if i ever feel better

i'll take a walk around, let you know...

*

cleaning out the upper shed. my SIL is throwing stuff out left and right. it's only when my brother steps in, says Hey. that's when the deep diving goes into effect. opening up the storage containers. sorting. tossing. the model airplanes that my brother has been saving up, ok. i get that. clothes from 1995? really? and then comes the good stuff: a box of pellets that i swear i knew from 850 College Ave, Columbus, OH. And I ask, "really, you still have this?" and the best response i get is how you "never know". then comes a box of shells that our dad had saved from his military days. i won't lie, i grabbed four thermal tops that were going to get discarded. but. But. We dug thru all this crap, mostly my brother's and primarily just to ensure space for the xmas decorations and whatnot (my idiocy included) but...let it go.

*

 when i first moved in i was amazed at how some things change but they don't. asking for a pair of work gloves i was pointed to a chest of drawers. the very same chest that i grew up seeing my brother use and still has now. same plastic handles. same bottom doors that never open properly and you have to work to get to close. i ask him, why? i could give your reasons but they suck.

*

i think about these things yesterday. all of this and more. how i talked about the old church with a friend in Columbus. our strange, shared history. the GOP screwing us over with the health care idiocy. how media infiltrates our head. black helicopters. but beyond all this, my sarcasm aside, what i thought about was how we view things. material. mental. external vs internal. and what i saw was this, walking down the road: I discarded the physical baggage, thinking this would solve the mental problem. What I discovered was that no matter how much of the physical you discard, the mental will expand to fill the void.

it's like...

...it's like...

*

I wonder where I went.  It's all the same anymore.


Resumes.  Interviews.  Wondering when life is going to return to normal, but then I realize that normal is gone.  All the friends have a 401K and a steady job and the usual.  And by usual I mean a job.  It amazes me that of the two folk that I knew best in Pittsburgh, one has his own company in NYC and the other is working non-profit.  My industry folk?  Not doing so well.  One chef just had another heart attack, another chef is looking at a divorce, my general managers?  One has been doing the cancer thing for over a year, another is still hating the new job (after a year +), and yet another is actually unemployed...after a year as well.  

I think too much about this crap, it's disabling.  My dad actually asked me about whether or not I'd think about Charlotte again, or maybe even Columbus.  And for once, maybe the first time in a while, I was honest, and I admitted that DC is the first time I felt like I was home.

I dream about it, yet...I talk with friends, and I realize how much I miss Pittsburgh.  Madison.  Charlotte.  Even Columbus.  My nephew mentions some random place and I immediately know what road, how to get there...a friend in Pittsburgh mentioned how he was at the bar I frequented last night, and my response was Say Hey to Donnie for me.

What does it mean when you see pictures online, on Wikipedia where you realize where the pictures were taken?  What does it mean when you know that the last good live show you've seen was back in 2002 at the Carnegie?  That hearing Aimee Mann say, deadbeat, "No", might be a highlight of your life?

What does it mean when you realize that it's so much better listening to music online vs. CD?  Have we really progressed that far now?  I like big speakers.  They double as end tables.  They also pose multiple problems when moving but always a good conversation piece.

Do those still exist?

I wonder what happened over the past decade, we moved from optical to optimal.  The desktop PC I had in 2000 is...well, let's just say that the hard drive was only 320 MB.  The laptop I'm typing on, let alone listening to some Pixies and checking my Facebook and AVClub idiocy is a million times better.  And the sound.  Don't even start.  But I suppose I mentioned that already.

Speaking of the Pixies.  Doolittle sounds amazingly good.  Frank Black is great and I swear I can hear the pic on Kim Deals' bass.  Especially on Monkey gone to Heaven.

fuck, there is an echo around the one minute point.  this is easily the (realistically) fiftieth time I have listened to this song and i have never heard that before.  with or without headphones.  hell, said it before a long time back but I swear the breakdown around the 55 second point as well as the 1:20.

This monkey's gone to heaven...

...standing here on the ground...

don't change a thing for me.

*

I thought I had something to say but I guess I didn't. Just spent the last five minutes staring at the screen wondering why I was bothering. The weekend, like my week, was one of useless introspection, phone calls, and rediscovering good movies and music. it's the little things, ya know? I could mention how i heard via the facebook that I heard from friends in Pittsburgh, NYC, Madison, and Charlotte, but so what? Time was I cared, and maybe just because I'm mentioning it, it means I care. But...who knows.

*
a new sensation.

i'm thinking...

...of a number...

