I've been in a pretty good mood lately. Oddly enough, it sprung out of a terrible mood. Monday, I was in a deep, deep funk. I tried dispelling the depression every way I knew how: I read, I wrote, I moped, I exercised, but nothing worked. There's only one fail-safe, sure-fire way to chase away bouts like this, and that's to read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. So, I whisked it off the shelf and started rifling through it, waiting for Marcus to tell me about how reality was just a sheath, waiting to slip away off my immortal soul or how my when and where is one pointless, listless locus on an infinite plane of existence. I wanted to feel minute, transient, silly, and distracted. Marcus had saved my life once before. In high school, paranoia gripped me pretty bad. I couldn't stand the people, their drugs, their fashion, their jibes, their fads, their insecurities. I asked Marcus, who was writing to me from the Danube River while holding off hordes of Macromanni and Quadi barbarians, whether I should even give a fuck about life. I mean, if my time here is to be spent among people, and I hate people, what was to stop me from hating my time left here? Marcus shook his head. Always dignified, always resigned, Marcus was. He told me people usually aren't worth it. They can be cruel, worthless, vile, destructive. But, we still have a soul, we still have a holy code to be good people. We are patient parents ignoring the stings of stupid children, we are rivers running against boulders and dams. We have to be stolid, steadfast, and strong. Whether or not there's worth in people, there's worth in being a person, a good person.
As a philosopher, Marcus presents some glaring holes. He posits the existence of a soul...I think that's ridiculous, at least for now. Anyway, anyway, who cares, though. Marcus was a man, and once again, he showed me how to let all the people I know and all their hurt, their small-minded assaults, their suffocating expectations, their self-serving small-talk, their jealous psychological war just wash away.
If there's a God, I'll finish the fucking Golden Bough tomorrow. I've been working on it for like four weeks now. It's embarrassing and time-consuming. It's not even really that good. I just...well, I wanted to both challenge myself and cross off another monumental work of literature.
Got clotheslined in the balls today. Some kid took a twenty-foot acceleration, then flipped his hand up and into my nads, not even stopping to see me wince. It's a good thing he didn't, too, else I'd a seen the bastard who belted my boys.
Today, I set a kid up to hit a wiffle ball off the tee. He took a few practice swings, his face the picture of concentration, then stepped forward with all his might. Unfortunately, he not only missed the ball, but toppled the tee. "FUCK!" he said. Did he just say "fuck"? I started laughing uncontrollably. I couldn't believe it. Five-years-old and he's saying "fuck" and saying it correctly? I couldn't keep from envisioning the same kid in a business suit realizing traffic will make him late to some big meeting: "Fuck!" I asked him what he said, and, clear as a bell, he answered me, "Fuck...," with a slightly confused look on his face. Aren't I supposed to say "fuck" when I fuck up? "Well, don't say that," I said.
I went to Susan's family cottage last weekend. It was pretty fun. It rained the whole time, but we made the best of it and squeezed in tubing where we could. A friend of the family, Chad, brought the Manta Ray tube, the one that lifts out of the water, pulling you behind the boat like a kite. I only got a couple feet of air on it, but one little girl must have been ten or fifteen feet out of the water. Susan herself got pretty high! After the Manta, Susan wanted me to do a double tube with her, saying it was "more fun." To Susan, fun must involve equal parts fear and pain. Needless to say, I agreed with a very reluctant "yes". The water was like a fucking washing board-choppy as hell. the compartment in which I was to sit was about the size of a hamster cage, and the 60 or so pounds I have on Susan tilted our tube in my direction. I was crusing for a bruising. "Don't be scared," someone called out from the dock. "Oh, I think you should be," said Chad, my driver, once again. Flooring it to 55, Chad shot out of the dock like a cheetah, leaving me and Susan eating wake-She was laughing, I was screaming. After three or four white-knuckled turns, I noticed a pain spreading through my balls as if they were being lowered into a blender. Keep it together, man; Don't show Susan how big of a baby you are, I thought. So, I tried to smile, but even through the spittle flying from our mouthes, the water drenching us from the wake, and the noise from the boat and all the cheering occupants, Susan could tell that I was scared out of my mind. "Cut the boat, Alex is in pain," she said. Shit, not only did you just get a tubing-neutering, but your girlfriend noticed what a big sissy you are! Oh well, knowing Susan, she probably thought it was more cute than anything else.
