Eight-Thirty am.

I’m so very tired of sunny, warm days.
I long, how I long for gray skies
and the playful chill of autumn afternoons.
I’ve grown so weary of tee shirts and sunglasses;
I’m dying for coats, scarves, hot cocoa,
and rosy-cheeked women.
O, the rosy-cheeked women.
Show me a young lady decked out
in a fashionable scarf and a knitted hat
and I will show you simple perfection.

Retire your azure skies and sweeping emerald vistas;
Bring to me the blinding brilliance of pristine snow-covered hills,
ripe with all the possibility of a blank canvas or a fresh sheet of paper.
Let me gaze at their comforting complement: the skies of subtle silver; the true heavens.
Set my face upward, let a hundred frozen miracles kiss my cheeks and nose.
Let me see my breath.
Someone, please… let it get cold soon.

Autumn

Life is forever in motion. Always reshuffling itself in an organized chaos, the world is a perpetual transitional period. A cycle exemplified in the changing of the seasons, and no season represents change like the season of autumn. It is a timeless cliché: the colors of the leaves, the gray skies, the biting cold yet refreshing breezes. It is a welcome change from the muggy heat, blue skies, and endless green of summer time. Suddenly, you finds yourself working to warm up the body, rather than cool it. It is a lovable tragedy that a person is always trying to alter their state of being, never satisfied. People are always too cold and too warm, too tired and too awake. When one puts a coat on to warm up, they often will take it off in minutes because now they’re too warm. Perhaps it’s merely a desire for something different; growing weary of the current state and vying for a deviation from the norm. Then, the deviation will become the norm, and the cycle begins anew. It’s the great human flaw: our lust for novelty, and our contempt for the familiar.

Autumn never seems to last very long, either. It lasts nearly four months, but it never establishes itself like winter or summer do, which seem to drag on and on forever. The same could be said about spring, but nobody likes spring anyway, so we won’t talk about that. It’s as if once the last leaf falls the season’s over, and the masses are ready for winter to begin. Maybe this is why I like Autumn so much: It seems to never be around long enough for me to grow tired of it. Regarding winter, once it begins to draw close to spring time, one will sometimes become gently impatient for the melting of the snow. The same can be said at the end of summer. Maybe not with school children, who enjoy the last day of summer like a death row inmate enjoys his last meal, but once one becomes old enough to appreciate such things.

Change is what life is all about. There is an old saying, “variety is the spice of life.” It’s half true. The fact is, without change, there wouldn’t be “life” as we know it. It would merely be existence. And that’s no fun.

In celebration of the most beautiful of seasons, I’d like to share with you one of my famous mixes, this one dedicated to the season of change. You can find it here at Blogspot, where they actually allow embedding.

Enjoy the fall, everyone.

Clearly Unititled

I just noticed the racism inherent to the game “Pink Belly.”

Someone left me a comment here and called me Weatherman. And at first I didn’t know why.

Corona is officially the least enjoyable beer on the market. Cutting up limes and getting them into a bottle is far too cumbersome for someone who is tired and would like nothing more than the simple pleasure of getting hammered: “Stick the lime in the beer. Now cover it with your thumb.” Like This? “No, cover the whole top! Now turn it upside down. Hey, hey! you’re spilling it! Just flip it back over.” It just sprayed all over me! “I said slowly!” I hate this beer. A beer requiring steps beyond “open” and “consume” is not worth the effort.

Having an entire book of poems in which every piece is titled “Structure of the Embryonic Rat Brain” is just about the coolest thing I’ve heard of. So, way to go Chris Janke, I guess.

You’re Not Your Fucking Khakis.

My best friend called me this evening. He lives in Chicago now, and since he doesn’t have a ton of friends out there, we correspond pretty regularly. Most of the time it’s the same old “What’s up with you?” “Nothing, what’s up with you?” rigmarole, but every once in a while, we will converse on a level that is above normal conversation. We cross into mindfuck territory.

