the eternal cycle

The dog I'm watching is nearing the end of his life, blind in one eye, almost blind in the other, he bumps into things sometimes, and while he was once so assertive, he seems lost and has grown stubborn as if he knows he's only got so long to get what he wants. Last night he sprawled across my lap and cuddled with me and he shivers now. Even though the apartment is kept warm, my hands are too cold for him.

and it seems that the marital bonds of my friends are fraying quickly if they haven't already, all over it seems like this. Some still ask if I want to be with someone and I look at what they're in and wouldn't want that for the world. I avoid people who want to talk about this because it's boring and I feel embarrassed at their vulnerability, maybe because I don't want to be that way someday. Maybe I'd be more jealous if I saw more instances of bliss, but I don't. 

It's probably boring for you to read about too, and I kind of want this day to be over so I can go back to the place I'm staying and drink some tea and do my homework. It just feels like a good day to hermit.

out with a bang

Labor Day weekend, holiday of cookouts and such, still seems to be a workday for most folks not in my technocratic orbit, but I was thankful for the extra day, and the Friday night of book discussing, and the late night coffee and donuts on the east side sitting out at a picnic table by the trash can to avoid the creepy dude trying to pick up chicks 20 years younger at a deserted Amy Joy, resurrecting the bicycle to fulfill dogsitting obligations, getting condescending looks from the hipsters for my decidedly unhipster two-wheeler (aquamarine Walmart mountain bike for the win) going through the gentrified part of the almost hood. Sorry, The Kids, for daring to share the road without fixie and accompanying tattoos.

Won the last game of the season, the other team was good people and therefore fun, the soundtrack was a Pandora channel of classic Americano punk rock, someone found kittens there that we played with.

The planes for the airshow flew overhead prompting much grumbling from those of us with frustrated politics and we later converged with others at a cookout that went late, with too much good food, classic rock in the background where the awesomeness of Skynyrd was reaffirmed, the Steve Miller Band was derided deservedly, grindcore band names discussed, politics and religion pondered, new people were acquainted.  I didn't plan to stay so late, but the conversations being had were just too good, and I departed when the rain hit and those of us still sober began to disperse.

Church was good as always, drove out to the lake to sit by the water with the parents and relatives, built a fire and played Creedence and Neil Young songs on the guitar with my dad, using his dobro and the firelight, the waves in the background, the sound of steel strings felt close to cinematic.

Drove home attempting to take the scenic route through Sandusky *(pictures tomorrow) thwarted by a  cadre of patriotic cyclists who forced the rest of us to slow down from 55 to 15, which was completely frustrating in a firstworldproblems way but I called a homie who works out there who got me to an alternate route and we conversed until we respectively made it back to the fair environs of Clevelandia.

And now, it's getting darker, it's back to the daily grind tomorrow but these days have been so good that I don't mind.

I walk through the ghost town, this would be my city...

Two huge cups of coffee in front of me, woke up to the dog whimpering last night, I don't know from loneliness or kidney stones, her family comes back today and I've become adept at administering medication through canine teeth but end up opting to sprinkle the contents of the capsules atop the kibbles and bits like sugar on corn flakes. If austerity ever really hits, maybe I can work at a kennel or something. It'll be nice to come home and sleep at my own place.

I think the cat actually misses me, because I hear her crying when I come up the stairs to check on her water and food while I've been gone the last two weeks. I'm sure we'll have a movie night soon because I'm still sleepwalking and while the weekend felt like a vacation, I don't know how I got through grad school taking a full load, working 30 hours a week and still finding time to go see bands every couple days back when such acts came through Clevelandia, Kent, and Akron on a frequent basis.

With the game cancelled, I took the other dog I watched down to the valley where the lush canopy of green filtered the sun like stained glass, the river sparkled, and we ambled through side trails down the side and if I was home more, maybe I'd get a dog, because I kind of like this companionship thing. Having another breathing mammal along for protection and accompaniment, with its drooling adoration for you are the one who pours the water and the food, and takes it on car rides with the windows down, it's something I could get used to.

There's a garden walk even in Clevelandia so me and one of my community garden people end up driving around parts of the west side I've never explored getting inspired by these green spaces created in other almost-hoods, these serene enclaves with spiraling wisteria vines and repurposed scraps as trellises. Her son isn't interested so we drop him off and drive out to the east side with a map that isn't terribly accurate, driving through the parts of the city where my relatives once lived before white flight.

She's not from around her so she has no loaded assumptions or fears of environs like St. Clair, Hough, Superior, and it's been awhile since I've come through these parts now that my friend who used to live down there now lives further down in the hood and would rather come to the west side to see me than have me drive over to his parts where drive-by shootings have escalated more to the occasional mortar round being tossed on someone's lawn.

We drive by a couple of gardens in vacant lots, and I think about all of the data that I pore through at work about the problems of the urban core, one of which was once overcrowding and now there are vacant lots everywhere, and where there are no vacant lots there are so many houses empty, curtains blowing in deglassed windows, crumbling front porches, because not only did white flight decimate these neighborhoods, the people that moved in get out if they can.

But yet, there is a greenhouse on the land of a deconsecrated church in the heart of a forgotten neighborhood, across the street from the Hell's Angels clubhouse, where the vast space has some people from the neighborhood singing soulful acapella renditions of Steely Dan songs and people playing piano in the former sanctuary and chalkboards scrawled with ideals, and the girl who shows us around shows us heating built with adobe for the greenhouses in winter and the former nunnery getting restored to be livable again and it reminds me of some hippie commune or crusty squat but the people were pretty friendly. I think about how I would have been all about this when I was 22 and idealistic and prospects for life were bleak, and I'm glad The Kids still have this energy even if I've more or less sold out to The Man.

