Nights At Home

"The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we're alone, thinking, feeling, lost in memory, dreamingly self-aware, the submicroscopic moments. His life happened, he said, when he sat staring at a blank wall, thinking about dinner...I almost believed him when he said such things. He said we do this all the time, all of us, we become ourselves beneath the running thoughts and dim images, wondering idly when we'll die. This is how we live and think whether we know it or not. These are the unsorted thoughts we have looking out the train window, small dull smears of meditative panic."*
                   I did read the new Roberto Bolano book** like I said I would. I never got around to writing about it...maybe I couldn't make the time but also the story didn't leave me with much except the image of the German tourist walking down the beach during a cloudy day, lost within his own vacation. This summer has felt like that, a little at least, to me. Rain for weeks on end, waking up to darkness and going back to sleep until the afternoon, going to work with wet shoes, coming home with damp hair. I didn't leave town enough maybe. I visited my mom in NC and we kayaked around a lake, a mountain storm has just passed and the water split dark and glassy under us, and I felt happy, to be thinking about nothing in the middle of all those mountain colors. I came home and finished my summer class and kept working. I should have stayed up there longer.
                   A few of us went to the beach the other day and that might be the last time in the ocean until spring. The water will stay warm a little longer but I doubt I'll have the time. On our way home the rain was so bad Adrien couldn't see the road. Everything in front of us just looked white, and I worried that if we died on our way home, somewhere in between Gainesville and Palatka, that I had totally wasted not just my summer but the last four or so years of my life. I keep hearing all these internet-worthy catch phrases about "doing what you love before it's too late" but I think there's something to be said for doing what you need to do too. Also, even at 26, I'm still unsure of what I really love. I like that I'm unsure. As far as I'm concerned, I've got fucking options. I'm just going to keep walking the fence until then, a little bit of staring out into the ocean and a lot of working my ass off until four in the morning. I'm not sure I have or even deserve the luxury of doing exactly what I want, and I know for a fact that most people never even get a chance. 
                   Of a few things I am at least certain. Not the future, not my next step, but at least the little things that make me happy. Don DeLillo is right, staring out the windows of trains at passing landscapes is absolutely one of them. Punk music still makes me inexplicably happy; I can still walk into a room of people I don't know, in a terrible mood, drunk or getting there, hungover or totally sober, and suddenly there is music and I feel better. Sometimes better than better! Sometimes even excited, or I start thinking, "hey, the world isn't so bad, I should fall in love! I should write a book! I should write more songs, I could write NEW songs!" And along down that line of thinking until the spell wears off. I also like sitting in my room tonight, with the windows open, finally signaling that the long, terribly humid summer might finally be over, and I can put on a record and go through my books, and think about my life and it's not so bad.

*Don DeLillo, Point Omega
** the new Roberto Bolano book is Third Reich

                   

Know When to Hold Em

"A poet can endure anything. Which amounts to saying that a human being can endure anything. But that's not true: there are obviously limits to what a human being can endure. Really endure. A poet, on the other hand, can endure anything. We grew up with this conviction. The opening assertion is true, but that way lie ruin, madness, and death."*

I. The last time I thought about this quote was over a month ago, I was driving home from Orlando by myself. I'd pretty much do anything to avoid driving by myself, because that's when everything comes bubbling up. I can create distractions for a little while- Lord of the Rings on tape, K Country on the radio, NPR, phone calls, but in the end somehow I always find myself alone, driving in silence. It's all I can handle, and at the same time it's all I can handle. I think about friends I've abused, relationships I've trashed, jobs I've fucked up, places I've abandoned. It seems like hell, but the thing that pains me most is the thought that it isn't enough, because I know at the end of the day it isn't enough just to think about the small crimes we've committed. I know somehow it isn't enough just to think hard on anything, the real pain isn't there, the real fucked up parts aren't committed solely to my head, they belong to other people now, and other places.

III. A woman was found in her apartment surrounded by fan mail. She had been dead for over a year and no one noticed. There's something enticingly fucked up about someone dying among boxes of people saying they loved her. Such an obvious metaphor. It freaks me out for other reasons. I'm upset that someone can be loved and still die alone in their apartment. It hurts somewhere in the soft part of my brain to know that you can achieve some sort of happy status and still wind up alone, and I don't mean solitude which is invasive but I mean alone which is tangible.

IV. So what's the point of trying at all? I mean trying like, doing something important, or doing something good, whatever that means to you. I've been having a lot of conversations. I've been reading a lot of books. I haven't figured it out, only gone to sleep more and more nervous. The original Bolaño quote is about what we can take, as in what we think we can take (or maybe what we think we're missing) and it comes back to the reason why anyone gets out of bed in the morning. So I think after a couple weeks of sitting on this the only thing I've come up with is having sincere relationships with people. I don't necessarily mean romantic relationships, although sometimes I think they manage to be the best kind. I only mean that as I've gotten older, i.e. thought more about the things I'm doing, better relationships have had more meaning to me. The only things I can consider important in the past few months are the relationships I've cultivated- and also the fact that I've earned them. It feels good to be able to call a friend for coffee in the morning. Period. It doesn't matter what the underlying context for your friendships is (right?). I remind myself that I am one of the lucky few that can meet up with someone when I need to. I guess that's what keeps me going most of the time.

