I didn't get out a lot this year. Or, maybe I got out too much, I dunno. The point is, I didn't get to hear a whole lot of new music this year. So instead of making a really long year-end list, I'm going to try to keep it relatively short. I'll start with my ten favorite songs of the year.
10 - Okkervil River, "Lost Coastlines" from The Stand Ins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKmZRO8XzyY (video)
I didn't get a whole lot of time with this album, in fact, I've really only had it for about a week. But that was more than enough time for me to fall in love with the album's first real song and first single. It's got that driving beat and wonderful happy-but-wistful kind of sound that should put it at over the ending credits of a teen movie. You know what I mean. Also, while lacking the strained emotion that makes me love Will Sheff's voice so much, Jonathan Meiburg's voice here is pretty great. Maybe I should go check out Shearwater.
9 - The Hold Steady, "Lord, I'm Discouraged" from Stay Positive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMrCIUUtWHU (song, low-quality)
My favorite song from Boys and Girls in America eventually ended up being "First Night." As good as Craig Finn is at shouting as many words as he possibly can in as little time as possible, he's proved now on several different occasions that he can also write himself a really killer ballad. This song not only contains one of the very best lines/couplets of the year (that which closes the song), it also just happens to have the best guitar solo.
8 - She & Him, "This Is Not a Test" from She & Him, Volume One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzB8Qs2sI3o (live)
This is my favorite song from Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward's album, which is very, very good, but not quite in my top five albums. So here's my chance to talk about it: it's very sweet, simple pop music that manages to feel very old and very contemporary at the same time. Zooey's voice is fantastic, and even occasionally overpowers the songs themselves, but that definitely isn't a problem with this song. This wasn't the album's single (that was "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?"), but I think it should have been.
7 - Portishead, "Deep Water" from Third
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwrgzdJGexA (song)
It's going to be hard for me to talk about this song apart from the album, or at least hard to not repeat myself when I talk about the album later. It just happens that when I look at my playcounts for this year, I listened to "Deep Water" way more than any other song on Third. It is absolutely minimal, just Beth and a ukelele and eventually some vocal backup, but its power is undeniable. Actually, I'm just going to stop now so I have more to write about with the album.
6 - The Gaslight Anthem, "The '59 Sound" from The '59 Sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxTmgUx2TOE (video)
This is the single and title track from the Gaslight Anthem's really good and almost excellent The '59 Sound, whose main flaw is that the rest of the album just isn't as good as this song. When everyone says this band "sounds like Bruce Springsteen in a punk band," they aren't lying, nor are they trying to insult them. That's a compliment. This song expertly captures that thing that the Boss always did so well (maybe he still does, I wouldn't really know, I haven't heard a Springsteen album from this decade), that feeling of confused and rebellious optimism. The song is sad, yes, but it's not sad in a mopey or depressing way. The best Springsteen songs aren't personal, they're universal, and this is a great tribute to that idea.
5 - Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, "For Every Field There's a Mole" from Lie Down In the Light
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O2aH4XLbto (okay, sorry, I can't find it, but everyone should be familiar with this anyway)
Best clarinet solo of 2008. This is also my way to honor this album, which is really completely wonderful but for some reason I just didn't listen to it enough this year. This song, though, man, this is a good song. Wasn't that a great review? Really though, Will Oldham is a fantastic songwriter, and after continually proving that he could write some of the darkest and most haunting songs ever, he goes and writes this album of light and, dare I say (yes I do) sweet music that is wonderfully uplifting. The harmonies in the last third of this song are pretty much amazing.
4 - Death Cab For Cutie, "I Will Possess Your Heart" from Narrow Stairs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq-yP7mb8UE (video)
You can say a lot of things about Death Cab and about Ben Gibbard specifically, and you may or may not be right, but you have to give them at least a little bit of credit for having it in them to showcase and market their new album with an eight-and-a-half minute single. I loved "I Will Possess Your Heart" the first time I heard it, I loved it when I heard it on the radio, and I love it now. Well, less so on the radio, because it's shorter. But I've come a long way from the days when I used to get bored when a song would hit the three-minute mark. There are three specific moments in the song that I love (0:21, the first couple times through bass line; 4:40, when everything else cuts out for Ben's first lines; and the three beats that kick the drums back in at 7:21), but without the very slow build and the patience it demands, those moments mean nothing.
3 - The Hold Steady, "Constructive Summer" from Stay Positive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=019ax9vm_kk (song, low-quality)
It shouldn't really come as a surprise that my favorite band would get two spots on this list, but here it is. This is the opening track from Stay Positive, a song that very easily summarizes everything that makes the band great. As with the rest of the album, Finn is a little more subdued than on other albums, but his passion is still definitely there, and his way with words is just as sharp as ever. Wheras "Lord, I'm Discouraged" gets the best ending line, "Constructive Summer" gets the best opener.
2 - Vampire Weekend, "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" from Vampire Weekend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wHl9qRsMzw (video)
Sometime around February or something like that, Vampire Weekend completely exploded. I'm not sure how it happened, but I certainly know why: "A-Punk" and "Oxford Comma" and "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" are pretty damn catchy. This is the best of the three, in my opinion, and I've been listening to it all year. The album is good, but not great, as it completely dies off after the first half, and I could get into one of those weird arguments about the problem with America falling in love with an Afro-beat band comprised of rich white kids, but none of those things change the fact that this song is really great. I'm also not going to comment on the fact that this song has been around for over a year and was actually on one or two best of 2007 lists; the single came out on August 18, 2008, and I'm sticking with that.
