Follow the Lighted Promenade

The moon casts an odd glow tonight.  I feel far from home and untogether.  Unread and underproductive.  Loud and distorted. Alone with dreams at two in the morning.  Full of thoughts too big. I love my friends and feel thankful - despite everything, I'm never alone. I am a teacher and I live what I do. I am a writer, though sometimes I wonder where it all comes from and where it all goes, and I know it doesnt matter as long as I am moved by it. Chris is a writer of the highest order...a real writer.  Adam's work is full of a fascinating (though deeply cathartic) passion.  Sarah has ideas but they go mostly unsung.   I have been so happy yet so longing. There is more here... In Brin's Woods I came close to saying it. I've been to Switzerland and felt it and saw it, though only for fleeting moments.  Does magic crystallize only in retrospect?   Find the one that lights the way for you. 

Bush Lied! Today marks the one year anniversary of the day ignorance reigned supreme and life was lost. King Dubya launched his "preemptive" strike against Iraq (to stop their production of nuclear weap...Ahem...weapons of mass...Ahem...evil) and showed the world the wonders of his bloated military budget and ego. I nearly cried when I saw a live picture of Baghdad (just before Shock and Awe) and I wondered what these people were feeling, waiting for the sky to literally fall. I felt so alone. Everyone was pumped up on adrenaline and I felt saddened beyond belief. It was one of the darkest days I have known. I know now that I wasn't alone, that nearly half of this country and 95 percent of the world were against it. The UN was against it. Most of our allies were against it. They said it would disrupt the very fabric of the world's alliance - and they were right. And things have changed for the better. Spain's entire gov't was just voted out...

It's been a long time since I've posted here. It certainly has been an interesting time - not boring at all; it's just that I express myself more eloquently in my stories and most of my creativity goes there. I've been a loner again. It's really hard for an introvert to be a teacher and usually I am just overcome at the end of the day. I'll take a nap, eat dinner in front of the Simpsons, read, take a walk, run errands, write, and go to bed. I have to do this at least two or three nights a week or I'll feel lousy. It's been somewhat of a rough run - I've been drinking too much caffeine (though still not nearly as much as most of my friends), I've been a little depressed by the weather, I've been somewhat overwhelmed/ burned out by teaching, and, until recently, I havent been all that creative. But this is a good time of the year to be burned out - the weather invites naps. I went hiking at the Dunes National Lakeshore on Monday - in...

Tonight's the Night I can feel that the magic is out there - but I cant quite touch it. I have very little to give. I guess I need to be selfish, but I feel that that's all I've been lately. I'm writing a World War One story because I like the forgotten desolation of that war. I hope to capture the mood. I feel happiness swim to the surface of the ice and then retreat. I want to be really happy. I should be. Today I'm not. I heard a great great great Bob Dylan song last night, from the Wonder Boys soundtrack. "It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there."

"A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves." - Willa Cather, O' Pioneers Seldom have I come across a quote that has so clearly defined my approach to everything. I have a lot to say. My mind is too hummy right now. I'll get back to you later. Suffice to say that I am writing again - a lot. Kudos to my friends who have taken the time to read my recent 50 page story. :)

Tuesday for me was devastation. Wednesday was an ache, a resignation. Tuesday we choked. Sunday and Wednesday we were simply outplayed and there is no harm in that. I grieved on Tuesday, grieved for Ronnie, for Steve Bartman, for Ernie Banks, for what might have been. By Wednesday I was tapped out. I still had hope but was acquiescent with the fact that it was not meant to be. Today I am sad but proud to be a part of this, to be a Cubs fan. There are those who don’t understand the deeply profound bond that we share with our team – my girlfriend for one. We’ve all heard it: “Why do you get so worked up over a bunch of overpaid athletes?” Well, is it any more illogical to feel for a group of guys that you’ve followed all year than it is to cry at the end of a movie for fictional characters that you’ve known for two hours? Is it any more pointless to get excited over the Cubs than it is to get upset over an outrageous political decision; we have control of neither. Re...

I need something loud. I'm only good when I write with passion. I awake to scattering, fantastic dreams, to the sound of the crickets, shuffle to the bath boneworn, ride to work under looming, low skies that would be beautiful. Are you passionate? Are you living like you talked? Got Neil's newest, Greendale, a wonderfully flawed epic, beautiful, simple, hokey enough to avoid that Andrew Lloyd Webber schlock (sorry Sarah). It choked my up. I think I'm in mourning for the lost time. In the summer I was so creative. I have such a passion for what I do (teaching, writing, riding, composing) that any one can consume me, and just so happens that teaching is doing that now. But I miss the windy, flashing nights when I would write until my fingers hurt and then lie in the darkness thinking Good enough, I did what I could tonight. And the open mic nights when I'd feel that buzzing, nervous energy right before I'd go on, playing a song I'd written th...

