chop chop

"Come back in six weeks to get trimmed up, want some product?" Not so much. Another six months, maybe. He probably cares more about my hair than I do, but that's how he gets paid.

But I come in and some people don't recognize me, someone mistakes me for someone else, I'm told it looks nice, and the big cheese says it looks "professional" which is perhaps a compliment but makes me feel like a stiff. I say the art nouveau has been rubbing off on me before realizing that most people don't know what I'm talking about, hence the recent love of floor-length skirts and dangly earrings and my inner goth kid trying to reconcile with the daily grind of adulthood.

Attempts at creative and academic writing diminished by a sore throat and a sore brain, assuaged by cups of tea and vending machine tylenol and strange and arty things on the Internet.

original angsta



I want to go to the House on the Rock really bad.



Pretty stuff...

she bangs the drums

A pile of papers on the desk finally close to being cleared, of spinning plates and juggling in this three ring circus of peonage, smiling and picking at my food, scavenging after the events for lukewarm coffee and leftover fruit, keeping the snark in check and realizing that letting out too much of my brains tends to have dire consequences among my superiors.

Having survived awkward social situations over lunch where I observed the angstings of fellow twentysomethings, awkward lunch dates, and marveled at the culinary generica of fine dining, endured an hour of the grind of history and being fed up with every -ism in existence, as we guess which one of us is going to say something in class first. I grew to expect absurdity when I was an undergrad, but now that I'm not just going along to get through, I get restless and my thoughts shoot off like fireworks in every direction, but instead of speaking up because my words and thoughts get so tangled, I doodle furiously in the margins and try not to roll my eyes as everyone talks about women who were totally down with the revolution.

No matter who's in charge, no matter what they say, the peonage get screwed in one way or another by the more powerful. It happens under czars and Dear Leaders and Mr. Presidents. The cast is different, the story the same.

I'm pondering all this as I miss the first bus and walk downtown to catch the next, in no real hurry, watching all the other working stiffs and the long lines of cars, the corner of the street where there are people sleeping when I ride in. 1 in 6 people in my country are living in poverty. Those of us who are really fortunate like yours truly hover just slightly above that line. Others will continue to bounce from one prestigious position to another, raking in the cash and perks. I wonder how they sleep at night.

A nap, a phone conversation, going up to church to wait for my fellow musicians to get there. Nobody's around so I pull out some old drumsticks and bang away at cymbals, toms and snare, surprised that the little bit of muscle memory is actually doing something even though I really don't know what I'm doing. One of my coworkers gave me a set she got from one of my other coworkers that I used to play when I lived at the old place and the roommate wasn't home, and I can at least do the Meg White if not the John Bonham. No one's here as it is so I can make all the noise I want and by the time they show up I've locked into some kind of rhythm. It's cathartic and I wonder why I don't do it more. It's something I'd love to do well.

summations

I've staked out my corner at the coffeeshop where I sketch out this paper, thankful for the invention of Google Docs, answering the phone from my mom to find out my dad's in the hospital again (it's just precautionary like they always say, but there's the part of me that still worries), tapping my pen to a Bad Religion song that reminds me of senior year, pondering in a way that's not quite optimistic, but not really despairing either. My mom calls me to be sure I'm not dead, because I'm terrible at responding to text messages.

I've had a breakthrough in inspiration, a way around the problem, attempting to summarize the threads of globalization, my favorite mid 19th and early 20th century art movements and their expressions of geopolitical realities in 3-5 pages. I know I'm insane for trying this because it's more or less a dissertation, but it's better than parroting back what someone wants to hear or read. I know it doesn't matter because it's not for a degree or grade but it's a personal thing.

The couple at the table is talking about high school, about cheerleaders and jocks and freaks. The academics flash their credentials, the older women at the place of employment swap juicy details and complain about there not being enough rich men to have affairs with, the overlords obsess upon minutiae, and I wonder what the hell is wrong with people, because this all seems so stupid but then I'm sure the way I do things seems just as crazy if not moreso.

the facts we hate

So much said by others so much better, I'm in the same place I was at this time last year more or less. If I think about it all too much I get depressed, for good reason one could say. I remember thinking that things were going to get messed up really soon but I don't think I realized to what extent and to what extent these kind of things had been going on for years. Ignorance is bliss, and that becomes the pursuit of happiness. Disorder and war machinery that keeps turning.

Arguments in class over the semantics of genocide. Who cares what some historian thinks? Who cares what conference this paper was presented at? Who cares? A million dead and the argument is over linguistics rather than truth? People want to hear themselves talk and sound intellectual. If your side screwed up you should own up to it. I can't whitewash the things done in my God's name, and neither should you about whatever ideology or credo you hold to whatever that is.

