stir-crazy here, going somewhere just to go, keep it low-key, hope it all gets straightened out, hoping the dread is overblown because this isn't starting out too well, at least there's a couple couches to crash on in the meantime.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
drink a cup of kindness yet, and say goodbye to our regrets...
It always comes together, everything working out except for that whole business of the lock on the apartment not locking and then being impossible to open. I called the landlady, and she says she'll change it and call me back but that was several hours ago now so I'm pretty much just waiting and starting to wonder what is going on and if I made a mistake.
Who knows, and everything seems to be closed except the swanky establishments, and didn't feel like being the three's a crowd extra with my friend and her new boyfriend. I appreciate the thought, but sometimes that just makes it more awkward, wondering what, if anything, to do next. Everything seems fraught with social peril, but I know it's just me this time.
Resolutions? I got out of Ohio, maybe I can try to get out of the country for a few days this time. Otherwise, not much. It'd be cool to start a band this year and have it click, I guess, maybe get back into the world of zinery to share the love of arcane artistry and general strangeness. Learn more, consume less, I don't know anymore. The time just keeps slipping away.
Who knows, and everything seems to be closed except the swanky establishments, and didn't feel like being the three's a crowd extra with my friend and her new boyfriend. I appreciate the thought, but sometimes that just makes it more awkward, wondering what, if anything, to do next. Everything seems fraught with social peril, but I know it's just me this time.
Resolutions? I got out of Ohio, maybe I can try to get out of the country for a few days this time. Otherwise, not much. It'd be cool to start a band this year and have it click, I guess, maybe get back into the world of zinery to share the love of arcane artistry and general strangeness. Learn more, consume less, I don't know anymore. The time just keeps slipping away.
Friday, December 30, 2011
and I swore I'd never go there again.
Another year another move, boxes piled up, everything in the middle room, wondering how I ended up with so many paintings, why half of them suck and why I feel so shy about sharing my art and end up piling the canvases in the corner.
So grateful yet stressed on the eve, hoping this will be the last one for awhile, hoping those who said they'd show up actually do, getting better at this kind of thing, feeling bad about putting others out but I make it up to them in cash or booze or coffee or furniture.
I have plans for New Year's Eve should I choose to take them, but my throat is getting sore, and I'm between three houses, drinking tea with a little Anubis dog resting her head on my lap. If I wouldn't be a neglectful parent, maybe I'd consider canine ownership, there's a loyalty there that's strange and sweet.
Sleep before the storm, needed so much.
So grateful yet stressed on the eve, hoping this will be the last one for awhile, hoping those who said they'd show up actually do, getting better at this kind of thing, feeling bad about putting others out but I make it up to them in cash or booze or coffee or furniture.
I have plans for New Year's Eve should I choose to take them, but my throat is getting sore, and I'm between three houses, drinking tea with a little Anubis dog resting her head on my lap. If I wouldn't be a neglectful parent, maybe I'd consider canine ownership, there's a loyalty there that's strange and sweet.
Sleep before the storm, needed so much.
a life spent waiting in cement
When women complain about how men don't have feelings, I wonder if they listen to Jawbreaker.
That being said, I can't remember how many times I've felt like this.
Been hearing about you.
All about your disapproval.
Still I remember the way I used to move you.
I wrote you a letter.
I heard it just upset you.
Why don't you tell me?
How can I do this better?
Are you out there?
Do you hear me?
Can I call you?
Do you still hate me?
Are we talking?
Are we fighting?
Is it over?
Are we writing?
We're getting older.
But we're acting younger.
We should be smarter.
It seems we're getting dumber.
I have a picture
of you and me in Brooklyn.
On a porch, it was raining.
Hey, I remember that day.
And I miss you.
That being said, I can't remember how many times I've felt like this.
Been hearing about you.
All about your disapproval.
Still I remember the way I used to move you.
I wrote you a letter.
I heard it just upset you.
Why don't you tell me?
How can I do this better?
Are you out there?
Do you hear me?
Can I call you?
Do you still hate me?
Are we talking?
