Geist's blog

(Currently reading Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", and wanted to apply that reading style to a mix of a very plausible future and the current situation in the Congo. Grisly stuff going on there, stuff we as a nation might be embroiled in sooner or later.

-Geist)

The jungle, rank with rot and death and rebirth, shaded the convoy of old trucks and clunky battle wagons as they slogged forward, backward, they didn't care, somewhere through the mud. There was no sound along the path save the purr of strained fuel cell engines and the slosh of rubber on wet earth. The birds were all gone or eaten, the apes and howlers had long ago been slaughtered. The trees were still there only because they were some of those luckily spared by the unrelenting machine of mankind's consumption.

(This is the two pieces I made after playing- no, experiencing- Fallout 3. I wanted to get more in touch with the atmosphere and setting, that of a bleak, dark, and cynical human race struggling to stop its self-destruction- an amazing feat, to say the least, and it shows. I recently found out that this game is being 'taught' in college courses alongside the first two. I mean, professors holding week-long discussions on player morality, personality imprinting, narrative decisions, etc. This is intriguing stuff, and I love every bit of it.

-Geist)

The sun had begun to set as the two bandits strolled down the swollen, cracked, and trash-congested highway.

(A continuation to Hockey Masks.

Also,

Excision. Noun.

A medical term pertaining to the removal of spinal material by cutting.

-Geist)

It was dark and then it was burning bright; the beat of life started up again and it was black and white at first but then the color hit him so he just laid there, closing and opening his dried and scabby eyes, letting the sunset in, pushing it out.

The bandit tried to breathe and his lungs heaved blood and water; he tried to move and his nerves exploded in machine-gun spurts in pain.

Closing and opening.

Closing and opening.

He tried to conceive shapes, but they twisted away into something else everytime he thought he had it pinned down- a car became a dog became a sign became a smell. His hearing was nothing but a high-pitched ring that resounded infinitely between each side of his empty head. His eyes rolled back and forth uselessly behind their lids, following the screeching wavelengths behind them.

The sun had begun to set as the two bandits strolled down the swollen, cracked, and trash-congested highway.

The first's beaten and duct-taped hunting rifle squeaked with each step across the grayed and decaying pavement, accompanying the rattle of her stapled and rusted tin-plate armor.

The second's pistol beat rhythmically against his thigh, the ragged leather cord keeping it attached to his faded and oil-stained work jeans in desperate need of repair. He tended to forget about it when the two would stop to rest under bridges, in broken houses, amongst rubble, anywhere, for lack of sleep.

The first stopped and looked ahead. Automobile carcasses lay strewn ahead of them, highway dividers that served to separate the road crumbled all over it. There was little hope of finding friendly camps for a long while. There never was much hope to begin with.

I sit in contemplation, imagining the possibilities of the new world that I so eagerly awaited.

All this for a computer game, I think.

I've become a sucker for advertising, shining with the message of post-apocalyptic cheer that the Fallout series have for so long cynically upheld. Almost like I've succumbed to a radiation sickness of corporate designs. Maybe someday I'll die a little from it. Perhaps I can purge it from my body.

I shrug to myself.

I want to have some kind of sin in my life just to say I did.

I just can't help but become one of the radiated.

(Lyrics by Usagi.

-Geist)

Even though the human race is completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things, what matters is what we think matters, and that's our few thousand years of human existence. That's the world we live in, the reality we accept as our own.

Perhaps we'll do something.

Perhaps we'll do nothing.

When we die, the lives of anyone else won't matter anymore.

In the end, it won't make a difference either way.

We're just-

just-

trespassing.

(I love this song and album too much to not stick this on here.

-Geist)

He couldn't believe how easy it was.
He put the gun into his face.
Bang.
(So much blood for such a tiny little hole)
Problems have solutions, you know.
A lifetime of fucking things up fixed in one determined flash.
Everything's blue...
Everything's blue in this world,
The deepest shade of mushroom blue,
All fuzzy,
Spilling out of my head.

I had held the man's gnarled hand in my own and grinned and shook it lightly. He was practically chained to a wheelchair, a sensor rigged up on the back alerting the nurses when he left his seat.

My grandfather was ecstatic to see him, sad to see him as he was. The man had been the principal of the school my grandfather taught Biology at. They had lots of stories to tell. Rocky stories, they called them. The man's name was Rocky.

"He's a tough guy," my grandfather said as we drove home. "You want some Korean War stories, you ask him."

"I thought I saw a veteran's pin on his jacket. He looks pretty good for his age."

