solar dip

There are redacted thoughts, that may have been spilled ten years ago but discretion says not so much. Strange what crossed signals are sent, that is all, and nothing too major. I will answer the phone for anyone at 3am if they're in a jam, I've learned, and it's nice when someone buys you breakfast as a thank you, and it feels good to be making art again with acquaintances turning into friends.

 Neighbor came over and told me that the chandelier lighting ceremony was stupid, as we knew it would be. Because nothing says provincial-as-heck like having a "World's Largest" something. We drank High Lifes and ate egg rolls and laughed, and I can't remember what genius ideas we came up with now but they were genius, for sure. 

Meanwhile an art gallery got raided the same night for not having a booze permit. I don't know enough to comment either way but it's all ridiculous.

Sportsball was rained out, but some good folks had us over for a cookout and we listened to bluesy whiteboy music of the best kind (Zeppelin maaaan) and then there was frisbee-throwing at the park and me and Tangerine took off because she wasn't feeling good and chilled by the beach for a bit because the sunset was gorgeous and talked about the general confusion of growing up and getting older, and realizing that our tendencies aren't always healthy. I guess it's good to know these things though I would have thought we'd have more figured out by now.

And some friends from church got married yesterday and asked me to take photos of their wedding which filled me with trepidation because usually I shoot things that are outside that don't move and this is kind of a big deal. But the light was good enough, and I got some beautiful shots of everyone mingling together and the ceremony.

I got all sappy watching everyone laugh and eat good potluck food together, because we all come from such different places and are together here with God and mutual friendship in common. Some of us had normal suburban existences and others grew up in crackhouses and shelters but we're all eating together, celebrating together, laughing together, everyone's kids are running around together and it feels so beautiful and right.

Neighbor and I wandered down to the lake and up the street for pizza and coffee, sat at tables outside overlooking the street and realizing we look like a pair of damn hipsters with our lattes and band shirts, before wandering back down to the lake to watch the sunset and snarking about overly earnest causes that seek to remedy the inevitability of human nature. Life is strange and beautiful.

caffeination

Me and neighbor planted potatoes last night in a giant sterilite bin from target because trash cans are expensive, and then I went to the Kentinistas' for rifftraxing of the godawful Star Wars Holiday Special which was astounding in its wtfery. 

A morning of dogwalking and garden stuff, and bike riding to sportsball and getting on base more in one game than I did all of last season, scoring the winning run and feeling awesome, celebrating with gyros up the street before heading out to a friend's wedding when I drank way too much coffee and got profoundly existential by the end of the night thinking about human interactions and the fleetingness of infatuation juxtaposed with the professions of undying love. My body is tired by my brain's still firing like crazy. 

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. 

unexpectations

It was a weekend of photo shooting and hanging out and pretending that there was no homework to do and coming home to be introverted with a bunch of candles and incense and Arvo Part and spiritual tomes. 

The sky was so gorgeous when I got home from work that I came home and grabbed my camera, threw on some grungy clothes, and drove down to the wastelands to snap photos of graffiti and weeds and rusting bridges, coming back to help amigo move in some boxes upstairs, before one of the girls calls and wants some girl-time to ponder breakups, bogus feminism, and other matters of the heart.

That the kind of men who call themselves feminist often use their sensitivity to take advantage of women who want to believe the best, that the other girls who talk about independence and the patriarchal suckitude will still defend the indefensible behavior of their male friends because it's still "our fault," and why couldn't we save them from themselves and save ourselves too.

And Friday night I make coffee mugs, ride my bike around the west side because it's beautiful out and I'm feeling extra-invincible, and then come home to get introverted, to read books and listen to chants, drink tea, and burn incense like a damn monk-hippie.

My sister and other family members converge at my parents' house since my dad is on vacation and we talk about music, and he's bemused by my youngest sister wearing a Nirvana shirt even though she doesn't like Nirvana (I first heard "In Bloom") in the car with him, he's a fan. Why would you wear a shirt of a band you don't even like? he says, and I think of when my punk rock shirts would go missing and end up in her closet when I still lived at home.

A friend has a baby shower that I need to show up at, I'm incredibly happy for her, and even though it's a lot of estrogen in one place, these things are more fun than they used to be. My former roomie and partner in photo adventures is getting out of a wedding shower at the same time and we rejourney to our old post-industrial haunts to climb around on riverbanks and shoot photos of graffiti in ambiguous legal territory. When we get down to the tracks we realize that we're not alone, that there are two men randomly setting things on fire so we get out of there and get a meal of Salvadoran comfort food before heading home. Introversion ensues and is much-needed.

