10.10.11

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.

6.10.11

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.




2.10.11

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.