Tim Gagnon Was Here.

On Proprietary Ownership (A Nursery Rhyme, perhaps)

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:41:35 -0400

I like that I used to think owning property,

meant deep breathing in places I eventually forget if I lost the ability to see.

I hoped my insides would move about,

intestines unfurl, bones shaved, lines between head and heart reroute,

So the air from seas, stars, and cities could sprawl,

and my land would fill me ‘til I grew over every cloud and wall.

I imagine I would eventually collapse inside,

the world I breathed and needed contained in the blood tide,

But the kingdom I built faced unexpected rezoning,

people paid off my mind for a memory; my selfish control needed atoning,

and every year, I grew, I saw, and I breathed with a slight moaning,

as I tried to remember whose body I thought I was owning.

On Weekends

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 21:16:00 -0400

Sometimes, when I lean my head the prescribed amount,

and give you what my older brother told me was the right amount of tongue,

I scrunch my eyes and imagine I’m absorbing every compliment you’ve ever received.

It’s for when your legs get tired of jumping into snow banks after me,

and the bags under your eyes swell shut waiting up for me,

I can take custody of every good thing said about you.

I’d only keep them on weekends, but I’d claim them as my own,

and hope no one could ever see,

the only reason I value myself,

is from you kissing me.

Happy/lonely/working.

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 20:28:01 -0500

I know it must appear I only come here to spill my graceless thoughts every few months or so, but I guess that’s been the case for every journal I’ve ever kept. I’ve never been one to write every single day or keep a workout regime for more than 3 weeks or past an injury or two. I’m hoping what matters is that I show up when I have something to say, not forcing words upon you and wasting both our time.

I am happy for the most part, but I am lonely. It’s rather nonsensical when strung together in a sentence like that, but I imagine them as two uncomfortable party guests with bad history together. They’re staring awkwardly across the room at each other, talking with people more of their kind, swilling their mixed drinks back, and wondering who will step forward first. Sometimes, I childishly hope that if I blink fast in a moment I really enjoy, that place and the people inside it will remain behind my eyelids for later recounting. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. I think that’s part of what happiness feels like, to be childlike in moments that adults would rush carelessly by. I keep an unwritten lists of places to see while I still get the chance to live in this English city and I try to act as a more heroic, less nervous version of myself when things don’t work in my favor. I think the first is still happiness and the second is just happiness with age.

Loneliness exists alongside the happiness. It isn’t a follower in my pursuit of happiness; it’s a brother in the same house. It’s reared on similar parents to happiness: television and optimistic daydreaming. But its singular function is appearing when your gaze falls somewhere else, momentarily forgetting about goals or jobs to complete. Loneliness exists only when you alone exist and it adores that word: “alone”. Have you ever said, “alone at last” to someone you lust for, but don’t care deeply for when you enter a room together? I honestly haven’t, but I imagine that is one of the saddest ways to brandish that word. Two people, two entirely massive histories, interests, desires, dislikes, weaknesses, flaws, strengths…put in a room “alone” to fumble each other’s bodies and put their fingers to their ears when the question of “what happens next?” comes out of someone’s mouth. I still quote that LCD Soundsystem song where he repeats how he believes in waking up together, but I can’t imagine the wrinkling comedown of lying next to someone that you only stayed with for sexual gain. Sure, walking through life with the idealism of being in a relationship popping into your head once every day is a little hell upon itself, but at least dignity still has its roots there.

I suppose where this all goes is that happiness and loneliness don’t go together as friends or brothers, but passerbys swerving by each other, confusing one for the other on occasion. Sometimes happiness is sitting alone on a Friday, watching episodes of Scrubs while going face first into a Nutella jar. Sometimes loneliness is a date bringing you to a club, the sound vibrating the collective bodies closer. I’ve begun to understand how happiness and I work together at this point in my life, I think. And I think that’s great in a time where loneliness and a drought in people worth trust is also at a high. I suppose I want things to work out, for happiness to triumph over the loneliness of not having someone to occasionally lean on and digest life with for most of my days. I guess people just want to run wild, crash into one another, and act irrationally. I suppose I can do that for a while as well, so long as this mode doesn’t become a permanent part of my life.