During the rainy bouts, I colored with Chad's son, Colin, a cute little kid absolutely obsessed with Nascar and, lately, "Born in the U.S.A." by Bruce Springsteen (The Boss! Hell yeah!). My poem for Susan was passed around most of the family while I was there. I was cool about it, though. I like having them read. Her cottage was four hours away from my house, and Susan and I spent a lot of time on the road together. We kept fighting about why farmers have horses. I maintained that there's no reason for them to have them: they don't serve any purpose; they're not used for food, fuel, fur, muscle, or milk. Susan thought there was no such mystery, and that farmers kept them sheerely for companionship. I think it's a good question, anyway. There must be some use... Glue?
I'm planning a camping trip with Franz, his girlfriend (AKA "the prospect"), Susan, my friend Danny, and Emilee, Danny's girlfriend. We're going to the Au Sable River next week, a really charming, clean river-I've been there once before. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm stockpiling jerkey and trail mix already.
As far as music goes, the only new stuff I like is the EP from Delorean, some Spanish electronica group that Pitchfork likes, and the latest album from A very U2-esque Australian band, the Temper Trap. They use a lot of good guitar delay and choir boy vocals.
I got my driver's license about two weeks ago. It's been all right. Of course, I'm now the family mule, meaning I'm the errand boy for everything- food, people-pick up, lottery tickets, movies, recycling, etc.
Susan has been great, but I'm still worried about my pessimism and the way I slowly but surely slouch away from people-all people. I'm confident she'll be the difference, though, i.e. the reason I won't retreat this time.
School starts up again September 8, and I would say I'm really, really, really upset by this and the notion of a return, but I'm trying to be optimistic (REALLY trying), so I'll just say that I'm nervous. A lot has to happen for me in a very little time.
Things used to just fall together, like a Jackson Pollock painting-random drips forming something beautiful and complete. I used to have epiphanies, where the light would just shine on my face and I just knew, I just knew I was doing the right thing. Now, to make my decisions, I have to buy a new bulb, screw it on myself, angle the lamp at my face, and decide whether it's bright enough to show me the way. Is this using my head vs. using my gut? Am I just to a point where I have to let myself make myself? Does it even matter what I make myself into? Can't I just adapt?
I noticed something about myself this week. One of the main grounds for my instability and my depression is my need to try and embrace two opposite or conflicting ideas at the same time. I ALWAYS try to hold two antagonistic opinions or philosophies in my head at the same time. I'm always trying to exist at both ends of the spectrum. I want to be social, loved, but cenobitic, isolated. I want to be successful, but unknown, small-time, local. I want to dissappear, but I want to reach people. I want to be happy and content, but I love to wallow, to drink in sadness. Am I trying to prove something to myself? Is it the challenge I like? Is it just scoffing in the face of the ever-changingb ever more pointless vicissitudes of human life? Do I just try to amuse myself?
Tell me, Marcus!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Late night blues
I wrote one cheerful poem for Susan last week, delivering it with a very apropos first bouquet of flowers, and also two really gloomy poems tonight. I might give a nice summary of my last couple weeks tomorrow, but I just had to add these now.
First Flowers
I think I know you best,
Still, the florist was a test.
Your hues blend and match-
Colorful, the perfect catch.
The clerk said, “May I propose
A bright, red, rose?”
Why not, I thought.
They’re lush, layered, and deep.
They drape the tombs of kings.
They line the halls of lovers.
Wherever the heart swells, plummets, or dies,
There, soon, a rose will rise.
But for all its passion and austerity,
Even your thorns would not
Suggest parity.
What about an Iris?
Sad, in my hands it seems to tire,
This purple, fleshy, fire.
But, though draped,
Its petals are so strong-
A stalwart, marching song-
Like you’ve been all along.
The tulip looked delightful.
It’s crisp, parabolic petals-
Walls of wonder.
It carves its place above the ground
Stem, protruding; flower, intruding.
But Holland’s prize cultivar
Wilts in the shadow of what
you are.
