Two entries in a day....in quite a writing mood, despite having nothing that wants to come out.
Or rather that knows how to come out.
So, my time off from work was....pretty bad. You'd think crashing out for a week and half would be pretty good, yea?
Here I am, on my first night off since the vacation....and I find myself remembering exactly why I hate time off more than I hate my job.
When I'm working....it's typically infuriating, I typically get TO work already angry with something. I can make a focus of it, since work is physical and sweat inducing anyway I allow myself to get "hot under the collar", because....I can't tell which is work and which is my mind's doing. I can spend all night fuming, but I don't have time to do anything about it or make it worse, because I'm busy. I'm busy being further angered BY work.
At home, though....instead of boiling over and steaming away, it just simmers. I sit here in a land of noone and no opportunity to realize that I've never really been in a position to advance any aspect of myself. That I COULD start taking some steps....and years ago, I would have....and now I'm too burned out to care. It's too much effort to change the water in the pot, it's simmering nicely on it's own and aside from the effort of pouring it out/refilling it, the hot water might burn me as I pour it out. Am I even able to lift the pot from the burner?
Dear reader, have you ever had a "perfect day"? A day that you would change no detail of, even if just for preference?
The mouths of babes sing revolution, the mouths of babes scream disillusion, you can't break what's already broken.
I'm accustomed to wanting death. Or being bored with life, whichever you'd prefer. Eitherway, it's not unusual for me to have overwhelming desires to simply STOP; not unusual to have such curiosity for what's beyond this shitheap and contempt for this shitheap that there can be no downside to suicide-even if what's next is nothing, it's better than being trapped in myself. What I miss, though, is being able to feel alive. Strange contradiction, it'd seem, to enjoy living and the moment, wishing to continue and looking foreward....yet still hoping for the reaper to be around the corner. There is no joy tinged with my misery anymore, and nothing seems to lift me up. I can't even think of something impossible that would bring me up, no fantasy to escape into. Nothing to tease myself with.
It's going to be odd to me if I live through this year:I can still remember a childhood dream of death, dying at 22. And ever since, it's been a strange recurrance-22. Maybe that's why I have an inexplicable feeling of dread over the year 2005, maybe it's just because I know how much has been closed off to me this year. I'd long since been convinced that at 22, on the cusp of SOMETHING, it'd end unexpectedly. I maintained for years that if nothing had come up, if I weren't doing SOMETHING at this point, that I'd allow myself to give in to my childhood nightmares and paranoia, and end it myself.
And I want to. Desperately. I have a few minor things I'd like to do first, but....I also can't bring myself to truly WANT it. I don't care one way or the other. I CAN'T care. I'd have had the strength and resolution in the past if I'd decided to do it, but I still felt like I was moving. Boiling over the pot with feeling.
During my almost two weeks sitting at home, I accomplished an amazing amount of nothing. On the very first day, my lifeline was cut:I have to run a lengthy ethernet cable to my neighbor's house to access the net, my phone box is FIVE FEET outside of service range for DSL....the guy's mother decided to stay there a few days to "cheery up" his home by rearranging, redecorating, replacing furniture, etc. Apparently the little space we bore out under the corner of a doorway to let the ethernet cable come in and run across the floor was "ugly"...so she put it in the upper corner of the doorway. Where the hinges are. You know, that tight sharply angled space. It didn't want to stay, of course, so in addition to being slammed several times like that it was NAILED in place and then run along the corners of the floor. RUINED the fucking cable. At some point later in the week, for whatever reason, his DSL modem died. Really not worth the cost to replace, since I'm the only one using it and to replace modem/cable, we're already talking a couple hundred dollars. SO, I'd lost access to my only contact with the outside world, coincidentally the only contact I enjoy too-Danny, Ashley, Carl, SG friends and community. A heat wave then hits, pushing temperatures above 100, hello air conditioner running all day/night and still not doing a good job due to this shitty home's design. I LOVE basting in my own sweat. I don't do enough of it at work without an air conditioner, you know? And the flea problem....naturally it got worse, too. I eventually drove the buggers out with TWO consecutive bombings within 24 hours. Who's the terrorist now, flea?!
And of course....all the time to simmer.
I slept through most of it. Not that working is any more productive for my life, but at least it passes the time in a familiar pattern.
