Just spoke with my mom about the logistics of moving. What gets stored where, how things go which place or are in transit, manpower, availability, etc etc. My sister is in a bit of heat for doing what she thinks is right, because it involves money. Same as me. My family has this constant fear of no money.
They say that she is never very clear on what she's doing. That she's ambiguous and evasive, intentionally misleading and subversive. She asks why. I answer honestly: Because half the time, it's well received, and the other half of the time, it's used to judge a situation or a motive and used against us. She doesn't say because she doesn't want the potential confrontation. She'd rather fight a battle she has the upper hand in because only SHE knows the truth, whereas you and dad have the fact manipulation down to an art if she just gives it to you. She's not stupid.
Mom got pissed. (See what talking in Blogs does? It makes me confident. Then I say shit I shouldn't. But it's the truth. The Truth will set you free. right? heh).
She goes off on how if that were really the case, then we wouldn't be able to trust them, and we should be able to trust them, because they're our parents. That's true. We should. But half the time it's a teddy bear, and the other half of the time it's a knife with the point at our throats.
Well, being able to trust her family was not a luxury she had as a child, nor one that dad had either. And they went through their whole lives not trusting anybody, even us. Trust works both ways. You give, you get. They always gave us about a half-and-half chance of screwing them over. So we gave them the same. I see this now. This is a revelation.
I've treated everyone I've interacted with the same way. I've done as I've been raised. I don't trust anyone because everyone's screwed me over. Well now I think I screwed myself over for a lot of them. That's why I get so anxious with my wife. I have to trust her. There's no option. She doesn't trust me at all. Maybe that's because I never really trusted her. And I don't mean in the 'sleeping with other guys' sense. I mean with my heart. I've given, but always been afraid to give that last little bit, so that it becomes an effort. I'm holding onto the last strand for myself so I can still have a piece of me, and giving her the rest. So what I'm giving her is stretched out and useless by the time she gets it. I panic when I have to just give it all, and swing very hard. Like yesterday. (Wow. Yesterday was a clusterfuck of just wrongness on my part.) I've thought the trust thing with us was the other way around until this afternoon. I thought it was a matter of self-preservation. It's not. Self is self. No two ways around it. Giving of the self means you just trust them. And I do trust her logically, and in all practicality. I mean, if it came down to my life, yeah, I can see that being an issue, but I don't want her to do anything to save mine. I embrace death. I seek it. It makes me feel alive. I appreciate it. I will meet it one day. It's not self-preservation. It's self-denial. I am what I am regardless of who holds my heart. My essence is mine. My soul is mine. I give them window and access. It's been poked a few times, but it only hurts because I still keep the wounds fresh by constantly revisiting the past. So it's my fault. Not hers. I'm the one afraid to be myself. She is to, but that's on her personal side. I let this effect both of us. Truth is, we're both kinda messed up. But when we're together, we're so perfect. It's so envigorating. I love every moment. Even when we argue. No kidding. I get excited when she rebukes what I'm saying, tells me why, and gives her perspective. I honestly find that fun, to a degree, minus the yelling voices. It excites me. I've never been angry with her for more than an hour. Even through these last 6 months. Sad, frustrated, confused: yes. Angry? Not yet. No, not self-defense or preservation - self denial.
I'm the same way with almost everybody. Give with the reservation that I may need it back. THAT has a lot to do with why I feel so intimidated, I bet. And why I'm so afraid to just DO. I conquer my fears every time, but still, there's something that makes me squirm and question. This move to Orlando with my wife: I'm excited. I still am. I remember the way things felt, the way we were when we were there. How everything made her smile and get excited. Now everyone's all "Jobs, Avery, Jobs." yeah. I know. Jobs. Economy's down. Yep. For high-end jobs. For extremely low-end jobs. For middle-end jobs. I know it. People are firing and laying off left and right. And hiring for less. And it's taking less and less to live. So...I'm worried? Sorta. Not really. Things always work out. You can make it through anything if you work at it hard enough. I know this well enough by now.
Mom also said she's not helping and not hurting the situation. She likes my wife, she wishes things were going better for her, but whatever I decide and whatever she decides mom's staying out of. Forever. My life now. She's done with it. Interact with her if I want to.
Such a loving family. These were best friends once, mind you. Ones I killed. Ones that took back what they'd given. It wasn't free. It was on lease. OK. I'm done trying to be friends, then. You're just my mom, and my dad, and I don't owe you, and you don't owe me. We're even, we both breathe air, same as you, same as me, and that's where you want it, so that's where it is. I could have made it a lot farther without your inner-turmoils anyway.
"Question: If Control's control is absolute, why does Control need to control?"
"Answer: Control needs Time."
"Question: Is Control controlled by its need to control?"
"Answer: Yes."
"Question: Why does Control need humans, as you call them?"
"Death needs Time like a junkie needs Junk."
"Question: Then what does Death need time for?"
"Answer: Death needs time for what it kills to grow in."
So, for what it is, as Time houses my existence, I can use time to control my future, or end time to avoid being controlled. As Death will inevitably greet me, I might as well spend time that I have doing what I think is best or 'correct'. Therefore, I do what I do. I leave here. I heal my wife. i love her. That is what's 'correct'. That is what's 'right'. It's an emotional choice, but also a logical one. She is my wife. And I love her. And it's my choice. Therefore, i choose. sometimes you have to pick a path and walk it, regardless. Depressing state of things aside, pressures will arise and fall just as waters with the tide. It is the way of things. The way must not be confused for the goal or destination. It is merely the path to get there. We all have our own destinations.
This just happened. Just now. My sister, the one who was being sweet that I defended, just demanded that I sign over my car to her, on grounds both of money and of some unspeakable she wouldn't go into specifics on. She enjoyed being a bitch, because she knew she could get away with it. Because she felt vindicated. justified. She was, in all honesty. I tried to help. I tried to make it better. But I hurt it. And I am punished by way of being stripped of my car. A car is a small price to pay. I now understand that my family and I can never be friends. Ever. Ever.
Ever.
I can want it more than anything in the world. But it won't matter. Just like I said, there's always that one thing that cannot be cured or answered or prevented. That one thing. Never. I killed it. They know I'm trying to start over. They enjoy twisting the blade.
They can have it. I'm going. As soon as I can get out of this responsibilities. I'm gone. I don't care. I'm leaving. I'll sell everything I have to. Everything I can. Everything. I have a 1979 Ford Courier. I have a few hundred dollars. I can't live in the same continent as them. They hate me, and I can't bear it. I've hated myself for so long, and now knowing that they hate me too, and it's pure and just waiting to be used...I can't do it.
Take everyone I've known that's died, put it all in one moment, and that is about as much loss as I feel right now. I am damned. I am gone.
I want to die. Truly. I don't like life. My wife doesn't like me. My family hates me. I chased everyone else off. Good. I die alone. Good.
survival can have someone else who's got a better chance and heart. May the next one use my breath better.
In Peace,
I love you, Andrea. I'm coming. If you love me still, open the door. If not, I'll wait 10 minutes, knocking every 5. After that, I'll take it that you don't, or think it'd be best if I went on my way.
I'm not healing from this one. I've just got to accept it. Time will maybe smooth it out? Or maybe, hopefully, I'll just meet Death, finally. Be done with this life.
16 April 2009
Let flown to the winds of anonymity
Things are stupid.
I am stupid.
There is a level of stupidness in all of us.
I have about three times my intended portion.
She is sweet. She is confused, she is lost, but she is sweet.
Every time I go through my family shit, I take it out on someone. I can't take it out on family, she doesn't talk to me anymore, so I just kill all ties. I try to kill it with everyone. I try to destroy all my relationships last night. My three friends didn't get it, and therefore didn't take me seriously. Instead, one asked me how I was, and the other two just told me to quit being an asshole. I can take that advice. That's fine.
But I don't stop with them. I smell blood. I don't really realize what I'm doing. I'm beast-mode. Going for a kill. Not THE kill, but any kill. Anything to put it into perspective.
I always do that. I need to quit. Now. I may have honestly hurt someone. I may have confused the freaking hell out of them. I may have just provided laughter. I doubt that, though. I feel I hurt them to some degree. I may never know it. I hope I do learn what it did. I love this person more than anything ever. I love her so much. I owe her so much. And for me to say the things I did, is horrible of me. For me to put her into a position of extremes, only two weeks after she's held up at gunpoint by some crazy bitch on a mission to get caught, is absolutely horrible. I am so sorry. I don't know if 'sorry' begins to describe my concern, or remorse for what I've done. I know what it is. I know what it means. I know what the consequences could be if she decides to follow through with them.
I have gotten better at managing it. But not really. I just go from punching things to sniping at people. I move from one poison to another. Before I'd hurt myself, mostly just physically. Now, I hurt others, mostly emotionally. I am a horrible person.
And I've the gumption to say that I'm an entertainer. That I'm someone who wants to make people dance. Someone who wants to make them smile, laugh, feel good about life. Probably because I want to hide, cry, and feel like life has no place for me. I want to keep them from feeling what I feel. The irony of a comedian is that we say 'fuck you' when we deeply care about our audience. We want to see them happy. It's not like we do it just for the ego massage-we do it for the audience. Ever wonder what makes a great comedian great? Honesty. Vulnerability. The ability to lay themselves - their core essence - in your hands, to some degree, and convince you that they, themselves, are the irony. That they, themselves, are the tragedy. They ARE the prat fall. They ARE the juxtaposition of misunderstandings and literal interpretations of abstract metaphors. That is their being. They are that disconnected.
"And you know the shit's good when you look at your hand, which is on fire, and think, 'What a lovely shade of blue...'"
I am disconnected. I have all the dysfunction of a great comedian. But I have no timing. I can tell great timing from a mile away, but I have none myself. And it doesn't matter. I don't want to make anyone laugh. I don't want to make anyone dance. I just want to finish my job, and go to her arms. I may have closed them forever. I pray not.
If I can't have her arms, I want to drift away into obscurity. I don't want to see my parents again. I don't want to see my sisters. Grandparents. Aunts. Uncles. Anyone. I just want to hide forever. I always wanted to. I just never did. I forced myself to interact, thinking it would get better. And it honestly does for a time. Then they start going through their own bullshit, and I'm not strong enough to differentiate anymore. I'm worn down. I'm worn out. I'm going to snap. I'm already snapping. I've had people make no sense at all this past week. I hear the words they say. I know what they say is coherent. I don't even know if what they're saying is what I'm hearing. It only happened twice. Here's what they said. But I cannot find meaning in it. "The beer is on the aisle with the shoes on it." (when asked if there was a curfew to buy beer on Sundays) "It might be if its colder than my brain normally should be." (when asked where the pound cake was). I'm scared. Couple this with a history of chronic blackouts and already once-in the hospital for a-fib, I don't know what to think. My families have alzheimers and clinical dementia in their genetics. What if it's hitting me at a younger age? One of my aunts at 40 had to go to the bathroom in the living room. Not the bathroom, the living room anywhere she was. Sneak in and take a dump right on the middle of the rug or floor. If their brains are colder than it should normally be when the cake is no where in the answer, then what am I going to be like when I'm 40?
I think that's part of the reason I did what I did yesterday, too. I don't want anyone to have to deal with me. Ever. Not when I'm half-sane, and sure-as-hell not when I'm insane. That's been weighing on my mind a lot. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, it was kinda cool and trippy. But no. It freaks me out too. I don't want to be like my great uncle and randomly go violent.
I love her. I love her with all my heart. Beyond expression. I don't want to hurt her. I think that's about all I have to offer her.
I am sorry beyond words. I don't know if she should take me back, I'm so fucked up. I want her to, because I love her, and I want to see her smile again. I feel so at peace in her arms. I should not have listened to my family again. I should not have listened to my enemies that threatened us. I was so afraid they'd gotten to her when she was held up. I didn't shit for 4 days. Normally, I have a very regular bowel. I felt like I was going to throw up I am so worried about her. I love her. Christ I love her.
I have to hurt someone. It's an inevitability. I need to hurt my family, and tell them that it's too much too long, too deep too hard. They fucked me raw, and I don't have any more energy to sustain their intents. I need to let them go. I need to move on. I need to go away. That's who needs the axe. They're so subversive. And they're great at deception. They are sweet people, but they are so fucking defensive it's a part of breathing in. I can't live like that. I'm not a mean guy. I never wanted to hurt them. It hurts to be treated as the enemy when you're just trying to be a friend. It hurts to be shot at over and over again when you don't have a gun. I won't disrespect other references' horror and victims of those horrors, but it's like those weigh on those who watch their senseless acts of violence and aftermath, and wonder why anyone could do that? It's like that. But every day.
I'm going to go try to call her now. Maybe she'll answer. Maybe we still have a chance. Or maybe I blew it out of the water. It's best for her if I did, I think. It's best for US if I didn't. I'm so mixed up. I used to call her insane. I think she's actually the more sane one. Flighty, selfish, and unreliable, but sane. I'm all those, and insane. And when she's herself, every bit of woman any man could ask for. I love her so much. I hate myself so much. I hate me. I love her.
I'm sorry.
I am stupid.
There is a level of stupidness in all of us.
I have about three times my intended portion.
She is sweet. She is confused, she is lost, but she is sweet.
Every time I go through my family shit, I take it out on someone. I can't take it out on family, she doesn't talk to me anymore, so I just kill all ties. I try to kill it with everyone. I try to destroy all my relationships last night. My three friends didn't get it, and therefore didn't take me seriously. Instead, one asked me how I was, and the other two just told me to quit being an asshole. I can take that advice. That's fine.
But I don't stop with them. I smell blood. I don't really realize what I'm doing. I'm beast-mode. Going for a kill. Not THE kill, but any kill. Anything to put it into perspective.
I always do that. I need to quit. Now. I may have honestly hurt someone. I may have confused the freaking hell out of them. I may have just provided laughter. I doubt that, though. I feel I hurt them to some degree. I may never know it. I hope I do learn what it did. I love this person more than anything ever. I love her so much. I owe her so much. And for me to say the things I did, is horrible of me. For me to put her into a position of extremes, only two weeks after she's held up at gunpoint by some crazy bitch on a mission to get caught, is absolutely horrible. I am so sorry. I don't know if 'sorry' begins to describe my concern, or remorse for what I've done. I know what it is. I know what it means. I know what the consequences could be if she decides to follow through with them.
I have gotten better at managing it. But not really. I just go from punching things to sniping at people. I move from one poison to another. Before I'd hurt myself, mostly just physically. Now, I hurt others, mostly emotionally. I am a horrible person.
And I've the gumption to say that I'm an entertainer. That I'm someone who wants to make people dance. Someone who wants to make them smile, laugh, feel good about life. Probably because I want to hide, cry, and feel like life has no place for me. I want to keep them from feeling what I feel. The irony of a comedian is that we say 'fuck you' when we deeply care about our audience. We want to see them happy. It's not like we do it just for the ego massage-we do it for the audience. Ever wonder what makes a great comedian great? Honesty. Vulnerability. The ability to lay themselves - their core essence - in your hands, to some degree, and convince you that they, themselves, are the irony. That they, themselves, are the tragedy. They ARE the prat fall. They ARE the juxtaposition of misunderstandings and literal interpretations of abstract metaphors. That is their being. They are that disconnected.
"And you know the shit's good when you look at your hand, which is on fire, and think, 'What a lovely shade of blue...'"
I am disconnected. I have all the dysfunction of a great comedian. But I have no timing. I can tell great timing from a mile away, but I have none myself. And it doesn't matter. I don't want to make anyone laugh. I don't want to make anyone dance. I just want to finish my job, and go to her arms. I may have closed them forever. I pray not.