Are we fighting?
Is it over?
Are we writing?
We're getting older.
But we're acting younger.
We should be smarter.
It seems we're getting dumber.
I have a picture
of you and me in Brooklyn.
On a porch, it was raining.
Hey, I remember that day.
And I miss you.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
give it away now
The piles of boxes keep rising, more and more of life in compartments, inventorying the legacy of inheritance and consumption, as words of gospels and epistles of sharing with others come to mind, of he who has two of something giving to the one that has none, and the thing is there's not just two, there's three there's four there's six. I didn't realized the extent of possessions until it's all pulled out of closets and from under the bed and laid out in front. Most of it was given to me, but to whom much is given much is expected right? So what does one person need with all this?
And it's liberating to pile these things to send along, to let go, to hold what is in one's hands lightly.
I take a break from this because one of my good friends from way back, my partner in geekness and grunge calls me to hang out with him and what I assume to be the companionship of his girlfriend, but I think it's possible it was a blind date setup or something. Props to his smoothness I guess, for good conversation over coffee and punk rocking it up old punks style standing in the back and nodding along while the Kids pogoed away. Nothing will come of it but getting to be geeky with a new soul was nice for a change. I wonder if it's bad that I've gone so long without the sentimental and the romance that I can't feel it for anyone anymore.
And it's liberating to pile these things to send along, to let go, to hold what is in one's hands lightly.
I take a break from this because one of my good friends from way back, my partner in geekness and grunge calls me to hang out with him and what I assume to be the companionship of his girlfriend, but I think it's possible it was a blind date setup or something. Props to his smoothness I guess, for good conversation over coffee and punk rocking it up old punks style standing in the back and nodding along while the Kids pogoed away. Nothing will come of it but getting to be geeky with a new soul was nice for a change. I wonder if it's bad that I've gone so long without the sentimental and the romance that I can't feel it for anyone anymore.
Monday, December 26, 2011
other places
Enough of culinary goodness and conversation as I leave the house to walk in the woods where the palette is grey and grey and brown under the relentless clear azure to be alone with the thoughts and with God because people are exhausting as much as I enjoy them and it feels strange to have this much time unstructured, time to be alone and hover in that transitional time of years turning over and living out of a backpack at the homes of others while my life's possessions reside in boxes and in piles for others to sort through to see if they need anything or can give it to someone who does.
I played around with the new baritone guitar because the people downstairs weren't home, though all my attempts at real songwriting were really nothing except noise and noodling. A few adjustments of the tone and reverb resulted in a pleasing crunch of distortion and satisfying waves of sludgy wavering tremolo like the blackened waves of Lake Erie breaking on the littered beach, the coherence elusive.
there's not much to say, just the unexpressible.
I played around with the new baritone guitar because the people downstairs weren't home, though all my attempts at real songwriting were really nothing except noise and noodling. A few adjustments of the tone and reverb resulted in a pleasing crunch of distortion and satisfying waves of sludgy wavering tremolo like the blackened waves of Lake Erie breaking on the littered beach, the coherence elusive.
there's not much to say, just the unexpressible.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
navidad
The rituals continue cyclical, shifting with age, as we're no longer required to do cutesy little kid Christmasy things like sing "Away In A Manger" to bemused nursing home residents, or plays for the grownups involving costumes made of 1970's colored bath towels and faded bedsheets, until we retreated to the basement to run around and be ninja turtles or whatever, buzzed on sugar.
Most of us are older now, old enough to drink or vote. There's fifteen years between me and the youngest, skinny with glasses and bangs like I once was, her room pink and glittery, an island in a house of sports trophies and pennants. She's a sweet and awkward kid who seems somewhat younger than her tweenage cohort, whose girliness is still ballet slippers and fairies instead of celebrity crushes and lipgloss. She tells me about her dance classes, that she likes to draw, and that she built these fairy houses out of silk flowers and cinnamon sticks for her dolls but seems embarrassed that what she perceives to be her cool older cousin sees this part of her world.