Today, I met a beautiful woman a year older than I am. She was in a writing lecture I was taking for the day and she’s simply the kind of visual shock and awe that reverts you back to a pre-teenage flood of desire. You’re stupidly gazing at her, hatching a million scenarios of where you could go together, regardless of the fact that your fullest conversation involved the assignment in class and hometowns. I could see her lips in the south of France, sinking into native fruit as the reflection of the day in her sunglasses blinds me for a moment. Her body ran through flowers and hills as we climbed Joe’s Peak twenty minutes from where I grew up. I saw her eyes in a million different places, my hands and body trying to keep up as she kept moving. For a moment, as the daydreams did when I was younger and a virgin to makeouts (never mind bodies), I was happy. I was content to let each backdrop and story fly away because, as I did, she started telling me how she was set to be married at the beginning of April.

The more I write this, the more I try not to contradict how all these emotions don’t tie up or how they’re hybridizing into each other. The point in writing all of this was to understand it myself, to find an answer. I don’t know if I did really.

I’m happy. I’m lonely. I’m working on it.

Update (12/30/12)

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 01:29:08 -0500

I write to you from an oddly uncomfortable bed in Connecticut. I’m wearing a flannel that either belonged to my late grandmother or my poppy…my mother is convinced they both just traded clothes until the end, even though they argued a lot. I’d enjoy a marriage like that, I think. Minus the arguing, obviously.

Let’s just get to it. I don’t post on here really. I fell in love with having a music blog and I never looked back. I guess, more importantly, I had a good year. I guess that good year came with the price of not having much inspiration to write, but I would do anything over. Not even that one crash-and-burn date I had in the summer or the awkward picture I took for my internship. There were stories this year, beautiful people I met, parties I actually loved, girls I kissed, girls I didn’t and wish like hell I did, and motion made. It’s overwhelming and I’ve missed that feeling.

I don’t know how much I’ll be blogging on here. It’s nice to come back and read what people think of my writing…you all are very kind and generous with comments. But, in case I don’t come back often, find me on my music blog, Casa Del Cage. Also, I’m apparently a Tumblr whore now and I have a 3rd blog for my upcoming travels in York, England called Tim vs. The Pond. Please, if you’d like to read a travel blog where the traveler just doesn’t give a shit and posts dumb things, follow.

Sherlock’s on though and Benedict Cumberbatch is just the sassiest motherfucker to grace my laptop screen, so this is goodbye for now. Be well, friends. Happy new year.

So I guess I miss this sometimes.

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 22:42:00 -0500

I’m trying to write again.

Everything’s going better now. Much better some nights, I think. Thank you, everyone.

An observation.

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:49:46 -0400

I find it wildly interesting that the more we age and make sense of this world, the less people make sense as they grow with it.

"I felt a tremendous distance between me and everything real."

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:24:23 -0400

““I felt a tremendous distance between me and everything real.””

- Hunter S. Thompson (via anchorofh0p3)

I sat in my bed last night, dying at the dual act of going...

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 23:58:33 -0400

I sat in my bed last night, dying at the dual act of going through every one of my Facebook photos and iTunes shuffling a perfect mix for said occasion. I’m kind of psyching myself up to delete my Facebook and saving all my (horrifically awkward) photogenic moments seemed like a good way to start. I really forgot how horrific I was at being in any sort of picture, but it’s weirdly amazing to know a chunk of my teenage years were documented via a website.

But honestly, who wants the shithead things they said at 16 lingering on the internet, free to be looked by a click of the timeline? So yeah…so long, Facebook. And Mark Zuckerberg. I imagine you had a lot of mean names created out of your last name in elementary school and I know that feel (Gagnon…yes, I recognize that’s my last name) Still, I want to rid myself of your social networks and the way you treated Andrew Garfield was disgraceful. He’s Spiderman now. You fucked that one up.

Also, this is my 500th post on here. This post is my gift to you all. Verbal vomit. Yuck.

casadelcage: Fanfarlo. I miss this so very much.

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 01:19:48 -0400

casadelcage:

Fanfarlo.

I miss this so very much.

Olympic withdrawals from the least athletic guy in the room.

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 01:51:59 -0400

But in all honesty, I love the Olympics. Start to finish, the stories, games, upsets, awkward classic rock bands combining with new pop stars in the Closing Ceremony and all. I even grew fond of NBC’s below-competent coverage with the censorship, huge delays, 500 hours of commercials, and only 34 hours of actual Olympic footage.

