Holding down the Fort!

And by Fort, I mean FF int'l headquarters! Jordan is officially done with work, even though we both know his days from advising and helping us are far from over! Thanks Jordan for all your hard work! In other happy news, Logan is also bouncing this week, but he'll still be in SB, livin' the life! And finally, the Network for Social Change is taking shape. We'll be hiring 4 more applicants in the first round, with our retreat in December. It'll be easier to manage with less Directors, and we'll also have the ability to experiment and see what works. Mistakes will be made along the way, and do I look forward to them! Just more lessons to be learned...

-Aaron

over it.

i blog on myspace.

http://www.myspace.com/whatjewexpect

it seems only fair...

where life takes us, this twisted abyss tack it up up on the list, consists OF the unknown road, ahead of us, keeping us on our toes through highs and lows bows and arrows sifting through darkness running through sunshine from these pages of word canvas shattering everything it touches-we were stealing people's lunches in twos and threes, from all da da da crazies at the zoo.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. cookies.

the blog is back. im feeeling it. this tangeringe color is pretty ugly, dont you think? who reads this page anymore? not me. maybe rabbi yonah. i met him again at jewish college night. he is one slick rabbi! let me assure you.

im staying in santa barbara, working here with the foundation another year. it will be sweet, for as long as it lasts. i got into this fight with a friend. it is not fun. i made out with her friend. oh. we were sort of together? for a while. its a confusing situation. i feel so accomplished today. besides for the whole fight thing. crap. im listening to so much animal collective as of late. it is such trippy, tribalistic atmospheric stuff...bloody good.

gotta shower. it is tuesday! till next time.

air-in

back from the dead

Hi. i am aaron. i used to write.

now its march, the first post in a month, the first good post in well over a year, at least, right? so much has happened i dont know where to begin: the good, the bad, the not so bad. oh, and then the great, wherever that may lie. but ill try.

march march march. work is going, going well. finally doing a lot more graphic design and artwok which really rocks. im designing the poster for a jewish festival thatll go all over town, a new marketing packet for the foundation, cell sheets, flyers, our newsletter...im really into the study of how eyes move. literally. i like working on flow, so that whatever piece im working on has the unique ability to really control the focus, gaze, and direction of your eyes.

im doing good here. work is fulfilling, perhaps more emotionally than professionally. it feels good. but its time for me to go, and thus ive decided to leave after this quarter and just head out, east coast, somewhere, new york hopefully. im dying for change. i can feel it in my bones. or australia for some reason. but that ozone layer is gonna destroy my skin, so on second thought, "go where other pale jews are!" so i guess NY is the key. i shall keep you all posted.

what else? the tipping point is a good book. i started making cards. just cards. and i write stuff in them. then i send them out to ppl i love.

im hanging out with my boy now, on this marketing thing...we get along nicely. we see eye to eye on so many things...music, work, life, philosophy. sometimes i feel like im slipping, my friendships disappearing. im fiercely introverted but at the same time love people. isnt that fucked up? or maybe just the antithesis of one another. i grew up in a pack of 4 tight guys...one im friends with, the other is engaged, the other went crazy. it sad. it is. it really is sad sometimes the way some things turn out. sometimes im led to believe, NO, that's the way its supposed to work out, but fuck, i neevr thought it would end like this, a tight circle broken in shambles. or maybe im justt exaggerating, and im the sole guy left on the outskirts.

tomorrow i go to this conference of jewish people. leaders. professional leaders. the PLP conference....they, the foundations and money men of our times, our jewish times, feel it necessary to charge us with leading the jewish people in generations to come. wierd how im part of that, shouldering some of that responsibility, but in some ways, it seems only approriate, and completely logical that id somehow be a part of that group. its honorable. and intimidating...but more exciting that anything else.

be good.

confession #2

Here I am confessing what you’ve always known, that life is nothing but a series of random chance events and we have the privilege of driving, no, wait, steering in one general direction over the other-we make choices, eat chocolate, go to the gym, buy new phones and talk to the best friend about the friend we don’t like, watch sunsets that let us disappear into falling suns, make love in expensive hotels where you can keep the towels and they won’t even care, move, move again, play the harp, and dance to rachmaninov on ice skates.

It’s the only crutch we have, sustaining us so life doesn’t slip out of our control.

who's really calling the shots? let me write.

giorno di valentino

"dear blowfish"

the blue dove, with bittersweets in tow
swooping lush lush to see her, that ever busy busybody
"it's over, i can't anymore," she wrote me via carrier pigeon
(the pigeon never made it back)
"i love you."
"what?"
"i said i love you."
"stop being so unprecise."
(and give me back my underwear)
love, sweet heart of the bitter onion that makes one cry
-----japanese blowfish sitting in your bed-you're naked, too.
-----you're kiss trapped in ice cubes
and i'm already melted water.

you beautiful bastard

can you believe that a fucking ferry sunk a few days ago? 1000 people, dead, perhaps. its almost comical. one would hypothesize that the days of sunken ships were long forgotten, a mishap that just doesn't happen anymore. i guess not. Is it just me or have there been way more plane crashes lately?

why is it that we live in this fantastic age of instant communication but its still so fucking hard to get a hold of somebody? no one picks up their phone, email is inconsistent...the more advances we have the more we attempt to resist. im cool with that. i hate the mobile. little machines are attached to our ears, all day, every day, without fail. somedays- i just let it ring, and ring, and ring-fuck you, i'm not picking up, no matter who the fuck you are.

im angry. im anxious. im exhausted. im quickly approaching my maximum limit of santa barbara, what ill dub a phony bubble of white liberal america content with sameness and resistant to change. i cant understand how minorities live here. seriously. everyone is fucking white white WHITE, wearing the sickening perspective of disgusting contentment at the status quo--i cannot stand the deadness in this wasteland of wine, sex, and work, watching the malleable conform more to some sad generic standard of indifference. i am who i am, a disparate soul, socially awkward to such an extent it may be called revulsion, and i've lived out my term here, approaching a level of discomfort too soon, hungry for something more. high school sucked, college rocked, and i finished both sequences, but im still here, working in my uni town, figuring shit out, abhorring that tricky situation where ppl i havent seen in months begin investigating. "so youre still here man?" "yea, i guess." "that's cool man, im still here too, shit, 3 more classes and im done" "no im working" "no, moron. i fucking graduated, ON TIME. i just work here. Why? I don't know why. that's just the way things worked out i guess."

my room is so cold. i light candles to heat it up, but come on now, you and i both know they don't do shit. i like the smell though. paraffin wax.

ive come to terms with the fact that im just anxious, and in reflecting back on the past, convinced that i always have been, as long as i can remember, but definitely as far back as the 4th grade-a vivid memory of hitting my pelvic bone, then in 5th grade, running through math problems like some asylum inmate who's just been put into a straightjacket and finds that talking incessantly becomes his only form of resistance. im sick of it, but moreso, im sick of not knowing why im this way. im expending too much energy trying to discover what kicked it off, if some event or action triggered my behavior, but i cant find any. maybe im not looking hard enough, or maybe thats just the way i am and holy shit, maybe thats the way i'll always be. i find i difficult to subscribe to the theory that "life is just about trying to figure everything out" because some people are already there, and im moving, im moving, wondering if im coming any closer to the truth.

i gotta get out of here.