A daisy might do nicely,
A simple, honest flower-
White knives rim the golden sun.
They shake when I breathe;
Their needle-stems bending to and fro
As obeisance to nature and
to the girl I know.
Yet, for all its humility and charm,
I can find so much more with you in arm.
Carnations!
Now there’s a great find.
I see their lacey folds crowd, converge, caress
Between their red-rimmed reaches
A secret.
What makes the petals so beautiful and keeps
Them riding the same wave,
Rippling in the same current, like
Shivers of the ocean
Obfuscating sunken treasure?
But whatever answer I’d find
Could never surpass my joy
In seeing the layers of
your mind.
How could I forget the forget-me-nots
And their soft, Vermeer blue!
Beautiful, yes,
But where grows the flower that captures your
Thick, flowing sepia hair
Or your rich, loess eyes-
So healthy, so lovely-
Artifacts from a life we no longer lead:
When corn grew without the farmer’s hand,
When men could run without getting tired
Or losing the vault of the sky;
When music trickled from the trees,
Like rich sap, drawn from the calls of birds
The sigh of the wind, the moaning of boughs,
And time sat in the shade
To watch the grass grow tall.
Flowers can say a lot of things.
Send them to a funeral
Lay them on a wall.
Pin them to a girl.
Throw them down the aisle.
But what petals can I pick,
What bulbs can I buy
Worthy of the girl
For whom I would die?
I’ve grown from a seed,
Nurtured and watered by
your gentle hand,
Into a dazzling new flower-
A happy, young man.
Stunted, I’d sat-
Alone, cold, so dark-
‘till you cracked the window
And offered your spark.
The heart is born on a breaking wheel.
Lash yourself to the spoke and be torn.
But you and I can say one thing to
Spite the darkness that everywhere falls:
“Good things do happen to good people.
Love brings them together and
Gives them a joy above all.”
You can't follow me
I’m meant for something else.
I march to fate’s flute.
You have to let me go.
You have to let me go.
You weren’t meant,
To walk these roads,
Fall on these rocks,
Bleed on these bones
I’m drifting up
And you can’t hold on.
Gravity pulls you down
Slipping, you’re gone.
I’m alone-
Alone again-
Because I’ve been branded
Culled, chosen
To know no fear
And to have no friends-
To follow the light
And leave everyone in the dark.
Weltschmerz
What ideas have you been feeding on
That your mind has ballooned to
Fill the universe?
Where can you put your ego?
Are you glad that you can’t fit anymore,
That there’s nothing here for you now?
What will you do and where will you go?
Can you ever find a country, a home, a woman?
Will you ever attach yourself to the ephemeral?
You must, for how will your name be remembered
And sung, and quoted, and anthologized.
You want to be remembered
But the world doesn’t want to remember you.
Does it frighten you how you can’t project
A future, a life onto yourself?
That you’re a shade, watching it all through the glass?
You’ve been disengaged and set into orbit.
You tried to rise above, only to disappear.
You can’t even taste anymore.
Was it all worth it?
This divorce, this schism, excommunication?
Who can you tell your tale of heartbreak to?
Can you even speak?
Do we envy or pity you?
Are you a hero or a waste?
They happen around you, the things,
I know.
They swirl, condense, dissolve,
And you grin and observe
Cool and collected,
Free to opine and analyze to your heart’s content.
But you can’t get it back.
You lost it at the quickening.
You’ve been released and you’re bobbing on a new horizon.
Keep crying
Keep lying
Keep sighing
Keep dying.
First Flowers
I think I know you best,
Still, the florist was a test.
Your hues blend and match-
Colorful, the perfect catch.
The clerk said, “May I propose
A bright, red, rose?”
Why not, I thought.
They’re lush, layered, and deep.
They drape the tombs of kings.
They line the halls of lovers.
Wherever the heart swells, plummets, or dies,
There, soon, a rose will rise.
But for all its passion and austerity,
Even your thorns would not
Suggest parity.
What about an Iris?
Sad, in my hands it seems to tire,
This purple, fleshy, fire.
But, though draped,
Its petals are so strong-
A stalwart, marching song-
Like you’ve been all along.
