I'll admit it, I sometimes like it when people get possessive of me.
I spend so much time and energy trying to be aloof, detached, and independent that I forget that there are times when I need to let someone affect me, for my own good.
I always think that there will be no one around to catch me should I ever falter... but I am wrong.
Wrong, I tell you.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Monday, April 24, 2006
prison keys
Let me tell you about two people who were locked up in separate prisons.
They were metaphorical prisons, of course: Jail cells with cast-iron bars, all imagined but yet as real as if it was right here in front of you, as real as if you were in that very cell right now at this moment, yearning to be released.
She was sick of hearing what people had to say about her. She wanted to prove them all wrong, and show them once and for all that she was a trustworthy, loyal person. By keeping herself in a cell, she was attempting to start her life over, with a fresh new slate.
She realized she was in a cell after a long period of denial and insisting that her imprisonment was a choice that she made. It was an escape, an attempt to go into hiding. She felt she could leave it any time she wanted. Then, one morning she woke up and realized that, no, she couldn't just walk out the door.
She had locked herself in.
She made efforts to contact those whom she figured could help her get out. No one responded. She had alienated everyone with her past behavior. She was running out of people who could help her escape.
There was one person she hadn't tried, but she was afraid to summons him, on account of her guilt over treating him badly on a few occasions.
She swallowed her pride and made the call anyway. She needed to get out of her prison that badly. It was an extremely difficult phone call to make.
*/*
He was also in a prison of his own device, but his was more deceptive. Rather than thinking he was in hiding, he went one further and actually believed that he was completely free, that there were no constraints around him and that he was in fact outside the reach of societal institutions.
He made the mistake of trying to prove to the rest of the world that he could do all the things they said he couldn't. He (like she) was sick of the gossip, the opinions, the aimless complaining of his friends. So he ventured out on his own and found some new friends, and began to construct a new existence.
He heard the words behind his back: He was described as being "brainwashed" by the new group of people he surrounded himself with, and was faulted for stubbornly setting his intense focus on his various crafts.
The transformation was so complete that he never questioned for one minute whether he was truly a free man or not. He never saw the bars, the iron doors, the close quarters encroaching. They didn't exist to him, and he conducted himself as if the world was his to survey.
He never felt confined or trapped until things started to go bad. The dreams and goals he was promoting began to deteriorate under the weight of factors outside of his control. Soon, he was doing nothing but sitting inside his cell, with his cellmates, trying to rouse them from their respective stupors.
The moment he knew he was imprisoned was when he received a phone call.
It was she. He was surprised to hear from her, and even more surprised to hear the reasons for her phone call.
She was asking him to help her get free. But as she spoke to him, his heart was breaking, because it was right then and there that he realized that he couldn't help her be free, not when was just as locked up as she.
He shut her down, frightened by the hint that things were not as they seem, angry by the notion of her appeal to him, frustrated by the conflicts in his heart-- Why should he help her, when she had thoroughly decimated his affections for her over the course of a few years? What was to stop her from going right back into her cell the minute he broke her out?
But more than that: Who was going to help him get free so that he could make her free?
*/*
Sadly, he found out recently that he had the prison key the whole time. He could have set himself free, and then he might have been able to liberate her as well. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and he has learned that there is no use in regretting things like that.
He has been out of the cell for some time now. He isn't sure if he is in another one, however, because it took a long time and several fucked-up events for him to realize his former captivity.
She found a way out of her cell too, albeit in a harsh manner. The prison was stormed, and in the confusion she was broken out of her confines, free to run away. She never wants to go back to it, and so she is on her guard to ensure that she never gets trapped against her will ever again.
Occasionally, these two former prisoners still have a hard time adjusting to their newfound freedoms, so they sometimes seal off the area they are in and revert to their cell-dwelling days... only this time, they are together in the cell, which makes the isolation from the rest of the world a bit more tolerable.
Eventually, though, there will come a day when they will never have to draw the shades and hide. Maybe in the future the both of them will overcome the ingrained instincts they possess, to place themselves in shackles and draw boundaries around themselves that they must not pass.
Wish these people lots of luck, because they will need it in spades.
They were metaphorical prisons, of course: Jail cells with cast-iron bars, all imagined but yet as real as if it was right here in front of you, as real as if you were in that very cell right now at this moment, yearning to be released.
She was sick of hearing what people had to say about her. She wanted to prove them all wrong, and show them once and for all that she was a trustworthy, loyal person. By keeping herself in a cell, she was attempting to start her life over, with a fresh new slate.
She realized she was in a cell after a long period of denial and insisting that her imprisonment was a choice that she made. It was an escape, an attempt to go into hiding. She felt she could leave it any time she wanted. Then, one morning she woke up and realized that, no, she couldn't just walk out the door.
She had locked herself in.
She made efforts to contact those whom she figured could help her get out. No one responded. She had alienated everyone with her past behavior. She was running out of people who could help her escape.
There was one person she hadn't tried, but she was afraid to summons him, on account of her guilt over treating him badly on a few occasions.
She swallowed her pride and made the call anyway. She needed to get out of her prison that badly. It was an extremely difficult phone call to make.
*/*
He was also in a prison of his own device, but his was more deceptive. Rather than thinking he was in hiding, he went one further and actually believed that he was completely free, that there were no constraints around him and that he was in fact outside the reach of societal institutions.
He made the mistake of trying to prove to the rest of the world that he could do all the things they said he couldn't. He (like she) was sick of the gossip, the opinions, the aimless complaining of his friends. So he ventured out on his own and found some new friends, and began to construct a new existence.
He heard the words behind his back: He was described as being "brainwashed" by the new group of people he surrounded himself with, and was faulted for stubbornly setting his intense focus on his various crafts.
The transformation was so complete that he never questioned for one minute whether he was truly a free man or not. He never saw the bars, the iron doors, the close quarters encroaching. They didn't exist to him, and he conducted himself as if the world was his to survey.
He never felt confined or trapped until things started to go bad. The dreams and goals he was promoting began to deteriorate under the weight of factors outside of his control. Soon, he was doing nothing but sitting inside his cell, with his cellmates, trying to rouse them from their respective stupors.
The moment he knew he was imprisoned was when he received a phone call.
It was she. He was surprised to hear from her, and even more surprised to hear the reasons for her phone call.
She was asking him to help her get free. But as she spoke to him, his heart was breaking, because it was right then and there that he realized that he couldn't help her be free, not when was just as locked up as she.
He shut her down, frightened by the hint that things were not as they seem, angry by the notion of her appeal to him, frustrated by the conflicts in his heart-- Why should he help her, when she had thoroughly decimated his affections for her over the course of a few years? What was to stop her from going right back into her cell the minute he broke her out?
But more than that: Who was going to help him get free so that he could make her free?
*/*
Sadly, he found out recently that he had the prison key the whole time. He could have set himself free, and then he might have been able to liberate her as well. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, and he has learned that there is no use in regretting things like that.
He has been out of the cell for some time now. He isn't sure if he is in another one, however, because it took a long time and several fucked-up events for him to realize his former captivity.
She found a way out of her cell too, albeit in a harsh manner. The prison was stormed, and in the confusion she was broken out of her confines, free to run away. She never wants to go back to it, and so she is on her guard to ensure that she never gets trapped against her will ever again.
Occasionally, these two former prisoners still have a hard time adjusting to their newfound freedoms, so they sometimes seal off the area they are in and revert to their cell-dwelling days... only this time, they are together in the cell, which makes the isolation from the rest of the world a bit more tolerable.
Eventually, though, there will come a day when they will never have to draw the shades and hide. Maybe in the future the both of them will overcome the ingrained instincts they possess, to place themselves in shackles and draw boundaries around themselves that they must not pass.
Wish these people lots of luck, because they will need it in spades.
Friday, April 21, 2006
fun
This week has been a marathon of activity, even by my hyperactive standards. Every day this week has been devoted to band rehearsal of some variety, whether it be playing bass in two bands, guitar work for an upcoming acoustic show, or compiling beats for a hobby-turned-serious-project. I have had virtually no down time.
Band #1: We're breaking in a new drummer, in this case a long-time collaborator known as "Buddhah". I played with Buddah in a band a few years ago and thought of him when The Wolf Man left on good terms.
Wolfie has now fallen in love with Cool Edit Pro, the ancient yet highly user-friendly audio program that predates Pro Tools. Now, he can sniff his septum dry all night long while sitting in front of a computer monitor playing virtual drums.
As for Buddah, he is a quick study and a better fit for this type of music. I have always maintained some distance from the material, and not because I find it beneath me. Rather, I find that my patented detachment serves me well in this band because I am not the "leader", as it were. I just play bass.
I told them I was taking a break at the end of the month. They were cool with it but they also threw out an offer to play some guy's party in Marina del Rey during the first week of May. I might do it, just for yuks.
Band #2: A late '70s-style pogo-dancin' kind of punk band-- not hardcore at all, reminiscent of X and early Siouxsie & The Banshees. We have no gigs planned until the end of May, which is fine by me. This week I have only been able to do one practice with them, as the other projects take precedence. But I look forward to playing a show with them soon, to see if this baby has some legs.
