Days: Fifteen Years Sober

Prologue

There were chandeliers.  I had rarely been around chandeliers, and even then, never so many, never so shiny.  In fact, nearly everything was shiny—the centerpieces, the candle holders, the forks and knives had glints and sparkles.  Light seemed to reflect and refract from everywhere all at once, off of balloons and from under tables, men’s wingtip shoes had tiny stars in them, large wire-rimmed glasses on women’s faces beamed chandelier light into my eyes.  The whole ballroom was like a universe.

I should have expected to be dazzled at the first wedding I ever attended.  I’d seen depictions of weddings in some movies, sure, but being only eight or nine years old, I didn’t have a lot to go on.  I knew there would be a ceremony, and they’d kiss, and then I heard we threw rice at them, oddly enough.  I must have expected there to be a party afterward, but if I did, I certainly had no idea what to expect from it.  And all this shininess—I hadn’t been prepared for that.

My cousins were there—some that I liked and some that I didn’t, but we all kept playing together, regardless.  That’s what you do with cousins when you’re a kid, after all—you play with them no matter how much you like them.  Once the pomp and trope of the adult rituals during the reception began to wear thin for us (how many times does an eight-year-old think it’s interesting to watch two grown-ups kiss? Just because someone tapped their glass?) we found our way to each other and began exploring.  We found an elevator in the lobby that we rode up and down and up and down, getting off on random floors, running to the ends of the halls.  We made a game where you tried to touch the wall at the end of the hall and get back to the elevator before the doors closed.  It wasn’t easy.  We also devised a contest to see who could, when controlling the floor buttons, go longest without the doors opening to let a stranger onto the elevator.  Again and again we were tempted to press the Emergency Stop button, but we never did.  Eventually, an employee caught onto the fact that some kids were playing fast and loose with their elevator and we got yelled at and told to stop, and, feeling like we’d just been dressed down by a Supreme Court justice, we ran out of the elevator, through the lobby, and back into the ballroom.

We played under vacant tables.  We made forts under there by using spare tablecloths and draping them over the chairs.  We moved the large potted plants out a few feet from the walls and hid behind them until grown-ups gave us weird looks.  We took M&Ms out of our gift baskets and threw them long distances into each other’s mouths.  By and large, nobody was watching us.  The adults were having a grand old time and we were left to play, to run around.  It was a unique environment for us.  Dressed in our little spiffy clothes—suspenders, skirts, ties—we felt like miniature grown-ups, doing our kid things under the shiny lights.

Occasionally, the action in the grown-up world would halt briefly while they did another of their inexplicable rituals—shoving cake at each other, somebody’s dad dancing with somebody else, and on and on.  At one point, everyone stopped what they were doing for the throwing of the bouquet, which did not sound remotely interesting to me, but my cousins ran to the crowd to watch.  I was thirsty and a little tired, so I made my way back to my family’s table to regroup and hydrate.

Nobody was there, as they were off watching something happen to a bouquet.  I pulled myself up to the table, the empty food plates still scattered around, and my mother’s purse hanging on the side of her chair, and more M&Ms in clear mason jars.  I found my Sprite and gulped it down.  It was nice to have a moment alone.  Then my eye fell upon it: the champagne flute.  Full, bubbles creeping up the sides, mysterious presences.  I glanced around and verified I was unwatched.  I took the glass, using both hands to steady it, and brought it to my lips, surprised by the blast of carbon dioxide as the carbonation hit my nose.  I barely tasted anything as I downed the beverage in one quick movement.  I sat back in my chair, looked around myself again to see if I had been observed.  In a moment, the warmth hit my stomach.  A smile crept at my lips.

 

Days of Nothing

 

It had been a hot summer. Summers are always hot, and Pennsylvania summers get that special kind of humidity working for them, but this summer had just been a rainforest ordeal. We spent every day with a thin sheen of sweat on us almost all the time, even indoors, even in the dark in the basement. It was a summer of Sloe Gin Fizzes, chain-smoking Newports, sitting on the front porch.  It was a stoop, really, but we called it a porch, although you entered through the side door, not the front.

I was staying quite suddenly and unexpectedly with two of my friends who were renting a house in the middle of the Pennsylvania countryside. And I mean Countryside. At least a 20-minute drive from where anyone might consider civilization. The view from that front porch was actual and real rolling Pennsylvania Hills, green as Ireland, constantly sun-dappled, you could see the shadows of clouds as they passed overhead, rolling down the hills like boulders. Cows and sheep on the periphery, small tree outcroppings dotting the very tops of the horizons. I make it sound kind of lovely, but in fact, it was a pretty awful time for everybody.

See, if you are from Pennsylvania, it would mean something if I told you this was in Perry County, and really far out in the middle of Perry County. How these friends rented the house, how they found it, I’ll never know. But there I found myself, immediately after giving up on a semester of college, literally walking away from classes that were over three-quarters of the way done, because I couldn’t stop drinking long enough to wake up in the morning, or do homework or even read Mark Twain books. I simply threw in the towel, and after spending a couple weeks tooling around campus aimlessly, I decided to just jump ship entirely, threw what little belongings I had into the back of my 1983 Ford Escort, and drove an hour from my college out into the middle of the rolling god-damned Hills. I did this in order to spend the summer with two people who were likewise as troubled as I was, but in different ways, and we were miserable as hell together. We’d spend entire mornings out in front of the house with a two-by-four, swatting at the huge bumble bees as they flew past us, drinking 20 ounce cans of Busch beer, trying to kill as many of those bees as we could, for no reason other than there was nothing else to do. We’d sit on our plastic lawn chairs on that porch, with our view of the field, secretly hoping that it was manure spreading day, just so that there was something to look at, something to talk about, something to complain about other than the heat and the damn bees.

We spent our nights inside, in the dark basement, lit only by multiple strings of Christmas lights, the smell of must and tobacco smoke, no television, no stereo. Just imbibing and talking, and sometimes in full silence. I spent the whole summer reading one issue of Guitar World magazine, articles I didn’t even understand, once everybody else was asleep, reading these damn guitar articles in the almost total darkness, falling asleep on a dust-covered couch. It was terrible and wonderful.

One morning, as we were sitting on our stoop smoking our cigarettes watching the distant rolling hills as though something might erupt from them, an Amish boy strolled past on the street in front of our yard, walking his ancient bike beside him. He stood and looked at us, as though he were seeing something for the very first time, some true curiosity. Thinking we were some sort of cultural emissaries, we approached him and struck up a conversation. I can’t remember now what was said between us, what inane questions we must have asked in the name of science, but after a 20-minute conversation, he went his way and we went back to the stoop, thinking we had just crossed some cultural divide. I can’t be sure what we said, but I know who I was back then, so I know I was an asshole.

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In my early twenties there was a short time period when I stayed with my mother in a small apartment she was renting in the small Pennsylvania town of Dillsburg. This was during a time when she went on frequent extended trips for her job, so even though it was a place where I wasn’t paying any rent, I would find myself with my own apartment for a couple days at a time, here and there. Living the kind of life I was living then, which is to say, mildly indigent, alone time was a fairly sacrosanct rarity. On these times when she was gone, I would wake up on the couch, still mildly dizzy from my stupor the night before, find some water to drink, and commence sitting there, absorbing cable television, mixing large amounts of Diet Coke with larger amounts of cheap gin, chainsmoking generic menthol light cigarettes until the whole room was suffused with a haze as if it were packing material. Somehow having that apartment to myself, and enough booze and cigarettes and food I hadn’t paid for to last me through a couple days, felt like I had a luxury a room on a cruise liner. I would crank up the air-conditioning, raid her collection of compact discs, listen to Led Zeppelin’s “Gallows Pole” over and over again at an incredibly high volume. One such night, after a lengthy day of solo debauchery, I found myself inexplicably out in the parking lot of the apartment complex, wandering aimlessly, smoking my cigarette with a gin and Coke in a supersize McDonald’s cup. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly I heard from behind me someone yell my name. It took me awhile to realize what I was witnessing, but it was one of my more lengthy roommates from college, suddenly here in this parking lot, 45 minutes from the town we went to school in. At this point, I must have been out of college for about two years and hadn’t heard from him since (this is pre-Facebook and even pre-MySpace). I couldn’t believe my eyes! After getting over both of our initial confusions, I learned that not only did he live in the same apartment complex, but he lived with a man that we were also roommates with. The three of us had shared an apartment for about a year in college, and now they were living together and working in the town of Dillsburg, while I was mooching off my mother in the same apartment complex! It was almost too much to handle. Excited for the reunion, we both walked into their apartment, and sure enough, there was the third roommate, and he was just as shocked as us! We spent about half an hour catching up on what we had done since school, and then sat there in a kind of dazed boredom. We had nothing to talk about. It hadn’t been that long ago we were in college, pulling pranks, making silly movies, running all over the town like young people who would never die, would never have a problem in the world. But now just a few years later here we were, clearly at different crossroads. We sat in silence and watched a movie, and then I left and never went back there again.

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I don’t really remember how it happened, but I know for a fact that once, stone drunk, I found myself walking down the Carlisle Pike in the middle of night, just past the 81 North entrance ramp, headed away from Carlisle. I had just past the entrance ramp when I saw a tractor-trailer pulled over on the side of the road, presumably for the driver to sleep there for the night. None of the lights were on and the engine was off. I thought to myself, ‘I could just roll underneath a truck right there and sleep for the night. I could just lay under there, be sheltered from view and the wind, look up at the underside of that trailer, let this drunkenness and tiredness wash over me, and sleep there for the night.’ And I did roll under that truck, and I looked at the underside of it. I put my hands behind my head and stretched out in the gravel parking lot. I laid there for a little while, I have no idea how long, but even in my drunken stupor, and as low as I was in every aspect of life at that moment, even I knew this was a bad idea. I rolled back out and kept on walking, and I have no idea where I went.

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Time is a sad, dense fog over a sea, and places are lighted buoys.  The people?  I don’t know, maybe they’re boats, or fishes.  The days stretch out like dreams in a desert.