The tulip looked delightful.
It’s crisp, parabolic petals-
Walls of wonder.
It carves its place above the ground
Stem, protruding; flower, intruding.
But Holland’s prize cultivar
Wilts in the shadow of what
you are.
A daisy might do nicely,
A simple, honest flower-
White knives rim the golden sun.
They shake when I breathe;
Their needle-stems bending to and fro
As obeisance to nature and
to the girl I know.
Yet, for all its humility and charm,
I can find so much more with you in arm.
Carnations!
Now there’s a great find.
I see their lacey folds crowd, converge, caress
Between their red-rimmed reaches
A secret.
What makes the petals so beautiful and keeps
Them riding the same wave,
Rippling in the same current, like
Shivers of the ocean
Obfuscating sunken treasure?
But whatever answer I’d find
Could never surpass my joy
In seeing the layers of
your mind.
How could I forget the forget-me-nots
And their soft, Vermeer blue!
Beautiful, yes,
But where grows the flower that captures your
Thick, flowing sepia hair
Or your rich, loess eyes-
So healthy, so lovely-
Artifacts from a life we no longer lead:
When corn grew without the farmer’s hand,
When men could run without getting tired
Or losing the vault of the sky;
When music trickled from the trees,
Like rich sap, drawn from the calls of birds
The sigh of the wind, the moaning of boughs,
And time sat in the shade
To watch the grass grow tall.
Flowers can say a lot of things.
Send them to a funeral
Lay them on a wall.
Pin them to a girl.
Throw them down the aisle.
But what petals can I pick,
What bulbs can I buy
Worthy of the girl
For whom I would die?
I’ve grown from a seed,
Nurtured and watered by
your gentle hand,
Into a dazzling new flower-
A happy, young man.
Stunted, I’d sat-
Alone, cold, so dark-
‘till you cracked the window
And offered your spark.
The heart is born on a breaking wheel.
Lash yourself to the spoke and be torn.
But you and I can say one thing to
Spite the darkness that everywhere falls:
“Good things do happen to good people.
Love brings them together and
Gives them a joy above all.”
You can't follow me
I’m meant for something else.
I march to fate’s flute.
You have to let me go.
You have to let me go.
You weren’t meant,
To walk these roads,
Fall on these rocks,
Bleed on these bones
I’m drifting up
And you can’t hold on.
Gravity pulls you down
Slipping, you’re gone.
I’m alone-
Alone again-
Because I’ve been branded
Culled, chosen
To know no fear
And to have no friends-
To follow the light
And leave everyone in the dark.
Weltschmerz
What ideas have you been feeding on
That your mind has ballooned to
Fill the universe?
Where can you put your ego?
Are you glad that you can’t fit anymore,
That there’s nothing here for you now?
What will you do and where will you go?
Can you ever find a country, a home, a woman?
Will you ever attach yourself to the ephemeral?
You must, for how will your name be remembered
And sung, and quoted, and anthologized.
You want to be remembered
But the world doesn’t want to remember you.
Does it frighten you how you can’t project
A future, a life onto yourself?
That you’re a shade, watching it all through the glass?
You’ve been disengaged and set into orbit.
You tried to rise above, only to disappear.
You can’t even taste anymore.
Was it all worth it?
This divorce, this schism, excommunication?
Who can you tell your tale of heartbreak to?
Can you even speak?
Do we envy or pity you?
Are you a hero or a waste?
They happen around you, the things,
I know.
They swirl, condense, dissolve,
And you grin and observe
Cool and collected,
Free to opine and analyze to your heart’s content.
But you can’t get it back.
You lost it at the quickening.
You’ve been released and you’re bobbing on a new horizon.
Keep crying
Keep lying
Keep sighing
Keep dying.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
I feel a melt down coming on
I've had a cold for a couple of days now. Seems to be a pattern- I like to write when I'm sick. Must be the down-time. I'm gulping sudafeds like air, and they're making my nose green and crusty, but at least I can breathe. My eyes feel like they are slowly poked out of my skull, as if by the handle of a hyperdermic needle. I kept waiting for them to pop today. My co-workers caught me blinking and swallowing, bull-frog-like, in a desperate- and stupid- attempt to keep them attached to my optic nerve. Is this what they call sinus pressure? I wouldn't know. Some people really take an interest in their illness, scouring WebMD for mutual symptoms or greedily feeding their paranoia to watch the rest of us squirm or to satisfy their hypochondria ("I have an itchy nose, too! It's polio!").