I imagine that I will keep things at a low simmer, doing the once-a-week thing so that I don't feel pressured about having to schedule everything around practice times. They are cool people-- I'm the baby in the band at age 32, and they are not in it for fame or fortune at all. Like Tony Montana once said in the movie Scarface: "I did it for fun."
Only Tony was talking about murder, not music. But music can be murder sometimes.
Band #3: It's not really a band I'm rehearsing with, but a loose collective of people who know Ellen, the girl I was playing with last year. She has a gig lined up at The Rainbow at month's end, and I got suckered into playing guitar for her.
This is the one that I can do without. I feel bad about saying it but yet I allow myself to get guilted into playing with her. That's because Ellen is not a bad person. Problem is, she isn't very interesting either.
Her songs are pedestrian, her voice is below par, her stage presence is non-existent, and her head is in the clouds, bursting with focused optimism on her "career".
I have a weird feeling that one day she will do something someday, but I'm not sure it has to do with music. It's as if she is so intent on becoming a star that she hasn't considered any alternatives at all.
I cannot bring myself to bag on it, no matter how futile it seems to me. I guess it's because I know the same can be said about me, in regards to my own art and vision. I'm sure some people shake their heads at me and say, "How pathetic. He still thinks he's going to make it."
Of course, I'm not trying to "make it". I'm trying to get better at what I do so that if I ever get the opportunity to demonstrate what I know, I'll be prepared. Playing with other musicians helps me to get over my monomaniacal tendencies concerning creativity.
It's like the sandbox when you were a kid: You have to play nice with the others, even if you think your mudpies are far tastier than someone else's mudpies.
After all, it's all about fun. Right?
Right. And I'm not having that much fun playing with Ellen. She has alienated so many people in the process of trying to realize a vision that has yet to materialize. The violin player and drummer she recruited have their doubts about her, I'm sure. They probably wonder what I'm doing playing with her.
I guess I am feeling sorry for her, and that does no one any good. But to be honest with her would not faze her. If I told her she sucked, she'd find some way of rationalizing it and continuing with her musical career. Nothing could derail her from that.
So I may as well help her as much as I can. I can show her how to play better. I can force her to play the songs over and over until they are perfect. I can try and instill my work ethic in her so that she can improve. Practice makes perfect, and she needs a lot of practice.
I'm just trying to help. After the acoustic show, I will have to tell her I'm too busy. But if she ever gets her act together, I would play with her again.
*/*
Last night, coming home from rehearsal, I got a speeding ticket. It was such a surprise, because I didn't even know the cop was behind me. Maybe if I'd been smoking pot while driving, I would have seen him coming. Instead, I was jazzed about how smoothly the practice went, and I was doing 50 in a 35 zone, not paying attention at all.
I was approaching a red light right before they stopped me. The cross traffic light was yellow, so I tried to do that thing where you time it so you don't have to stop all the way, catching the green as it flashes and keeping the pace even. But this time, the light hesitated, and I had to stop a bit abruptly, and with the front of my car extending into the crosswalk.
It was 11:30 in the evening, so there were no pedestrians, but the cops hit their lights as soon as the light went green. I was startled, because I literally had no idea that they were directly behind me.
When the cop approached my car, I thought it was in regards to my failure to make a complete stop, but he told me I was speeding. That means they'd been following me for some time.
I recognized the cop as the one who pulled me over last Fourth of July for having my license plate displayed on my windshield. I explained that I was so amped up from rehearsal that I didn't realize I was speeding. He told me that I wasn't driving recklessly but that he had to pull me over.
He wrote me a ticket. I was not charged with being guilty of an infraction, and the failure to fully stop was not mentioned. Most likely he will not show up for the court date, so I think I will receive some leniency provided I show up in court.
Before he issued me the ticket, he asked me, "So what do you play?"
"Uh, bass."
"Cool."
"Yeah, I got it in the trunk. We jammed out tonight."
"Drive carefully."
That wasn't so bad. But when I got home and discovered that my phone was unable to make outgoing calls, I got a little pissed off. No, wait... I got VERY pissed off.
*/*
I woke up early and called the phone company. I discovered that my account was suspended for non-payment of an old account. This made me scratch my head, because as far as I knew this old account was getting paid in $50 increments every month, through a collection agency. No letter of disconnection was ever received, and the one time they called me and left a vague message was a disaster: I returned their call, only to be rudely told by the operator that I had called the wrong department and that I couldn't be transferred to the proper one.
They gave me the runaround, so I left it at that. Fast-forward to this morning-- I called the company three times total; the first time I got so irate at the operator that I hung up, knowing that I could call back and receive a different customer service person; the second time, I was quoted an account balance that was significantly lower than what the first operator told me; and by the end of the third call, I was confronted with the facts:
--I had not one, not two, but three phone accounts in varying states of delinquency. I should not have ever been allowed to get a fourth, and yet when I set up the plan for the present number I have, these accounts were never mentioned.
--The account that triggered my phone disconnection was not the one I'd been paying off monthly. It was from three years ago, when I was moving around here and there.
--In addition to being without a phone for the next week, I was expected to pay a restoral fee of $125.
Add to all of this the fact that I was disconnected at the beginning of April because one of their authorized payment centers screwed up, and you have the recipe for Steamed Jimi at your fingertips.
After nearly an hour and a half on the phone and a dozen transfers to other departments, I finally managed to skirt past the idiotic service people (yes, they have a thankless job, but some of them should really learn to use their workplace software programs) and talk to a supervisor, who not only knew what I was talking about but agreed to let me have my phone service back for the rest of the week under the condition that I get this account paid off by next Friday.
She confirmed what I already knew: Phone company workers in a rush to get a "sale" for establishing a new account overlooked my past delinquencies in an attempt to get more revenue. Then, around tax time, they scour the books and shake down anyone with so much as two pennies outstanding.
This is a reasonable theory for me to formulate, since the phone companies are hurting from the proliferation of cel phones. I think they were desperate enough to sign me up with phone service despite my delinquencies, and now they are desperate enough to demand their pound of flesh by using tactics one step below that of a Mafioso.
I mean, cutting my current phone line off... because of a phone line I had over three years ago? Granted, I was hard to get a hold of in those nomadic days, but I've had this current number for almost two years. During that time, no one from the phone company has told me of the existence of these accounts, and I must admit that I am not so good at remembering these types of things.
This was not a fun excursion at all, but luckily I have dealt with these bastards before. I was curt and surly with the subordinate "managers", but changed my tone when the supervisor who could get me what I wanted came on the phone.
I had said to the operator, "Let me speak to your manager."
She got all cocky and said, "I am one of the managers."
Without missing a beat, I said, "Then let me speak to your boss."
The operator said nothing. She quietly and politely transferred me over to the supervisor, and within fifteen minutes my phone service was back on again. I still have to pay off the account, but at least now I know what needs to be done.
Fucking bureaucratic red tape.
btw: Thank you, Mrs. Hutchinson, for understanding my situation.
*/*
This weekend, I want to have a different kind of fun. I want to enjoy tomorrow, the one day this week where I have no obligations to anyone save for the one or two people with whom I already have plans.
Eve and I might go to out of town. I will play it by ear regarding her-- she has had a stressful week and may not want to do anything with anyone.
Speaking of Eve, the one thing that I did find time for this week was watching movies with her. I rented Capote and A History Of Violence.
I haven't finished watching the latter, but it is excellent so far. Capote, however, was better than I thought it would be, and I had very high hopes for it.
I have only read Breakfast At Tiffany's, but I did see the b&w movie version of In Cold Blood starring a young Robert Blake. However, that movie gave me no clue as to the subtext and emotion of this classic "non-fiction novel".
Capote brilliantly manages to convey the torn sense of empathy that a writer has with his subjects: It is partly traitorous and partly loyal. The very people you are writing about are also the ones you might end up hurting the most.
I never had any real insight into this side of writing until I started blogging. Choosing to base my characters on real people is fine in private, but when the writing is semi-public suddenly lines are drawn that you never knew existed.
Writers are notoriously narcissistic, and the real Truman Capote was supremely self-involved. At the height of his fame, he was a charismatic socialite but also an emotionally insulated individual who seemed to be capitalizing on the misfortunes of others. Also, it is suggested early on in Capote that his dear friend Harper Lee (author of To Kill A Mockingbird) did a lot of the legwork when the book was first being researched.
However, had Truman Capote not been such a compelling personality with the uncanny ability to elicit the trust of his subjects by offering up his own pain as a halfway meeting point, the resulting novel might not have been as superb as it was when it was first published.
The writing of In Cold Blood took such a toll on him that he never finished another novel after it had cemented his reputation into the halls of history.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance is incredible, and his Oscar win was truly deserved. The real Capote was not necessarily likeable at all times, and Hoffman infuses this role with a devastating humanity that illuminates the conflicting passions of a man such as Capote.
