re-ignition

Can we talk? There are things I need to say, there are things I need to tell you and things I need to say I'm sorry for. 

It was cold when I awoke this morning, shivering on my drive into the station, playing records and having a cathartic morning playing songs that have continually soundtracked all my interpersonal dilemmas.

And to my surprise we do. I have no expectations as to change because experience tells me it's unlikely.  I get anxious because I know the bitterness within me that would only grow if I waited longer, that it tends to dissipate when I see our common humanity. But the words pour out so much more gently, so much more thoroughly, all the things that are so wrong right now, all the things I can't live with and that you can't continue to live by. There are apologies for our respective thoughtlessness and lack of self-control. I say I need no excuses, no well-intentioned words, let's just start fresh from here.  a weight from my soul has been lifted because reconciliation is beautiful, because this is what my God gives us in spite of our constant failures, and this is what we need to give to others in spite of ourselves, in spite of what happens, not because it's fun or it'll happen the way we want, but because it is right.

out of step

It's only a matter of time before I go ballistic,  it's only a matter of time before I get frustrated, because that's what I do, because I can't keep these thoughts and feelings inside. Because I care about you, because it hurts me to see you get so fucked up and not want to admit it. It hurts me that there's so much good in you but you don't take care of yourself.

And not only that, but over the past month or so since we reconnected, I get resentful of playing second fiddle to your addictions. I like that you respect me but is it so much to demand that you respect my time instead of showing up late or punking out all together because there was something to drink or smoke somewhere else?

And this is normal in this city. This is the way my generation functions when the cost of living is low enough and the standards even lower that this is the recreation of choice for the majority of my peers. I hate this so much.

 I come home and can't sleep and lay there staring up at the ceiling as the wind howls. And I think of my sister and my cousins and my friends from high school and my friends from college and my friends from adulthood and everyone else who has a heart of gold and a fucked up liver and life hurtling towards ruin. Maybe I'm crazy but what I see with my clear eyes isn't good.

 I can't stop feeling, I'm tired of passively enabling and excusing. I won't do it anymore and I can't pretend it doesn't depress the hell out of me. Because if I stop feeling I stop being human, and being human means that sometimes I break down and get angry over shit being fucked up, and sometimes I get depressed because that's a natural response. I can't be calm because I'm no angel, no saint, no bodhisattva. I wish I was. I usually regret what I've said, but this time I wish I had said more, and sooner.

And maybe tomorrow - sound won't fill in for words to say

those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, those who do learn from the past are sometimes doomed to repeat it too. We're creatures of habit, predictable and conditioned. Part of this keeps us going, part of it holds us back, part of it means we're circulating in this endless loop.

This week has been me writing papers and drinking more tea than is probably good for me. My heating bill was high but I also got paid to feed the landlady's cat and shovel her driveway so I'm not stressed too much. My book club is looking at delving into the world non-western writers. In pursuing these options, the sheer volume of tantalizing tomes, the sheer volume of tomes untranslated into our native tongue, are overwhelming. So much that I'll never get to read.

I throw some more coffee mugs on the wheel, stop up at the record store, go home and read for class, it feels good to be alone and introverted after so much interaction. The snow makes me not want to go outside, and maintain this hermiting with the record player and a now-almost-clean apartment, and try not to think about all the things that stress, the things that make me feel dishonest with myself and others, wondering what is the most true and real response. The sun's come out and maybe I should shovel the driveway, maybe walk down to the water, maybe do something or other, to embrace the solitude that's been these decades and kill the longings.

karmacoma

It's Del Naja's birthday today which meant I played an hour of Massive Attack on the show this morning. Like Portishead, it seems like they cut across all sorts of cultural and aesthetic boundaries which I always find interesting, being adored in equal measure by the heshers and the hip-hop kids, and everyone in between and I'm sure that I'm not the only one who began to dip my toes into non-straight-rock things after I heard Mezzanine for the first time and fell in love with the cavernous dystopian atmosphere and the deep bass and sweet vocals.