It really slowed me down at work today. I work for my city's Parks and Rec. Department, doing whatever they need- coaching, score-keeping, chaperoning, etc. Our boss summoned us a whole hour early to give us donuts and orange juice in exchange for forcing us to listen to her rant and rave- really the only thing she can hold on to, the real foundation of her authority, the sole claimant to her boss throne. The silver lining: we WERE paid. Oh yippy... After that, I dragged ass for six hours, letting kids hit me with baseball bats, hi-five me in the nuts, pelt me with mitts and hats, and try to "pants" me during our morning run. Any other day, I'd be grinning while recounting all the mischevious pranks and adorable quirks of the kids, but when I'm sick, I really start to feel like a punching bag. To make matters worse, my co-workers, who are already kind of annoying, kept pushing my buttons, asking me where my "sunshine" went and why I wasn't being my usual "Winnie the Pooh" self. Fucking gag me. I kept trying to work up a sneeze to blast them with when they made that caricatured droopy frown face, asking me questions in baby-talk, "Are you gunna be okeayayyyyyy?"
How's summer been? I really can't say. Too complicated an answer... My first inclination is to say "fucking terrible," but I really can't find the reasons, you know, except for the same bull shit things I usually bitch about in here- no ambition, no plan, no friends, no feeling of home, no good jobs. I've had plent of time to read. I finally finished the Dark Tower, and I got around to capping the two epochal dystopian novels that everyone who's ever been to a bonfire has had to listen to some asshole sermonize about- 1984 and Brave New World. After that, I read Portnoy's Complaint and A Passage to India. I'm working on Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer right now. It seems pretty dense and experimental, which worries me. Nothing makes me more insecure than when I feel I'm missing the subtlety in something.
I've spent a lot of time in Flint with my girlfriend. We have fun because we love being together, even if our love affair is split between the two most miserable metropolitan areas in the country. Sometimes, though, being with her saddens me further. "You have to love yourself before you can love someone else." The insecurities and shortcomings I can ignore with a book, a song, a day in the sun, reappear when she's around. Questions like "why do you love me?" or "but I'm a loser, aren't I?" or "do you know I'm not an adult, not even a little bit?" throb in my brain like a migraine, and they taint some of the good times I know we'd be having. Added to these are the fatal uncertainty and pernicious financial situation I've been grappling with lately. But, summer is warm, forgiving, lazy, listless, balmy, drowzy, smiley, sunny. . . I can be the grinning idiot, the prepubescent pococurante, for another two months.
J.J. , my brother, is making me download him music all the time now. I've always resented those people who say they have a "music guru" or someone who showed them "good music" and, thus, "saved" them. It's too personal, music, that is, to be picked out by someone like a store clerk. It's not like fashion. We don't asked to be dressed by someone with good sense. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Word of mouth is important to music, anyways. I guess I'm not sure whether that's separable from musical tutelage. Either way, I've showed some stuff I really like, and, much to my delight, he's liked it all. This summer hasn't been a complete bust. I've found some stuff I like: New albums from The Dirty Projectors, Phoenix, The Dear Hunter, Dream Theater (of course), and The Mars Volta have all been pleasant, nothing that's really knocked me off my ass, though, though Orca Bitte, from the Dirty Projectors, was exceptional. When he's not soliciting me for new music, J.J. can be found baking underneath a blue canopy, hugging his personal flotation device, laughing at his ironic smear of nose sun tan lotion- absolutely revelling in the thrill of his new job, a life guard for our local pool. Sarah, my sister, joins him there. It's pretty cute, actually, watching them strut off together, twirling their whistles, feeding off each other's egos, trying to out hard-ass the other with their morning threats, "Well, today, I'm not going to let anyone so much as SKIP on the deck. If they do, their ass is grass!" To this, the other will reply, "OH YEAH? Well I'm going to tell ______ that I'm sick of their @#$% and that she/he can go to a different pool if they touch pool rope one more time." "Whoa, that's awesome!" Power-tripping in the red suit!