The single upside:I got to hear my Molly singing at a local bar. INCREDIBLE voice. I've got to get her trained on some King's X and I'll be quite blissful. That actually is a fond memory of Anna, The Heroin Addict (another case of a relationship I should have cut off when I continued to put in when I never got anything in return). No, fuck that, it's THE fondest memory of her, as it's pretty much the only thing I ever think of when I think of her. There was a night, not sure exactly when, a few months into the affair....she was staying with a friend of hers that night, and I'd tagged along to provide transportation (ah, the joys of an adult lover). It was getting late and I was starting to drift off on the bed, while the girls drunk and had stepped out for a cigarette. I slapped in an acoustic King's X mix disc I'd made for her friend and allowed it to soothe me...I didn't even hear her come back in, and the music certainly wasn't up loud. Though her breath had enough alcohol in it to cause ME to fail a test, I couldn't complain as I was swiftly and silently sat upon and sung to. Cradled and caressed and undressed with nary more than the tips of fingers. Oddly unsexual, the heaviest feeling on my skin came from eyes I couldn't see. A shared tension of not knowing what, if, next. Breaths only controlled when singing. Siren.
Why can't I wreck myself for MYSELF?
It would seem I have more fond singalong KX memories than I though, though none as wonderful as the above. Again, Anna, and 3...4? Probably 3 of her friends piled into my vehicle as the Ear Candy album blared, "Who IS this?! Did this just come out?!"....nope. A request to hear "A Box (There Is No Room Inside)" again. Spontaneous, simultaneous, ramping up speed hitting the bridge and every voice bursting and flowing out the open windows "There is no room inside a box, there is no room inside".....every "Sooooometime" getting a full set of voices....an eerie silence of the car, passin through lightless beach highway to the sound of a crying guitar calling out for "Fathers"...
Driving home a few years back from a ren faire with a car full of people HATING the music playing, it wasn't familiar enough to them....but "Down" got a reaction and barely audible singalong.
I am incorrect. The Anna memory isn't the most treasured singalong-it was certainly the most powerful at the time of it's occurance, but an innocuous other instance is far more treasured, though it certainly didn't FEEL special at the time:
My dearest friend and brother, Darren, on his first visit to my home a decade ago, as we were outside painting....I put on "FaithHopeLove". Little did I think that I would be introducing him to a favorite. Many years later, we would be at our usual weekend dive, The Secret Cafe, a horrid little place in downtown Pensacola. Once a gay coffee shop (or at least VERY gay friendly, they were open to anyone really), since bought out by a hipster sex hound and slowly going down the tubes as the "secret" aspect of it faded and it became known and trendy-but still we went. One night (after I'd spent most of it asleep on one of the couches upstairs, exhausted from work) it came to closing time, about 2 am, and we stood outside for a bit chatting....before we realized that the people we were chatting with weren't going home, nor did we really know them anway...in fact, where IS someone we knew, someone who typically gave us a lif?! SHIT. We tried calling his father, to no avail. Looks like we'll have to walk the several miles home from downtown, through a "bad" neighborhood, down a lonesome highway to our trailer park kingdom. So we began walking.....and as we approach the worst neighborhood of our passing, what do we do to distract ourselves and make our prescence known? We start singing, of course, and not the sounds of angels either-we have HORRID voices. I don't remember how/why we started in on "We Are Finding Who We Are", but as we were finishing (complete with air guitar and mouthed solos), I launched into the following song from the album, which lead to another of our favorites (convienantly also next on the album) and on to the 4th, then 5th, then.....and so on....we'd listened to it so much that we'd memorized that fucker without realizing it. We sung through the entire album. The trip took hours, but that hour....went by. Tired as we were by the time we got home, we couldn't resist putting the disc on and didn't drift to sleep until after it was over. 10 or so miles in a few hours and it felt like nothing.
Until the next morning, anyway, but that's another story.
Or rather that knows how to come out.
So, my time off from work was....pretty bad. You'd think crashing out for a week and half would be pretty good, yea?
Here I am, on my first night off since the vacation....and I find myself remembering exactly why I hate time off more than I hate my job.
When I'm working....it's typically infuriating, I typically get TO work already angry with something. I can make a focus of it, since work is physical and sweat inducing anyway I allow myself to get "hot under the collar", because....I can't tell which is work and which is my mind's doing. I can spend all night fuming, but I don't have time to do anything about it or make it worse, because I'm busy. I'm busy being further angered BY work.