Nothing's quite touched their earlier work, but they're still some of the best, the soundtrack to so many late nights encompassing long drives and art school projects and conversations about all and nothing.

starkness

This weekend I'm going to be seeing the film below and spending time with the near and dears. The first week of the onslaught has been exhausting, I repeat my political frustrations too much in real life to relate them here, I've been listening to way too much Hole, and the winter is beautiful even as the salt is corroding away everything.

a line to keep us safe

And so the reconfiguring begins, of defining boundaries, of drawing lines, even though I wake up and the large empty house is creaking and shuddering and I wish that I did not live alone and miss the presence.

How does one talk of such things, when there is still so much ambiguity, when we are both afraid of having the conversations that might break the spell. When your actions speak louder than the words you don't say, and I don't know how to respond to such gestures of kindness in a way that is completely graceful because I've been independent for so long, when I begin to second guess everything because it's beautiful and seems so easy to lsoe.

love is blindness I don't want to see...

I am not a romantic, I am not a touchy-feely person, I don't let people get close to me, in part because I rarely feel safe enough to, my brain tends to override the more primal parts of me, but something shifted in that,  and now I'm trying to figure out what that means and if it means anything, because it might, it probably does, and I don't want to be naive or overanalytical and I think if we're honest there's more feelings there than just friends, but what that means is anyone's guess. I knew it would come to this someday, with someone, but that doesn't make it easier.

drink a cup of kindness yet...

the unexpected plans are sometimes the most beautiful and darkthroning in the woods segues into low-key new years' eve revelry. Peoplewatching at a west side liquor store on New Year's Eve is an experience in itself, the television wasn't on too loud, the company was small, two other couples and some kids, and I felt like I'd known everyone for years.


Downtown, there was partying by the bright young things and the nannystatism that ruled out participation by the elderly and the kids, but ours was homemade Cambodian food, some shots of honeyed whiskey, and just hanging out, getting shy when his friend says "oh isn't she the most awesome girl ever you're so lucky" when we're not together in that way, but we hug at midnight while the other couples kiss, and that's how 2014 started, driving around listening to X and basking in the glow.

A cold night where I felt warm and welcomed and stayed up too late, stayed up too late too many days in a row, which coupled with a couple snow days due to the weather, and a couple sick days in between with a nasty headcold in which I dosed myself with Nyquil and slept a lot, I realized it's been awhile since I've been on here.

Maybe it's that everyone's breaking their new year's resolutions within 24 hours or that my sister just got out of rehab but I get frustrated that so much of our culture's sense of fun is wrapped up in how much you drink, and I find myself trying to refrain from saying too much because people make their own decisions, it's their own bodies and their own choices but it hurts me to watch the continual struggle and to feel complicit even if it's not my fault. people ask how I get by on so little and it's because my main vice is so cheap, because caffeine costs less than booze and it leaves me less prone to make bad decisions. I look at what my broke friends spend at the bar and don't know how they do it and this is all around me.

Maybe it's the one thing that numbs the frustration of getting older in a dying city and finding that things aren't quite working out. Maybe it's that while I get depressed here, I'm really not that upset with where I'm at. Maybe I just get drunk on religion instead even though I feel like I still sometimes wake up with a hangover of occasional existential crisis and unanswered questions.

And there are other things happening too. Part of me feels like life's been on hold since it began snowing and I was clearing 3-foot drifts from my driveway and hoping the pipes wouldn't freeze upstairs and getting cranky on the neighborhood association facebook page because I get sick of all the paranoia about The Other, namely anyone who might be a minority or smoking a cigarette and oh noes a pawnshop is moving in next to the martini bar and that's so not family friendly even though this same drag is home to a pole dancing studio, a massage parlor of dubious provenance, and other establishments that would be an anathema to nimbys elsewhere.

Me and the neighbor walked down to the water and marveled at the glorious turbulence of wind and ice.  An old friend from the Kent days when I hung out with a bunch of punkers is putting together a new band where I might end up playing bass in something 70'sish. We both have an affinity for punk and classic rock, being children from the suburbs of a certain generation and the last time we played together was some late-night jamming on cheap Japanese guitars to Alice Cooper records in a crummy apartment. The other project on half-hiatus is going again, and we've resumed our routine of dinner and playing guitar and random adventures. It feels like going everywhere and nowhere at once.

oh and I played cold weather songs yesterday, because despite not working, I believe in maintaining the sounds of college radio against all odds, here's a few.