1 - Bon Iver, "Skinny Love" from For Emma, Forever Ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_1E6s7mQxA (fan video about Jim and Pam, apparently by someone who doesn't listen to lyrics)
Speaking of release date arguments I'm ignoring, "Skinny Love" is my number one song of the year. For Emma, Forever Ago is going on a bunch of year-end lists that I'm seeing, so I guess we can just assume that everyone's going with the album's wide release instead of its independent release last year. That's fine with me, since it doesn't really matter to me what year this song comes from, there isn't a better one in either of them. This song is beautiful, heartbreaking, and powerful. It's simple and stripped down, so much so that I can't really say all that much about it other than how much I love it. Here's a final compliment: the album isn't on my best-of list, because I honestly just don't listen to the rest of it. There's no point. I've tried. I just hit this thrird song, and that's enough. Maybe one day I'll try to get past it.
12/10/08
11/3/08
stretch out your legs and dance with me
it's pretty amusing to look back and read the last personal post i made on this blog. it seems to have been written on the first day of february 2007, which by my count is 21 months ago. it doesn't really seem all that long by some counts: i remember exactly where i was sitting when i made it (right over there on my kitchen table, at the chair that faces the door), and i'm pretty sure i remember the odd mix of self-pity and self-loathing that drove me to write it. it reads relatively positively if you'd just happen upon it and read it without knowing who wrote it, but i don't really have that luxury, and so i know the whole thing is bullshit. that was no turning point. no epiphanies came to me that day.
like i said, by one or two measures, february 2007 doesn't seem that long ago, but across other wavelengths of my life, along other strands of the great swirling mass of spaghetti that is my life, that was a long, long time ago. i wasn't happy in those days, which wasn't particularly anyone's fault, not even mine, i don't think. i gained a lot of things in the last 21 months that i really needed, and i lost some of the things that i probably shouldn't have had. most importantly, of course, i re-evaluated the things i had and still have, and i determined that they were the most important things in my life. i am of course talking about one specific thing especially, and i think making an effort to establish that as a presence in my life until the day i die has been pretty key to my being happy over the last couple months. sure, it involved a pretty hefty monetary investment, and yeah, it's a hell of a lot of work at a time when i have absolutely no free time, but it's made me happy and it will continue to do so for my entire life. so it's worth it.
i stopped taking medication for my stomach in april, right after i started my new job. i started school officially in late august, unofficially 12 months prior. i proposed to lindsay 27 days ago. i made my first donation to the obama campaign one year and one month ago, three months before the iowa caucuses and three months and a couple days before lindsay and i went to costa rica. i became 25 years old 16 months ago, then 26 years old 4 months ago, and then i went to new york city and washington dc 3 months ago. i met a penguin almost exactly 11 months ago. these are the things i've done since february 2007.
it's pretty much true that i only write when i get in a very specific mood. i haven't yet determined what exactly causes this mood, or even what this mood really is. it's kind of like nostalgia, but it almost never involves looking back--present company notwithstanding. i can't imagine what this blog would look like to someone who doesn't know me; good thing nobody reads it, much less people who don't know me. but i'd think that someone reading it would think that i'm always like this, always taking small, seemingly-insignificant things in my life and turing them into some larger metaphor or trying to pull some deeper meaning out of relatively everyday things. but that's not entirely true, imaginary reader who doesn't interact with me on a daily or semi-often basis--well, it's a little true, i guess, but it's not the entire story. i would say that the mood that i'm in when i start thinking like this just happens to be the mood that makes me want to write. this wistful, over-analytical, and yes, pretentious style of meandering thought is really just how my brain works when i get that weird voice in the back of my head that tells me to write it down, whatever it is. these moods seem to be more and more rare (see the last 21 months of posts here for evidence), so i might as well get it all out of my system before i fall asleep.
were i to be tasked with making some sense out of the third paragraph's mash of chronological points of interest in my life, i'd have to say, and not just because tomorrow happens to be november 4, that october 6, 2007 was a pretty important day for me. i can't really remember if i recognized that fact at the time, but at the very least it has become something of a symbol for how the next year would be. i had just started taking classes again and getting back into the swing of thinking about things that really matter, and so 10/06/07 marks the day that i decided that politics was in fact something i cared enough about to actually invest some meaningful sense of myself in, however small and effortless my contribution might be. i've gone up and down in my enthusiasm for the obama campaign and the american electoral system in general over the past year, but that point still remains as the time in which the real political world started to matter to me. after that decision, the decision to work for my masters was easier, which gave me a direction again and pushed me to work out some of the things that i'd been letting stack up. allow me one of my metaphors: the campaign for me was like playing fantasy football. it's easier to be interested when you have a stake, when you feel like part of the competition.
it's always been interesting to me that the obama campaign would latch on to the word "hope." obviously, it's clear what the campaign wants it to mean: hope for the future of america, hope that we can succeed as a nation if we change the policies that brought us here. but when i see a poster with a picture of a black man and those four capital letters, i think of a different slogan: i hope we can elect him. i hope we can be what we haven't been for 230 years. the campaign's hope is a noun, mine is a verb; theirs is a positive emotion, a rallying cry for unity and brotherhood and a brighter future, mine is a despairing cry for help, a way for me to hide my disappointment in a thick cloak of sarcasm. barack obama wants america to prove him right, and i want america to prove me wrong.
so with that, i'm going to bed. the polls open in about six hours. do the right thing, america. and if you could also vote down prop 8, that would be great. thanks.