"Pretty good for having his guts blown out in the war."

I was quiet.

"He's been living with plastic mesh holding up his insides since fifty-one."

We didn't talk until the car was parked in the driveway.

"Tough guy," my grandfather said, over and over.

I nodded and repeated his thoughts.

"Tough guy."

(A tragedy of accomplishment.

-Geist)

He slumps down again, his shadow casting itself over the nearly-finished book, and then lurches back up in the chair, pushing unshed tears away from waiting eyes. It's twenty to midnight. There's a mouse that's scurrying in the walls of the kitchen and that's all the noise he hears. He is alone.

He ponders about his life for a split second before he continues to read. Is he really giving that much up for academics, he thinks. Has he fallen so far to have no personal enjoyment whatsoever. He writes. He enjoys that, doesn't he, he thinks. And that music he makes. Sort of catchy. He "enjoys" it.

It isn't enjoyment, though, he thinks. It's forced, he thinks. It's advancing a skill with enjoyment slapped on top of it. What isn't forced, he thinks. Everything can't be forced, he thinks. He tries to think of something that isn't.

And one boy is against a wall in the crowded cafeteria
as the aggressor pulls back
and the teachers plead for him not to
and the students scream and watch
and one girl gets caught between them and she runs out crying
and the fist meets the face, and the face the skull, and the skull the
hard
white
concrete
wall behind it.

The wall is painted red
and the boy is on the ground now and he can't get up
and the teachers are all silent
and the students are calling for more
and the girl is still crying
and the aggressor is walking away
and his knuckles are bloody
and stiff.

You never said this would be hard.

You never said I could lose.

Never said that I, me, myself I
had to be socially applicable, I
attempt to make the best of what's left
but I'm stuck with what's like music for the deaf

Just hold my hand, make a stand,
I'm drowning in a sea of sayings,
each one harsher than the next
and all of them start with "What's wrong with-"

You, you never took the time,
you cut the line, put me on the fast track to pain,
the fast track to that beast, to that social feast to that
nightmare of
myself.

I killed a fox the other night.
I didn't see it die, no.
Barely even knew I hit it.
A split second, an instant of realization as the emerald eyes
shimmered in the unstoppable oncoming light.

Then, barely a bump.
Not even a squeal.
The technology of the car was made so you didn't
have to hear those things, right?
I didn't even have to stop, just had to comprehend:

That I took a life.
And I only cried the night after
because I realized I
hadn't felt anything at all,
you know.

When it happened.

I listened to a deaf woman sing today.
Not sing, really.
Try to.
She had felt her mother's throat as a child,
felt the vibrations, copied those to her throat and added words.

I watched her, eyes closed, body stationary,
and listened as she didn't sing a note
and didn't hit a tune
but listened anyway
because it was so wrong and fractured and fragile and

Beautiful.
"Never be anybody but yourself," she said at the end of Silent Night

Stumble through the door, which one hand slams shut; other hangs useless, idle.

Stop.

Blink.

Dull yellow covering living room blinds momentarily. A somewhat green digital display shows that it's about eleven past ten and midnight is getting closer.

Hunger.

I feel hunger.

The dull yellow is offset by an avalanche of tinted blues and greens and yellows as refrigerator is silently perused: homogenized consumer products and bright colors to appease the retina; fragile, ornate jars, see-through but pretty if you squint; a tinny glint of silver from the two-cent cover of a yogurt container.

Look closer.

"It's time to rise up against cancer" against a background of billowing pink and cursive signatures and smiling faces.

I don't understand
why you continue to contemplate
the blank and black and empty void that is
(and imagine-
my hand
hits hard
on my husk
of a heart)
this.

I don't understand
how you could ever ponder
that these little scraps of soul that survive
(bastard bits that they are)
could ever be yanked into
something
anything
cohesive.

The life I continue to live
(or is it that I slowly die?
[and imagine-
my hand
hits harder-])
is not what it is here.

You see,
Hit harder.
I have nothing
and harder.
to offer, and everything
I don't want
to take.

And remember.
The longer you view
that nothing
that something
(this husk
of a heart
on its way to a hell)
that void

the closer
I hit harder
that nothing
that something
comes to being
the viewer
themselves.

And my hand
hits harder.

(Welcome back to Berlin, circa World War Two, kiddies.

Any comments would be great.
Enjoy.
-Geist)

She knew it had begun to rain.

She couldn't see it, for no windows lined the spiral staircase between the second and third floors of the Flakturm.