V. Here's the link to the article. http://www.boingboing.net/2011/05/03/rip-yvette-vickers-c.html

VI. I promise the next blog post will be about Kenny Rogers. Just wait.

*Roberto Bolaño, Enrique Martîn. From Last Evenings on Earth

Secret Story

"So now you're wondering what I mean by the secret story? asked my friend. Well the secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every single damn thing matters! Only we don't realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, and we don't realize that's a lie."*

I. Your hands shake when you hold the microphone. You don't trust your voice. You know all your friends are watching, but you can't help the shaky attempt at harmony that follows. Karaoke terrifies you. The words go across the screen, but they're hard to read, uncertain like everything else. You've been told you can do this. You try one more time. You don't recognize your voice when it comes out of the speakers, singing a song you didn't write.

II. I work for ten hours and cut a few corners to get out early. I have to get to the show before the second bands starts. I show up and nothing's started. No one's even talking. I go across the street and have a few beers with the people I rushed over with. One does karaoke and the other buys beers. I wish I had the nerve to sing a song but I can't stand the anticipation of waiting to hear my name called. The song ends. We finish the beers. Across the street the show starts without anyone noticing, but we're there just in time to stand around.

III. You figure out how to play guitar, you think, this is easier than singing. There is a comfort in the rhythm, not like the awkward cadence and meter of your voice. You practice to Ramone's songs in your room. There will be late nights, but there will be some progress. You "figure it out." There will be pedals, cords, and equipment. Your friends like it.

IV. The band at the show makes me want to go home and work on things I started months ago. I have to finish this or that project, I have to do something after watching them. The two people playing sounded great together. Proof that something can be done. I know I nodded my head, moved my feet around, but the whole time I was thinking "I have to get home, I can finish that sentence now." I get a record, I literally ask for the one "with the weird slow songs on it" and I balance it across my handle bars. I begin a story in my head while I bike home, "your hands shake when you hold the microphone..."

V. You make it to the show in a town you've only read about. Your friends aren't there. You are singing in a band for the first time and your hands still shake when you hold the microphone. You hold the guitar close like you could be dancing. Everyone stands in a weak half moon in front of you, but they tap their black shoes when your voice comes out awkward, then clear. You have no idea if anyone really liked it, but you get a few smiles, and someone buys a record. You see them biking off alone one by one and you go back to your van. You sit in the dark and tell yourself you're not alone.

*Roberto Bolaño, Dentist

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)

2666

"While we must search for the antidote or the medicine to cure us, the new, that which can only be found in the unknown, we must continue to turn to sex, books, and travel, even knowing they will lead us into the abyss, which, as it happens, is the only place we can find the cure."*

I can tell what kind of day I'm going to have by what kind of country song I wake up with in my head. The other morning I woke up signing a song I hated, something really banal, one of those songs that people mean when they say "modern country music." I can't believe I even live that sort of life anyway, that I have to hear anyone use that phrase, but it's worse than that of course because not only do I know what they mean but I know the songs too. That morning, I woke up with that song and I rode my bike to work and someone almost ran me over and I know that the people I'm giving my shit eating grin to over the counter are the same ones that are trying to kill me on my way there.

This morning though I woke up with a better one. Sort of tender, or at least trying to be romantic. I mean, nothing next to George Jones of course but it could be a lot worse, especially in 2010. So I woke up with this song and as I rode my bike across University Avenue someone yelled out "I love you Keri!" and I don't know who it was but it helped me a lot, later, with the shit eating grin.

Anyway, I'm kind of "back on track" and finally, after a good day of work I sat down to write about it. I've been drinking way, way less. This all started a few weeks ago.

My mom read my blog, just as I hinted might happen in earlier posts, and here's the rub, I actually give a shit what my mom thinks of me. She has always been horrified by my drinking habits, and trying to explain to my mom what poppers are was sort of a low point for me. We had a very serious conversation, where we talked about my life and where it was going, and I cried a lot, and tried to tell her I was a good person, and I think I half-way believe that, but she fully believes that and it amazes me. Then, I took a trip to Mexico with my straight-edge-ex-boyfriend-from-high school and a really cool thing happened, I didn't get drunk for ten days.

I had so much to do in Mexico, with waking up early and hiking ruins and swimming and getting a truly stunning tan, that I didn't really have time to get drunk. I think I just needed to know I could do it. Since I've been back I've been reading a lot more, drinking less, and finally writing and getting my applications together for graduate school. So I don't have a lot to write about it, because I'm not doing anything that fucked up or embarrassing. Actually, the other day I told someone to "suck it" in a pool hall but that's about it. Summer is starting, there's lots of anticipation all around, and maybe that's all I needed. Warm weather and something to look forward to.

* "literature + illness = illness" speech by Roberto Bolano