If I can't have her arms, I want to drift away into obscurity. I don't want to see my parents again. I don't want to see my sisters. Grandparents. Aunts. Uncles. Anyone. I just want to hide forever. I always wanted to. I just never did. I forced myself to interact, thinking it would get better. And it honestly does for a time. Then they start going through their own bullshit, and I'm not strong enough to differentiate anymore. I'm worn down. I'm worn out. I'm going to snap. I'm already snapping. I've had people make no sense at all this past week. I hear the words they say. I know what they say is coherent. I don't even know if what they're saying is what I'm hearing. It only happened twice. Here's what they said. But I cannot find meaning in it. "The beer is on the aisle with the shoes on it." (when asked if there was a curfew to buy beer on Sundays) "It might be if its colder than my brain normally should be." (when asked where the pound cake was). I'm scared. Couple this with a history of chronic blackouts and already once-in the hospital for a-fib, I don't know what to think. My families have alzheimers and clinical dementia in their genetics. What if it's hitting me at a younger age? One of my aunts at 40 had to go to the bathroom in the living room. Not the bathroom, the living room anywhere she was. Sneak in and take a dump right on the middle of the rug or floor. If their brains are colder than it should normally be when the cake is no where in the answer, then what am I going to be like when I'm 40?
I think that's part of the reason I did what I did yesterday, too. I don't want anyone to have to deal with me. Ever. Not when I'm half-sane, and sure-as-hell not when I'm insane. That's been weighing on my mind a lot. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, it was kinda cool and trippy. But no. It freaks me out too. I don't want to be like my great uncle and randomly go violent.
I love her. I love her with all my heart. Beyond expression. I don't want to hurt her. I think that's about all I have to offer her.
I am sorry beyond words. I don't know if she should take me back, I'm so fucked up. I want her to, because I love her, and I want to see her smile again. I feel so at peace in her arms. I should not have listened to my family again. I should not have listened to my enemies that threatened us. I was so afraid they'd gotten to her when she was held up. I didn't shit for 4 days. Normally, I have a very regular bowel. I felt like I was going to throw up I am so worried about her. I love her. Christ I love her.
I have to hurt someone. It's an inevitability. I need to hurt my family, and tell them that it's too much too long, too deep too hard. They fucked me raw, and I don't have any more energy to sustain their intents. I need to let them go. I need to move on. I need to go away. That's who needs the axe. They're so subversive. And they're great at deception. They are sweet people, but they are so fucking defensive it's a part of breathing in. I can't live like that. I'm not a mean guy. I never wanted to hurt them. It hurts to be treated as the enemy when you're just trying to be a friend. It hurts to be shot at over and over again when you don't have a gun. I won't disrespect other references' horror and victims of those horrors, but it's like those weigh on those who watch their senseless acts of violence and aftermath, and wonder why anyone could do that? It's like that. But every day.
I'm going to go try to call her now. Maybe she'll answer. Maybe we still have a chance. Or maybe I blew it out of the water. It's best for her if I did, I think. It's best for US if I didn't. I'm so mixed up. I used to call her insane. I think she's actually the more sane one. Flighty, selfish, and unreliable, but sane. I'm all those, and insane. And when she's herself, every bit of woman any man could ask for. I love her so much. I hate myself so much. I hate me. I love her.
I'm sorry.
14 April 2009
Exposition and selfish relativism That you shouldn't care about.
I don't get it at all. I do everything I can to be chipper and upbeat to people I care about. Everyone's intent on being self-centered and down in it. No body's really down in it. That's the thing. They just want to feel sorry for themselves.
I'm told that there's no way that my family can retire by the time they want to. So? I feel bad for you, but you do have exorbitant luxuries you'll sacrifice yourself to maintain. You can go without several things I can think of, but still refuse to acknowledge your ability to change your present and future resides in DOING, not in the 'wishing' or 'worrying'. You've always tried to teach us that you've got to keep DOING things...sometimes the action is the inaction, or absence of action, and the determination of that path. Sometimes it means intently refraining. So don't go golfing 3-4x per week. So sell the boat. You've only come into that stuff in the last 10-12 years anyway. There were 40 without it. you can do without it again. It was a good 10-12 years. Get over it. Can't take it with you, anyway.
Also, don't refer to my sisters' praise of you, my father, as buttering up their meal-ticket through college. Don't insult their sincerity so. You will alienate yourself if you keep doing that. I already despise that continued perception you boast, and am no longer interested in any interaction with you as long as you maintain that mentality. My sisters love you. They're not placating or condescending to you. If you had told them you walked on air, they'd believe it to this day. It's fucking horrible for you to crush their feelings like that. She had to choke back tears, you asshole. You didn't see it because you're too self-indulgent and self-righteous in your pity cause that you thought you were being clever. It was mean, and you were wrong.
Side note - Shut the fuck up with the mean shit, everybody. Deal. Quit cutting others down.
Back to it: I love my sisters. Don't fuck with them. Even if you are my dad. It reminds me of all the times you pulled the same shit with me. And I still hate you for it. I gave you everything I had, but I was just doing it for money in your eyes. YOU NEVER DID THAT UNTIL YOU MADE MONEY. you think you always made it: NO YOU DIDNT. I remember not being able to afford tires for your car. I remember cold blankets. I remember an apartment the size of my one bedroom that the 4 of us lived in. I remember these things. I remember cups being buckets, warm water being heated on the stove. I remember the Chevette with the yellow showing from the cushions through the torn seats, unable to make it up hills. I remember pawpaw trying to give you money. I remember your start. I loved you anyway, BEFORE you had the fucking money. I remember you being fun, having fun, loving us, playing, being very gentle and strong. My sisters loved you before they knew what money was. I loved you for loving them. We were all best friends.
you pulled that shit with me, and I thought, "OK, bad day." for a year. Then it didn't stop. I realized mom was getting worse. You were getting worse. My sisters were turning into you two. Mom physically assaulting me because she hates me because she sees you in me, you bitching at me because I'm just like my fucking mother, then yelling at mom, then beating the dog, and the reason? Money. "Can't afford this, can't do that, gotta have it, fuck it, fuck you." And Avery'd get it because I was a financial burden. I got a job when I was 16. Didn't use any of your money. Paid my insurance, my food, my everything. Well, there was college. From MY mutual fund. From MY childhood. OK. I paid for that. "You need a new car." OK. I'm spending about $200-300 on starters per month as is, I can rock a car for that per month. So you cosign. I see a girl. We hit it off. I am paying for college. I want to make sure I make good grades. I study. I go to the library almost every night, from 7 until 12/1/2AM sometimes. "You're not studying. you're doing god knows what." No, you're wrong. I was fucking studying. We both were. BUT, now I realize it's never going to change. If it's money, and I fix that, now it's something else. Then it'll be something else when that's over. Want to know why I was so quiet? Because you fucking yelled all the time. If I stated an opinion (i.e. "I want to be a lawyer, I think." "Why the hell would you want to do that?!" "Because I like psychology, and perspectives, and the idea of justice." "TWIST the FUCKING knife in my back, son. Jesus FUCKING christ, a lawyer. Shit.") OR, it'd be something about a new chip design that allowed 256 mb of ram or 512 in the same space as it used to be 128 mb max and how I thought that was impressive, the only thing you heard was I wanted a computer all of a sudden, and I had no concept of money, or something like that. If I mentioned the guitar not feeling natural, they heard that I wanted them to buy me a new one - all I was saying was my fingers were clumsy that day. If I went and got a rail, I was fussed at for spending any money at all. I competed in street comps. Spent money for that, too. $5-$10 entry fees were fun to lose, because at least I was there. Never told them, never caught shit for it.
Anyway, whatever my opinion, it'd always turn out to be the wrong one, and either I was just like my mother for saying that, or I was being assinine and selfish. But, my sisters could do no wrong. I was ok with it as long as they weren't the targets. I knew that deep inside somewhere they loved me. Mom'd punch me, or start wailing on my chest. Kicking me. Maybe you just forgot since you had all this shit when you were young, but you'd remember us someday, and it'd be great because I'd forgive you, and everything would be excellent, and we'd all be best friends again.
Then my sisters started accusing me of being just like mom.
And they started accusing me of being just like Dad.
And we started getting into some very nasty fights.
I started channeling my aggression towards them.
I love my sisters.
mom wailing on me, yelling at my sisters, dad yelling at everyone, mom yelling at him, everyone breaking shit, throwing shit around, poor bonnie getting thrown up against the tree anytime dad had no other outlet, then pissing in the floor whenever he'd come around, then getting walloped on the head by a strong fist every time she did...
Guns enter the house. Wrecked home enters wrecked home with automatic weapons. What happens? Are things dealt with logically and rationally? No. Everyone is screamed at, forced into the car, and taken somewhere illogical. As if the guns will hop up and start randomly firing at everyone. They'd never seen guns before, I don't think. what the holy fuck? We finally disassembled them in pieces around the lake, pieces miles apart. barrel here, pin there, hammer here, gave the bullets away.
Now it's my fault for not listening to my mother scream incoherently at us and making a scene.
I didn't make the scene. She was crying her eyes out when she was screaming.
She was kicking my shins, trying to make me do what she demanded.
She was shoving my sisters into the car by their heads as they were crying.
Only she and I knew about the guns.
My sisters didn't know. They were confused as hell.
Screaming, yelling, forcing, kicking.
I couldn't do it.
no more.
I left. Why? Obvious to me. Is it obvious to anyone else?
I'm called every day, being bitched out, how could I do that to them, blah blah. It lasts two weeks. When I ask about how people are doing, I'm told everyone's fine, if I ever really cared.
I'm told that in my absence, they've gotten a brand new TV, a new PS2, a new whatever. So many new things. Things they'd told me for years I was stupid to save up and get. I'd come and visit them early on Saturdays and make them breakfast for a month or so. Well, I was still just trying to get money out of them. Being nice to gain. it had nothing to do with that, but that's what they wanted to believe. My girlfriend moves in. We were doing well, things were going good. I knew I loved being around her, I knew I loved her, and I knew she was very supportive to me through all of this, even at the cost of befriending my family. She alienated herself from them to support me. She even started alienating herself from her own family a bit, not listening to negative advice being given, a very innocent soul, in all honesty. Aware of the world, but it never seemed to touch her, if that makes any sense. Anyway, a truly awesome woman.
Well, my family couldn't stand it. What was bad before became horrid. My family went ape-shit. I was going to hell. I was Satan incarnate. The preacher at their church, a genuinely sweet man, came and tried to speak with us about religion, and the 'right' way to do things. We'd been fucking like rabbits after about a month of the "you're not studying" accusations. We still were studying until 1 or 2, but then we were fucking like crazy until about 4AM. We'd been living together for a few weeks. We're about as right as we can be, I thought. I took everything my family had as standards, motives, goals, meanings, worthy endeavors and said So, fuck it, it's my life. I can do whatever and be whatever I want, since I can't be what you want. You're wrong in most anything you've accused me of. It's time to see what's really true.
So I did what I did. i told the preacher that I was Wiccan. He didn't know what that meant. We're eating CiCi's Pizza (a truely delicious pizza still, to this day for some odd reason), and he's trying to grasp what Wicca is. We come to the middle ground that it's pantheism, but I don't very adequately convey that I don't necessarily believe that every element or property has a god's name associated with it, that I agree and ascribe to it mostly as a philosophy, and not so much as a theology . so he thinks I worship Greek mythology. No. so I hug trees? Closer. He says that there are paths for every individual, and what may seem as a straying now may just be a path closer to the truth. This is coming from a man who's put in the highest recommendation possible for me to attend Sewanee, be a member of the clergy, and who would speak with me about the different aspects of a sermon he'd written, and ask my opinion of...not like he was seeking wisdom, but he genuinely enjoyed talking with me, and I him. he was a very sweet man. And he didn't say 'closer to god' or 'jesus'. He said 'closer to the truth.' That was the last time I saw him. I wish him all the best in this life and the next. He's one terriffic guy. Everyone should meet him. You'll know when you do.
Continuing on: I haven't seen my family in a couple months. my mom won't let my sisters come over, even though she's in town every day. She dad won't talk to me. I call my grandparents: same thing. Mawmaw and pawpaw would talk with me, as would Jackie and Brenda, but only briefly, and 'hows the weather'. I started to realize what alienation was. I didn't see what I had in a loving woman. I saw what I had sacrificed. I saw the absence I had created for myself. I realized my place. I was expendable. All our best friends. All my best friends. They now hated me. And I hated them. we were no longer family. We were enemies. I stop calling. A few weeks go by. I get a call from my mom. I don't answer. We stop talking. I believed all the shit they'd told me.
It's a very occassional once-per-month-or-two two minute conversation that always ends with "Can my sisters come see me?" "No." "Why?" "Because of your lifestyle." "Ok, bye." *click* I couldn't believe their ignorance. I started getting frustrated. One of their friends forever has lived with this chick for years, hasn't married her, and you don't judge HIM, but, somehow, I'm setting a bad example for my sisters?! I didn't choose this because he did it. I chose it because I thought it was the right thing to do. The whole 'next step' thing. You know?
I still have the car. At somepoint in all the heated arguings, I was told that they wouldn't have a bad-credit risk with me and that car, since they didn't trust me to make a payment. This was preceded by me forgetting to go by an atm on my way to visit them to pay them for the whatever I had to pay them for. I went to the atm, got the money, when I got back, there was paperwork and a forced pen. OK, cool. Fuck it. Made a few grand to the side after I gave them $25000. They get their money. They make payroll for this month. They're happy. Next month they'll have to take from my sisters. Fuck it.
We're on about our life, my girlfriend and I. It was great sometimes, horrid other times. And it was all about where I'd see myself. I should have gone to a therapist. I should have talked about it. Not that I want her back - and I don't mean that she was at all anything to get rid of - but she's about to have a kid now with her husband whom she loves more than any of us know the meaning of the word, and is truly happy. Told you, one hell of a woman. :) No, but I would have saved her a lot of shit. She stuck with me two years through some of the most tumultuous emotional baggage you've ever seen. I wasn't my mom or my dad by any stretch of the imagination, but I was conflicted. What if I was just the stupid teenager? What I f I was wrong? What if? What if everything I knew was incorrect? Did I make the right decision? Those questions ate me alive. I started flashbacks to getting the shit beat out of me, being chased in dark woods, awkward moments that I blacked out in (and still don't remember), vivid memories. Terror. Hell. Very disjointed. Very disconnected. I'd play video games and watch movies just to give linearity to my thought processes. Otherwise, I'd literally start crying without knowing why, or start shaking. I would go 4 or 5 days sometimes with no sleep. Reality had no effect. I was immune, completely gone. I was stronger than this. I was a warrior. Warriors don't do that. What the fuck, asshole?! Get it together.
All of our love gone.
Get it TOGETHER.
We were dead.
GET IT TOGETHER, FUCKFACE.
They said it was my fault.
DUDE!
Maybe it was.
TOGETHER!
Maybe I did it.
GET IT TOGETHER ASSHOLE! NOW.
I killed us.
I killed our friendships.
I killed us being best friends.
I did it.
Somehow, I was in Savannah, now. I was excited to be here. It was a place to start over. Cleave from the grip of the piedmont, go to the coast, get the fuck away. Give us an honest chance, me and my fiancee. Got odd jobs. Ran two at once. Kept it moving for a little bit.
got told by my job advisor that i was a stupid teenager who'd broken his family heart, and didn't have a shred of moral fiber in his body, and should just go join whatever cult and kill myself because I was lost to the world. She was just pissed because she was diagnosed with some incurable cancer. I didn't see that until years later, even though she told me that in her apology on company letterhead with the watermark. I shreded the letter. All I heard was everything I'd feared being put into one breath. It must be true.
I do a show I don't remember. Apparently I was good in it. People still comment to me on it. I remember getting punched in the face during it to get me to shut the hell up.
GET IT TOGETHER.
couldn't. What a whiney little pussy I was. what a whiney pussy I am.
