let's address some things.

i only ever came back to lincoln for jake. the only reason i fought so hard, the only reason why it mattered so much to get my contract is because i wanted to be around him. the job was important, yes. some of my friends were weighed in the decision, absolutely. my viability in the city just a concern on the periphery.

when i realized that, i was pretty shocked. i wish i could say it's because i don't tend to make life-changing decisions based on one person, but that isn't true.

there's only one reason i ended up in madison, too.

when things fell apart through my own doings, and while things were falling apart, i had two opportunities to escape. i hadn't signed a lease. these opportunities were something bigger than what i had.

i had two opportunities present themselves to me, and i turned down both of them.

luckily, even though i came to lincoln for an irresponsible reason, i decided to stay for the right ones.

a few friends of mine have been going through some rough times, as is our wont. i've taken everything i've ever learned from jake and i'm turning that into something other people can use, too. i'm trying to help. i am focused on putting good things into the world. there is a lot to be said about doing 'nice things' for someone who won't talk to you.

but it conveys the right things. and it makes me happy. ultimately i end up going 'why wouldn't i do this?'. and i feel good about that, even if no one (not even he) understands or cares.

when i have a chance to step back from my friends and day-to-day adventuring, when i'm actually in my apartment for a night where i'm not just crashing-showering-going-back-to-work, and i process thoughts, i can't believe these people i've found.

i am so grateful for these forces in my life. i am grateful for fruit parties and nerdnights of chinese food and 1 vs 100, screaming at jesus. i'm grateful for hesitant crying over a side of pancakes in a diner and confessions over ice cream. i'm grateful for sarcastic dinners and the sharing of someone's joy in life; her carefully selected friends and her amazing daughter. i'm grateful for the mutual feeling of absolute responsibility (even if it ends in ulcers).

most of all, i'm grateful for this amazing collection of people. awake at all hours. there is no way i could ever explain how important these people are to me. how much they've changed me. how much they've made me LAUGH. and how much i love them all.

not giving in and not running away has rewarded me in such inexplicable ways. i have moved 18 times in 6 years. it's no longer a way to escape, it's a conditioned response.

saturn vs uranus, right jim?

i will defy my nature.

the only unknown: will you defy yours?

Steph: They type like old people.
me: old people typing is .... what, exactly?
Steph: Hello.......
I just wanted to see if you are there LOL :)
me: ........ oh my god you're right STOP IT FUCKING STOP IT

you're wrong.

you're an idiot.

and you're fucked.


"Then we need a plan of attack.

This is America. Crazy shit works out all the time. So. Two-fold attack.

Brutal seduction mixed with psychological warfare."

poverty jet setting theatre presents . . .

OVERSIGHTS IN MOVING: PART TWO IN A FOUR PART MINISERIES
or, alternately, shae spent a saturday running errands and decided to photodocument it.

( sponsored by URLS. )

the best day-after-intense-migraine therapy ever?

( click here to find my miracle cure. )

i was walking home from work tonight at 1am. there was some form of forgiveness in the air, painfully noticeable with the past 100 degree nights. i took my time, secretly glad that my flip-flops are so worn that i can feel the ground rubbing through the material. watching the nightly timed sprinklers going off, i noted the time. i'm getting to know their habits.


i switched my pants earlier when i went home from khakis to jeans, and when i pulled my ipod out of my pocket to change to 'the wolves i and ii', i found a piece of danburite that i'd been carrying around with me last week.


Someday my pain, someday my pain
Will mark you
Harness your blame, harness your blame
And walk through

interesting, since a friend of mine is having such an odd time with this stone.


i brought up the fact that i don't know how to react to someone's reaction to my 'creativity' that the reaction garnered somehow didn't fit what was presented. and i was confronted by four people who told me the reaction is completely understandable and that they have no idea what i'm talking about half the time.




am i really that tangential? to you, whose eyes are passing over this right now, do you feel like you know me? at all?