I saw the Horse last night - the one band that I needed to see before I died. It was a very low-key show, starting with Neil's newest "Greendale," a 10-song cycle, that took nearly two hours. It wasn't thunderous Crazy Horse material but that man can still write a beautiful song and his often hokey, often humorous, often prosaic storyline (replete with actors, props, and spotlights) kept even the beerheads entertained. It was a good show. I wanted the EXPLOSION!!! that is Crazy Horse but instead I got long-winded, beautifully played country-tinged rock. Not a bad deal at all. Went with Sarah, Chris, and the parents. Liz and Donny and Julie W. were in the balcony somehwere, hopefully lauding, as I was, Neil's audacious attack on Clear Channel and the Stalinistic Patriot Act. Had another birthday. (Yawn.) I'm 26. Feel spacey, flat, scrambled. I've been at a three-day seminar to improve my teaching skills. Right now, I have no teaching skills....

Into the twilight of early evening The sky turned cinder-black, the rain still fell aberrantly but I could feel the telling rise of wind, the smell of the flowers now nearly overmastered, the lights of the stores presupposing the significance of nightfall. I sat under the boardwalk on the square, the courthouse, restored, heroic, quiescent, rising splendidly o'er the verdant green of the lawn, the street, the oleander and magnolia, a low suggestive thunderpeal and then silence, still no rain from the oleaginous heavens but only the smell of rain, the promise, the covenant of rain; I looked up from my reading with each low reverberation, each amalgamation of sound and silence – for indeed that’s what it was; there was no clipped line, cutoff, between the silence and the thunder and the silence again, but only a dim, ill-defined effluvium of half-silence and half-sound, easily as forbidding (and quite possibly more so) than either the pure sound or the pure hush – and then down aga...

Why I oppose the war - by Daniel Brugioni 1. Bush (whom I think has had a disastrous run as a President) first advocated war because of Iraq's supposed nuclear arms build up. There was never any proof of any nuclear arms build up (at least none that was ever submitted to the UN or the world at large.) US "intelligence" submitted photos to the UN but (according to the Chicago Tribune) they were dismissed when it was determined that they had been doctored. 2. Failing to find any evidence of a nuclear program, Bush started the al Qaeda link theory. Again, no proof was ever submitted to the UN or the world at large. Again, the al Qaeda and Hussein's Baath Party are not allies, though they may be after this war is over. 3. I don't doubt that there are chemical and biological weapons in Iraq or with their allies. But again, there is NO proof that these still exist. (And if they do, why exactly hasn't Iraq, essentially a defenseless country, star...

An open letter from Tyler Brugioni (My mother): I want to thank all those peacefully demonstrating a war they believe is illegal. The world is watching and they need to know that not all Americans feel that this war is just. It is a war of agression, for colonization. Bush told the world that Iraq will soon be ours, and NO ONE can tell him no. He needs no one's permission. I'm sure some people in our nation would be cheering if someone promised to depose Bush, but most of us would fight to the death to keep our country from being occupied by a foreign government - in fact we have, as our history will attest. My thoughts are always with our soldiers and children, siblings and spouses, who are risking their life for their government, both here and in Iraq.

I said goodbye to the car last week. Said goodbye to 8 and a half years, 160,000 miles, the old boy’s been with me awhile. It feels very sad. I played “Prisoners (Of Rock and Roll)” by Neil Young and Crazy Horse to send him off. That’s a happy song. Very loud, volatile, road music. I feel sad. I’ve seen everything in that car. It has come to define me in many ways. It’s known simply as “The Car,” and everyone who sees it knows it’s mine. Neil wrote a song about his first car. I am writing this paean. I drove home from Tippecanoe with Brian when I was 18 and he was 16. There was lightning on the horizon and I was afraid it was going to rain. Jeremy and I listened to the Cub’s game on the way to Ouabache, and the lights of the small towns glowed as if on film. I had my first kiss in that car and my first road trip and my first day of college and my first time seeing the aurora borealis, camped alone near Moose Mountain is Saskatchewan. Further north, on Wakesieu, ...

I've successfully fought off a rather savage case of the Mondays. Spirits have fluctuated a bit, generally high with just the sometimes affectionate sadness that lingers when the world is dead and dormant like it is now. It is six o'clock and I am still at school, but I'm happy enough I guess. I may have another long day this week, but not as long as this one, and I got most of what I needed to done. Right now I want to read some Hemingway. Maybe I'll head to Borders and read "The Snows of Kilmanjaro" or launch into A Farewell to Arms. I like his simplicity and his imagery; it provides a most welcome retreat from the ice and cold, obsidian world that turns hostile with any wind. The world grows cold and sometimes connections are hard to come by. Matt got a dog, named Journey. She is neat. From the new novel ( He Had Lost God ) due this year, hopefully: He left the restaurant and headed west, past the KFC where he would eat dinner, over the ra...

