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| 11302002 | |
| The Madagascar Institute found a new cavernous unsafe concrete hole to throw parties in, some kind of abandoned manufacturing warehouse, areas roped off with safety tape and the usual assortment of unsafe contraptions, tires tied together, and chaos that they bring to the table. Drank some whiskey, watched somebody ride the rustiest, scariest falling chair ever, vacuumed the Human Doormat while Erikka stepped on his face, et cetera. It was a good time, until the cops showed up and shut everything down on account of danger. |
| Hanging out the side of a car, trying frantically to get home without losing everything in my stomach (which was basically seven beers, as I'd forgotten to eat anything since breakfast), puke rocketing all over the rear passenger side door, one hand on my glasses to prevent them skidding off of my face and into traffic, and I'd been having a pretty good time today, all told, but I guess it couldn't last. |
| An open-faced turkey sandwich at the Odessa and a glass of beer after Jackass: The Movie may not be a very traditional way to spend a holiday, but when you're three time zones away from your family you learn to celebrate in other ways. So sleeping in, playing Cubivore, walking freezing to the theater to meet Erikka and chomping popcorn in a vacant auditorium, and then out for empty diner dinner. And it was pretty sweet, they even brought me a side of disco fries, which I later had to explain to my Mom exactly what those are. |
| I'm girding up for tonight's Motherfucker party, a monthly explosion of gender-bent coke-whoring and general depravity. Thanksgiving has always struck me as the most conservative, soft-focus family holiday out of the lot, so I think I'll enjoy tomorrow's schedule of lying on the couch with an icepack on my forehead, vainly trying to remember exactly what trouble I got myself into. I'm feeling pretty sassy today, so look for reports from the frontlines of the VIP lines and the back of the bar. I'll hold your hair. |
| Mysterious call on my cell phone in the middle of the day yesterday - since I lost my first one in a taxi on Halloween, I've been slowly rebuilding my phone book, but in this case it was a 917 number that I didn't have in memory, and since whoever 'twas didn't see fit to leave a message on my handy voice mail, I've got no way of knowing. I looked through my notebooks and paper-scraps last night but so far no match. Oh, sure, I could just call them back, but where's the mystery in that? |
| Three-day work week, no fronting on that. Even though I got nowhere to go on Thursday night I think I'll have a pretty decent turkey day, probably recovering from a skull-splitter of a hangover and gnawing on a turkey leg I fished out of somebody's trashcan. Two days off, two days of weekend - that's a foursquare of not-work that I couldn't be happier about. But, of course, that's if I can get through the first three. |
| There's tons of volunteers at the shelter today so I decide to take it easy for once and just take Sheba for a long meander around the neighborhood, trying to do a little light training so she'll be better-behaved around potential adopters. Of course, that all screeches to a halt as I'm showing her to some women on Bedford and talking about the shelter and she starts tearing circles around me, her tongue crazily lolling, jumping on my back and snuffling through my hair. I fall on my back off the curb into the street, get her under control and try to explain why, exactly, she is this way. |
| Logy and listless, ran out in the cripplingly cold city air to take care of some business but quickly hied it back to the comfort of the couch and the cats - it's just too damned frosty to spend that much time out and about, which is too bad. My nose starts running, sinuses freezing, hands jammed deep into pockets, hood up over my head jogging down the sidewalk like Rocky. All that steam coming out of my mouth, fogging up my glasses, could take me on a train somewhere where it's still summer. |
| It's gonna be an interesting night, all right - heading out to see #1 Entertainer Cex on his jaunt through town, happily on the guest-list and salivating to see the tour T-shirts I designed for him (possibly on sale in the store soon). It's Friday, finally, and although I'm going to be working a bit through the weekend there's still plenty of time for drinks and dogs and quiet desperation, the holy Trinity of my life on this weird, weird planet. I honestly can't ever call what's going to come my way next, and while that's a little disorienting, at least it keeps me awake. |