 

Days of Something

 

Just a few months after getting sober, I found myself living back in Pennsylvania, after a short stint in New Jersey.  I had moved in with a friend of mine who had a spare bedroom. I got my old job back, the same job cooking greasy diner food for a company that kept giving me chances.  I would come home everyday and see some of my friends there, hanging around this house I had moved into. Sometimes playing music, or fiddling with the communal telescope, or playing board games.   A few weeks into this living arrangement, I decided that I was going to go out that night by myself.  I ended up going to a movie, “Million Dollar Baby”, and it was a good movie, I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I’ll start watching good movies.’  I walked out of the theater, and it was a late showing, and it was winter, so it was dark and frigid everywhere, and I was the only one in the parking lot, and it suddenly dawned on me that I could do anything I wanted. I wasn’t a slave to anything like I had been before. Nothing drove me to a bar or a convenience store to get a fix. Nothing told me I had to be somewhere that I could fall asleep anytime soon. I didn’t have to work in the morning. I didn’t have anybody who knew where I was or was expecting me somewhere. I walked across the frigid parking lot to the adjacent Walmart, bought a Butterfinger candy bar and a Red Bull, walked back to my car, and drove into the countryside, smoking cigarettes, laughing my ass off at freedom.

 

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Philadelphia is a great city, but there’s nothing special about it in the winter. It becomes winter just like every place else becomes the winter: slowly, and then all at once. My first winter in the city was also the first winter I’d spent anywhere without a car. During the summer I had learned to get around by riding my bike and walking, and was just getting pretty good at it when the gradual winter hit all of a sudden. It was cold and it was windy, but didn’t snow for the first few months, and then one day, a day that I also happened to have off work, the sky opened up and dumped down about eight inches. It was a very different experience than my previous winters elsewhere, where you might go outside and walk around, do some shoveling, maybe go see a few of the local landmarks covered in the fluffy cliches. In a densely packed urban area that stretches out for miles and miles in any direction, and where local landmarks are a dime a dozen but breathtaking beauty might be a little scarce, I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with myself, other than sit on my couch and watch Netflix. Eventually I decided to just bundle up, put on some heavy shoes (since I never really am in the habit of keeping boots around) and venture out into the snow and see what happened. I started walking through the streets of my South Philly neighborhood, unplowed, unshoveled, the houses squished up against each other like sandwich bread, snow building up in the trashy pedestrian alleys between them, choking the tops of open the trash cans, pawprints sometimes the only sign anyone had been down a sidewalk.  And I kept walking and walking, taking note how it was different than my previous experience, and also ways in which it was similar, compare and contrast, compare and contrast, that is essentially how I Live every moment of my life. One experience must always be similar or different from previous ones; otherwise, how do you measure anything?  Eventually the neighborhood started to change as I kept walking, buildings got farther apart, the roads got wider, the streets were starting to be plowed, cars started moving around, the city seemed to wake up. I started passing people on the street and there was an air of conviviality, of shared experience. Everyone was saying hello, commenting on the snow, and it wasn’t just what people were saying, but the attitude, the feeling, like we were all finally together, not that we were undergoing any major hardship, but just that the presence of something so different, something so sudden, almost held us together like a web. Connection.  Eventually I realized I was closer to Independence Mall, which is the cluster of extremely significant historical sites in the city, than I was to home, so I just kept on walking. I arrived behind Independence Hall probably an hour and a half after leaving my house, still trudging through almost a foot of snow, surprised to see that there were a few people milling around, but only a few, much less than the hundreds and hundreds that crammed into this park in the summer months. I circled the building, taking note of what the roof looked like covered in snow, imagining it would have looked the same to George Washington or Thomas Jefferson when it snowed in the late 1700s. I crossed Chestnut Street, which is directly in front of Independence Hall, my feet not quite hitting the cobblestones, but still feeling the unevenness of the walk, as the snow impacted into the cracks around the cobblestones, as it surely has done to other foot travelers for centuries. I trudged across the open space in front of Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell to my left, taking note that it was still open, the Park Service still there and operating, but I didn’t see a soul in line to see the famed bell. I kept on going, heading towards the visitor center, with its bright glass interiors, newly built restrooms, shiny gift shop and concession stand. I often used to stop at the visitor center in the summer, as I was riding my bike around the city, for its quick and easy access to a restroom and bottled water.  As I swung open the heavy glass and stainless steel doors, it was clear to me that everyone inside the visitor center was surprised to see me, not because of anything about me, but simply because I was a human being. I was literally the only non-employee in this entire visitor center. It’s amazing what snow does to history tourism. Despite the fact that it was winter and snowing, I was sweating greatly, and was glad of the opportunity to take my coat off, breathe a little bit, stomp the snow out of every crease and crevice. I was thirsty and hungry, as I didn’t leave the house with the intention to walk halfway across the city, so I went straight to the concession stand, got me a bottle of water, a hot coffee, and some sort of breakfast sandwich.  I sat alone in the bright, metal cafeteria, my belly growing content as I fed it.  I took note that outside, it had begun snowing again, and heavier this time.  It was quiet in the visitor center.  I was far from home.

 

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This day started very early. I woke up around 4am not knowing what I was going to do with the day, but knowing that I wanted to wake up early enough to have a really thorough day, if you know what I mean. I was living by myself in Erie Pennsylvania, in an apartment, one bedroom, on the second level of an old house that was nearing dilapidation, but still teetering on the edge of respectability. It was smack-dab in the middle of summer, and waking up at 4am, the whole apartment was already laden with a heat, an oppressive second floor apartment kind of heat; a thin layer of sweat somehow on everything you looked at. I rolled out of bed, made myself a latte on my proudly-acquired home espresso machine, and set about pondering what to do with such a lengthy, summery kind of day all to myself.  I took a long, overly hot shower while the local morning news played on the television which I had crammed into my tiny bathroom. I stayed in the shower for the whole newscast, mind mostly blank. After the shower, while air drying mostly to cool off, I randomly selected a DVD from my bloated collection, and came up with “The 40 Year Old Virgin”, a movie that I don’t know how it ended up in my collection and no longer resides there, but at the time, a mindless comedy seemed just the ticket. I laid on my couch and let the Steve Carell comedy wash over me. Having gotten up so early that an immense amount of day still laid stretched out before me, even after my lengthy ablutions. What to do? Living by one’s self for so long, and so far from everyone you know, turns days and 31316_1458245861882_8379455_nmornings into quiet studies of one’s inner mechanics, and if you linger too long without plans, your cogs and belts begin to make a lot of noise. Suddenly it hit me: Niagara Falls. I’d been living relatively close to Niagara Falls for almost a year at this point, and it was always something bouncing around the periphery of what I wanted to do, but I never quite made it there, never quite made that my actual plan. Almost the moment that it struck me, I bounded off the couch, went to my computer to MapQuest the directions, threw on some clothes and some essentials into a backpack, and I was out the door.  I don’t remember much about the drive, although certainly there had to be a drive. It was close but not incredibly close, probably something like an hour and 15 minutes. A decent trip, but then again, much closer than almost anyone else in the world lives to such landmark. I remember having trouble figuring out where to park when I got close to it, the town itself surrounding it not exactly being incredibly helpful with instructions.  Finally I did get my car parked, and walked across a large grassy mall, the sound of the falls quite distinct, just like you expect the sound of Niagara Falls to be: thunderous, droning, like a white noise that comes from within.  I remember hearing the falls, I remember a large grassy area you had to walk across to get to it, but I don’t remember actually arriving at the falls.  In fact, the order of what I did that day and the specifics of how I did it, are lost in the labyrinth of my brain. I did the touristy things, I rode the boat, I walked up and down the path alongside the falls, I wore the poncho they provide you. I took selfies on the boat, all by myself, surrounded by revelers and families and church groups. After doing the requisite attractions, I found myself walking around the grounds, reading the historical markers, interpreting the interpretive maps. I noticed that there was a small landmass called Goat Island, out of the middle of the river, one of the features that gives the Falls that look, where it is divided occasionally, not one big solid Falls. It was accessible quite easily via a pedestrian bridge across the river, so I went out there, reading the Wikipedia entry on my phone as I went, the long and somewhat interesting history of the island, its ownership and various names. I arrived on the island to find a sweltering patch of grass, the heat dense with liquid, the roar of the falls now like a white noise outside myself, like a curtain descending. The island itself was no larger than a small park, and trees lined the northern edge, so that one couldn’t actually see the land fall away at the end.  I had the island entirely to myself. Of course the only thing to do on an island like that is to walk toward the edge. Walking through the grass I was assaulted by bugs everywhere, insects nipping at my legs, bouncing off my knees like miniature Kamikazes. The closer and closer I got to the river, the more amazed I was that there were no protections of any kind in place. One expects to find some sort of railing here, some warning signs, maybe even Park Rangers or something. But no, the island just walks right up to the river, and right up to the falls, anyone with dark designs would be in no way dissuaded.  The design of the island makes it challenging to walk right up to the falls, but instead it is very easy to sit at a clearing about twenty yards away from the actual precipice. I took my backpack off and sat in the grass, and looked out across the Niagara River, just beginning to get a real good head of steam up, just beginning to get its little whitecaps and wavelets, the water not knowing it was about to fly.  The heat washed over me, the insect buzzing began to mesh with the white noise of the falls, it all became a hot buzzing constant, I laid my head on the grass and sunk in, sunk down into the dirt, I was so far from home, and for a moment, I had no idea where I was, or maybe even who I was.

 

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“Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for something or someone to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun!”

‘Time’, by Pink Floyd

 

Days of Everything

 

It was a cold night, but not too cold, which was fortunate, because we had to park very far away from the arena. I unbuckled Boy from his car seat and heaved him into the air, bringing him next to my cheek to give him a kiss in the crisp evening air. “This soccer game?” He asked. “Yes,” I told him. “This is the big building I told you about.” I sat him down and stuck out my hand for him to grab, as we strolled quickly through the immense parking lot together. He had lots of questions. He kept calling it football, which was interesting, I thought, since most of the world referred to soccer as football, but he couldn’t possibly know that, could he? Most of his questions weren’t really about the sport we were about to go watch, but the building it was in. How could a building be so big that you could play soccer inside of it? How tall was it, was it taller than the telephone poles? Taller than our house? Will there be snacks? Soft pretzels? I’ve become accustomed to the constant barrage of questions at this point, pulling from deep within me a patience I honestly did not think I possessed.  Not that this patience is without limits—but at any rate, I seem to have more than I thought.  I suspect a toddler will prove this to be true of most anyone.

