A Little Like Giving Up

"As an ironic spectator of myself, I've never lost interest in seeing what life brings. And since I now know beforehand that every vague hope will end in disillusion, I have the special delight of already enjoying the disillusion with the hope, like the bitter with the sweet that makes the sweet sweeter by contrast. I'm a sullen strategist who, having never won a battle, has learned to derive pleasure from mapping out the details of his inevitable retreat on the eve of each new engagement."*

Drinking leads into itself. Once you drink a beer, at the bar or on a porch, alone or with friends, the next beer waits for you like mail waiting to be delivered. Then, the next thing you do seems so easy. Of course you want to go to the next bar, the other club, just for a dance, just for another drink, just to see who might be there, who or what else might be waiting. A good idea, on a Friday night maybe, when you're with your friends who will follow you anywhere and into anything. Then sometimes you're just left waiting. On the curb, in front of the bar. Sitting on the steps in front of your house, not willing to admit the night has ended, and there's nothing else waiting for you. No more possibilities. Just your empty bed and a cloud hanging around you, filled with what might have been and all the something else's that wait for you on another night.

Sometimes I know better. Sometimes there's something to wake up for in the morning, and going to bed sounds great, like the easiest part of my day. Other times I just know the night's a lost cause. It doesn't matter how many beers I drink, or how many different people I try to find, it's time to go home. I ride through the streets, avoiding distraction, and remind myself that these are the constants- my companions for the past five years- a bicycle and an empty night, weaving toward somewhere I don't even need to be.

*Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

The Whole Pathetic Nine Yards

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."*

Today I cried twice like a little baby. Big heavy wet tears, soaked cheeks, the whole pathetic nine yards. The first time I really let loose. A nurse couldn't find a vein in my right arm, so she kept pulling the needle out and sticking it back in, and sort of nosing it around a little, and then when she found it, pulling out my blood (which I need, to survive, apparently) and putting it away in a little vial and sending it off with a bunch of other little vials to determine if I am seriously sick (I'm not). Shit sucked. I don't like needles, I like getting tattooed to an extent, but I've never liked getting injections or getting blood drawn, I immediately start to sweat, I feel sick, light-headed, and all the stuff they asked me if I felt to begin with. So once again, in less than a week, I found myself crying in a hospital. Yeah, it hurt really bad, and the IV felt pretty lousy, and I could feel the fluid (all sorts of fluids!) moving up my arm and into my chest, and I sort of felt like Frodo when he got stabbed on Weathertop, but I also think I cried because I felt a little sorry for myself. Every time I get sick I miss my mom (I'm being serious), I miss having someone there to hold my hand and tell me it's going to be OKAY, I can't help it. Growing up, we find ourselves in these situations where it would be really nice to have someone around (or health insurance for that matter) and it feels harder when you're trying to do it all by yourself. I'm luckier than most people, I had a friend who drove me to the ER and sat there the whole time while I got stuck with needles and acted like a brat, and she didn't ask for anything in return (I took her to lunch anyway). Most people who are sick, or hurt, or really, really fucking sad have to be alone, they don't have anyone to turn to. I should be grateful, but sitting there feeling like I was going to puke on the nurse, I couldn't help it, I had to embrace the suckiness of the situation and let it in. Not my proudest moment. I probably won't go back to the hospital anytime soon, but I have lots of friends who have had to go over and over again without health insurance, and I can just imagine they cry like big babies too when they open their hospital bills. Really, you can't imagine opening a bill for $1,400 when you can't even afford to go get a cup of coffee. Friends of mine walk around with that weight on their shoulders all the time, and yeah, you could be a dick and call "first world problems" on all of that, but I think the moment of feeling really alone, of wanting help, that's the transcending moment for all of us, it's relatable, and it's a pretty big universal bummer.

I walked to work in the gloomy weather we've been having, black pea coat and black books. I felt high on IV drugs and thought maybe I'd make it a whole shift. Thankfully, again, someone covered my shift and I got to walk home almost immediately. House to myself, night off, fucked up on Benadryl, still feeling pretty shitty, so what did I do? Netflix. I watched X-Men and a one episode of Buffy and then I started browsing around (genre: romantic) and I found a possibly made-for-TV movie with Miley Cyrus called Last Song or maybe The Last Song or A Last Song, anyway, the description was something like "troubled teen spends summer with estranged father" and I watched it immediately. As a whole, complete garbage, but with just enough redeeming moments to keep me watching. Very cute teenagers meet each other and have a summer fling where they tell each other "I love you" after the first month (puke) and hold hands a lot on the beach. However, the twist to the movie is that the dad actually has cancer or some other life threatening disease, and the two bond after so many years apart, and somewhere before the last scene where they complete a piano sonnet together (not making this up) I started crying just like before; big wet tears and glistening eyes and puffy cheeks. Thankfully none of my roommates came home. I got up and washed my face in the bathroom and told myself, "it's just a movie." Back on the sofa, five minutes later, I had snot and salt covering my face. How did I get to this point? Have I reached a new epitome of self-pity, or am I just too full of empathy to function? At the end of the movie, after the funeral, the boy decides to go to college in the town where the girl lives, and I went back into the bathroom, and threw up.

*Plato. I know this quote shows up A LOT in blogs, zines, my mom's emails, et cetera, but I think it's mildly overused because of its simplicity. Life sucks for a lot of people, and no one should assume anyone has it easy. I'm all for people taking care of their problems on their own, and being independent, and not wallowing in bullshit, but I also think it's important to be kind to people, especially the woman serving you coffee in the morning, or the mailman, or the kid at the punk rock show with no friends. You never know who just spent most of the day crying behind closed doors.