My dad, I think, is starting to feel old, and it's absolutely awful to watch. He sleeps like a lion. In fact, he lives like one outright. He'll wake up, roar, scaring rivals away from his section of the wildebeest, gorge, then sleep and sleep and sleep until he's hungry again. Anyways, back to his nigh-silent senescence, he's been quieter, more irritable, less good-natured about his failing body, more defensive. I probably wouldn't notice his lonely descent if it weren't for his occasional bacardi marathons, when the graying layers of his mind are peeled back and he's jolly again, telling me, "It'll all work out," "Just keep doing what you're doing," "You'll find it," "Something's out there," making me engraged. Of COURSE, drunkeness would elicit that kind of shit. How nauseating is it that this "hope in the bottle" crap has to be spread before me, this bottle-tipping despair. But I don't hold my dad at fault. He's just feeling old; accepting age means accepting death, and there would be nothing to learn if we didn't have to accept death. It's the supreme challenge, and, frankly, the only thing worth LIVING for, as far as I can tell.
My mom is going through menopause, which means the water works are being flipped on and off haphazardly. She'll cry if a hug is too short or if a memorial is broadcast on T.V. (for MJ, for a veteran, for ANYONE). She's been irritable, too.
My friends? I really have nothing to write about here . If I haven't succeeded in isolating myself from all of them by now, I'll be truly surprised for the first time in a long time. My one good friend left in this city is pissing me off. I work with him, actually, and lately his butt-kisser laugh has become insufferable, both because it's insincere and because it's fucking working. My friend in Ann Arbor truly got lucky: three semesters spent conducting a booze and drug experiment, wondering whether he will remember the name written on his diploma when it's handed to him, landed him an awesome research job for the summer and tons of connections. Great, good for you, I say. And what does he do? Throws it back in my face, usually with my girlfriend standing right next to me (inadvertently stirring the self-pitying questions I just wrote about): "So, are you even doing anything?", "Aren't you going back home to the same job?", "Isn't that type of degree worthless? Unless, of course, you want to be a barrista?". I'm not charitable enough to try being happy for someone when that's my return back-clap.
It really slowed me down at work today. I work for my city's Parks and Rec. Department, doing whatever they need- coaching, score-keeping, chaperoning, etc. Our boss summoned us a whole hour early to give us donuts and orange juice in exchange for forcing us to listen to her rant and rave- really the only thing she can hold on to, the real foundation of her authority, the sole claimant to her boss throne. The silver lining: we WERE paid. Oh yippy... After that, I dragged ass for six hours, letting kids hit me with baseball bats, hi-five me in the nuts, pelt me with mitts and hats, and try to "pants" me during our morning run. Any other day, I'd be grinning while recounting all the mischevious pranks and adorable quirks of the kids, but when I'm sick, I really start to feel like a punching bag. To make matters worse, my co-workers, who are already kind of annoying, kept pushing my buttons, asking me where my "sunshine" went and why I wasn't being my usual "Winnie the Pooh" self. Fucking gag me. I kept trying to work up a sneeze to blast them with when they made that caricatured droopy frown face, asking me questions in baby-talk, "Are you gunna be okeayayyyyyy?"
How's summer been? I really can't say. Too complicated an answer... My first inclination is to say "fucking terrible," but I really can't find the reasons, you know, except for the same bull shit things I usually bitch about in here- no ambition, no plan, no friends, no feeling of home, no good jobs. I've had plent of time to read. I finally finished the Dark Tower, and I got around to capping the two epochal dystopian novels that everyone who's ever been to a bonfire has had to listen to some asshole sermonize about- 1984 and Brave New World. After that, I read Portnoy's Complaint and A Passage to India. I'm working on Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer right now. It seems pretty dense and experimental, which worries me. Nothing makes me more insecure than when I feel I'm missing the subtlety in something.