Sunday it is so beautiful outside and me and one of my neighbors drive out to "goth it up" at the cemetery, where we wander around through the Garfield monument through the graveyard, laughing about the toenails of the weeping angel being painted and gleeful at the gang of kids on dirtbikes and ATVs roaring through the Cultural Gardens and getting absurd over hot apple cider at the coffeeshop below his apartment. Homie calls me and offers dinner, and we play a little bit but we're both tired so we're spaced out on the couch talking about everything else.

the next night we end up watching some guys play Neil Young covers at a corner bar and they're quite good, I'm a sucker for Neil Young, it's hard to do it badly. We decide to go on a night hike, darkthroning that I could never do by myself but having a partner along is wonderful. I haven't done this in years, and we're listening to the owls hoot and the howls of dogs as we push our way through the dark pine forests to a gorgeous cliff overlooking the river valley. On the way down, we get lost but it's beautiful out so we're not too worried and then we end up down the hill at an intersection that we know but we're so disoriented and turned around that we start wandering one way and then the next trying to figure out how to get back to my car.

 By this time my feet are soaking and I'm debating whether or not to call anyone for directions, but he ended up thumbing us a ride, and some guy with a baby seat in his minivan and a bunch of bread in the front seat takes pity on us and gives us a ride back to the car, going into Dad-Mode about being careful about getting lost in the woods and we're so relieved to be back safe and I guess this is my first time hitchhiking,  and we're laughing over late night dinner and old country music and punk rock, pondering the wonder of occasionally compassionate human beings and the strange ways in which this world happens. I feared that adulthood would equal boredom, and it's been anything but.

got a gut feeling.

maybe it's the hormones, I could blame this on, that emotional roller coaster, but no, I was feeling this for awhile, already seeking a way to extricate, and evidence piling up only confirms that feeling intuited a month ago. I find it easier to bail sooner rather than later, all hesitations validated, all red flags signaling no. Creativity especially with others is a strange thing, and sometimes you just don't click with others and it's better to figure that out now than later, and I'm not convinced by concessions made, I don't want to make those concessions.

Explaining this over the phone at 1am makes no sense and makes me sound like a jerk, and it shouldn't bother me that a good friend might think less of me because of this unsurety about the motivations of others, that maybe rankles the most. I don't know if there's anything else I could do. I go back and forth between relief and regret.I hope I haven't lost too much here.

ivory towers and reflective powers

a friend of mine from way back when is in college now, and like me, reads a lot of blogs, and like me in my early twenties, quite the idealist with other earnest friends. I was kind of an older sister figure, introducing him to Fugazi and zines and other underground kind of things.

I take things more seriously than a lot of people, but even in my younger years, I didn't have much patience for those conversations about race/class/gender that were more theoretical than anything else, and often profoundly disconnected from the dynamics of the real world in any real sense. Not that things shouldn't be thought about or are unimportant, but sometimes I feel like these conversations, mostly between us people socioeconomically privileged to go to college and be connected to the internet, tend to get extremely circular and self-indulgent.

When you get off the Internet, most people aren't losing sleep over the things that young people care about on Tumblr, aren't arguing about tasteless Halloween costumes or something clueless that some guy posted on his Facebook page, but I guess it's always fun for people to feel smarter and more enlightened than others, hence Internet haterade. I still don't have patience for the competitions of the Suffering Olympics variety, if you trace back anyone's history you'll find out that their ancestors were screwed over by someone, and that everyone's felt disrespected or had judgments made about them because of how they look or whatever.

Evidently to total strangers this makes me an awful person full of white privilege, which if you know me, is kind of ridiculous because I geek out on history and anthropology and the ins and outs of others' worlds, willing to be the uncomfortable and awkward minority, to the point where I have empathy but only to a point, that everyone's got their issues, and to focus on just one place's is kind of myopic. If you go anywhere, people are racist and classist and judge by the gradient of your skin tone or what religion you practice or who your parents are. Not to invalidate anyone's experience, but it's a human problem not an American middle class cracker problem exclusively. Jerkitude is universal.  Besides, such conversations are always better had over caffeine or booze as it is.


And so I wonder if this is why, in tandem with my companions with whom I snark about all things brainy (Pynchon, Shakespearean English, obscure medieval history), I find maybe I prefer these things with those in my world who are older, because we've got less to prove and we've seen more of life and there are other stressors like how are we going to pay the heating bill this winter and what are we doing with our lives since we're perpetually underemployed and there are fewer and fewer open doors.

And I love eating dinner with someone else again, cooking the proceeds of our gardens, talking about how our days went, these life things that are so simple, the things that I miss about roommates and friends who worked on my side of town who used to drop in at the old apartment. It's so good to geek out over history and play music and listen to records again and laugh, I don't think I realized how much I missed this kind of companionship until it started happening again, it's hard to believe that it's 2 in the morning and I have to go to work the next morning, he's laughing as I back out of the driveway and almost run over his datura plant, but all that coffee would have kept me up as it was, and despite the tired eyes and the continued drinking of tea, I feel so alive.

on surf guitar and the east side

On the other side of the river there's a suburb that's got a reputation for being openminded and progressive. They're a nuclear-free zone after all. When I think of the song California Uber Alles, I think of that part of Greater Clevelandia, the home of Harvey Pekar, where my older friends would tell me old tales of Coventry back when it was full of subcultural denizens before the city made a concerted effort to apply a veneer of bohemian sheen to what is now mostly chain restaurants and bars full of bros and yuppies and drunk girls.

