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Mon | November 14, 2005

Tao Lin

Tao is applying to Kaplan. You don't need a job! I said, punching him twice in the arm. But he is like I was a few years ago. He wants a job; he won't feel normal until he has one. He is advanced of where I was; I burned a year in film and then another year or so at two ill-fitting jobs before landing at Kap. And hell, he knows he wants to be a writer. I didn't know that, or I didn't admit that, until January 2004. Then I didn't really do anything about it until January of this year. I mean I thought I was doing things, but I really wasn't. Maybe I'm not even really doing things now. But I think I am.

Tao is like chococat. He has this spaceyness about him. I barely know him, which is why I can write about him. I think once you get to know people it's harder to write about them, because there's something at stake then. Also, once you get to know someone, you forget them a little. You forget your first impressions and you don't see their physical features anymore. Or I don't.

Tao has hair like black grass. Like the grass in a wooden box that you can put on your city apartment windowsill. I didn't remember his hair being this way before, but the last time I saw him, it was like this. Maybe he styled it that way. But I don't see him as someone who styles his hair. I see him more as someone who wears the same navy sweatshirt and pants for days on end. Who wakes up and lets his hair be whatever it is. Yet I may be confusing him with myself. I do that sometimes.

His brain is mushy and poetic. This is why he is so spacey. He's really overwhelmed by the world, in a way. He'll say things that are basic observations, as if they are big revelations to him. One Sunday at KGB there was this old man sitting nearby, and Tao said, "he's so old," drawing out the 'oh' in 'old,' as if he were old himself. As if by being near an old man Tao somehow experienced his oldness.

I met him at an Opium reading. He read some poems. One of his poems was called "some of my happiest moments are on IM." Or something like that. Another one had a line like, "I'd rather be unhappy and honest than dishonest and unhappy." Or something.

On his blog he writes that the people he likes never like him. I suppose that implies that he doesn't like the people who like him. (Or maybe it doesn't. When I took philosophy of logic I nearly failed it.) At any rate, since I like him, he probably doesn't like me. But I think he meant "like" as in, "like like."

Maybe we will continue to be acquainted and grow into friends. But then I would have to delete this post. I don't think there's anything up here he would object to, though.

I wonder if he will work at K. It seems to be the fate of Kaplan to employ every lost soul between the ages of 21-25.

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