Before you get all excited though, sports dudes, I was basically just another follower watching for women’s gymnastics, diving, swimming, tennis, and a few other sports.

But seriously, dudes, who couldn’t love the Fab 5? Those girls just rule beyond comprehension. Yes, you may high five me for that.

And then let’s simultaneously remember that most of the Fab 5 are sixteen year old girls and very much not legal. Except for Aly Raisman. Aly, I would so let you [insert any awkward, gymnastic euphemism here] on me all night. But seriously, you’re probably able to break all my bones and all I’d really want is a nice dinner out sometime.

London 2012, you made sitting in front of a TV a lot feel productive and worldly. Until Rio, I guess…

Wundarland

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 10:29:02 -0400

Here’s a chunk of a short story I just wrote tonight. I probably should edit it down more, but hey…this is my blog, so I decide if I want to irrational post things after a long and unexcused absence!

Also, I have a music Tumblr blog now and I’ve been in the beginnings of working on some spoken word pieces accompanied by music. Now you can’t say I’ve been slacking off by not posting on here, ya jerks.

— tim

Wundarland: an excerpt

Louis Carell had grown up sixteen years of his life begrudgingly and accepting of the idea that this whole line dance humanity called love was meant to be just that: arranged, precise steps in a dance.

In fact, Louis was almost certain that the so called cherub in the sky shooting those love arrows had put a relationship foot map down for us mere humans to follow. Pretty girl bats a lash, boy goes into butterfly heart attack. From there, the first date. The boy struts and tosses his riches into the ring, a bird of paradise under the lens of the female and the National Geographic cameras. Then the kiss, an earned tradition made at her front door. Depending on the kind of girl she was or is, that doorstep’s a graveyard of first and last kisses. Memories of misfires and miscommunications were observed and singed into those misguided boys by what felt like the world, but were only witnessed by the azaleas growing on the handrails. If her lips part, if he sees her neck loosen as his hand reaches her back, if she leads him inside…well, the game’s only begun then. And what a series it is, a series of building, yet slow and revealing dates until a ring sprouts in the boy’s pocket. The girl’s eyes are faucets as the engagement party, wedding day, and honeymoon stream together like Christmas lights on their first home together in Northern suburbs. They still kiss three years into their public display of intention with the gold rings, but with purpose now. They’re like little boys in tree houses during war time on the playground, passing messages without even an inkling of what the word “subtlety” means. She kisses him harder if he stops using the word “baby” as her pet name or as an interjection at the end of a fight and he clumsily responds with a white tailed infantry aimed directly at the hallowed walls of that battle-ending egg inside her belly. A girl, supposedly smart and well intentioned with a desire to become far more successful financially and educationally despite buying into the same, ideal relationship plan her parents fell into, falls out of her mother’s uterus in under a year. Then, serving at the surprise in the girl and boy’s highly ordinary tale of domesticated creationism, a boy arrives only a few months after the girl’s first birthday. He, like his arrival, is unplanned. Unbelievable, at first, in the worst way. And unlikable at first too, with such unwillingness and inability to cope with the idea that love, the great and wise and ancient master of us all, is wonderful merely because it is so unwonderfully orchestrated and put together like all the others. And he, viewed as the unnerving, unscheduled arrival in his family’s tidy plans, sought to write all of his thoughts on love, close the book on a sad, last note, and simply live his life without the scarring clutches of a bleeding heart near him.

But self acclaimed geniuses always seem to bring out the cherub of love’s most secretive, malicious weapons of all: a night sky and an unexpected gust of wind in the opposite direction. Louis’s sister, Bethany, barely old enough to attend or understand the accounting and political science classes at her baby Ivy in the city, came home from her first year at college with a pencil thin mustache named Jeremiah and a swollen stomach under her sweater. It was her birthday, she said, he took her to the only place in the city with stars, kisses entered into a highly debated osmosis that resulted in a condom-less shot in the dark. Their parents gave their pained, “we’ll save the argument for later” congratulations as their daughter’s dreams of being the bookkeeper behind future presidents seemed to get overpowered off financial plans like a vacation plan getting consumed by a recession. Louis, in typical improvised fashion against his family’s tight scripting, told Bethany her belly looked like more like a bruised shiner than a blessing, and left to watch the same stars that spurred children into his sister’s uterus.

