For the werewolf, have sympathy
for the werewolf, somebody like you and me

am i moody or crazy? ADD or bi polar? jordan, or just someone doing the things jordan does...
i just bombed my English final, i think. my essay, in spite of spending more time and effort on it than anything else i've ever done for school turned out way below my expectations, not showing what i wanted to show. it's like some disease i have, impossible to remain even, or something approaching order, structure. spend all semester working, keeping up, just to let it fall inches before the finish line.
people throwing words of encouragement at me

'you'll still do well'
'it's still better than 95% of what people handed in'

and it just doesn't matter to me. what good is all this education, all this testing, if it just makes me feel so empty at the end, rather than full. school is like a mental contortionist act, and my bones just keep breaking.

it doesn't make sense, that it's not enough to want to learn, know more.

location: library mood: discontent music: cat power--evolution

today, i get off the PATCO, walk up the stairs, that familiar urine smell and city noise assaulting my senses. everything looks like it'll be another normal day in Camden: the hotdog jesus cart (he always tells me to "have a blessed one" after giving me my pretzel) sitting there on the corner of market and 5th, a congregation of probation cases and police officers complaining--rightly so--about the Sixers. I cross the street, heading toward Cooper. i see a silver civic cut off a maroon one, cutting across her lane to pull into a parking lot. The driver of the maroon car, a 250 pound black woman mouths, "DUMBASS!" i look at her, and we catch glances.
she rolls down her window, says to me, 'don't matter WHAT color you are--if a motha fucka can't drive then they can't fuckin drive!" i laugh, caught in one of those rare moments when i have nothing to say. I laugh, and then so does she.
"i guess idiocy knows no race," i say. we laugh again, and she drives off.

location: Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey mood: happy music: Professor Haworth, talking about emotions

my mind is like a razor
my face moves too fast for the lens







slow down, jordan, steady your hand.

location: land of adult insomnia. mood: working music: The English Motorway System--Black Box Recorder

"they say a watched pot never boils
well i closed my eyes
and nothing changed"
-arcade fire

here i am again.
semester is almost ever. sprint to the finish.

i've ignored this thing for a while now. i'll have to continue to do so for a little while later. i just haven't been able to write much. something is just wrong.
therapy doesn't work anymore. or maybe it's just my therapist himself. he let's me in late, ends the session early, and generally says nothing new at all.

"how's this? how's that?"
"go fuck yourself."
"you need someone who Challenges you."

i feel like i'm talking to a much dumber version of my parents. no matter. i barely go anymore. less than once a month or something. useless.

all my friends were home, now they're gone again.





sunday night, i promised i would think of something cool to do. i decided to go ghost hunting with kevin and paul at batsto historic village. however, due to a buncha things (darkness, gates, detours that went nowhere) we never found the place. instead, we ended up on some backwoods road, staring at the stars on an extremely clear night. we all dressed up for the occasion--i wore my tophat and a nice white/black ensemble. kevin wore an explorer's hat. paul wore boots. i guess i dressed up, and nobody else did.
overall, i was disappointed. no haunted village=no ghosts. at least the stars were beautiful.
in the grand scheme of things, we barely see anything at all. this rock we inhabit rockets through space at 700,000 mph around a gigantic burning ball of gas. one day, it'll explode and collapse on itself, bringing us with it. how magnificent the end will look. something so undoubtedly beautiful it has to burn out your eyes and kill you.

i went to rachael's to read and keep her company, but all we did was talk, and try to figure out just how to get pen ink out of a white leather couch. i left her place around 3:30am, got home around 3:50, talked to kevin for a bit online, watched some tv, read the same page over and over in my book, and bam, here i am, 30 pages into a 200 page novel due today at 1:20pm.

and now the choice: another ritalin, or do i just drop dead for a couple hours.. christ

here i am, in bed, mind speeding through nowhere.

location: Batsto Village mood: numb music: wake up--Arcade Fire

i don't know how i could've made the whole thing easy on myself. the simple truth is, sometimes, most times, nothing is easy unless you're not paying attention. time passes quickly in moments, even days begin and end, but the months stretch on. i feel like a massive attack song: symphonic cacophony, evil brooding and beautiful, hopeful for destruction.
i don't feel like myself. going to class has become relatively easy, as with work, and that doesn't make feel at home. i struggle with this lack of struggling. everything is coming easily except the passage of the greater amounts of time.
and even that isn't true. it's already november, halfway between midterms and finals, which means more studying. keeping this whole charade up of giving a shit requires next to no effort. it just means that some nights, you don't sleep very much, cause you have to write a paper, or study, or w/e. i guess i don't see the big deal here. people are pulling hair out of their head, and to what end? i'm not a terribly anxiety ridden person, unless there's Reason for it.