I love well-made movies about writers. The ones I particularly like are the ones that convey the perspective that writers possess to audiences that don't see the world through the same eyes. Capote is such a movie; so is The Hours and Naked Lunch (directed by David Cronenberg, the man who directed A History Of Violence) and the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink.
Some people think those kinds of movies are boring but I think they are... fun.
Yes, fun.
I hope you have some fun this weekend.
Band #1: We're breaking in a new drummer, in this case a long-time collaborator known as "Buddhah". I played with Buddah in a band a few years ago and thought of him when The Wolf Man left on good terms.
Wolfie has now fallen in love with Cool Edit Pro, the ancient yet highly user-friendly audio program that predates Pro Tools. Now, he can sniff his septum dry all night long while sitting in front of a computer monitor playing virtual drums.
As for Buddah, he is a quick study and a better fit for this type of music. I have always maintained some distance from the material, and not because I find it beneath me. Rather, I find that my patented detachment serves me well in this band because I am not the "leader", as it were. I just play bass.
I told them I was taking a break at the end of the month. They were cool with it but they also threw out an offer to play some guy's party in Marina del Rey during the first week of May. I might do it, just for yuks.
Band #2: A late '70s-style pogo-dancin' kind of punk band-- not hardcore at all, reminiscent of X and early Siouxsie & The Banshees. We have no gigs planned until the end of May, which is fine by me. This week I have only been able to do one practice with them, as the other projects take precedence. But I look forward to playing a show with them soon, to see if this baby has some legs.
I imagine that I will keep things at a low simmer, doing the once-a-week thing so that I don't feel pressured about having to schedule everything around practice times. They are cool people-- I'm the baby in the band at age 32, and they are not in it for fame or fortune at all. Like Tony Montana once said in the movie Scarface: "I did it for fun."
Only Tony was talking about murder, not music. But music can be murder sometimes.
Band #3: It's not really a band I'm rehearsing with, but a loose collective of people who know Ellen, the girl I was playing with last year. She has a gig lined up at The Rainbow at month's end, and I got suckered into playing guitar for her.
This is the one that I can do without. I feel bad about saying it but yet I allow myself to get guilted into playing with her. That's because Ellen is not a bad person. Problem is, she isn't very interesting either.
Her songs are pedestrian, her voice is below par, her stage presence is non-existent, and her head is in the clouds, bursting with focused optimism on her "career".
I have a weird feeling that one day she will do something someday, but I'm not sure it has to do with music. It's as if she is so intent on becoming a star that she hasn't considered any alternatives at all.
I cannot bring myself to bag on it, no matter how futile it seems to me. I guess it's because I know the same can be said about me, in regards to my own art and vision. I'm sure some people shake their heads at me and say, "How pathetic. He still thinks he's going to make it."
Of course, I'm not trying to "make it". I'm trying to get better at what I do so that if I ever get the opportunity to demonstrate what I know, I'll be prepared. Playing with other musicians helps me to get over my monomaniacal tendencies concerning creativity.
It's like the sandbox when you were a kid: You have to play nice with the others, even if you think your mudpies are far tastier than someone else's mudpies.
After all, it's all about fun. Right?
Right. And I'm not having that much fun playing with Ellen. She has alienated so many people in the process of trying to realize a vision that has yet to materialize. The violin player and drummer she recruited have their doubts about her, I'm sure. They probably wonder what I'm doing playing with her.
I guess I am feeling sorry for her, and that does no one any good. But to be honest with her would not faze her. If I told her she sucked, she'd find some way of rationalizing it and continuing with her musical career. Nothing could derail her from that.
So I may as well help her as much as I can. I can show her how to play better. I can force her to play the songs over and over until they are perfect. I can try and instill my work ethic in her so that she can improve. Practice makes perfect, and she needs a lot of practice.
I'm just trying to help. After the acoustic show, I will have to tell her I'm too busy. But if she ever gets her act together, I would play with her again.
*/*
Last night, coming home from rehearsal, I got a speeding ticket. It was such a surprise, because I didn't even know the cop was behind me. Maybe if I'd been smoking pot while driving, I would have seen him coming. Instead, I was jazzed about how smoothly the practice went, and I was doing 50 in a 35 zone, not paying attention at all.
I was approaching a red light right before they stopped me. The cross traffic light was yellow, so I tried to do that thing where you time it so you don't have to stop all the way, catching the green as it flashes and keeping the pace even. But this time, the light hesitated, and I had to stop a bit abruptly, and with the front of my car extending into the crosswalk.
It was 11:30 in the evening, so there were no pedestrians, but the cops hit their lights as soon as the light went green. I was startled, because I literally had no idea that they were directly behind me.
When the cop approached my car, I thought it was in regards to my failure to make a complete stop, but he told me I was speeding. That means they'd been following me for some time.
I recognized the cop as the one who pulled me over last Fourth of July for having my license plate displayed on my windshield. I explained that I was so amped up from rehearsal that I didn't realize I was speeding. He told me that I wasn't driving recklessly but that he had to pull me over.
He wrote me a ticket. I was not charged with being guilty of an infraction, and the failure to fully stop was not mentioned. Most likely he will not show up for the court date, so I think I will receive some leniency provided I show up in court.
Before he issued me the ticket, he asked me, "So what do you play?"
"Uh, bass."
"Cool."
"Yeah, I got it in the trunk. We jammed out tonight."
"Drive carefully."
That wasn't so bad. But when I got home and discovered that my phone was unable to make outgoing calls, I got a little pissed off. No, wait... I got VERY pissed off.
*/*
I woke up early and called the phone company. I discovered that my account was suspended for non-payment of an old account. This made me scratch my head, because as far as I knew this old account was getting paid in $50 increments every month, through a collection agency. No letter of disconnection was ever received, and the one time they called me and left a vague message was a disaster: I returned their call, only to be rudely told by the operator that I had called the wrong department and that I couldn't be transferred to the proper one.
They gave me the runaround, so I left it at that. Fast-forward to this morning-- I called the company three times total; the first time I got so irate at the operator that I hung up, knowing that I could call back and receive a different customer service person; the second time, I was quoted an account balance that was significantly lower than what the first operator told me; and by the end of the third call, I was confronted with the facts:
--I had not one, not two, but three phone accounts in varying states of delinquency. I should not have ever been allowed to get a fourth, and yet when I set up the plan for the present number I have, these accounts were never mentioned.
--The account that triggered my phone disconnection was not the one I'd been paying off monthly. It was from three years ago, when I was moving around here and there.
--In addition to being without a phone for the next week, I was expected to pay a restoral fee of $125.
Add to all of this the fact that I was disconnected at the beginning of April because one of their authorized payment centers screwed up, and you have the recipe for Steamed Jimi at your fingertips.
After nearly an hour and a half on the phone and a dozen transfers to other departments, I finally managed to skirt past the idiotic service people (yes, they have a thankless job, but some of them should really learn to use their workplace software programs) and talk to a supervisor, who not only knew what I was talking about but agreed to let me have my phone service back for the rest of the week under the condition that I get this account paid off by next Friday.
She confirmed what I already knew: Phone company workers in a rush to get a "sale" for establishing a new account overlooked my past delinquencies in an attempt to get more revenue. Then, around tax time, they scour the books and shake down anyone with so much as two pennies outstanding.
This is a reasonable theory for me to formulate, since the phone companies are hurting from the proliferation of cel phones. I think they were desperate enough to sign me up with phone service despite my delinquencies, and now they are desperate enough to demand their pound of flesh by using tactics one step below that of a Mafioso.
I mean, cutting my current phone line off... because of a phone line I had over three years ago? Granted, I was hard to get a hold of in those nomadic days, but I've had this current number for almost two years. During that time, no one from the phone company has told me of the existence of these accounts, and I must admit that I am not so good at remembering these types of things.
This was not a fun excursion at all, but luckily I have dealt with these bastards before. I was curt and surly with the subordinate "managers", but changed my tone when the supervisor who could get me what I wanted came on the phone.
I had said to the operator, "Let me speak to your manager."
She got all cocky and said, "I am one of the managers."
Without missing a beat, I said, "Then let me speak to your boss."
The operator said nothing. She quietly and politely transferred me over to the supervisor, and within fifteen minutes my phone service was back on again. I still have to pay off the account, but at least now I know what needs to be done.
Fucking bureaucratic red tape.
btw: Thank you, Mrs. Hutchinson, for understanding my situation.
*/*
This weekend, I want to have a different kind of fun. I want to enjoy tomorrow, the one day this week where I have no obligations to anyone save for the one or two people with whom I already have plans.
Eve and I might go to out of town. I will play it by ear regarding her-- she has had a stressful week and may not want to do anything with anyone.
Speaking of Eve, the one thing that I did find time for this week was watching movies with her. I rented Capote and A History Of Violence.
I haven't finished watching the latter, but it is excellent so far. Capote, however, was better than I thought it would be, and I had very high hopes for it.
I have only read Breakfast At Tiffany's, but I did see the b&w movie version of In Cold Blood starring a young Robert Blake. However, that movie gave me no clue as to the subtext and emotion of this classic "non-fiction novel".