I was surprised by the patience he displayed as we waited in a long line to buy tickets. It seems every day, he is making leaps and bounds, growing in things like patience, understanding, and empathy. Which is not to say he’s still not a little ball of emotions that doesn’t know how to act, just maybe a little less so than a few months ago or a year ago. He’s becoming much more of a companion as opposed to a force of nature to wrangle and watch. While for the most part, time with Boy is still all about teaching, there are moments now of truly just being.  And “just being” with a little guy like boy is more magic than I’m accustomed to.

Finally, tickets procured, we entered the concourse, looking for our section. I hadn’t studied the arena map extensively, and had chosen seats in the section on the complete opposite side of the concourse, so we had to walk past countless souvenir stands and snack bars, him wanting desperately to stop at each, and also wanting to enter into each section as we passed, with me constantly trying to tell him that it wasn’t much farther, not much farther. But through it all, he didn’t freak out or melt down or cry, just implored me strongly. Finally we came upon our entrance to the arena, and I picked him up because I knew the stairs were going to be steep and he was probably going to be shocked by the sight of walking into the big room. Carrying him on my side, we entered the arena proper, and although an indoor soccer field lacks the nebulous breathtaking quality of a baseball field, the sudden shock of green and the expanse of a sudden cavernous room had its desired effect on the countencance of Boy, which is to say, it produced a certain amount of awe. After pausing to allow him to soak it in, we climbed up the steep steps, to find our seats. We were all alone in our section, something I had to ask the ticket man to do, in case it did not go very well. Boy was beyond excited to sit here. He was very into his seat, enamored with the idea that the number on it matched  the number on his ticket, and in this enormous room, this seat was his and his alone. He was not restless as I had feared, his eyes trained on the action on the field. I would steal sidelong glances at him, see his eyes glued to the action, his head swiveling as the ball bounced back and forth, his complete concentration and immersion something only possible in the earliest years of life, and during a first exposure to things; the sights and sounds meshing with dawning understanding, realization writ large across his face. He would sometimes stop his concentration to ask questions about the goalies, which he called The Goal Guys, their different colored jerseys causing him no end of confusion. Later, as he was able to again float back into our world, he would watch me for cues whenever the arena sound system would play the tropes of modern sporting events: the “Charge!” song, the “De-Fense!” chant, and on and on. He saw and understood there was an audience participation element and he wanted to learn.  I would raise my fist and yell “Charge!”, glancing over to see him mimic it, his tiny voice bursting forth its own “Charge!”  This moment, especially, nearly crippled me with emotion.

He paid close attention to the game and stayed quite interested for well over an hour and a half when he started to fall asleep on my shoulder. I told him I thought it was time to go, and he protested quite strongly, saying he didn’t want to miss anything. And I kept giving in, saying we could stay, and then he kept falling asleep again, until eventually I picked him up, went up the stairs to the upper concourse, and told him he should get down and walk around and look at all the empty chairs, all the sections without anybody in them. The arena was quite empty, in fact, especially once one got up to the upper reaches. We got to a very high section, a corner section so high up you could almost touch the roof in a few of the spots, and as we emerged into it, it became clear that it had not even been cleaned out or looked at after the preceding weekend’s Motocross event in the arena. Everywhere there was trash, even half-eaten food and some beer cans on their sides. It was an astonishing array of trash and smells to walk into amid what appeared to be an otherwise normal arena. It was immediately too late for me to backtrack and take him out of this section, he was much too interested in the hows or whys this could have happened. I explained as best I could that they assumed they would not sell any tickets in this section for the soccer game, so they must be waiting to clean up from the Motocross. He did not want to walk around the section, but he also didn’t want to leave. I picked him up and we watched the soccer from way high up near the ceiling, looking down on all that old trash and beer cans, until he looked at me and told me he was ready to go home. I felt that I had a companion here, a little guy who I could teach and learn from, who was now going to be interested in things, who was present with me.

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It wasn’t too long ago that we had a little get-together for Boy’s birthday. My Love’s father was there—and let me tell you, I like Love’s father so much it’s nearly criminal–as well as both of my parents and my paternal grandmother. My parents have been divorced for quite a few years, and yet they get along like the best of friends, and there was my dad’s mother, chatting it up with his ex-wife, all while boy ran around and told everyone he loves them all the time, and climbed on everybody, and climbed on me, while I held Loves hand, while the room was full of talk and laughter, while there was warmth everywhere, and everywhere I looked there was future, future, future.

 

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My love and I put on our light spring jackets and walked into the crisp evening. Just the two of us, we interlocked our hands, and headed down the street toward Midtown. It is one of the benefits of living where we do, that usually, given the right weather and the right child care situation, we can walk to some of the places that we like to spend time together. This night it was simple: we were going out to eat. It was one of the last walkable nights of the year, and we knew it. The cold was setting in, soon we would be driving everywhere and stuck inside like prisoners.  So tonight, we knew, was a walking night.

There was a very popular and artsy restaurant in the middle of Midtown, which somehow we still had not made it to. Recently they had started serving a very popular veggie burger, that all of our friends were talking about, and we still hadn’t tried. It had been on our list for weeks.

The thing about taking a somewhat lengthy walk with the person that you love is that it forces conversation you don’t normally have inside the house or perhaps in a moving car. You see things that you don’t normally see, are reminded of things you might only see or think of by yourself, you’re moving at an interesting pace, a different speed. I love holding hands and walking with my love. I love the way her hand feels, I love being connected to her physically in that way, I love being able to look at her face from the side so often. I love being able to point out things, and have her point out things to me, elements of our neighborhood that we only see when we are walking the dog by ourselves.  I love kissing her outside. Many people spend most of their lives in relationships and begin to take things like this for granted, maybe even very early on in life, they assume they will have a companion in this form. Having spent so long single, small things like holding hands, walking down the street, these things never seem anything other than magical to me. My love thrills me.  Literally every single thing about her. It’s electric.

Twenty minutes later we found ourselves the only customers in the artsy eating establishment, it being only five o’clock. We were talking about the art on the wall, the interesting sculptures, the funny man who kept looking at us askance from inside the kitchen. We talked about the interesting ordering system the restaurant used, the haphazard way salt was placed on some of the tables but not others, we talked about our days, we held hands and looked at each other. Sometimes we didn’t say anything and that was lovely in its own way. When you know someone is your true partner, being in their presence is a constant salve.

The food came and it was delicious, just as delicious as everyone says it is was, and it was fantastic to share a meal with someone who shares so many of my worldviews, who has the compassion in the same places I do, love and freedom in the same proportions, to share a meal with a woman who has taught me so much. As I was finishing off my Diet Pepsi, stealing glances at this woman, I kept thinking some of the same thoughts I come back to all the time.  How I waited so long to find her.  How, when I did find her, I couldn’t and still can’t believe how perfect she is.  How my journey to find her wasn’t about me, or even the journey, but it was about her, about us.  How I still learn about her every day and she’s such a delicious mystery.  How she fits so well.  I looked at her as I sat there, finishing my Diet Pepsi, and I said to her the only thing one can say, given the unbearable weight of the world:  I can’t believe you’re finally here.

 

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The days, good or bad, really do just stretch out like deserts, uncountable deserts, again and again and again.  Some, you find, contain nothing: plodding marches under a bored sun.  But sometimes, they are filled up, filled with everything you ever dreamed, brazen neon signs of days, confetti and love love love.  I don’t know about you, but I’m trying to figure out how to keep them filled up.  I want the days of everything, forever.

Days of Something

Philadelphia is a great city, but there’s nothing special about it in the winter. It becomes winter just like every place else becomes the winter: slowly, and then all at once. My first winter in the city was also the first winter I’d spent anywhere without a car. During the summer I had learned to get around by riding my bike and walking, and was just getting pretty good at it when the gradual winter hit all of a sudden. It was cold and it was windy, but didn’t snow for the first few months, and then one day, a day that I also happened to have off work, the sky opened up and dumped down about eight inches. It was a very different experience than my previous winters elsewhere, where you might go outside and walk around, do some shoveling, maybe go see a few of the local landmarks covered in the fluffy cliches. In a densely packed urban area that stretches out for miles and miles in any direction, and where local landmarks are a dime a dozen but breathtaking beauty might be a little scarce, I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with myself, other than sit on my couch and watch Netflix. Eventually I decided to just bundle up, put on some heavy shoes (since I never really am in the habit of keeping boots around) and venture out into the snow and see what happened. I started walking through the streets of my South Philly neighborhood, unplowed, unshoveled, the houses squished up against each other like sandwich bread, snow building up in the trashy pedestrian alleys between them, choking the tops of open the trash cans, pawprints sometimes the only sign anyone had been down a sidewalk.  And I kept walking and walking, taking note how it was different than my previous experience, and also ways in which it was similar, compare and contrast, compare and contrast, that is essentially how I Live every moment of my life. One experience must always be similar or different from previous ones; otherwise, how do you measure anything?  Eventually the neighborhood started to change as I kept walking, buildings got farther apart, the roads got wider, the streets were starting to be plowed, cars started moving around, the city seemed to wake up. I started passing people on the street and there was an air of conviviality, of shared experience. Everyone was saying hello, commenting on the snow, and it wasn’t just what people were saying, but the attitude, the feeling, like we were all finally together, not that we were undergoing any major hardship, but just that the presence of something so different, something so sudden, almost held us together like a web. Connection.  Eventually I realized I was closer to Independence Mall, which is the cluster of extremely significant historical sites in the city, than I was to home, so I just kept on walking. I arrived behind Independence Hall probably an hour and a half after leaving my house, still trudging through almost a foot of snow, surprised to see that there were a few people milling around, but only a few, much less than the hundreds and hundreds that crammed into this park in the summer months. I circled the building, taking note of what the roof looked like covered in snow, imagining it would have looked the same to George Washington or Thomas Jefferson when it snowed in the late 1700s. I crossed Chestnut Street, which is directly in front of Independence Hall, my feet not quite hitting the cobblestones, but still feeling the unevenness of the walk, as the snow impacted into the cracks around the cobblestones, as it surely has done to other foot travelers for centuries. I trudged across the open space in front of Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell to my left, taking note that it was still open, the Park Service still there and operating, but I didn’t see a soul in line to see the famed bell. I kept on going, heading towards the visitor center, with its bright glass interiors, newly built restrooms, shiny gift shop and concession stand. I often used to stop at the visitor center in the summer, as I was riding my bike around the city, for its quick and easy access to a restroom and bottled water.  As I swung open the heavy glass and stainless steel doors, it was clear to me that everyone inside the visitor center was surprised to see me, not because of anything about me, but simply because I was a human being. I was literally the only non-employee in this entire visitor center. It’s amazing what snow does to history tourism. Despite the fact that it was winter and snowing, I was sweating greatly, and was glad of the opportunity to take my coat off, breathe a little bit, stomp the snow out of every crease and crevice. I was thirsty and hungry, as I didn’t leave the house with the intention to walk halfway across the city, so I went straight to the concession stand, got me a bottle of water, a hot coffee, and some sort of breakfast sandwich.  I sat alone in the bright, metal cafeteria, my belly growing content as I fed it.  I took note that outside, it had begun snowing again, and heavier this time.  It was quiet in the visitor center.  I was far from home.