Everything comes to a head. I don't know what's going on. We fuck one night, the next night it's over. Not 'get ready because it's done' over but, 'gone tomorrow and changing locks' over. I remember vague discussions. I cry. I wail. I can't stand it. It hurts. This was the new beginning. I knew I fucked it up, but I wanted to prove I was sincere. Nope. OK. I call my dad, my best friend, crying to him that it was over, that I'd fucked it all up. He comes down next day with a truck and we pack shit up and move out. I want to live here, still, to sell everything. he wants me to get my head back on straight, and come back home and live with them. OK. I'm lost. Might as well give it another shot, right?
I throw what I can in my car, and go to drive back home, to make good on the family I'd destroyed.
I get there, and I'm bitched out for spending money. I was a wreck. Stuff like: She was so awful to me, how could I have ever loved her? Why was I so consistently stupid? Because someone tells me they love me, hugs me, does what she did, I'm a sucker for a lie. I'm so fucking gullible. I make them sick that they raised someone so stupid.
She calls.
She tells me she's sorry, and she knows I was trying. She got stressed and snapped, and maybe we could make it work.
My show opens in a week. i didn't make it to rehearsal that night because I was with my family. Im a lead role. THE lead role.
Two positives and a negative that's breaking my heart. I go back. i dont' take anything but what's left in my car. I go tell them this is what i'm doing. They tell me i'm thinking with my dick, not my head. I am crying, because this hurts, Because I do love her, because I don't think of her as a fuck at all, i think of her as a soulmate. I try to choke back tears, I kiss my dad on the cheek, and tell him to have a nice life. What we used to be can be no longer. sorry I let you down.
I never told them they were the ones being stupid. I never said, "No, YOURE the moron." I wasn't abrasive. Such things are just petty, and put you right back on the level they're at.
I get back, I'm there for a week, and it's over again. My show opened. I was removed from the relationship again. Same as before: Out by tomorrow.
I still have the show to perform.
I have no money.
I have nowhere to live.
I'm not going home. Not to that.
I live in my car.
I perform the show, showering in the dressing room. Once that's over, I sneak in to take showers. Someone catches on, and locks the doors. Next it's truck stops. I dont' have a commercial license, which is required to visit a truckstop shower. OK. Sneak by. Gotta get a job. I get a job. I have no residence. I used a guy that I spent a few nights sleeping in his dorm while he worked at the SUB for his address. We became good friends, smoking Djarum cigs he was gracious to lend and talking about System of A down albums, and music in general. He was about in the same place as me. We vibed well. He became incredibly intellectual, and ended up teaching english in Singapore, and still lives in Asia, I believe. Great guy. I owe him a lot.
Then it was roommates, and people he knew. Great couple. We got along perfectly. Spent every dime I'd saved working and put in on a deposit for tus an apartment. That's all they asked of me. The deposit. no monthly rent. No utilities. They were so sweet. I loved playing games and music with him, and talking about these raves she used to go to. It was fantastic. We got along great.
In comes one woman, out goes another for a few months. Us three all enjoying ourselves incredibly. Killians and games / tv at night with him, working or riding around town listening to techno / trance with her during the day. They tried to get me to go clubbing a few times, but I just wanted to write music. Then they'd tell me that it sucked, or that it was good, and it was awesome. he was the best critic of music. He was so blatant. "Good idea, but it sounds like you just shit everywhere. If you're going to shit, at least put it in a nice pile." Then he'd tell me what he meant. He was so fun. Seriously. He'd say that, but he'd do it in such a dry fashion, it was perfect comedic timing. He was cool. He ended up going overseas. he was in the army. I met a woman. She was timid and shy, but so fun and awesome. I loved her within a week, believe it or not. No warming up, just got the feeling one night when we were walking around outside. I saw her smile when I looked at her, and she sent this wave of comradery and comfort over me, and a desire to know her better, and of knowing that I'd do anything and everything I could forever to get her to smile like that again. She comes and visits me when there's no heat. No TV. When there's no reason to be there. We'd lay and cuddle wherever and talk about random things. Sleep. nothing sexual. Except the make-out sessions. Those were sexual. But they never ended up in sex. Just making out. It was fun just to kiss her. he's coming back into town. His TOD is finally over. But when he came back, he was not the guy that left. He was aggressive, accusatory, and directly confronted me that I slept with his wife. They were my brother and sister. Every time she and I were together after that, it was an excuse to be alone with her. I was reminded of my family, and how I was always trying to do this or that by my actions. I left them, too. They had to keep my TV, because it was practically theirs anyway. OK. Fine. Another one bites the dust. I wish them both well.
I go find a place I can afford on what money I make, now. I find one. She still comes over. It's awesome. She tells me things. I listen. She tells me she doesn't know what to do. I tell her that's fine. She tells me she wants to do something. I tell her to do it. She tells me she wants to have something. I tell her it's unnecessary, then buy it for her to surprise her. She tells me I don't understand alienation. I tell her I do. She tells me I don't understand family. i tell her I do. She tells me I don't get it because I don't speak with them. She never asked why. it was just that simple in her mind: you don't speak with them, you don't get it. Hm. Maybe something to that.
I called mom.
Answered begrudgingly.
Talked piddle talk. But it was cool. Maybe if they knew I was back on track, or something, it'd be good. They help me move into my next place. They visit. They enjoy being there. It's nice.
We talk for about a week before they start accusing me again. They want me to go back to college. I'm worn out. Finish up. I don't want to. It's a burden, and unnecessary. Besides, 43% of college graduates won't have a college graduate job by the time I graduate. Why spend the money? Because it's something I'll have accomplished, they say. I go, I graduate, I have to scrape by with only $5 for the entire month to eat off of more than a couple of times. Her family helps me out and feeds me. I'm told I don't handle money well, and her family is just enablers for my lifestyle. Well, they are enablers, but they weren't to me. They were honestly trying to help me out because their daughter loved me so much. shit. I pay bills. There's not a lot left over when your AC bill is $215. they don't hear that. I show them the statements. Whatever, that's just one month, what about all the other months? Well, I actually eat those months. They say I'm drinking, or smoking it all away. Fuck 'em. whatever. It's my money, anyhow. I'll not spend what I don't have however I damn well please. I graduate. I'm engaged again. I get a good job pulling about 50k. One of the top sales-persons in the REGION. I'm set.
I'm bored.
Years later.
Who loved me so much and would do anything for me doesn't know where to start. I'm living in the Northwest, she's still in GA. She was coming out, but she got too scared, missed her chance, and then life started beating her up. Family went stupid, brothers gone crazy, she starts blaming everyone else for her feelings because that's what everyone around her does. It's all about her entertainment and her enjoyment of things only, without consideration or recognition of anyone else's feelings or positions. When told repeatedly 'this hurts', her response was it was her life, and she should be free to do whatever she wants without it hurting anyone. sorry, hon, you don't tell me how I react to things, or anyone else, for that matter. It's not a "I want to do it and you're ok with that." I tell her this. So she quits talking to me. For 5 months. Now 6. She asks me if I've ever fucked up so bad that I don't know where to start? If I know what that's like? No. I've been kicked out of my family, my home, my home with my ex, had no job, lived in my car for a while, almost got killed a couple times definitely, maybe three, ran a rap studio, got the ever living pants stole off of me, friends killed for the dumbest shit, others riding on baby's mama putting him in the hospital, my other family through her doesn't talk to me and can't stand me because I'm straight forward with them, I lost my job again, I had an entire community that I've screwed because I couldn't do what everyone demanded, what was too much wasn't enough, and do I know what feeling lost feels like, and not know where to begin? Wrecks. I call. No answer. Got a good little concussion. No response. I could have died, you fucking idiot. Didn't matter to you at all. Wouldn't talk. Your fucking pride has killed us. You don't know where to start, but you don't just start anywhere. you don't start at all. you sit still and wait for it to hit you on the head, or place itself in front of you. Things don't work that way, hon. I've gone through, in 8 years, more than what most people go through in 30. OK? I've had my life directly threatened, I've had friends shot dead for a necklace, others who don't remember my name because they got so fucked up in a wreck trying to keep oncoming traffic safe where many could have died, have had the family that you accuse me of not being close to at all stab eachother in the back repeatedly, and say it's because they love each other. Have had my extended family stab my grandparents repeatedly. Have had my heart now ripped out by you, and you want to tell me you don't know where to start? You used to smile with me. Now, when we talk, you just shut off and don't speak with me for months. Then you tell me in an email that if you were leaving me, I'd know it. I thought not speaking with someone for months was a sign? Or maybe going away and never coming back was a sign? Or maybe not ever telling me what you're doing is a sign? Or maybe taking off your rings? Or maybe telling me that it was your life, and I don't have a part of it, and shouldn't want to share in any of it because I don't want that, because you don't want that, because that's what you want things to be like was a FUCKING sign? Maybe it was telling me how I was supposed to take things? How I'm supposed to talk to you? What I'm supposed to say? How I'm supposed to feel? What about a letter to your delusional husband about how much you hate me? Those aren't SIGNS?! You tell me you don't want to be controlling, but if I say ONE thing out of line, you don't talk to me for months. What's worse is that what you bitch about that you want me to say, I said earlier in that conversation, but you never heard it. You just complain that I don't or didn't say it.
Now you're held up at gunpoint. Your life is brought into question, same as mine, only mine was as a threat, and yours was as a bartering chip as she cleaned out your store and wallet. Wait...you had a job?! I didn't know. You don't tell me anything, you hide the rest, and then get offended that I don't trust you. Get real. What happens now that you've gone to see your concerts? What happens now that you've stayed there for two years when you were supposed to be here? Ever think that if you were here, you wouldn't have been held up? You might not have seen those concerts, but is that really worth the next two years of jumpiness every time you see someone take their hands out of their pockets quickly? Or move fast behind your head? Was that worth it? It'd better be, because that was your price. You set aside your husband, your relationship for your own personal fulfillment, put yourself in the position, and the situation happened there. She would have come throught that store whether you were there or not. But because you won't get here, you were the one working there to try to make $50. Now you tell me you don't know where to start? Are you fucking serious?
The woman who smiled I havent seen for half a year. The woman who smiled smiles at other things now. The woman who I would do anything to see smile like that again, somehow anything I do just makes her hate me. it's over. There is no coming back without you doing. You've got to see this. You don't want a relationship. you want a friend that glorifies yourself, not someone who tells you 'dude, you're fucking up' or 'I love you' because they mean it. You want them to tell you that they love you because they find you amusing, or they think you're great, and that's it.
No, I don't understand caring for family. No, I don't understand being destitute. no, I don't understand what it's like to have no where to go. No, I don't know what it's like to lose a loved one. No, I don't understand what it's like to have to just move on. No, I don't get the fact that it's all what you make of life, not what life makes of you. I don't get it at all. That's why I'm running a TV station. That's why I had the job I did. That's why I got the job I have now. That's why I spent all my money and time trying to get us together. You just want to rip it apart because you don't know what else to do. That's fine with anything else. This is me. You're not ripping me apart. I've given everything I had to you. You're taking the gifts and the ribbons and you're tearing and stretching and smashing and stomping. I've cried about that long enough. I'm taking them back. I'll just give them to someone else. someone will like them. Maybe they won't. At least I won't have to endure you destroying it.
Mom: Shut up.
Dad: Shut the fuck up.
Sisters: Sorry. Get ready.
Wife: Listen to yourself. You've become a walking contradiction of yourself. Why not listen to someone else?
Self: Go away.
Reader: Purge your memory.
I'm told that there's no way that my family can retire by the time they want to. So? I feel bad for you, but you do have exorbitant luxuries you'll sacrifice yourself to maintain. You can go without several things I can think of, but still refuse to acknowledge your ability to change your present and future resides in DOING, not in the 'wishing' or 'worrying'. You've always tried to teach us that you've got to keep DOING things...sometimes the action is the inaction, or absence of action, and the determination of that path. Sometimes it means intently refraining. So don't go golfing 3-4x per week. So sell the boat. You've only come into that stuff in the last 10-12 years anyway. There were 40 without it. you can do without it again. It was a good 10-12 years. Get over it. Can't take it with you, anyway.
Also, don't refer to my sisters' praise of you, my father, as buttering up their meal-ticket through college. Don't insult their sincerity so. You will alienate yourself if you keep doing that. I already despise that continued perception you boast, and am no longer interested in any interaction with you as long as you maintain that mentality. My sisters love you. They're not placating or condescending to you. If you had told them you walked on air, they'd believe it to this day. It's fucking horrible for you to crush their feelings like that. She had to choke back tears, you asshole. You didn't see it because you're too self-indulgent and self-righteous in your pity cause that you thought you were being clever. It was mean, and you were wrong.
Side note - Shut the fuck up with the mean shit, everybody. Deal. Quit cutting others down.
Back to it: I love my sisters. Don't fuck with them. Even if you are my dad. It reminds me of all the times you pulled the same shit with me. And I still hate you for it. I gave you everything I had, but I was just doing it for money in your eyes. YOU NEVER DID THAT UNTIL YOU MADE MONEY. you think you always made it: NO YOU DIDNT. I remember not being able to afford tires for your car. I remember cold blankets. I remember an apartment the size of my one bedroom that the 4 of us lived in. I remember these things. I remember cups being buckets, warm water being heated on the stove. I remember the Chevette with the yellow showing from the cushions through the torn seats, unable to make it up hills. I remember pawpaw trying to give you money. I remember your start. I loved you anyway, BEFORE you had the fucking money. I remember you being fun, having fun, loving us, playing, being very gentle and strong. My sisters loved you before they knew what money was. I loved you for loving them. We were all best friends.
you pulled that shit with me, and I thought, "OK, bad day." for a year. Then it didn't stop. I realized mom was getting worse. You were getting worse. My sisters were turning into you two. Mom physically assaulting me because she hates me because she sees you in me, you bitching at me because I'm just like my fucking mother, then yelling at mom, then beating the dog, and the reason? Money. "Can't afford this, can't do that, gotta have it, fuck it, fuck you." And Avery'd get it because I was a financial burden. I got a job when I was 16. Didn't use any of your money. Paid my insurance, my food, my everything. Well, there was college. From MY mutual fund. From MY childhood. OK. I paid for that. "You need a new car." OK. I'm spending about $200-300 on starters per month as is, I can rock a car for that per month. So you cosign. I see a girl. We hit it off. I am paying for college. I want to make sure I make good grades. I study. I go to the library almost every night, from 7 until 12/1/2AM sometimes. "You're not studying. you're doing god knows what." No, you're wrong. I was fucking studying. We both were. BUT, now I realize it's never going to change. If it's money, and I fix that, now it's something else. Then it'll be something else when that's over. Want to know why I was so quiet? Because you fucking yelled all the time. If I stated an opinion (i.e. "I want to be a lawyer, I think." "Why the hell would you want to do that?!" "Because I like psychology, and perspectives, and the idea of justice." "TWIST the FUCKING knife in my back, son. Jesus FUCKING christ, a lawyer. Shit.") OR, it'd be something about a new chip design that allowed 256 mb of ram or 512 in the same space as it used to be 128 mb max and how I thought that was impressive, the only thing you heard was I wanted a computer all of a sudden, and I had no concept of money, or something like that. If I mentioned the guitar not feeling natural, they heard that I wanted them to buy me a new one - all I was saying was my fingers were clumsy that day. If I went and got a rail, I was fussed at for spending any money at all. I competed in street comps. Spent money for that, too. $5-$10 entry fees were fun to lose, because at least I was there. Never told them, never caught shit for it.
Anyway, whatever my opinion, it'd always turn out to be the wrong one, and either I was just like my mother for saying that, or I was being assinine and selfish. But, my sisters could do no wrong. I was ok with it as long as they weren't the targets. I knew that deep inside somewhere they loved me. Mom'd punch me, or start wailing on my chest. Kicking me. Maybe you just forgot since you had all this shit when you were young, but you'd remember us someday, and it'd be great because I'd forgive you, and everything would be excellent, and we'd all be best friends again.
Then my sisters started accusing me of being just like mom.
And they started accusing me of being just like Dad.
And we started getting into some very nasty fights.
I started channeling my aggression towards them.