Capote brilliantly manages to convey the torn sense of empathy that a writer has with his subjects: It is partly traitorous and partly loyal. The very people you are writing about are also the ones you might end up hurting the most.
I never had any real insight into this side of writing until I started blogging. Choosing to base my characters on real people is fine in private, but when the writing is semi-public suddenly lines are drawn that you never knew existed.
Writers are notoriously narcissistic, and the real Truman Capote was supremely self-involved. At the height of his fame, he was a charismatic socialite but also an emotionally insulated individual who seemed to be capitalizing on the misfortunes of others. Also, it is suggested early on in Capote that his dear friend Harper Lee (author of To Kill A Mockingbird) did a lot of the legwork when the book was first being researched.
However, had Truman Capote not been such a compelling personality with the uncanny ability to elicit the trust of his subjects by offering up his own pain as a halfway meeting point, the resulting novel might not have been as superb as it was when it was first published.
The writing of In Cold Blood took such a toll on him that he never finished another novel after it had cemented his reputation into the halls of history.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performance is incredible, and his Oscar win was truly deserved. The real Capote was not necessarily likeable at all times, and Hoffman infuses this role with a devastating humanity that illuminates the conflicting passions of a man such as Capote.
I love well-made movies about writers. The ones I particularly like are the ones that convey the perspective that writers possess to audiences that don't see the world through the same eyes. Capote is such a movie; so is The Hours and Naked Lunch (directed by David Cronenberg, the man who directed A History Of Violence) and the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink.
Some people think those kinds of movies are boring but I think they are... fun.
Yes, fun.
I hope you have some fun this weekend.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
hilarious anti-bush propaganda
One of the funniest Photoshop jobs I've seen in some time, in addition to being clever:
I know, the Sgt. Pepper cover has been parodied to death... but this one still cracks me up the more I look at it. Maybe it's because it reminds me of some of the work of SF punk montage artist Winston Smith, the man who cut his teeth creating the visual ethos for Dead Kennedys and also one of my favorite visual manipulators.
See if you can identify the faces in the crowd.
POST SCRIPT: This is fucked up-- a list of the 100 "unsexiest" men in the world.
Of course, they're all famous. So even though the list reads like 100 punch lines to one very funny joke, at the same time you know that even the list's Number One pick-- Gilbert Gottfried --has probably gotten more tail than I've had hot meals.
My favorite pick: Tom from My Space, #79...
I know, the Sgt. Pepper cover has been parodied to death... but this one still cracks me up the more I look at it. Maybe it's because it reminds me of some of the work of SF punk montage artist Winston Smith, the man who cut his teeth creating the visual ethos for Dead Kennedys and also one of my favorite visual manipulators.
See if you can identify the faces in the crowd.
POST SCRIPT: This is fucked up-- a list of the 100 "unsexiest" men in the world.
Of course, they're all famous. So even though the list reads like 100 punch lines to one very funny joke, at the same time you know that even the list's Number One pick-- Gilbert Gottfried --has probably gotten more tail than I've had hot meals.
My favorite pick: Tom from My Space, #79...
Monday, April 17, 2006
masculinity
This link caught my attention.
It says that, online, women and men have distinguishable traits that can be discerned from their writing styles.
This is something I can agree with, but with the standard Drawzian twist: I make no bones about my writing style being "feminine", despite my manly subject matter and insistence on documenting male juvenalia in its purest forms.
The biggest thing I learned about my blogging is that I attract way more females to my blog than males. Yes, men read what I have to say, but rarely do they comment-- and if they do, it's usually to try and hate on me or prove they are smarter... which they are not, of course.
Women make up the core of my blog audience, and I am proud of that-- but it was shocking to me at first. I guess finding out who your audience is can be jarring if it doesn't match your expectations. I figured I would attract adolescent teenage boys or men who spend too much time playing XBOX, but that is not the case.
*/*
Eve did my tarot again. This time it was one of the best readings she's ever done for me. The future looks bright, and I feel like I am in control of every situation currently being thrown in my face.
It was her idea. She pulled out the cards and I complied. I don't know what motivated it, but it doesn't matter. It really is just entertainment. But it's thoughtful entertainment, and when the results jive with what I am feeling, it only makes the game more fun.
*/*
I spent Friday night coked out of my mind with The Wolf Man, who is now our ex-drummer. He was lonely and had a bag of white powder that he didn't want to sniff alone. I consented, so long as we worked on music while doing it.
We came up with another cool tune, but to be honest it would've gone easier if I had not snorted any "yayo". Maybe if he brings it by again, I will set everything up before getting high, then proceed to sniff my brains out.
I was up until 5AM, but I am up that late without the aid of drugs, so it's not much of a boast, is it?
I feel bad for people like Wolfie, because he is a cool guy with good intentions but he is massively insecure and is preoccupied with his own image. I recognize his narcissism, but his is more destructive and less evolved.
I let him do it because I would rather he be with me, doing it under supervision, than out and about, doing it alone or with people who only want to use him to get high and nothing more.
Cocaine is wasted on me, really. I AM cocaine, for all intents and purposes. I am always keyed up and ready to explode, and it takes alcohol and pot to bring me to a level somewhat resembling normal.
I wish that wasn't the case with me, but it is.
*/*
Easter was cool. I hung out with the family and ate lots of food. I talked with my brother about The Bible while watching The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, which is a religious allegory in case you didn't know.
I played with my niece and nephew, and talked with my mother about my cousins' soap-operatic lives. I took the opportunity to let her know that the things she was telling me were the key reasons why I am not intent on settling down anytime soon.
Once I get married and have kids, I have no intention of divorcing, paying alimony or finding a mistress. It's for good. It's for real. And I just don't think anyone can truly know what is real or not when they are in their early twenties or mid-thirties.
Not that I think I will ever know what is real... it's just that at least I will have decades of experience under my belt before deciding to commit to someone in that fashion. I know that I can be monogamous and loyal, but now it is a matter of finding someone who deserves my attention. I would hate to be married to someone who didn't appreciate what I do for them. Likewise, I wouldn't want to have kids with someone who didn't respect me as a person.
Sounds simple, but that's because it's written down. To actually practice such sentiments is harder than all hell.
*/*
Talked with Nicole over the weekend. She was seeing some dude for a while after we had gone our separate ways last year. Dude got her pregnant, and she had an abortion.
She was OK about it. It did not traumatize her; if anything, it reaffirmed her belief that she is not ready for motherhood, not while she is unhappy with her job and living in Los Angeles.
The dude, on the other hand, was completely devastated by her decision. But it's her decision. If the dude had been all for an abortion with Nicole being the one wanting to keep the baby, it still is her decision, because it's her body and she's the one who has to carry it to term.
This is something guys have a hard time with, to varying degrees. But ultimately, the ball is in the woman's court. And that's why it is important to have the choice in the first place. Even if they don't exercise their right to abort, they should still have the option, and it should be a decision that comes naturally.
I am not one of those guys who is defined by the quality of his seed. I could even argue that the quality of my literary seed is far more important to me than the quality of my biological seed.
This blog is my baby. It's one of thousands of children I have given birth to over the years. I have sired entire generations, complete broods... each of them possessing some sort of value.
In this regard, I am quite virile and potent. As for biological reproduction, who cares? I can always adopt if I have to... As a man, I am not measured by my sperm count but by the content of my heart and mind.
I have even aborted some of my progeny if I felt that I was not ready to have them. My first blog is a good example of this, but that was more of a miscarriage.
In many respects, I am already a father, not just to my art but to my friends, as well as being a role model for my family. I am a respectable person who is barely beginning to realize that I am far more mature and responsible than I ever imagined.
I am not perfect, but I feel comfortable in this skin.
That, my friends, is more important than anything else in this world.
It says that, online, women and men have distinguishable traits that can be discerned from their writing styles.
This is something I can agree with, but with the standard Drawzian twist: I make no bones about my writing style being "feminine", despite my manly subject matter and insistence on documenting male juvenalia in its purest forms.
The biggest thing I learned about my blogging is that I attract way more females to my blog than males. Yes, men read what I have to say, but rarely do they comment-- and if they do, it's usually to try and hate on me or prove they are smarter... which they are not, of course.
Women make up the core of my blog audience, and I am proud of that-- but it was shocking to me at first. I guess finding out who your audience is can be jarring if it doesn't match your expectations. I figured I would attract adolescent teenage boys or men who spend too much time playing XBOX, but that is not the case.
*/*
Eve did my tarot again. This time it was one of the best readings she's ever done for me. The future looks bright, and I feel like I am in control of every situation currently being thrown in my face.
It was her idea. She pulled out the cards and I complied. I don't know what motivated it, but it doesn't matter. It really is just entertainment. But it's thoughtful entertainment, and when the results jive with what I am feeling, it only makes the game more fun.
*/*
I spent Friday night coked out of my mind with The Wolf Man, who is now our ex-drummer. He was lonely and had a bag of white powder that he didn't want to sniff alone. I consented, so long as we worked on music while doing it.
We came up with another cool tune, but to be honest it would've gone easier if I had not snorted any "yayo". Maybe if he brings it by again, I will set everything up before getting high, then proceed to sniff my brains out.
