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.

Theme song for nothing...

I've been having a few talks with Runner (name changed, clearly) recently.  Covering everything from kids these days - ye gods, are we getting this old this fast - to Shakespeare to various story ideas, punctuated by gallows humor.  As we're born around the same time (and that time is coming soon) we seem toe be experiencing a bit more pathos than usual.  The pallor of our dreams mingling with our utter bewilderment at how fast time seems to go now-a-days, and then added to the feeling we have looking around that we've got no/every reason to feel as damn old as we do...

I'm getting ready to turn twenty seven.

My two major concerns are my hairline and keeping my number of tweets about the number of people I follow on twitter.

I'd hang out with my friends more (yes, I have friends - few but good) if it wasn't for my creeping sensation that they are trying to castrate me (long story, but 70% of the times I hang out with people ends in groin injury...so I have a reason for my reluctance).  Besides, they're all getting married/having kids/doing "adult things" (make of that what you will).  Which makes me glare at my socio-biological clock while gesturing in a reassuring manner with my cricket bat.

Ultimately, the conversations with Runner have helped spur on my writing.  While I'm hoping it's not too infused with the current free floating nihilism, I am hoping it will get me out of my current rut.  It's rather deep now.  Really a nook.  Add a table, and you could put on a fancy meal here.

Male Pattern Body Issues...

I'm out of shape.  For a guy with next to no body fat, this is a serious problem - from health issues to generally not falling into a depressive state when I watch action films. The phrase "skin and bones" is really pretty apt - it really seems like I have nothing beyond those - well, ok, hair too (more on that a bit down).  But also I smoke, so in general I look like a skeleton that's been dipped in paint that wheezes during jogs.

I've stuck with it enough to discover that - addictive personality aside - the body image thing really bothers me.  Sure, I want to be healthy, but I also think there's a problem with how I currently am.  But, really, there's no reason for me to feel this way.  I don't take in as much visual media as the average Statie, I'm not trying to attract a mate/partner/warm-body-to-wake-up-next-to.  It's not insecurity, at least, it's not the normal insecurity.  I'd want to pin it on being afraid of how I'll look when the EMT arrive and find me on the couch, but as I'll be dead, I doubt I'd really care.

Part of it, I know, is the fact that I now work in an office, sitting down all day, and my crippling desire to sleep once I get home - having spent an exhausting day of...dealing with people...from the "comfort" of my chair.  But looking at my co-workers, I have a dread of what can easily become my repertoire of comments (aches, pains, and dieting to relieve said aches and pains and "You know, really start living" - actual quote for a forty-three year old in regards to their joining Weight Watchers).

All fine and well, really - and I've been able to stick to my plan about four to six days a week.  And I honestly do feel better, both in general and about myself - although that may just be the endorphins talking.

The thing that I cannot control is my hairline, which has decided to enter a war of attrition with my scalp.  And since follicle revanchists don't happen, I'm a bit stuck on this count.  My hair was one of those things people always commented on - from family members to friends of the family, to girls I was courting.  It was the one thing I knew wouldn't disappoint.

Now, though, I have have the creeping suspicion that I can measure the distance lost as a solid centimeter, maybe two, and it's only a matter of time until I have the dreaded "geographical patterns" - with a tiny grove of hair forming Australia, and the Asian subcontinent in a horseshoe around the side with the might pacific of a chrome-dome filling in the rest.

I shouldn't worry about this, but I do.  I like my hair, and I never obsessed about it until I got the office job and realized that I had no hope of ever showing up to work with the beginnings of a bear ever again - those days were gone, and stylistic blandness is hear to stay.

So what can I do?  My evil plan for coping with it is, once the geography settles in, I'm going to grow a goatee and Fu-Manchu mustache.  Then I'm going to shave me.  Everything but the properly started facial hair and the eyebrows.  The facial hair I'll try to cultivate into the long and wispy style, so that I'll look something like a Celtic Dr. Lao.

Which I much prefer to look like a midget version of George "The Animal" Steele.

FML? No, just FU...

I'm crap with headaches - I've taken large bit of metal through the torso, been hit by cars, bricks, book, bottle and once a small child and solider through them all.  Even went to work a few hours after being impaled by a crowbar - literally, the thing went through through me, and then there I was folding pants and cursing under my breath.  It's in the police report.  But headaches lay me right out - I think it comes from the fact that I think my brain, deficient though it is in a great many regards, is the part I like best.  I hate hearing people talk about their headaches, but then then I always assume mine are worse because, well, it's my head.

The thing is, though, I don't tend to tell people when I'm in pain.  This is because my father's spine is in constant agony - and has been since I was a child - to the point that telling him I have a headache is like telling a blind person the lights are off and you aren't sure where they are.  They can pity you, but sympathy is impossible.

So, forgive me when I say this or don't, this is pretty much my reaction to people constantly whining on their websites.  I know I'm guilty of this, too - but next to no one reads my blog.  On social media sites, though, it's another story - you get mass puling about the various and sundry, usually one tab over from my world news reading about child soldiers in Africa, the U.S./Mexico drug wars, or the Middle East (how sad is it that I don't have to say "or something happening in...", just put the place name and we all nod?).  Oh, your significant other left you or yelled at you or your job sucks?  Click tab - there's a kid getting peppered by a belt fed chain gun.  Yup, "FML" indeed.