"The higher 'soul,' or higher faculty as I would prefer to say, has absolutely no value in itself. Many who have attained it have remained imbeciles or worse; some have 'graduated' to higher imbecility, or fanaticism. The 'vegetative soul,' or oldest part of the brain, merely perceives simple sensations: hot or cold, damp or dry, seemingly safe or seemingly noxious. The 'animal' soul, or middle brain, perceives the body language of similar organisms and can, somewhat, predict their behavior from this. The 'human' soul, or later brain, perceives the structures of a simple, mechanical kind. The 'fourth soul,' or emerging brain, perceives the invisible web of connections between all things; but it is no more infallible than the rest of the brain, or the gut, or the liver, or the gonads. It merely works without effort, unlike the more primitive parts of the brain, which is why meanings seem to flow into us, when this is activated, and we forget that we are still creating the meanings. We imagine we are 'receiving revelations,' and hence we do not take responsibility or exercise any prudence or common sense. This is why there are so many 'holy fools' and so few holy wise men."

-Robert Anton Wilson, The Widow's Son: The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, Volume Two

real world: SHAE SHAE PAY 400 DOLLARS IN DEPOSIT AND 880 DOLLARS IN RENT UP FRONT AND THEN TWO WEEKS LATER PAY ANOTHER 440 DOLLARS AND TURN ON YOUR GAS AND ELECTRIC AND PAY THE CELLPHONE BILL AND TRY AND SCROUNGE TOGETHER CHANGE SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO SLEEP ON THE FLOOR OF YOUR GORGEOUS NEW APARTMENT OH AND YOU'RE GOING ON A 2 WEEK LONG TRIP IN AUGUST SO SAVE FOR THAT
shae: lol k




suck it, real world.

me: dude i am still laughing about those stupid rock puns.
jj: hahaha
those were pretty rock solid
granite, they could probably be better

moving in the rain is hard. i must have looked pretty pathetic. i'm tired as hell from lugging books up the spiral staircase to my apartment, but i've got most of the bigger things moved to the new place.

send housewarming gifts and bombs!

shae sackman
1201 e st #4
lincoln, ne
68508

next weekend i'm getting all kinds of furniture from my twin from work, since she's moving to chicago, that lucky bitch.

plans have been hatched in 20 minutes. with one fell swoop, the itinerary has been set. the captain of the un-stealable civic rose up out of her haze of 3d modeling and pizzas and mused we could get it done in 19 days no problem.

we're just waiting for the foreman to sign off on the plan.

lincoln -> moses lake -> seattle -> halifax -> toronto -> montreal -> chicago -> lincoln

6,675 miles.

if we don't get lost.

and we'll probably try just for the hell of it.

my sole job: to come up with a snazzy name for this summer's adventure.

we've had the lesbian sex summer of 06. debauchfest 07. insanipalooza 08, unofficially.  what'll it be this time?

From: Lori Kadavy
To: All Lincoln

Wilkinson and Hawthorne are fighting at the white fence at 3:30. Hopefully, Wilkinson has the food all cleaned out of his braces by then, or he'll win due purely to Randy's puking. Like I do every day in 4th period. Gag.


From: Jay Wilkinson
To: All Lincoln

Hawthorne will probably wuss out. What a dorkwad.

-j


From: Andy Robbins
To: All Lincoln

White fence is good, Kadavy. In my elementary school, there were three
simple words that were NOT uttered unless you were absolutely serious.
And once you heard it, you knew that person had reached their limit, and
there was no turning back. A bloody nose and possibly a black eye were
basically inevitable once it's spoken.



Three words. Two sentences. The where and the when; and it was always
the same:



"FLAGPOLE! AFTER SCHOOL!"



From: Shae Sackman
To: All Lincoln

In my country, we don't solve our problems with violence.

- the foreign exchange student.



From: Jason Morehead
To: All Lincoln

You just use hockey.



From: Shae Sackman
To: All Lincoln

That's different. That's *art*.



From: Jason Wilkinson
To: All Lincoln

You only have a country because our founders didn't like to shovel snow.

to wait for the wind (for him) in the trees; in the slim marvels in the big day erasers for when it's howlin' (for him)

til we're covered in dawn mountain shavings and cloudskin (for him) in the particulate of dreams

that burn in the billions (for him) waiting (for him) waiting (for him) for him.


they mighta emptied canada

left it featureless but free

last night i dreamed in darkly nurtured dreams

some of them i didn't want to see

fires burned colder values clashed
good and evil were all dry grass.


it's absolutely gorgeous outside and everything is alive, even my sanity. greatly altered, it will never do what it did for me before. but i am nothing if not resourceful. inventive and forceful, i have no choice but to alter everything in my path. in this whole thing, i am a catalyst for change. worship and damn me in equal parts.

