so this is the aftermath

I was so tensed up the other night that I thought I would cry upon entering the sanctuary of my apartment, but instead I took a nap, and then remembered I was supposed to have a coffeeshop night with one of my favorite ladies, which turned into dinner instead, devouring vegetarian burritos and instead of talking about Calvino or Chechnya we're talking about the male species, and feeling a little intellectually slummy for it, and how we sometimes feel like the stronger ones, the more assertive ones in these dynamics, which is funny given that we've been pushovers for so long, and it's like we discovered this part of us that's strong and tough after all we've been through. Nothing like black bean and sweet potato goodness to restore the equilibrium, that and the wonderful and productive distraction of music lessons.

I feel like I'm reaching back ten years in memory to the last time I took all this theory, and it's strange and I find myself nervy and hitting the wrong strings even though I do practice, but he's a gentle teacher. I feel bad when the people greet me in Ukrainian and I don't speak it, but people overall seem friendly. I get some homework done at the coffeeshop and crash, feeling lame for wondering if I've made anyone upset and remembering that there's a whole lot of other life going on even if that does happen.

The next morning things are back to where they were, if not better, with more clarity and honesty, and I'm so used to others cutting and running in times of friction and that doesn't happen here. And that night there are other moments of dealing with the interpersonals of personalities and musicianship and trying to get beyond the theoreticals of culture and economics to what the core issues are.

I find that for all our talk about rich and poor and black and white and whatever, it really comes down to just how well individuals get along and get over themselves, how willing we are to meet in the middle, and some will do that across any boundary and others will refuse to for whatever reason. Humility and being able to listen and understand where someone's coming from goes a long way no matter who you are, and letting go of all your hangups about yourself and others to see the soul underneath. sometimes I feel like a lot of us went to school too long and are so full of jargon we forget to do the basics of just learning to exist with each other.

Last night I ended up through a series of unforeseen circumstances, meeting up with a friend of mine from high school that I haven't had a real conversation with in about ten years. We did punkass things together, wrote a zine together with her sister and a couple other folks when she was in high school and I was in college, I made her lots of punk rock mixtapes of bands she never did get into, except for the Dead Milkmen, who her dad maybe liked even more than her, and then she moved out of her folks' house and stopped talking to any of us who were still crazy enough to be into organized religion and we lost touch for a long time.

I show up at her apartment with a bag of food for a friend of hers who got her food stamps cut, she invites me in, we catch up, and find the conversation flows, she cooks me dinner, we are in such different places now, with her married and me living alone, and so many reconciliations along the way. She laughs when she finds out I've been arrested, we reminisce on our teenage absurdities, and ponder all the strangeness. Somehow those lost years cease to matter, and it's beautiful to be back again in a place better than where we were.

keep your eyes open

I've felt like voting was a meaningless process, but the Kafkaesque absurdity of "no you're not in here" even though I voted here six months ago and updated my information then didn't mean anything, and I don't like the people at my polling station at all because they're not all that bright and kind of mean and I wouldn't have put it past them to pull some shenanigans since last time they wouldn't let me take a non-partisan ballot (faced with lesser of two evils, I opted for the gooper one back when people I still liked a little were in the running) so it wouldn't have shocked me if my provisional ended up in electoral purgatory.

It was kind of hectic in there, hard to find an extra booth, texting the Queen of the Bondo in frustration as I get sent from one line to another, and a lady behind me, seeing my plight, tells me it's better to get pissed off than pissed on and finds me some lawyer guy who I guess monitors or something and while he was really nice there wasn't much he could do either. Still don't understand why I needed both an ID and a piece of mail, and why they hire a lot of lousy people, though maybe I should cut slack because that has to be a long day of dealing with goofballs too.

So my provisional ballot didn't count, I voted for the guy who wasn't Mandel (because he didn't seem all that great) nor Brown (I don't care how progressive you claim to be, urging the prez to attack Iran and voting yes on NDAA is kind of jerkfaced), neither of the two main presidential candidates. My vote for the third party probably didn't count, and there were things that BDR links to that make me feel less bad about that. 

I guess I care way more about what someone does than what they say, and lipservice means little to me no matter who or what. I've been shooting emails back and forth with a friend coming to similar conclusions along the political/religion continua in Bachmannland, where we've been exasperated with the passes given to Certain People by progressives, and also to Republicans by their base just because they say they love Jesus.

