 | 09302002 | |
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Another month we did, you and me and us, another one we made it through. Things got strange in the middle, loose at the seams, a little unraveled but with the right hands and the right threads we knit it back together. Thanks, my thimbles and hands, my nears and fars.
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The sun melts everything down, taking a half a dozen dogs through their paces on this deceptively warm Sunday morning, how apropos. I get a lucky draw today, dog after dog of my favorites, Sheba getting so big that she's almost grown into her paws, three-legged Drew bouncing merrily along, Bruno careening from cheek to jowl, tripping passerby with his leash, Snow yanking my shoulder out of the socket as he takes off down the street, my feet clapping the sidewalk in a high-five forever.
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Rachel's room is at the back of her apartment and the only windows are at the front, so when we bed down for a night's sleep we're far from the world, the streetlights straining to reach us as we cocoon in the blankets. Daylight has the same problem, though, and without intending it we wake up, bleary, looking at each other and then the clock as it's one in the afternoon, the day half slipped away but not really missed.
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With a clunk, a whirr and a plume of steam, the antiquated blueberry blubbery iMac that I do everything on here at work ground to a halt, simple applications fuzzing and flickering as the operating system finally died. It'd been crashing eight to ten times a day for the last week or so, so I knew that something was up. I carted it to the back and got a replacement, trudgingly replacing all my software and loss. Friday, never loved you more.
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The RSO curse has risen again, it's time for Thursday practice and a tropical storm sets down in Florida, sending sheets of rain our way. I'm tempted, since we don't have a drummer, to build a complicated habitrail/storm drain system that will channel even drops of water down on the abandoned drum kit, splashing on the high-hat and thrumming on the floor tom as electricity travels through our guitars and out into the cool New Jersey night.
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Free long distance is a pernicious thing, my new cell phone hot in my hands I spent last night reaching out around the globe, talking to my Dad for the first time in near eight months as he prepares the Alaska homestead for the onset of winter. As always, we get to evetually talking about politics, he's relieved that I'm past the draft age and frankly so am I. It's so weird, we're both so weary of the ways of the world, but he's up in the frozen isolation and I'm still here in the thick of the thieves. But for how long? A lot longer.
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Rachel and I are in a Thai restauraunt in Midtown; they've seated us at a table next to an older woman eating alone. We order our food but whenever a waiter comes within the orbit of this woman, she sucks the poor man into her madness. "Is that spicy chili sauce? You know, I can't have spicy chili sauce, because I get (long pause) - you know - (longer pause) - the - (painfully, glacially long pause, we are frozen with terror and anticipation) - the diarrhea." And then she puts on her headphones and digs into her lobster, in her own little world.
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This is the shadow I cast; the ghost I leave behind, I changed my mind again. Two sets of footprints in the sand; I walked on my hands, got left behind again.
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The last day of summer, a perfect Sunday morning kicked off by dogwalking four slobbery, dirty, happy to see me dogs, and after two hours I'm a filthy mess. I run to the office to change and then to meet Lucy and Rachel for champagne on the patio and then out into a last evening of summer, Rachel's neck turning a soft pink from her first sunburn in years. And on the last day of summer I feel pink as well, like I shed a skin and the new one's growing in, like there's a sea change coming but I don't know what it is, and I resolve that when the first leaf falls off the tree tomorrow I'm not going to forget anything, anything.
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In Philly, waiting outside the recreation center where the wrestling is taking place tonight, leaning up against the wall reading the Cometbus book. Dick Togo, one of the Japanese wrestlers that I came to Philadephia to see, comes out of the building with a group of Japanese photographers. One of the photographers walks up to me and says "Excuse me?" I ask if he wants me to move away from the wall and he responds with "No, he (pointing to Togo) wants to take a picture with you." I'm flabbergasted, but that's not so unusual these days.
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 That's a goddamned fog-making robot there. |
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I need to be calmer, quieter. I have been feeling the roil start again, the eternal internal monologue of doubt and despair that I've tried so hard to quiet over the last year. I need to return to that state of unexamined purity that I had when I was traveling, so consumed with living and loving that I had no time for fear or worry. That's elusive, I know, but having been there before I know I can be there again - all it takes is patience, calm and singularity of belief. Let's see if I can get those running again.
