Wednesday, May 21, 2003
i slept at my new house for the first time last night
the bed was facing the walk-in closet, the sliding closet opening, and the doorway; i'm not used to staring at that many openings when i go to sleep so i turned the bed sideways today - it looks very stupid but at least my view is a little different.
I lay awake for while last night remembering the night Guhan and Scott got kicked out of CVP, and how what had always seemed like such a cool place sit and drink became an asshole bar in the span of a few quick minutes. I remember in particular listening to Justin work himself up over how shitty and unfair it was that scott got involved simply for trying to figure out what had happened - Justin was particularly mad about the big no-neck kid with his goof troop friends who'd followed the commotion outside and started shit with Scott after it was all over just to look tough. Justin sat on his couch that night next to the rest of us, muttering about how "it was just like highschool".
The assholes always win.
So on.
I'd watched most of the fight happen that night - especially the bullshit afterwards where the whole CVP entourage banded together like a tribe of drunken neanderthals, posturing and cursing excessively until everyone had left their piss-marked territory and they were free to go back inside and tell eachother about how awesome it was when they kicked those kids out just a few minutes before. And while for most of that night i felt the same way He did, i felt that later on, in his oven-breaking, furniture-throwing fits back at his apartment, Justin failed to appreciate the subtly fitting comedy of the whole situation. After the initial anger and bullshit wore off all of us, it seemed that - sitting around on dirty couches playing cards and listening to Guhan break bottles outside on his front walk - for Dave at least (if not for the rest of us), going out with that kind of style was as good an exit as any. Everyone got to give a little "fuck you" goodbye to baltimore.
Still lying in bed and still not sleeping, I thought about how it seems like the way we're taught to get past things in life that are unfair and out of our control is to re-direct our anger into something postive or creative until we no longer feel that strongly about whatever it was that made us angry in the first place. We're taught not to fight when someone takes our lunch in preschool or when someone picks on us. Or, if we do fight, life teaches us that the bigger kid will bust our nose, make everyone laugh at us, and still take our lunch.
That's what i learned in middelschool, and since i spent so much time growing up being blindly angry at everything in the world, i was never very good at picking my battles. I, like a first-grader, and like many other people in the world, am extremely quick to anger and i have a hard time being patient enough to think my way around a shitty situation.
However.
Eventually, all the stuff people taught to me about dealing with anger and being contrustuve and finding back doors and other ways to get through problems did work pretty well, and i feel infinitely more controlled and capable than i used to feel - things which i have no doubt stem from the frustratingly slow process of growing up that i've just described.
And yet, i have the nagging feeling somewhere still tucked away that i will always have one foot in first grade, and that i wont be able to think and re-direct my way around everything that goes wrong.
I feel this when i'm out of my element - when my landlord is screwing me out of alot of money and i don't know the law well enough to fight him.
I feel it when i fight with my freinds - when they or i say just the right thing to set the other person off and start the punching and breaking of shit.
I feel this way when someone bigger picks on someone smaller.
And when i feel this way, all 24 years of learning and growing up and reasoning go out the fucking window and i want burn the world down around me with powers i wish for but never have.
As i lay in bed last night i daydreamed like i used to in middelschool - i dreamed of having an invincibility card - of hearing the super mario invincibility star music come on and of then knowing that for the next 20 seconds i am UNTOUCHABLE and it is ass beating time. And what i would do with those 20 seconds... it was these endless little fables that eventually put me to sleep, tossing in my lumpy bed in a strange house that smells of mildew, listening to the rain on the patio and to Logan's heavy, tired breathing.
I dreamed last night that i was sitting alone in the bleachers of a stadium, waiting for a hockey game to start, when two girls ran up to me and asked me if i had any tape.
I said i thought i might have some in my car but i realized as i spoke that my car was very, very far away for some reason. I asked them why, and they, crying all of a sudden, said that their dog had been hurt and that they needed to find a way to stop the bleeding.