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This day started very early. I woke up around 4am not knowing what I was going to do with the day, but knowing that I wanted to wake up early enough to have a really thorough day, if you know what I mean. I was living by myself in Erie Pennsylvania, in an apartment, one bedroom, on the second level of an old house that was nearing dilapidation, but still teetering on the edge of respectability. It was smack-dab in the middle of summer, and waking up at 4am, the whole apartment was already laden with a heat, an oppressive second floor apartment kind of heat; a thin layer of sweat somehow on everything you looked at. I rolled out of bed, made myself a latte on my proudly-acquired home espresso machine, and set about pondering what to do with such a lengthy, summery kind of day all to myself.  I took a long, overly hot shower while the local morning news played on the television which I had crammed into my tiny bathroom. I stayed in the shower for the whole newscast, mind mostly blank. After the shower, while air drying mostly to cool off, I randomly selected a DVD from my bloated collection, and came up with “The 40 Year Old Virgin”, a movie that I don’t know how it ended up in my collection and no longer resides there, but at the time, a mindless comedy seemed just the ticket. I laid on my couch and let the Steve Carell comedy wash over me. Having gotten up so early that an immense amount of day still laid stretched out before me, even after my lengthy ablutions. What to do? Living by one’s self for so long, and so far from everyone you know, turns days and mornings into quiet studies of one’s inner mechanics, and if you linger too long without plans, your cogs and belts begin to make a lot of noise. Suddenly it hit me: Niagara Falls. I’d been living relatively close to Niagara Falls for almost a year at this point, and it was always something bouncing around the periphery of what I wanted to do, but I never quite made it there, never quite made that my actual plan. Almost the moment that it struck me, I bounded off the couch, went to my computer to MapQuest the directions, threw on some clothes and some essentials into a backpack, and I was out the door.  I don’t remember much about the drive, although certainly there had to be a drive. It was close but not incredibly close, probably something like an hour and 15 minutes. A decent trip, but then again, much closer than almost anyone else in the world lives to such landmark. I remember having trouble figuring out where to park when I got close to it, the town itself surrounding it not exactly being incredibly helpful with instructions.  Finally I did get my car parked, and walked across a large grassy mall, the sound of the falls quite distinct, just like you expect the sound of Niagara Falls to be: thunderous, droning, like a white noise that comes from within.  I remember hearing the falls, I remember a large grassy area you had to walk across to get to it, but I don’t remember actually arriving at the falls.  In fact, the order of what I did that day and the specifics of how I did it, are lost in the labyrinth of my brain. I did the touristy things, I rode the boat, I walked up and down the path alongside the falls, I wore the poncho they provide you. I took selfies on the boat, all by myself, surrounded by revelers and families and church groups. After doing the requisite attractions, I found myself walking around the grounds, reading the historical markers, interpreting the interpretive maps. I noticed that there was a small landmass called Goat Island, out of the middle of the river, one of the features that gives the Falls that look, where it is divided occasionally, not one big solid Falls. It was accessible quite easily via a pedestrian bridge across the river, so I went out there, reading the Wikipedia entry on my phone as I went, the long and somewhat interesting history of the island, its ownership and various names. I arrived on the island to find a sweltering patch of grass, the heat dense with liquid, the roar of the falls now like a white noise outside myself, like a curtain descending. The island itself was no larger than a small park, and trees lined the northern edge, so that one couldn’t actually see the land fall away at the end.  I had the island entirely to myself. Of course the only thing to do on an island like that is to walk toward the edge. Walking through the grass I was assaulted by bugs everywhere, insects nipping at my legs, bouncing off my knees like miniature Kamikazes. The closer and closer I got to the river, the more amazed I was that there were no protections of any kind in place. One expects to find some sort of railing here, some warning signs, maybe even Park Rangers or something. But no, the island just walks right up to the river, and right up to the falls, anyone with dark designs would be in no way dissuaded.  The design of the island makes it

A photo I took from Goat Island that day.

challenging to walk right up to the falls, but instead it is very easy to sit at a clearing about twenty yards away from the actual precipice. I took my backpack off and sat in the grass, and looked out across the Niagara River, just beginning to get a real good head of steam up, just beginning to get its little whitecaps and wavelets, the water not knowing it was about to fly.  The heat washed over me, the insect buzzing began to mesh with the white noise of the falls, it all became a hot buzzing constant, I laid my head on the grass and sunk in, sunk down into the dirt, I was so far from home, and for a moment, I had no idea where I was, or maybe even who I was.

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“Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for something or someone to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun!”

‘Time’, by Pink Floyd

Summer’s Elbow

Spoiler Alert

It rains and rains some more.  Some would say That’s summer and some say This should be over by now, but in the end, it’s raining a lot and the rain doesn’t know what month it is. I wonder if the months themselves know what month it is.  It’s my understanding that months don’t care about much.

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I saw the new Jurassic Park movie.  I liked it well enough.  It entertained me, which is more than many movies do, but of course much less than I ask of the movies I’m passionate about. One can’t deny it is occasionally nice to be simply entertained.  But even as the genetically-engineered dinos were (inevitably, terrifyingly) taking over the park, it can be difficult to shut off the part of my viewing mind that wants to pick everything apart.  Is the female character strong enough?  Does she exist just for the male character to obtain glory (in this instance, it passes my feminism test–but just barely).   What does a movie about resurrected extinct creatures (even if said movie is a summer popcorn flick) have to say about animal rights and the ethics of genetic cloning (in this instance, quite a bit, but it’s all a little aimless and lacks coherence).  These and many other questions I simply CAN’T turn off when I’m watching a movie, but ultimately, sometimes I just want to be wowed.  And at least this dino flick provided me with interesting questions to ask in between raptor maulings.

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My love’s son (which makes him My Little Love, or for the sake of brevity, in the future on this blog he will be My boy) is a very active and delightful little guy.  My love and I spend hours playing with him in the backyard (meaning: we chase him around) and we have developed quite a few fun routines.  One of our favorites is when he balances on the row of bricks that line our patio.  He carefully balances on one before moving to the next.  As he reaches each brick, he pauses and announces to all assembled one of two things: he says either Doo-Doo, or Dee-Dee.  There doesn’t seem to be any particular significance that causes it to be a Doo-Doo or a Dee-Dee.  He can walk around the approximately dozen bricks and one will hear a random assortment of the syllables, like this:  Doo-Doo, Doo-Doo, Dee-Dee, Doo-Doo, and so on.  It’s a special kind of adorable.  My love and I now find ourselves saying it moments when the boy isn’t around, when we have a moment of careful or precarious walking, or some such thing.  Secretly I’ve started thinking of it as a mantra for any moment that requires great care or special attention, or when you are close to great accomplishment.  Holy moly, that cop almost gave me a speeding ticket.  Dee-Dee.  Or maybe We got the discount even though the sale ended last week.

Doo-Doo.

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I went hiking today with a dear friend of mine.  It’s been a long time since I went hiking.  I used to be very familiar with the woods and parks and trails around here; it was a passion for me.  Then I got gripped by the circumstances of my life and ended up spending a few years in a city, far removed from any kind of real wilderness.  Today was a real joy for me to spend time in the real woods again (and with Michael) but it raised more questions for me than it answered.  Do people necessarily have to be Country People or City People?  Is this like the old Cat Person/ Dog Person question, where people won’t let you be both?  How did I spend so long away from the woods and not feel like I was missing something?  And how did I love the city so much yet not feel its absence now? What is the true sound of my soul–cicadas or car horns?

Can you even imagine–I mean can you imagine–what this land looked like to the first European settlers when they landed here?  Here in what would become Pennsylvania, it was all trees.  Very literally.  All trees.  The going must have been rough if you were trying to bring your boat inland for any reason, or build a fort.  Clearing a little land to plant some crops.  I can imagine some of those scraggly be-hatted Euros probably thought of the amount of trees as an actual hindrance.  Imagine!  Today Michael and I spent two or three hours at a picturesque Pennsylvania State Park–in which our government has politely provided restrooms, clear hiking trails and other amenities, all while doing a fair job of conserving nature to a high degree.  The whole time we were there (it wasn’t a beautiful day, but it IS June) we saw about 7 people.  I bet on a similar day in 1950 we would have seen 700 people.

This isn’t just a typical bitching about people not enjoying nature anymore.  I’m just wondering.  How long will it be until nobody remembers why we’re keeping these places around?  How many country boys will hear car horns in their souls?  It’s even been brought to my attention recently that most people dislike sweating!  What will become of the parks?

We saw like a thousand frogs today, and one big fish that was standing still underwater like it was dead, and then it disappeared.

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Shackleton, after being stranded in the arctic with his men for two years, finally saved them all with zero loss of life.  He did this by sailing (with four of his crew) for 800 miles in a tiny boat to the whaling outpost on South Georgia Island, which, coincidentally, was the same island they had embarked from on their mission two years earlier. One can only imagine (you can only imagine) how much these men must have thought about, talked about, and dreamt about getting back to this island, which itself was a far-flung outpost of civilization.  Ernest Shackleton and his 28 men were eventually all returned to their normal, day-to-day lives.  Shackleton had already been quite famous and of course he became more so then.  But somehow, only four years later, he found himself back on remote and barren South Georgia Island, preparing to embark on another quest.  But as luck would have it, his luck had run out, and he had a heart attack and died, right there on South Georgia Island.  And he’s still buried there.  The island he made a monumental and Herculean effort to get to, so he could get back to civilization, that’s where he’s buried.  Doo-Doo, Dee-Dee.