The hacky-sackers, the buskers, the punks and skins and five-percenters, the guys trading rhymes, those are harder and harder to find down there. Yes, there's still a couple of bookstores that sell marxist lit, esoterica, and Kerouac, and a good music venue there, but it's hardly a bohemian mecca by any means. Trendy boutiques and boomer holdovers perhaps, but not what it once was. It almost makes those aspirations seem crass.

Also, they're the kind of town that loves to distribute parking tickets and tickets for everything. Heaven forbid you don't have a bicycle license. There's no late night greasy spoon diners here anymore, just an IHOP in the strip mall near the Wal-Mart. You can get ticketed for jaywalking. It's still a place to meet up with my east siders, but I find they like coming west now, more often than not.

I used to like hanging out down here, sometimes I still don't mind. We would park at R.'s house and walk over, the four of us, two interracial couples don't raise eyebrows over here, and we'd get dollar cans of Arizona tea and dollar slices of pizza and loiter in the plaza. We went to hip-hop shows in the basement of a shoe store where me and K were the only white girls in the room where a generation of young kids still swore by Native Tongues like we did our grunge bands.

But young black males freestyling in the public space is evidently more threatening than burned-out beatniks so usually they get moved along, and there's signs on the doors of a lot of these venues denying entry to those wearing hoodies and baseball caps and do-rags and whatnot, though if I was wearing a hoodie I'm sure that'd be completely different.

I find the sanctimony of the usual suspects reprehensible but on the other hand, the iron fist in paisley glove somehow bothers me more, be it this side of town or Bloomberglandia. A few years ago, some punkass kids decided to brawl at the street fair and the city council instituted a 6PM curfew. Which sucks if you're a teenager and you live near an area which has places to go out to eat and see good bands and you don't want to be chaperoned or have a note from your parents or saying you're studying at the library or working minimum wage bagging groceries or making smoothies. 

Like most emergency measures that inhibit the daily lives of people for the good of the well-heeled, this curfew is still in place two years later, and it's amusing to me to watch aging boomer liberals justify something that generally seems to single out teenagers of a certain profile, which disparaging my hometown, which, despite its crackerific history, doesn't have such things. And yeah, I've seen some pretty nasty fights go down there, but still. It seems like overkill. And they're not even having the festival anymore, which, despite my not having an affinity for tie-dye and 60's cover bands, is still a bummer.

But I end up here anyway on Saturday night, because one of my homies invited me to see Dick Dale with some of his coworkers. Like most people, I know him for maybe two songs, but I appreciate good guitar work and have a soft spot for surf music, and he delivered, with a good bit of curmudgeon and snark, and some divergences involving banging out melodies on the bassist's fretboard with some drumsticks and a harmonica solo that seemed to leave a lot of people confused. He said he pretty much plays whatever he wants, which he did, from the instrumentals that everyone knows to the oldies the boomers dig and 'Amazing Grace,' and such.

He's an amazing guitarist, and eschewed the wankery that comes with that whole realm of technical ability, and I think I appreciated it way more watching him do those weird harmonics and everything, with no pedals or sonic gimmicks, just an upside-down Strat and some hefty tube amps that were probably older than me. He looked like he was genuinely having fun, and I guess this might be one of his last tours, because the cancer he's been fighting for forever keeps coming back.

Crowd-watching was fun too, ex-biker couples, bros who probably like 'Pulp Fiction,' punk and rockabilly kids, underage kids who look like they stumbled out of an Urban Outfitters ad, boomers on a night out, the local Hell's Headbangers contingent, probably the most eclectic crowd I've seen since Godspeed You Black Emperor ten years ago. I still find it ironic that the guy who pretty much got everyone tremolo-picking is of a nationality that isn't terribly beloved by the more xenophobic cornerse of the black metal world.

We drove back in D's hoopty-jeep through East Clevelandia, where he told stories of delivering black and milds to corner stores and gas stations and he thinks I'll be freaked out, but I'm not, because I've been through here before, my friends live here too despite my lack of criminal teenagehood and suburban-white-girl visage.

The next day I realize that we drove past where they found all those bodies, and when I hear that they're going through abandoned buildings in the area, I wonder which ones, because there are so many. When I get accosted walking past the apartment building full of sex offenders down the street from me, I wonder which of them is plotting something, considering that neighbors said this guy behaved aggressively towards women in his neighborhood. I wish I didn't have to think like this, and I know that to some degree white privilege means I'm way less likely to go missing than the women I see on the corner at 2am and that's disconcerting to me too.

in every place

I ended up in the exurbs the other night, strange to be among immaculate lawns and corporate parks and long roads. One of my friends plays bass at a church out there and invited me to come out and hang with them, it's one of those groups for older young people which isn't called a singles group but could function as such.

I'm a little skittish around large groups of clean-cut people, I joke, but no one here seems to mind my black t-shirts and strange sense of humor. I'm so used to being around working-classers and underemployed liberal arts graduates that I go into a little bit of culture shock in a world where the girls are way more dressed up, and have accessories of affluence, really nice watches and whatnot, the cars in the parking lot make my beater with the broken fender look out of place, the guys are wearing things I never see in the city like the occasional chinos and topsiders and polos in pastel colors.

