the answer is both.

Two more haiku. I wrote these on my drive to school:

Lonely aqueduct—
you've been through many valleys
evaporating.

Poor Nicole Kidman;
flood, murder, poverty, war
beneath her headline.

My cousin Amarantha's father, who is also my cousin, got remarried Friday. I got lost in a public garden in Claremont and eventually stumbled upon the scene of a bunch of druids and gnomes and fairies dancing around. Half the party was dressed in "renaissance" attire, meaning they shelled out up to a hundred dollars each to look like Disneylandified Medievalites. I was wearing my curtain pants, plus some shiny fancy button-up shirt I got at a label clearance store in San Francisco. Anyway, people asked why I wasn't dressed up renaissance, and I said, "fashion guru renaissance." And they nodded half-frowningly. And then I sat down in the audience and observed the wedding photographer, a 60 year-old man, obviously into faggotry, wearing a beret and glasses with lenses shaped like half-filled glasses of water. It was difficult photographing him without him noticing. I bet he spoke with a fake British accent and a slight lisp. Then, the harpist started playing "Here Comes the Bride," and the bride walked with her father down the aisle. It was like being in a tv show; I couldn't help but want to cry. And then the woman performing the ceremony boldly announced that their love was a sea between two lands, and that they stood as two pillars, and something about poverty. It was outrageous and scripted and plastic.

This is where I'd like to interject my opinion on weddings and marriages. It's been on my mind a lot, as I almost got married recently. Marriage is a meaningless formality done more for publicity and networking than anything else. I don't need to vow anything in front of three hundred people to stay with my lover forever. And why must I stay with my lover forever? If you become boring, I might as well leave you. (I say this despite a reputation of loyalty and committedness.) I don't need legal documentation to prove my love habits. You've got to want me enough to take that chance. If I ignite this hoop, I expect you to jump. Weddings, on the other hand, are the last thing I'd like to see ridden. People never congregate these days. But it especially doesn't count if you read something scripted and melodramatic about birds and trees and world peace in front of people you care about.

The best part was when the ceremony lady said "as long as you shall love" instead of "as long as you shall live." At least there was something real and honest. Afterwards, I hung out with some cousins and drank a plain margarita, a banana margarita, a coconut-pineapple margarita, a plain margarita with better tequila, and then a repeat of that last one. I talked to one of them about our cousin who's in prison for life for killing his wife. Apparently he thinks I'd have a lot in common with this fellow. To this day, he still doesn't regret it. His wife was looking into getting a divorce, so one day, he walks into her workplace and shoots her dead. Now he writes books from his jailcell about our Mennonite heritage. I have so many questions. On Sunday, I went to an art gallery where they simultaneously played the Super Bowl and the film La Société du Spectacle, and Anna Oxygen performed during halftime, simultaneous with Prince.

Interim classes finally ended. They're a part of a session about two weeks long with hardly any homework, just massive amounts of things to attend. They're poorly scheduled, so I took the liberty of leaving and entering classes as I pleased. Morton Subotnick, a famous composer known to the music school secretaries as "Morty," taught an interim class called "Creating New Media," during which, all he did was explain how he and all his famous composer colleagues met in San Francisco in the 1950s (I guess it used to be nice there?) and moved into a house together and formed a little art colony. At some point, I noticed in the catalogue that there was a class called "Forming an Arts Collective" offered at the exact same time-slot, so I got up in the middle of his talking and walked over to that class.

I keep hearing complaints about the gay community. Nothing new about that in all my time as a gay. Here's my idea though. The gay community needs recreation centers. Public spaces to play games, do yoga, read books, like a YMCA, a bar and a library combined. I think it would only succeed in the form of a business though. Let's start a franchise.

And lastly, what is all this life hubbub about? The word "alive" means being conscious and being active. I think it's important to avoid compromise and never waste a moment. Question everything around you. I also disagree with myself and think it's impossible not to do the right thing. If you feel like dying, go ahead. We don't die, we just get recycled. Something else I've been thinking lately: stop trying to define yourself. You're not made of plastic; you can't avoid endless contradictions and changes in your being; you get more than dented. For hundreds of years, humans have been bounded in their minds by the concepts of "you" and "me." Julia Kristeva calls this "the abject." We've been separating objects from actions, but where is that boundary? You are. You have being. Existence includes you. But the opposite is also true. The answer is both.