I love my sisters.
mom wailing on me, yelling at my sisters, dad yelling at everyone, mom yelling at him, everyone breaking shit, throwing shit around, poor bonnie getting thrown up against the tree anytime dad had no other outlet, then pissing in the floor whenever he'd come around, then getting walloped on the head by a strong fist every time she did...
Guns enter the house. Wrecked home enters wrecked home with automatic weapons. What happens? Are things dealt with logically and rationally? No. Everyone is screamed at, forced into the car, and taken somewhere illogical. As if the guns will hop up and start randomly firing at everyone. They'd never seen guns before, I don't think. what the holy fuck? We finally disassembled them in pieces around the lake, pieces miles apart. barrel here, pin there, hammer here, gave the bullets away.
Now it's my fault for not listening to my mother scream incoherently at us and making a scene.
I didn't make the scene. She was crying her eyes out when she was screaming.
She was kicking my shins, trying to make me do what she demanded.
She was shoving my sisters into the car by their heads as they were crying.
Only she and I knew about the guns.
My sisters didn't know. They were confused as hell.
Screaming, yelling, forcing, kicking.
I couldn't do it.
no more.
I left. Why? Obvious to me. Is it obvious to anyone else?
I'm called every day, being bitched out, how could I do that to them, blah blah. It lasts two weeks. When I ask about how people are doing, I'm told everyone's fine, if I ever really cared.
I'm told that in my absence, they've gotten a brand new TV, a new PS2, a new whatever. So many new things. Things they'd told me for years I was stupid to save up and get. I'd come and visit them early on Saturdays and make them breakfast for a month or so. Well, I was still just trying to get money out of them. Being nice to gain. it had nothing to do with that, but that's what they wanted to believe. My girlfriend moves in. We were doing well, things were going good. I knew I loved being around her, I knew I loved her, and I knew she was very supportive to me through all of this, even at the cost of befriending my family. She alienated herself from them to support me. She even started alienating herself from her own family a bit, not listening to negative advice being given, a very innocent soul, in all honesty. Aware of the world, but it never seemed to touch her, if that makes any sense. Anyway, a truly awesome woman.
Well, my family couldn't stand it. What was bad before became horrid. My family went ape-shit. I was going to hell. I was Satan incarnate. The preacher at their church, a genuinely sweet man, came and tried to speak with us about religion, and the 'right' way to do things. We'd been fucking like rabbits after about a month of the "you're not studying" accusations. We still were studying until 1 or 2, but then we were fucking like crazy until about 4AM. We'd been living together for a few weeks. We're about as right as we can be, I thought. I took everything my family had as standards, motives, goals, meanings, worthy endeavors and said So, fuck it, it's my life. I can do whatever and be whatever I want, since I can't be what you want. You're wrong in most anything you've accused me of. It's time to see what's really true.
So I did what I did. i told the preacher that I was Wiccan. He didn't know what that meant. We're eating CiCi's Pizza (a truely delicious pizza still, to this day for some odd reason), and he's trying to grasp what Wicca is. We come to the middle ground that it's pantheism, but I don't very adequately convey that I don't necessarily believe that every element or property has a god's name associated with it, that I agree and ascribe to it mostly as a philosophy, and not so much as a theology . so he thinks I worship Greek mythology. No. so I hug trees? Closer. He says that there are paths for every individual, and what may seem as a straying now may just be a path closer to the truth. This is coming from a man who's put in the highest recommendation possible for me to attend Sewanee, be a member of the clergy, and who would speak with me about the different aspects of a sermon he'd written, and ask my opinion of...not like he was seeking wisdom, but he genuinely enjoyed talking with me, and I him. he was a very sweet man. And he didn't say 'closer to god' or 'jesus'. He said 'closer to the truth.' That was the last time I saw him. I wish him all the best in this life and the next. He's one terriffic guy. Everyone should meet him. You'll know when you do.
Continuing on: I haven't seen my family in a couple months. my mom won't let my sisters come over, even though she's in town every day. She dad won't talk to me. I call my grandparents: same thing. Mawmaw and pawpaw would talk with me, as would Jackie and Brenda, but only briefly, and 'hows the weather'. I started to realize what alienation was. I didn't see what I had in a loving woman. I saw what I had sacrificed. I saw the absence I had created for myself. I realized my place. I was expendable. All our best friends. All my best friends. They now hated me. And I hated them. we were no longer family. We were enemies. I stop calling. A few weeks go by. I get a call from my mom. I don't answer. We stop talking. I believed all the shit they'd told me.
It's a very occassional once-per-month-or-two two minute conversation that always ends with "Can my sisters come see me?" "No." "Why?" "Because of your lifestyle." "Ok, bye." *click* I couldn't believe their ignorance. I started getting frustrated. One of their friends forever has lived with this chick for years, hasn't married her, and you don't judge HIM, but, somehow, I'm setting a bad example for my sisters?! I didn't choose this because he did it. I chose it because I thought it was the right thing to do. The whole 'next step' thing. You know?
I still have the car. At somepoint in all the heated arguings, I was told that they wouldn't have a bad-credit risk with me and that car, since they didn't trust me to make a payment. This was preceded by me forgetting to go by an atm on my way to visit them to pay them for the whatever I had to pay them for. I went to the atm, got the money, when I got back, there was paperwork and a forced pen. OK, cool. Fuck it. Made a few grand to the side after I gave them $25000. They get their money. They make payroll for this month. They're happy. Next month they'll have to take from my sisters. Fuck it.
We're on about our life, my girlfriend and I. It was great sometimes, horrid other times. And it was all about where I'd see myself. I should have gone to a therapist. I should have talked about it. Not that I want her back - and I don't mean that she was at all anything to get rid of - but she's about to have a kid now with her husband whom she loves more than any of us know the meaning of the word, and is truly happy. Told you, one hell of a woman. :) No, but I would have saved her a lot of shit. She stuck with me two years through some of the most tumultuous emotional baggage you've ever seen. I wasn't my mom or my dad by any stretch of the imagination, but I was conflicted. What if I was just the stupid teenager? What I f I was wrong? What if? What if everything I knew was incorrect? Did I make the right decision? Those questions ate me alive. I started flashbacks to getting the shit beat out of me, being chased in dark woods, awkward moments that I blacked out in (and still don't remember), vivid memories. Terror. Hell. Very disjointed. Very disconnected. I'd play video games and watch movies just to give linearity to my thought processes. Otherwise, I'd literally start crying without knowing why, or start shaking. I would go 4 or 5 days sometimes with no sleep. Reality had no effect. I was immune, completely gone. I was stronger than this. I was a warrior. Warriors don't do that. What the fuck, asshole?! Get it together.
All of our love gone.
Get it TOGETHER.
We were dead.
GET IT TOGETHER, FUCKFACE.
They said it was my fault.
DUDE!
Maybe it was.
TOGETHER!
Maybe I did it.
GET IT TOGETHER ASSHOLE! NOW.
I killed us.
I killed our friendships.
I killed us being best friends.
I did it.
Somehow, I was in Savannah, now. I was excited to be here. It was a place to start over. Cleave from the grip of the piedmont, go to the coast, get the fuck away. Give us an honest chance, me and my fiancee. Got odd jobs. Ran two at once. Kept it moving for a little bit.
got told by my job advisor that i was a stupid teenager who'd broken his family heart, and didn't have a shred of moral fiber in his body, and should just go join whatever cult and kill myself because I was lost to the world. She was just pissed because she was diagnosed with some incurable cancer. I didn't see that until years later, even though she told me that in her apology on company letterhead with the watermark. I shreded the letter. All I heard was everything I'd feared being put into one breath. It must be true.
I do a show I don't remember. Apparently I was good in it. People still comment to me on it. I remember getting punched in the face during it to get me to shut the hell up.
GET IT TOGETHER.
couldn't. What a whiney little pussy I was. what a whiney pussy I am.
Everything comes to a head. I don't know what's going on. We fuck one night, the next night it's over. Not 'get ready because it's done' over but, 'gone tomorrow and changing locks' over. I remember vague discussions. I cry. I wail. I can't stand it. It hurts. This was the new beginning. I knew I fucked it up, but I wanted to prove I was sincere. Nope. OK. I call my dad, my best friend, crying to him that it was over, that I'd fucked it all up. He comes down next day with a truck and we pack shit up and move out. I want to live here, still, to sell everything. he wants me to get my head back on straight, and come back home and live with them. OK. I'm lost. Might as well give it another shot, right?
I throw what I can in my car, and go to drive back home, to make good on the family I'd destroyed.
I get there, and I'm bitched out for spending money. I was a wreck. Stuff like: She was so awful to me, how could I have ever loved her? Why was I so consistently stupid? Because someone tells me they love me, hugs me, does what she did, I'm a sucker for a lie. I'm so fucking gullible. I make them sick that they raised someone so stupid.
She calls.
She tells me she's sorry, and she knows I was trying. She got stressed and snapped, and maybe we could make it work.
My show opens in a week. i didn't make it to rehearsal that night because I was with my family. Im a lead role. THE lead role.
Two positives and a negative that's breaking my heart. I go back. i dont' take anything but what's left in my car. I go tell them this is what i'm doing. They tell me i'm thinking with my dick, not my head. I am crying, because this hurts, Because I do love her, because I don't think of her as a fuck at all, i think of her as a soulmate. I try to choke back tears, I kiss my dad on the cheek, and tell him to have a nice life. What we used to be can be no longer. sorry I let you down.
I never told them they were the ones being stupid. I never said, "No, YOURE the moron." I wasn't abrasive. Such things are just petty, and put you right back on the level they're at.
I get back, I'm there for a week, and it's over again. My show opened. I was removed from the relationship again. Same as before: Out by tomorrow.
I still have the show to perform.
I have no money.
I have nowhere to live.
I'm not going home. Not to that.
I live in my car.
I perform the show, showering in the dressing room. Once that's over, I sneak in to take showers. Someone catches on, and locks the doors. Next it's truck stops. I dont' have a commercial license, which is required to visit a truckstop shower. OK. Sneak by. Gotta get a job. I get a job. I have no residence. I used a guy that I spent a few nights sleeping in his dorm while he worked at the SUB for his address. We became good friends, smoking Djarum cigs he was gracious to lend and talking about System of A down albums, and music in general. He was about in the same place as me. We vibed well. He became incredibly intellectual, and ended up teaching english in Singapore, and still lives in Asia, I believe. Great guy. I owe him a lot.
Then it was roommates, and people he knew. Great couple. We got along perfectly. Spent every dime I'd saved working and put in on a deposit for tus an apartment. That's all they asked of me. The deposit. no monthly rent. No utilities. They were so sweet. I loved playing games and music with him, and talking about these raves she used to go to. It was fantastic. We got along great.
In comes one woman, out goes another for a few months. Us three all enjoying ourselves incredibly. Killians and games / tv at night with him, working or riding around town listening to techno / trance with her during the day. They tried to get me to go clubbing a few times, but I just wanted to write music. Then they'd tell me that it sucked, or that it was good, and it was awesome. he was the best critic of music. He was so blatant. "Good idea, but it sounds like you just shit everywhere. If you're going to shit, at least put it in a nice pile." Then he'd tell me what he meant. He was so fun. Seriously. He'd say that, but he'd do it in such a dry fashion, it was perfect comedic timing. He was cool. He ended up going overseas. he was in the army. I met a woman. She was timid and shy, but so fun and awesome. I loved her within a week, believe it or not. No warming up, just got the feeling one night when we were walking around outside. I saw her smile when I looked at her, and she sent this wave of comradery and comfort over me, and a desire to know her better, and of knowing that I'd do anything and everything I could forever to get her to smile like that again. She comes and visits me when there's no heat. No TV. When there's no reason to be there. We'd lay and cuddle wherever and talk about random things. Sleep. nothing sexual. Except the make-out sessions. Those were sexual. But they never ended up in sex. Just making out. It was fun just to kiss her. he's coming back into town. His TOD is finally over. But when he came back, he was not the guy that left. He was aggressive, accusatory, and directly confronted me that I slept with his wife. They were my brother and sister. Every time she and I were together after that, it was an excuse to be alone with her. I was reminded of my family, and how I was always trying to do this or that by my actions. I left them, too. They had to keep my TV, because it was practically theirs anyway. OK. Fine. Another one bites the dust. I wish them both well.
I go find a place I can afford on what money I make, now. I find one. She still comes over. It's awesome. She tells me things. I listen. She tells me she doesn't know what to do. I tell her that's fine. She tells me she wants to do something. I tell her to do it. She tells me she wants to have something. I tell her it's unnecessary, then buy it for her to surprise her. She tells me I don't understand alienation. I tell her I do. She tells me I don't understand family. i tell her I do. She tells me I don't get it because I don't speak with them. She never asked why. it was just that simple in her mind: you don't speak with them, you don't get it. Hm. Maybe something to that.
I called mom.
Answered begrudgingly.
Talked piddle talk. But it was cool. Maybe if they knew I was back on track, or something, it'd be good. They help me move into my next place. They visit. They enjoy being there. It's nice.
We talk for about a week before they start accusing me again. They want me to go back to college. I'm worn out. Finish up. I don't want to. It's a burden, and unnecessary. Besides, 43% of college graduates won't have a college graduate job by the time I graduate. Why spend the money? Because it's something I'll have accomplished, they say. I go, I graduate, I have to scrape by with only $5 for the entire month to eat off of more than a couple of times. Her family helps me out and feeds me. I'm told I don't handle money well, and her family is just enablers for my lifestyle. Well, they are enablers, but they weren't to me. They were honestly trying to help me out because their daughter loved me so much. shit. I pay bills. There's not a lot left over when your AC bill is $215. they don't hear that. I show them the statements. Whatever, that's just one month, what about all the other months? Well, I actually eat those months. They say I'm drinking, or smoking it all away. Fuck 'em. whatever. It's my money, anyhow. I'll not spend what I don't have however I damn well please. I graduate. I'm engaged again. I get a good job pulling about 50k. One of the top sales-persons in the REGION. I'm set.
I'm bored.
Years later.
Who loved me so much and would do anything for me doesn't know where to start. I'm living in the Northwest, she's still in GA. She was coming out, but she got too scared, missed her chance, and then life started beating her up. Family went stupid, brothers gone crazy, she starts blaming everyone else for her feelings because that's what everyone around her does. It's all about her entertainment and her enjoyment of things only, without consideration or recognition of anyone else's feelings or positions. When told repeatedly 'this hurts', her response was it was her life, and she should be free to do whatever she wants without it hurting anyone. sorry, hon, you don't tell me how I react to things, or anyone else, for that matter. It's not a "I want to do it and you're ok with that." I tell her this. So she quits talking to me. For 5 months. Now 6. She asks me if I've ever fucked up so bad that I don't know where to start? If I know what that's like? No. I've been kicked out of my family, my home, my home with my ex, had no job, lived in my car for a while, almost got killed a couple times definitely, maybe three, ran a rap studio, got the ever living pants stole off of me, friends killed for the dumbest shit, others riding on baby's mama putting him in the hospital, my other family through her doesn't talk to me and can't stand me because I'm straight forward with them, I lost my job again, I had an entire community that I've screwed because I couldn't do what everyone demanded, what was too much wasn't enough, and do I know what feeling lost feels like, and not know where to begin? Wrecks. I call. No answer. Got a good little concussion. No response. I could have died, you fucking idiot. Didn't matter to you at all. Wouldn't talk. Your fucking pride has killed us. You don't know where to start, but you don't just start anywhere. you don't start at all. you sit still and wait for it to hit you on the head, or place itself in front of you. Things don't work that way, hon. I've gone through, in 8 years, more than what most people go through in 30. OK? I've had my life directly threatened, I've had friends shot dead for a necklace, others who don't remember my name because they got so fucked up in a wreck trying to keep oncoming traffic safe where many could have died, have had the family that you accuse me of not being close to at all stab eachother in the back repeatedly, and say it's because they love each other. Have had my extended family stab my grandparents repeatedly. Have had my heart now ripped out by you, and you want to tell me you don't know where to start? You used to smile with me. Now, when we talk, you just shut off and don't speak with me for months. Then you tell me in an email that if you were leaving me, I'd know it. I thought not speaking with someone for months was a sign? Or maybe going away and never coming back was a sign? Or maybe not ever telling me what you're doing is a sign? Or maybe taking off your rings? Or maybe telling me that it was your life, and I don't have a part of it, and shouldn't want to share in any of it because I don't want that, because you don't want that, because that's what you want things to be like was a FUCKING sign? Maybe it was telling me how I was supposed to take things? How I'm supposed to talk to you? What I'm supposed to say? How I'm supposed to feel? What about a letter to your delusional husband about how much you hate me? Those aren't SIGNS?! You tell me you don't want to be controlling, but if I say ONE thing out of line, you don't talk to me for months. What's worse is that what you bitch about that you want me to say, I said earlier in that conversation, but you never heard it. You just complain that I don't or didn't say it.
