this is the most ridiculous picture of
myself that i could find. it's a still from
a webcam video entitled "motion 6,"
in which i attempt to explore the dark
side of v1dz. love carefully. -rachel
entry:
slaughterhouse daydream 01.21.02
i was at sugarbush enjoying myself, taking rides around, discovering caves, boulders and rugged corners. i kept passing this guy on snowshoes as i navigated. by the end of the day, all was quiet, and i stopped to rest for a moment, appreciating the white scenery and the implication of the reality in which i was embedded. semi wilderness enveloped my lungs and toes, so i smiled. the snowshoe guy came climbing over the horizon. we conversed like old friends. the day ended.
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wilderness school of contrast 01.17.02 - 10:54 p.m.
a frantic phone call would come at eight or eight thirty in the morning. everyone would get
out of bed, sleepyeyed climbing toward the chair. we tracked through the woods and did not
stop. through tight groves of evergreen or vast open spaces dotted with small trees, we
followed each other's paths. it would have snowed heavily the night before. the best things
i shared with my friends were climbing, breathing heavy and not having to talk, secret
places we found above and beyond immeasurable boundaries, and their inevitable ruin. in
those days, there was a push to do and a surge to experience more. in the whole adventure
process, other activities, the ones we did in the evenings, were meaningless.
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buddhist phrase: a smiling face and gentle words 01.09.02 - 1:08 p.m.
the most wonderful world is contained within the winter woods, in frozen streams and vegetation otherwise green and vibrant now covered in snow, in the occasional large boulder disguised profoundly. streaking through miles of countryside at a rapid pace, i feel worthwhile and alive, finally willing to live for thirty thousand more days recklessly. i push myself to go fast through all of these surroundings, enough so that my face and legs always burn at the end, red bumps are left on the insides of my thighs and i become a wonderful kind of breathless time and time again. quietly, after, i realize the extent of the muscles, ligaments and tendons that hug and hold the human skeleton in delicate shape, of their capabilities.
my feeble attempts at writing cannot do justice to the edge of earth. small brown shrubs hide in snow, but they expose themselves a little. they fear burial, and i run them over. sliding like an collapsible lens, i can see miles of forest and mountains in the distance, but subdued and hibernating versions that streak by quickly, so as to prevent anything but an overwhelming sense of joy. that's the magic in all of this, the unbridled happiness.
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12.10.01
take a polaroid picture of this, these last days of sun before winter blankets the world for good. make me learn all the things i can't remember.
baked goods arrived in the mail today. i ate them. they came with a letter. everything tasted splendid, including pieces of the baker/sender's halloween costume that were discretely tucked into the envelope. thanks. i love you.
it is my job to do the best possible work i can during this last, horrible week of the semester. i am trying terribly hard not to disappoint anyone, including myself.
it's painful to see photos of where i used to live, frozen in time, and to realize those days were the best i ever had. cherish hope and freedom. MINE ARE GONE. ugyhgh just kidding.
shred the gnarly.
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my life as a rich asshole 11.25.01
everything starts with the will to live and a long drive south. last week i went snowboarding until my legs would no longer cooperate. i had occasion to listen to some intelligent russian conversation on the gondola, almost reminding me of better days with my slavic compadres. i am yuppie scum and loving it. give me a walkie talkie please!@!!
my aim in life is to be as unstylish as possible. i am achieving this by wearing a yellow noothgrush shirt and keeping the rusty edges on my '98 burton custom 48 w/ sunset. forever.
there were a lot of trips involved in the thanksgiving ordeal. during some of them , i was on the road, like this time:
it was dark and i was playing with my headlights. suddenly, the idea struck me as i drove past some hiking trails that now was a wonderful opportunity to be outside. i turned around and went back to nature. i ran around in the woods, listening to my footsteps over and over wooden bridges in the dark for about half an hour. then i was satisfied.
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for father, a huge and thunderously good book about the civil war 10.23.01
school is school and i am a small ivory box, colored black, and made out of fragile elephant parts.
today i got an e mail from my friend who is studying is Moscow, Russia for the year. he said he sometimes goes to a bar where they play surf and snowboard videos. it's lonely there, desolate and institutional, but so, so colorful. red and yellow in my mind.
i love people all over the world.
IDM (intelligent dance music) is truly the future.
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let's make vodka nothings and carouse 10.18.01
plan to take photographs that remind me of people in scarves and introduce the songs you have written to others. plan to float through the fucking air and get more tattoos, specifically ones of japanese onagata and sparrows bearing hope.