At home, though....instead of boiling over and steaming away, it just simmers. I sit here in a land of noone and no opportunity to realize that I've never really been in a position to advance any aspect of myself. That I COULD start taking some steps....and years ago, I would have....and now I'm too burned out to care. It's too much effort to change the water in the pot, it's simmering nicely on it's own and aside from the effort of pouring it out/refilling it, the hot water might burn me as I pour it out. Am I even able to lift the pot from the burner?
Dear reader, have you ever had a "perfect day"? A day that you would change no detail of, even if just for preference?
The mouths of babes sing revolution, the mouths of babes scream disillusion, you can't break what's already broken.
I'm accustomed to wanting death. Or being bored with life, whichever you'd prefer. Eitherway, it's not unusual for me to have overwhelming desires to simply STOP; not unusual to have such curiosity for what's beyond this shitheap and contempt for this shitheap that there can be no downside to suicide-even if what's next is nothing, it's better than being trapped in myself. What I miss, though, is being able to feel alive. Strange contradiction, it'd seem, to enjoy living and the moment, wishing to continue and looking foreward....yet still hoping for the reaper to be around the corner. There is no joy tinged with my misery anymore, and nothing seems to lift me up. I can't even think of something impossible that would bring me up, no fantasy to escape into. Nothing to tease myself with.
It's going to be odd to me if I live through this year:I can still remember a childhood dream of death, dying at 22. And ever since, it's been a strange recurrance-22. Maybe that's why I have an inexplicable feeling of dread over the year 2005, maybe it's just because I know how much has been closed off to me this year. I'd long since been convinced that at 22, on the cusp of SOMETHING, it'd end unexpectedly. I maintained for years that if nothing had come up, if I weren't doing SOMETHING at this point, that I'd allow myself to give in to my childhood nightmares and paranoia, and end it myself.
And I want to. Desperately. I have a few minor things I'd like to do first, but....I also can't bring myself to truly WANT it. I don't care one way or the other. I CAN'T care. I'd have had the strength and resolution in the past if I'd decided to do it, but I still felt like I was moving. Boiling over the pot with feeling.
During my almost two weeks sitting at home, I accomplished an amazing amount of nothing. On the very first day, my lifeline was cut:I have to run a lengthy ethernet cable to my neighbor's house to access the net, my phone box is FIVE FEET outside of service range for DSL....the guy's mother decided to stay there a few days to "cheery up" his home by rearranging, redecorating, replacing furniture, etc. Apparently the little space we bore out under the corner of a doorway to let the ethernet cable come in and run across the floor was "ugly"...so she put it in the upper corner of the doorway. Where the hinges are. You know, that tight sharply angled space. It didn't want to stay, of course, so in addition to being slammed several times like that it was NAILED in place and then run along the corners of the floor. RUINED the fucking cable. At some point later in the week, for whatever reason, his DSL modem died. Really not worth the cost to replace, since I'm the only one using it and to replace modem/cable, we're already talking a couple hundred dollars. SO, I'd lost access to my only contact with the outside world, coincidentally the only contact I enjoy too-Danny, Ashley, Carl, SG friends and community. A heat wave then hits, pushing temperatures above 100, hello air conditioner running all day/night and still not doing a good job due to this shitty home's design. I LOVE basting in my own sweat. I don't do enough of it at work without an air conditioner, you know? And the flea problem....naturally it got worse, too. I eventually drove the buggers out with TWO consecutive bombings within 24 hours. Who's the terrorist now, flea?!
And of course....all the time to simmer.
I slept through most of it. Not that working is any more productive for my life, but at least it passes the time in a familiar pattern.