i was at work one evening with nothing to do so i wrote this
sam wasn't nervous. not exactly. being nervous implies apprehension about something that's coming up; being nervous therefore requires at least some level of knowledge about what that something would be.
and sam most certainly had none of that.
he had his meticulously-constructed playlist, of course, developed over the course of two hours, despite being only ten songs long and requiring only to occupy the twelve-minute drive from the hotel to the office. he had his cell phone, recently updated with a new message from alison ("they will love you! i love you! good luck"), and his laptop, and a notebook with a pen in case they weren't the typing type. he had his favorite dark blue shirt and his favorite tie, steel grey and completely innocuous, which he called his "lucky tie" although it wasn't particularly luckier than any of this other ties, and the black shoes which were just comfortable enough for him to think they made him look quite sensible but still uncomfortable enough to fit in. he had all his nervous energy--not to be confused with nervousness, remember--and he still had at least 70% of the enthusiasm he had on the night they called and told him to pack up his life and move to chicago, which by his estimation was a pretty good percentage to be at at this point.
none of these things, he thought, really made him ready for whatever it was that was coming, but oh well, the rest was out of his control, and we should all try not to worry about the things we can't help, and no, of course he didn't really believe that.
5/16/08
Peggy Noonan: The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are.
http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html
"This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. "We can't let the Democrats take our issues." And those issues would be? "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives," he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.
2/5/07
this recent rash of kidsmoke
The man had traveled alone for a very long time, and it was understandable that he was not a big talker. It wasn’t that he felt uncomfortable in the presence of others or that he didn’t enjoy their company, it was simply that he wasn’t used to talking while he was moving. The boys had begun their journey tittering and laughing and whining and running ahead and behind, just as boys should, but they soon adopted the slow but steady and quiet pace of the man they now followed. The three would stop to rest a few times a day and exchange a few observations, and at night around their small campfire they would share stories--the boys wide-eyed and silent while the dark man, made darker somehow by the light of the fire, told tales of places his steady pace had taken him--but during the day, moving straight ahead was all that was on their minds.
It occurred to him, of course, that the boys might have wanted to talk, to banter, simply to pass the long hot hours under the sun. Because while the desert was beautiful to him, full of life and sound, the truth was that it was just a landscape, and a relatively featureless one at that. Perhaps the boys were only silent to impress him, or perhaps it was a juvenile attempt to imitate him, who had, simply for lack of anything better, adopted him as a father. When his thoughts led him down this path, he would admit to himself that he was in fact impressed with their relatively quick maturation. It followed then that perhaps he had adopted them as well.
They were eleven days out of the last town, a small but surprisingly clean tangle of buildings, a stop not big enough for a name but big enough to feel like something. The people were friendly and asked few questions, allowing the man and his boys to stay the night and leave in the morning without the kind of trouble that he had gotten used to of late. It had been the third--no, the fourth--settlement that he had passed through with the boys, the only real measurement of time and space out here in the beautiful emptiness of the desert. Neither boy had made mention of his mother since sometime after the second town; he hadn’t quite decided how to feel about that yet. There were times for words and times for silence, times for walking away and times for holding your ground, but every once in a while a road would loom heavy on the horizon that would offer no hint as to what was at the other end, and the only way to find out was to just keep walking. It was a familiar feeling to him, uncertainty, and a not altogether unwelcome one for someone who had seen so much of the world. a familiar feeling, but one that had come less and less frequent as the years and the traveling continued. he had given up wondering how long the roads would stretch out in front of him a long time ago.
but no, the boys were definitely something new. he had had companions before--after all, he had been traveling for a very long time--but the two brothers were something fundamentally differently. at first he had thought it might simply be their youth: he had spent quite a while away from the kind of refreshing sincerity and naivety that blows children around like leaves in a strong breeze. after even just a few days with them, however, he picked up on an odd, almost ageless quality about the pair; their innocence still shrouded them like a fog, but occasionally he caught a flash of something deeper, an intelligence that, to wince through a cliche, was far beyond their years. he had first noticed at night, around their storytelling campfire, two or three days--probably three--after leaving their mother. he had been deep in a tale that he had started the night before, one of his almost endless stock of stories about those uncertain roads he had walked down.
[tired now bedtime; it's good to be alone guitar solo]
It occurred to him, of course, that the boys might have wanted to talk, to banter, simply to pass the long hot hours under the sun. Because while the desert was beautiful to him, full of life and sound, the truth was that it was just a landscape, and a relatively featureless one at that. Perhaps the boys were only silent to impress him, or perhaps it was a juvenile attempt to imitate him, who had, simply for lack of anything better, adopted him as a father. When his thoughts led him down this path, he would admit to himself that he was in fact impressed with their relatively quick maturation. It followed then that perhaps he had adopted them as well.