I was up until 5AM, but I am up that late without the aid of drugs, so it's not much of a boast, is it?
I feel bad for people like Wolfie, because he is a cool guy with good intentions but he is massively insecure and is preoccupied with his own image. I recognize his narcissism, but his is more destructive and less evolved.
I let him do it because I would rather he be with me, doing it under supervision, than out and about, doing it alone or with people who only want to use him to get high and nothing more.
Cocaine is wasted on me, really. I AM cocaine, for all intents and purposes. I am always keyed up and ready to explode, and it takes alcohol and pot to bring me to a level somewhat resembling normal.
I wish that wasn't the case with me, but it is.
*/*
Easter was cool. I hung out with the family and ate lots of food. I talked with my brother about The Bible while watching The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, which is a religious allegory in case you didn't know.
I played with my niece and nephew, and talked with my mother about my cousins' soap-operatic lives. I took the opportunity to let her know that the things she was telling me were the key reasons why I am not intent on settling down anytime soon.
Once I get married and have kids, I have no intention of divorcing, paying alimony or finding a mistress. It's for good. It's for real. And I just don't think anyone can truly know what is real or not when they are in their early twenties or mid-thirties.
Not that I think I will ever know what is real... it's just that at least I will have decades of experience under my belt before deciding to commit to someone in that fashion. I know that I can be monogamous and loyal, but now it is a matter of finding someone who deserves my attention. I would hate to be married to someone who didn't appreciate what I do for them. Likewise, I wouldn't want to have kids with someone who didn't respect me as a person.
Sounds simple, but that's because it's written down. To actually practice such sentiments is harder than all hell.
*/*
Talked with Nicole over the weekend. She was seeing some dude for a while after we had gone our separate ways last year. Dude got her pregnant, and she had an abortion.
She was OK about it. It did not traumatize her; if anything, it reaffirmed her belief that she is not ready for motherhood, not while she is unhappy with her job and living in Los Angeles.
The dude, on the other hand, was completely devastated by her decision. But it's her decision. If the dude had been all for an abortion with Nicole being the one wanting to keep the baby, it still is her decision, because it's her body and she's the one who has to carry it to term.
This is something guys have a hard time with, to varying degrees. But ultimately, the ball is in the woman's court. And that's why it is important to have the choice in the first place. Even if they don't exercise their right to abort, they should still have the option, and it should be a decision that comes naturally.
I am not one of those guys who is defined by the quality of his seed. I could even argue that the quality of my literary seed is far more important to me than the quality of my biological seed.
This blog is my baby. It's one of thousands of children I have given birth to over the years. I have sired entire generations, complete broods... each of them possessing some sort of value.
In this regard, I am quite virile and potent. As for biological reproduction, who cares? I can always adopt if I have to... As a man, I am not measured by my sperm count but by the content of my heart and mind.
I have even aborted some of my progeny if I felt that I was not ready to have them. My first blog is a good example of this, but that was more of a miscarriage.
In many respects, I am already a father, not just to my art but to my friends, as well as being a role model for my family. I am a respectable person who is barely beginning to realize that I am far more mature and responsible than I ever imagined.
I am not perfect, but I feel comfortable in this skin.
That, my friends, is more important than anything else in this world.
Friday, April 14, 2006
tarot 2
So I demanded that Eve read my cards again.
This time around, the forecast wasn't so bleak.
It tickled her that I was so adamant about getting a new reading. "It's only for entertainment," she said to me as she shuffled her deck.
"Yeah, and that's how I treated it when you did my reading last time... now, I want to take it seriously..." I smoked my cigarette nervously, hoping for something more hopeful.
The message of this card reading was brighter, but it did seem to suggest that money will be an issue sometime soon.
When is money not an issue with me?
Lately she and I have been having some pretty genuine conversations that leave me feeling better about things. I am still adjusting, but I seem to have found a center.
We met over at Laurie and Daniel's place last night for a nightcap.
Everything is feeling OK. I will live, dammit!
Nothing else to report. I will clue y'all in on my further time travels on Monday. Until then...
HAVE A NICE WEEKEND, Y'ALL!!
HAPPY EASTER/PASSOVER/WHATEVER THE HELL YOU CELEBRATE!!
peace
This time around, the forecast wasn't so bleak.
It tickled her that I was so adamant about getting a new reading. "It's only for entertainment," she said to me as she shuffled her deck.
"Yeah, and that's how I treated it when you did my reading last time... now, I want to take it seriously..." I smoked my cigarette nervously, hoping for something more hopeful.
The message of this card reading was brighter, but it did seem to suggest that money will be an issue sometime soon.
When is money not an issue with me?
Lately she and I have been having some pretty genuine conversations that leave me feeling better about things. I am still adjusting, but I seem to have found a center.
We met over at Laurie and Daniel's place last night for a nightcap.
Everything is feeling OK. I will live, dammit!
Nothing else to report. I will clue y'all in on my further time travels on Monday. Until then...
HAVE A NICE WEEKEND, Y'ALL!!
HAPPY EASTER/PASSOVER/WHATEVER THE HELL YOU CELEBRATE!!
peace
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
tarot
About a week ago, Eve read my Tarot. A bunch of seemingly negative cards kept coming up. I forgot which ones were picked out, but every meaning she pulled out of her Tarot book seemed to be a doomsday omen.
After a while, I laughed and said, "What the fuck?"
Eve insisted that these "negative" cards were signs of things I need to overcome, obstacles that I need to get by, hang-ups I need to get over...
I think her Tarot forecast was very accurate, given the way things have been in the past two weeks.
Last night I thought about what the hell I am doing, playing in bands where I have no control over the content of the music, the crowds we play to, the venues we book or the location of these venues. I thought about how I still don't get paid, and in fact I have to pay out of my own pocket in order to assist someone else in satisfying their own ego and control freakishness.
I've been writing original music again, for the first time in a long time. Most of the songs I've been working on for the past few years have been older recordings that I wanted to remix, but I'm over all of that now.
I want to create something new.
I am going to let the notion of quitting all of these bands stew in my head for a bit. Then, if it gains momentum, I will tell all of the respective bands that, as much as I want to help them out, I am getting nothing out of it that can help me in the long run.
Basically, I am going to be a dick and say, "I need to get paid or else I can't do this anymore."
I don't expect them to bend over backwards or pay me. I expect them to say "Sorry" and find someone else to play bass for them. There's a ton of them out there.
After a while, I laughed and said, "What the fuck?"
Eve insisted that these "negative" cards were signs of things I need to overcome, obstacles that I need to get by, hang-ups I need to get over...
I think her Tarot forecast was very accurate, given the way things have been in the past two weeks.
Last night I thought about what the hell I am doing, playing in bands where I have no control over the content of the music, the crowds we play to, the venues we book or the location of these venues. I thought about how I still don't get paid, and in fact I have to pay out of my own pocket in order to assist someone else in satisfying their own ego and control freakishness.
I've been writing original music again, for the first time in a long time. Most of the songs I've been working on for the past few years have been older recordings that I wanted to remix, but I'm over all of that now.
I want to create something new.
I am going to let the notion of quitting all of these bands stew in my head for a bit. Then, if it gains momentum, I will tell all of the respective bands that, as much as I want to help them out, I am getting nothing out of it that can help me in the long run.
Basically, I am going to be a dick and say, "I need to get paid or else I can't do this anymore."
I don't expect them to bend over backwards or pay me. I expect them to say "Sorry" and find someone else to play bass for them. There's a ton of them out there.
time travel
So I built a machine in my mind, and now I can accelerate to the edges of the expanding universe whilst sleeping.
It is fueled by my sleep apnea/insomnia and incessant snoring.
Last night, after a less-than-stellar gig in Long Beach that found me questioning my existence a little deeper than usual, I got home and slept off my drunk with journeys into my past, courtesy of the astral plane.
I ended up in my old neighborhood, as a little boy. My next door neighbor Sophie was there, just like the first time I saw her. She was in the alley behind our homes, helping her parents wash their car. She kept looking over at me and I kept on looking over at her.
Then, the time machine scooted me up a few years later, when she and I were best friends. She would walk over to my house and knock on my door and ask my mother if I could come out and play.
My mother absolutely adored Sophie. My mother often made jokes about how she and I would end up getting married someday. These jokes would embarrass me back then, but last night in my dream I wanted to step out of the time machine and tell myself back then that I shouldn't be ashamed of this love, that one day I would wish intently that Sophie was still around...
I woke up at one point and realized that my thus-far commitment to never getting married is intrinsically linked to Sophie's absence from my life.
I went back under and traveled on to the last time I saw her: as a teenager, sixteen, clumsy and shy, with shoulder-length locks and glasses as thick as a welder's goggles.
Sophie was a young woman at that point, no longer a tomboy whom I considered an equal. She was way out of my league, and yet she consorted with potential criminals and taggers.
She thought I was ridiculous.
I woke up again, interrupted this time by the need to drain the alcohol out of me. This time, I linked in my mind the need to know if Sophie has ever thought of me in the past twenty years with the recent revelation of Eve thinking of me while she was with Dick.