But everyone I talked to seemed very nice, and it was kind of refreshing to be somewhere full of people my age who aren't sporting any ironic affectation. You know you're sick of hipster accoutrements when you find a strange comfort in middle American normality. But it was the friendliness that got me, and the message that night wasn't intellectually vapid, so I might come back. If anything, meeting some nice girls and not running into anyone that seemed like future soulmate material made it easier. And I also talked to homie's roommate and we might be starting a band soon, since we like the same music and live near each other.

It's funny, we dress exactly alike, he says. And we do. Jeans and converse sneakers and t-shirts of bands we like. I'm way more girly than I once was, but I'm conscious of the lack of difference still. I drive home through the hot summer night listening to Nothing's Shocking and wonder how all the social anxiety I used to feel completely seemed to dissolve itself. There's still social situations that turn me into mush, but fewer and fewer do.

And yet last night I was driving home and feeling stupid for other things, for feeling things that are normal and human, of unrequition, of cynical sour grapes (it wouldn't work out anyway), of what-could-have-beens and it-was-never-meant-to-bes. The feelings of deep affection for my friends both male and female are probably more intense than some, but that's different than this. Absence maybe doesn't make the heart grow fonder, but it masks the inconvenience of seeing those day to day things that would render someone more human and less attractive, and sometimes it's worse to see them again and feel all of those emotions shuttered so carefully away bubble to the surface once more.  I could blame the hormones, and maybe that's all it is, but it's a terrible feeling.

the first week of warmth

night 1...
When you've been inside all day, and trying unsuccessfully to cut down on your caffeine intake, and it's beautiful out, you get the itch to start thinking and exist with others, and I don't know him well, there's nothing like that going on, but an exchange of ideas was needed. We changed our plans the other night and walked from my house down to the water, instead of getting coffee, which probably would have been awkward and datey. We were talking about art and God and this strange hovering between the embrace of subculture and the spiritual community that alternately nourishes and frustrates.

The sunlight was fading by the time we reached the beach, staring out over the empty sand to the lavender water and the pink sky enraptured by not the most picturesque sunset, but a peaceful understated one. There's something wonderful about the near-empty beach in the twilight.

I don't come down here much, he says.
All my greatest memories happened here, I say. There's always something to remember here.

We run into people he knows, foment plans of the creative kind that my skeptical self finds myself questioning a few days later. As we walk back, a group of kids sets off a hot air balloon lit from one of the grills, and it looks like a burning heart soaring away through the darkness. It sounds twee of me to say this but there was something very beautiful about it. We walked back and I took him past this giant thicket of bamboo by one of the mansions where all the birds live, and we listened to the rustle and the singing before walking back to my front yard and going our separate ways.

night 2...
The next night I have dinner on the porch with the usual suspects and then go out for a friend's birthday and miss dinner with them but end up at a pub I like with a group of her friends, most of whom I barely know. The can of Strongbow I'm drinking usually doesn't do much to my equilibrium but I knew I was a little more tipsy than usual and a little hazy so I don't say as much for a change. Most of the time when I have a drink either alcoholic or caffeinated I end up going on long ramblings about Balkan geopolitics or my beef with most urban planners or foreign policy or the intricacies of sundry music or religion but I'm not feeling like doing that this time. It's too loud in here, and these people are neither total strangers nor close friends.

I get introverted in gatherings like these and either become a total wallflower or Mary Contrary. I either say nothing or start talking about how awesome inner-ring suburbs are, and how Lynyrd Skynyrd is better than your favorite indie rock band, that the guy you voted for sucks, and how I love driving my car and riding bikes scares me.

But as such, people keep telling me stories that they think I'll find funny but I don't find them funny and feel bad because I'm not amused, they're not realizing that I'm really not as cool as I evidently come across to those that don't know better. I don't want to be impressed, I almost feel embarrassed for you when you try to do it. I just want you to be yourself, and not drop f-bombs because you think I'm tough, not try to impress me by pointing out the dudes at the bar who are probably into Nickelback, because who cares.

My theory is that alpha males overcompensate by talking about the geeky dweebs or extolling their physical prowess and their fast cars, beta males overcompensate by talking about how dumb alpha male bros are and try to impress you with their record collections, knowledge of local restaurants, smartphone capabilities and their swank bikes. Bros will be bros and geeks will be geeks. I'm usually not this magnanimous, and I know that high school never ends, but this is getting old and so are you. It must be the hard cider talking.

night 3... 
I end up working late and decide not to do anything social. I work in the garden until sunset, marvel at the seedlings poking up through the soil that will be spinach and chard, and walk to the corner store past kids playing in the apartment building parking lot, the EMTs in the garage relaxing on lawn chairs, and the crowds at the punk bar and the old-man-gay-bar. It's a beautiful night, and I feel safe because there's so many other people around.