They were eleven days out of the last town, a small but surprisingly clean tangle of buildings, a stop not big enough for a name but big enough to feel like something. The people were friendly and asked few questions, allowing the man and his boys to stay the night and leave in the morning without the kind of trouble that he had gotten used to of late. It had been the third--no, the fourth--settlement that he had passed through with the boys, the only real measurement of time and space out here in the beautiful emptiness of the desert. Neither boy had made mention of his mother since sometime after the second town; he hadn’t quite decided how to feel about that yet. There were times for words and times for silence, times for walking away and times for holding your ground, but every once in a while a road would loom heavy on the horizon that would offer no hint as to what was at the other end, and the only way to find out was to just keep walking. It was a familiar feeling to him, uncertainty, and a not altogether unwelcome one for someone who had seen so much of the world. a familiar feeling, but one that had come less and less frequent as the years and the traveling continued. he had given up wondering how long the roads would stretch out in front of him a long time ago.
but no, the boys were definitely something new. he had had companions before--after all, he had been traveling for a very long time--but the two brothers were something fundamentally differently. at first he had thought it might simply be their youth: he had spent quite a while away from the kind of refreshing sincerity and naivety that blows children around like leaves in a strong breeze. after even just a few days with them, however, he picked up on an odd, almost ageless quality about the pair; their innocence still shrouded them like a fog, but occasionally he caught a flash of something deeper, an intelligence that, to wince through a cliche, was far beyond their years. he had first noticed at night, around their storytelling campfire, two or three days--probably three--after leaving their mother. he had been deep in a tale that he had started the night before, one of his almost endless stock of stories about those uncertain roads he had walked down.
[tired now bedtime; it's good to be alone guitar solo]
2/1/07
you know i stay fresh to death
welcome back, friends, to the lowercase hipster info hub. you might remember this place being located on a blogger site, but i decided that wasn't really the best format for what i was trying to do with it. i've been using a relatively simple journaling program to do all my writing, you see, and after a while i started to realize that i would often find myself in a place that i wanted to write without the tools to do it. here, i can organize everything as i see fit and access it from pretty much anywhere. it might end up being slightly disorganized, but that is a feature: i'm pretty disorganized myself, so i suppose this place should be too. what's that you say? it's still on blogger? oh yeah, i switched back after i found out that google pages couldn't do what i wanted either. then i gave blogger a little more time and i think i have it set up pretty okay now, what with proper labels and all.
so please, sit back, relax, enjoy the smooth sounds of elvis costello and burt bacharach (not provided), drink a tall, cool glass of milk, whatever makes you happy. personally, listening to my crazy neighbor wail along to jethro tull makes me happy. seriously, he really gets into it: i'll be sitting here in relative peace and quiet and then out of nowhere IN THE SHUF-FULL-LING MAAAADNEAAAAASSS!!!! it's awesome. anyway, the point i never got arond to making is that this is a place of work, but most certainly not a place of business, so please understand that nothing here is actually serious and no, i don't actually think any of it is any good. the main reason i organized everything in this way was to be able to change anything i wanted at any time. and if you'd like to leave a comment, you know, like you used to leave at the old site, well, you'll just have to do it the hard way and email me: adampetersen@gmail.com. yep, there's another couple sentences that don't apply now that i'm back here. oh well, i always liked my "don't ever use the backspace rule" so why stop now.
now to get to work on putting everything in it's right place... you can navigate the site using the links on the right side, one for each section. i'll change the date to reflect when a particular section has been updated. shout is just me ranting about things like i used to on the blog, while dark, undoing, and paycheck are active projects, and crash is where i'll put all my reviews. yes, this paragraph made a lot more sense when it was in google pages. each link on the right is now just a label, so it will link to all the posts that fall under said label. no, there is nothing under crash at the moment, which is why it's not there. man, my neighbor is still going. i mean, he is screaming. okay, back to work.
so please, sit back, relax, enjoy the smooth sounds of elvis costello and burt bacharach (not provided), drink a tall, cool glass of milk, whatever makes you happy. personally, listening to my crazy neighbor wail along to jethro tull makes me happy. seriously, he really gets into it: i'll be sitting here in relative peace and quiet and then out of nowhere IN THE SHUF-FULL-LING MAAAADNEAAAAASSS!!!! it's awesome. anyway, the point i never got arond to making is that this is a place of work, but most certainly not a place of business, so please understand that nothing here is actually serious and no, i don't actually think any of it is any good. the main reason i organized everything in this way was to be able to change anything i wanted at any time. and if you'd like to leave a comment, you know, like you used to leave at the old site, well, you'll just have to do it the hard way and email me: adampetersen@gmail.com. yep, there's another couple sentences that don't apply now that i'm back here. oh well, i always liked my "don't ever use the backspace rule" so why stop now.
now to get to work on putting everything in it's right place... you can navigate the site using the links on the right side, one for each section. i'll change the date to reflect when a particular section has been updated. shout is just me ranting about things like i used to on the blog, while dark, undoing, and paycheck are active projects, and crash is where i'll put all my reviews. yes, this paragraph made a lot more sense when it was in google pages. each link on the right is now just a label, so it will link to all the posts that fall under said label. no, there is nothing under crash at the moment, which is why it's not there. man, my neighbor is still going. i mean, he is screaming. okay, back to work.
i will find my fears and face them, or i will cower like a dog
i said i was going to write something on the drive home, so i’m going to do it. i don’t care how tired i am. wait, no, that’s a lie, of course i care how tired i am. but i have to write down what i said or i will forget it and then i’ll have to wait another four months to feel like i need to write something.
i have often joked that i should develop a drinking problem so that i have some sort of real issue in my life to worry about. tonight, i have officially determined that such action would not be altogether wise. you see, while i do give myself quite the benefit of the doubt, the doubt itself lingers. at some point i’m going to have to realize that nothing is going to change unless i change it.
one of my favorite things to do is to find hidden metaphors in my daily life. my clever adamism of the other day read “my face is a metaphor for my life, and i need to shave.” on the way home tonight, i think i may have found a new clever little metaphor, one that i hope might actually do me some good.