Thanks to 50 Shades of Grey, Jane Eyre just got sexier...

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 18:56:28 -0400

Thanks to 50 Shades of Grey, Jane Eyre just got sexier...:

chasingcoolness:

…the world, however, continues to get dumber.

Ladies and gentlemen, erotic fan fiction is now the only way of becoming the next New York Times bestseller. Even if your book was once a literary classic.

I guess my first thought is that, even more so than ever, I feel like I’m writing not for a hundred likes, to be featured, to be whatever it is that signifies real literary success these days. I guess I just write for the idea of a connection with someone. For myself, mostly, but with some mystery reader out there.

My second thought is I should probably dig out all the mildly racy things I wrote back in early high school and publish them before this craze dies down. Seriously, this all sounds too easy now.

I'd Go Amish For You: A (Rough Draft of an) Essay

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 23:32:43 -0400

Please give thoughts. Be brutal. It’s a super rough draft that needs polishing, after all. And, for those who don’t like reading for a while, the short version of this is basically the sentence, “I really don’t like texting and such” over and over.

I’ve finally met the temptation of breaking communication.

I mean, I would like to believe any woman I’ve given a damn about has killed a few pixels in me or taken a bar off my reception in some way. Madeline Stone, 1st kiss, 4th grade, summer camp. I threw my Gameboy in the deep end of the swimming pool to get her attention. The best memories I had up until that point were in 8 bit, the friends I kept were all drowning in the Pokemon Red cartridge strapped to the back of that doomed vessel. I sold out every trainer, every stadium, every desire to catch them all, and threw it six feet under for the advanced 5th grade swimmers and the counselors to find. Madeline gave me a peck in the pickup line that afternoon, barely enough for her mother to yell “Maddy!” from the Stone family Subaru, and I guess it felt fine to be worth shouting about.

Virginia Montgomery, 8th grade, 1st dance. I remember her telling me how much my hands felt like death. Cold, nervous death, lingering under the bleachers in the gymnasium. In every catch of my oversized dress shoes with the floor. Death was middle school. Death was this night. Death, in fact, was in the air tonight. By Phil Collins. “Aren’t you going to dance?”, Ginny asked. Everyone was pairing up like marriages in the far East and the DJ took a deep, drunk sip from his Thermos. Mr. Collins played his inappropriately sad slow song over the PA system and I faced the biggest decision of my young life. Ginny’s corsage was swaying in impatience, poking into my eye line like a loaded question. Martin, my pen pal from England, was texting me updates on the Chelsea v. Munich soccer match (excuse me, 8th grade me would’ve preferred if it had called it “true football”) And I was realizing the “true football” matches I followed, my flip phone that I texted on, and the reserved tendencies that I thought would make me more mature to girls like Virginia were the exact qualities holding me back. And so I stood for Virginia. I silenced my phone as, somewhere in the world, Munich scored a heart wrenching goal to send the game into overtime kicks. And I danced as slowly as I could, moving my hands from hovering the air around her, to the space below her shoulder blades, to running my fingers along the beaded dress down her back. Maturity is action, I learned that night. It does not care about how you can analyze team rosters or the talk you have in your arsenal. Maturity is where your eyes gaze to, how little you stare at your phone, what your teenage vernacular can muster out as a sentence, and where your hands can reach to. And, in the deathly and alcoholic-chaperoned air that night, my hands found a girl’s lower back.

It’s existed among every girl since then, this need to speak without screens and emote without emoticons. And I guess every girl, up until a few years ago, has been accompanied by a real experience. Hailie Jones, freshman year of high school. My phone died and I saw her across the school courtyard, talking with Julie Saunders and staring in my direction. Susan Benidoff, junior year. The events of my first receiving of oral sex by her can, in my mind, be directly traced to the time I told her I don’t play war video games. And, as a man in this age, I’ve used this need to talk and separate myself from technology as my wingman. Other boys take girls to movies; I take her to parks and gush about Bukowski.