The Past is a Melted Glacier

The section of the Susquehanna River that flows past Harrisburg has, by far, the most bridges in close proximity I’ve ever seen in my life. At one point the vehicle, train, and pedestrian bridges are so close to each other, you might be tempted to think immense, 300-foot-high mirrors have been slid behind some of them.  The reflection off the water only heightens the effect.  When one first encounters and really ponders them, many natural questions follow.  Why so many, so close?  How did this come to pass?  The city, the river, and the bridges have, I suspect, a long tale to tell.

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It is this time of year that I am most alive. I can feel the air buzzing around me, the close buzzing of air and oxygen and the thickness of invisible moisture. All-everywhere life is springing forth, preparing to display its full self.  Today I was simply unable to stay indoors, needing to feel the pavement under my bicycle wheels, exploring this city which I have always kind of known but never known, letting the sun warm up my skin, feel my pigment change shade. I was made for heat.

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Once every few years I become immersed for a few weeks in one of my minor tangential interests, early polar exploration. It’s not something I’m interested in enough to become an expert, or to have it be a true hobby, but it’s definitely something that intrigues me, for reasons I don’t quite understand. I have a special interest in Franklin’s lost expedition and the great adventure of Shackleton’s Endurance.  I just finished reading the definitive book on Shackleton’s journey, “Endurance” by Alfred Lansing. I finished the last two thirds of it in a breathless sprint today, in coffee shops and under the summer sky by the river. My brain is filled with polar agony, soaked horsehair sleeping bags, salt water-filled mouths, brittle frozen beards. The thing that I always find in these tales is that despite some of the hardest and most intense human suffering you can imagine, they are always filled with joy, hope, and celebration. And also mystery, and the idea of being somewhere nobody else has ever been, or probably will ever be again, and the vast majestic mystic magical landscape, in a world that doesn’t give a shit about you. So yeah, cherry stuff. Good summer reading.

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In the quiet moments that I have, I’ve always spent an inordinate amount of time contemplating the bigger issues of the universe. Time, past, memory, and the nature of oneself. Not to sound hoity-toity, that is just what I do. Lately I have found myself mesmerized by the change that has occurred in the recently, and suddenly. I spent most of my adult life espousing the fact that being alone was my best gateway into the secrets of the universe. And I’m not backtracking now, I’m not saying I was wrong. Just that maybe these long years alone were perfectly setting me up to best experience the other side of the coin. Now I can see that living with a partner, child, and, yes, a dog, are enlightening parts of myself I’ve never even seen or thought of before. In the best possible ways, I don’t even know who I am anymore.

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Karla and I were taking a walk through our new neighborhood the other day, when we walked past an ornately and oddly built and designed church, sporting in huge block letters across the front PLACE OF PRAYER FOR ALL PEOPLE. We stopped to look at it and talk about its unique brickwork and design, when we noticed the two large angel statues at the top of the building on either side of the minaret. They were odd-looking men (both were identical). Unlike most religious imagery on most ornate churches, the faces of these male angels looked…modern.  Like some dude you might see in the mall.  But there was something else strange about them that we couldn’t quite put our finger on. Then it dawned on me.  I turned to Karla and said,  It looks just like George Carlin. After a moment’s hesitation, Karla burst out laughing. It was undeniable.

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I’m actually dictating this blog entry into my cell phone, while sitting on a bench in the black of night overlooking the vast but comprehendible Susquehanna River. It’s a warm night, warm enough for the bugs to be nibbling at my legs, but the breeze off of the river is calming and cooling, drying my sweat off my skin enough to keep me temperate. It reminds me of summer days and evenings in Erie, a period of my life that is not that long ago, but is also quite different than recent.  The temperature and the breeze transport me right inside my 2008 Saturn Aura, with the windows down driving down Peninsula Drive, heading out onto Presque isle, the peninsula that juts out into Lake Erie, making it also the northernmost point in the state of Pennsylvania. On one side you have Presque Isle Bay, the safe harbor formed by the city of Erie and the peninsula, and as you drive your car around the tip of the peninsula, it opens up to the vast lake, a body of water that climbs to the horizon like a mountain, not unlike an Arctic ice floe. I remember the wind through my car, the heat and humidity, the breeze off the water, an enormous plastic cup of Dunkin’ Donuts caramel iced coffee, the sugar crunching at the bottom as my straw tapped it, The National’s  “Squalor Victoria” blasting out of my stereo. It was quite a day, and quite a period in my life. But that guy, he and I don’t stay in touch anymore. I don’t know him. There’s a new me here to discover. The past is a melted glacier.

Juggler, Fairmount Park

Philly Journal, 7/24/14

It is not unusual for me to throw whatever current book or magazine or newspaper I am reading into a backpack and bike to one of the city’s parks or otherwise unique public spaces to do some outdoor reading.  I was just about to do that this evening, when I realized that I always go pretty far away to do this–usually the mile and a half or two miles toward Center City to hang out in one of the more illustrious or famous public spaces.  There are tons of parks near me, but these are actual parks, used by the residents who are regular folks!  I suppose I’ve stayed away from them not only because they are less interesting, but because I have typically felt like an outsider at them.  But this evening I took my book straight to Mifflin Square Park, by far the closest park to my house, at only 5 blocks away.  Mifflin Square Park is unique in that it is bordered on two of its four sides by the largest population of Cambodian residents in the state of Pennsylvania.  Not everyone who uses this park is Cambodian, but I would say 80% of the folks there are in fact Cambodian. Like, first-generation, speaking-Cambodian folks.  It wasn’t my first time there, but it was my first time spending any significant amount of time there.  It was nice!  Very pleasant folks (except the group of white teenagers sitting a bench next to me who were smoking weed).  I took some pictures that you might find pretty interesting:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kingdom of Rust

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Philly Journal, 6/4/14

To see all previous Philly Journal entries, click here!

So I had a fairly marvelous day today. One of my favorite days, in fact, in recent memory.  It is finally summer, and I finally had a very nice day off.  I rose early and left the house early, astride my trusty steed (my bike).  My original plan was to explore this, but I got foiled by security guards watching the entrances.  I had planned to make a big exciting video about the experience but was left with only this.  So, barely after 9am and already sweaty and way far from home, I had a whole summer day to find stuff to do.

I ended up doing a whole bunch of stuff, but I was especially taken with my trip around the Schuylkill River Trail.  This is a bike/ pedestrian trail that starts near the Art Museum and stretches in a ten mile loop through what is known as Fairmount Park.  It is a fantastic trip!  I had been aware there was a trail there, but I had never known it was a loop that crosses over the river at two points and allows you to end up where you started.  It was one of the more invigorating, fun, and recuperative things I’ve done since I moved into the city.  So of course, I took some video of it and set it to some music for you.  I understand there are pretty few of you who will actually want to watch this, but if you find yourself truly bored right now, or want to see an area of Philadelphia you may never experience, well, this is for you:

 

 

 

Get Out of the Kitchen

In the few years since I’ve begun riding a bike for pleasure, I have found a curious thing to hold true: if you want to experience deafening, post-apocalypse-like solitude, there is no place quite like small town or suburban streets in the middle of summer.

Let me state this again: when it gets hot out, the streets of your local neighborhood are always empty.  Eerily so.

OK so, people don’t like the heat, so what?  That’s certainly fine with me.  Go wherever you want and like whatever you want; I’m always glad everyone doesn’t like the same stuff I like (you’d all be making me wait in line for shit)!  But as I was riding my bike around a sweltering small town today, glorying in the sweat on the inside of my cap and the buzzing of relentless insects and the lively way sound has of travelling through active, hot air, I couldn’t help but ponder the many conversations I’ve had with people about their aversion to heat.

I’m pretty into summer, and most people aren’t, so I’ve had lots of these conversations.

Very close to 100% of people give a form of this argument for an anti-summer stance:

At least in the winter, you can go somewhere and warm up, maybe throw a blanket over yourself.  In the summer, sometimes you just get real hot and there’s nothing you can do about it. Give me a blanket any day!

What a load of steaming bullshit.  It is certainly possible that you think that way, and if so, may I suggest that you’re a wanker?  You mean to tell me the foremost thing you base your human happiness on is your level of physical comfort in relation to the atmospheric temperature?  How dreadfully boring, how devoid of active thought or action, how painfully insipid of a way to think about your life.  So, more than anything, you just want to be comfortable, eh?

You know, in many instances, comfort is a synonym for complacency.  That means not giving a shit.

(I have a few readers in parts of the world that are not “four season” areas; this rant applies very little to them)

Curling up under a blanket, while certainly a nice escape from the death season which is Winter, is certainly no valid recompense for losing the ability to partake in just about any meaningful outdoor activity (please, if you’re contemplating commenting about snowboarding, making snowmen, snowball fights, etc, please read this old entry of mine, and then take a flying leap).  It is inherent in the very reasons you give for liking “cold over hot” that these activities revolve around escaping from life, withdrawing from action, focusing on comfort and the absence of the cold from your living room, rather than anything that is celebratory, life-affirming, or satisfying of your human curiosity.

I reject your argument about blankets, fireplaces, and Christmas.  It is invalid.  You don’t like cold more than you like heat.  You like comfort more than you like living.

The Lost Andrea Pictures

What is now many years ago (five? six?  fuck…seven?) my friend Andrea and I spent a lovely day together doing this and that in the middle of a lovely, blistering hot summer day.  We took with us a disposable black-and-white camera and took many jolly photos.  That disposable camera promptly became forgotten in the bottom of my messenger bag for half a decade. 

Shortly after moving to Erie, I found the camera and had it developed.  What a stunning, bizarre feeling, to see these images from one day so long ago, all of a sudden.  And I was stunned, too, by the quality of the images.  At least for my taste, these are some terrific photographs (taken by both Andrea and myself).  And I am pretty much in love with how the black-and-white prints look after being scanned into my computer; there is a timeless, classical quality to them.  Here are some of my favorites of what I’ve come to call “The Lost Andrea Pictures”:

 

Ten Mini-Memoirs

1.  The first concert I ever went to was 80s superstar Tiffany.  I remember being very excited, despite not really knowing who she was or what was going on.  I went with my mother and my sister; it was at The Forum in Harrisburg.  This is one of those memories that consists of just a few details and sensory portraits. Bright, colorful lights.  Standing on the cushioned chair.  So many people. 