Once more, I descended into sleep and took a trip back into time.
I ended up somewhere in the middle, during a time when I took her for granted and figured that she and I would be friends forever.
Sophie told me that she thought I was the smartest person she ever knew, and she asked me to help her with her homework.
She and I went to the same school, but I was in the Magnet and she was a "regular" student. We weren't supposed to socialize at school, but afterwards she would walk over two houses down and knock on my door, and we'd ride our bikes and play stickball all day long, until it was time to eat dinner.
I helped her with her homework, and as I watched us I realized that she probably has found a man by now and married him, and has kids, most likely in the wake of some wild partying years and bad relationships.
And for some reason, I could hear her-- not in the past, but in the present --telling me to stop searching for her, that she was alright, that she ended up doing good, and that even though we have been apart for decades she still ended up finding a good man, maybe not as good as I was to her but just as good, and that she never ever forgot me throughout the years...
And when I woke up, I felt very calm.
It is fueled by my sleep apnea/insomnia and incessant snoring.
Last night, after a less-than-stellar gig in Long Beach that found me questioning my existence a little deeper than usual, I got home and slept off my drunk with journeys into my past, courtesy of the astral plane.
I ended up in my old neighborhood, as a little boy. My next door neighbor Sophie was there, just like the first time I saw her. She was in the alley behind our homes, helping her parents wash their car. She kept looking over at me and I kept on looking over at her.
Then, the time machine scooted me up a few years later, when she and I were best friends. She would walk over to my house and knock on my door and ask my mother if I could come out and play.
My mother absolutely adored Sophie. My mother often made jokes about how she and I would end up getting married someday. These jokes would embarrass me back then, but last night in my dream I wanted to step out of the time machine and tell myself back then that I shouldn't be ashamed of this love, that one day I would wish intently that Sophie was still around...
I woke up at one point and realized that my thus-far commitment to never getting married is intrinsically linked to Sophie's absence from my life.
I went back under and traveled on to the last time I saw her: as a teenager, sixteen, clumsy and shy, with shoulder-length locks and glasses as thick as a welder's goggles.
Sophie was a young woman at that point, no longer a tomboy whom I considered an equal. She was way out of my league, and yet she consorted with potential criminals and taggers.
She thought I was ridiculous.
I woke up again, interrupted this time by the need to drain the alcohol out of me. This time, I linked in my mind the need to know if Sophie has ever thought of me in the past twenty years with the recent revelation of Eve thinking of me while she was with Dick.
Once more, I descended into sleep and took a trip back into time.
I ended up somewhere in the middle, during a time when I took her for granted and figured that she and I would be friends forever.
Sophie told me that she thought I was the smartest person she ever knew, and she asked me to help her with her homework.
She and I went to the same school, but I was in the Magnet and she was a "regular" student. We weren't supposed to socialize at school, but afterwards she would walk over two houses down and knock on my door, and we'd ride our bikes and play stickball all day long, until it was time to eat dinner.
I helped her with her homework, and as I watched us I realized that she probably has found a man by now and married him, and has kids, most likely in the wake of some wild partying years and bad relationships.
And for some reason, I could hear her-- not in the past, but in the present --telling me to stop searching for her, that she was alright, that she ended up doing good, and that even though we have been apart for decades she still ended up finding a good man, maybe not as good as I was to her but just as good, and that she never ever forgot me throughout the years...
And when I woke up, I felt very calm.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
the backward stroke
I think in terms of time, all the time. Last night I even had a conversation with Doctor Dos, a friend from high school, concerning time travel.
I theorize that it is almost impossible to travel back in time, because the universe is expanding forward and we cannot reverse the will of the universe. However, if we were to accelerate forward in time, to the exact point where the universe stops expanding and starts contracting, then we can ride the "backward stroke" (as the good Doctor put it) and travel past the departure point (the present) back into time, going with the flow of a cosmos whose reality is reversed like that of a DVD rewinding.
Or, if you buy the notion that the universe expands like a balloon being filled with air-- that is, it expands then stops and contracts slightly before expanding again --then it might be possible to pinpoint the exact moment when a contraction occurs, and ride the backward stroke for a relatively short amount of time. You'd only be able to travel backwards for maybe a century, if that.
Now all we need to to do is make the accelerators. If we were to use the first theory, all it would take would be to plan an space mission that would keep a man in space for as long as it takes to reach the end of the universe expansion. That could take billions of years, but a man in space might only have to live up there for a few decades before coming back down to catch the universe as it contracts and ride it back into the modern day.
Got it?
*/*
Like I said, I think in terms of time, all the time. And one of the things that has always bothered me about Eve is: If she wasn't that into Dick, then why did she stay with him for nine years?
I asked the same question of my good friend Flora, who got married after high school and spent eight years in misery before she left her husband. The negative part of me wants to say that these women didn't want to admit they were wrong, and so they stayed with their men in an attempt to save face.
There is truth to that, but there's more to it. There's always more to it.
For the record, I can't imagine myself ever spending more than a few years with anyone, mostly because no one has ever wanted to spend more than that amount of time with me. Or rather, no woman has ever felt like she deserved to spend the rest of their life with me.
Of course, that's utter bullshit, because first of all no one deserves anything in this world, and second of all it would imply that I am hard to live with. I may be stubborn and independent, but I am not hard to live with.
Anyway, I think about Eve and me, and when you break down the fourteen years we've known each other, it goes like this:
The first six months of our relationship was pure friendship. After about a year, we were in love. Technically, our first go-round lasted a little over two years, but it was interrupted by obstinate parents and terrible circumstances.
We broke up, and we were distant acquaintances for the next five years. Then, I broke off ties with her, because Dick forbade her from seeing me... and she listened to him. She put the love of a man she barely knew over my friendship, which was going on seven years at that point.
Five years passed, and our paths never really crossed, despite her close proximity to my work and home. So out of twelve years, only seven were really spent knowing her, and out of the seven only two were even remotely intimate... not counting the fact that her parents deemed me 'untouchable'.
Anyone else in their right mind would've taken the hint a long time ago and just moved on. It wasn't meant to be, they'd say.
Well, I'm an idiot.
After five years of silence, we found each other again-- or rather, I found her, and she allowed me to approach her. We made up for lost time.
And now, two years later, we are back at square one again: friends.
She gave her best years away to someone else, and yet I'm the one she loves.
Makes me wish she didn't love me.
*/*
There's this tendency in all human beings to assume that the green grass on the other side is really as green as it seems.
In all those years spent apart from her, I always thought that I was a mere blip on her radar. I had to think of it that way, in order to keep the pain at bay. It was easier to think that she never loved me than to think that she made some bad decisions concerning me.
Much easier.
This past weekend, not only did we decide to be friends again, but I proved it to her by not taking advantage of a situation where we were all shit-face drunk. I drove her home and then I drove myself home. She thanked me for not being a typical man.
I've never been a typical man.
And last night, she decided that I was "ready" to see something she had written years ago, when she was with Dick, when I stopped talking to her.
She opened a box of papers. Eve told me that they were the only things Dick returned to her after they split up. She pulled two pages out: one a rough draft of a poem, the other a slightly more polished version of the same poem.
I won't reprint it here, because I have already taken the words and composed music to them. Thus, to reprint them here would be akin to giving the song away for free... and the song isn't done, so you'll all just have to wait.
But they were good words, meaningful words. They were good enough for me to set music to them, and they touched my heart because they acknowledge something that I have always wanted to know about her.
Did she ever think of me when she was with Dick?
The answer is yes.
The gist of the poem is that she was testing out a typewriter and this free-form piece flowed out of her.
She wrote that she lost me, and that she was richer as a working person but poorer for the loss of her dear friend. She was wondering where I was, and if I was happy, and if I was being loved.
She never showed it to me because she didn't think I'd understand it. She feared I would misinterpret it. She was right. I would've taken it as a testament to our lasting love, and my ego gratification would have known no bounds.
Instead, I see it for what it is: an admission, a confession, a secret she never wanted to come to terms with, a regret perhaps.
I read it over and over after I left her apartment. I then paid a visit to the Doctor to procure illicit drugs. I doped myself into a stupor and read the words again.
I heard music in my head. It was a tune I'd written years ago, music with no lyrics. I can never marry words to music if I write the music first, but whenever I start a melody using the words, I always come up with a ditty. In this case, the music had been written so long ago and yet it came to the fore of my thoughts naturally. These words were the catalyst.
I rarely use other people's words, but these words could've been mine at one time.
I finished the song around 2AM, and then I sat on the couch and cried tears that I have never cried before. It felt as if my jaw was going to break apart. I couldn't make any sounds other than a pathetic whimper.
It was the release of years of doubt and self-hatred.
I never knew how she felt about me during that five year exile. She isn't very good at showing me that. Maybe it's because it's too intense, and can break your jaw open and flood your eyes with salty water.
*/*
I am experiencing an ever-shifting array of emotions currently. I go from sorrow to anger to euphoria to epiphany in the span of a few minutes.
