of shoegaze, landladies, and cups of tea.

I knew I'd be tired this morning, fatigue haunted me all weekend. No amount of tea and coffee sufficed, and sleep was hard to come by.

I went to see Alcest and enjoyed them even more than last time, the songs I didn't get to hear live this time around I got to hear the last, Neige made some comment about how the last time they were here no one was there, which was probably true, since it was right around the time Ecailles de Lune came out and I didn't know they existed until Randal's end of the year list.

It was nice to go to a show and soak in the atmosphere without gazing at it through an iPhone being held aloft in front of me. This crop of kids and older prog rockers were rapt around me, no one had their phone out to text or post on instagram. A little surreal to watch a bunch of blastbeat loving dudes getting all blissed out to some of the most sublime shoegaze being created now. Songs I was kind of ambivalent about on the last album had a lot of gorgeous crunch live and it was beautiful to see them coming into their own even more.

The rain was pouring down and I ran into a girl I knew from class so we hung out in the doorway, because I didn't want to cut across that giant parking lot alone and Anathema sounded all right but I wasn't in the mood to stand there alone in that crowd of people and the volume was perfect where we were.

I came back to my friends' apartment, where the cats greeted me ambivalently, slept, made goodness for a cookout, stayed up late, stayed up even late because I couldn't fall asleep, realized I completely started doing my take-home midterm wrong, attempted to remedy, went to sleep early.

I have yet to fail an exam that wasn't written, but I can tell I'm not doing my best work here. I wonder how much of this is just that I've been taking slacker classes for so long, or have had actual textbooks, or if it's just that I've been doing a million other things. I'm so good at regurgitating, or I was, or I'm overthinking it, and it's just taking longer to coalesce into anything coherent.

And with four days to finish two more pages and put some flesh on the skeletal outline, it made perfect sense last night to do some initiatory noise-making. I cooked dinner this time, he sliced up garden tomatoes and walnuts as the spaghetti squash roasted in the toaster oven and I cooked down spices on the skillet.

My landlady was having some junk in her basement hauled away and the dudes were creepy so I was glad I had someone else there.There's some disingenuousness afoot with her as far as how the place is zoned, that bothers me, I'm not sure how much it should, since property owners with tenants don't always seem to be the most scrupulous, but I don't like being pressured to aid in lying to anyone, I can't do that.

But we played music last night and it sounded good, and it's the first time in awhile where I've felt like I had creative freedom and we clicked so much, building off each other's notes and chords, scrawling them in a notebook as I tried not to make it too noisy with all the pedals since I didn't know when she was coming home, but we're on the same musical trajectory and it sounds good, I'm almost surprised at how good it sounds since we've never played together before, and I can only imagine it'll sound amazing with another guitar and drums in the mix.  We shall see...

 

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.

give me little bits of more than I can take

An accidental christening of the new perky and lightly colored office carpet with the elixir of St. Drogo meant some dismay on the parts of the powers that be and now I have a brand spanking new desk mug with a lid so I don't spill again, because this new corporate floor covering is evidently really damn special and the greatest thing that happened in years. It's not some priceless rug from Tabriz, for heaven's sake, just some generically patterned thing with a corporatey buzzword name like "Synergy" or "Media-Fest" or "Follow That Dream" that evidently make some people who have nothing better to think about really happy.

 It's not the first time I've gotten treated like the baby of the workplace family and this in particular,  makes me feel like a little kid that's gotten used to drinking out of the glass, spilled some Hawaiian punch on the Persian rug and has now been demoted back to sippy-cup status. Evidently everyone else has one now too,which I guess is supposed to not single me out, but everyone also seems to know that I was the first to spill coffee on the brand new carpet. Because no one's ever spilled coffee on a carpet ever before in all of recorded history. Seriously.
Addendum:
as if this wasn't enough, I received an electronic transmission that was sent at midnight last night, as if this horse wasn't beaten enough to a bloody pulp already...  At this point, it's just hilarious. 

your love affair has got to go

My mom called me this morning and asked where I'd been most of Easter afternoon, after visiting my uncle in the nursing home where he gave me a bag of werther's originals and talked about the state of the world, which given the diet of talk radio, of course isn't very good. I don't really know what to say and it seems he doesn't either, so I watch the clock and then make an exit. I feel like every time I've taken initiative and tried to visit the lonely ones, it never seems to do any good.

I went to the woods and walked around and spilled my thoughts to God and immersed myself in the world of wind and new leaves and water. I came face-to-face with a deer and it startled me so much to see those eyes gazing straight into mine. I stood there frozen for a moment, and then was amazed that the other four didn't run away when I unzipped the camera pouch (left my camera in the car, sorry for the lack of visuals) and started shooting. Then they ran away through the underbrush across the creek and I walked back, drove home and slept, walked, planted and rearranged the containers on the back porch for when I'll be able to start growing things before attempting to exorcise the writer's block and everything else.

There are other things, sometimes it's overwhelming to be around the loved ones as much as I love and enjoy them. I worry to death about her, the way I see her get more furtive, watching her continue the self-destruction, watching her lose respect among her friends, knowing that she's not going to grow up and figure things out if she doesn't move out, but I doubt her ability to take care of herself or figure it out. It kills me knowing that her beauty is the only thing she really sees about herself and pours her time and money into and yet she's doing all these things that are only going to burn her out at the rate she's going. She laughs at me when we go out and I have a cup of coffee and she's drinking multiple beers but I'm thinking about work the next morning, of trying to drive home and besides I'm tired and can't do the late nights like I used to.

She dressed up as Amy Winehouse for Halloween a few years ago before things got worse, and I wonder if it was strangely prophetic. She won't do rehab, she swears there's no problem even though she disappears sometimes. I look at pictures like these and read these stories and listen to my despairing dead junkie music and I'm afraid this is the way she's going. It's already happened to other family members, it's come very close to happening to some of my friends. I feel bad for being angry, but it's more knowing I can't stop someone's trajectory if their heart is set on it.

hoodie weather

The irresistible urge to be outside and among, cruising through the cemetery with the windows down, chance encounters leading to watching gifted undergrads play harp and violin, walking to the lake to wander among skeletal tipi frames of driftwood inhabited by wandering dreadlocked souls, hipster couples, lycraed runners, motorcycles whirring down the highway, stoop-shouldered seniors gathering ever more rare beach glass, the water light azure.

(the middle part near the end just gets me in a way I can't explain).

The caffeine consumed on Sunday morning has worn off and my eyelids are heavy as I sit in a friend's living room watching the curtains undulate in the breeze, singing along to Faith No More in the car glad that no one else is paying attention, drinking tea and finally getting around to getting some writing done for the first time in awhile. I don't feel like going back to work just yet. I've been thirsting for this warmth for so long.