these days, i'm not feeling much of anything. i want to finish. i can finish by the end of next fall. this spring i am taking 4 english classes, which will translate to like, 500 pages/week of reading. so maybe that'll be intense. all the same to me, i guess. time to fucking get out of here, and start doing what I want to do.

mood: restless music: A Journey to Reedham--Squarepusher

today is my parents' anniversary. it's also halloween.
born under a bad sign hahaha...
working at UPS is like getting paid to goto the most ghetto ass gym in the world and lift like crazy. it's not so bad.
i love you all.
-jordan

location: bed mood: sore music: The Killers

here i sit, in my favorite library spot, legs crossed at the ankles on a vibrating radiator, cool air on my feet. staring out the window, evergreens in front of me. familiarity is nice after a long weekend of being lost on various Delaware highways.
paper finished.
relaxed.. stomach hurt from coffee, but i'll ignore it and just enjoy the moment.


-jsb-

mood: accomplished music: bishonen--momus

my would be nap turned into my sleeping the whole night. now i have to go write a paper in the next 2.5 hours or so.
le sigh.

location: Paul Roberson Library mood: having a stroke. music: Air Conditioning Vent

i'm going to be in pictures, movin' ones. john applebaum is making a movie, a western of sorts, and i'm helping out. i have only one line...


"Madness.."


it's the part i was born to play.

i'll be at UDelaware all weekend, staying at Asher's or Rachael's, or both, or neither. i kind of feel like toughing it out, and just finding places to crash. traveling with too many contingencies is like cheating. like a tight rope 5 feet off the ground or something. it's just.. travel should have a sense of danger, and unknown. maybe i can sleep in the saloon we're shooting in, or the beach there. i think it's on some boardwalk or another.
maybe, i'll just keep heading south to frederick, maryland, to pick up josh lovewell. we'll head south to Florida, orlando--i just get ahead of myself. i have too many ties to do that.

the Future is permanently attached to the past, but most of the time it can't relate. we're new people every single day sometimes. maybe that's Youth, but i don't think so. maybe people are like popsicles--a static center, with an everchanging, melting, refreezing, reshaping exterior. we're created as metaphors: our bones, the support system for the soft parts goes on existing after all the tissue is stripped away by time; our personalities revolve around semi-permanent traits.

i'm beginning to not care about school bigtime. this trip should be a good escape. cept i have to find time to read a shitty novel, and write a shitty paper.

fuck fuck fuck fuck



let's hear it for compartmentalizing. ok? OK! ONward!

location: leaving mood: wanderlust music: Terminally Ambivalent Over You--The Real Tuseday Weld

your words sift through me like me through time
stay a little while
just once
and wake up next to me.

location: floating across an ocean or two mood: scattered music: ava adore--smashing pumpkins

so iTunes automatically, unless you tell it not to, shares your songs for streaming to other iTunes users.
the new iTunes also plays .mpgs and a few other movie formats.
apparently, "Josh's Limewire Tunes" includes all the weird gangbang porn he enjoys watching...

i scouted around the library for other mac users, and it turned out that this kid about 3 workstations down was the film major, so to speak. he's this really scrawny awkward white kid with an ugly goatee. i want to say something to him, but i have no idea what..
that's a lie, of course. the problem, in this case, becomes what of the Million things on my mind do i pick to say...


but i said nothing. i had to study.
oh well.

location: library mood: sick music: le territoire--brazilian girls

midterm today.
midterm in 1 hour and 16 minutes, to be exact.
after i update i'll get back to studying.

i have nothing much to say, i guess. i am sick, and i start work tonight.
i pissed off devon last night, because of something stupid i did. now she won't be on until a week or two from now. i get her letter in the mail on friday, i think.

sometimes, there's not much to do but what you have to.
on to studying.

-jordan







that is some leaf i took a few pictures of.

location: Rutgers, Camden, Paul Roberson Library mood: sick music: Single Again--Fiery Furnaces

oh my god. English class today consisted of listening to my white--nix that--EXTREMELY white, short, bearded prof reading this for an hour.