2.  I’ve always thought that somehow I got my love of Dr. Pepper from my Grandma Allie, though I do not know where this belief comes from.  I have never seen her drink it, not does she ever have any at her house.  But I have a flash of a memory:  my family, on vacation in Ocean City, Maryland.  Grandma and I, somehow, are alone in the hotel room.  I am very young.  We are sitting at the dining room table together, discussing (to my memory) two things:  how much my allowance is, and Dr. Pepper.  On the table with us is a sweating, lovely crimson 2 liter bottle of Dr. Pepper.  This small, insignificant memory has forever welded Grandma Allie and Dr. Pepper together for me.

3.  I lost my virginity in the Subaru Legacy station wagon that had been passed down to me from my mother, on a dirt road in the far, far out country of Perry County, Pennsylvania, at the age of 16.  The rap album Regulate by Warren G. was playing, and I was 16 years old.  The car smelled of vanilla car air freshener.  I had one of those tree-shaped air fresheners hanging from the volume knob of the radio.  I used a green condom, for reasons unknown.

4.  My dad and I used to go to Harrisburg Senators games all the time.  They are the minor league baseball team for that city.  I remember very little of the games themselves.  What I remember most is the arrival and the departure, but especially the departure.  We’d usually leave early if the result was clear, so we walked past all the seated fans, then out to a largely empty parking lot.  Then, inside Dad’s car, he’d tune into the AM station broadcasting the Senator’s game.  The combination of drying sweat, kicking-in air conditioning, the calming sounds of a radio-broadcasted baseball game, and often gloaming sunset light—well, things don’t get much better than that, at any age, I dare say.

5.  I went on a vacation to Vermont with my friend Brock’s family, when Brock and I were teenagers.  At the time, it seemed like a pretty boring vacation, compared to my family’s beach vacations.  We stayed at a sleepy lake town called Lake Rescue, in a very posh cabin.  It all must have been very expensive.  Nowadays, it’s just the kind of vacation I’d like to take—grilling delicious meat on the stained-oak deck overlooking the sun setting over the lake, lazy days canoeing, hiking the flat trails, falling asleep to the sound of ducks diving for food.  At the time, though, Brock and I were miserably bored, though we did invent a sport called Twizzling, the rules of which I have long since forgotten.

6.  My first real drink of alcohol—other than a few sips of champagne at somebody’s wedding sometime—was what the kids call a “40” (a 40-ounce bottle of Malt Liquor) and a few Zimas.  I was 16.  It was at the apartment of an adult who I did not know, but who knew one of my friends.  He supplied us the alcohol.  We just sat around, consuming, and it was frankly a little boring.  I didn’t feel much.  After completing my allotment of Zimas, I asked the adult friend-of-a-friend if he could go back to the bar (which was just across the street) and buy me “a beer”, which I thought might put me over some sort of edge.  I didn’t know you couldn’t just buy one can of beer, and I got laughed at.  I wouldn’t have my “a-ha moment” with alcohol until the second time I drank it, though I usually combine these two stories for a more powerful “alcoholic’s first drink” story, but that version is not true.  The bar where the adult frind-of-a-friend bought the alcohol went out of business and recently became a pizza shop, less than a block from my last apartment in Carlisle.  I used to go there for pizza all the time.

7.  I have had sex in the projection room of a movie theater.

8.  While I have never been a grade-A athlete, there were, for a time, things I excelled at, though none of them were of any use to me in organized sports.  I was very good at gym class type things, like floor hockey.  At my high school, we played a lot of a specific type of dodgeball called “bombardment”, and I was freaking amazing at bombardment.  Two years running, it was offered as a ‘club’ (a fun class of your choosing you had once a week) and I took it, along with my more athletically-skewing pals.  We were on a team called the Pussycats, and we dominated for the entire two years it was offered as a club, winning all 4 championships (2 a year).  The only thing is, the first championship we won, I cheated.  I had been hit by a ball, and no one saw it, and I didn’t tell anyone, and I was the last man standing for our team.  So if I’d have been honest, we would have lost.

9.  I once saw my sister fly over the handlebars of her ten-speed bike after she tried jumping a hill I had urged her to jump, and it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life.  I thought she’d die!

10.  My father and I went golfing once, and little did we know that the water in the golf course’s drinking fountains actually had a high level of fecal matter in it.  It was a very hot day, and we drank a lot of it.  The next day, my mother, myself, and my grandma Cohick went to see WWF Live in Hershey.  On the way there, I ate (and swallowed) an entire pack of grape bugglegum.  Halfway through the show, I got very ill, and once we got home, I vomited and kept on vomiting for what seemed days (I think, in fact, it was days).  It wasn’t until later that we pieced together what all happened, after a class-action lawsuit was brought against the golf course.  To this day, I cannot chew grape bubblegum.

Seth’s Favorite Poems

 Click here to read all the previous poems in this series.

The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
by Dylan Thomas

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
is my destroyer;
and I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
my youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
how at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
hauls my shroud sail;
and I am dumb to tell the hanging man
how of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
how time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
how at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

 

The Fountain in Perry Square, downtown Erie, 7/29

I Keep Getting Stuck in Rain!

First this (it was worse than it looks):

Then this (it was worse than it looks):

Which lead to this:

Videos taken on my recent trip home

Sunset Over Liberty Park, Erie 7/9/10

LML

I just had a really awesome day.

While I’d love nothing more than to write a lengthy, detailed narrative of said awesome day, I don’t really have time, so I’m just gonna tell you about one moment that was a really knockout moment for me.

I was in Buffalo, NY to see an Ed Kowalczyk show (he’s the former lead singer of LIVE).  The show was a free show in a small park in a square in downtown.  I arrived around noon (first openng act was to go on at 5) and parked about 20 feet from the park.  I spent awhile scoping out the venue (the stage was up and there was ‘staff’ milling about, but the park was otherwise empty) and then I commenced wandering around the city for a bit.

(quick side note:  I love Buffalo.  Why?  It’s the most pedestrian-centric city I’ve ever been in.  Wider sidewalks than Manhattan, soft music piped EVERYWHERE.  You can’t even see the speakers, they must be hidden in planters, etc…just a great city to walk around in.  I’ll post a full entry about this sometime)

Anyway, after about two hours of wandering I ended up just a block from the stage a Lafayette Square, sitting at an outdoor table at a coffee shop, drinking a really delicious, piping hot caramel latte.  The sun was shining, it was about 80 degrees with a gentle lake breeze, I had nowhere to go, the quiet light jazz was being piped onto the street from somewhere, and life was just really freaking nice.  (this was when I Facebook-statused “LML”).   It was an incredibly simple, beautiful moment, and it’s magnificence was not lost on me. 

After sitting and enjoying the moment for a few minutes, I was jarred to reality by the thought that an Ed Kowalczyk song was playing down at the square (this was still only about 3pm).  I thought, It’s quite odd they’d play an Ed song on the day of an Ed show, as I thought they had simply started playing music through the massive speakers set up for the concert.  but after a few minutes I realized the sound was too “live”.  Ed was soundchecking!  I got up and walked (did not run) down the block to the park.  Ed and his band were playing one of the new songs off Ed’s solo album (which I did not hear any of until I bought it at the merch table after the show, so I fear I’ll never know what song I hear them soundcheck).  There were about 6 people in the park watching Ed’s soundcheck, and I suspect all of them just happened to be in the park.  I’m pretty sure I was the only Ed fan there.  I stood in the center of the park and watched Ed Kowalczyk play a song just for me, while still sipping my latte and enjoying the sunshine and breeze.  This was an incredible moment. 

After they were done playing, I took this video of Ed talking into the mic to prove how alone I was in the park:

Times Like These

I arrived at The Silo in Reading, PA at about 5pm Friday.  This was an hour and a half before doors were to open.  I always get to shows early, so I can be guaranteed to actually see the action on stage.  When you’re as short as I am, you get sick of spending money to look at the back of some dude’s head.  However, even I knew that this early arrival was probably unnecessary.  If you don’t know alot about Seven Mary Three, let me be the first to tell you, this is no longer a popular band, and they were never more than marginally popular to begin with.  They are, by most measures, a one-hit wonder, and time has largely forgotten them.  At their peak in the late nineties, 7m3 was playing to sold out crowds at the more premiere, mid-size national act clubs in the country; (such as Trocodero and Seattle’s Showbox)  now, touring-wise, they are one step above a bar band (but they are not a bar band yet!). I want to make that clear, before anyone thinks the story I’m about to relate is more impressive than it actually is.  It is not impressive in a real sense, but it was a huge night from my perspective.

At 5pm, Silo’s parking lot was empty, save 6 or 7 cars.  I took them time to walk back out Silo’s driveway so I could take a picture of the marquee.  The much dilapidated marquee.

Then I walked back to the building.  There was one guy standing by the door, and he was holding a clipboard.  Naturally I walked up to him so I could ask my usual questions:

1.  Where will the line form?

2. What is the camera policy?

3. Are there different areas for over/under 21, and if so, which area is closer to the stage, and how will I know how to do this once inside the door?

Of course, these are questions for a situation where there is a line, and people are streaming into the building.

I approach the guy.  “Is this where the line will form?”

“I have no idea,” guy says.

He was a fan.  His clipboard was pictures of the band, which he was going to try and have signed.  This guy was a bigger fan than I am!  I learned his name was Tim, and boy-howdy, if we didn’t strike up a really fast friendship!  Aside from my buddy Paul (who was unable to attend due to his wife’s impending due-date–damned priorities!) there is probably no one else in the state of Pennsylvania who I can talk to about 7m3 like this.  What 7m3 album would you take to a desert island? (We both agree it’s RockCrown) Are there really only two utternaces of “fuck” in the 7m3 catalogue? (Yes.) I sure do miss Jason Pollock, don’t you miss Jason Pollock? (He misses him more than I do.)  Is there a way in which the album day&nightdriving is NOT a breakup album? (No.  It is entirely a breakup album)  And on and on.  I was happy as a squirrel at a squirrel party.

Shortly after I met Tim, he proceeded to tell me that after I parked my car and walked to take a picture of the marquee, Casey Daniel (7m3’s bassist) walked out of the club and into the adjacent Holiday Inn.  I was floored!  I had yet to comprehend that this band wasn’t still the band that I watched from a balcony at a sold-out 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, ten years ago, and that The Silo in Reading is not The Electric Factory.