Now you're held up at gunpoint. Your life is brought into question, same as mine, only mine was as a threat, and yours was as a bartering chip as she cleaned out your store and wallet. Wait...you had a job?! I didn't know. You don't tell me anything, you hide the rest, and then get offended that I don't trust you. Get real. What happens now that you've gone to see your concerts? What happens now that you've stayed there for two years when you were supposed to be here? Ever think that if you were here, you wouldn't have been held up? You might not have seen those concerts, but is that really worth the next two years of jumpiness every time you see someone take their hands out of their pockets quickly? Or move fast behind your head? Was that worth it? It'd better be, because that was your price. You set aside your husband, your relationship for your own personal fulfillment, put yourself in the position, and the situation happened there. She would have come throught that store whether you were there or not. But because you won't get here, you were the one working there to try to make $50. Now you tell me you don't know where to start? Are you fucking serious?
The woman who smiled I havent seen for half a year. The woman who smiled smiles at other things now. The woman who I would do anything to see smile like that again, somehow anything I do just makes her hate me. it's over. There is no coming back without you doing. You've got to see this. You don't want a relationship. you want a friend that glorifies yourself, not someone who tells you 'dude, you're fucking up' or 'I love you' because they mean it. You want them to tell you that they love you because they find you amusing, or they think you're great, and that's it.
No, I don't understand caring for family. No, I don't understand being destitute. no, I don't understand what it's like to have no where to go. No, I don't know what it's like to lose a loved one. No, I don't understand what it's like to have to just move on. No, I don't get the fact that it's all what you make of life, not what life makes of you. I don't get it at all. That's why I'm running a TV station. That's why I had the job I did. That's why I got the job I have now. That's why I spent all my money and time trying to get us together. You just want to rip it apart because you don't know what else to do. That's fine with anything else. This is me. You're not ripping me apart. I've given everything I had to you. You're taking the gifts and the ribbons and you're tearing and stretching and smashing and stomping. I've cried about that long enough. I'm taking them back. I'll just give them to someone else. someone will like them. Maybe they won't. At least I won't have to endure you destroying it.
Mom: Shut up.
Dad: Shut the fuck up.
Sisters: Sorry. Get ready.
Wife: Listen to yourself. You've become a walking contradiction of yourself. Why not listen to someone else?
Self: Go away.
Reader: Purge your memory.
09 April 2009
Note To The Reader
Hi,
After skimming over my previous blogs, I found one big hole in my writings that I have failed to, and think might be necessary to explain.
I have three brains.
This may come as something of a shock to you. Well, I assure you, it's the truth. I will have one train of logic, and it will be moving along just grandly, then my other brain will click on, and will take one tangent, leaving the other two on the original. Then the next fork in the tracks, my third brain will opt to venture THAT unknown, taking a completely different tack than my other two, and none of them know how to read the signs on the tracks. So, one is going to Chicago, the other Phoenix, and the other finally discovered that it is actually a plane, not a train, and is taking the first available airspace to fly to London. They often never see each other again. I am perfectly grounded in the Existential.
I have the observational/analytical brain, the introspective/intellectual brain, and the curious/creative brain. None ever stop. All respond to stimulus simultaneously. All have very loud voices, and over power each other frequently. Ergo, my writings will probably seem to be disjointed ramblings without a point. Well, they are. Except, they do have a point, but only I know the tracks, so only I get them; which makes the 'self-expression' thing a terrible failure, if it's never expressed - it takes someone understanding what you're saying in order for it to be communication. Otherwise, it's just stupid ramblings. See? Exactly like that.
So, I stupidly ramble great things. Or greatly stupid things. Either is accurate.
I am seriously starting to question my sanity, now. At least I understand what I mean.
If you ever are wondering exactly what I mean, ask me. I'll tell you exactly how I understand it.
I love complicated simplicity.
btw, I write music. My artist name is Mode Of Being. Check out my links.
www.myspace.com/modeofbeing
www.ilike.com/artist/mode+of+being
www.garageband.com/modeofbeing
www.soundclick.com/modeofbeing
www.twitter.com/modeofbeing
Also on Facebook
And I'm a dj on Blip.fm
and I'm done explaining myself and selfishly whoring myself and talking about things that don't matter. just figured I'd let you know something that might make a difference, so you didn't think I was an idiot. Hopefully this blog removes all doubt.
Yes, that was intentional. I LOVE plays on words. :)
- Avery
After skimming over my previous blogs, I found one big hole in my writings that I have failed to, and think might be necessary to explain.
I have three brains.
This may come as something of a shock to you. Well, I assure you, it's the truth. I will have one train of logic, and it will be moving along just grandly, then my other brain will click on, and will take one tangent, leaving the other two on the original. Then the next fork in the tracks, my third brain will opt to venture THAT unknown, taking a completely different tack than my other two, and none of them know how to read the signs on the tracks. So, one is going to Chicago, the other Phoenix, and the other finally discovered that it is actually a plane, not a train, and is taking the first available airspace to fly to London. They often never see each other again. I am perfectly grounded in the Existential.
I have the observational/analytical brain, the introspective/intellectual brain, and the curious/creative brain. None ever stop. All respond to stimulus simultaneously. All have very loud voices, and over power each other frequently. Ergo, my writings will probably seem to be disjointed ramblings without a point. Well, they are. Except, they do have a point, but only I know the tracks, so only I get them; which makes the 'self-expression' thing a terrible failure, if it's never expressed - it takes someone understanding what you're saying in order for it to be communication. Otherwise, it's just stupid ramblings. See? Exactly like that.
So, I stupidly ramble great things. Or greatly stupid things. Either is accurate.
I am seriously starting to question my sanity, now. At least I understand what I mean.
If you ever are wondering exactly what I mean, ask me. I'll tell you exactly how I understand it.
I love complicated simplicity.
btw, I write music. My artist name is Mode Of Being. Check out my links.
www.myspace.com/modeofbeing
www.ilike.com/artist/mode+of+being
www.garageband.com/modeofbeing
www.soundclick.com/modeofbeing
www.twitter.com/modeofbeing
Also on Facebook
And I'm a dj on Blip.fm
and I'm done explaining myself and selfishly whoring myself and talking about things that don't matter. just figured I'd let you know something that might make a difference, so you didn't think I was an idiot. Hopefully this blog removes all doubt.
Yes, that was intentional. I LOVE plays on words. :)
- Avery
06 April 2009
Well, the ball's set in motion. Dreams, HO! Rock 'n Roll Cat
There it starts. Notice is set in to the apartments. I'm out at the end of May / beginning of June. I'm relocating somewhere different. To a place where they just laid off 1200 people at the place I applied for a new job. Exciting. Hotel rooms and odd jobs ensue, I predict. But, I'll be with my wife again, and I'm excited as all hell for that. I've practically went crazy these last couple of months. I do things I never thought I would, and say stuff I don't mean, and try things that I shouldn't. Self-destructive patterns of behavior that I need to just get rid of forever. Smoking, excessive drinking, occasional violence, some other recreational explorations into alternative perspectives. I'm keeping my blood clean from now on. I'll drink a couple beers a day, have a good cigar once per year (my birthday), and other than that, screw the rest of it. It just hurts people. That's all it's good for. Which isn't anything good. I'm too old to keep doing stupid stuff.
I'm very against anyone being anything definite by their own proclamations and suspicions. "I'm a loving person." "I'm a rebellious person." "I'm a this or that." Self identification based on self-analysis is about as selfish and subjective as you can get. I've always believed that you are what other people make of you, not what you say you are. you can think you're jesus, but if no one likes your piety, then you're just a pain in the ass, regardless of how you see yourself. The Spirit is an interesting topic for me. I don't think of it so much as an inspiration in oneself via some unexplained source, but, rather, the inspiration you give to others via your actions. Immortality is not living forever in your physical body you possess currently, but is living on in the hearts and minds of others. This kind of thing. I am also a fan of both sides of the fence, and I practice what I preach. So:
I'm a rock 'n' roller. I am a party guy. I love interacting with people. I love making people laugh. I love making them dance. I love being the 'cool guy'. I am the cool guy by nature. I'm also the weird geeky guy at the same time. I have that nerdy intrigue about me. I make friends easily. I earn respect quickly. I love people very easily. I enjoy having fun more than anything. In my heart and my day to day, it's like I'm constantly stoned, and the world is a great place. I like honesty. I like acting like a fool. Anything that pushes limits or perceptions that is done by choice (not being forced into). I'm a very "Yes, that's exactly what I think, too." kinda guy, and genuinely mean it. I enjoy philosophy, even though I think it's all bullshit and pointless. I enjoy the little things and trinkets of knowledge that don't matter. I desperately want to have a broader perspective and knowledge, so I can create really interesting art. My mind always smiles. I didn't used to think in words, but in pictures, audio, and sequences. I think I think in words now, sometimes. I like the 60s mentality, and the sense of unity and justifiability in the division of how things were (yes, I know that's contradictive. My point is, if you were on one side or the other, you were with people who supported you and what you believed in through and through. That is inspirational). I believe in the Beatles Let It Be and Abbey Road. I believe in Led Zepplin. I believe in Cream, Rush, Dave Matthews Band. I don't believe in Pink Floyd, but I find their music absolutely GENIUS. Same thing for the Rolling Stones. Give me a rock'n'roll group, and I'm down. Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Buffet (I know, not real rock, but shut up. He's pretty bad-assed), The Cars, The Cure, New Order (again, Bad-assed), Bad Religion, both songs the Ramones composed and rehashed over and over again, ZZTop, Billy Joel, Tori Amos, David Byrne, Rage Against The Machine, good god, so many influences in my life. Allow me to explain.
I used to - and still do - think in pictures and sounds, sorta. So music is a very powerful form of communication for me. I used to do that constantly: try to find a way to express an idea via a picture, drawing, or music. I wrote some weird shit. I mean, some weird shit. I got all my fulfillment out of things through music, though. I'd listen to a happy song, and things would quite literally smell different. Clean, fresh, whole, satisfying. I'd listen to an aggressive song in that mood, and the air would tense up, as would I. If I were tense, and listened to some heavy metal, for some reason my mind identified it as being sympatico, and I'd mellow out so well. I could keep track and a consistent mood by what I listened to. Voices would do that. I pick up very keenly on tenseness in voices, or inflections. I often find myself listening to the quality and inflections of the voice more than the actual words. I can't tell you anything of what that person just said, but I can tell you what they meant. If something's bothering them, I can tell, and I ask. Sometimes they don't even know what's bothering them, and when I ask, it becomes another level of confusion or frustration layered on top of what they had in their heads just before, and I feel really bad for compounding it, when I'm trying to help. But, time moves on, it's a fact, and this time is meant to be enjoyed. Music is better than a drug for me. It is my entire justification for existence.
how do I make it better? I want to be a performer. I want to be an entertainer. I want to make people dance, to make them sing, to give them escape, as other artists gave me the same. I loved them for that, and I want to be like that, too. lol At 26, I've finally found out what I want to do when I grow up.
how do I give people escape? Do I talk about my life? Do I talk about someone else's? It seems almost all music on the radio today has a 'I feel like' 'i am like' 'i wish it' 'i want this' feel to it. Brings to mind "I, Me, Mine", and I'm not sure if that's the way to go. I think it's good, but I don't know if it's the best. Concept albums lose me sometime, and lose others, too. I can sing about good things. That's part of what I loved about the Beatles, was their sense of storytelling with the music and lyrics combined. "She's Leaving Home" is one of the most beautiful songs ever written. Across The Universe. One is about someone else in another situation. The other is about the person writing the poem, but in an objective sense. The Police did that, too. Regatta Del Blanc Vs Syncronicity, two of the best albums of all time, almost direct contradictions of eachother. "Poor me" Vs "That's what you think.", respectively. How do I give people something to cling to?
1. It has to be Universal. If they don't understand it, they won't feel connected to it, and it won't lift them out of their situation, or enhance it.
2. It has to give them something they lack. Lonely people listen to love songs, or 'nobody loves me' music. Political people listen to very driven political type stuff. It's something they crave in that moment, a need that is filled. Sad people listen to sad music if they want empathy, or happy music if they want distraction. So an album needs diversity, and it has to hit different emotional ranges. Hope, happiness, love, hate, sadness, anger, complacence, maybe an introspective track, maybe a track that's completely abstract (like a Tori Amos Little Earthquakes) for those who like mystery, and crave something superfluous to routine, or anything outside of the ordinary. Sometimes people just like music, without words. One of those, too. There's an album.
3. It has to be memorable. I can beat on a tin can all day, screaming "Harsh minds create harsh lives." over and over and over again. It's a shiny can, perfect for symbolizing reflection, it's a cylinder, for the 'full circle' idea, it's a stick, which indicates aggression / phallic superiority, it's a person screaming, which shows violence, and it's just two things going, which is very raw and basic, without refinement, which is the embodiment of being harsh. It's a harsh song about being harsh. Brilliant, right? But who's going to sing along to that? Who's going to feel any connection? That's where George Harrisson and John Lennon lost it when they departed from the Beatles. They were more interested in sharing THEIR minds, as opposed to entertaining the masses (which is what they started out doing), and so consequently become more boring to listen to. "Try Some, Buy Some" is a great track, but the whole album is almost a chore to listen to, it's so preachy.
New music is becoming rare. It's time to make something good. The Cars took and built upon a generation. Same thing for Soundgarden. Same thing for Alice In Chains, same thing for David Bowie. He's built upon 2 generations.
I used to be excited for things. Now everything's a chore, or an effort. So I'm leaving. Again. I don't know if I'll ever have a home. And I don't really care. I love the chase, the pursuit. I love the ability to try and find it. I love how things always manage to work themselves out. I have given myself and others the most dire of situations, and they have turned out ok. A couple of knicks or bruises, but all in all, knowledge of a limit that you didn't have before, and the removal of the ones before it. Life can be a great thing.
Even when I was living in my car, or hopping from room to room with different people, or travelling the south-east with movers and being paid under the table for it - I always went to sleep at night, and I always woke up the next morning. I loved what I did, because nothing really mattered. It was easy to be enthusiastic, because things were always different. Not anymore. Now it's just expectations piled on expectations, always compounded by lack of time or communication or both. Grr. It's important to maintain perspective, and I'm starting...no, I've lost it.
I want to tell people things. Justifiably, they don't want to listen often. They get bored with what I tell them. I think I'm slightly retarded. I think something's a great revelation, and most everybody is, "Yeah, dude, no shit." Which means it's not very revelation-ey at all. So, I'm just stupid, I guess. It's ok. I just feel stupid. But I don't think I'm really being stupid, I think I'm just slower than most everybody. I pick up on things very quickly, and other things are very hard to make my mind comprehend.
So, whee, let's rock this shit. You only live once, that we know of for a fact, and I've lived my life so far to best accomodate those I respect, on fear that if I don't, then they'll no longer respect me, and take away our interactions. One of those fears has been realized with someone I love very dearly, and it's BECAUSE I did what I thought was the best thing for everyone involved, so that method is a failure.