One of my friends had a former roommate who needs a place to stay for a month or three, and doesn't know that many people over here or have a lot of cash, since she's from Ethiopia, working at a gas station, and going to nursing school. I have an extra room at my place for the purposes of art making and having a place where people can stay, so we talk tonight and negotiate out shares of utilities. I haven't had a roommate since the crash-and-burn of the previous domestic situation, but I know this has a limited timetable and I'm feeling ready.

But now I need to figure out how to consolidate two rooms worth of bachelorette living into one. Furniture starts getting moved and rearranged. I find some things I can throw away, or try to give away. It gets later than I thought, but the feral cats in the yard are fighting so it takes awhile to fall asleep as it is.

night 4...
I have an extra bed in the spare room that I was going to try and cram in a corner somewhere but a friend's friend just moved down the street from me and needs something to sleep on, so he comes over, decides it's perfect, and we cram the mattress into his hatchback just barely. The boxspring won't fit, however, so on our second trip we end up deciding to tie it to the roof of my car hillbilly style, with two dry-rotted bits of clothesline I find in the garage. It's a long and slow couple miles up the street with him holding onto the rope for dear life and me hoping this doesn't slide down onto my windshield. I'm sure it provides amusement for the onlookers.

His new place is full of guitars and drums and bikes and records and roommates. They play in a band or something, and they invite me to stay for dinner. I go home and bring over an attempt at sweet potato fries that doesn't work but still tastes good, and a bowl of hummus. They grill me some amazing steak and onions and we sit on a patio over a storefront that reminds me of friends' photos of rooftop Brooklyn parties, listening to My Bloody Valentine and I feel like I've known them all my life, it's that comfortable and weirdness-free. I'm amazed that we see so many stars considering that there's car dealerships on the other sides of the walls that aren't old apartment buildings.

one hand will wash the other

My new place of residence is way better than the almost-hood, but between me and the Punk Bar of Good Music there is an apartment building housing three recently-released rapists. It is the scarlet letter of the modern age but still it is kind of disconcerting when one wants to go up and see some doom bands on a late night and doesn't want to end up like Mia Zapata especially when the comings and goings in front of said building tend to involve a lot of drugs and sketchy characters in the lobby.

So the other night I was doing homework, one of my friends offered to pick me up to go see Samothrace and some other bands but he ended up working late and I ended up just going to sleep because I'm getting old and I've been up since 4am. By all accounts they were excellent of course but it frustrates me that I have to strategize these things in my activities.

I tend to believe in the whole safety in numbers/good common sense thing and I don't live in too much fear, but I'm way more skittish than I used to be when I'm going it alone, which happens more and more, since I don't want to have to rely on other people to do what I feel like doing. Maybe it's a greater awareness of the surroundings, or those times when I'm walking and I get propositioned or hollered at or intimidated or whatever. Knowing that things do happen in these parts doesn't help.

I was talking about this to a friend of mine last night, about the frustrations of urban life, especially as a single woman. I wish I had more freedom of movement, even though guy friends of mine have gotten mugged and such too, and he told me one of his friends who lives down there got mugged on his front porch after walking home from a show. I guess I do live in the environs of one of the most dangerous cities in the United States, but still! I don't feel like it's a warzone, but there's always that lingering thought in the back of my mind.

Some of my friends are really into feminist theory to deal with these kind of things and I get a little bored with the strawmanning of the usual suspects or screeds about the patriarchy, because the thing that turns me off more is the posturing that I got from overly earnest undergrads or the type of girls who talked about how emancipated they are and within six months were hitched, taking their dude's last name, and getting all twee with their homemaking skills. It doesn't generally address the day-to-day issues at hand and veers into parody all too quickly. Maybe it's the generally contrarian nature of yours truly, or that estrogen heavy gatherings tend to get kind of mean so it's hard for me to have a whole lot of gender solidarity and I just don't always find the same things interesting as a rule.


I guess it's a human problem, and men dominate and injure with their bodies, and women with their words and politic-playing, and instead of taking sides, I just end up adapting as best I can, forming the alliances and friendships with the likeminded souls, seeking peace and solace above, and holding out for the best.

pre-lupercalian

On the days when my curmudgeonly colleague is enjoying his time away from the slab, I get less scowling and occasional pithy discourse on existentialism and heshery and more, well, chick stuff that's not quite as generally interesting. I know I'm in the minority on this business of matters of love, which I'm more and more okay with, but it's amusing to see how other people view this stuff and more than a little disconcerting.

You've got to look like you want it more
You've got to join the activities where there's lots of men
You've got to stop acting like you're so independent,
How do you get all that attention? I wish I had some...
I've got one guy taking me out to dinner and another one sending me a bottle of wine and another getting me flowers. 

 I think of that line from a Morphine song, about you get what you pay for with free advice and it makes a world of sense listening to such absurdity. I guess it boils down to what you want, and what your wants have been influenced by, or something, I don't know.

And I have no plans for that day. I never do. Not even the platonic let's be single together kind of plans.Which is fine because usually that's weird anyway. It's ceased to be a point of frustration long ago except for that one time I wanted to go see Henry Rollins and then those plans fell through, but that had to do more with Henry Rollins than a superimposed-over-pagan-apocryphal-saint's-day.  