Now, I really fucking love Casey Daniel.  He is one of the few bassists out there who I am a true fan of what they do.  The man is a mad genius.  His intricate yet subtle, balls-to-the-wall bass lines truly turn some medicore 7m3 tunes into masterpieces.  I listen to some songs, like “First Time Believers”, just to listen to what Casey is doing.  I couldn’t believe I had just missed him.

Now, I no longer do the whole “hero worship” thing.  Five, ten years ago, I thought my favorite artists were some kind of gods, and if I met them–which I really really wanted to–I’d have peppered them with silly questions relating to the myth surrounding them; some silly hints in liner notes or recurring names in films or irregular iambic structures in poems, and just told them ten different ways that they were “awesome”.  Then, a few years ago, something changed, and I came to the realization that even though these people were immensely talented, they were all just people.  Hell, I know some immensely talented people who just happen to not be famous, and sometimes I’m just watching them eat a hot dog.  So, I decided I did not want to meet my artistic idols.  I did not want to bother them, and I now thought it awkward that I would want to meet a regular person; it seemed homo-erotic and obsessive.  Listen to the music, watch the movie, read the book–and leave it at that.  You’re already having a conversation with them, and that’s where that conversation is meant to end.

Then, about 6 months ago, my sister won meet-and-greet passes to meet the band LIVE (a band I also adore with all my heart), although in the end there was a mix-up and she ended up not getting to meet them.  But as the day of the meet-and-greet drew near, we were talking about what she would say to them.  She was a bit stumped, as was I.  Then I said, “I’d just thank them for everything they’ve done for me.”  And I knew right then that I wanted to do that, to say that, to all the artists who had enriched my life, meant so much to me, gotten me through such hard shit, and made the sweet moments of my life so much sweeter.  Sure, I can keep throwing money at them, but wouldn’t it be satisfying for everyone involved if I could also tell them that they meant something in my life?

So.  I was upset that I’d missed Casey.  But no more than 2 minutes after Tim tells me this does Jason-fucking-Ross (vocals, rhythm guitar, lyrics, undenied leader and spirit of the band) walk out the door 5 feet from me, talking on a cell phone!  Now I was certain this wasn’t the Electric Factory!  I was totally ready to introduce myself right then and there and thank him profusely and even tell him that the album Orange Ave. helped me greatly with my recovery from alcoholism, but he was only out there for a minute, and he was on his cell phone the whole time.

But!  Moments later, lead guitarist Thomas Juliano is walking straight toward us!  Tim grabs him first.  “Tom!  Tom!  can we just have a moment of your time?”

Let me tell you, Tom had more than a moment for us, he had five minutes for us, and he’s really cool. Not like, cool in the sense of, he’s just a regular Joe; no, Thomas Juliano is they type of guy who is so cool, you wish you could be that cool.  And I’m not saying he’s cocky–he was anything but cocky.  He was down-to-earth (after all, he’s playing The Silo) and very, very appreciative of our attention.  And I got to do something that I’ve wanted to do countless times with countless artists:  I got to tell him specific stuff that he had specifically done that had touched me.  I told him how much I loved his playing on “Where Are You Calling From?”–how the emotions of his playing perfectly matched the content of the lyrics, how he worked in perfect concert with the rhythm section to literally drive the song like a big rig through Jason Ross’s emotions, etc etc.  I was having so much fun!  And then, Tom and Tim and I just chatted–about getting gray hair, about how much he missed the old tour bus (Tim had a picture of it; they tour in a van now), and about the hat he was wearing.  Then he kindly imformed us he had to go, but told us to stick around after the show!

Then, mere moments later, here comes Casey Daniel!  We’re on a roll!  We stop Casey and it’s more of the same, and Casey is of course really cool too, but in a different way than Thomas is.  I can imagine being roommates with Casey Daniel–and I’d be the responsible one.  You immediately feel at ease around him, as though you’ve been friends forever.  He drops the F-Bomb within 60 seconds of meeting you.  He lets a cigarette hang in his mouth while he talks.  He has less of a fashion sense than I do.  It was seriously like just meeting a guy on the street; within moments, any apprehension I had was gone; suddenly, I knew Casey Daniel.

My new buddy Tim with Casey

I was even more excited to thank Casey than I was to thank Thomas; I just go apeshit over Casey’s bass playing, and it really does add alot of emotional punch to what is happening in the songs lyric-wise.  The first thing I mentioned–and I’m actually saying it as the picture of us together was being taken–was that his playing in the song “Headstrong” makes me poop my pants.  And then I did a very smart thing: I got specific.  “That change you do, in the middle of the final chorus, where you take it up a notch.”  His eyes lit up–someone actually wanted to talk about his bass playing!!  And did he ever start throwing me golden nuggets!  He told us (for it was not just me, but Tim and I recieving this special moment) the story of “Headstrong” being written–how it was him and Jason Ross living together in a little apartment in Virginia, it was the middle of summer, and on and on.  He even showed us some of the song on an “air bass”!    Then the conversation steered toward more rare songs, and I mentioned how much I love “Shelf Life” (which was never on a 7m3 album) and his eyes lit up big time; I suppose they don’t have many hard core fans anymore who know the deep tracks.  So he told us about “Shelf Life”, and how it materialized, musically, out of jam session in an attic with just himself and Giti Khalsa (the band’s drummer, who unfortunately is not touring with them at the moment, as he has just opened a restaurant in Florida.  Some dude is touring in his place but I never did meet him).  Then we chatted amiably, Casey talking alot about his bout of Shingles a few years back, which caused him to gain alot of weight and make sit hard for him to play bass sometimes.  We must have talked to Casey for ten minutes.

6:30 arrived, and no one else was there to form a “line”, so Tim and I just sorta waltzed into the place by ourselves.  Inside there is a huge island bar, tables throughout, a surprisingly large stage, and a railed-in “pit” area, about 20 feet square,  in front of the stage.  We immediately see Casey at the bar and we stop and talk to him some more.  It is unbelievably congenial.  Because Paul will want to know:  he was drinking a bottle a Budweiser.

After a few minutes of talking to Casey, I edged away and sat at a table.  Although Casey showed no signs of being annoyed by us–in fact, seemed to like us quite a bit–I was still wary of overstaying my welcome and bothering him.  Eventually Tim joined me, and we settled on staying at this table during the FIVE OPENING BANDS (which I’m not going to bother to talk about there) or until people started actually standing at the stage.  We were going to be front row either way, but we weren’t going to stand up there for five openers.

I should take a moment to tell you that Tim was getting stealthily drunk, and this is an awesome fact about Tim.  As we were waiting outside, the fact of my recovery had come up in our conversation and he was fully understanding.  As we sat at our table throughout the night, Tim would get up “to go to the bathroom” about once every half hour.  He would return, every time, with a bottle of water for himself and a Coke for me, despite my protestations.  It also became clear that Tim was getting drunk, almost certainly doing a quick shot of something during his stop at the bar.  How cool is that? Here I am, a guy he’s only known for two hours, and he’s going out of his way to not bring a drink to our table, even though I had told him outside that I am perfectly fine being around booze now, in bar settings, etc.  However, around the fourth opening act, this also got a bit annoying, because he was drunk.  He began forgetting what we had already talked about, and we had a couple of conversations for the second time.  Nonetheless–a sweet gesture, and I got a lot of free Coke (I did buy him one bottle of water once on a return trip from the bathroom.)

As the second opening act was playing–the only good one, too–I saw Jason-fucking-Ross walking though the bar in a tremendous hurry.  He was doing that quick-walking thing, when you’ve really got some place to be.  But I couldn’t help myself–I was on a roll.  I’d met Thomas and Casey, I simply could not leave without at least saying “Thank you” to Jason.  So I, um, kinda, a little bit, stood in his way and stopped him.  I stuck out my hand, introduced myself, and said “Thank you for everything.”  He was very cool about it, and he thanked me for listening and for showing up, and then he was off.  I didn’t get a picture with him, but I told him what I wanted to, and I hope he really heard it.

Nobody came to this concert.  Nobody.  By the time 7m3 went on (midnight) There were about 30 people in the pit area (most standing near the back, not the stage) and maybe 20 other people at tables and at the bar.  It was like watching them play in somebody’s basement.  It was neat, but I was sad for the band.  They may have headlined only large clubs, but they have played arenas, as recently as 2004, when they opened for Nickleback.  So an empty club in podunk Pennsylvania mut not look very awesome from that stage.  But Tim and I, from our spots nuzzled up to the stage (no barrier) were determined to rock the fuck out and show these guys some love.

All four guys came onto the stage to ge ttheir equipment ready.  They noodled around for awhile, tuning guitars, etc.  Then Casey went somewhere.  And he didn’t come back.  And he didn’t come back.  And he didn’t come back.  Finally some dude comes onto the stage and whispers something into Jason-fucking-Ross’s ear, and Jason is obviously pissed.  I figure, Casey has gotten into some shit.  Maybe he has diahrrea, or a phone call from a girlfriend, or something.  So Jason confers with Thomas and the drummer guy, and moments later, Jason says into the mic, simply, “Uh, we’re gonna do something until Casey gets back.”

Then Jason and Thomas proceeded to play a guitars-only version of “Times Like These”, a quiet, contemplative song from their masterpiece album RockCrown. Now, I follow 7m3’s setlists online, and, although “Times Like These” may have been played, at the most, 30 times over the last decade, it has certainly never been a show opener, and it hasn’t been played in at least 5 years, not that I’ve seen, anyway.  This was one of the last songs I expected to hear. This is just the first of many thrilling moments.

The setlist:

Main set:

Times Like These
RockCrown
Was a Ghost
Last Kiss
Headstrong
Shelf Life
Joliet
Settle Up
She Wants Results
Peel
My My
Upside Down
Over Your Shoulder
Dislocated
Southwestern State
Roderigo
Cumbersome
Breakdown

Encore:

Water’s Edge
Strangely at Home

Yeah.  Do you see the songs I’ve put in bold there?  Yeah.  The songs I mentioned to Casey.  And these are not songs played by this band frequently.  “Headstrong” gets played somewhat–maybe 20% of the setlists I’ve looked at.  But “Shelf Life”?  That’s as rare as looking in the toilet after you take a crap and finding an Oscar statuette.  As both songs started, Casey (who I was directly in front of) pointed at me and smiled.  We nodded our heads at each other.  During the bass line change at the end of “Headstrong”, I was all about Casey, and he was all about me.  We watched each other and smiled, and I  jumped around like a lunatic.  It was like living in a dream.  Literally, it was like living in a dream.

