I'm used to dealing with opposites. I can deal with most of the confusion and such that rises out of it. Wasn't always that way, but I guess maturity had to take some form. Case in (professional) point - I had material for three books. Realized I'll most likely never force myself to be still long enough to write them, so condense the basic points enough to make one, fairly cohesive (if metaphor addled) novel. I still doubt if it's anything that could go big - but my views on the importance of that changes day to day, so what can you do?
Another example: My office nickname. I found it out yesterday (05.25.2011). To set the scene, my sub-boss' nickname was Flounder, from the movie "Animal House" - an eminent fuck-up whose arrogance and possibly criminal underpinnings made me feel better about myself. My nickname is "Kaczynski" as in Ted "The Unabomber" Kaczynski. This is because I wear a hoodie at work, as the office is kept about as cool as late autumn. While I'll admit to being an angry person, and at times a very strange person, I'm not a violent one. As I've often pointed out, I'm a (mostly) honest coward. I get it, though. Most of the folks around the office that call me that remember the Tylenol Murders, so the fear of the man (if they ever felt is) is way past the sell by date. You have to make fun of it, or it owns you. You have to wear the monsters' skins to make sure there's a zipper. If you can't mock something, you have no business taking it serious.
I work with highly experienced, well trained people. I was trained by a spineless backstabber who it appears (going over his files and records) was possibly involved in low level fraud. I can see why they need the excuse to make fun. Tiny little pissants have given birth to larger monsters before. If you think A.Anderson was bad, look at Goldman. If you think Main was underhanded, check out Haliburton. And the former always started from something smaller. You have to put on the monster's skin. You have to convince yourself that it's not you.
Recently...frankly, I feel myself beginning to lose patience with the whole wretched affair. Most of the people close to me who aren't family and know about the Trip are excited for me. Those in my bloodline - or closer to the blood line than to me...they've expressed their doubts. Most of them are the elders - guys and gals my parents age. And my parents, too. They don't see the point of it, I guess - or they do, and they don't like it.
[...]Here's a story I hate. Late summer, 1988 or 89. I'm in the backseat of my dad's old blue coup, and we go driving through Fairless Hills. That's the town where I spent my first nine months of breathing my own air, and mom and dad both liked to drive by the old house and see what the "new" owners were doing with it. I was three or four at the time - I remember this because dad retells this story from time to time. I remember the car. That's really it.
Anyway -- dad asked me if I was doing alright, since I was having nightmares. I told him that there were Asian people in the trees. And that we were shooting at them and they were shooting at us.
When my dad told me the story later (it stopped being a thing in my late teens - around 2001, of course), he went into Edgar Cayce, and reincarnation. For a First Vatican Catholic, my father has always seemed to know a lot about reincarnation - a couple of times he claimed his interest in the Titanic was because he never got off the boat, and when we went to see that stupid James Cameron flick he had to walk out towards the end. Whatever was working on him, I guess, had been working on me, too, just in a different way. When I was ten, I started reading what I could about Vietnam.
I don't remember any of the dreams my dad used to say I had. Mostly, he's stopped talking about it. Which might be for the best.
[...] I wrote that to write this: I've always gotten along better with the old-timers. So their...let's call it "disapproval" of my plans for the trip cuts a bit harder than I suppose it should. Most of all when it comes from the ex-hippies. Those that I thought might get it. But they don't. I understand why they don't:
Parents still together after thirty-one years.
Descent job.
Ok (not great) head on my shoulders.
Somewhat of a future.
A couple of romantic prospects (to them this means girls around my age).
They don't see me from thirteen until twenty-five(ish) - the unreasoned self-loathing, the pitch black anger towards the world because at least the anger made sense, the feeling that I would have been better served by life being a cruel bastard rather than a kind one. They don't see it because, fuck, I kept it hidden most of the time. All of the dark humor, all of the gallows wisdom, all of night spent reading about what was happening beyond the no-horse town. [...]I was able to shrug off the first World Trade Center attack. Oklahoma City. Columbine fucked me up a little, but not much. 9-11...shit, I used to laugh at the politicians saying we could never forget, then doing their damndest to return us to a normal mindset while making my mother go through strip searches every time she gets on a plane (once every two months). I shrugged off the horror. I had to. It was easier than admitting that it made sense to me. No one really makes friends with their shadows. Not until it's that or implode. Memories will do that to you.
And they didn't see that. They don't know about the long nights alone with just my thoughts whirring on and on behind my eyes. They see the kid who couldn't connect with people until he started acting. They don't see the kid who couldn't stop acting. They don't see the family hound ripping his mental state the shreds over the fact that he feels like he'd be stabbing his family in the back by going. They just know they might stop it. All they had to do is bring back the scared thirteen year old.
[...] I was planning the road trip in 2003. When I was getting ready to graduate. The end point was Vancouver, BC then - I've toned it down to Seattle, WA - and I was pretty much ready until life happened (as it tends to do). But that's a story for another day. When my manager at the books store asked me what I was going to do once I got there, I said, "No clue. Lots of options." I remember the look he gave me.
