Snow fall in October...

It snowed on my birthday.  It was kind of nice, sitting at home, watching it fall on my car, and checking in on facebook of the electric glow of my friends' warm wishes.  Then the undercurrent hit.  Around noon, really.  A lot of the kids I knew from high school started posting things about "Ian".  I went to school with two of them - one I had known from childhood, and the other...well, I knew two versions of the other.

And it was the other one who had died.

I don't know the details beyond Ian, his friend Mike, and their car hitting a tree near where I went to middle school.  That's all I really know.

Here's the two Ian's I knew: High School and Slightly Post, and Mid-Twenties.

I fucking hated him in high school.  I say that without reservation - I didn't like him.  I know much of it was out of the same envy I felt towards anyone who seemed to mesh easily with others, who had that effortless effort about them when it came to inter-personal relationships.  But, more than that, dude just rubbed me the wrong way.

In our mutual mid-twenties I remet him a few times.  At bars.  Run ins at gas stations.  Maybe I had matured, or he had, or both of us.  I didn't know the shit he had gone through, same as he didn't know what I had gone through.  But we were civil.  Had we moved in similar circles, I suppose we could have become friends.

All that's as maybe.

The other Ian, my childhood friend, wrote about him as a friend.  I post the link to his writing here, and hope you'll take the time to read it.

I didn't know he was a teacher.

I hope he and Mike are at peace, wherever they are.  I hope the families and friends comes to terms.

Damn shame.

Long night in late October...

I love autumn.  I love the world going quiet, and people staying indoors more.  I love the sensation that, slowly but surely, I'm becoming the only person outside.  I love the sound a leaf makes when it falls off a tree - a muffled pop followed by a soft swishing.  Even when it dive bombs down.  I love the smell of the bonfires.  This Halloween I'll be seeing the World/Inferno Friendship Society's Hallowmas show - probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me.  One of my favorite bands playing on what used to be my favorite holiday, and seeing them with some of my favorite people.

Having come to terms with the fact that the road trip keeps getting pushed back into the reaches of "You're Chicken Shit and It's Never Going To Happen", I decided I would take a vacation for my birthday.  My big birthday plans were pretty simple.  I was going to get a hotel room at some beach in New Jersey, and just take a few days to sit and watch the wave roll in and feel like I was the only one in the world.  I wanted to watch the stars rise over the Atlantic.  Little light pollution.  Nothing to keep the wind at bay.  Everything feeding my hopes of an alien abduction (hey, we all have dreams).

No real noise.  No real problems for a day or two.  Just me, my laptop, and the whole world over.

I've always wanted to live near a large body of water.  Something I can see - not "it's only a mile away" - you know, step out the back door and, boom, large body or water.  Fuck, even a lake or something, Great or otherwise.  Granted, I'd prefer not to be able to see the other side on a clear day, but I'm willing to compromise.  Or resign myself to it.  Really it's just a matter of degrees.

But that's my idea of Heaven.  A cosmic beach in mid-autumn, bare feet, jeans and a hoodie, feeling equally small and infinite.  The metaphor of endings and beginnings being one and the same, the ouroboros still circling.  And no fucking loud mouthed "Lookatme!" assholes around.  It's too cold for them.  At fifty degrees, it might as well be night's Plutonian shores at high noon.

But I'll go for the once-in-a-lifetime show, and be with people I adore.  I can always cast my eye back there later.  True, it will be November, but that doesn't bother me.  I'd prefer October, true, but that's because all of the things I like about October are things I liked about my childhood.  People get quieter, the world is going to sleep, and I feel like I'm waking up.  All of the people I knew were old and in various stages of dying, and yet they never felt that far away, because around my birthday (on my father's birthday inpointoffact) some folks believed they came back and walked around once more.

In Buddhism, the west is the land of the dead.  But every western ocean arrives on an eastern shore.

I am where it takes me...

"It's really just the passing of these days / That's gonna leave us all set in our ways"

-Dear Landlord, Three to the Beach

A year ago I swore I wouldn't have work this Monday.  I'd be taking the whole week to say goodbye to people on the east coast, take in a soccer game with my brother, and then start driving that Friday to the west.  I'd be crisscrossing the country, taking side streets and detours, and finally arriving at the Pacific before I turn twenty-seven.

Not the first time I've broken a promise to myself.

Hell, I probably won't even follow through on the "quit smoking" thing.

During a conversation with Teagan she pointed out that the change I'm looking for might not be the change I need.  That the whole trip is really just an expression of my desire to "live", but that said desire is still not strong enough to combat the sense of duty/fear that I have - a thing which over-rides everything else, from nightmarish frustration, sexual repression, and general dislike for my stick-in-the-mud lifestyle.

Knowing that she's probably right annoys the hell out of me.

I've taken some steps - embraced more of life and randomness that I have in years.  I've visited friends, hung out, gone on mini-adventures.  I've been trying to avoid a lot of negativity (which for me is quite the feat), but that's because I can no longer let the anger out in it's accustomed manner - namely hurling insults and curses at the cause and then breaking for lunch.  I feel this life, this current phase of being Sean, hardening into a solid form...and I'm not happy with it.