This evening he called me with a quandary in mind. He had been feeling like everything was created for him, as though he were living in some kind of Truman Show. He then proceeded to blow my fucking mind with insights about reality  and the nature of death. What if, he proposed to me, what if when you die, that’s it? What are you supposed to make of this? What’s valuable? Things are as valuable as you make them, I responded. This three-hundred dollar iPod I have here could be nothing more than a paperweight if that’s the only value I attatched to it. That led into all this talk of religion, and afterlife, and subjective morality… it really made my head spin.

Then I watched Fight Club later on. That got me thinking again about what we as a culture value and what we condition ourselves to strive for. Do we truly need the Ikea apartment? Is it necessary for our survival to pursue this fantastical notion that possession begets fulfillment? The answer, I feel, is a resounding nyet. A cultural shift in priority is in order. Personally, I have never been enamored with the “American Dream” of a suburban house with a sporty sedan in the driveway with kids that have to go to practices and rehearsals and meets, working a job I at best tolerate while my wife weighs the pros and cons of going back to work after maternity leave. I’m not even sure I want a wife and kids at all. As long as I have a roof, something moderately cushioned to lay on, the means to write, and the ability to play music, I wouldn’t complain about my life.

I think we’re too focused on accomplishing what we think other people want us to accomplish. We convince ourselves that our parents, or our bosses, or society in general want us to do this this way, and that that way, and then we’ll be respected members of said society. No one focuses on what they want. How to achieve the simple contentment that we all subconsciously desire but suppress lest we disappoint our vicarious observers.

Do whatever the fuck you want. Don’t work a job you have no passion for because it’s been dictated to you that it’s what you should be doing. What you should be doing is figuring out what makes you content. Not even what makes you happy; happiness is a fleeting, temporary emotion that comes and goes constantly throughout the day and throughout your existence. I’m talking about contentment.

Because at its basest level, that’s what success truly is: Doing something that does not make you want to do something else.

Not Comfortable Discussing Things Amelodically.

Everyone likes music. This is a rather obvious explication that must be aired out, not unlike musty bedsheets, before we get underway. Everyone likes music. There is not a single person alive who has never heard at least one musical composition that they enjoyed. Everyone, at some point, has tapped their toe, stomped their heel, bobbed their head, or snapped their fingers to the beat of some song.*

*Note: a large exception and apology to the hearing impaired, as well as quadriplegics, for whom the previous statement unfortunately does not apply.*

Moving on, there is a line of distinction which must be drawn at some point. A further clarification has to be made, for surely the fellow sporting the blowout haircut with the “wifebeater” undershirt-as-outershirt ensemble who is assaulting passers-by with techno-industrial noise coming from his comically overhauled Honda Civic cannot be placed on the same team, or even the same sport, as the scraggly-haired young man spending his evenings hunched over a notebook, guitar in-hand, scribbling a dazzlingly indecipherable mixture of notes and words with near religious fervor. Both, obviously, like music. However, there is a nigh-impassible canyon of difference apparent.

And here, gentle reader, is where the distinction must be made: between those who like music, and those who get music.

Those who get music are often musicians themselves, but that is not necessarily the rule. To truly get music, one can’t simply know just what notes are being played, but why they need to be played. And there lies the distinction. The understanding. The understanding of the emotion, the passion that is palpable beneath the music.

My brother made mention of music that moved him to tears. He is someone who gets music.

Crass as it may sound, sometimes it is, in fact, a matter of taste. For example, the 24-year-old Insane Clown Posse fan does not, in all probability, get music. That subtly cute girl wearing the thick-rimmed glasses she doesn’t need who can be seen going to show after obscure show just so she doesn’t get laughed out of the coffee shop for not being scene enough does not get music either, though she does not know it. Conversely, the groom-to-be who spends days sorting through his cavernous record collection to find the song to which he and his new bride will share their first dance together, taking into consideration each choice’s ambiance, lyrical content, melody, tempo, danceability, and a gamut of other criteria just to make sure his bride will cry with joy in his arms as they dance not only gets music, but is going to make one hell of a husband to boot.

I lost where I was going with this. In short, I get music. and I hope you get me.