i probably have an ulcer. i say “probably” because it’s not really definite; my doctor doesn’t really know what it is, and i suppose there’s no real way to know without some seriously invasive tests--which i may or may not have to go through since my next stop is at a gastrointestinologist’s office--but all signs point to ulcer. she prescribed me harder antacids this time with the hope that they’ll make a difference, but when it all comes down to it, i need to realize that this isn’t something that has any sort of quick fix. this is pretty much going to require an actual lifestyle change, something that i’ve been avoiding for just about the entire time i’ve had my own lifestyle. i’m going to have to eat better and take better care of myself if i ever want to heal. this isn’t something i can put off any longer; my body has finally had enough of my bullshit and it’s trying to bring me down from the inside for revenge. i’ve been faking it over the last several weeks, but only because i thought--well, i don’t know why i was doing it, because i thought that the meds would take care of it. even just typing out that sentence makes me realize that i didn’t really believe that; i guess i was just putting it off just that little bit longer. but i can’t do that anymore.
so why, then, do i think the rest of my life is any different? do i really believe that whatever constitutes the meds in this metaphor is going to suddenly turn my life around and make me happy? do i think that someone is just going to come along and hand me the answer to my problems? i don’t think i can, if i’m being completely honest to myself, just get a new job and make it all better. i can’t blame my job for everything that’s wrong with my life, everything that makes me unhappy.
i need to grow up. i need to eat a salad. but no tomatoes still, thankfully; they’re on the ulcer no-no list. i can’t expect to cold-turkey my way into this, though, because a) i know myself and i don’t have that kind of conviction, and b) i don’t really know what it is i need to fix. so let’s extend the metaphor, then: i’ve been to my life general practitioner and i know i have a problem, now it’s time for a trip to the life specialist. life gastrointestinologist. whatever.
i have often joked that i should develop a drinking problem so that i have some sort of real issue in my life to worry about. tonight, i have officially determined that such action would not be altogether wise. you see, while i do give myself quite the benefit of the doubt, the doubt itself lingers. at some point i’m going to have to realize that nothing is going to change unless i change it.
one of my favorite things to do is to find hidden metaphors in my daily life. my clever adamism of the other day read “my face is a metaphor for my life, and i need to shave.” on the way home tonight, i think i may have found a new clever little metaphor, one that i hope might actually do me some good.
i probably have an ulcer. i say “probably” because it’s not really definite; my doctor doesn’t really know what it is, and i suppose there’s no real way to know without some seriously invasive tests--which i may or may not have to go through since my next stop is at a gastrointestinologist’s office--but all signs point to ulcer. she prescribed me harder antacids this time with the hope that they’ll make a difference, but when it all comes down to it, i need to realize that this isn’t something that has any sort of quick fix. this is pretty much going to require an actual lifestyle change, something that i’ve been avoiding for just about the entire time i’ve had my own lifestyle. i’m going to have to eat better and take better care of myself if i ever want to heal. this isn’t something i can put off any longer; my body has finally had enough of my bullshit and it’s trying to bring me down from the inside for revenge. i’ve been faking it over the last several weeks, but only because i thought--well, i don’t know why i was doing it, because i thought that the meds would take care of it. even just typing out that sentence makes me realize that i didn’t really believe that; i guess i was just putting it off just that little bit longer. but i can’t do that anymore.
so why, then, do i think the rest of my life is any different? do i really believe that whatever constitutes the meds in this metaphor is going to suddenly turn my life around and make me happy? do i think that someone is just going to come along and hand me the answer to my problems? i don’t think i can, if i’m being completely honest to myself, just get a new job and make it all better. i can’t blame my job for everything that’s wrong with my life, everything that makes me unhappy.
i need to grow up. i need to eat a salad. but no tomatoes still, thankfully; they’re on the ulcer no-no list. i can’t expect to cold-turkey my way into this, though, because a) i know myself and i don’t have that kind of conviction, and b) i don’t really know what it is i need to fix. so let’s extend the metaphor, then: i’ve been to my life general practitioner and i know i have a problem, now it’s time for a trip to the life specialist. life gastrointestinologist. whatever.
9/3/06
here's to life
we’ve haven’t spent a hell of a lot of time here, but we’ve learned enough about the real world to know that it is nothing like what we came to expect. there is no panning, no zooming, nothing gets framed or cropped, nothing is well-lighted. when you meet a girl’s gaze from across the room, no music plays, nothing slows down. when you raise your voice, the other person doesn’t wait for you to finish any more than you have any idea the next word that will come out of your mouth. when you pull the trigger, nothing explodes, no sparks fly, there’s just a dull, deafening crack, and the person you were aiming at is either dead or getting there pretty damn fast. and no, it probably wasn’t his last day before retirement, and no, he isn’t going to get to tell his wife he loves her with his last breath. he’s just dead.
in this place, this life we call home, not the one we wish we were in, with the good lighting and the clever script, but the one where we sit in traffic and go to meetings and die of everyday, boring diseases like heart disease, the moments that define our lives are gone before you realize they were happening, before you realize that that was the time you were supposed to say the line, to have the answer, to reach out and grab her and kiss her and never let her go. either you did it or you didn’t, and no amount of preparation could have made you ready for it, just as no amount of thinking about it afterward will change it. but oh, you’ll think about it, yes, because these moments are the critical corners in the road that makes up our lives: you’ll always remember the intersection, and you’ll dig in your head for years to find out why you chose to go left instead of right, and you’ll constantly wonder what your life would have been like if you would have gone the other way, but none of that will matter, because the truth of the matter is that you went left and you’ll never get to go back there again.