But then came Allison North. Her name sounds like a million crime fiction damsels, but I haven’t even had a conversation with her yet. Her hair is auburn, but I’ve only met a profile picture of her in Rome. She is a number at this point, a setting up. Her name feels like nothing when I type it out, just pixels and unexperienced terrain. But I want it. The Gameboy killer in me wants it. The boy who’d dance for Phil Collins and pretty girls wants it. And, as my generation writes coy texting as the new way to start flirting, I want nothing to do with it.

I don’t know Allison North, but the temptation of breaking communication lies in her eyes that she posts in Facebook albums. I’m saying farewell to the witty texts about drunk cooking she posts somewhere in between late Saturday nights and early Sunday mornings. Arrivederci to every mention of her taking Italian that she posts to her friends. I would go Amish for this girl if it meant I wouldn’t have to wonder about the wording of a text again. If it meant I actually get to meet a girl without her meeting me behind a screen, cowering in fear. Without the world at my fingertips, I’d be the most free I’ve ever been.

Someone from work today tried to convince me Wiz Khalifa is a better all-around artist than Kanye.

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 22:00:17 -0400

I hate to be the guy that uses gifs to explain himself, but…dear lord, my face…

I like wanted to ask him if he needed help or something. Maybe a hug, I dunno. Kid just seemed really lost.

chasingcoolness: patfarley: arrivinsomewhere: blownoffstranger...

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:54:54 -0400

chasingcoolness:

patfarley:

arrivinsomewhere:

blownoffstrangersandhotrodangels:

IT’S FUTURE DAY! Remember in Back To the Future, where Doc sets the DeLorean to a future date? That date is TODAY!

This is poor photoshopping. Any real fan knows that Marty and Doc go to Oct 21st 2015, you fucking goobers.

Relevant text in bold.

This picture needs to make like a tree and get out of here. Right now.

I spent far too many years without a clue that this man was...

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 23:39:33 -0400

I spent far too many years without a clue that this man was molding the very socially awkward, musically pretentious self I would become in high school.

Bravo, Seth Cohen. I spent high school so uncomfortable and nerdy unknowingly following your lifestyle, but at least I listened to good music.

what does timgagnonwashere mean? also do you make $ with your blog using peepspayerDOTcom?

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 18:41:17 -0400

Well, kind, grey-faced man of great jaw length, timgagnonwashere is the phrase, “Tim Gagnon, wash ‘ere!” combined into one word. You see, I (Tim) used to wander the streets of Americana-filled small towns, living life as a rank-smelling vagrant of sorts. I’ve heard some of the towns have created folklore out of me even (you may have heard of Terrible Tim and The Terrific Odor…yep, it’s about me) It wasn’t until a large saloon owner in between Oklahoma and Texas offered to wash my hair that my life was changed forever. Everyday, he’d call to me in his gruff, Southern accent, “Tim Gagnon! Wash yer ‘ere!”. And I would come to him and he’d wash my “ere” with the gentlest hands you ever did feel.

It wasn’t until a month’s worth of washing that the robust saloon owner showed me his true trade: spaying and neutering of animals. He had an irrational fear of bunny rabbits planning a mutiny against humanity by reproducing their kind at alarming rates, but boy, did he share his passion for the spaying like no other! After some time, I became good enough to do my own spaying and I even learned there were websites that offered money if you filmed your spaying surgeries. So, yes, kind anon, I have heard of peepspayerDOTcom and I am filthy rich as a result of it.

But anyway, what was the question again?

Walk The Moon is such a solid band, it’s not even funny....

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 22:58:00 -0400

Walk The Moon is such a solid band, it’s not even funny. This week’s been crazy fun birthday concert times and the other night topped it off perfectly.

Meet my roommate and I's new blog, Casa Del Cage. We're going to be posting music, occasional reviews of things, and the like. I will still post writing on here, but go follow Casa if you want a blog where I post way, way more.

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 17:47:00 -0400

Meet my roommate and I's new blog, Casa Del Cage. We're going to be posting music, occasional reviews of things, and the like. I will still post writing on here, but go follow Casa if you want a blog where I post way, way more.

SHIT. did someone post your pics on tumblrafterhours(.)com ?? go there and look up timgagnonwashere

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 01:33:03 -0400

OMG, Anon. You so kind to me n tellin me my nudies are on sum website, bbygirl!

But seriously, I hope you step on a hundred Lego pieces while sipping extremely hot soup.