I told her last night, before I left, that I was terrified of these new prospects. I shared a few things that I never would have let on if we were still romantically linked.
What's happening is: I'm learning to feel again, after years of pretending that she never mattered.
The numbness is wearing off. And I will be a wreck for a while, a schizophrenic basket-case teetering between despair and elation.
Bear with me, please. It's only a temporary phase, just like all these events and episodes that make up the fabric of my relationship with the best friend I have ever had.
At the moment, it is a heavy burden. But in the long run, is is fleeting.
I theorize that it is almost impossible to travel back in time, because the universe is expanding forward and we cannot reverse the will of the universe. However, if we were to accelerate forward in time, to the exact point where the universe stops expanding and starts contracting, then we can ride the "backward stroke" (as the good Doctor put it) and travel past the departure point (the present) back into time, going with the flow of a cosmos whose reality is reversed like that of a DVD rewinding.
Or, if you buy the notion that the universe expands like a balloon being filled with air-- that is, it expands then stops and contracts slightly before expanding again --then it might be possible to pinpoint the exact moment when a contraction occurs, and ride the backward stroke for a relatively short amount of time. You'd only be able to travel backwards for maybe a century, if that.
Now all we need to to do is make the accelerators. If we were to use the first theory, all it would take would be to plan an space mission that would keep a man in space for as long as it takes to reach the end of the universe expansion. That could take billions of years, but a man in space might only have to live up there for a few decades before coming back down to catch the universe as it contracts and ride it back into the modern day.
Got it?
*/*
Like I said, I think in terms of time, all the time. And one of the things that has always bothered me about Eve is: If she wasn't that into Dick, then why did she stay with him for nine years?
I asked the same question of my good friend Flora, who got married after high school and spent eight years in misery before she left her husband. The negative part of me wants to say that these women didn't want to admit they were wrong, and so they stayed with their men in an attempt to save face.
There is truth to that, but there's more to it. There's always more to it.
For the record, I can't imagine myself ever spending more than a few years with anyone, mostly because no one has ever wanted to spend more than that amount of time with me. Or rather, no woman has ever felt like she deserved to spend the rest of their life with me.
Of course, that's utter bullshit, because first of all no one deserves anything in this world, and second of all it would imply that I am hard to live with. I may be stubborn and independent, but I am not hard to live with.
Anyway, I think about Eve and me, and when you break down the fourteen years we've known each other, it goes like this:
The first six months of our relationship was pure friendship. After about a year, we were in love. Technically, our first go-round lasted a little over two years, but it was interrupted by obstinate parents and terrible circumstances.
We broke up, and we were distant acquaintances for the next five years. Then, I broke off ties with her, because Dick forbade her from seeing me... and she listened to him. She put the love of a man she barely knew over my friendship, which was going on seven years at that point.
Five years passed, and our paths never really crossed, despite her close proximity to my work and home. So out of twelve years, only seven were really spent knowing her, and out of the seven only two were even remotely intimate... not counting the fact that her parents deemed me 'untouchable'.
Anyone else in their right mind would've taken the hint a long time ago and just moved on. It wasn't meant to be, they'd say.
Well, I'm an idiot.
After five years of silence, we found each other again-- or rather, I found her, and she allowed me to approach her. We made up for lost time.
And now, two years later, we are back at square one again: friends.
She gave her best years away to someone else, and yet I'm the one she loves.
Makes me wish she didn't love me.
*/*
There's this tendency in all human beings to assume that the green grass on the other side is really as green as it seems.
In all those years spent apart from her, I always thought that I was a mere blip on her radar. I had to think of it that way, in order to keep the pain at bay. It was easier to think that she never loved me than to think that she made some bad decisions concerning me.
Much easier.
This past weekend, not only did we decide to be friends again, but I proved it to her by not taking advantage of a situation where we were all shit-face drunk. I drove her home and then I drove myself home. She thanked me for not being a typical man.
I've never been a typical man.
And last night, she decided that I was "ready" to see something she had written years ago, when she was with Dick, when I stopped talking to her.
She opened a box of papers. Eve told me that they were the only things Dick returned to her after they split up. She pulled two pages out: one a rough draft of a poem, the other a slightly more polished version of the same poem.
I won't reprint it here, because I have already taken the words and composed music to them. Thus, to reprint them here would be akin to giving the song away for free... and the song isn't done, so you'll all just have to wait.
But they were good words, meaningful words. They were good enough for me to set music to them, and they touched my heart because they acknowledge something that I have always wanted to know about her.
Did she ever think of me when she was with Dick?
The answer is yes.
The gist of the poem is that she was testing out a typewriter and this free-form piece flowed out of her.
She wrote that she lost me, and that she was richer as a working person but poorer for the loss of her dear friend. She was wondering where I was, and if I was happy, and if I was being loved.
She never showed it to me because she didn't think I'd understand it. She feared I would misinterpret it. She was right. I would've taken it as a testament to our lasting love, and my ego gratification would have known no bounds.
Instead, I see it for what it is: an admission, a confession, a secret she never wanted to come to terms with, a regret perhaps.
I read it over and over after I left her apartment. I then paid a visit to the Doctor to procure illicit drugs. I doped myself into a stupor and read the words again.
I heard music in my head. It was a tune I'd written years ago, music with no lyrics. I can never marry words to music if I write the music first, but whenever I start a melody using the words, I always come up with a ditty. In this case, the music had been written so long ago and yet it came to the fore of my thoughts naturally. These words were the catalyst.
I rarely use other people's words, but these words could've been mine at one time.
I finished the song around 2AM, and then I sat on the couch and cried tears that I have never cried before. It felt as if my jaw was going to break apart. I couldn't make any sounds other than a pathetic whimper.
It was the release of years of doubt and self-hatred.
I never knew how she felt about me during that five year exile. She isn't very good at showing me that. Maybe it's because it's too intense, and can break your jaw open and flood your eyes with salty water.
*/*
I am experiencing an ever-shifting array of emotions currently. I go from sorrow to anger to euphoria to epiphany in the span of a few minutes.
I told her last night, before I left, that I was terrified of these new prospects. I shared a few things that I never would have let on if we were still romantically linked.
What's happening is: I'm learning to feel again, after years of pretending that she never mattered.
The numbness is wearing off. And I will be a wreck for a while, a schizophrenic basket-case teetering between despair and elation.
Bear with me, please. It's only a temporary phase, just like all these events and episodes that make up the fabric of my relationship with the best friend I have ever had.
At the moment, it is a heavy burden. But in the long run, is is fleeting.
Monday, April 10, 2006
quiz or quiznos?
This latest quiz was giving me trouble when trying to post it up here, so here (without further ado) is a link to the results of that ornery quiz.
Enjoy.
Enjoy.
notes
A weekend saturated with vice... two days that opened my eyes and cleared my cloudy vision... tears and smiles inexplicably bound together like kindling sticks ready for the fire... rockandroll release to balance my teetering rollercoaster wiles...
Inching closer to the core of my neuroses every day... a newfound dimension adds exciting planes to my personal geometry... doors opened and closed, hearts torn asunder and rent for sacrificial purposes... fine meals and scaled-down diets temper my impulses and keep me grounded... I am meditative...
Visits with family elicit truths I never bothered to notice... random words echoing from voice message systems reverberate inside my hollow skull... dreamtime covers me with a blanket as soft as nightsand, deep drifting into surreal bliss and unconscious abyss... poetry leaking from my soul like levees ripe to burst...
Only when fashioning some sort of certainty in the void of Space do I find any repose... and I conclude that all art is shadowplay, puppet silhouettes cast against bright white walls glistening in the dark... sculpting abstracts into reifications, concrete and tangible like granite, traveling to other planets by way of the far-off tangent...
Tearing my hale head of hair out will only wear me out... exhausted and in need of enervation, I seek shelter from self-inflicted storms... she reached out to me and gripped my hand as if I were dangling over a precipice precipitously... I cradled her with a solemn oath taking form within my psyche...
Now that I know the reasons, I can welcome the new season, and accept what she sees in me as something valuable, urgent and demanding but always within reach...
Inching closer to the core of my neuroses every day... a newfound dimension adds exciting planes to my personal geometry... doors opened and closed, hearts torn asunder and rent for sacrificial purposes... fine meals and scaled-down diets temper my impulses and keep me grounded... I am meditative...
Visits with family elicit truths I never bothered to notice... random words echoing from voice message systems reverberate inside my hollow skull... dreamtime covers me with a blanket as soft as nightsand, deep drifting into surreal bliss and unconscious abyss... poetry leaking from my soul like levees ripe to burst...
Only when fashioning some sort of certainty in the void of Space do I find any repose... and I conclude that all art is shadowplay, puppet silhouettes cast against bright white walls glistening in the dark... sculpting abstracts into reifications, concrete and tangible like granite, traveling to other planets by way of the far-off tangent...
Tearing my hale head of hair out will only wear me out... exhausted and in need of enervation, I seek shelter from self-inflicted storms... she reached out to me and gripped my hand as if I were dangling over a precipice precipitously... I cradled her with a solemn oath taking form within my psyche...