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low and capital letters, a case study in self detriment. 09.28.01
i remember driving down small county highways, blasting team dresch and minor threat alternately through my headphones and secretly thinking those were the two best voices in the world. i can still smell those days because they reek of wet jackets, warm winters and dirty snow: some of the best times i ever spent alone.
they had to cut off all my stylish black bracelets when i broke my wrist. now there is a huge red cast in their place. please keep snowing.
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fuckin neil young records. 03.16.01
i have pretty much given up on school. walking around in the warm breeze, sunshine, toothy grin, i really don't have time to care about what henry david thoreau had to say about nature. in reality, i'd rather go snowboarding and entertain obscure life fantasies than do anything else. i want to run away and live on the roofs of buildings. everything in arizona seems so much more violent and profound than anything that has ever happened here. let's be homeless and alive. soon. love
i'm going to the us open of snowboarding tomorrow. once there, i plan to take copious notes and mold them into messy and emotional art. then i plan reach a state of drunken enlightenment. see it.
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blast beats/screaming 03.05.01
it's snowing. this makes me so happy. all morning i have been fantasizing about driving my car through the slippery streets of vermont and somehow sliding over an embankment and off a cliff, which would be sure to cause painful and uncertain death. also, i have visions of creating large snow ramps and heaving myself off of them while attached to a snowboard. death
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breckenridge 03.04.01
before i really knew anyone in town we lived at this different place like 4 miles up a huge hill with no lights.
i used to walk home with one of those headlamps and my walkman and try not to get hit by cars.
it was actually really nice sometimes. i had a lot of time to think and there was this lookout point in the middle where you could see the whole town and all the stars and mountains.
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memories of the distant past and rain 01.19.01
there was a night of driving through a road in the woods and seeing nothing because of the snow and the experimental jazz music coming in static. it was truly beautiful and followed a day of we can barely see so we'll go even faster.
i forget what happened that night. but to share all of this with you and have it mean nothing but snowboarding is so so fantastic.
i need more friends who write poetry and are totally unattractive.
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plans for the future: 01.05.01
start riding dirt bikes
interview senile vermonters, preferably with microphones and polaroids
become an international boardercross champion
draw pornographic comics and send them to people
garnish snowboard helmet with skulls and crossbones
watch low quality movies
compliment others on the condition of their intestines
get married
that's all for right now, but i'll be sure to add more as i think of them!
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everything you need to know about tv. 12.20.00
it's been a long few weeks. i recently traveled to the middle of nowhere to partake in some wintertime fun. for a few days: free food, clothing, and jacuzzi. all thanks to an oil spill.
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some tasks to accomplish before death. 12.12.00
everything will be different when i come back because there's only one class in january. come winter, there will be bridge playing, zine making, snowboarding and some rather serious and emotional conversations that i don't especially want to have. i'm still doing a radio show, though, so don't worry too hard.
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james turns twenty one. 12.02.00
gone snowboarding. it went well. since then, i have learned that it hurts a lot to slam kneecaps into large metal bars while fucking up 50-50 to boardslides. now i walk up stairs funny and i'm not afraid of anything.
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(not about snowboarding but still valid) 11.05.2000
let's talk about robots and play power chords and act like robots and smash drums. let's throw trash cans off of small cliffs and light things on fire. i just want my old life back where i'd eat vegan chinese food, take walks, go see movies and use walkie talkies. this dress up and go see jam bands play crap really isn't working for me right now. i am stupid. but i do get lots of mail.
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magnetic fields song 07.24.00
in all these memories the sun is shining even though, if i chose to remember any of this correctly, it would be a cold and overcast january night. i miss you and my job and all the days and nights and the way i filled them with a bunch of happy nothings. i miss our conversations on the chairlift and my stupid roommate who would hug me over and over again just to see the way i would cringe upon being touched. i miss those two boys and their indian cigarettes and how you'd walk home with me at night in the freezing cold and we'd get all out of breath from cutting through the woods instead of going the long way. i miss all the people who picked me up hitchhiking and everyone whom i offended on a regular basis with my candid and lazy conversational skills. i miss the ugly condo that i called home, last remodeled in the 1970s and falling apart, with the laundry key pinned to a piece of wood by the front door. right now i'm missing everything.
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what words can't express and songs will never touch completely 06.07.00
running around outside in a downpour and nobody can tell whether it is rain or tears that are smeared across my face so violently.
