My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

It seems that John Travolta and I are very close to being close personal friends. That’s right, we share the same dentist, Doctor Jonathan J. Bromboz. I had no idea when I woke up this morning that fortune would shine upon me so vividly. The very tools that had polished John Travolta’s pearly whites were sterilized and perhaps used to make my smile so bright today. Really, one could even say that in a sense, I practically French kissed Vincent Vega. Okay, I will say it, I practically French kissed Vincent Vega. Yes…

I’m Aimee Mann’s Goddamn fucking moth. I’m fueled by need and anger desperation. I need the life I want. I’m angry it’s so difficult. I’m desperate not to fail. I’m sick as shit of people telling me what’s “best” for me. I’m sick as shit of people pretending to know what’s in my heart and in my head. My biggest fucking mistake is trying to please everybody while not pleasing myself. I’m done. I’m out. Fuck it. Fuck doing what I’m told. Fuck juggling everybody’s happiness. That doesn’t get me anywhere but miserable. Fuck wasting time. Barring something incredibly stupid, everybody I know is going to outlive me, so fuck not pleasing myself. Fuck feeling guilty about the things that I want. Fuck it all. I’m a good Goddamn person, flawed like anyone, but good. I’ve endured a whole Goddamn fucking lot in my 27 years and I have held up pretty fucking well. The same people who tell me what to do would have broken by now were they in my place. 

I stumble, but I don’t quit. I beat my wings till I burn them black, but I don’t give up.

So, there’s a video clip of Kurt Cobain in concert, it’s a clip from Nirvana’s Lithium video. He’s in a crazy white lab coat thrashing around on-stage, just trashing everything in a totally manic fit. At one point, he’s on his knees holding a giant amp and banging his head against it.

To me, I think it’s one of the great visual metaphors for frustration and lack of control. It’s usually the absolute first image that comes to mind when the entire world seems insane. I see it plenty enough and I’m glad it’s there for me. I drift to lots of images like that, different things for different moods. I actually think about why I do it, and partly, I think it’s how I experience physical emotional outbursts. A fellow gets really upset, maybe he puts his fist through a window. I can’t put my fist through anything, nor can I even imagine myself doing so. There are certain things for which I just don’t have a frame of reference for myself, so I pick an approximation from elsewhere. Why bang my own head into an amp when Kurt Kobain does it so well?

I love it when something I’m reading reflects things that I often think on. I’m currently reading The Tyrant by Michael Cisco and last night I came across the following passage…

When Ella was thirteen, she realized she was going to die, and for a month she lay awake every night in terror, flat on her back afraid she might vomit, rigid, nodding and starting nearly jolting herself out of bed, finally she would fall asleep. Now she sleeps better but with no warning she is sometimes ambushed and paralyzed with terror of death … Looking around the car, she can see each of these faces in its casket, grey flesh limp, eyes fallen in, nightmare caverns of stiff nostrils black as pitch, sagging ears, slack cheeks drooping away from a wired jaw and permanently sealed, livid mouth … The opposite bench is empty, in the black pane of the window above it there’s a wan dewy frowse, Ella, and above all she can see that face in its casket, purple-black bruises make a wide ring around her eyes, her hair dry as hay, weirdly friable and clumsily gathered on the stiff cushion – “just fucking burn me” she says with cold lips sutured shut.  In her mind’s eye she’s searing, melting and shriveling in the flames, locks of hair flap here and there in gusts of fiery wind – and that would be something like life, it would be a decision – as if she had set the fire – instead of that passive acquiescence to rot away in a wet hole.

I’ve had that exact kind of experience. I remember as a kid, maybe ten or eleven, something like that, I’m in the van looking out the window when the idea hits me that one day the sky and the trees will keep going, but I won’t, I’ll be dead. My mom, my brother, they’ll die too, but even then I realize I’ll probably die first. Everything will keep going, but I won’t. Then I start to think about everything that happened before I was born, how I didn’t exist and time kept going until I did. I remember being absolutely terrified for a few minutes. I remember that experience vividly. Long before the last year or two, before tasting it so many times, I’d thought about death and time and existence.