You're so negative, someone once told me, stressing positivity over reality. Sometimes this is what's real.



the facts we hate
we'll never meet walking down the road
everybody yelling "hurry up, hurry up!"
but I'm waiting for you, I must go slow
I must not think bad thoughts

what is this world coming to?
both sides are right but both sides are murdered
I give up, why can't they?
I must not think bad thoughts

the civil wars and the uncivilized wars
conflagrations leap out of every poor furnace
the food cooks poorly and everyone goes hungry
from then on it's
dog eat dog, dog eat body, and body eat dog
I can't go down there, I can't understand it
I'm a no good coward
and an american too, a north american that is
not a south or a central or a native american
oh, I must not think bad thoughts

I'm guilty of murder of
innocent men, innocent women, innocent children
thousands of them
my planes, my guns, my money, my soul
my blood on my hands
it's all my fault
I must not think bad thoughts

lo-fi love song

It's always a pleasure when my cousins come up, especially the one my sister's age who works in IT for an evil tween clothing company and has to work a 12-hour shift tomorrow for 9/11, which is also his birthday, though he's not the most social of people by any means. Just in case, you know, terrorists try to bring down the glittery pink site of Tweenage Western Decadent Strumpetry Bieberland, or something.

The conversation gets spirited as the wine flows freely though we don't delve into politics this time, which is probably good. My teenage cousins discuss their favorite bands earnestly in a way I remember doing, getting mad at the kids in school who like the one song they heard on the radio and saying that's the best band ever. I remember when it mattered so much, and now it doesn't. I don't say much because I'm losing touch with the pulse of the youth, and soon I'll be like their teachers that they make fun of for wanting to be in touch with POPULAR CULTURE.

My dad is tired from working all day and ends up sleeping on the couch in the other room, but I go back to get my laundry and we end up hanging out, playing guitar, listening to music. He's been going through his hundreds of cassette tapes recorded with friends on a double-tape deck with a microphone hanging from the ceiling and found one that had songs he wrote for my mom, twenty years into their marriage, played on three chords on the amp we got when I first decided I really liked making noise.

His voice is wavering, the words simple, the sentiments deep, the uncomplicated thoughts of first impressions and insecurities of questions of himself and God, the guitar swirling with the flange, fading out as he runs out of words. I ask him if he's ever played this for her and he says no and for some reason this moment moves me in a way I can't explain.

I drive home through the dark streets, considering trying to catch the last half of Studio-A-Rama but by then Scrawl will be done and the night is beautiful and for some reason 80's thrash on the radio sounds like the best thing ever, so I drive with the windows down, the greasy rain on my shoulders, my hair wild, missing late night drives of spilling words, knowing that there just isn't time or words to say what's there.

storm in my house

Maybe it's some last vestiges of picket fence American dreams when I've wanted a place of my own, when I see for sale signs for little 1920s urban cottages in my neighborhood with stained glass windows or century old Victorian-era rowhouse townhomes with slate roofs and wild roses growing up the porch within walking distance of the water in Lakewood, knowing that with no credit history (no credit cards, no debt, no car payment), and little income, this would be almost impossible, and I'm not the world's greatest maintainer of things. Keeping an apartment clean and the garden weeded is hard enough, and I live alone. I really don't need all that space and hassle and wouldn't want to have my life and money tied up in something that seems to be more of an albatross than equity at this point in history.

So I went into the kitchen this morning, and realized that not only is it raining outside, it's dripping in my kitchen. A plastic bucket and some pots and pans on top of the fridge, going up to the attic to find the source, which looks like piles of insulation and boards of dubious stability. I'll leave this to the experts and my landlord, and head to the empty house I grew up in to do laundry and drink coffee. Plans of seeing Scrawl tonight look like they'll be derailed by both inclement weather and family functionals. It won't be so bad.

best of the blotter: gum, guns, drugs, and turtles

DISORDERLY CONDUCT,

CHRISTOPHER DRIVE: During the evening of Aug. 29, a resident reported an older man pointing a rifle at the complainant, his wife, and his dog while they were walking by.

The resident asked the man with the rifle if it was loaded, after observing the red laser coming from it.

The elderly man with the rifle told them he was just aligning his laser on his .308 rifle and need a long distance to do it.

He told the officer he detached the laser and waved it across the street, a story with which the complainant disagreed.

The man with the rifle was issued a citation for disorderly conduct.