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03.27.00
A basin stretches infinitely, in peaks. I looked around at white jagged triangles for miles and struggled with the wind that almost blew me away. But it was comforting. It was an experience of being somewhere that nobody else knew about right then. We would give high fives at the top and race through the woods with complete disregard for our personal safety. Sometimes we would meet up, come crashing though the trees and stop just at each other's feet. And then we'd smile and breathe a little heavy together and jump off on our own once again. Completely immersed in the cushiony softness of winter trees, we would push the branches out of the way with our heads and arms and bodies and keep on flying. At the bottom, everyone would take off their snowboards and hike back up to the road to hitch a ride to the lift. The walk was long, but it is such an inherent novelty of backcountry experience that nobody ever thought to replace it. Later, sitting in the back of a pickup truck, everyone remained completely still, concentrating on nothing but soaking up the sun and wind with our ecstatic grins. Eventually, the truck would stop at the edge of the parking lot, and we’d hop out and do it all over again.
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backcountry sesh. the world seen as an oyster from the back of a pickup truck. 03.21.00
i just went to the top of the world. and now i'm back.
hi.
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how the rockies look at night. 03.19.00
as i left the sun was setting. it was grey and pink in streaks for miles. i set next to a private investigator on the plane.
my friend stole someone's luggage from the airport. and we sat in the front seat and talked a lot about everything. before us lay the entire world.
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abt a dream i had . 03.11.00
fade in to five kids standing around a front yard. their backs are to a modest blue bungalow with yellow shutters and two overgrown bushes as armor.
the kids are patronizing this machine that lets them store items in it for money and makes comments about what they store. it says things like: "ooh, a bag! that is very special." for some reason, it seems perfectly normal that this machine is in a front yard. in fact, it is acknowledged that the two men who live across the street rent the machine and keep it there for the purpose of making multi extra bucks. the kids steal the machine and bring it to another yard.
this time, their backs are to a yellow house with brick steps that lead up to a door. a plot is being organized. the kids' parents seem to think there is an urgent need to escape "the system," namely "the college board." a plan is formulated in which everyone will pack his/her respective "stuff" and flee the neighborhood. "don't worry," repeats someone's mother several times, "i have seven travel kits/pads of paper/toothbrushes." it seems that seven is a magic number in my dream.
amidst the fury and chaos that surrounds everything, i am in my room trying to organize my life and pack it into small bags. there is a big conflict over which goggles i should bring. in the dream, even though we are fleeing the neighborhood, i am still going to colorado as scheduled. "my name is on the ticket," i casually think. "the college board will find me." but then i realize that we have license plates on our cars and will be easily tracked, regardless of whether or not i fly out of an international airport. i breathe a sigh of relief. it seems as though all i care about in my fantasies are goggles and traveling.
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from a novel 02.28.00
"when i was a youngster of ten years," he recounted, "i wanted to catch the sun in a glass. so i took the glass, stole to the wall, and bang! i cut my hand and got a licking to boot. after the licking, I went out in the yard and saw the sun in a puddle. so i started to trample the mud with my feet. i covered myself with mud and got another drubbing. what was i to do?
i screamed to the sun: 'it doesn't hurt me, you red devil! it doesn't hurt me!' and stuck out my tongue at him. and i felt comforted." -maxim gorky
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* these are just small paragraphs from a vast number of entries i have scanned in the recent past. if anyone wants to go snowboarding at killington or sugarbush, please let me know. i am constantly searching for company.
Journal Excerpts: The ones about winter. -RC
The Olympic Rant: : Hey, we had one four years ago.
Vermont is for Skateboarders: An indoor park in Burlington. What will they think of next?
Ticos, Imperial and Spanglish: Welcome to Costa Rica.
The Blue Lodge: Where are they now?: It may be a little premature, but what the hell!
Space Odyssey: Bendini Productions premieres its latest.
Degrassi: The Next Generation: It's back and better than ever.
US Open 2001: Better late than never.
Yo Beat Midwest Skateboard Tour:3465 miles, one shop team, and a midwest that starts in Eastern Washington.
Obligatory Mt. Hood Coverage 2001: Experience the power of a new snowboard during the summer.
The Dry Erase Skateboard: New innovations in skatepark hooching.
A Simple Guide to Living in Bellingham: Only funny if it is about you.
Life Behind the Iron Curtain: Yo Beat's War correspondent David S. Bobolay reports.
Got Drunk, Went to Oregon to find Heckler and got Drunk Again: Yeah.
Slam City Jam 2001: Being some one is important, as we learn at BC's premiere skate contest.