Me glad fe se's you come back bwoy,
But lawd yuh let me dung,
Me shame o' yuh soh till all o'
Me proudness drop a grung.

Yuh mean yuh goh dah 'Merica
An spen six whole mont' deh,
An come back not a piece betta
Dan how yuh did goh wey?

it goes on and on and on.

holy fucking shit. that's all i have to say. i took a picture to show how miserable i was.

mood: thirsty music: metal fingers in my body--mike patton

ok, so i think she looks like she has downs syndrome...



anyway.


my job interview at UPS went really well. i think i was the only person there who didn't have a bunch of stains on my T-shirt. now, at 9:50pm, i have to start writing an essay for English. subject: unknown. literature selection: undecided. ritalin: double and triple check. we have takeoff.



by the way, lovelies, i am officially off probation today.
oh, how lovely it all is. here's a picture of that shitpit:



i was gonna get a pic inside, but i never want to see the inside of that place again; besides, probate officers are weird about pictures and what not, i'm guessing. at any rate, it's past me. i'm past it. i've passed it.

love (oh and how i mean it today),
jordan seth berg

location: 108 saxby terrace, cherry hill, NJ mood: energetic music: someday you will be loved--Death Cab

irish dan

smoked marlboro reds at a bus stop somewhere in connecticut.
i got off my bus, he got off his; i was heading to vermont from boston, he was heading to wherever my old bus was going--just like that, my old became his new, his old became my new.

i asked for a light as he winked with his cheek, the crackle of fresh tobacco, addiction sated and renewed; he obliged.

we talked briefly, said he'd been in the states about 6 years. i asked him if he was the middle child, to which he nodded yes, i pressed further, said he was 2 of 3, both of his siblings college educated (he told me earlier that he was a carpenter--his paint slathered boots did, anyway), at which point my good guesses caused him some alarm.

"ya some kind'oh psychic or sum'thin' boy?"
"i just guess well, Dan, that's all." he smiled.
"fuh'kin eh right 'cha do." we both laughed.

the break between buses lasted about 7 minutes--enough time to light a cigarette and guess a man's life.


just some poem i wrote about going to Vermont from Boston. it was this little 1 story white barn looking thing with a Sbarro sign outside. oh, so many bus trips.

some parts of it i'm going to change. probably the beginning, gonna trim the fat a bit.

location: 2 years ago. mood: talking with the dead music: Fyuz--Mike Patton

A Proper Update:

i drove to TCNJ today to get some lunch with Jen. Since i had only six dollars, and i needed that for gas money, she was kind enough to pay for me. i had a cheeseburger, and a bunch of beer at Triumph Pub in Princeton. For those who haven't been there in the fall, i highly recommend a visit.. 50 degree breezes orange leaves, good beer and rich assholes running around.
Did i mention the ivy league hipsters talking about astrophysics on street corners? Cause they're around. A public library that looks like a gold-plated Barnes and Noble, some cute singer/songwriter type chick wearing a skirt that, in that weather, must've made stalagmite sized goosebumps pop on her legs. her music was sucky, in the traditional sense of things that sucked.
it like haddonfield, but laminated and shined with windex.

Friday night, i went to the movies with anthony. we saw half of that dane cooke movie before walking out. we went to jackass 2, or at least its last 30 minutes. it's good, dumb humor. then tony and i went to get coffee at some diner. we talked about rubix cubes, then i dropped him off at his house, and went home. we've been friends since we were 13 or so, and there's just nothing left to really talk about.......

i don't know what else to really say. i'm pissed off that Safari fucked over my last entry, cause i thought it was pretty good. it was a big downer, though--the entry, i mean, was depressing. it just happens sometimes, when i've been up all night with an important assignment due. i feel the Dread of deadlines approaching, coffee and ritalin making my heart race, the clock ticking; i scan the channels for something to keep distracting me. last year, i watched Scent of a Woman until about 20 minutes before a class in which i had a 40 minute presentation to do, one which i put together up until the last second, literally working on it as someone else presented before me. but i love it, what can i say? in some weird way, i like just about anything that'll get me going, moving. mm mmm mmmmm thrill seeking.

it's getting, gotten old, though. i've been getting my work done ahead of time--some of the time--and it's almost preferable, in some ways, to get that extra hour or two of sleep than to get that old rush. oh adulthood, how i... need to adjust to thee? there's no simple one word exchange to make that one say what i need it to. to say something i need to say.
to need is to say
some things don't say, just need.