I tell her it's really cool, and I mean it, though I wish her imagination had been stretched even further, that there were more books in the house to be absorbed by osmosis instead of videogames. I wish I had copies to give her of all the fantasy novels I read when I was her age, all the Robin McKinley and Lloyd Alexander paperbacks checked out countless times from the library and read over and over. I wish she had volumes of fairy tales (she'd never heard of Andrew Lang) with illustrations by Bilibin and Dulac and that she'd read the Lord of the Rings instead of just watching the movies. Maybe this will come with time.
I end up missing the vigil this year, because this time we're actually enjoying each other's company and talking about what's actually going on with us even though the ones my age take the cynicism further than I do into borderline paranoia, as we roll dice over a board of the world map and snark about imperialist stoogedom. There is choir music on the radio as I drive home and I commune with the Divine on Route 2 to the crystalline voices floating through the static under the dark skies.
I wake up with scratchy eyes and whisper through the microphone as the others sing, and tonight I find I enjoy the company of pretty much everyone, and as the wine bottles empty, no one's arguing about Iran, but we're talking about books and I don't even know what's on the bestseller list because I've been reading about the Balkans and medieval people and Herodotus so I end up cooing over the baby and trying to speak wisdom into the lives of The Kids who are still caught up in nascent hipsterdom or high school hierarchies remembering when I thought I knew it all.
The drive back to the soon-to-be neighbor's house is quiet, and there's more lonely souls than I remember wandering the street, empty buses, a solitary figure framed in the laundromat window, a pack of young punks scowling beneath the awning of a cell phone shop. The cats are hungry and the street is quiet. A week ahead of sleeping, friends' cats, and packing boxes, feeling like a wanderer with a pile of clothes and sundry in the trunk, grateful for the introversion.
Most of us are older now, old enough to drink or vote. There's fifteen years between me and the youngest, skinny with glasses and bangs like I once was, her room pink and glittery, an island in a house of sports trophies and pennants. She's a sweet and awkward kid who seems somewhat younger than her tweenage cohort, whose girliness is still ballet slippers and fairies instead of celebrity crushes and lipgloss. She tells me about her dance classes, that she likes to draw, and that she built these fairy houses out of silk flowers and cinnamon sticks for her dolls but seems embarrassed that what she perceives to be her cool older cousin sees this part of her world.
I tell her it's really cool, and I mean it, though I wish her imagination had been stretched even further, that there were more books in the house to be absorbed by osmosis instead of videogames. I wish I had copies to give her of all the fantasy novels I read when I was her age, all the Robin McKinley and Lloyd Alexander paperbacks checked out countless times from the library and read over and over. I wish she had volumes of fairy tales (she'd never heard of Andrew Lang) with illustrations by Bilibin and Dulac and that she'd read the Lord of the Rings instead of just watching the movies. Maybe this will come with time.
I end up missing the vigil this year, because this time we're actually enjoying each other's company and talking about what's actually going on with us even though the ones my age take the cynicism further than I do into borderline paranoia, as we roll dice over a board of the world map and snark about imperialist stoogedom. There is choir music on the radio as I drive home and I commune with the Divine on Route 2 to the crystalline voices floating through the static under the dark skies.
I wake up with scratchy eyes and whisper through the microphone as the others sing, and tonight I find I enjoy the company of pretty much everyone, and as the wine bottles empty, no one's arguing about Iran, but we're talking about books and I don't even know what's on the bestseller list because I've been reading about the Balkans and medieval people and Herodotus so I end up cooing over the baby and trying to speak wisdom into the lives of The Kids who are still caught up in nascent hipsterdom or high school hierarchies remembering when I thought I knew it all.
The drive back to the soon-to-be neighbor's house is quiet, and there's more lonely souls than I remember wandering the street, empty buses, a solitary figure framed in the laundromat window, a pack of young punks scowling beneath the awning of a cell phone shop. The cats are hungry and the street is quiet. A week ahead of sleeping, friends' cats, and packing boxes, feeling like a wanderer with a pile of clothes and sundry in the trunk, grateful for the introversion.
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