Ever-crescendoing,
Christopher.

Two Decades?

As I sit here listening to former literary agent and compiler of complete world knowledge, John Hodgman, recite a list of 700 hobo names from his book, The Areas of My Expertise, while troubadour Jonathan Coulton plays guitar ceaselessly in the background in what I can only describe as an act of feral musicianship, I am reminded of the fact that today (the 3rd of March) is, in fact, my birthday.

Now now, please. Hold off on your applause and adulations for just a moment, though I do enjoy them. I am now twenty (20) years old. No longer a teenager, I am now suddenly and rather forcibly shoved into the grouping of “twentysomething.” Foregoing the slightly degrading notion that I am now considered merely a something, I feel I am now obligated to somehow act differently; to man up, as they say in the frat houses (I’m assuming; I’ve never actually been in one.)

My quandary is this: Just how is a “twentysomething” expected to behave? Surely we can no longer get away with the shenanigans of adolescence or the rigmarole of teenage whimsy, at least not without severely stern looks from disapproving and disappointed onlookers. No, this is a new era in a man’s life; one where he must face that most invincible and intangible of foes: The future.

The concern of what horrifying surprises the future will bring gnaws at the back of everyone’s mind, not unlike a malnourished house pet. I, however, have had relatively little bother from this notion until now. I have dismissed most concerns presented before me about the future as depressing, paying them little to no mind afterward. I’m still moderately certain that I will obtain my teacher’s degree, which will then dictate, through necessity, a large portion of my life henceforth. But what of the further future? A family?

I have never really envisioned myself as a family man (except for two successive dreams, in which I got married, and had a daughter, respectively). I am reticent to want to start a family, because years of listening to Tom Waits and reading Hemingway have convinced me that drinking myself to death beginning at about forty (40) is a romantic and ideal way to go out, and such a death would only become complicated once you throw financial dependents into the mix.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I suppose what I am really trying to say is that today, on my birthday, I want presents. Lots of them. A metric shitload would suffice.

Or a nice card with warm well-wishes would also be appreciated.

Warmest regards,
Christopher.

The Achievement of Desire.

While reading through Rodriguez’s story, I didn’t feel I could relate to much of his story until somewhere near the end, where he mentions the phrase “the great mimic.” Suddenly it’s like he’s summed up my entire academic career between quotation marks. He called the great mimic more of a “collection of thoughts, not a thinker.” Wow, I thought. That is exactly what I am. I have the ability to exude the illusion of knowledge, more easily that I can actually retain that knowledge. I’ve never heard a name put on the unusual condition I’ve always felt I’ve had all through school. I’m the Great Mimic. I suppose it fits; I’ve always fancied myself an actor. I just didn’t know how far I carried it into my life. The day you realize you’re a fraud is a sobering one. I think I need to lie down for a while.

Free Writing.

Septmber 11th. It’s my generation’s Pearl Harbor. My Kennedy Assassination, my ‘Who Shot JR?’ I remember just where I was when I found out, who told me, what everyone’s reaction was. But remembering September 11th is strange for me due to the fact that my father was still alive. The dichotomy of September 11th still seeming so recent and it feeling like my father has been gone forever feels like some kind of trick my memory is playing on me. Coming home from school early that day, I remember my father being home and not at work, and coming up from the basement saying, “Bummer, huh?” And that was almost exactly my reaction, as well. I wasn’t thinking “Oh, sweet Lord, how could this have happened? All those poor souls thrown away for no reason.” I simply thought, “Bummer.” But coming from my dad the usually innocuous word carried more weight than all the rambling prose of the newscasters and pundits who were spewing out all their self-righteous speculation and opinions as if anyone actually gave a damn what they thought anymore. So I can’t actually look back on September 11th, 2001 as wholly a tragedy, because my father was with me, and I’ll take any memory I can get.

What’s your favorite sound?

Mine is the sound of an acoustic guitar being played badly.

December 8th, 1980.

“Lennon? Sure, I think he lives right over there.” I tried to ask him what the gun was for, but he was already gone. I wonder what he was up to.