and there’s nothing quite like that feeling when one of those moments just passed, while you’re standing there over a guy who, while it probably wasn’t his last day before retirement, is not going to get to tell his wife he loves her since she wasn’t around when he had his last breath, with the afternoon sun sort of glaring through the high windows and reflecting harshly off the tile floor and into your squinting eyes, with your ears ringing softly and the gun heavy in your clammy hands, that feeling that you just turned left when you should have turned right, that feeling that the last two and a half seconds will replay in your mind until the day you die.
in this place, this life we call home, not the one we wish we were in, with the good lighting and the clever script, but the one where we sit in traffic and go to meetings and die of everyday, boring diseases like heart disease, the moments that define our lives are gone before you realize they were happening, before you realize that that was the time you were supposed to say the line, to have the answer, to reach out and grab her and kiss her and never let her go. either you did it or you didn’t, and no amount of preparation could have made you ready for it, just as no amount of thinking about it afterward will change it. but oh, you’ll think about it, yes, because these moments are the critical corners in the road that makes up our lives: you’ll always remember the intersection, and you’ll dig in your head for years to find out why you chose to go left instead of right, and you’ll constantly wonder what your life would have been like if you would have gone the other way, but none of that will matter, because the truth of the matter is that you went left and you’ll never get to go back there again.
and there’s nothing quite like that feeling when one of those moments just passed, while you’re standing there over a guy who, while it probably wasn’t his last day before retirement, is not going to get to tell his wife he loves her since she wasn’t around when he had his last breath, with the afternoon sun sort of glaring through the high windows and reflecting harshly off the tile floor and into your squinting eyes, with your ears ringing softly and the gun heavy in your clammy hands, that feeling that you just turned left when you should have turned right, that feeling that the last two and a half seconds will replay in your mind until the day you die.
there was this big bang once
it's days like these when i finally get home and the noise stops but i can't relax that i feel like some sort of giant, sweeping change has come over me. very rarely have i ever been able to explain what it really actually is, especially because it usually never pans out, but when i look back on it i'll always associate it with that damn cranberries song. no, i don't even know what the song is called; i've never tried to look it up or look up the lyrics or try to download it.
you see, when i hear that song, something is going to change. it never comes on to tell me that a change has occurred, no no, it's very, very specific: when i hear it, always on the radio, sometimes when i'm waking up, sometimes in a random place--as with this particular time, at a restaurant--it means that that not particularly welcome feeling of change is coming. i don't want to listen to it. i don't want to hear it. i don't even really particularly like it. but it means what it means, and i can't force it by going out and finding it. so no, i know absolutely nothing about it, except it's a cranberries song and it came out some time while i was in high school.
anyway, i heard it on wednesday, at a restaurant, for a going-away lunch for my boss. i chuckled to myself when it came on, and i heard myself simply saying "yep." suffice it to say it's been a very long four days.
so now i'm sitting here at my house in poway--had to get out of pb for the holiday weekend--wide awake despite the fact that i could barely keep my eyes open on the drive back from lindsay's, trying to explain something that i've never once been able to explain in the vague six to nine years that this bizarre phenomenon has been occurring. huh. i suppose i'm trying very hard to make this peculiar repeated coincidence more significant than it really is, but it weirds me out sometimes. i suppose i can pretty much explain away my current anxiety, at least.
having spent the day at usd, i now know, finally and absolutely, why i am miserable at ucsd. i don't miss my old job, i don't miss usd, i don't miss the kids--well, no, that's not true, i miss the kids, at least. anyway, what i really miss is mattering. i don't ever fucking do anything at ucsd. nothing i ever do matters. and when i come back to usd for a day and really honestly don't do anything, it somehow matters to people; regardless of the fact that i didn't actually do anything today, i still left feeling like i made some sort of a difference. while i realize it's terribly selfish, i don't really care: i miss being important. even if it was only important in my head, what little importance i had at usd is infinitely more than i have at ucsd. where once i at least had something to fight for, now i am just invisible and worthless.
i think i'll leave and go to bed with that happy thought.
you see, when i hear that song, something is going to change. it never comes on to tell me that a change has occurred, no no, it's very, very specific: when i hear it, always on the radio, sometimes when i'm waking up, sometimes in a random place--as with this particular time, at a restaurant--it means that that not particularly welcome feeling of change is coming. i don't want to listen to it. i don't want to hear it. i don't even really particularly like it. but it means what it means, and i can't force it by going out and finding it. so no, i know absolutely nothing about it, except it's a cranberries song and it came out some time while i was in high school.
anyway, i heard it on wednesday, at a restaurant, for a going-away lunch for my boss. i chuckled to myself when it came on, and i heard myself simply saying "yep." suffice it to say it's been a very long four days.
so now i'm sitting here at my house in poway--had to get out of pb for the holiday weekend--wide awake despite the fact that i could barely keep my eyes open on the drive back from lindsay's, trying to explain something that i've never once been able to explain in the vague six to nine years that this bizarre phenomenon has been occurring. huh. i suppose i'm trying very hard to make this peculiar repeated coincidence more significant than it really is, but it weirds me out sometimes. i suppose i can pretty much explain away my current anxiety, at least.
having spent the day at usd, i now know, finally and absolutely, why i am miserable at ucsd. i don't miss my old job, i don't miss usd, i don't miss the kids--well, no, that's not true, i miss the kids, at least. anyway, what i really miss is mattering. i don't ever fucking do anything at ucsd. nothing i ever do matters. and when i come back to usd for a day and really honestly don't do anything, it somehow matters to people; regardless of the fact that i didn't actually do anything today, i still left feeling like i made some sort of a difference. while i realize it's terribly selfish, i don't really care: i miss being important. even if it was only important in my head, what little importance i had at usd is infinitely more than i have at ucsd. where once i at least had something to fight for, now i am just invisible and worthless.
i think i'll leave and go to bed with that happy thought.