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When I don't exercise, I can feel my entire body starting to rebel against me, muscles straining and creaking as I get out of bed and return myself there. It's also my brain that starts to go, depression and paranoia sneaking in the corners. So I cut work a few early last night, came home, slipped on my trainers and went for a run down Riverside, the sun setting over the Hudson as I sweated out all the worry and strife. I need to do that more often, more push-ups and low hurdles and generally remembering what I love about this body I'm in, more pushing it a little, more making it work.
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kthorjensen: sometimes when things are really awesome my brain can't process it all and i forget stuff kthorjensen: i have awesomeheimer's disease |
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First day post-mugging and I'm doing all the little things I have to do, cancelling my credit cards and getting a form at the DMV for a new non-driver's ID card and all that other little stuff that goes in the inside of your wallet. Gotta get new pictures of my neices to replace the ones that were in there, gotta get a new library card, gotta get a new wallet to put it all in! Who knew that being a victim of crime could get so complicated.
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Walking home from the subway station, sudden clump of running feet behind me and I'm tackled, arms pinned to my side and hustled into Morningside Park. There's a black kid in front of me in a white Roca Wear hoodie, saying "Where's the wallet at, where's the wallet at" as he plunges his hads into my pockets. It's in my front right but I don't even get that out, he's got his hands on it and yanks it out, and the guy restraining me throws me down into the cool, wet dirt.
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Neil comes down the stairs, all he'd wanted for his birthday party was a fog-spewing robot and by God I was giving it to him, pouring hot water through the chest flap onto the dry ice in the little plastic receptacle as he came down the stairs. He stood there, agog, as I handed it to him, and he carried it back up to the party like a puppy, held at arm's length, saying "Awesometastic" quietly to himself, thin tendrils of fog wisping down the stairs behind him.
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In gear and firing on all cylinders, things are falling into place like Tetris these days. Every time I sit down to get stuff done I actually manage to stay there and get it done, despite the temptation of beautiful girl and fun Nintendo and sweet, sweet beer and all of the other amazing best things ever about living in New York. But I'm drawing, playing music, writing a few bits and pieces for here and there, and sleeping calm, cool nights. And it's good.
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"By God, that one-armed midget with no feet is the best dancer I've ever seen!" - fried chicken, Red Stripes and a night spent painting and watching the adventures of the Goddess Bunny is a night well spent indeed. I'm raging away on a secret project that has to be done by the weekend and it feels good to be under the gun again. I live on deadlines - in fact, the other secret project that's coming in about a month is all about deadlines. Enough teasing? No, not yet.
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So this was the big hullaballoo, and for all the ORANGE ALERTS and AMERICA MUST BE VIGILANTS nothing really happened. I'm not a very political guy, to be honest - the machinations of foreign policy are for the most part completely beyond my comprehension. But even a slowbro like myself can see war on the horizon, and this time it's not even remotely justifiable. There's no revenge, no motivation, no reason to go to war with Iraq aside from making a profit for well-connected corporate scallywags. Sigh. And yet soon bombs will be flying, and we'll be waving our explosive dick from Mecca to Medina, Christ over all and America over that.
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Strip for forthcoming issue of Matte magazine.
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Everybody's got their onions ready for this Wednesday, everybody's rehearsing their theater community reactions or art community reactions or what the nuts ever you have reactions to the horrible, terrible, hurrible durrible tragedagedy of September 11th. I'm as sympathetic as the next American to those who lost their lives and loves in the disaster, but I really don't need to hear a fortnight of Tony Kusher dialogue on NPR to tell me how I should be feeling. I'm planning on skipping town on the big day, not out of fear but rather out of annoyance with parades, pomp, and crying eagles soaring high over the etc etc.