Perhaps this is a sign of both our good fortune, and our doom.  True, most of us who don't live in Detroit or East St. Louis rarely worry about which type of street sweeper is turning the corner, but we also ignore those who do.  Yes, I was fairly well shell shocked when my basement flooded, taking a lot of my childhood (and a few bits of future) with it - then I saw how Vermont, remembered what happened in Nashville (just to name the bits in [very] recent memory), and shut up right quick.

But it won't do to get self-righteous about it - as I said, scroll down a post or two and there's me going on about how life is a disappointment.  But that's just it - I'm disappointed and frustrated, not one of the various forms of -cidal over those events, and I know it.  I know it's not the end of the world - and even if it was, it would give me a reason to get out of my high school reunion in two years.

I would be fine if it was just my teenage acquaintances, but it isn't - people upwards of forty on my feed are there, acting as though it's the days of fire when their car runs out of gas on the freeway.  Well, it's not, it's you missing a day of work - if that.  It's all just new information, things meant to aid you the next time life go for the groin with a steel toed boot.  Repeatedly broken heart?  Maybe it's you.  Problems with the family?  All families are psychotic.  Friends ditch you?  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD YOU'RE ONLINE WITH PEOPLE - MAKE NEW PLANS.

Why sit there and sulk?  There's a chance that it's all meaningless anyway - go to the fucking movies, and don't think about how odd it is that you're alone, think about the movie.  Read a book, take your mind off of the problem so your brain can work it out because: it's not that bad.

Unless you have a headache.  Then it is that bad.  Just find a nice quiet place and have a lie down.

Twits...

So, there's a new "widget" (which I thought was to "wedgie a midget") to your right for my twitter feed.  I'm rather glad that it doesn't fit properly, as I feel it makes it pop.  But I've found myself rather taken with Twitter - for one thing, it might be the apotheosis of Internet interaction - you are streaming into the void, anything you want, and interacting with people you have decided to stalk (well, "follow").  I prefer it to facebook, where everyone seems to pick a few days every month to whine (see next post), and myspace (which just became a massive ad), and google+ (which is too new to really be effective).  I like this blog, but I usually turn to it when I feel like spewing bile that I hope is entertaining, but I know is really just wankery.

The threat of wankery is always there - it's easy to slip into the general blah-ness of life and then start bitching about how nothing exciting happens or your lover used way 26 to leave you.  But there seems to be less of a chance of the social orgy of abasement and self-flagellation.  You have 140 characters - the normal facebook whiny post takes a bit more than that, and each @NAME makes it less and less.  I have to evilly chortle every this happens...so I've yet to evilly chortle, but I've been gearing up for when it's time.

Yeah, voyeur that I am, I'm also reading the thoughts of others.  I really dig Joe Hill (who...really is currently the best writer in his family [sorry Mr. King]) and Neko Case (her voice is sex, her tweets are delightful), and Roger Ebert (one of the few critics I respect).  Do I feel any closer to these people?  A bit.  Closer than I would about the normal twitter celebrities, who tend to be people that helped me decide to avoid television like the plague.  But there is something wonderful about sitting in on how people's day went, like being invited to dinner and listening to snippets of conversation around the table in between lamenting the lack of carrots in the salad.

So, will I be sticking to the haiku format of twitter?  I suppose so - I've yet to see a twitter war, but the people I've been following - be they friends or famous people I wish I knew.  Not because they're famous, mind you - I just want to be at the dinner.

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.

We Gather Together to Pawn Our Crap Unto Others...

Normally, the last Saturday of September is Hulmeville Day - a three town wide flea market where you can buy everything from children's clothing to military grade civilian vehicles.  But, as we're currently still experiencing a slow motion monsoon, it's been pushed back into October, which suits me fine, as we're still checking the "to-be-sold" piles for mildew and water damage.

There's also a looming "problem" to our yearly undertaking - the "our" here being the family McGovern as opposed to the town at large - namely, we're running out of crap.   It's been five years of heavy lifting, but we're damn near out of furniture, the book selection has gone from twenty crates of books (per year) to ten (beginning last year).  Most of the tech got sold off last year to strange people in white vans who had a lot of twenties and flannel.  Most of the clothing goes to the shelters.

Still, though, that's our look out.

There's still the normal insanity of "things lodged under the couch since 1974," humidifiers shaped like the ranch from "Dallas", decommissioned jeeps from the Korean war that still have the bracers for mounted ordinance, and sword canes (yes, I bought one, don't act like you wouldn't have done the same).  There's miniature ponies walking around firehouses, and the smell of bar-b-q everywhere (even in the port-a-johns...which is an interesting experience that I won't go into further).

It has become a minor fixture for folks across bucks county, parts of middle-south Jersey.  It clogs the streets of the town, rips the carefully manicured lawns of suburbia, and pastes the rest with tables and blankets and shit that hasn't seen any sort of light since the first Regan administration.

There's more to this than bargain hunting.  If there wasn't, I don't think it would be nearly as large as it has become.  Part of it, I suppose, is the normal suburban habit of knowing people two houses down and that's really it - the porch lights go on, maybe they see the others in church or passing by during power-walks/jogs/bike-rides.  Now, though, we get to see them, and see what they've had buried in their basements and attics.  It supplies both the need for gossip and the need for community, working like a block party/Spring cleaning.

So we deal with the questions about what is and isn't for sale, hagglers, and that one neighbor dressed in army fatigues that smell like Schnapps.

Which, on the whole, is better than how I normally spend my Saturday mornings.