8/8/06
i see a darkness
oh no, blank page. i thought about what was going to come next all the way home, but i forgot that when i finally got there i would have to face the one thing i fear the most. fuck it, let’s go:
“you know exactly what i want.”
he hung there like that, the center of the universe, close to the bartender, close enough to smell his breath even through the haze and smoke of the place that had seemed to melt around them. it smelled like spent powder. he had said the words so softly that the bartender would later decide that he might not have said them at all. maybe i just finished it for him, he would think.
right now, though, he just stared. not wide-eyed, not necessarily afraid, just very still. there was no other noise, no other motion; the world had been entirely reduced to the two men and the two and a half feet of darkly-stained wood between them. the bartender did not dare to blink and simply met the steady gaze of the other man with more calm than he thought possible. his only thought was: This is about the girl. It is always about a girl.
and then, as suddenly as the world had fled around the face of the newcomer as it rose to meet his, color and focus returned. the man moved slowly down and away, breaking his stare and curving his lips into an easy smile. he hooked his foot around a stool and sat in a smooth motion, then rested his chin on his fist, still smiling his relaxed and altogether-unassuming smile. “i want a drink, friend,” he said, sounding tired.
no, thought the bartender, feigning tired. he was a barman, after all: he had spent his whole life with men who drew their last day out twenty years or more. he knew tired, and this man’s eyes betrayed him: they were too bright, too alive. there was something mildly upbeat about them, too--he thought this was funny.
“fine then,” said the bartender. “what’ll it be, stranger?” He stretched the word out mockingly and made absolutely no move to grab another glass.
the man chuckled under his breath, then sighed, still smiling. he dropped his arms and crossed them on the bar in front of him. this, as with all his previous motions, was done very slowly, very deliberately, like a person trying to work with a wild animal. when he finally spoke, his voice was soft and smooth, slow and clear, just like his movements: “come on, frank, the least you could do is play along.”
the bartender tightened at the sound of his name, then immediately forced himself to loosen. he would not let this man frighten him. he also recognized the fact that this was already a lost hope. “’sthat supposed to impress me? that you know my name?” he said, his voice a little more dry than he would have liked.
the man continued his insufferable smile. “no, of course not. it’s written right there, after all,” and he pointed to the wooden carving past the bartender’s right shoulder. rae had had that made for him somewhere over on the coast, carved and burned out of the deep red trees that grew there. it announced to the world that this was, in fact, “frank’s bar.”
still, though, frank would not allow himself to let his guard down. something was undoubtedly wrong about this newcomer. he moved and spoke with the aloofness of someone either incredibly stupid or absolutely confident in himself, and frank knew better than to count this man among the former. and behind it all, frank could still see in his eyes that he thought this was somehow amusing. “well?” frank asked, remembering suddenly that he still held a glass in one hand and a towel in the other. he began cleaning it again in earnest. “what’ll it be?”
the man blinked, his smile dropping suddenly, then returning just as fast. “oh, right, a drink. i dunno, whiskey? that’s what the folk around here drink, right?” after a slight pause with no response whatsoever from frank, “yes, whiskey. i’ll have whiskey.”
frank never let his eyes leave the man as he reached under the bar for the nearest bottle, which just so happened to be tequila. he poured the man a shot, sloppily, of course, as the glass he used was barely even in his peripheral vision. when he tipped the bottle back up, he made no effort to reach for the glass; he just slung the towel over his left shoulder and rested his hands on the bar. the man reached for the shot, slowly, deliberately, safely, then brought it to his nose. he pulled away, squeezing his eyes shut. “odd-smelling tequila you have here, frank.” he brought the glass almost all the way down to the bar, stopped, then raised it back up to his face. “oh well, maybe it’ll make you feel better. here goes!” he said cheerily, and tipped back the shot.
he sputtered and coughed, and frank’s fingers twitched as he fought off another urge to reach for the shotgun. no, he thought again, his eyes. he’s faking it again. he thought perhaps it was time to try and put the newcomer off a bit. “you don’t have to pretend you don’t like it,” he tried smugly.
“oh,” said the man, coughing again, “i’m not pretending. that shit is terrible.” he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “like, completely terrible.” putting the glass down, he straightened. “but i’m relatively sure that’s not what you meant.” his smile returned.
frank could feel his blood rising up through his arms, up through his stomach. he was beginning to get angry--no, he realized, he had been angry from the start, he was only now starting to lose control over it. “who are you?” he growled. it was only after he said it that he realized he did not really want to know the answer.
“my name is will,” he replied calmly. this was not the answer frank had expected, and he didn’t really know how to continue. clearly, will saw this in his eyes and continued himself: “we’ve already been over what i’m doing here, so you needn’t ask that. perhaps a ‘where do you come from?’ is in order?” he paused again, waiting for frank’s response. frank continued to stare, hoping that his blank confusion came off as simple anger. it didn’t.
“all right then, frank, i’ll tell you. i come from a place where there aren’t any of you,” his voice twisted the word, providing the first outright bitterness to come out of him, “where the dead stay dead, where people like you can never go. Will never go.” His smile had slowly faded, and again, with it went the rest of the bar, the rest of the world. Frank could feel his fingers tightening on the edge of the bar, could feel the blood that had risen with his anger slide out of his face.