Note to self: Trying To Please Everyone
- FAILURE. IMPOSSIBLE.
Let's make this life something fun. Adventure doesn't come to anyone. You seek and find adventure on your own. I'm going to find it. Wanna come?
I'm very against anyone being anything definite by their own proclamations and suspicions. "I'm a loving person." "I'm a rebellious person." "I'm a this or that." Self identification based on self-analysis is about as selfish and subjective as you can get. I've always believed that you are what other people make of you, not what you say you are. you can think you're jesus, but if no one likes your piety, then you're just a pain in the ass, regardless of how you see yourself. The Spirit is an interesting topic for me. I don't think of it so much as an inspiration in oneself via some unexplained source, but, rather, the inspiration you give to others via your actions. Immortality is not living forever in your physical body you possess currently, but is living on in the hearts and minds of others. This kind of thing. I am also a fan of both sides of the fence, and I practice what I preach. So:
I'm a rock 'n' roller. I am a party guy. I love interacting with people. I love making people laugh. I love making them dance. I love being the 'cool guy'. I am the cool guy by nature. I'm also the weird geeky guy at the same time. I have that nerdy intrigue about me. I make friends easily. I earn respect quickly. I love people very easily. I enjoy having fun more than anything. In my heart and my day to day, it's like I'm constantly stoned, and the world is a great place. I like honesty. I like acting like a fool. Anything that pushes limits or perceptions that is done by choice (not being forced into). I'm a very "Yes, that's exactly what I think, too." kinda guy, and genuinely mean it. I enjoy philosophy, even though I think it's all bullshit and pointless. I enjoy the little things and trinkets of knowledge that don't matter. I desperately want to have a broader perspective and knowledge, so I can create really interesting art. My mind always smiles. I didn't used to think in words, but in pictures, audio, and sequences. I think I think in words now, sometimes. I like the 60s mentality, and the sense of unity and justifiability in the division of how things were (yes, I know that's contradictive. My point is, if you were on one side or the other, you were with people who supported you and what you believed in through and through. That is inspirational). I believe in the Beatles Let It Be and Abbey Road. I believe in Led Zepplin. I believe in Cream, Rush, Dave Matthews Band. I don't believe in Pink Floyd, but I find their music absolutely GENIUS. Same thing for the Rolling Stones. Give me a rock'n'roll group, and I'm down. Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Buffet (I know, not real rock, but shut up. He's pretty bad-assed), The Cars, The Cure, New Order (again, Bad-assed), Bad Religion, both songs the Ramones composed and rehashed over and over again, ZZTop, Billy Joel, Tori Amos, David Byrne, Rage Against The Machine, good god, so many influences in my life. Allow me to explain.
I used to - and still do - think in pictures and sounds, sorta. So music is a very powerful form of communication for me. I used to do that constantly: try to find a way to express an idea via a picture, drawing, or music. I wrote some weird shit. I mean, some weird shit. I got all my fulfillment out of things through music, though. I'd listen to a happy song, and things would quite literally smell different. Clean, fresh, whole, satisfying. I'd listen to an aggressive song in that mood, and the air would tense up, as would I. If I were tense, and listened to some heavy metal, for some reason my mind identified it as being sympatico, and I'd mellow out so well. I could keep track and a consistent mood by what I listened to. Voices would do that. I pick up very keenly on tenseness in voices, or inflections. I often find myself listening to the quality and inflections of the voice more than the actual words. I can't tell you anything of what that person just said, but I can tell you what they meant. If something's bothering them, I can tell, and I ask. Sometimes they don't even know what's bothering them, and when I ask, it becomes another level of confusion or frustration layered on top of what they had in their heads just before, and I feel really bad for compounding it, when I'm trying to help. But, time moves on, it's a fact, and this time is meant to be enjoyed. Music is better than a drug for me. It is my entire justification for existence.
how do I make it better? I want to be a performer. I want to be an entertainer. I want to make people dance, to make them sing, to give them escape, as other artists gave me the same. I loved them for that, and I want to be like that, too. lol At 26, I've finally found out what I want to do when I grow up.
how do I give people escape? Do I talk about my life? Do I talk about someone else's? It seems almost all music on the radio today has a 'I feel like' 'i am like' 'i wish it' 'i want this' feel to it. Brings to mind "I, Me, Mine", and I'm not sure if that's the way to go. I think it's good, but I don't know if it's the best. Concept albums lose me sometime, and lose others, too. I can sing about good things. That's part of what I loved about the Beatles, was their sense of storytelling with the music and lyrics combined. "She's Leaving Home" is one of the most beautiful songs ever written. Across The Universe. One is about someone else in another situation. The other is about the person writing the poem, but in an objective sense. The Police did that, too. Regatta Del Blanc Vs Syncronicity, two of the best albums of all time, almost direct contradictions of eachother. "Poor me" Vs "That's what you think.", respectively. How do I give people something to cling to?
1. It has to be Universal. If they don't understand it, they won't feel connected to it, and it won't lift them out of their situation, or enhance it.
2. It has to give them something they lack. Lonely people listen to love songs, or 'nobody loves me' music. Political people listen to very driven political type stuff. It's something they crave in that moment, a need that is filled. Sad people listen to sad music if they want empathy, or happy music if they want distraction. So an album needs diversity, and it has to hit different emotional ranges. Hope, happiness, love, hate, sadness, anger, complacence, maybe an introspective track, maybe a track that's completely abstract (like a Tori Amos Little Earthquakes) for those who like mystery, and crave something superfluous to routine, or anything outside of the ordinary. Sometimes people just like music, without words. One of those, too. There's an album.
3. It has to be memorable. I can beat on a tin can all day, screaming "Harsh minds create harsh lives." over and over and over again. It's a shiny can, perfect for symbolizing reflection, it's a cylinder, for the 'full circle' idea, it's a stick, which indicates aggression / phallic superiority, it's a person screaming, which shows violence, and it's just two things going, which is very raw and basic, without refinement, which is the embodiment of being harsh. It's a harsh song about being harsh. Brilliant, right? But who's going to sing along to that? Who's going to feel any connection? That's where George Harrisson and John Lennon lost it when they departed from the Beatles. They were more interested in sharing THEIR minds, as opposed to entertaining the masses (which is what they started out doing), and so consequently become more boring to listen to. "Try Some, Buy Some" is a great track, but the whole album is almost a chore to listen to, it's so preachy.
New music is becoming rare. It's time to make something good. The Cars took and built upon a generation. Same thing for Soundgarden. Same thing for Alice In Chains, same thing for David Bowie. He's built upon 2 generations.
I used to be excited for things. Now everything's a chore, or an effort. So I'm leaving. Again. I don't know if I'll ever have a home. And I don't really care. I love the chase, the pursuit. I love the ability to try and find it. I love how things always manage to work themselves out. I have given myself and others the most dire of situations, and they have turned out ok. A couple of knicks or bruises, but all in all, knowledge of a limit that you didn't have before, and the removal of the ones before it. Life can be a great thing.
Even when I was living in my car, or hopping from room to room with different people, or travelling the south-east with movers and being paid under the table for it - I always went to sleep at night, and I always woke up the next morning. I loved what I did, because nothing really mattered. It was easy to be enthusiastic, because things were always different. Not anymore. Now it's just expectations piled on expectations, always compounded by lack of time or communication or both. Grr. It's important to maintain perspective, and I'm starting...no, I've lost it.
I want to tell people things. Justifiably, they don't want to listen often. They get bored with what I tell them. I think I'm slightly retarded. I think something's a great revelation, and most everybody is, "Yeah, dude, no shit." Which means it's not very revelation-ey at all. So, I'm just stupid, I guess. It's ok. I just feel stupid. But I don't think I'm really being stupid, I think I'm just slower than most everybody. I pick up on things very quickly, and other things are very hard to make my mind comprehend.
So, whee, let's rock this shit. You only live once, that we know of for a fact, and I've lived my life so far to best accomodate those I respect, on fear that if I don't, then they'll no longer respect me, and take away our interactions. One of those fears has been realized with someone I love very dearly, and it's BECAUSE I did what I thought was the best thing for everyone involved, so that method is a failure.
Note to self: Trying To Please Everyone
- FAILURE. IMPOSSIBLE.
Let's make this life something fun. Adventure doesn't come to anyone. You seek and find adventure on your own. I'm going to find it. Wanna come?
04 April 2009
Something for anyone
Hi.
You may know me. You probably don't. I am about as impersonal as you can get. A stream of electrons flipping switches an inconscionable number of times to display myself as words on your screen, an image in the corner, and an ego based on your own perceptions. I am miles away, or right next door. I am your friend, or I am your enemy, or I am neither. I exist, but only as a predetermined shape and format before you, made more commercially available and publicly accessible to lend value to a product to drive commerce via advertising. My font is predetermined. My size is predetermined. My position is predetermined. My words, however, are not. These are what allows me to communicate with you a semblance of my thought processes, for those that I can express. For those that I cannot via traditional literary communication, visit my music sites for explorations into other pathos that I haven't found a way to describe as of yet.
I will warn you outright, for those who have virgin eyes. I will say fuck (oh no!!). I will say damn. I will say shit, Christ, jesus, goddamnit, cunt, pussy, bitch, dick, cock, pimp, ho, weed, dirty sanchez, ass, porn, blowjobs, handjobs, piss, murder, slaughter, rape, genocide, patricide, pesticide, and, context aside, all beside fratricide, so best hide eyes. I'm not sure why I use such language, other than I always have, and enjoy making what few people left that can squirm in their now-moistened underwear. :) Squirm, you Squirmers. Also, in all honesty, it may be because it helps weed out my interactions with people who are intolerant or narrowminded and insecure, as they will often cling to an ideal or 'moral' as a means for some form of center, which really only justifies their condemnation of whomever does not do things the way they are told is the 'right way'. It keeps the sheep from drowning out the shepherd, in other words.
I will say many things. I will rant. I will rave. I will scream. I will bark. I only bite when pain is involved. I will never bite as long as it just involves me receiving pain. I will bite if someone I care about is receiving the pain. So don't bitchslap my friends, or my loved ones. You can be Jesus and hurting the person I care about, and you will have just made me your enemy. The contradiction is that I will resort to stinging you a little if I think it will help shock you out of a mindset or misconception. I know what I know is right. It comes from personal experience, and observations of others experiences I don't want to repeat, and from listening to my elders and what they recommend and went through. There are a number of ways to go through life. I want to make it as far as possible with as few of road-snares as possible.
Recently, I've been made aware of how impossible this is. I am beginning to understand the phrase that keeps creeping up, "It's your life." I've done a lot in my life. Some things I can't talk about, and will haunt me to my grave. Some things that I'm very proud of that no one else could have done. Mostly, though, it's a lot of mundane nonsenses just for the sake of perpetuating society's place, obedient to Plato and his responsibility perception. And it's true. I live here. I accept to choose my place to live, and I choose to accept here for now. I drive the speed limit, knowing that I am not a dangerous driver, but there are those that are that the law is in place to regulate. I help support that, just by living here. I don't carry a weapon without a permit for the same reason. Most of us aren't dangerous, and just want to live out our lives in peace. But there is always that 2-5% that wants to do the world justice back. Hence the laws. Most of what we do merely conforms to laws set in place by our predecessors, both of this country and of others, as the global society has slowly progressed. I don't want to shake the world. I don't want to change lives. I want to live. I want to love. I want to move forward. I don't like looking back. I like figuring out how things went sour, where they hit the bump, so I can read the river better downstream. Sometimes boulders are submersed. Sometimes they are jutting out. Sometimes the way the riverbed is shaped dictates the currents, and can either take you straight into a cliff wall, or can let you ease around chicanes effortlessly.
I like the river-rafting analogy I've stumbled upon. I'm going to keep with this.
For the past four years, my life has been a fog. It has been one white-water rush to another to another to another to another, and they've all started to blend together. I have memories of things I've forgotten to tell those closest to me. I have things I remember that I forget that I tell, and repeat myself over and over again, apparently verbatim, because people start nodding their head at the first sentence of my recollections. lol I won't divulge in those this blog, but I will say that there is a lot that I forgot I did. Nothing really bad, nothing really horrible, but still, it has shaped what I do to some degree, and it is difficult to know why I respond to this particular instance emotionally instead of logically, when I have no frame of reference to be emotional about it. Then there are the most vivid images and tangible memories that I could ever hope for; some bad, most great. I enjoy reliving the great ones, even if it's alone sometimes.
Me and my river-buddy are going down river. Her boat getts moored on a boulder on the first rapid as I catch a slipstream, trying to shoot the narrow. Risky, but a mostly straight shot. Tuck and lean. As I'm being rushed downstream, I glance a submerged rock and am tipped over at the first rapid. My kayak is over me, and I'm trying to use the current to my favor and do a paddless roll to reestablish center. It's not until after the second set of rapids that I'm successful, and I'm exhausted from the effort. I don't have a paddle anymore, but I'm ok. Now I have to use my hands. I want to get out of the boat, and portage around the next set of rapids. But it's a canyon with enclosing vertical walls on both sides. I'm stuck. I can't go upstream; current's too fast. Downstream faster means death. So I slow as best I can, looking to maybe breach on a partially submerged rock for a spell.
i find one at the top of the next series of rapids, and keep the boat steady. This rapid will probably destroy what I have left, and if so, i don't have a boat, and I'm stuck swimming class 5 rapids. That's not an option. Not in these frigid waters, and not with the water levels where they are. Where the hell is my river buddy? Did she make it down?
As I sit and wait, trying to figure out where to aim to where I have the best chance to survive, here she comes. She's a little shaken, no worse for the wear, it appears, though. I ask her for help, and she tentatively says ok. She just sits to the side of me, moored on the same rock, staring at the rapids below. We can't go back. We can't go up and out, unless we scale 90 degree walls. We can't stay here because we don't have enough food. We have to move forward. This is the toss. How to both make it down. She doesn't have another paddle. I don't have another way. This could kill me, but I've got to do it. I tell her i love her, and think about telling her that if I don't make it out, name a city after me, hell, I dunno, just to make her laugh. I don't say that. I just say 'I love you. Watch me down. Learn the current. Make it through.' Then, i look at it, zone out, and say 'fuck it' and saddle into the current. It's quick, it's crazy, I get airborne once, flipped upside down once, roll back over, and somehow make it through. My head is bleeding, but I'm not sure from what. This water is cold, i've already hit my head on fifty things so far, and we're only three sets of rapids down. I find a rock, and hand-paddle myself onto it and wait. And wait. And Wait. And I start to worry. An hour later she comes down, dry, not submersed. Ran it perfectly.
It's mild currents for the next mile or so now. We go along the river, don't talk about what kept her. I ask repeatedly, and she just gets frustrated with my questions, but won't answer them, keeping everything to herself. Eventually, this will pose a huge problem. I continue rolls to stop the bleeding of my head.
We're to the 4th set, now. She is loosened up a bit, or at least acts like it. She's goofing around and laughing again. There is a rapid coming up that has two paths, very near. One on the left, one on the right. The left is deep, mild, and relatively clear. The right is shallower, looks faster, and doesn't bend around the wall, but goes straight forward. I'm exhausted. I'm taking the left route. She feels adventurous again. She takes the right route.
the current is wide on my side of the river, and I am able to float freely without fear of collision. My head isn't bleeding anymore. I turn my boat around and look back to see how she's doing. She's dragging bottom. The river's high enough, those are not normal rapids. They're normally a small shoals to beach and rest on. Now, they're separated from the rest of the stream by a partition in the water where the river normally runs on the other side of. Small snag after small snag, she gets frustrated. "Stupid rock. Stupid rock. Stupid rock. Stupid rock. Stupid rock. Stupid rock." I find it somewhat funny in a compassionate way, and shout "Having a difficult time of it!?" She replies, "Shut UP!" jokingly. I laugh. She eventually gets through them. She complains, "I don't like the way they look."
"Why's that?"