OK, word play time is over. i'm exhausted.

mood: contemplative music: aa xxx--peaches

safari just closed and delted my whole journal entry.




sometimes, things just aren't meant to be.




"I have spit back at the pouring rain"
-langhorne slim-

location: bed mood: blank music: speaker static

"In starlit nights I saw you
So cruelly you kissed me
Your lips a magic world
Your sky all hung with jewels
The killing moon
Will come too soon "


i wrote a haiku about the morning commute:

patco bulimia
binges on morning riders
vomits them to work

here's a picture of me thinking that in my head on the way home:





it's raining. my fingers smell like oranges.
love,
jordan

location: my family room mood: amused music: the killing moon--nouvelle vague

Nothing like a Savage Love column to make me feel oh-so-grounded these days.

Savage Love


by Dan Savage
October 4, 2006

My background: I'm a gay man; I recently came out to my friends, mostly because I met someone with whom I wanted to pursue a relationship. I had never experienced this feeling before. After much courting and pursuing, we met enough times that he remembered my name—then came love.

Eight months later, despite a few indiscretions on both our parts, I'm happy as can be. But I don't think we're in the same place emotionally. I need him—well, actually I neeeeed him—and he "needs his space." I don't want to date anyone else, and I fear that if we were to split up I would revert to the sexual deviant that I was and he would do the same.

Here's where the story gets on your nerves...

His prior "indiscretion" was with a German shepherd. I have no problems with his zoophilia, per se, except that we have an almost nonexistent sex life. I wouldn't mind this aside from a few issues. First, he still masturbates. Second, he lied about it. Third, the very few times we have engaged in sex, he only receives, and it upsets me when he tries to maneuver us into a doggy-style position.

He is in therapy and it seems to be helping, but the more therapy he goes to, the less time he seems to want to spend with me. I may just be a screaming paranoid, but like I said, this is my first relationship. I love him and can't bear to think of us parting. I want to have sex with him, but I want to respect his boundaries. But how do I know when I've given him enough space, and how do I get him to want to spend more time with me? Am I right for giving him space? Or should I be more forceful in my pursuits?

--Not A German Shepherd


P.S. Is his zoophilia relevant? I don't think it is, because I love him despite his attraction to canines. And I'm 24, while he is somewhere between 26 and 29. I don't really care about his age. The first time we exchanged ages he said 26, but his driver's license has a 1976 DOB on it.

Let's quickly review your case: The man you've fallen in love with likes to fuck dogs (or be fucked by dogs); doesn't much like being fucked by you (except in the doggy position); "needs his space" (in order to fuck dogs, no doubt); and lies to you about his masturbatory routine, age, and God only knows what else. The one thing he hasn't lied to you about is the dog fucking—that little detail he's only too willing to share.

So yeah, NAGS, I'd say there's a problem here—but you're the problem, not him.

Don't get me wrong: The love of your short life is a total mess, of course, what with all the dog fucking, space needing, lie telling, and therapy inning. But this eight-month relationship would have ended seven months and three weeks ago if you weren't so desperately in love with the idea of being in love. How else to explain your fear of parting from a man that any sane fag would run screaming from?

And there really is no other explanation for your willingness to overlook issues that any sensible person would regard as four distinct deal breakers. A person might be able to have a relationship with someone who has had or is still having sex with dogs (1–2 percent of the population has sexual contact with animals, and even passionate zoophiles can sustain relationships with humans), and you might be with someone who isn't all that attracted to you, or with someone who needs his space, or with someone who lies compulsively—but not all four.

Look, NAGS, I feel for you; I've been there. Well, not there, I've never been with a dog fucker, I'm happy to report. But I have allowed myself to fall hopelessly in love with guys who were completely fucked up. And here's what I learned: Sometimes we fall in love with people who, for whatever reason, simply aren't healthy enough to love us back. When you realize that you're falling in love with a hopeless mess, NAGS, you don't hang in there, hoping that your love will cure him. It won't. Love is great, love is grand, but love ain't chemotherapy—it's not going to magically turn some sick fucker into a healthy fucker.

So dump the dog fucker already, NAGS, and do it quickly. A man who doesn't want to spend time with you or fuck you isn't going to be your boyfriend for much longer. For the sake of your own self-esteem, dump the dog fucker before he dumps you. Trust me, NAGS, you don't want to look in the mirror every morning and think to yourself, "There's the guy who wasn't good enough for a dog fucker."