Now that I know the reasons, I can welcome the new season, and accept what she sees in me as something valuable, urgent and demanding but always within reach...
Thursday, April 06, 2006
fear
We got into an argument.
I said some things that I wish I hadn't said.
But... and this is a big but... I'm not sorry I said them.
I can't really get into the details. Too intimate. Too personal. Suffice it to say, she made an observation about me and didn't explain why she felt that way. That stewed inside my head for the past week. We hung out a few times but I was still fuming over it, and she didn't offer to explain.
Finally, I bring it to a boil, and suddenly there she is with an explanation-- this is Classic Eve 101. The explanation is supposed to shame me for assuming the worst, and I'm supposed to feel bad for her and say "Why didn't you tell me in the first place?"
Well, I did say "Why didn't you tell me" but I didn't let her off the hook.
At one point she accused me of sounding like Dick, her psychotic ex, who may or may not be in jail right now. I replied that if it sounded like Dick, it's because she allows him to live inside of her head.
Brutal, yes. But it had to be said. Isn't it telling that she doesn't hear what I'm saying? Rather, she compares the tone to her ex-boyfriend, a lowlife by all means. It's her way of excusing herself from having to be mature and deal with reality.
I know she's unstable, I know she's in therapy. But I'm not trying to mindfuck her or manipulate her. I just want her to stop acting sneaky, like she has to hide everything from me.
Besides, it doesn't work. If you try to hide it from me, it'll only stir my curiosity. And I am very very good at detecting what lies underneath. I may not be able to read your mind, but I'll know if you are being less than truthful with me.
Maybe I'm too confrontational. But she has to learn to deal with confrontation, not just from the likes of me but from people who are NOT on her side.
And I refuse to victimize her. She insists that she needs to be more selfish, but I say that she doesn't need to read a book on it-- she wrote the book!
She is uncomfortable with seeming outwardly selfish. This is why she apologizes for things that no one asked her to be sorry for-- it's her way of transferring the guilt of her genuine selfishness. She will say she's sorry for this and that, and I laugh because there's no need to be sorry for them.
But when I demanded this time that she apologize for her assumption about me, she did it backhandedly: "I'm sorry you misunderstood."
No. Nah-ah. That's not an apology. Normally, I don't demand them, but this time I can't let her slide on this.
Am I being mean? It feels like it. But this incident has really hurt me, even more than the Sharky thing.
It hurts because it is the worst form of paranoia. She is convinced that I would actually go to the most extreme lengths in order to "keep" her.
I can't "keep" her anymore than I can keep a straight face in church.
Why can't she see that I'm not trying to force her into anything she doesn't want? Why can't she see that she is imagining certain things and allowing her general mistrust of everyone and everything to cloud her vision and judgement?
Why can't she see this? Is she afraid?
Well, so am I.
I said some things that I wish I hadn't said.
But... and this is a big but... I'm not sorry I said them.
I can't really get into the details. Too intimate. Too personal. Suffice it to say, she made an observation about me and didn't explain why she felt that way. That stewed inside my head for the past week. We hung out a few times but I was still fuming over it, and she didn't offer to explain.
Finally, I bring it to a boil, and suddenly there she is with an explanation-- this is Classic Eve 101. The explanation is supposed to shame me for assuming the worst, and I'm supposed to feel bad for her and say "Why didn't you tell me in the first place?"
Well, I did say "Why didn't you tell me" but I didn't let her off the hook.
At one point she accused me of sounding like Dick, her psychotic ex, who may or may not be in jail right now. I replied that if it sounded like Dick, it's because she allows him to live inside of her head.
Brutal, yes. But it had to be said. Isn't it telling that she doesn't hear what I'm saying? Rather, she compares the tone to her ex-boyfriend, a lowlife by all means. It's her way of excusing herself from having to be mature and deal with reality.
I know she's unstable, I know she's in therapy. But I'm not trying to mindfuck her or manipulate her. I just want her to stop acting sneaky, like she has to hide everything from me.
Besides, it doesn't work. If you try to hide it from me, it'll only stir my curiosity. And I am very very good at detecting what lies underneath. I may not be able to read your mind, but I'll know if you are being less than truthful with me.
Maybe I'm too confrontational. But she has to learn to deal with confrontation, not just from the likes of me but from people who are NOT on her side.
And I refuse to victimize her. She insists that she needs to be more selfish, but I say that she doesn't need to read a book on it-- she wrote the book!
She is uncomfortable with seeming outwardly selfish. This is why she apologizes for things that no one asked her to be sorry for-- it's her way of transferring the guilt of her genuine selfishness. She will say she's sorry for this and that, and I laugh because there's no need to be sorry for them.
But when I demanded this time that she apologize for her assumption about me, she did it backhandedly: "I'm sorry you misunderstood."
No. Nah-ah. That's not an apology. Normally, I don't demand them, but this time I can't let her slide on this.
Am I being mean? It feels like it. But this incident has really hurt me, even more than the Sharky thing.
It hurts because it is the worst form of paranoia. She is convinced that I would actually go to the most extreme lengths in order to "keep" her.
I can't "keep" her anymore than I can keep a straight face in church.
Why can't she see that I'm not trying to force her into anything she doesn't want? Why can't she see that she is imagining certain things and allowing her general mistrust of everyone and everything to cloud her vision and judgement?
Why can't she see this? Is she afraid?
Well, so am I.
Monday, April 03, 2006
desperation
You'd think that I'd have a tougher skin by now, after over three decades spent dousing myself in metaphorical gasoline and igniting figurative fires in order to burn this evil spirit out of my system, in order to smoke out the demon that whispers in my ear and convinces me that I am nothing...
I'm tough. I'm stronger than most. But I bleed and I hurt just the same as anyone else.
I've been accused of many things in my life, and I've been called numerous infernal names under the sun, but the one label that I loathe more than anything is the label of desperation where there is none.
I have had desperate times in my life, and I owned up to them when I was in their midst. But it's an insult to level that accusation at me right now, when there is little that I want and I am stabler than I have been in some time.
There is no shame in genuine desperation, but it angers me to know that others see my affection, my concern and my passion as signs of dependence, weakness, perhaps feeble-mindedness.
What nerve it takes to describe me in this manner! The fact that I haven't lost my head over it is a testament to my restraint.
Instead, I just shrug it off, like so many other inaccurate assessments of my character. I am constantly being underestimated and patronized as if I am some fragile flower who cannot bear the mercurial weight of Truth.
Please.
I can handle it fine. However, it still makes me mad, still feels unfair, and still irks me to no end.
There's no escaping this sort of judgement. People feel that they know me, but then they say things like this and suddenly there is evidence-- much evidence --to prove otherwise.
Listen: If you think for one second that I am a sucker, you've got a few things coming to you. Don't ever make that mistake with me. I don't take kindly to people assuming they have me down pat, especially when they are dead wrong.
I know who I am, what I am capable of, and where I am going. Can anyone else say that about themselves with any degree of confidence?
Understand? I don't expect you to, so it's up to you to understand. It is not up to me to make you comprehend this simple fact.
I just don't have the time to bother with this negative crap coming from other people. I just don't.
I think tonight I want to spend some time with myself, maybe write some things down, possibly work on the computer. I think I need to be selfish for a while, even more selfish than I am accused of being.
Yeah, I think that's the ticket.
See ya.
I'm tough. I'm stronger than most. But I bleed and I hurt just the same as anyone else.
I've been accused of many things in my life, and I've been called numerous infernal names under the sun, but the one label that I loathe more than anything is the label of desperation where there is none.
I have had desperate times in my life, and I owned up to them when I was in their midst. But it's an insult to level that accusation at me right now, when there is little that I want and I am stabler than I have been in some time.
There is no shame in genuine desperation, but it angers me to know that others see my affection, my concern and my passion as signs of dependence, weakness, perhaps feeble-mindedness.
What nerve it takes to describe me in this manner! The fact that I haven't lost my head over it is a testament to my restraint.
Instead, I just shrug it off, like so many other inaccurate assessments of my character. I am constantly being underestimated and patronized as if I am some fragile flower who cannot bear the mercurial weight of Truth.
Please.
I can handle it fine. However, it still makes me mad, still feels unfair, and still irks me to no end.
There's no escaping this sort of judgement. People feel that they know me, but then they say things like this and suddenly there is evidence-- much evidence --to prove otherwise.
Listen: If you think for one second that I am a sucker, you've got a few things coming to you. Don't ever make that mistake with me. I don't take kindly to people assuming they have me down pat, especially when they are dead wrong.
I know who I am, what I am capable of, and where I am going. Can anyone else say that about themselves with any degree of confidence?
Understand? I don't expect you to, so it's up to you to understand. It is not up to me to make you comprehend this simple fact.
I just don't have the time to bother with this negative crap coming from other people. I just don't.
I think tonight I want to spend some time with myself, maybe write some things down, possibly work on the computer. I think I need to be selfish for a while, even more selfish than I am accused of being.
Yeah, I think that's the ticket.
See ya.
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