"Because they're stupid. that's why."
"That's not a very valid reason." I laugh back.
"Well, that's why. They're stupid."
"Why are they stupid?"
"Because." she smiles playfully.
"no, why? why are the rocks stupid?" I play back.
"Because they kept my boat from going like it should!" Genuine frustration starts to creep into her face. I decide to try and console her.
"No, they were just being rocks."
"But they didn't have to be so difficult." now she's veritably frustrated again.
"They weren't doing anything other than what they always do. You chose to take that path. It wasn't their fault. Don't be mad at them. Just avoid them in the future. You know what that kind of water looks like, now."
"Yeah, I know...."
We continue on. More rapids. more snares. There were two rapids where she did take the faster current early on, and enjoyed it, and relaxed, and because she got it right that way and had fun, she'd go right back to the rocks on the next few sets of rapids. More shoals. More slow goings. Eventually she just got stuck on getting stuck. I'm getting good at reading the currents to navigate, and can almost do it on the fly without studying the river. She keeps taking shallow paths just to prove she can do it her way. I try to tell her where the current is, so I don't have to wait for her and freeze keeping upright with my hand-paddles. Exhaustion is starting to set in for me, my shoulders are starting to cramp, and I'm not anywhere near a resting point yet. She's still cussing out the rapids and the rocks. It's no longer playful. She gets through them finally.
"You know," I tell her, "if they looked a certain way, and handled a certain way three and four times before, they're going to be the same thing the next time you see them, too."
"Shut up." she's not playful now.
"Look, I'm not trying to keep you from doing what you want to do. But what you're doing isn't moving forward. You're still stuck on the fact that it didn't work once. Why keep trying to prove that it's going to work this next time?"
"Because it's what I want to do!" pissed
"Why do you want to keep doing the same damn thing?!" confused
"Because I want to! It's MY life. I'M running this river. I can do it how I want to."
"Yeah, but you're not the only one who's on this team. I don't have a paddle. I'm cold. My body's shaking. I'm cramping, and we're only half way down. We could be 3/4 the way by now."
"Shut up."
"Look, I'm sorry about your rapids, but just give the damn things up. It's hurting me. Literally. Just give the fucking things up. OK?"
"Shut UP!"
"No. Listen: Get your head to quit talking, stop being so fucking proud and stubborn, and just LISTEN. IT. Won't. Work. Like. This. You think you can do it? you're right. You CAN do it. BUT. It takes longer and more effort than you want it to, and will every single fucking time. Give me one-hundred shoals, and they will snag you every time. It's a 100% success ratio you're betting against, hoping there's a one-or-two-tenth percent that's overlooked. It's not. Boat with 2-4 inches of water WILL GET CAUGHT. It's not worth this pain for you to prove something wrong that can't be proven wrong right now. You're sacrificing ME to prove yourself superior on something that doesn't even matter! Get me a paddle and a wetsuit that's not torn up, and I'll be happy to run them with you. but for right now, help me out, ok?"
She just stares at the nose of her boat, angry, and reluctant. A little further down the river, as she starts to loosen up a bit after a long time of silence, I try to console her.
"We just need another inch or two of water, and you'd be able to rock those shoals."
"I know! Stupid water! Stupid rocks! Why doesn't anything go like I want it?!"
Next set of rapids with shoals, same thing. She takes the shoals, determined to prove them wrong. My head is bleeding again, and I'm starting to feel dizzy. I tell her I need to just get out of here, or I will not be able to recover. She doesn't respond, and just keeps cussing out the damn shoals, pushing with her paddle. I ask her if she hears me.
"I'll be right there!"
"I need to leave now. i don't think I can do this much longer."
"I said I'll be right there!"
"Can you breach the barrier now, and just come on?"
"No!"
"Why not?"
"Because I can't!"
"I don't know how much I've got left to give! Will you just give up the shoals already? Let's GO! Before I DROWN!"
"SHUT UP!"
OK. She hears me, but she chooses not to listen. Not my problem. I'll apologize on the other end of the river, if I'm alive, and if she ever gets there. My fingers and hands are numb. My skin is pastey and veiney. I feel very sick. I also feel very dizzy and high. I've got to make sure I survive first. She's not in any real danger. She's going to keep taking Grandma rapids until she gets to the bottom, frustrated and spent. Make sure I live. that's priority. i don't really know why, but it is. Survivalism at its worst.
I rip down the next few rapids. My dizziness is starting to affect my depth perception, and sense of timing. I start smashing into rocks again, fighting to keep my wits about me. At some point, I think I'm actually swimming inverted moving forward. disorientation is the only thing I recognize. Water and air are the same to me now. I'm struggling to keep my fear from getting the best of me.
The walls are slanting back, now. Trees become visible again. Finally a beach shows up. I aim and let my boat crash into the beach, and I flop out, arms limp and hands numb. I notice that I can only know what they're doing by looking at them. I have no sense of placement. I have no feeling in my arms, either. I have a good sized gash on my forearm from the crash and rocks, but don't feel anything at all.
There is a fire-pit left from previous campers, and a box of matches there. I nearly cry with hope. I find some brush, pile it up, and light the fire. I take off my cold wetsuit, and sit by the fire, warming myself, desperately trying to think of ways to stop the bleeding. My wetsuit is torn, and useless anyway. I tear it apart, and make a bandage for my arm and for my head. My arm starts to get slightly sore. Good. Still dizzy as hell, but good. I check my pulse, and I can't tell what my heartbeat is. I look down at my chest to see it beat and count. It looks like something's inside my chest stamping and kicking rapidly to get out. Good. Possible stroke, but good. Not from excessive bloodloss, just exhaustion. Lay down. Relax. Sleep. Rest. The fire is nice and warm. I put a log or two on it, and thank the merciness of the previous campers to leave these matches. What freak luck.
I am woken hours later to her sitting with a cover over her shoulders, face staring at the fire, angry, brooding, out of it. I am reminded my pack was lost in the first rapid. I am also reminded I have on nothing. This fire is awesome.
"You left me."
I sit up surprised. My head is pissed at me, and so is my body. I put another couple of logs and stoke the flames a bit.
"I had to. I couldn't keep that up. What was I supposed to do?"
"I told you I was coming."
"You weren't coming. You were fighting."
"I should have told you not to go."
"No, you should have come when you could."
"But. You. Left. Me."
"No. I. Didn't."
"You took off down that river without looking back. I watched you go down that river, and I couldn't take it. You left me! You left me there all by myself. What was I supposed to do?"
"Look. I told you what was happening. I told you how I was. I told you the situation. I told you what needed to happen. You told me to shut up, and you were coming. I believed you because I had no other choice. I couldn't test you. I shouldn't have to test you. You're supposed to help me down this river, and I you. It's not a 'I get to make it down grandma shoals because I want to' trip. It can be if it's not emergent, but right now, it's kinda crucial I get out of here. I have no wet suit, these waters are 45 degrees and below, I have no paddle, and I have no way out but down to the end. Want to help a bit, instead of bitching about how I didn't wait for you to get to the end of those shoals? Hours later?"
"I just sat there. I couldn't believe you left me."
"For the love of fucking christ, I didn't leave YOU! I left a bad situation! I left to HEAL! I was just about DEAD. And if I'M dead, you've got a better chance of it, too. You were just gonna take Grandma rapids down all day, anyway. You can't drown in those if you tried. I wasn't leaving you! I left because I had to!"
"But you still left!"
"FINE! I LEFT YOU! FUCK IT! I REALLY WILL LEAVE, IF THAT WILL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT, SINCE YOU WANT TO SO FUCKING BADLY! GET OVER YOURSELF!! SHUT THE FUCK UP! YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!"
"You're right. I need to do this right. Wait right here."
She gets up, takes her covers, walks to her boat, packs it up. I ask her to let me have her covers. She screams at me that I'm trying to keep her from doing what she wants. Fine, keep the fucking covers. She gets in, and paddles off, and doesn't look back. Frustrated and exhausted, I sleep for another couple of hours to rest and regain strength. She makes it down the shoals the way she wants to, without me there. She left the campsite so that she could do what she wanted how she wanted without my input or need. She wasn't coming back. She never wanted to. She went into shoals that were shallower than before, almost like they planned to be that way. Mother Nature has a way of being subversive that way. Is it because I yelled at her? No. All I told her was what she was teling me back. I spent a good hour trying to convince her it wasn't what she was saying it was. I need help, still, but now there's NO shot in hell of getting it. Stupid fucking shoals. Even I'M starting to hate them, now. Or maybe it's the ego that refuses to be tamed so far. I've really got to be careful now. I don't have anyone backing me up. If I tip, or if I submerge, I'm practically dead. Keep it stoney, man. Keep it fresh. Don't do dumb.
Can't walk. Too steep, too far. Weeks that way, not days. Do better by river. Do or die.
Fuck it.
that is a metaphorical representation of the past 4 years according to the Gospel of Avery. Rough and bumpy? Smooth and flowing? What do I prefer? I do enjoy an adrenaline rush, but just because the water's white doesn't mean it's rapid. Just because the water's smooth doesn't mean it's slow. Every rapid has its own idiosyncracies, and its on consistencies it keeps.
If you go fast all the time, you lose track of what Slow means. The same holds true in the reverse, and the thrill of the contrast is lost. So, to that, balance is necessary. She's learned balance, but refuses to let me see it. I'm seeking for a place to slow down. she is robbed at gunpoint, and only calls me the day after, after she's called and talked with everyone else, and says she does that because I'm her husband. She says she's going to call at a certain time yesterday. Well, it's two days later, no call. Again. I have a show 3 days offset from a David Cook show. i'm playing the city. He's playing a venue. If i had $100, I'd put it on her ditching her 'husbands' show and going to his. She already ditched our anniversary and my other show for him. And she takes her rings off at his shows, now. I'm still trying to absorb that one. And she's still telling me to shut up. It's just another rock in the shoal. It's part of the path she's chosen. It's not the circumstance that's to blame, it's the path. She won't see this, though. The 'Us' is a separate issue, however. This is about me right now. Because I'm selfish, and stupid, just like many other bloggers out there. i wish it weren't so hard to separate her from me. Again, separate complaints. Don't get me wrong. i love her. I dont' think she remembers me now, though.
I am done here. I have, in 1.5 years, worked about 3.2 years worth of labor at 1000 hours per year AVG. The last 7 weeks have been 100hr+ weeks. I am salary, so it doesn't count, but it's insane. I have given my left nut for this job, all because I believed in the vision of it. I'm a sucker for a cause. So shoot me. Go read your letter from the kid in Tanzania you decided to sponsor through that TV ad if you don't like it.
I want to slow down. Actually, I want to stop. I truly want to end it all, but not forever. Just a couple of years. I am broken. I am frayed. I am fragile. I am naked. I am cold. I am raw. I am bleeding still. I am piecework.
i am exhausted.
this week: 92 hours walking into Saturday night. It's an 8 hours shift, this time. And I still have editing to do. This has been composed while rendering video out. Shitting you, right? Nope. what do I do?
In my heart of hearts, I want to skip this country, go to Jamaica, or the Bahamas, or British Virgin Islands, find a job as a paper boy or as a cook or grocery store attendant, work 6-8 hours per day from morning to noon, then go chill on the beach for the rest of the day. No TV, no PS3, no laptop, no cell phone, no computer games, nothing but rum, beer, beach, enough to pay the rent, enough left over to eat, and my baby. THAT is perfect harmony to me. Hell, it'd be perfect if we had a sailboat, 25-28 feet, and just cruise from island to island and get a job at each one for a period of time until we decided we were done. Thunderstorms again. Rain showers. Ocean hum. Warm breezes. Think she'd go? Doubt it. Has to have civilization. Keep up on her shows. go to her concerts. She wants where she lives to have constant concerts all the time. I just want to stop and rest for a year or two. I'm so very tired.
So there it is. now tell me how 'It's your life' is supposed to help me live that dream? Old people are odd. But, they are why I am who I am today. literally. Snares, rocks, shoals will come up. Either get stuck in them, or take the path around them. sometimes you get stuck in them without meaning to. Then it's important to get through them.
Do with Love and Kindness to anyone you meet. Thanks for reading.
regards,
Avery
You may know me. You probably don't. I am about as impersonal as you can get. A stream of electrons flipping switches an inconscionable number of times to display myself as words on your screen, an image in the corner, and an ego based on your own perceptions. I am miles away, or right next door. I am your friend, or I am your enemy, or I am neither. I exist, but only as a predetermined shape and format before you, made more commercially available and publicly accessible to lend value to a product to drive commerce via advertising. My font is predetermined. My size is predetermined. My position is predetermined. My words, however, are not. These are what allows me to communicate with you a semblance of my thought processes, for those that I can express. For those that I cannot via traditional literary communication, visit my music sites for explorations into other pathos that I haven't found a way to describe as of yet.
I will warn you outright, for those who have virgin eyes. I will say fuck (oh no!!). I will say damn. I will say shit, Christ, jesus, goddamnit, cunt, pussy, bitch, dick, cock, pimp, ho, weed, dirty sanchez, ass, porn, blowjobs, handjobs, piss, murder, slaughter, rape, genocide, patricide, pesticide, and, context aside, all beside fratricide, so best hide eyes. I'm not sure why I use such language, other than I always have, and enjoy making what few people left that can squirm in their now-moistened underwear. :) Squirm, you Squirmers. Also, in all honesty, it may be because it helps weed out my interactions with people who are intolerant or narrowminded and insecure, as they will often cling to an ideal or 'moral' as a means for some form of center, which really only justifies their condemnation of whomever does not do things the way they are told is the 'right way'. It keeps the sheep from drowning out the shepherd, in other words.
I will say many things. I will rant. I will rave. I will scream. I will bark. I only bite when pain is involved. I will never bite as long as it just involves me receiving pain. I will bite if someone I care about is receiving the pain. So don't bitchslap my friends, or my loved ones. You can be Jesus and hurting the person I care about, and you will have just made me your enemy. The contradiction is that I will resort to stinging you a little if I think it will help shock you out of a mindset or misconception. I know what I know is right. It comes from personal experience, and observations of others experiences I don't want to repeat, and from listening to my elders and what they recommend and went through. There are a number of ways to go through life. I want to make it as far as possible with as few of road-snares as possible.
Recently, I've been made aware of how impossible this is. I am beginning to understand the phrase that keeps creeping up, "It's your life." I've done a lot in my life. Some things I can't talk about, and will haunt me to my grave. Some things that I'm very proud of that no one else could have done. Mostly, though, it's a lot of mundane nonsenses just for the sake of perpetuating society's place, obedient to Plato and his responsibility perception. And it's true. I live here. I accept to choose my place to live, and I choose to accept here for now. I drive the speed limit, knowing that I am not a dangerous driver, but there are those that are that the law is in place to regulate. I help support that, just by living here. I don't carry a weapon without a permit for the same reason. Most of us aren't dangerous, and just want to live out our lives in peace. But there is always that 2-5% that wants to do the world justice back. Hence the laws. Most of what we do merely conforms to laws set in place by our predecessors, both of this country and of others, as the global society has slowly progressed. I don't want to shake the world. I don't want to change lives. I want to live. I want to love. I want to move forward. I don't like looking back. I like figuring out how things went sour, where they hit the bump, so I can read the river better downstream. Sometimes boulders are submersed. Sometimes they are jutting out. Sometimes the way the riverbed is shaped dictates the currents, and can either take you straight into a cliff wall, or can let you ease around chicanes effortlessly.
I like the river-rafting analogy I've stumbled upon. I'm going to keep with this.
For the past four years, my life has been a fog. It has been one white-water rush to another to another to another to another, and they've all started to blend together. I have memories of things I've forgotten to tell those closest to me. I have things I remember that I forget that I tell, and repeat myself over and over again, apparently verbatim, because people start nodding their head at the first sentence of my recollections. lol I won't divulge in those this blog, but I will say that there is a lot that I forgot I did. Nothing really bad, nothing really horrible, but still, it has shaped what I do to some degree, and it is difficult to know why I respond to this particular instance emotionally instead of logically, when I have no frame of reference to be emotional about it. Then there are the most vivid images and tangible memories that I could ever hope for; some bad, most great. I enjoy reliving the great ones, even if it's alone sometimes.