I've spent a lot of time in Flint with my girlfriend. We have fun because we love being together, even if our love affair is split between the two most miserable metropolitan areas in the country. Sometimes, though, being with her saddens me further. "You have to love yourself before you can love someone else." The insecurities and shortcomings I can ignore with a book, a song, a day in the sun, reappear when she's around. Questions like "why do you love me?" or "but I'm a loser, aren't I?" or "do you know I'm not an adult, not even a little bit?" throb in my brain like a migraine, and they taint some of the good times I know we'd be having. Added to these are the fatal uncertainty and pernicious financial situation I've been grappling with lately. But, summer is warm, forgiving, lazy, listless, balmy, drowzy, smiley, sunny. . . I can be the grinning idiot, the prepubescent pococurante, for another two months.
J.J. , my brother, is making me download him music all the time now. I've always resented those people who say they have a "music guru" or someone who showed them "good music" and, thus, "saved" them. It's too personal, music, that is, to be picked out by someone like a store clerk. It's not like fashion. We don't asked to be dressed by someone with good sense. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Word of mouth is important to music, anyways. I guess I'm not sure whether that's separable from musical tutelage. Either way, I've showed some stuff I really like, and, much to my delight, he's liked it all. This summer hasn't been a complete bust. I've found some stuff I like: New albums from The Dirty Projectors, Phoenix, The Dear Hunter, Dream Theater (of course), and The Mars Volta have all been pleasant, nothing that's really knocked me off my ass, though, though Orca Bitte, from the Dirty Projectors, was exceptional. When he's not soliciting me for new music, J.J. can be found baking underneath a blue canopy, hugging his personal flotation device, laughing at his ironic smear of nose sun tan lotion- absolutely revelling in the thrill of his new job, a life guard for our local pool. Sarah, my sister, joins him there. It's pretty cute, actually, watching them strut off together, twirling their whistles, feeding off each other's egos, trying to out hard-ass the other with their morning threats, "Well, today, I'm not going to let anyone so much as SKIP on the deck. If they do, their ass is grass!" To this, the other will reply, "OH YEAH? Well I'm going to tell ______ that I'm sick of their @#$% and that she/he can go to a different pool if they touch pool rope one more time." "Whoa, that's awesome!" Power-tripping in the red suit!
My dad, I think, is starting to feel old, and it's absolutely awful to watch. He sleeps like a lion. In fact, he lives like one outright. He'll wake up, roar, scaring rivals away from his section of the wildebeest, gorge, then sleep and sleep and sleep until he's hungry again. Anyways, back to his nigh-silent senescence, he's been quieter, more irritable, less good-natured about his failing body, more defensive. I probably wouldn't notice his lonely descent if it weren't for his occasional bacardi marathons, when the graying layers of his mind are peeled back and he's jolly again, telling me, "It'll all work out," "Just keep doing what you're doing," "You'll find it," "Something's out there," making me engraged. Of COURSE, drunkeness would elicit that kind of shit. How nauseating is it that this "hope in the bottle" crap has to be spread before me, this bottle-tipping despair. But I don't hold my dad at fault. He's just feeling old; accepting age means accepting death, and there would be nothing to learn if we didn't have to accept death. It's the supreme challenge, and, frankly, the only thing worth LIVING for, as far as I can tell.
My mom is going through menopause, which means the water works are being flipped on and off haphazardly. She'll cry if a hug is too short or if a memorial is broadcast on T.V. (for MJ, for a veteran, for ANYONE). She's been irritable, too.
My friends? I really have nothing to write about here . If I haven't succeeded in isolating myself from all of them by now, I'll be truly surprised for the first time in a long time. My one good friend left in this city is pissing me off. I work with him, actually, and lately his butt-kisser laugh has become insufferable, both because it's insincere and because it's fucking working. My friend in Ann Arbor truly got lucky: three semesters spent conducting a booze and drug experiment, wondering whether he will remember the name written on his diploma when it's handed to him, landed him an awesome research job for the summer and tons of connections. Great, good for you, I say. And what does he do? Throws it back in my face, usually with my girlfriend standing right next to me (inadvertently stirring the self-pitying questions I just wrote about): "So, are you even doing anything?", "Aren't you going back home to the same job?", "Isn't that type of degree worthless? Unless, of course, you want to be a barrista?". I'm not charitable enough to try being happy for someone when that's my return back-clap.
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