*

and i was so much easier to deal with when it was just speakers, the wires running in between rooms, the front room was left, the kitchen was right, and in the hall and dining room was the middle. and centering it all was me just deciding how i felt like how i wanted to hear it all. maybe it was NPR tonight. maybe WYEP. Maybe it was putting random discs in the player and seeing what happens. And maybe I end up keeping note of how it plays because it makes more sense. But then there are those times when I call in and they play my song...and maybe it's Beth Orton. and I hear her sing. and I remember. and I wonder what happened. where did I go. what did i do. was it worth it? all those late nite conversations? it's like... it's like... maybe I could have been. maybe i can still be. maybe i can still maybe i can maybe i maybe maybe it's just another jacksonville skyline. maybe it's just a 50 cent picture frame. maybe it's just memories...thrown out there, maybe catching something, someone, hell, anything anymore. maybe... maybe all i'm good for is memories. rememberances of things past. spelling errors and all. perhaps my lot in life is just to see what could have been and ensure that others don't fade out. better to burn out than to fade away. HURRAHH!!! but somehow... hey, bar lights in the liquor, see how the bottles shine... you'll feel fine. wait for it... look, i found four more dollers... write your name down on this matchbook sleeve call me up on sunday for a drink call me up on sunday, it don't mean anything... and it didn't, the times we spent, the lazy mornings where i just wanted to stay in bed but you called me up and you still bugged me because you knew i was only ten doors down from you on parkview, and you had no one to hang out with and wanted to get high with...I was there. I marched thru the snow, I put up with your strange girlfriends and boys who I wanted to kick in the ass because they got to sleep with you and i didn't. I had the occasional house party just to make sure we had the Parkview for life going...but all I wanted was you and it never worked out. and the funny thing is, in the end i still end up loosing track of everyone. despite my best efforts. I still have the restaurants on my resume, but names? they are all gone. you all went away. transient, just like me, despite how much we all loved Pittsburgh. gotta go. the time is only for a season, a year, maybe two, and then we are all gone. and it's probably all for the best, this way. having loved and lost and never knowing that part of you. I see a better part of me in that life, the part that still cared, had a heart, had something to give when I still knew what it meant.

*

I sit on the outside deck, a stranger in a place I never thought I'd be, a prisoner to things that I once thought enabled me to get free from myself. I wonder where it all took us, the people and places, was it worth it? I'm not old, yet I find myself looking back on these times only ten years ago and wondering, was it even possible that I could have seen myself homeless, lifeless, that much time later?

*

Shuffling through the snow, that winter was horrible, and even after I did my neighbors sidewalk I still questioned why I was going over to your place. I knew that just ten doors down the morning would change, yet I remained hesitant. But I still went. The girl I was seeing was there, and the girl I wanted was there, and in it all I was going to be the only boy who could just come and be anything. anything at all.

and i'll be anything you ask and more

it's not a miracle we needed...

*

self evaluation is never an easy thing. had to do it professionally for two different companies, both with different sets of standards. doing it with no outside interference is that much harder. try it when there is nothing. no rule. no standard aside from that which you actually set yourself.

it's a bit tough.

*

moved on from listening to Phoenix, have Led Zep "When the Levee Breaks" playing over the headphones. what does it mean to be someplace? every time i hear this song all i can picture is the long bridge span heading from Indiana into south Chicago, what is it, 90/94? does it matter?

*

sense of place, sense of time...i'm stuck in a place, a period, a time, a loss, a lack of knowing what to do, who to be, where to go. I used to have an idea, a plan, a sense of what i was doing and what was going on around me. not so much anymore.

maybe i really am losing it. i was applauded for my self awareness when i was younger, and even just as late as this last year from my own family, yet is it really that good to realize just how much of a dick, how much you're a jerk to those around you, yet do nothing to rectify the situation? what good is it to be an ass if being ass only proves that you're an ass?

i'm talking in circles. i state the last fun fact simply because it reminds me of better times: the reason for Bonhams' huge drum beats during "Levee" is because his kit was planted at the bottom of a four story castle tower where they recorded pretty much all of Led Zep IV. and honestly, it's pure genius. akin to Radiohead and how they recorded OK Computer in that castle as well. different castle. but...atmosphere goes a long way, and sometimes you get lucky on the recording.

sometimes you get lucky

'cause nothing changes, ever changes

doesn't seem the same these days

*

first there is this:

http://www.30seconds.org/year4/113000.html

i have a feeling i've linked to this before, but i lost track, got older, other things got in the way, got lazy. i used to have a print out of it that i carried around with other random stuff, like random emails that seemed to carry some importance to them: one from a friend talking about a coworker that gave him a painting a few days before he killed himself; another, a two page single spaced note from Carl Steadman just talking about packing for a trip; random family messages that seemed necessary at the time, but one especially from an aunt about a second cousin, i hadn't seen him since the last family reunion in 1994(?) who, after a long bout with depression, had also removed himself from this mortal coil.

i say this all from memory, as they are all long gone but the memory of them remains, simply because during my own times of loneliness and introspection i read them, again and again. not so much like a favorite book, but as points that seemingly have no connection but over the years formed a crumpled polaroid of my life over a few years. the picture not really clear but you can see how before it all got mashed together there was once something there worth looking at.

