if there's hell below...

Ever since the last couple weeks of sportsball season, it's been an angry 80's party in my car. Thras, punk, hardcore. My mood's been more surly. I have argued with family members and friends over Palestine, Ferguson, Kurdistan, Cleveland.

The current events of slaughter abroad and overreach at home don't help. The anger is helpless and pathetic like most sentiments. I am as unsurprised by the massacres of fellow believers in other parts of the world as I am another young kid now dead but the wrongness still rattles me. I have nothing to say that hasn't been said except I think of all of my friends who've got skin a few shades darker than me and the additional pressures and frustrations that they experience.

I played rock and roll on the radio the other night, brought something a little more ballsy to the rock rotation, including the tunes below. People seemed to like it okay I guess. Sometimes this is the only therapy I have.

oh the summer

the leave of absence was a combination of increased work duties, and also increased time outside when not at work. It has been a swift but sweet summer, cooler than most, spent in woods, next to water, in the garden, outside as much as possible. I crave the outdoors after being under flourescent most of the day. The world is sad and the constants of companionship and nature are reassuring.

Bicycling through the west side to go to the beach, to eat ice cream, to mingle at festivals, backpacking through the mountains of western Pennsylvania, playing softball on the weekends and tennis on the weeknights (who knew I'd be doing this at 30), swimming in the not-yet-green waters of Lake Erie, getting scowly at the park system turning it into a beach party with expensive beer and cover bands and food trucks, while having K-9 dogs roam the beach and checking the trash cans extra often for poor folks' booze.

There have been late night drives and diner coffee, a magical night seeing Failure in Detroit (it's been almost three months here, forgive me all three readers), a night of moshing at 7 Seconds in which I felt 19 again with all the other old punks, watching a bridge blow up and eating a picnic breakfast in the industrial valley after the clouds of debris blew away, drinking blueberry margaritas with Neighbor as the tornadoes hit, long walks with no destination, porch nights, dirty hands in gardens, helping friends move, realizing that 'watching a movie together' or 'hanging out and listening to music' with a male friend doesn't mean what it did when we were younger and that I am if anything more cautious now than I was.