| When I was fourteen and got my first walkman for my birthday, it came with two tapes I had asked for - Mojo Nixon's "Root Hog Or Die" and "Three Feet High And Rising" by De La Soul. Ever since then I've wanted to be a grizzled, dirty mountain man and a rapper. Since there's not too many outhouses and stills in NYC, the first plan has gone mostly unfinished, but that's no excuse for the second. And that's how I find myself in Doug's home studio, busting honky rhymes as we look for the perfect beat all night long. |
| I'm sorry if things seem a little slow around here lately, what with my newly-acquired homebody status and all, but honestly what can I write about staying in, cooking steak and pan-wilted spinach and green chile beans and rice, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, drawing and playing guitar unamplified so nobody can hear it but me? Well, I guess I could write that I like doing it a lot. |
| Couldn't sleep all that well for a handful of reasons last night, and when I finally dropped off of the edge of consciousness I was plagued by anxiety dreams, visions of people complaining about eBay merchandise and drawing work, being laid off from my day job, everything Murphying in my dome as I tossed and turned, dislodging the cats and blankets. Somehow I took almost all of my clothes off in my sleep, wrapped a sheet around my neck and was choking the hell out of myself when it came time to go to work in the morning. |
| I'm full of vim and vigor today, ready to rocket away from my desk once the closing bell rings like a bee taped to a bottlerocket. I'm full of ants, a dozen things to do calling my name in tiny insect voices, demanding to be done before the sun rises tomorrow morning. I'm chirping like a cricket, wanting to dial everybody in my speed-dial just to see how they're holding up. I'm rolling up like a pillbug, buzzing like a cicada and living forever like a cockroach. |
| Up to 145th and Frederick Douglass to have a late, hangover-helping all-you-can eat lunch at Charles'. A warm plate piled with buttermilky fried chicken, cornbread hot inside a plastic bag, collard greens, macaroni and cheese with an orange dairy crust on the top. We eat until there's no more eating to be done and then the rest of the day goes to digesting and sleeping and warm dreaming. |
| Lost in the rain on a Saturday night due to my belief that the direction I'm facing when I climb out of the subway is the direction I need to go, so there's a little slog through a lot of puddles before we get re-oriented and headed in the right direction of the party. I drink a little, smoke a little, and break into a big dumb grin a lot, and when I finally dry off it's time to go home again. |
| The Kaiju boys and girls came back to town last night for another sweatbox crazyfest of giant monster wrestling. This was my fifth time seeing them live, and it's amazing to see how they've grown while still keeping true to their original intentions. It makes me happy, beyond the fact that giant monsters make me happy, that a bunch of art students with a dream and some foamcore can sell out clubs across the eastern seaboard. It makes me feel a lot better about all of my stupid monster dreams. |
| Every morning when I wake up, if Switch isn't already sleeping with me he'll run over and curl into the crook of my arm, purring like a bandsaw and making it completely impossible for me to motivate out of bed and onto the kitchen floor for my daily sit-ups. Sometimes he's asleep on a pile of my clothes in the corner, or on my messenger bag, or on my shoes, but as soon as I move he's asleep on me, trying to steal a few more minutes before the purring stops. |
| I had an interesting conversation with Frank yesterday night where he mentioned reading this page but not really wanting to, saying that he'd rather be able to bump into me on the street (which certainly does happen) and ask me how things are going rather than already be privy to the inner workings of my life. And it's an interesting conundrum - I have no idea who reads this page, whether they're old friends or new strangers. I have never even attempted to keep track of who comes here. Who are you? |
| The rain's coming down constant and slow, but for some reason I've still got a smile on my face. I'm reprioritizing, again, realizing that some of my old habits aren't very necessary anymore and some of my new ones should be encouraged a little more. It's going to be a busy week, as usual, but at the end of it I think it'll turn out to be a good one. Is this just another brief manic blurt before another hideous spiral of depression and immobility? To be honest, I don't really care - I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. |