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We're asleep in the living room of Ryan's friend Pete's house in the Adams Morgan section of DC. It's about 3:30 in the morning when the front door flies open and three totally wasted blonde sorority girls stagger in, giggling maniacally. Ryan and I sit up, confused, as they hold onto each other for support and look around at the basement-punk decor. "This - this isn't Tiffany's house," one spits out, and as swiftly as they arrived, they're gone again. Five minutes later Pete comes out of his room - "What the hell was that?"
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That was better than I could have ever hoped. Ryan and I get into Maryland at about 4PM on Saturday and are immediately told that Lord Rexington Fear is trundling around with some sort of cheese knife threatening to stab me! Since I've never been stabbed before, the novelty of the situation colors my whole day of shooting shit about an upcoming project and buying comics from some flabbergastingly good cartoonists. People regale me with stories of Rexington trying to cut his own palm with the knife to demonstrate how sharp it is, carrying leftovers around for two days, and other activities that cement him in my mind as the awesomest fat psychopathic stalkmonster ever. I didn't see or smell hide nor hair of him in the few hours I was there, though, so who knows. Keep on stabbing for the stars, Rexington!
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Heading off to Maryland for SPX this weekend, Ryan offered to drive so I don't have to take the greydog which is nice. I love Greyhound but it's always more fun to be in a car with a friend blasting Black Flag. Apparently he has a place to stay too which means I may not be rocking my traditional park bench. I guess the only thing I have to "worry" about now is Lord Rexington Fear "beating me up." A full report on Monday when I get back.
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It's time to leave cover songs behind, we've decided, so we're bidding a humble adeiu to the Misfits numbers that have carried us so far and instead are standing in Friggle's parents basement holding out guitars and staring at each other. Ryan threw all his songs away. Friggle goes to college and can't be expected to write songs. I only write sensitive boy anthems that sound like Belle & Sebastian because I'm inexcusable. Then Ryan pipes up with "What Bruce Loose of Flipper used to do to write songs was just take whatever song was popular at the time and fuck it up until it was unrcognizable" so we go upstairs to get some Avril Lavigne chord progressions.
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Meetings and mistreatings, I complain a lot but it's really just because of the laziness. If I had all the free time I needed I'd just waste it on the usual nonsense, the sun is out and my slackgland is pumping out the carefree hormones and stimulating my climbtree gland. I just got out of another epic timewaster of a meeting about this video game, who ever thought that making something that gives little kids epileptic seizures could be so boring? I'm tired of pounding my head against walls not made of sugar. Off to the drinkydrawing night for a Bass and a doodle and then out to meet Rachel and her gargantuan Vermont brother, my face was made for sibling punching.
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Haiku: "Spooning," you hate that word; something else to describe it? two hooked in one? |
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Why do I work on holidays, especially Labor Day? I could just see the ghost of some caricature captain of industry looming o'er my shoulder puffing on a cigar made out of hundred-dollar bills, tiny faces of minimum-wage orphans drifting in the haze as I crunch down over my computer, tappa tapping away at the game design document we should have had out the door a hitch and a half ago. Yes, I'm alone in the office, my tiny little iMac speakers blaring out cracked-out Casiolectro crunkle, grinding out the blueprints for a Game Boy game. I'll be leaving soon, true, but not soon enough.
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Walking dogs in the rain is never as much fun as it sounds but despite rocking a white T-shirt and no umbrella I managed to take a few out, dashing from awning-shade to tree-shadow as the water came down on us. I didn't do my usual number, choosing instead to go buy a hoodie and some records and some books and some peace of mind before going home to prep up for a rock and roll show that was cancelled, I'd like to think rained out. So I sat, cat-on-lap, a beer in my left hand and Super Mario in my right, listening to it come down, come down, come down.
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After the last week of frenzy and hectic, I needed some decompression, and sleeping until the mid-afternoon in a big soft bed was the way to do it. After an amazing band practice, we've only played together twice but the new band (name still pending) is coming together like star-crossed lovers, filling out into a big (maybe 7-8 people!) unit with a big, full sound. Lots of keyboards and people singing at the same time. After that, a few of us went out to dinner and then sleep, for longer than I'd thought, but as long as I needed.
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AUGUST
all content (c) 2002 k. thor jensen