THen the dream cut to me standing over the dog, who was clearly Logan, lying sideways on the ground with the fur around her hindquarters stained pink with blood. The girls were in hysterics and i didn't know what to do, so i simply pulled up the fur around the wound and put my hand over the cuts to stop the bleeding. One of them then said that she'd run back to the store (which for some reason we all knew was very far away) and try to get some bandages, and i told her i'd stay and put pressure on the wound. Most of the remaining dream was me crouched over my dog feeling the odd sensation on my hands of blood leaking out a pair little puncture holes in her abdomen and leg. When the girl eventually came back, my dog was still alive, but i woke up before we could bandage her up. Try as i did, i couldn't get back to sleep to finish that dream.
I ate Golden Grahms this morning (afternoon) and walked logan for a long time in the rain. SHe got very wet and ate a paper bag.
On the radio in my car i listened to a commercial on DC's radio station that was sponsored by the Maryland/DC police which targeted underaged drinking.
It was very "in my face".
the radio man says....
"If you're under 21 and you're thinking of going out to a bar or club tonight, DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. Undercover cops and stings are set up in bars all over dowtowon Washington, and when you DO get caught, it will be worse than you imagined. First, a night in DC lockup is no picnic. You'll be fingerprinted, processed, taken downtown, and locked up for the night - guaranteed. No excuses, no warnings, no exemptions for students. And if you think it's over after that, think again. There's telling your parents, your school, academic probation, fees, community service, and possibly even more Jail time. If you're under age and thinking of drinking, DON'T be a MORON. It's just not worth it."
Wow. i think. what an asshole.
Cut to the next commercial, and the radio man says...
"This song is a message from Coors Light to all of you who love to 'Rock On'. It's to your buddy to who goes to the bar with you and babysits the anchor while you get the girl - he's not just your best freind or your roomate... He's your wingman." At this point, cue the fucking awful 'i-am-a-target-market' 16-30 year old demographically-tested "funny" song about the "wingman" that makes us all laugh and makes me think that i am suddenly thirsty for a Coors Light.
AS this song ends i am sitting at a red light waiting for the longest left-turn signal in the world to turn green when, with a screech of hydraulic brakes, a huge billboard painted across the side of a bus pulls up 10 inches from my driver side window. It is part of the Baltimore Believe project, and it is simplistically composed of huge white letters on a stark black background.
it reads.
IF YOU ARE ON A JURY, DO YOUR DUTY. CONVICT THE GUILTY.
these are strange days...
the bed was facing the walk-in closet, the sliding closet opening, and the doorway; i'm not used to staring at that many openings when i go to sleep so i turned the bed sideways today - it looks very stupid but at least my view is a little different.
I lay awake for while last night remembering the night Guhan and Scott got kicked out of CVP, and how what had always seemed like such a cool place sit and drink became an asshole bar in the span of a few quick minutes. I remember in particular listening to Justin work himself up over how shitty and unfair it was that scott got involved simply for trying to figure out what had happened - Justin was particularly mad about the big no-neck kid with his goof troop friends who'd followed the commotion outside and started shit with Scott after it was all over just to look tough. Justin sat on his couch that night next to the rest of us, muttering about how "it was just like highschool".
The assholes always win.
So on.
I'd watched most of the fight happen that night - especially the bullshit afterwards where the whole CVP entourage banded together like a tribe of drunken neanderthals, posturing and cursing excessively until everyone had left their piss-marked territory and they were free to go back inside and tell eachother about how awesome it was when they kicked those kids out just a few minutes before. And while for most of that night i felt the same way He did, i felt that later on, in his oven-breaking, furniture-throwing fits back at his apartment, Justin failed to appreciate the subtly fitting comedy of the whole situation. After the initial anger and bullshit wore off all of us, it seemed that - sitting around on dirty couches playing cards and listening to Guhan break bottles outside on his front walk - for Dave at least (if not for the rest of us), going out with that kind of style was as good an exit as any. Everyone got to give a little "fuck you" goodbye to baltimore.
Still lying in bed and still not sleeping, I thought about how it seems like the way we're taught to get past things in life that are unfair and out of our control is to re-direct our anger into something postive or creative until we no longer feel that strongly about whatever it was that made us angry in the first place. We're taught not to fight when someone takes our lunch in preschool or when someone picks on us. Or, if we do fight, life teaches us that the bigger kid will bust our nose, make everyone laugh at us, and still take our lunch.
That's what i learned in middelschool, and since i spent so much time growing up being blindly angry at everything in the world, i was never very good at picking my battles. I, like a first-grader, and like many other people in the world, am extremely quick to anger and i have a hard time being patient enough to think my way around a shitty situation.