| Some days I wish I was made out of glue, an adhesive homunculus, holding and enfolding and keeping things together, forever preserved. The band is breaking up and down, hackles rising over things beyond my control and all I can do is stand there, guitar in hand, trying not to cry as another world falls apart. Life seems full of stresses and fractures, tectonic plates drifting us off from each other to new lands. Some days I wish I could build a million bridges to keep us all together. |
| Two new puppies came into the shelter last week, still totally tiny and blank-slates, and it's no surprise that they found homes already, but thanks to the mandatory waiting period while they get their shots and neuterings and such they're still around the shelter to be walked for a while. I take Martha, the shyer, less fluffy one out to try to drum up some interest in the shelter but I can barely walk her, every half a block we're stopped by people who want to pet her. I sit down on the sidewalk and give them the shelter pitch while she crawls into my lap and curls up there, looking at all the people, wanting to be taken home. |
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Cutting down on 'spenditures as I have to now save the money to pay rent and bills and such, the hobo lifestyle coming to an end with 2002, one hopes. So I'm staying in unless I'm on the guest list, not ordering out but cooking rice and vegetables at home instead, if I could find a way to bathtub-brew my own whiskey I'd be a totally self-fulfilling prophecy. |
| I'd like to be doing pretty much anything at this moment besides working. I feel trapped behind my desk like an animal in some kind of cage, the weekend signing a siren song to lure me outside even as the slow tick of the clock constantly reminds me that I'm stuck here for that much longer. I'm trying to distract myself with projects from here (new Amber chat today, new Red Eye, Black Eye) but everything's all done and it's not even three PM yet... |
| Went to see the Mountain Goats last night. Somewhere out in the country, it could be the middle of California but it's just as likely Iowa or Scotland or Vietnam or somewhere that I've never seen, where there's still trees to get lost in but there's also empty expanses of orange to the horizon, there's a one-story house with a basement where a man and a woman live. For seemingly as long as I've been listening to music John Darnielle has been writing songs about them, and other people and other things, and I hope he does it forever. Thanks, John. You forgot to put me on the guest list, but thanks anyways. |
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| Some things aren't reducable, theorizable, explainable. Some things exist so far outside the want/get desire matrix of human existence that to attempt to force them in there robs them of their essential nature, like a quantum particle observed and hence changed. I've often said that I'd rather love something that understand it, and I'll stick by that until the day I go under, but what if what I'm trying to love is understanding, and understand is love? |
| Another work-week has begun, but I'm feeling a lot more capable than I was last week; the wall of labor that confronts me at least seems surmountable, crevices and footholds making themselves known to me as I struggle to heave myself over the top once again. But now I feel like I can do it, like it's possible, where last week I was just sitting at the base of the wall trying to push my skull through. |
| Sunday carries on the weekend of inactivity, amazingly enough I don't even walk the dogs today as the New York Marathon is running through my usual routes, a horde of sweaty, exhausted humanity stumbling by in front of me. I give up and head away from the shelter, back to a warm bed and a good movie. Next week, my little ones, when there's less of my two-legs clogging up the roads, I'll take you out. |
| My goal for this weekend was nothing. I didn't want to feel like I had anything on my back, anything on my to-do list, anything on my plate. Instead of rising from the couch with a bound to tackle the adventures that a weekend brings, I pulled my cat closer to my chest and went back to sleep, the heat hissing in the radiator and collecting in my bones, Switchblade's soft purring resonating through my chest like a far away earthquake. |
| Friday's come at last and as October winds to a close I'm hoping that I can come to terms with the winter as it approaches. I've been trying too hard to hold on to the summer, leaving the house in short sleeves warmed only by the memory of the sun on my skin. Times change, little friend, and if you don't change with them you'll just end up frozen. Welcome to November, here's your coat and scarf. |
OCTOBER
all content (c) 2002 k. thor jensen