The single upside:I got to hear my Molly singing at a local bar. INCREDIBLE voice. I've got to get her trained on some King's X and I'll be quite blissful. That actually is a fond memory of Anna, The Heroin Addict (another case of a relationship I should have cut off when I continued to put in when I never got anything in return). No, fuck that, it's THE fondest memory of her, as it's pretty much the only thing I ever think of when I think of her. There was a night, not sure exactly when, a few months into the affair....she was staying with a friend of hers that night, and I'd tagged along to provide transportation (ah, the joys of an adult lover). It was getting late and I was starting to drift off on the bed, while the girls drunk and had stepped out for a cigarette. I slapped in an acoustic King's X mix disc I'd made for her friend and allowed it to soothe me...I didn't even hear her come back in, and the music certainly wasn't up loud. Though her breath had enough alcohol in it to cause ME to fail a test, I couldn't complain as I was swiftly and silently sat upon and sung to. Cradled and caressed and undressed with nary more than the tips of fingers. Oddly unsexual, the heaviest feeling on my skin came from eyes I couldn't see. A shared tension of not knowing what, if, next. Breaths only controlled when singing. Siren.
Why can't I wreck myself for MYSELF?
It would seem I have more fond singalong KX memories than I though, though none as wonderful as the above. Again, Anna, and 3...4? Probably 3 of her friends piled into my vehicle as the Ear Candy album blared, "Who IS this?! Did this just come out?!"....nope. A request to hear "A Box (There Is No Room Inside)" again. Spontaneous, simultaneous, ramping up speed hitting the bridge and every voice bursting and flowing out the open windows "There is no room inside a box, there is no room inside".....every "Sooooometime" getting a full set of voices....an eerie silence of the car, passin through lightless beach highway to the sound of a crying guitar calling out for "Fathers"...
Driving home a few years back from a ren faire with a car full of people HATING the music playing, it wasn't familiar enough to them....but "Down" got a reaction and barely audible singalong.
I am incorrect. The Anna memory isn't the most treasured singalong-it was certainly the most powerful at the time of it's occurance, but an innocuous other instance is far more treasured, though it certainly didn't FEEL special at the time:
My dearest friend and brother, Darren, on his first visit to my home a decade ago, as we were outside painting....I put on "FaithHopeLove". Little did I think that I would be introducing him to a favorite. Many years later, we would be at our usual weekend dive, The Secret Cafe, a horrid little place in downtown Pensacola. Once a gay coffee shop (or at least VERY gay friendly, they were open to anyone really), since bought out by a hipster sex hound and slowly going down the tubes as the "secret" aspect of it faded and it became known and trendy-but still we went. One night (after I'd spent most of it asleep on one of the couches upstairs, exhausted from work) it came to closing time, about 2 am, and we stood outside for a bit chatting....before we realized that the people we were chatting with weren't going home, nor did we really know them anway...in fact, where IS someone we knew, someone who typically gave us a lif?! SHIT. We tried calling his father, to no avail. Looks like we'll have to walk the several miles home from downtown, through a "bad" neighborhood, down a lonesome highway to our trailer park kingdom. So we began walking.....and as we approach the worst neighborhood of our passing, what do we do to distract ourselves and make our prescence known? We start singing, of course, and not the sounds of angels either-we have HORRID voices. I don't remember how/why we started in on "We Are Finding Who We Are", but as we were finishing (complete with air guitar and mouthed solos), I launched into the following song from the album, which lead to another of our favorites (convienantly also next on the album) and on to the 4th, then 5th, then.....and so on....we'd listened to it so much that we'd memorized that fucker without realizing it. We sung through the entire album. The trip took hours, but that hour....went by. Tired as we were by the time we got home, we couldn't resist putting the disc on and didn't drift to sleep until after it was over. 10 or so miles in a few hours and it felt like nothing.
Until the next morning, anyway, but that's another story.
I am jealous of your bantha skull tattoo. I kind of want a Star Wars tatoo, but in some ways the new movies made me feel different. Should i get a tattoo from a series that i now only like half of? But i really really really like half of it. Le sigh. I dunno of what anyway. I actually really like the pattern over the ears of the helmets the xwing fighters wear. I don't think anyone would recognise it. Not really decided on whether thats a good or bad thing.
I wish you'd been at PAx too. That would have been fun. But alas. We will have to meet some other time. Want to go to the San Diego comic con? We'll split you hotel rent! Seriously though, that would be great, but yegads, its so expensive to go to that. Anyway, I felt PAX was a lot bigger this year witout being better. So Greg and i may skip it in the future. Last year people were crashed out in their cars under the convention center in the parking garage. It was awesome...like its own free car hotel. This year security kicked everyone out, and you couldn't stay inside the con 24 hours a day...it actually close at night. Those aspects of the con were quite unfortunate.