Something That Heals

"Time, I thought while lying in my bed, doesn't exist. What is exists in the movement of matter-or better- matter in motion, because //motion// doesn't exist any more than //time// and //space// exist; it's just the word we use to describe matter in motion. Time is not a thing. When asked what time is, we can't point to some specific object, the way we can if we're asked what a chair is, a column, a lancet window, hemoglobin. Time isn't tangible, just as space isn't tangible, and the idea that we could turn these artificial (yet useful) terms into something tangible, into something that heals, into something you can kill, or something you have to fight against, this might be one of our last great myths." *

"When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which comes before and after- as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day- the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here? By whose command and act were this place and time allotted to me?"**

I woke up in Pensacola in room that was probably the average temperature of Iceland, woke up John, and we drove to the hospital half drunk and confused on sleep. I should have brushed my teeth. I should have combed my hair. I shouldn't have stayed up all night doing fake speed and drinking. Still, I had to go to the hospital (not for myself, my health problems seem to be getting better with copious amounts of allergy pills and antacid tablets). No one, not a single fucking person helped me when I got lost not once, but two times trying to find the ICU. Finally, I just stopped a nurse and asked. You'd think with someone like me walking around they'd want to make sure I wasn't stealing pills, but I guess now I know that the Sacred Heart Hospital will be my first stop when I go on some sort of Drugstore Cowboy rampage across Florida. So I found my dad, and he looked yellow (probably from the Iodine, I don't know if you know this but when you go into surgery they love to wash you with Iodine and it stains your body for days). He was sitting up and watching the weather channel, and didn't seemed surprised to see me. My step mom didn't look happy, she looked stressed out, but I don't think I had anything to do with it. I kissed Parker on the forehead and we talked about bullshit for five minutes (the weather, bullshit, my band playing a show the night before, bullshit, et cetera). He explained the surgery to me and it made me feel pretty sick to my stomach. I don't want to think about anyone's ribs being opened up like that, and veins in their leg replacing the deflated, empty veins in their heart. I got one of the nurses to get him some more morphine, they put the needle into the IV and put a fucking lot of it in his body. My step mom walked out to talk to someone and Parker starting telling me a story about my mom, when she and him were sailing out of Haiti and he broke his finger. I've heard the story about a thousand times, but not since he got remarried. Luckily, he finished the story and nodded off before I really started crying. My step mom and I hugged goodbye, and I walked alone through the mostly empty hospital and waited for John to come pick me back up.

Rose Cross played in St. Augustine, Gainesville, Pensacola, and Tallahassee. All the shows were fun, and I met some nice people, and I don't feel totally awful now that we're back. I read the quotes about time while we were driving on I-10, which can seem kind of surreal when you're eating Taco Bell for the third time in as many days and you know in a couple hours you're going to get really, really drunk. Sitting in a van being quiet can be hard for that part of your brain that thinks about choices and "what you're suppose to be doing." I'm sort of incapable of making any choices right now, I just want to play shows with my band and come home and listen to Agnostic Front's Victim in Pain on repeat. I just want to wake up and get coffee and maybe eat something and read a book. The bigger decisions can wait a little longer. I told someone this last week and I'll stick by it- don't make life decisions in the winter. Let's just wait for warmer weather, then we can resume freaking out.

*Marco Candida, Dream Diary

** Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Welcome to 2011

"The truth is, I don't believe all that much in writing. Starting with my own. Being a writer is pleasant- no, pleasant isn't the word- it's an activity that has its share of amusing moments, but I know of other things that are even more amusing, amusing in the same way that literature is for me. Holding up banks, for example. Or directing movies. Or being a gigolo. Or being a child again and playing on a more or less apocalyptic soccer team. Unfortunately, the child grows up, the bank robber is killed, the director runs out of money, the gigolo gets sick and then there's no other choice but to write. For me, the word "writing" is the exact opposite of the word "waiting." Instead of waiting, there is writing. Well, I'm probably wrong- it's possible that writing is another form of waiting, of delaying things. I'd like to think otherwise. But, as I've said, I'm probably wrong."*

I played a show tonight while my mom went to a concert and my dad got prepped for open heart surgery. They don't talk. I'll go see him Saturday morning in the Sacred Heart hospital in Pensacola, since we're playing Sluggo's tomorrow night anyway. Would I go see him otherwise? I'm not sure.

I've been breaking out in hives and it's hard to sleep because I wake up itching and I try to remember what I ate during the day and I just hope against hope that I'm not allergic to Publix subs. I've also been shitting blood a lot, but I wouldn't even begin to know who to talk to about that. Rich said if it's bright red blood not too worry about it, it's the dark stuff you've got to freak out about. That's what band mates are for. "Dark stuff to freak out about" sounds like a compelling theme for the new year, but I'm trying to look on the bright side and I've been doing a good job of waking up early and leaving the house (basically my only new years resolutions, that and not feeling stupid or sorry for myself). There's just some things I've been putting off and it's time to stop waiting.

Last night we played in a honky tonk bar in St. Augustine. The bartender ended up being an old childhood friend of mine, haven't seen him since I was four feet tall, but he's punk now too I guess, and it sort of made me amused all day to think about it. If my mom calls me back I'll tell her all about it, I can say, look mom, sometimes people just grow up to be punks. She probably won't be amused. Tonight there's a show in New York City I'd like to be at, and across the planet somewhere there's probably also a real quiet place just waiting for me.

*Roberto Bolano, The Last Interviews (63)