But anyway, people today have been jerks, but that doesn't mean I need to spread the jerkitude around anymore than it already is. I hang out with the people in my world who still have hearts, souls, brains, and guts, and while I don't always agree with them, they've made my world brighter, vaster, and more beautiful, and I'm glad they put up with me too.

a case of the Mondays

I didn't want to wake up this morning, wanted to roll over again and again. A few pots of coffee later and I'm rolling my eyes and being more abrupt than usual as it seems that everyone who walked in got hit with the stupid stick a little bit extra, got especially exasperated with the males who just stood there slackjawed and couldn't seem to remember what they came in there for. Almost fell asleep in class, retreated to the Batcave to listen to sludge metal and attempt to drown out the chatter ala valley girl. Some days are better than others I guess.

the chill

Last night the rain felt so cold as we walked back to his car after watching RJD2 conjure beatacular magic with keyboards and drum machines and turntables that remind me I don't know what I'm doing with those 1200s at the station.  There was hail this weekend, heated discussions of election issues which make me look forward to the day after election day when the kinder gentler machine gun hands return to business as usual, a couple of friends had babies, got to know some acquaintances better,  and some of the plants on the porch have died.

Sitting on the porch leads to chills now, the windows left open all summer are shut, the sore throat needs tea, and the grunge layers have resurfaced, as have the long skirts and clunky boots, melancholic dirge chord music and trip-hop being operative tuneage right now. I want to carve pumpkins and hibernate, sit by fires and get existential, see where all these new tendrils of acquaintanceships go. 

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.

knowledge of motion but not of stillness...

sometimes the structure and the daily grind is welcome, with the familiar caffeine in the mug of shame, the way the hours slip away, there are changes afoot, closed doors and whispers, and who knows what that would be, try not to think about it too much, try not to aspire, because conversations with certain people are awkward due to the imbalance and the mutual lack of camaraderie.

And I find it harder to make small talk, I get bored with hearing people talk about what's on TV or what they ate for dinner yesterday. I don't even know what to say because whatever will come out of my mouth will come out more dismissive than I mean it to. There's nothing wrong with those things, it's just not something that gets my brain moving.

Technocracy's soullessness evidences itself in the little things too hard to articulate. The blissful ignorance, the mistaking the means for the ends, the continual talking past each other, the veiled condescension and disdain that evaporates off my lips without meaning for it to.

So easy to change the channel, change the directional flow of the conversation when it gets too pithy and goes beyond song lyric bumper sticker Facebook meme sloganeering. I find irony when those who think I'm a little wacky for believing in some God up there somewhere seem to put an awful lot of faith in certain things like the American political process in relation to certain political parties, certain leaders as infallible as the popes they might deride who somehow can do no wrong despite the blood crying out from the ground. We've all got our little religions, involving deities our venerations of saints, our arcane rituals, our stimulants and opiates. It's just as matter of which kind, which ones give life and which ones slowly destroy.

o world of spring and autumn, birth and dying
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

I feel misread enough...

Awareness of the social ramifications of telling someone further up the totem pole of overlordery to mind their own business and then some, it's a source of constant marvel to me that intellectual activity devoid of social climbing or some other agenda involving the trifecta of money, status, and power, is somehow strange and disconcerting. I suppose it's generally threatening to the social order, as are alliances formed among the peons because heaven forbid they start thinking. That's so weird. 

These kinds of things seem normal, in a birds of a feather kind of way. We all tend to gravitate towards those with whom we share something in common, be it beach books or sports or subculture, so is it really so surprising? I wish I could say what I feel but know that wouldn't be a good idea on so many levels. In a way it seems tragic to get a glimpse into someone's world and see it be so incredibly small.

Oh Mia, you sing it so much better than I ever could... 

Well I don't need your social love, no
I feel misread enough
And what repels me
Is the fact that you're smiling
Walking on by, walking on by
Yeah when it hits me
See it still gets kinda heavy
Yeah when it's laying there over
It's wide open and read

I don't need your social crap
You head iron sleep boys
I can see, what repels me
Is your pretentious stare
You never look me in the eye
Or feel the truth
Yeah when it hits me
I see you still gets kinda heavy
Yeah when it's laying there over
It's wide open and read

I don't need your social love
I already feel misread enough
And what repels me
Is the fact that you smile
When you're walking all back
There's a connection to be made
It's something you always crave
And now that it's over
Hell, I'd set that fire that you know you like
And now when it hits me
See it still gets kinda heavy
Yeah when it's laying there over
It's wide open and read
How dare you?