don't let me near you, i'll change you forever. just ask the exuberant corpses i've left in my wake.

you guys don't seem to understand the importance of these things, you know? i'm spending my time down on the ground, getting to know the permafrost and having the leaves introduce me to their close, intimate friend, the sky. it's a slow, uneasy time. but i think we'll get over the initial awkwardness.

the trees don't move to wilco anymore, though. they're digging fox confessor brings the flood, though. and that's cool with me.


i spend a lot of time at my bridge. ripping up letters for ryan and naomi and craig and jake and erika and katie and gwyn and chris and victor and tre and amanda and michael and josh and ven and spencer and miranda and david and everyone who died and left me in this life, and throwing them into the water.

it gives the muskrats and ducks something to read for the winter. i'll appreciate their opinions come march. they always seem to have so much more common sense than the rest of you.

i'll spend all my nights out in the dying fields with stolen clothes and strong black coffee.

wishing you could feel it all the same way i do.

when my friends don't comment on my posts, i know i've done something weird. and they don't know how to react.

no worries guys. just because i'm in love with the fall doesn't mean i'll keep jumping. unless one of you wants to come with...

i catch myself thinking back to friday night, and re-processing. 'wow, did we really talk about that?'

there's a line in hey nostradamus about how the way to get to know someone is to tell them one of your secrets. then they'll tell you one of theirs. and then, maybe, one day, you'll fall in love.



it's an interesting method to make friends with. i don't think it can work the same way. eventually you hit a plateau and it becomes comfortable and okay and all knowledge and experience from then on somehow becomes communal, or you no longer have anything to counter with and it becomes a stalemate.



i left the dinner table feeling like it was an unequal trade. i wonder if he thought about that. i suppose i could just ask.



but i feel like that same stupid kid who was worried about bothering ryan, or chris, or lyle, when i met them. wanting to take up their time, but simultaneously feeling like their time is better spent on someone else, or something worthwhile.

who the fuck wants to teach ME anything? or spend time with my inane thoughts? or let me disturb the same molecules of air that they are (or, for that matter, let me in their house)? what a waste of energy.


but, man... do i ever want to learn.

what i have slowly come to realize is that most people think this way all the time. they don't merely want to hold their values; they want their values to win. and i suspect this is why people so often feel betrayed by art and consumerism, and by the way the world works.

if you feel betrayed by culture, it's not because you're right and the universe is fucked; it's only because you're not like most people. but this should make you happy, because - in all likelihood - you hate those other people anyway. you are being betrayed by a culture that has no relationship to who you are or how you live.

do you want to be happy? i suspect that you do. well, there's the first step to happiness: don't get pissed off that people who aren't you happen to think paris hilton is interesting and deserves to be on tv every other day; the fame surrounding pairs hilton is not a reflection on your life (unless you want it to be). don't get pissed off because the yeah yeah yeahs aren't on the radio enough. you can buy the goddamn record and play 'maps' all goddamn day (if that's what you want). don't get pissed off because people didn't vote the way you voted. you knew this was a democracy when you agreed to participate, so you knew this was how things might work out.
basically, don't get pissed off over the fact that the way you feel about culture isn't some kind of universal consensus. because if you do, you will end up feeling betrayed. and it will be your own fault. you will feel bad, and you will deserve it.

now it's quite possible you disagree with me on this issue. and if you do, i know what your argument is: you're thinking 'but i'm idealistic'. this is what people who want to inflict their values on other people always think. they think that there is some kind of romantic, respectable aura that insulates the inflexible, and that their disappointment with culture latently process that they're tragically trapped by their own intellect and good taste. somehow, they think their sense of betrayal gives them integrity. it does not. if you really have integrity - if you truly live by your ideals and those ideals dictate how you engage with the world at large - you will never feel betrayed by culture. you will simply enjoy culture more. you won't necessarily start watching syndicated episodes of everybody loves raymond, but you will find it interesting that certain people do. you won't suddenly agree that amelie was a more emotive movie than friday night lights, but you won't feel alienated and offended if every film critic you read tells you that it is. you will care, but you won't care.

you're not wrong, and neither is the rest of the world.

but you need to accept that those two things really aren't connected.