There is Movie Night tomorrow, there are friends coming over for dinner tonight, for our monthly pondering and planning and talking til late in the night bringing out the upstairs neighbor's atheist rage, because evidently it's ok for me to have people over and be listening to Opeth and Tom Waits late into the evening (they're my age and from what I hear through the ceiling watch a lot of movies), but it's totally not okay if it's 8:30 and we're embroiled in theological matters. That's when I get the banging on the ceiling and the complaints that I'll try to avoid this time, knowing that the whole thing is ridiculous, but hey what can you do?

Oh, and this in honor of the festivities.

the best-laid plans

Getting new winter tires turned into a debacle of sorts as I got my car back all rattling and roaring in ways that it wasn't before. Some might sneer at my love of my vehicle, but this money pit has been the source of some degree of social life for yours truly that would have been made much more complicated by can you pick me up? I can help friends move, and go see bands, and venture out to places unknown, and get from one end of Clevelandia to another when it's not shaking away.

One of my homies celebrates his 30th tonight, and I wish I could be there to laugh at him and congratulate him for living longer than Cobain and Morrison, and hang out in the outer boonie eastern burbs, but I fear driving alone out there with such a dubious ride and don't want to be calling for help off some godforsaken exurb road. .

All was not lost as a previous roommate and his friends called me up and we met at the lovely West Side Market, now a foodie mecca and a mess of traffic, but despite my grousing, I'm glad to see people there rather than not. Took the train down and we bought sundry goodnesses of produce and the men cooked in the kitchen and me and the girlfriends sat in the living room talking politics and history, generating much mutual snark of the sexes.

I cook mostly vegan for myself for economic and ew-raw-meat reasons, but cannot refuse such goodness as homemade stew of fresh vegetables and meat, succulent in beer and homemade stock, roasted corn and pumpkin gnocchi, blackberries and cream, we toast to friendship and his dead bassett hound,  wine gave way to mead, a bottle of dizzying fire-honey which was emptied between the seven of us and stories are told, and laughter is great, and we're all suddenly sleepy, the internet at the bibliotheque provides no great insights into automotive matters, too many creeps up here anyway. It'll be an early night, but it was such a beautiful day.

somebody put me together

With great power comes great responsibility, and while being a responsible lass, I don't desire large doses of either, let me sleep so my teeth won't grind, right, I suck at dealing with data and spreadsheets and abstract financial figures, people, despite their occasional absurdity are way easier to deal with. I don't mind boring so long as it's not stressful and bureaucratic and I can go home and not panic about the next day or year or whatever. It'll all simmer down, but yeesh this is the stuff I can't stand. Give me boxes of papers and things to scan and I'll be happy, thanks.

So yeah, I'm tired from thinking too hard and staying up too late too often, and I'm ready already for a weekend, though it'll be anything but restful, involving a wedding of two people I love dearly and have long and tangled history with, and the weather is beautiful and I find myself testing the waters with new friendships and wishing everything wasn't so damn complicated, wondering if the signals are already crossed, and with life in general I wish that I had some clue what was going on instead of fumbling around and clinging for dear life to something I can't even see and trusting that the pieces will fall into place because despite the doubts they always do, it's just the getting there that's hard. 

When it's all worn out, I'd rather go without...

I don't know if it was something I did or something I said except for maybe blurting out in a conversation among many of us that I wasn't sure I felt at this point like I was wanting to be tied down to anyone currently in my world, that I'm still trying to sort through all the feelings of prior losses, but since then the communication has lapsed completely, and in one way maybe it's a relief, and in another I wonder how many other things I inevitably implode with verbiage, but then I wasn't sure what to feel if anything, there were so many unsureties all the way around, attempting to figure out how to conform to norms and relationals that make me skittish by default. Not so much a breakup or a bang but a whimper and I still say this is better.

I wanna be your Thurston Moore

BDR points out that today is Thurston's birthday, someone who's been one of my guitar heroes for a good while now even if I can't call myself the world's biggest fan as much as some.

I got some Sonic Youth albums from the library in the formative years but it was the lesser works in their career, the Silver Sessions of straight feedback and Experimental Jet Set which didn't stick at the time. One of my classmates junior year wore his sister's Sonic Youth shirt and his Rollins Band hoodie almost daily, and told me that Teen Age Riot changed his life. Most of my crew's inside jokes involved obscure references to Nirvana and Black Flag, geeky teens that we were. The first time I heard that song on the radio, at 2am on a hot summer night, it was revelatory for me too, though the band was one that we more talked about than actually listened to, because there is a difference. I wanted to play guitar that weird, and had a brief all female band that tried to be like Sonic Youth but we weren't so good and like most things, it fell apart.

My freshman year as an art major with oil paint in my chopped-up hair at a small conservative school in the heartland was made bearable by the art majors several years my senior who liked weird Brazilian movies and similar tuneage. One of our professors was a Fluxus alumnus who traded art in the mail with Yoko Ono and it was the most wonderful artistic community I've ever been around, and I would have maybe stayed if all the people I really liked weren't 26 to my 19 and on their way to graduating or getting the hell out. There was probably a reason why the campus tours never came to the art building, where we oddball Jesusheads with our grungy clothes and piercings congregated to talk theology and books and listen to Ani Difranco and Bjork and Sonic Youth. The year Murray Street came out, we gathered in a classroom late at night after painting and blissed out to Rain on Tin.