NOISE COMPLAINT, NORTH STREET: Police responded shortly after 10 p.m. on Sept. 3 to a report of “very loud and scary music that sounds like it’s coming from Waterfall Trail or Twin Lakes Trail.” Police tracked the commotion to Waterfall Trail, where the revelers were advised to turn the sound down and disband the party at 11 p.m.

DISTURBANCE, EAST WASHINGTON STREET: A clerk at the BP Station reported Sept. 3 that a woman and her daughter had been in the station making a purchase and that she then accused him of throwing her change back at her. “The clerk countered that he had accidentally dropped a dime on the floor. The clerk said a witness backed his story up that “he did not throw coins at the delusional, out of control customer.”

DISTURBANCE, RIDGEBURY BOULEVARD: Police responded Sept. 1 to a report of a boy stepping out in front of passing motorists on the street and blowing his trumpet. Officers advised the boy to put his trumpet away and march on.

VANDALISM, NORTH INDUSTRIAL PARKWAY: Representatives from Digestive Disease reported a second-floor window of their building shattered some time between 5:20 p.m. Sept. 1 and 8:20 a.m. Sept. 2. Police had no suspects or damage estimates at the time of the report.

SNAPPING TURTLE, SPRINGBROOK: A large snapping turtle was loitering in the parking lot of a Springbrook Drive apartment complex around 7:30 p.m., Aug. 28. A concerned resident told police that the turtle could be injured or could injure somebody else. An officer responded and escorted the turtle into a nearby creek. The turtle readily entered the water.

BEREA

COMPLICITY, SPRAGUE ROAD: Police arrested a 31-year-old store clerk after he gave money to one of two youngsters to steal a sign.

A resident who put up a handmade sign urging people not to shop at a nearby store saw a boy on a bike Aug. 27 take the sign and leave. The report said the man has had an ongoing problem with his signs disappearing from his yard.

Police found two boys at the store, one of whom was described as the culprit. The 13-year-old said the clerk gave him $11 to steal the sign. The boy also told police he was offer $20 to egg the house and shout obscenities at the resident. The boy gave police a $1 and $10 bill from his pocket.

The clerk said he had “international” lawyers and the case would be dismissed if he did give the boy the money. He also said he had a “billion dollar” family and that “We run America,” according to the police report.

The Rocky River man was cited for complicity regarding the theft since he caused an irresponsible person to commit an offense.

SCARY MOVIE, WARREN ROAD: Someone called police just after midnight on Aug. 19 out of concern for their neighbor. The caller told police they heard arguing and a female screaming for help. Police responded, but found all the drama was for naught. Apparently, the neighbors were just watching a scary movie and the volume was a little high.

DISTURBANCE, WHTNEY ROAD: An anonymous caller reported that it sounded like someone was shooting a gun in the neighborhood around 10:30 p.m. Aug. 20.

Officers arrived at the scene and spoke with several people, though no one else heard or saw anything resembling the report.

The noise was later identified when officers discovered a resident on the fifth floor of an apartment complex dropping bags of clothing off his balcony. That resident explained that dropping the clothes to the ground was easier than taking them down in the elevator.

Not Much Fun on Party Bus

Police found an unoccupied party bus marked "Rock It Cleveland" pulled over on Sprague Road near Pearl Road about 5 a.m. Aug. 28.

There was no sign of the partiers. Officers called the number on the bus, but the person who answered said he did not know why the vehicle was there.

He promised to have it moved shortly.

Suspicious Bag

A caller didn't like the looks of a large red bag sitting on the side of the road at Royalton and Prospect Aug. 26.

Police found the bag had an address on it and was advertising a garage sale.

An alarm brought police to Twilight Boutique, 11025 Prospect Rd., just before midnight Sunday.

Officers found the glass broken and some products, including herbal incense, missing.
In addition, the cash register had been picked up, but was left behind.

The product sold at the store is marketed as incense, but is often rolled into cigarettes and smoked by teens and young adults for what they call a "legal high."

The leafy material in the packets is treated with chemicals that produce a marijuana-like high when smoked, authorities say.

DRUG NOTE, NORTHLAND: A Northland Drive woman returned home on Aug. 19 around 10:50 p.m., and found out that one of her neighbors had given her 12-year-old brother a note asking if the woman would sell the neighbor marijuana or pills. The woman filed a report with police, but no arrests have been made.

THEFT, GIRARD DRIVE: About $130 worth of chewing gun was stolen overnight Aug. 26 from a car in the 400 block. The owner of the car is a sales representative for the company that makes gum. The thief did not take a wallet or a backpack that the owner found outside his car.