She couldn't hear it, for the concrete was far too thick and not even a rocket would make anything louder than a grumble.

But she knew. Marie knew.

Too little time to type up words. Urgh.

I've recently begun to read this book by Cormac McCarthy and love it because of its unfettered obsession with darkness, and so have decided to do it for the Forensics league. I wanted to know what you guys thought of my selection before I put it up for judging by our captains in October.

I can also mix and match related parts from the book as I see fit, so if you think something doesn't fit or a section could be done away with, please write in the comments.

Music at the end from Nine Inch Nails.

And, actually, it's part of a free download. Handily.

Enjoy.

Will add words tomorrow.

Have you ever had someone you love refuse to speak to you?

I mean, you're right next to them, but they won't talk.

You touch them.

You hug them.

You say their name.

You plead.

You're quiet for a while but then sob because you can't do anything else.

And then they just look at you- no, they don't say anything- just look at you. Look at what you've become. Like there's some black, gnarled, rotting hole filled with puss and decay and pure insignificance where your face should be.

And everything freezes and your stomach curls into itself and your eyes jerk backward and you begin to daydream a nightmare.

(I've uploaded the music, haven't had time to sing lyrics. Here's a basis for what I'm doing.

Guitar and bass by Geist. Drums by Trent Reznor.)

Without a central beat, I'll melt away into useless twangs and hums.

Minus the essential rhythm, I'll be half of what I've made of myself.

Without a central beat, I can't mold the notes into something for someone.

Drum harder, I think I'm going deaf.

Pull back.

First, feel the muscles flex, the skin stretch and scar from the pressure, the tendons extend to breaking point, the sweat as it dribbles from pores.

Now, release it all into that certain ecstasy, that certain mesmerizing pain rolled into a fist landing on an object of choice.

Of preference.

Something you can choose, for a change.

Reel away.

Toss that living corpse of yours onto something, onto anything that can hold that weight of expectations on your shoulders.

Turn a faucet on in your head and let the guilt flow out of the eyes as bits of liquid lapus lazuli upon the unsaturated school clothes.

You can't help but snarl.

The curls of it rip across unwilling cheeks, like crumpled paper being shredded in two. Jawbones jut and temples pulse a tempo to the frustration, and, for a clear moment, it seems like the world has averted its gaze from you and your sad and pathetic glimmer of life in a universe of shining stars.

I.
Bring the school-bell down on my hand,
watch the blood eek out from the cracks.
I see this purple and fleshy ring upon my fingers
and wonder what I really lack.

Is it feeling, I ponder?

Is that the missing piece?

I can't tell, really.

Blue dots and swirling black crusts whisk about my knuckles.

Maybe it's intelligence.

Common sense?

Never had that anyways.

Slowly, the scab oozes over; I begin to pick again.

The grades have already begun to drop.

Has writing distilled my mind?

Why isn't anything working anymore?

Picking and picking and picking and picking and.

Laughing-

And.

Squealing-

And.

And it bleeds all over.

II.
I'll let you in on a little secret of mine.

Come closer.

That's it.

You know when-

-and how he-

-and that night they-

-should she have-

-all black and red-

-didn't! He wouldn't-

-and, oh, that must've felt good.

Quiet.

Here he comes.

And he's gone.

III.

(First:
http://www.youngwritersproject.org/node/12113 )

I slouched back in the painfully fake theater seat next to her, her hand brushing mine as I came down to her level. Her eyes glittered as I settled myself. I smiled. She did, too.

The movie began.

It was nothing new. We had both seen it before. We were there because we could be, because we wanted to be, because we wanted to be together and wanted each other and wanted to be wanted and loved it all. None of it was new. Not one bit.

But when lips met and fingers glided down bare arms, it still felt fresh.

(So.

I've been working on and off with this for a good month, but I think it's ready for unveiling.

This little escapade down musical lane has helped me expand my horizons and given me a new view on the world as it is, and hopefully others who haven't tried already can pitch in with the free stuff available on the interwebs. With this song, I'm pretty much stopping with music recording, as school is going to be a female dog.

Rock on, YWP.

Bass, percussion, piano, vocals by Geist.

Sound effects: google'd and without copyright protection. :)

Enjoy.)

Shattered mirrors at my feet
tell me I'm not who I am.
People that pass by
remind me this is not my land.
How can I live with myself like this,
do I know what I am?
Team keeps tearing me apart but hey,
change be damned.

And I am in your solar storm.
I'm within your solar storm.

Stop, don't stop now.
Stop, don't stop now.

I'm within your solar storm.
I'm within your solar storm.