*

there were other things, like a few stories i'd written, also long since gone but committed to the grey matter. i'll reconstruct when the time is right, for those had a bit of a timeline to them at least, a flow that had a beginning and an end that simply needed the large blank spaces between them filled.

but that link. i used to read the blog all the time, long before we knew to call it a blog. and then, well, like i said, time, laziness...but to be honest it was work more than anything that just got in the way. in between moving so many times the last decade i tended to not have much of an interest in reading others and nearly less so in writing about mine.

but now. i'm lazy. i cook when i feel like it, only for myself. i read, but only online. haven't cracked the spine of a book in over a month. i watch tv, but only when i'm not sleeping 16 hours a day (or more). i say this all because for the first time in a while i'm remembering my dreams.

i don't put too much stock in dreams, but i always find it interesting what i still remember after waking up, and i dreamt i was reading this at some random hotel desk sometime over the last eight years. and after i was done reading that faded printout, i sat back in the crappy chair (this must have been one of the lower class places i was in with my last company) and just stared at myself in the mirror over the desk for probably five minutes.

i'm not sure what it means, again, why should it mean anything? i just find it a curious thing that my subconscious would recall a specific blog entry from over eleven years ago.

"And so I think I write mostly so I don't forget, while silently wishing the memories away so I can read." i suppose that sums it up pretty well.

*

i could take a train or fly away, maybe write a book and change my name...i could settle down

can't this car go any faster...

can't this car go any faster...

*

i used to park my car in an unregulated lot off of Lane Ave. I did this entirely because i was cheap, i was short of money, and honestly, the parking pass i had meant i had to take a bus that made my walk to classes that much further. parking there was convenient, close, and one of the hidden secrets of OSU life. access was on the same alley as the lane bar (probably long gone now), but the best thing about it was the proximity to my classes and the fact that it overlooked a park. and the river. and...it was not what OSU was.

i did like parking there. but two stories:

middle of winter, snow coming down constantly. i pull into the alley to go down and immediately realize i am not only never going to get down to the parking area, i am also going to get stuck in the 6+ inches of snow that is never going to get plowed...and i get stuck.

i'm in a two door Tercel, motor is already blown but whatever. i get out, thank god that i have a shovel in my trunk (you can't lie about some stuff...i also had a blanket and a full tool chest).

i shovel for a bit and try to get myself out but no luck. i'm pushing and out of no where comes a guy who says hey need a push? and of course i say yes.

i get back out to Lane Ave...park it just to see that he is ok, doing the right thing. and there are no tracks in the snow aside from mine. i backtracked, even putting my boots in the same prints i made before...whoever it was, was never there.

*

the second is that...one of the last times i ever parked in that lot, overlooking a very nice floodplain park (god bless OSU) i was getting to my car when i noticed a blanket. and then a leg. and then a girl. and i managed a very bad conversation while i got in the car. it was very nearly summer (and finals) and here was this girl just laid out in her swimsuit in a parking lot, adjacent to a decent park. and i still have no idea what was going on. but this, this song was what started up when i started the car and all she did was say Turn it up Louder.

*

yeah.

if i ever

feel better...

*

when i moved to Pittsburgh i had occasional dreams about Columbus. When i moved to Madision I never dreamed about Columbus or Pittsburgh, I dreamed about Chicago. Yeah, makes no sense to me either. Aside from the nightmares on the beltway...

When I was in Charlotte I dreamed about nothing. Hmm...can honestly say I never realized that until now. I consider dreams to be semi-important...assuming you ever wake up knowing what you dreamed. In DC I dreamed about the past. The house i grew up in. The farm. Places I'd never thought about before and suddenly they were there my waking life.

Being here in Southern MD...I dream about DC (of all places) constantly. Well, and painting the house at 850. Can't explain that one. But DC...yeah I have dreams about pitts, madison, random places in columbus, and charlotte (don't get me started)...

why DC? is it because it's unobtainable? a place i so desperately want to get back to that all i do is think about it and then it gets into my subconscious? I've always thought that NYC was the place to be but it rarely interferes in my dream time.

and i happen to like NYC. despite me abusing it, it's been good to me. good food, good people, how can anyone complain? (insert snide Woody Allen comment...) as ive always remarked to folk, aside from the rent, if you just eat out all the time you're doing ok.

but DC.

it's like my Mecca. and it's bad enough i want to just hop off and plant myself in Tangier for the next ten years...

huh.

i'd be 46 in ten years. maybe the key is finding where the folks are going and just going there. i have quasimarketable skills that aren't going to get screened at the boarder. find the hot spot and just make myself a presence. it only took me 35 years but i finally have people skills...

*

they say your name can be a start...