And I've known I'm not happy with it for quite sometime.

The dangerous part of it, of course, is that I can see it staying this way.  I can think about staying in the rut for awhile more - a while that could turn into me at fifty looking at the cube wall.

It might take a major even to nudge me out.  But then, the universe has always preferred my life to be interesting from time to time.

Brace for impact.

Well, at least we got together and it wasn't Christmas...

Nikki was one of the few Neshaminy people I stayed in contact with during my college days. She's one of the few I still interact with in person - although that's really a matter of time and tide. It's kind of funny, watching your friends grow up, see how they change a little bit each time you meet them. I have this memory of her, back in eleventh grade (I think), right after her maternal grandfather passed. I remember kneeling by her desk, hugging her and wondering why the fuck she felt compelled to go into school the morning after a thing like that.

Troopers. You never really know which ones they are until they get shook.

My paternal grandparents help raise my brother and I. Ester and John. They were hard line Vatican I folks from Philadelphia, taught my brother and I the Latin mass, the rosary, the mysteries, the creeds...whole shabang. My grandmother, Ester, passed a few days after I left kindergarten. She..um...the reason that the elder McGovern's played such a large roll in our lives was because my mom and dad worked weird hours. Mom was the personnel manager at the Neshaminy Mall's Strawbridge & Clothier, so her hours were just all over the clock. And in kindergarten class, (the unfortunately named) Mrs. Skank and her student teacher were going to have a Mother's Day Tea. And my mom couldn't make it, because of work, so we decided that my grandmother would go.

The only picture I have of her - and I have two copies of this - is her and I walking through the classroom, my hand raised up to hold her's, and I'm smiling at the camera and she's smiling down at me. My hair was already going from redish-brown to it's current black state, and she's smiling down, and when I look at it now she's...I can see how frail she was. And I'm not seeing the woman who had screaming matches with my mother over my brother and I going to the museum and seeing evolution or how the stars hang in the heavens. I'm not seeing her laying on the couch too weak to move because her heart's on it's last legs.

All I'm seeing is this one moment that I barely remember.

I usually shut up when people say "They're in a better place". This, I suppose is proof that there is a God, because a minor miracle has occurred: I've shut my mouth. I don't mention that I could never, even as a little kid, tell the difference between heaven and hell without the normal cues (Clouds/Fire), or how most of my life has been spent wanting to wring the Logo's neck - and tend to feel that way still.

But a fun bit of providence...years later, around fifth grade, when my paternal grandfather passed, we got a letter in the mail from that student teacher. Inside was a mass card and a copy of the picture from the Mother's Day Tea. A lady friend once noted that it's the last picture of me "Honestly smiling," and that "All the others just show [me] smirking at a joke" or "trying to get the photographer to shut up". Both are true, I guess.

Flash-forward to now. Nikki's maternal grandmother will be laid to rest on Thursday. I know all those grandkids and all of the family, and...Omnia mutantur nihil interit. De hoc satis.

Hard Times and Good Rocking...

This weekend...meh. It did not go well. There's only so much joy to be found in know where you stand after the bills are paid, and missing invites from friends. I ended up going on a bit too long in a letter to a friend, saying a lot and nothing at the same time. Frankly, I have no idea what's going on. Summer's never been kind to me, and I think the lack of a defined assault has made me go looking for one.

Normally this isn't a problem - I just ignore the self-destructive tendencies until they go away. Tell myself that everything is self-control, that nihilism never works out for me, and move on. But for some reason I can't shake it. It took a lot for me to get my head out of my ass, stop with the self-loathing and start living a somewhat enjoyable life. And something's put the kabosh on that for now. My apologies to those who suffered the blast back. It might happen again - but I should be good for a year. As soon as the venting was complete I ended up smiling to myself and chuckling at what an idiot I can be. Sometime I think my personality is that of Homer Simpson - and I see little wrong with that.
***
So I did some writing in earnest. Best thing to do when the emptiness won't be ignored. It's the kind I like best - when I'm not doing it with a thought of trying to be published or make my living at it or anything. When it comes down to "Fuck it - this is what I do". Creation in freefall - down as in flames, up as in smoke. That when it's best, when I let it work and find the world falling to order. I might still be unhappy with the world once I go back to it, but I know more about it by letting it fall into a polite chaos.
***
I watched "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" this weekend. It was a great movie, but it added to the "did not go well" portion of my mental state. Watching him come apart, seeing what his family went through...yeah, that struck a nerve. Probably my second most uncomfortable viewing experience of all time. Heh. While I'm way more functional than he, I can see my parents in his - their long suffering due to their refusal to completely turn their backs on the mad black sheep of the family. His fixation with God and the Devil, and my own with the various concepts of death, see...I'm not him. I can function. I can deal with people, with reality - whatever the hell that is. But knowing I was that close, that I pulled back on my own...it's a good reminder, maybe even a timely one. I'm me.
***
All of this shit would have gotten to me and leveled be out for months a while back. Funny. Changed a lot and didn't even know it. And I'm grinning a bit. I hate my job, I don't like the various situations I'm finding myself in, and I'm still happy. I'm turning into a half-assed Dr. Lao. And I don't see anything wrong with that.