I took her through the streets of the old Polish neighborhood, where St. Casimir's just reopened, and where my grandpa's side first settled, where he played tennis and went to dances, where his brother got mugged on East 79th, the house that my dad was born in, the house where one of my best guy friends lived where I'd sleep on his couch beneath the African mud cloth on the wall listening to the Fugees while he got ready.

And then we ended up in Hough, where there were race riots back in the day, and shiny new homes where the streets once burned, and an older lady there shows us and the cops who came through her massive gorgeous garden on a side lot, full of flowers from Alabama and vegetables and I wonder how she does it. We're all talking about what we're growing and I'm finding it kind of surreal that we're all here together with common ground that we otherwise wouldn't have if we weren't connected to the earth that we walk on. I'm also kicking myself for not having a camera with me even though that might have ruined some of these moments.

But I love driving these streets, getting lost in forgotten corners of shuttered factories and crumbling towers, to the amusement of the old men sitting on front porches at these crazy white girls driving through with the windows down and the Screaming Trees on the CD player in the beatup car with the front end taped together. She's of a similar mind, someone who appreciates the grit without romanticism, curious, friendly, and pondering. I feel so thankful that I get to see these places with her and that we're equally willing to explore.

It feels like a coda to to the end of the day when I pick up a former bandmate to go see Agalloch at the Beachland again. I wasn't feeling the opener all that much, but we got two hours of meandering alternately beautiful and heavy tuneage, and while the vocals will never be my thing, the songs hit me in that place I can't explain, those guitars and the bass lines and Aesop's drums. She wasn't as into it, but one of my fellow DJs was there so we enjoyed it together. I guess I'm not the only one who goes alone, there were a lot of solitary folk there. Once again, I wish I had a camera, but at least Randal was there to document a little closer.

Drove back to the house of my friends for one last night to get five hours of sleep, feeling like there were few wasted moments in the past days, and so much strange and surprising beauty.

a time for everything...

The street was loud last night, with so many vibrating car stereos and the drunken disputes on the sidewalks, the sirens and barking dogs, I used to tune all this out when I lived down here, but now the floor below is empty, and the dog I watch is old, and the sense of vulnerability is strong, the nightmares are incoherent manifestations of the week's anxieties and I can't tell if I've slept deep or not at all, but waking up drained, drinking coffee in the pew trying to make sense of everything, unable to sing because these words on my lips would not be true, trying to remember that I've come through more crazy things just fine, and I'll be ok here too, that the emotions are not necessarily the truth.

The ennui hits every summer, with the heat sapping the strength, the lack of sleep, watching another set of friends pair off in wedlock every couple weeks, housesitting while everyone else gets out of town and goes on vacation somewhere else, and having way much time to get existential about the realities of living in a dying city, where everyone leaves, gets hitched, get stupid, or is just too poor to get adventurous. There are the occasional interludes of bliss, but they come few and far between, and seem to be fewer by the year...

sapped

My landlady and I ripped out more crawling vines and weeds from the back yard, freeing up the berry bushes, restoring some order, it felt cathartic to do that, and vaguely metaphorical given all the other thoughts bouncing around, because so many things ultimately weary me, the sheer not knowing what to do at any given time of wanting to say things that would ultimately be pointless or rock the inertia with which we've grown comfortable.

Is the lack of being social sometimes a reflex to the sense of rejection? The cruel ironies of social networking showing off everyone's business is when you plan something, and everyone but one says they can't make it or doesn't respond at all and then you find out that a few of them hung out together without you and you feel like you're in high school again, because there's too much connection and why upset that balance that could topple the relationships between us that are honest? I'd rather not bother with trying to think too much about it, because sometimes things cycle back around, and sometimes they exist in this ambiguity which I guess is better than open hostility.

And so I end up reading books, watching a movie, playing guitar and painting, which isn't bad, but the sting is still there a tiny bit, the feeling of f--k this already, and it makes me less inclined to bother with others where there isn't even a modicum of trust yet.

So yeah, back to the daily grind, and the two weeks of housesitting which will afford much in the way of canine companionship and also the creature comforts of window unit air conditioning. I'll try not to think about the rest and drown it with song instead.

slow motions

This week has gone ever so slowly, despite the sundry commitments and obligations, and falling asleep on the couch next to the dog, hoping that the things that go bump in the night are just the cats, because despite the weaponry in this house, I'd never want to be called upon to use it.

But the weather gets warmer, and my landlady gave me the okay to do some gardening and such at the new place so I'm trying to figure out what to grow on the balcony, how to fit as much as I can on that small back porch until the front one is done, what blooms to plant in the rows of pots alongside the house. She says there's lots of critters that will eat things on the ground so I'll have to be inventive and try not to be disappointed, though it's probably a good thing if there's more wildlife, as opposed to the almost-hood.

I don't have the space or the same amount of sun to go as crazy as I did last year, with giant sunflowers and poppies and morning glories tangled on the fence, and the plot in the back yielding more squash, beans, and eggplant than I could ever consume on my own and therefore was shared with everyone, but I want to try, I guess and see what I can do with some ingenuity. There was something cathartic about ripping out the weeds with my bare hands, getting my fingernails dirty and knowing that the benefits would be reaped in a few months.

And tonight, dinner with the sister, bowling ala Lebowski with the grunge buddy and his homies. I don't have much compared to some, but the abundance and lushness within my world continues to stun me.