I am so out of tune with you My, it has been a while. I've been away. I'm in Alice Springs right now, where the railroads came in 1929 linking it with the major cities. I want to go everywhere. I'm down because I don't even remember how to hope to travel, I've been so resigned to the stationary existence. I am done with student teaching and it has taken a toll. The writer in me has fallen down somewhere below and I can hear him breathing but can't get down there yet. With sleep he will return. I will sit alone at my desk in the lamplight, typing on the laptop I've yet to finish paying for, maybe Leonared Cohen will be there. There was a lonely traveling cloud in the sky tonight. I thought of you, stretched horizontal in the mid-morning sun, bare midriff, smiling at me, smiling at the world through unjaded eyes. The lights glowed fiercly. I sung along to music from the Isle of the Moon. Perhaps tonight was an awakening of a frustr...

Hello!

In the run of interminable and depthless and often disastrous sadness, there comes those rare blessed moments of tranquility. I've been surrounded in sadness, steeped in it, I've seen misery and betrayal greater than I have known. I am tired, off-kilter, punchless, happy, alone, surrounded. I am listening to music from Madagascar. It sounds good. Suddenly the clouds have parted, like in the picture of the road to Antisirabe, and I find that perhaps my bout of sadness is to be short lived, and the next tide of happiness may stay a little longer. He came to the river. The river was there. Adam and I are collaborating on a story. Gasy Manambara. Sarah and I have been thus for a year. Manatara. Right here I'm happy but not content. There are far larger memories on their way, hopefully off in the far corners of the earth. Volitiana for vaovao tsara. There are souls on the breeze, speaking, warning of approaching darkness but promising a change of direction.

So Colleen bought me the new Beck album and I've been listening to it, a lot, and it's sounded very good. But I have not been down, and to appreciate a work of such towering sadness, I think you need to be a bit down to appreciate it. But I've still enjoyed it. And I know that my moods shift oftener than the tides even. On the way home I may feel it all, 'cause in a sea change, nothing is safe. Teaching's going very well. I designed perhaps my best lesson ever yesterday. It had to deal with the moral philosophies of the characters in "Lord of the Flies" and how peer pressure can make good people do bad things. I bought two bags of candy and put them in my backpack. Then I found a culprit in each class and told them that I was going to leave the class for a moment and they were to go to my pack and say "Hey, there's candy in Mr. Brugioni's bag; we should take some, he'd never know." Afterwards, I came into the room and yell...

There must be a beginning here somewhere. There have been lots of ends. This may be a bit discursive; if so, I apologize. I just took a walk. The harvest moon hung impending, the clouds were salmon-bellied off to the tempestuous west but as they skated in front of the bone-white moon they turned starkly white and black, racing, with a beauty that hurt to look upon, into the mysterious east on some unknown yet compelling errand. I looked at the moon. It stayed, silver, always. The wind spoke of ends, spoke of beginnings, spoke of the continuing thread with no end nor beginning that runs through us and through us, upon which we are born and upon which we die; it spoke of summer’s ghost, it spoke of now wizened autumn, it spoke of brooding winter and swamp-damp spring, through the door goes one and into the light, from the light comes one and through the door; a smiling baby, an old man breathing his last in an eyes-wide coma, a man not quite sure where his road is going but who’s...

Under riotous skies I walk alone It's sparkling out, sunny and wonderful. I'm sitting here with my cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee feeling on top of the world. I just finished my first week of actual student teaching and it has gone quite well. I have found that I actually look forward to teaching the lessons that I design, and the students have at least tolerated them. I feel that I am still moving forward even though my life has changed a lot since August, and I am still reinventing myself for the better. Last night was awesome. I picked up Sarah after work and we went to Pizza Hut for a thick, greasy pizza that just tasted like heaven (take that abs) and then went to Meijer for - get this - some non-alcoholic beer because I was curious. I will NEVER drink alcohol, the whole concept just makes me feel a little ill, losing your wits and having your senses dulled like that, but I like the taste of beer a little so I bought a six-pack and had one and it was neat. And...

Already dead to me now cause it feels as though I'm watching something die I've been listening to the new Beck album online. The three songs I've listened to have been filled with a windy desolation, a sadness so complete that it's unimaginable unless you listen to someone going through it. Like Mutations, this album wraps you in sadness and makes you feel warm in it, like it's okay to be sad. I just cried a little bit, sitting here in the computer lab, and I don't know if I've ever had that happen on a first listen. I just feel so affected right now. Rolling Stone called it "an entire album of spectacular suffering," and the best album Beck has ever made. Anyone want to go with me to see him? I'll sell my cats to the research lab or something. :)