Sometimes, especially at the mall, I look around at everyone with their cellphones and shopping bags, I think to myself that we’ll all be dead. People who are so young and stylish, texting their friends and drinking chocolate lattes, they’re all going to lose everything that seems so important right now and they won’t exist. I think how some will grow old and die quietly. Some will get sick and die in hospital, slowly, they’ll know it’s coming. Then, of course, I think of myself dying, how it’ll probably be some kind of acute respiratory failure. At least for a few minutes I’ll know what’s happening and I won’t be brave about it. Everyone in the entire mall will be gone, but the world will keep going and that day at the Macy’s and the Starbucks won’t matter at all.

I’m definitely not obsessed, but I do think about these things. Sometimes, like Ella, I don’t sleep.

So, this is kind of a local to Tampa hate blog. On Saturday the 19th we’ll be host to the first annual Red Bull Flugtag. Basically, the event involves people building homemade flying machines and riding them down a 30 foot ramp in order to soar over Tampa Bay. However, most of them don’t so much soar as crash and sink. Yet, it’s THE BIGGEST EVENT IN TAMPA, it’s on the news every day, people are burning with Flugtag fever. Some cities get art festivals or renowned stage-plays, we get Flugtag. Oh, and to make the event even more classy, their web site has super awesome embedded audio which makes any site extra cool.

Well, it was a little harrowing, but we are up and running under WordPress 2.6! I’m really glad I backed up my old install because I screwed something up on my first two upgrade attempts. Had I lost this blog, I’d have walked off my roof, which would actually have been the most amazing suicide of all time…

The Father: Wait. What happened?

Jesus: Yeah, no shit, he walked off his roof.

The Father: Wait… What?

Jesus: He. walked. off. his. roof.

The Father: You’re shitting me.

Jesus: No, Father, I’m not shitting you. He definitely walked, off his roof.

The Father: Really?

Jesus: Sigh…

I feel the need to note that by way of my peg tube and lots and lots of foods, I’m clearly becoming morbidly obese. I didn’t actually realize it until my Sara pointed out these photos…

Pre-peg

Post-peg

Please, somebody, call or write Richard Simmons, or even Maury Povich. Help me get the help I obviously can’t get myself.

I desperately want to believe that Star Wars: The Clone Wars will be good, but I can’t. I just… can’t. Waiting for Lucas to do something good is like waiting for Godot.

So, today’s the Fourth of July, another June has gone by.  When they light up our town I just think what a waste of gunpowder and sky…

That is the beginning of the saddest, most grammatically correct song ever written about the Fourth of July. It’s one of my favorite Aimee Mann songs. Last year, Sara and I were broken up for the Fourth. We broke up before the holiday, but that song was actually playing when she said her good-byes. Things are much better this year. We’re separated again, but only by physical distance. It’s weird, I’m not sure how to word this right, maybe I can’t. Being apart like this is a painful experience, I miss her on some level all the time, but it’s not an empty pain. It’s a pain that promises something better. It’s almost like getting a tattoo. It’s a constant stinging pain, but when it finally stops, you’re left with something beautiful. It’s a pain that’s a prelude to something that you know is worth anything. It’s not a loss, not an emptiness. It’s not Hell unending, the complete and total absence of God.

Life’s really not easy, but I think it’s always worth the trouble in the end. Happy Fourth…

He can’t sleep because he’s not with her. He wants her close, the flesh of her cheek against his arm. He wants her steady breathing in his ear. He’s alone in a room that doesn’t feel like home, such a place seems distant right now. He’s kind of a zombie, a wanderer, doing the things people do, but his mind is always somewhere else. He’s a moth with no flame. He can’t sleep, so he writes…