I won’t bother you with why the rest of this setlist is bonkers-crazy unreal.  If you are familiar with the band, then you already know.  But I just kept crapping my pants over and over again.  And Tim and I were rocking out, jumping, throwing our arms in the air, singing at all the right parts, and letting Jason sing when we had no right to be singing (like in “Southwestern State”).  I’d turn around occasionally, and see that the room was getting even emptier; people were leaving.  Oh well–let them.  Seven Mary Three don’t need no room full of people.  Seven Mary Three didn’t need nothing but me and Tim.

After the last song (the beautifully exquisite “Strangely at Home”), Jason-fucking-Ross immediately left the stage, and just about everyone in the building except Tim and I left, as well.  That left Tim and I (and two other guys who were, thankfully, pretty serious fans of the band, as well) to chat with Thomas and Casey as they packed up their gear.  Casey simply said to me, “I hope you liked that”, with a wink, which I took as confirmation those two songs were for me.  Then he promptly got on his cell phone.

Thomas, however, was a chatterbox, and I got to, once again, do an unimaginably cool thing: tell one of my favorite musicians, immediately after a show, which parts I thought they did really good in. (I know some of you see alot of local and smaller-venue artists and this probably seems silly to you, but most of the shows I go to are larger-scale clubs and arenas; this kind of interaction is brand new to me).  I told Thomas that his solo in “Southwester State” moved me, and that the new take he had brought to “Cumbersome” (and boy, is it new!) made the song fresh for me again.  Tim asked Thomas is he could have a guitar pick, and he asked the drummer for a drum stick, which they were happy to give.  I didn’t want any thing from them, however.  I’ve already gotten so very much.

Thank you for 12 great years, Seven Mary Three.

Seth’s Summer Movie Scorecard

So far:

Wolverine: 3 out of 5

Star Trek: 4 out of 5

Terminator Salvation: 4 out of 5

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian: 4 out of 5

Drag Me to Hell: 5 out of 5

Land of the Lost: 2 out of 5

Year One: 4 out of 5

Bruno: 3 out of 5

Public Enemies: 3 out of 5

Funny People: 3 out of 5

G.I. Joe: 0 out of 5

SevenMaryThreeHolyShit!

So, it’s really late at night, and I don’t have time for the kind of entry I want to write here, but I can’t go to bed without putting something here, so I’ll give a quick rundown, mainly for Paul’s benefit, since I won’t be able to tell him about this until tomorrow afternoon.  I’ll have a more detailed blog about this tomorrow night.

1.  Met the entire band except for drummer Giti Khalsa, who isn’t touring with the band this tour–though I didn’t meet his fill-in, either.  Talked to bassist Casey Daniels and guitarist Thomas Juliano at length, mainly about a few of my favorite songs of the moment, but also about Casey’s shingles (the illness, not the roofing), the upcoming 7m3 live album (which I did not know about!), Thomas’ salt and pepper hair, etc etc.  I’ll have more on that tomorrow.  Met lead singer Jason Ross inside the venue.  He was in quite a hurry so I didn’t bother him for a pic, but I shook his hand and thanked him for everything and he was quite gracious, despite being in a quite obvious hurry.

2.  The band played the two songs I had talked to Casey about, and they were definitely put in the setlist for me!!! (“Headstrong” and “Shelf Life” back to back); Casey pointed at me and grinned during both songs (I was right in front of him) and after the show he walked over to me and simply said “I hope you liked that.”

3.  I know I always say something like “The setlist was amazing!” in my post-show blogs, but really…I honestly can’t believe that set just happened and it wasn’t a dream.  I follow their setlists online and nothing like this has ever happened.  The setlist isn’t online yet, and I’m not sure I can re-create it from memory, but (this next bit will probably only interest Paul)…they opened with “Times Like These”!  They weren’t going to but they had to improvise..full story tomorrow.  The show ended with “Strangely at Home Here”!!! Can you say HolyShit!!!  Other songs in the set:

–Southwestern State
–Roderigo
–Was a Ghost
–Joliet

…and alot more!!!  But I’m having trouble thinking right now!!! Full blog tomorrow.  More pics are already up on my Facebook!

Friends 4evah

I spent a good deal of time today with two friends of mine who nourish my soul greatly, but neither of whom I get to see nearly often enough.  Those friends would be Tasha and Michael, and I am in such a tremendously good mood now due to my time spent with them.  A few notes from the day:

1.  Today was the first time in 2 years I’ve spent any time with Tasha’s daughter, Milaina, and she is awesome. She is very much her own person, with quite a mind of her own.  She’s gonna be a handful.  Soon.

2.  Michael gave me a swivel office chair she was getting rid of, and it is amazing!!  If you push yourself around in a circle just a few times, and then take your feet off the ground, it will keep spinning forever and ever!

3.  Tasha is a comedic genius.  At one point, in LeTort park, Milaina had a little tiny leaf and was pretending to paint my nails with it.  Tasha just casually says, “Leaf Press-On Nails.”  Then later she made another pun that was truly incredible, but I forget it.

4.  We went shopping at K-Mart, which seems to be a running theme in my life lately.  There, I learned, through her clothing selections, that Tasha is 70% evil.

5.  Michael’s mom mysteriously showed up at her house for a brief moment.  I sure do like her!

6.  So many of those crazy ‘coincidences’ kept happening with Michael and I that there was surely some sort of universal force at work there.

7. Michael and I wound down the afternoon playing each other some of our current favorite songs and videos.  (we’re big fans of exposing each other to new art/media).  I ended up tearing up 3 times during this session.  it was rather incredible.  Of the new things Mike showed me, I’m really still stuck on this song, “Feelin’ Good Again”, by Robert Earl Keen.  Do yourself a favor and look up the lyircs and print them and follow along:

By the end of the day, I also ended up loaning her one of my Billy Collins poetry collections (see pic of her waving it around, above).  Hopefully I’ve actually put another Billy Collins fan into the world!!!

8.  Tasha and I argued about Dane Cook, and she made a face like this:

9.  I beat Michael at a game of tic-tac-toe and immediately got cocky.  I then beat Tasha at a game and got cockier.  Then Tasha schooled me in two successive, very quick games.

10.  Michael and I drove around for an hour and shared.  Alot.

11.  Tasha and I came up with yet another million-dollar idea:  mattresses with a thin layer of grass on top of them.

12.  Tasha to woman at coffee shop: “How big is your big one?”

8/13/09

Seth’s Summer Movie Scorecard

So far:

Wolverine: 3 out of 5

Star Trek: 4 out of 5

Terminator Salvation: 4 out of 5

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian: 4 out of 5

Drag Me to Hell: 5 out of 5

Land of the Lost: 2 out of 5

Year One: 4 out of 5

Bruno: 3 out of 5

Public Enemies: 3 out of 5

Funny People: 3 out of 5

Seth’s Summer Movie Scorecard

So far:

Wolverine: 3 out of 5

Star Trek: 4 out of 5

Terminator Salvation: 4 out of 5

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian: 4 out of 5

Drag Me to Hell: 5 out of 5

Land of the Lost: 2 out of 5

Year One: 4 out of 5

Bruno: 3 out of 5

Public Enemies: 3 out of 5

7/19/09

1.  Before an awesome lunch with Joni, we saw a squirrel trying to get into a drainpipe, and it was hilarious.

2.  Joni also wore what I would consider to be the shirt best matched to the person wearing it, ever.  It’s like someone made that shirt for her.

3.  Started off my day by watching 2005’s ‘Rumor Has It’.  I loved it. What’s going on with me and romantic comedies?  I used to think they were the devil.

4.  Saw the very first guy who was my roommate my first time through rehab walking down the street with a case of beer.

5.  I’m going to mention my sister now so I can create a sister tag for my blog, which I don’t understand how one doesn’t already exist.  PS my sister rules.

6.  Walked from my apartment to Thornwald Park, did some reading, met Michael there, and we watched a nice free bluegrass show in the park.  Talked through most of it.  Beautiful evening for sitting in a park for live music.  Instead of walking right home, I stopped at the theater and saw ‘Bruno’.  It was OK.  It’s no ‘Borat’.  Then stopped at the chinese buffet.  Then went to wal-mart and bought more stuff than I should have, since the walk back was rather long.  My shoulder hurts.

7.  Quote from Michael today:  “You want to eat my arm, don’t you?”

8.  Mary is a freelance writer.  She got a job today to write a screenplay that apparently involves a road trip and medicinal marijuana.  I’m excited for her!

9.  Took some dumpster pictures on my walk today.  I continue to be amazed by how many great dumpster pics I can get in this one podunk town of Carlisle.

10.  Going to bed now, going to try to catch up on the 8 unread magazines on my bedside table.

11.  Oh, PS, another quote from Michael today:  “What’s a romantic attachment?  Is that like a dildo or something?”

12.  Things I need to add to this entry to create tags for my blog without having to actually write an entry about them:

Paul, Modest Mouse, NPR, P.T. Anderson, Philip Larkin, High School, Childhood, spirituality, woods

I Swelled, Everything Swelled

Saturday after a small rain, the air still thick,
the stream loaded with silt and fertilizer.
I need to run but my lungs are thick with
too much of some things, not enough of others.
A few mosquitoes, lots of sweat, the calm woods
and if I look close the light from the stream
moving on the undersides of the high leaves.
Why should I care about pronouns and referents
when the purple wildflowers I can’t name are
standing tall, when the birds are crooning easy,
when the cricket I saw ten minutes ago
is still crossing the path?  I thought
crickets hopped but this one was walking,
hustling but not going fast, a slow foot
onto the hardpack and a long way to go,
some distant kin to the little mammal
like a round tube of hurry that scuffed out
fast onto the highway and met neatly
with my left front tire so that I saw it again,
a week ago, on the way to Pine Grove.  I said
nothing to my friend about it as we drove past,
and she didn’t notice it.
It had seemed to know what it was doing.
I have had it with road kill poems
larded with large noble animals, with
invisible strangers who leave the terrible
bags of evidence to swell and testify,
and yet I know it is not enough merely
to mourn our own small dead, the ones
we do not know or love until we kill them
helplessly, just going where we need to go.