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.

festive and restive

Of setting off the fire alarm (good thing that it works I guess) while grilling pineapple in the kitchen with Neighbor, of waking up feeling awful and rolling back over to sleep off the mess for another four hours, of drinking ginger beer on the balcony and conversation, of Asian festival festivities with a few of my social worlds converging in one place, of birthday parties and bicycle rides, of being thankful for the untethering, that life will continue, because if the last four years have taught me anything, it's to let things come and go with ease.

A group of us went down to the river for Alice in Chains last night, and while the sound quality took a little bit of time to right itself, we basked in the glow of the bridges and lights, noshed on snacks, and indulged our love of 90's-era angst, singing along to our favorite songs, shaking our fists at the unused train rolling through, and just enjoying a night of free entertainment on the dirty banks of the Cuyahoga.

And this morning I played songs of catharsis, most of which were in the previous entry and it felt good.

eat my dust.

Redacted rants substituted by passive-aggressive folkies who say it better than I could, plus bonus extra tunes..

it's gonna be sudden
it's gonna be strange
i'm gonna turn on a dime
give you 5 cents change
it's gonna be long
overdue
it's all gonna come out
out of me, on to you

out of me
on to you

one of these days you're gonna push too hard
we'll go on like we've always done
till you go too far
one of these days it's gonna reach the top
then it's gonna start to spill
and it's not gonna stop

out of me
on to you...

no more

some people wear their smile like a disguise
those people who smile a lot watch the eyes
i know cause i'm like that a lot
you think everything's okay
it is till it's not

out of me
on to you...

 

waking up and getting up has never been easy...

I don't know if it's the rain or the ennui or the fatigue. I woke up not feeling like rolling out of bed and going to work, getting here is fine, the ritual of caffeinated beverage and big riffs, getting things done feels all right. The attempt to walk it off feels unsuccessful, maybe it's the relentless rain. Maybe it's the realization of other things.

I woke up angry this morning, replaying the events of last night, which started out out amazing, but which soured by the end of the night when basic shit like chivalry and seeing me home end up being cancelled out by too much booze affecting the other parties involved and other factors which led to me probably getting more angry than I ever have in my life and letting my feelings be known with a hefty dose of FCC-unapproved language. I shouldn't have to shame someone into doing the right thing. It's not because I'm crazy or jealous or bossy, it's pretty much a can you keep your word and can I please care about my basic safety. I am now reconsidering everything about the friendship and pondering grace and forgiveness and also trying to be rational about my frustration and resentment at always being the heroine and the strong one and the hardass when I know my vulnerability and it makes me feel profoundly alone, angry, and constrained.

also,
People who think bike culture is a viable substitute for cars in gentrifying urban areas are almost undoubtedly not single females who view cutting back alone through almost-hoods as a recipe for being a potential crime statistic.

Dammit, I'm pissed.

your wants make me nervous

The tiredness has kicked in, attempting to extricate oneself from plans, because it's Monday and I'm exhausted already. This weekend was diner food and helping a friend move, an amble through a hipster craft fair full of stuff that all looks mostly the same and artisan ethnic food where the dudes were walking around wearing giant vintage cameras around their necks like Flava Flav does clocks, and there was so much seeing and being seen and general overpriced tchotchkes that we left relatively quickly for sportsballing and snarking far from tiaras and way-too-expensive trust fund home furnishings.

I gave props to all the ladies of my life, am super-hyped about seeing Failure in Detroit in a couple of weeks, worked in the garden and had a laundry night with Neighbor up the street at the laundromat where we washed loads of work clothes and black band t-shirts, ate junk food and sang Dead Milkmen songs and made up blues songs and loitered in the parking lot as the machines spun around. Something about the laundromat makes you feel like you're not all that well off even if you're doing reasonably okay given the circumstances.

All the caffeination took awhile to wear off and I woke up sleepy this morning, thinking about how I'd rather be out in the garden than getting a stiff neck, wondering why I commit to things at all, and being all the more relieved that my life is not tied to some goofball even though I don't want to live alone in an apartment forever and the concept of solo homeownership is profoundly intimidating. I just need the brain to slow down, and to plant my peppers and eggplants, and read some more books and remember to slow down. 

the thin lines

What's the difference between love and lust? 
 
He asks me this as we're sitting at my kitchen table, thinking about going to see Slint, but deciding we could save the money and take in the beauty of a warm spring night on my porch instead, talking about love and life and what we're reading and what we're thinking about.

sometimes it's good to know that guys feel just as lost about this stuff as we do... I say this, laughing that they sometimes google these existential questions too for lack of someone to talk to .  We are so strange.

 I don't have a good answer initially, in part because we were in such murky waters for that time and are no longer there and I don't want to say too much because of the motivations I've so often questioned and the ambiguities that were unanticipated. We are firmly back on the ground of friendship, which allows for more honesty and less awkwardness and I return to my usual more candid self.

And then I wake up this morning thinking about this question. That we all have lust if we're honest with ourselves, that our love is imperfect. But that maybe the main difference between the one and the other is that the one involves acting on a taking of pursuing one's own pleasure and happiness whether or not that leads to the happiness of the other, perhaps a mutual taking for that reason, and the other is borne out of a mutual giving that leads to receiving what we've desired. Sometimes one in the relationship is motivated by one or another, and our imperfect ways of relating mean there's a little bit of both. I tell him this, and he says he agrees, but I wonder if he understands what I mean.