Me and my river-buddy are going down river. Her boat getts moored on a boulder on the first rapid as I catch a slipstream, trying to shoot the narrow. Risky, but a mostly straight shot. Tuck and lean. As I'm being rushed downstream, I glance a submerged rock and am tipped over at the first rapid. My kayak is over me, and I'm trying to use the current to my favor and do a paddless roll to reestablish center. It's not until after the second set of rapids that I'm successful, and I'm exhausted from the effort. I don't have a paddle anymore, but I'm ok. Now I have to use my hands. I want to get out of the boat, and portage around the next set of rapids. But it's a canyon with enclosing vertical walls on both sides. I'm stuck. I can't go upstream; current's too fast. Downstream faster means death. So I slow as best I can, looking to maybe breach on a partially submerged rock for a spell.
i find one at the top of the next series of rapids, and keep the boat steady. This rapid will probably destroy what I have left, and if so, i don't have a boat, and I'm stuck swimming class 5 rapids. That's not an option. Not in these frigid waters, and not with the water levels where they are. Where the hell is my river buddy? Did she make it down?
As I sit and wait, trying to figure out where to aim to where I have the best chance to survive, here she comes. She's a little shaken, no worse for the wear, it appears, though. I ask her for help, and she tentatively says ok. She just sits to the side of me, moored on the same rock, staring at the rapids below. We can't go back. We can't go up and out, unless we scale 90 degree walls. We can't stay here because we don't have enough food. We have to move forward. This is the toss. How to both make it down. She doesn't have another paddle. I don't have another way. This could kill me, but I've got to do it. I tell her i love her, and think about telling her that if I don't make it out, name a city after me, hell, I dunno, just to make her laugh. I don't say that. I just say 'I love you. Watch me down. Learn the current. Make it through.' Then, i look at it, zone out, and say 'fuck it' and saddle into the current. It's quick, it's crazy, I get airborne once, flipped upside down once, roll back over, and somehow make it through. My head is bleeding, but I'm not sure from what. This water is cold, i've already hit my head on fifty things so far, and we're only three sets of rapids down. I find a rock, and hand-paddle myself onto it and wait. And wait. And Wait. And I start to worry. An hour later she comes down, dry, not submersed. Ran it perfectly.
It's mild currents for the next mile or so now. We go along the river, don't talk about what kept her. I ask repeatedly, and she just gets frustrated with my questions, but won't answer them, keeping everything to herself. Eventually, this will pose a huge problem. I continue rolls to stop the bleeding of my head.
We're to the 4th set, now. She is loosened up a bit, or at least acts like it. She's goofing around and laughing again. There is a rapid coming up that has two paths, very near. One on the left, one on the right. The left is deep, mild, and relatively clear. The right is shallower, looks faster, and doesn't bend around the wall, but goes straight forward. I'm exhausted. I'm taking the left route. She feels adventurous again. She takes the right route.
the current is wide on my side of the river, and I am able to float freely without fear of collision. My head isn't bleeding anymore. I turn my boat around and look back to see how she's doing. She's dragging bottom. The river's high enough, those are not normal rapids. They're normally a small shoals to beach and rest on. Now, they're separated from the rest of the stream by a partition in the water where the river normally runs on the other side of. Small snag after small snag, she gets frustrated. "Stupid rock. Stupid rock. Stupid rock. Stupid rock. Stupid rock. Stupid rock." I find it somewhat funny in a compassionate way, and shout "Having a difficult time of it!?" She replies, "Shut UP!" jokingly. I laugh. She eventually gets through them. She complains, "I don't like the way they look."
"Why's that?"
"Because they're stupid. that's why."
"That's not a very valid reason." I laugh back.
"Well, that's why. They're stupid."
"Why are they stupid?"
"Because." she smiles playfully.
"no, why? why are the rocks stupid?" I play back.
"Because they kept my boat from going like it should!" Genuine frustration starts to creep into her face. I decide to try and console her.
"No, they were just being rocks."
"But they didn't have to be so difficult." now she's veritably frustrated again.
"They weren't doing anything other than what they always do. You chose to take that path. It wasn't their fault. Don't be mad at them. Just avoid them in the future. You know what that kind of water looks like, now."
"Yeah, I know...."
We continue on. More rapids. more snares. There were two rapids where she did take the faster current early on, and enjoyed it, and relaxed, and because she got it right that way and had fun, she'd go right back to the rocks on the next few sets of rapids. More shoals. More slow goings. Eventually she just got stuck on getting stuck. I'm getting good at reading the currents to navigate, and can almost do it on the fly without studying the river. She keeps taking shallow paths just to prove she can do it her way. I try to tell her where the current is, so I don't have to wait for her and freeze keeping upright with my hand-paddles. Exhaustion is starting to set in for me, my shoulders are starting to cramp, and I'm not anywhere near a resting point yet. She's still cussing out the rapids and the rocks. It's no longer playful. She gets through them finally.
"You know," I tell her, "if they looked a certain way, and handled a certain way three and four times before, they're going to be the same thing the next time you see them, too."
"Shut up." she's not playful now.
"Look, I'm not trying to keep you from doing what you want to do. But what you're doing isn't moving forward. You're still stuck on the fact that it didn't work once. Why keep trying to prove that it's going to work this next time?"
"Because it's what I want to do!" pissed
"Why do you want to keep doing the same damn thing?!" confused
"Because I want to! It's MY life. I'M running this river. I can do it how I want to."
"Yeah, but you're not the only one who's on this team. I don't have a paddle. I'm cold. My body's shaking. I'm cramping, and we're only half way down. We could be 3/4 the way by now."
"Shut up."
"Look, I'm sorry about your rapids, but just give the damn things up. It's hurting me. Literally. Just give the fucking things up. OK?"
"Shut UP!"
"No. Listen: Get your head to quit talking, stop being so fucking proud and stubborn, and just LISTEN. IT. Won't. Work. Like. This. You think you can do it? you're right. You CAN do it. BUT. It takes longer and more effort than you want it to, and will every single fucking time. Give me one-hundred shoals, and they will snag you every time. It's a 100% success ratio you're betting against, hoping there's a one-or-two-tenth percent that's overlooked. It's not. Boat with 2-4 inches of water WILL GET CAUGHT. It's not worth this pain for you to prove something wrong that can't be proven wrong right now. You're sacrificing ME to prove yourself superior on something that doesn't even matter! Get me a paddle and a wetsuit that's not torn up, and I'll be happy to run them with you. but for right now, help me out, ok?"
She just stares at the nose of her boat, angry, and reluctant. A little further down the river, as she starts to loosen up a bit after a long time of silence, I try to console her.
"We just need another inch or two of water, and you'd be able to rock those shoals."
"I know! Stupid water! Stupid rocks! Why doesn't anything go like I want it?!"
Next set of rapids with shoals, same thing. She takes the shoals, determined to prove them wrong. My head is bleeding again, and I'm starting to feel dizzy. I tell her I need to just get out of here, or I will not be able to recover. She doesn't respond, and just keeps cussing out the damn shoals, pushing with her paddle. I ask her if she hears me.
"I'll be right there!"
"I need to leave now. i don't think I can do this much longer."
"I said I'll be right there!"
"Can you breach the barrier now, and just come on?"
"No!"
"Why not?"
"Because I can't!"
"I don't know how much I've got left to give! Will you just give up the shoals already? Let's GO! Before I DROWN!"
"SHUT UP!"
OK. She hears me, but she chooses not to listen. Not my problem. I'll apologize on the other end of the river, if I'm alive, and if she ever gets there. My fingers and hands are numb. My skin is pastey and veiney. I feel very sick. I also feel very dizzy and high. I've got to make sure I survive first. She's not in any real danger. She's going to keep taking Grandma rapids until she gets to the bottom, frustrated and spent. Make sure I live. that's priority. i don't really know why, but it is. Survivalism at its worst.
I rip down the next few rapids. My dizziness is starting to affect my depth perception, and sense of timing. I start smashing into rocks again, fighting to keep my wits about me. At some point, I think I'm actually swimming inverted moving forward. disorientation is the only thing I recognize. Water and air are the same to me now. I'm struggling to keep my fear from getting the best of me.
The walls are slanting back, now. Trees become visible again. Finally a beach shows up. I aim and let my boat crash into the beach, and I flop out, arms limp and hands numb. I notice that I can only know what they're doing by looking at them. I have no sense of placement. I have no feeling in my arms, either. I have a good sized gash on my forearm from the crash and rocks, but don't feel anything at all.
There is a fire-pit left from previous campers, and a box of matches there. I nearly cry with hope. I find some brush, pile it up, and light the fire. I take off my cold wetsuit, and sit by the fire, warming myself, desperately trying to think of ways to stop the bleeding. My wetsuit is torn, and useless anyway. I tear it apart, and make a bandage for my arm and for my head. My arm starts to get slightly sore. Good. Still dizzy as hell, but good. I check my pulse, and I can't tell what my heartbeat is. I look down at my chest to see it beat and count. It looks like something's inside my chest stamping and kicking rapidly to get out. Good. Possible stroke, but good. Not from excessive bloodloss, just exhaustion. Lay down. Relax. Sleep. Rest. The fire is nice and warm. I put a log or two on it, and thank the merciness of the previous campers to leave these matches. What freak luck.
I am woken hours later to her sitting with a cover over her shoulders, face staring at the fire, angry, brooding, out of it. I am reminded my pack was lost in the first rapid. I am also reminded I have on nothing. This fire is awesome.
"You left me."
I sit up surprised. My head is pissed at me, and so is my body. I put another couple of logs and stoke the flames a bit.
"I had to. I couldn't keep that up. What was I supposed to do?"
"I told you I was coming."
"You weren't coming. You were fighting."
"I should have told you not to go."
"No, you should have come when you could."
"But. You. Left. Me."
"No. I. Didn't."
"You took off down that river without looking back. I watched you go down that river, and I couldn't take it. You left me! You left me there all by myself. What was I supposed to do?"
"Look. I told you what was happening. I told you how I was. I told you the situation. I told you what needed to happen. You told me to shut up, and you were coming. I believed you because I had no other choice. I couldn't test you. I shouldn't have to test you. You're supposed to help me down this river, and I you. It's not a 'I get to make it down grandma shoals because I want to' trip. It can be if it's not emergent, but right now, it's kinda crucial I get out of here. I have no wet suit, these waters are 45 degrees and below, I have no paddle, and I have no way out but down to the end. Want to help a bit, instead of bitching about how I didn't wait for you to get to the end of those shoals? Hours later?"
"I just sat there. I couldn't believe you left me."
"For the love of fucking christ, I didn't leave YOU! I left a bad situation! I left to HEAL! I was just about DEAD. And if I'M dead, you've got a better chance of it, too. You were just gonna take Grandma rapids down all day, anyway. You can't drown in those if you tried. I wasn't leaving you! I left because I had to!"
"But you still left!"
"FINE! I LEFT YOU! FUCK IT! I REALLY WILL LEAVE, IF THAT WILL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT, SINCE YOU WANT TO SO FUCKING BADLY! GET OVER YOURSELF!! SHUT THE FUCK UP! YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!"
"You're right. I need to do this right. Wait right here."
She gets up, takes her covers, walks to her boat, packs it up. I ask her to let me have her covers. She screams at me that I'm trying to keep her from doing what she wants. Fine, keep the fucking covers. She gets in, and paddles off, and doesn't look back. Frustrated and exhausted, I sleep for another couple of hours to rest and regain strength. She makes it down the shoals the way she wants to, without me there. She left the campsite so that she could do what she wanted how she wanted without my input or need. She wasn't coming back. She never wanted to. She went into shoals that were shallower than before, almost like they planned to be that way. Mother Nature has a way of being subversive that way. Is it because I yelled at her? No. All I told her was what she was teling me back. I spent a good hour trying to convince her it wasn't what she was saying it was. I need help, still, but now there's NO shot in hell of getting it. Stupid fucking shoals. Even I'M starting to hate them, now. Or maybe it's the ego that refuses to be tamed so far. I've really got to be careful now. I don't have anyone backing me up. If I tip, or if I submerge, I'm practically dead. Keep it stoney, man. Keep it fresh. Don't do dumb.
Can't walk. Too steep, too far. Weeks that way, not days. Do better by river. Do or die.
Fuck it.
that is a metaphorical representation of the past 4 years according to the Gospel of Avery. Rough and bumpy? Smooth and flowing? What do I prefer? I do enjoy an adrenaline rush, but just because the water's white doesn't mean it's rapid. Just because the water's smooth doesn't mean it's slow. Every rapid has its own idiosyncracies, and its on consistencies it keeps.
If you go fast all the time, you lose track of what Slow means. The same holds true in the reverse, and the thrill of the contrast is lost. So, to that, balance is necessary. She's learned balance, but refuses to let me see it. I'm seeking for a place to slow down. she is robbed at gunpoint, and only calls me the day after, after she's called and talked with everyone else, and says she does that because I'm her husband. She says she's going to call at a certain time yesterday. Well, it's two days later, no call. Again. I have a show 3 days offset from a David Cook show. i'm playing the city. He's playing a venue. If i had $100, I'd put it on her ditching her 'husbands' show and going to his. She already ditched our anniversary and my other show for him. And she takes her rings off at his shows, now. I'm still trying to absorb that one. And she's still telling me to shut up. It's just another rock in the shoal. It's part of the path she's chosen. It's not the circumstance that's to blame, it's the path. She won't see this, though. The 'Us' is a separate issue, however. This is about me right now. Because I'm selfish, and stupid, just like many other bloggers out there. i wish it weren't so hard to separate her from me. Again, separate complaints. Don't get me wrong. i love her. I dont' think she remembers me now, though.
I am done here. I have, in 1.5 years, worked about 3.2 years worth of labor at 1000 hours per year AVG. The last 7 weeks have been 100hr+ weeks. I am salary, so it doesn't count, but it's insane. I have given my left nut for this job, all because I believed in the vision of it. I'm a sucker for a cause. So shoot me. Go read your letter from the kid in Tanzania you decided to sponsor through that TV ad if you don't like it.
I want to slow down. Actually, I want to stop. I truly want to end it all, but not forever. Just a couple of years. I am broken. I am frayed. I am fragile. I am naked. I am cold. I am raw. I am bleeding still. I am piecework.
i am exhausted.
this week: 92 hours walking into Saturday night. It's an 8 hours shift, this time. And I still have editing to do. This has been composed while rendering video out. Shitting you, right? Nope. what do I do?
In my heart of hearts, I want to skip this country, go to Jamaica, or the Bahamas, or British Virgin Islands, find a job as a paper boy or as a cook or grocery store attendant, work 6-8 hours per day from morning to noon, then go chill on the beach for the rest of the day. No TV, no PS3, no laptop, no cell phone, no computer games, nothing but rum, beer, beach, enough to pay the rent, enough left over to eat, and my baby. THAT is perfect harmony to me. Hell, it'd be perfect if we had a sailboat, 25-28 feet, and just cruise from island to island and get a job at each one for a period of time until we decided we were done. Thunderstorms again. Rain showers. Ocean hum. Warm breezes. Think she'd go? Doubt it. Has to have civilization. Keep up on her shows. go to her concerts. She wants where she lives to have constant concerts all the time. I just want to stop and rest for a year or two. I'm so very tired.
So there it is. now tell me how 'It's your life' is supposed to help me live that dream? Old people are odd. But, they are why I am who I am today. literally. Snares, rocks, shoals will come up. Either get stuck in them, or take the path around them. sometimes you get stuck in them without meaning to. Then it's important to get through them.
Do with Love and Kindness to anyone you meet. Thanks for reading.
regards,
Avery
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