There was someone I had a small and of course unrequited crush on during those days and we drove up with one of his other friends to Cleveland one night listening to Washing Machine. I still remember him singing along to the guitars at the end. I was too shy to say much to him then, and I probably still would be now.

I transferred to Kent the following year due to economics, profound loneliness, and coming near to a nervous breakdown from the prior year. I made friends with a girl who loved loud tuneage as much as me and we lived together two years, went to shows, and watched old VHS tapes of MuchMusic and Daria and wish that we were as cool as Kim Gordon. I had MySpace for a couple weeks with a picture of her up instead of me, and got lots of "friend requests" from dudes who didn't know better and realized this whole social networking thing with strangers is kind of stupid.

She had copies of Goo and Dirty. I have to admit that I prefer their more accessible material to the more arty-farty stuff. It's not that I don't like things that are a little more complex, but sometimes I felt like it was just too arty, and I wanted a verse-chorus-verse and some fabulously squalling guitars and jams. I still don't don't own any of their albums, and compiled my favorite tracks onto a cassette tape that I listened to when I shelved library books at work.

Some friends of mine who lived out of town came in for a festival our old alt-rock station had. We met up and I had the closest thing to a romantic moment I've ever had with anyone sitting drenched on a lawn and listening to Schizophrenia.  Incidentally, the guy ended up having a breakdown a year or so later and this song kind of haunts me now.

I realized then I'm not a super-fan when I didn't hear the songs that I wanted to hear, which were these.

. I never could do Kim's voice, finding her songs generally uninteresting, but I loved Thurston's guitar work, in part because I couldn't figure out how he did it, and how he managed to sound so epic without being technical. Celebrity followers have their own couples, but for a lot of us, there was Thurston and Kim, making music and having a kid and being arty and old and still cool. My dad refers to the band as "Sonic Old" which may not be entirely inaccurate. It was kind of surprising that they split, because I dropped out of the loop on those things for awhile, but I'm past the point of assuming that things last forever most of the time as it is.

congenitally fractured anyway...

There are times the patience grows thin, and the lack of words is preferable to the usual kvetching. It must be the hormones, or the frustration with our perpetual brokenness and the baggage accumulated upon ten years of adulthood and the first tastes of heartbreak and things not working out the way we thought they would.

Some jumped in too fast, and now have the consequentials, and others of us crawled out from the wreckage, or saw enough of the damage surrounding to steer clear, but still there's that sense of longing, instilled by quasi-platonic ideals instilled all to young of missing halves, of fairy tales and platitudes, and destiny or whatever. It's always what we don't have, or what doesn't seem to be ours to possess isn't it? So as we get older, you'd think we'd grow up a bit, but this adult thing seems to elude us as a whole.

So my biggest pet peeve is to hear this laundry list of what the perfect girl is knowing damn well that such a person probably doesn't exist, because we all have our bad days and our not so bright moments and the times when we get PMS and aren't much fun, and c'mon dudes, you have bad days too, who are we kidding?.

And I hear the bemoaning of the lack of smart women or women who like good music and it's hard for me to take this seriously, because dude I'm standing here right in front of you and I'm waxing rhapsodic about galaxies and literature and history and bands that even you who reads the blogs on the Internets haven't heard of and not using it as social capital but just a wanting to share the sweetness that I've found. Oh yeah, and I can cook pretty well, and I can understand and enjoy sports even if I'm clueless about videogames, and I'm not going to make a fool of myself in public. But if you don't get it, than it's not worth my time, it says more about you than me.

And I've got friends who are like this too, but even if we're cute, because we don't look like that centerfold you drool over or That Hot Chick In That Band that got profiled in Revolver, or that girl who posts pictures of the doves tattooed on her hipbones on facebook, somehow we don't count, because we're not just getting our hair done and retouching our makeup, we're rocking out next to you, and therefore we're either one of the dudes more or less or there's the unspoken assumption that we probably swing the other way, and let's be real, those girls wouldn't hang out with you anyway, or it'd get old fast. You say you want a chick who likes the power chords? Especially in Clevelandia, raised on classic rock and grunge, we're out there, we just don't look like Angela Gossow or Cristina Scabbia or Zooey Deschanel, justsayin'... but who does?

And maybe we girls are guilty of this too, but I think it's easier for us to eventually get smitten by a good personality and a sense of humor and a general sense of decency or something, we're willing to take the chance that the attraction might come later, but perhaps we're expecting a bit too much to think that you'd be the same.

knot-tying

Despite the clouds and humidity, the wind that knocked over my houseplants in the living room and had me waking up to the ominous creaking of the sycamore tree in the front yard that sounded like it'd crash through the front window, it's been a long time since the insomnia hit this hard and the lack of rain bothered me when I woke up more tired than I've ever been this morning.