No lyrics for this one- but I took a loooong time in writing the support to this.

The main theme is the main synth beat taken (with apologies) from a Gorillaz song, All Alone, the song that made me fall in love with the key of A minor.

I added harmonies as well as breaks and variations with a piano while playing the theme.

I wanted to come up with lyrics to this, but homework has to be done.

Enjoy.

(Final edit to be sent to Brown.)

Alright, I’ll admit it. As a kid in grade school, I was a little chubby.

What?

Okay, maybe more than a little.

Kids dared me to eat as many Sloppy Joes on hot lunch days as I could, I won the 4th of July pie-eating contest three years running, and my mother called me her little Oscar-Meyer wiener.

Now, imagine, a hot summer day, this plump pink hot dog sizzling in the scorching sun, waddling along as fast as he can next to his dad, an upright, muscular, and hard-working man, who is running as slow as he can so that his son can keep up.

Panting and sweating in a t-shirt and ripped shorts, I say, for probably the twentieth time, “Dad, I don’t think I can keep up.”

(Just listening to this makes me feel evil.

:|

Percussion, bass, guitar, vocals and mixing by Geist.

Enjoy.
-Geist)

Don't get too close, the beast's at bay.
Don't trust what your eyes are saying.
The heat that you feel is in the way
of getting to the heart of my being.

Something's amiss, the world turns over.
Can't you see what's wrong?
I'm not the thing you think I am.
The soul that you wanted is gone.

Chip away at the mold and I've become,
Heartless, heartless.
Find a way to absolve the hope and you're,
Heartless, heartless.

And the master has become irrelevant now,
the world and its creations slipping through his fingers.
Nothing really matters from him anymore
and only his vague outline lingers.

Is this how it's supposed to be?
Am I to be left in the dust of advancement?
This isn't what I thought I would see.
There is nothing but abandonment.

Hopefully the dust will carry my presence away,
maybe no one will care that I'm gone.
I laugh at the thought that people will remember me.
Remember what? A few typed words and a voice? Wrong.

He remembers those who had stood by him,
vanguards of the breakdown, harbingers of the end.
They knew that this would never last.
They knew his soul would come out dead.

They, too, abandoned the derelict,
the empty factories swept of their product.
The trains of thought never came back to the station.
No water flowed, the electricity unable to conduct.

He was left alone to advance,
alongside an alien few.

(Numero tres on my march down musical lane. Sorry about the sucktacular voice. I had just finished playing a varsity soccer game for ninety minutes straight when I recorded it. Very rough, though. I want to add bass and maybe guitar if my brother ever gets around to teaching me minor chords. :p

Enjoy.

-Geist)

Chorus

Have you ever seen a man
lose all comprehension of life?

Have you ever seen his gaze
dart over towards the knife?

Have you ever seen his eyes
see infinity spread before you,

Have you ever seen a man
die?

Have you ever blocked the screams
as they echo through the night?

Have you ever heard the mute,
seen the blind and wronged the right?

Have you ever helped me up?
When was the last time you did that?

What’s the point anymore?
You made up for things I lacked.

Chorus

Will you do me one last thing?
Just wondering if you could.

Tell the people I knew no god
and leave my body out in the woods.

(Took me a while to sort out life and a little tweaking of the lyrics, but here it is.

I wanted to try speaking in between singing, akin to the Nine Inch Nails song "Zero-Sum", which details the end of the world from the perspective of two lovers sitting outside a church. Quite moving.

Percussion/ambient sounds, bass guitar, guitar, piano, and vocals by Geist.

Enjoy.)

Keep waiting, maybe the sirens will stop.
This one can’t be real.
Sit in the shelter and let the rumbles rock you to sleep.
Wake up before the others, see if you can feel.

Watch the sky light up behind the radiation.
Hear that microwave’s buzz as the world fries.
Let the burnt skin peel off like paper machè.
Now wonder why you believed the lies.

This is the endgame, family and friends.
This is the end result.
This is the past and future of this human race.
This is the final expression of a collective guilt.

Keep walking, it just keeps getting better.

(After reading the English tragedy "The Mayor of Casterbridge", wherein the main character, exiled by his only remaining family, his community, and his employees, wanders the London countryside until he dies in an abandoned old shack, I just sat down at my piano and played this song.

A fitting intro to the rest of the pieces about to be put up, methinks.

Enjoy.

-Geist)

And it's a,
rainy day,
in Casterbridge,
today.

A rainy day,
in Casterbridge,
today.

Today.