My nickname at work is Kaczynski. Lots of folks laugh at it. Me included. They need to see the zipper on the monster's skin. I know it's a hoodie - I wear it because they won't touch the fucking thermostat.
Another example: My office nickname. I found it out yesterday (05.25.2011). To set the scene, my sub-boss' nickname was Flounder, from the movie "Animal House" - an eminent fuck-up whose arrogance and possibly criminal underpinnings made me feel better about myself. My nickname is "Kaczynski" as in Ted "The Unabomber" Kaczynski. This is because I wear a hoodie at work, as the office is kept about as cool as late autumn. While I'll admit to being an angry person, and at times a very strange person, I'm not a violent one. As I've often pointed out, I'm a (mostly) honest coward. I get it, though. Most of the folks around the office that call me that remember the Tylenol Murders, so the fear of the man (if they ever felt is) is way past the sell by date. You have to make fun of it, or it owns you. You have to wear the monsters' skins to make sure there's a zipper. If you can't mock something, you have no business taking it serious.
I work with highly experienced, well trained people. I was trained by a spineless backstabber who it appears (going over his files and records) was possibly involved in low level fraud. I can see why they need the excuse to make fun. Tiny little pissants have given birth to larger monsters before. If you think A.Anderson was bad, look at Goldman. If you think Main was underhanded, check out Haliburton. And the former always started from something smaller. You have to put on the monster's skin. You have to convince yourself that it's not you.
Recently...frankly, I feel myself beginning to lose patience with the whole wretched affair. Most of the people close to me who aren't family and know about the Trip are excited for me. Those in my bloodline - or closer to the blood line than to me...they've expressed their doubts. Most of them are the elders - guys and gals my parents age. And my parents, too. They don't see the point of it, I guess - or they do, and they don't like it.
[...]Here's a story I hate. Late summer, 1988 or 89. I'm in the backseat of my dad's old blue coup, and we go driving through Fairless Hills. That's the town where I spent my first nine months of breathing my own air, and mom and dad both liked to drive by the old house and see what the "new" owners were doing with it. I was three or four at the time - I remember this because dad retells this story from time to time. I remember the car. That's really it.
Anyway -- dad asked me if I was doing alright, since I was having nightmares. I told him that there were Asian people in the trees. And that we were shooting at them and they were shooting at us.
When my dad told me the story later (it stopped being a thing in my late teens - around 2001, of course), he went into Edgar Cayce, and reincarnation. For a First Vatican Catholic, my father has always seemed to know a lot about reincarnation - a couple of times he claimed his interest in the Titanic was because he never got off the boat, and when we went to see that stupid James Cameron flick he had to walk out towards the end. Whatever was working on him, I guess, had been working on me, too, just in a different way. When I was ten, I started reading what I could about Vietnam.
I don't remember any of the dreams my dad used to say I had. Mostly, he's stopped talking about it. Which might be for the best.
[...] I wrote that to write this: I've always gotten along better with the old-timers. So their...let's call it "disapproval" of my plans for the trip cuts a bit harder than I suppose it should. Most of all when it comes from the ex-hippies. Those that I thought might get it. But they don't. I understand why they don't:
Parents still together after thirty-one years.
Descent job.
Ok (not great) head on my shoulders.
Somewhat of a future.
A couple of romantic prospects (to them this means girls around my age).
They don't see me from thirteen until twenty-five(ish) - the unreasoned self-loathing, the pitch black anger towards the world because at least the anger made sense, the feeling that I would have been better served by life being a cruel bastard rather than a kind one. They don't see it because, fuck, I kept it hidden most of the time. All of the dark humor, all of the gallows wisdom, all of night spent reading about what was happening beyond the no-horse town. [...]I was able to shrug off the first World Trade Center attack. Oklahoma City. Columbine fucked me up a little, but not much. 9-11...shit, I used to laugh at the politicians saying we could never forget, then doing their damndest to return us to a normal mindset while making my mother go through strip searches every time she gets on a plane (once every two months). I shrugged off the horror. I had to. It was easier than admitting that it made sense to me. No one really makes friends with their shadows. Not until it's that or implode. Memories will do that to you.
And they didn't see that. They don't know about the long nights alone with just my thoughts whirring on and on behind my eyes. They see the kid who couldn't connect with people until he started acting. They don't see the kid who couldn't stop acting. They don't see the family hound ripping his mental state the shreds over the fact that he feels like he'd be stabbing his family in the back by going. They just know they might stop it. All they had to do is bring back the scared thirteen year old.
[...] I was planning the road trip in 2003. When I was getting ready to graduate. The end point was Vancouver, BC then - I've toned it down to Seattle, WA - and I was pretty much ready until life happened (as it tends to do). But that's a story for another day. When my manager at the books store asked me what I was going to do once I got there, I said, "No clue. Lots of options." I remember the look he gave me.
My nickname at work is Kaczynski. Lots of folks laugh at it. Me included. They need to see the zipper on the monster's skin. I know it's a hoodie - I wear it because they won't touch the fucking thermostat.