However.
Eventually, all the stuff people taught to me about dealing with anger and being contrustuve and finding back doors and other ways to get through problems did work pretty well, and i feel infinitely more controlled and capable than i used to feel - things which i have no doubt stem from the frustratingly slow process of growing up that i've just described.
And yet, i have the nagging feeling somewhere still tucked away that i will always have one foot in first grade, and that i wont be able to think and re-direct my way around everything that goes wrong.
I feel this when i'm out of my element - when my landlord is screwing me out of alot of money and i don't know the law well enough to fight him.
I feel it when i fight with my freinds - when they or i say just the right thing to set the other person off and start the punching and breaking of shit.
I feel this way when someone bigger picks on someone smaller.
And when i feel this way, all 24 years of learning and growing up and reasoning go out the fucking window and i want burn the world down around me with powers i wish for but never have.
As i lay in bed last night i daydreamed like i used to in middelschool - i dreamed of having an invincibility card - of hearing the super mario invincibility star music come on and of then knowing that for the next 20 seconds i am UNTOUCHABLE and it is ass beating time. And what i would do with those 20 seconds... it was these endless little fables that eventually put me to sleep, tossing in my lumpy bed in a strange house that smells of mildew, listening to the rain on the patio and to Logan's heavy, tired breathing.
I dreamed last night that i was sitting alone in the bleachers of a stadium, waiting for a hockey game to start, when two girls ran up to me and asked me if i had any tape.
I said i thought i might have some in my car but i realized as i spoke that my car was very, very far away for some reason. I asked them why, and they, crying all of a sudden, said that their dog had been hurt and that they needed to find a way to stop the bleeding.
THen the dream cut to me standing over the dog, who was clearly Logan, lying sideways on the ground with the fur around her hindquarters stained pink with blood. The girls were in hysterics and i didn't know what to do, so i simply pulled up the fur around the wound and put my hand over the cuts to stop the bleeding. One of them then said that she'd run back to the store (which for some reason we all knew was very far away) and try to get some bandages, and i told her i'd stay and put pressure on the wound. Most of the remaining dream was me crouched over my dog feeling the odd sensation on my hands of blood leaking out a pair little puncture holes in her abdomen and leg. When the girl eventually came back, my dog was still alive, but i woke up before we could bandage her up. Try as i did, i couldn't get back to sleep to finish that dream.
I ate Golden Grahms this morning (afternoon) and walked logan for a long time in the rain. SHe got very wet and ate a paper bag.
On the radio in my car i listened to a commercial on DC's radio station that was sponsored by the Maryland/DC police which targeted underaged drinking.
It was very "in my face".
the radio man says....
"If you're under 21 and you're thinking of going out to a bar or club tonight, DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. Undercover cops and stings are set up in bars all over dowtowon Washington, and when you DO get caught, it will be worse than you imagined. First, a night in DC lockup is no picnic. You'll be fingerprinted, processed, taken downtown, and locked up for the night - guaranteed. No excuses, no warnings, no exemptions for students. And if you think it's over after that, think again. There's telling your parents, your school, academic probation, fees, community service, and possibly even more Jail time. If you're under age and thinking of drinking, DON'T be a MORON. It's just not worth it."
Wow. i think. what an asshole.
Cut to the next commercial, and the radio man says...
"This song is a message from Coors Light to all of you who love to 'Rock On'. It's to your buddy to who goes to the bar with you and babysits the anchor while you get the girl - he's not just your best freind or your roomate... He's your wingman." At this point, cue the fucking awful 'i-am-a-target-market' 16-30 year old demographically-tested "funny" song about the "wingman" that makes us all laugh and makes me think that i am suddenly thirsty for a Coors Light.
AS this song ends i am sitting at a red light waiting for the longest left-turn signal in the world to turn green when, with a screech of hydraulic brakes, a huge billboard painted across the side of a bus pulls up 10 inches from my driver side window. It is part of the Baltimore Believe project, and it is simplistically composed of huge white letters on a stark black background.
it reads.
IF YOU ARE ON A JURY, DO YOUR DUTY. CONVICT THE GUILTY.
these are strange days...
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