It was the first of what will be three friends of mine getting married this summer, and of course she was beautiful, they were both radiant and I'm extremely happy for them both, and it was nice not to have to worry about dancing at the reception, just a picnic in a park, paper plates and unstructured, and so I mingled among people that I know and like, hold crying babies and manage not to fall in wedged heels.

And while I know my way in and out of every hood in Clevelandia with no problem, I get completely disoriented on often-unmarked country roads and intimidated by horse and buggies because I have a hard enough time figuring out how to share the road with bicyclists, especially when I've got her two Ethiopian roommates behind me depending on my errant sense of direction in rural parts, who thankfully had a GPS for such things that spared me from going down roads turning from pavement into dust. Everything is so green underneath the sky, and I see signs tempting me towards homegrown tomatoes and hometapped maple syrup and I understand why people live out here even as I'm ready to come home.

pardon my rudeness

One of my near and dears from the Kent days has a brother who stopped up unexpectedly to visit me as he's doing research on Fair Clevelandia these days for a thesis so we hung out in the courtyard by the cathedral and talked such things as relate to cities.

And then I'm walking home and I hear my name called from an apartment window. It's a friend of my previous roommate, someone I barely knew as an acquaintance and haven't seen in a couple years, given that he's graduated and me and her no longer hang out. After the initial "hey we're neighbors" and how've you beens, it suddenly turns to can-I-make-you-dinner, let's drink some wine, my roommate's not home, and I'm caught completely off guard but I want to get to art class so I say later at first thinking well of course who wants to eat dinner alone, but as I'm dusting green enamel on the copper plates, I realize that the whole exchange of half an hour ago is completely weird, that the reason of his sudden moving to this side of town may or may not have to do with a relationship that ended, and that showing up after class later on in the night is probably a very bad idea and for lack of other options, I'm just going to pretend the whole interaction didn't happen.

So I kill time in Lakewood, walking around the park, sitting by the glassy lake watching the geese and the swallows, work in the garden til sunset, come home to let the phone ring, because I don't want to talk, I don't want to deal with this. We live three houses away, so I'll have to eventually, but there are other things to do, so I let it be, because this is not how I do things, this is not what I want. I don't want token gestures of chivalry and romance, from someone who barely knows me, if I want anything, it's camaraderie and naturalness and some kind of foundation other than hormones and loneliness. I don't know why this and other things kind of make me mad but they do.

love and noise

On a particularly caffeinated night, I postulated to a couple of friends that being in a band is like being in a relationship, only there's sometimes more than two people and it's probably not romantic. I lapsed into incoherence shortly afterward, but I really think this is true.

There are expectations, differing degrees of give and take, investments of time and energy, some degree of inevitable emotional intimacy due to that whole expression of the soul thing, balances of power, and sometimes it clicks immediately and sometimes it takes awhile, and the duration is hard to ascertain. Is it a weekend warrior project or a summer fling, a gig on the side or a lifelong commitment? Does it fall apart due to incompatible personalities or tastes or differing expectations and desires? Do you stick it out because it's more economically feasible than severing those ties? Do you stay in it For The Kids?

I love music in countless forms, I love making music with other people, and I love hanging out with the male species, those two things being consistent life pleasures for the sheer intellectual stimulation and geeky camaraderie that most women around me aren't really into, but I've never been in a steady musical project or a serious relationship that lasted more than six months. Do I like the idea of said things better than being in them itself?

I feel like whenever it get past the just messing around with chord progressions in the basement or the extremely comfortable strictly platonic where we're admiring other things besides each other's eyes, I find myself looking for any exit out. It makes me feel trapped and obligated and a bit spooked. Maybe there's too many social expectations, or I don't feel like I'm taken seriously or that anything I say matters. I don't mind pushback, but I don't like being pushed to the side and taken for granted either. Maybe I don't want to play these songs in front of other people, that me and you don't have enough in common to really go anywhere, or that extra something just isn't there no matter how hard we try.

Maybe you want to move too fast, get too close too quickly, maybe you think I'm going to drop everything and practice three nights a week and gig on the weekends. Maybe the songs just aren't all that good, maybe you and me just aren't right for each other in that way and we can't get past our respective shortcomings. Can we just play music together for fun and make some noise? Can we just be friends? Is it just easier if it doesn't go anywhere per se?

I used to go along to get along and then realized I couldn't do that anymore, that it was easier to cut off things that weren't working before too much time and pent-up feelings piled up. It's easier to bail out before the other person makes plans or thinks things are heading towards a tour of the midwest or matrimony. I wonder if this makes me an awful person and a total flake to cut the losses so quickly over and over again. To leave before the acrimony gets too big.

So I brought this up to a fellow musician and dear friend with a couple extra years of wisdom on him in regards to the music thing, because we've both had our share of soured relationships and I don't want to go there. You just haven't found the right fit, he says, because we've been playing in the liturgical setting for five years now. It's not that you're not committed. It's just that it doesn't work all the time with everyone and it's better just to figure that out. I hope that he's right. I hope I find something that works someday somehow.