“is this about--”
“of course it’s about the girl, frank.” he smiled again, but the world stayed dead around him. “it’s always about a girl.”
“you know exactly what i want.”
he hung there like that, the center of the universe, close to the bartender, close enough to smell his breath even through the haze and smoke of the place that had seemed to melt around them. it smelled like spent powder. he had said the words so softly that the bartender would later decide that he might not have said them at all. maybe i just finished it for him, he would think.
right now, though, he just stared. not wide-eyed, not necessarily afraid, just very still. there was no other noise, no other motion; the world had been entirely reduced to the two men and the two and a half feet of darkly-stained wood between them. the bartender did not dare to blink and simply met the steady gaze of the other man with more calm than he thought possible. his only thought was: This is about the girl. It is always about a girl.
and then, as suddenly as the world had fled around the face of the newcomer as it rose to meet his, color and focus returned. the man moved slowly down and away, breaking his stare and curving his lips into an easy smile. he hooked his foot around a stool and sat in a smooth motion, then rested his chin on his fist, still smiling his relaxed and altogether-unassuming smile. “i want a drink, friend,” he said, sounding tired.
no, thought the bartender, feigning tired. he was a barman, after all: he had spent his whole life with men who drew their last day out twenty years or more. he knew tired, and this man’s eyes betrayed him: they were too bright, too alive. there was something mildly upbeat about them, too--he thought this was funny.
“fine then,” said the bartender. “what’ll it be, stranger?” He stretched the word out mockingly and made absolutely no move to grab another glass.
the man chuckled under his breath, then sighed, still smiling. he dropped his arms and crossed them on the bar in front of him. this, as with all his previous motions, was done very slowly, very deliberately, like a person trying to work with a wild animal. when he finally spoke, his voice was soft and smooth, slow and clear, just like his movements: “come on, frank, the least you could do is play along.”
the bartender tightened at the sound of his name, then immediately forced himself to loosen. he would not let this man frighten him. he also recognized the fact that this was already a lost hope. “’sthat supposed to impress me? that you know my name?” he said, his voice a little more dry than he would have liked.
the man continued his insufferable smile. “no, of course not. it’s written right there, after all,” and he pointed to the wooden carving past the bartender’s right shoulder. rae had had that made for him somewhere over on the coast, carved and burned out of the deep red trees that grew there. it announced to the world that this was, in fact, “frank’s bar.”
still, though, frank would not allow himself to let his guard down. something was undoubtedly wrong about this newcomer. he moved and spoke with the aloofness of someone either incredibly stupid or absolutely confident in himself, and frank knew better than to count this man among the former. and behind it all, frank could still see in his eyes that he thought this was somehow amusing. “well?” frank asked, remembering suddenly that he still held a glass in one hand and a towel in the other. he began cleaning it again in earnest. “what’ll it be?”
the man blinked, his smile dropping suddenly, then returning just as fast. “oh, right, a drink. i dunno, whiskey? that’s what the folk around here drink, right?” after a slight pause with no response whatsoever from frank, “yes, whiskey. i’ll have whiskey.”
frank never let his eyes leave the man as he reached under the bar for the nearest bottle, which just so happened to be tequila. he poured the man a shot, sloppily, of course, as the glass he used was barely even in his peripheral vision. when he tipped the bottle back up, he made no effort to reach for the glass; he just slung the towel over his left shoulder and rested his hands on the bar. the man reached for the shot, slowly, deliberately, safely, then brought it to his nose. he pulled away, squeezing his eyes shut. “odd-smelling tequila you have here, frank.” he brought the glass almost all the way down to the bar, stopped, then raised it back up to his face. “oh well, maybe it’ll make you feel better. here goes!” he said cheerily, and tipped back the shot.
he sputtered and coughed, and frank’s fingers twitched as he fought off another urge to reach for the shotgun. no, he thought again, his eyes. he’s faking it again. he thought perhaps it was time to try and put the newcomer off a bit. “you don’t have to pretend you don’t like it,” he tried smugly.
“oh,” said the man, coughing again, “i’m not pretending. that shit is terrible.” he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “like, completely terrible.” putting the glass down, he straightened. “but i’m relatively sure that’s not what you meant.” his smile returned.
frank could feel his blood rising up through his arms, up through his stomach. he was beginning to get angry--no, he realized, he had been angry from the start, he was only now starting to lose control over it. “who are you?” he growled. it was only after he said it that he realized he did not really want to know the answer.
“my name is will,” he replied calmly. this was not the answer frank had expected, and he didn’t really know how to continue. clearly, will saw this in his eyes and continued himself: “we’ve already been over what i’m doing here, so you needn’t ask that. perhaps a ‘where do you come from?’ is in order?” he paused again, waiting for frank’s response. frank continued to stare, hoping that his blank confusion came off as simple anger. it didn’t.
“all right then, frank, i’ll tell you. i come from a place where there aren’t any of you,” his voice twisted the word, providing the first outright bitterness to come out of him, “where the dead stay dead, where people like you can never go. Will never go.” His smile had slowly faded, and again, with it went the rest of the bar, the rest of the world. Frank could feel his fingers tightening on the edge of the bar, could feel the blood that had risen with his anger slide out of his face.
“is this about--”
“of course it’s about the girl, frank.” he smiled again, but the world stayed dead around him. “it’s always about a girl.”
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