Missing The War

This is for Zane's Birthday, it is late, like pretty much everything I do in my life. I keep listening to three songs over and over, let's see if they put themselves into this.

I've been coming to this blog a lot lately, to see if I have talked about something already, to see how I used to feel about people, places and things, and to help me figure out what is going on in my head. Isn't that what detectives do? Go through someones past life to figure out what frame of mind they were in or whatever? Well, I am detecting myself lately. Anyways. I've been coming to this blog a lot lately, and the pictures on the right side bar continue to be from Dan and Marliegh's wedding on Fourth of July. None of the scenes in the pictures are familiar. They make sense; I can tell when people are drinking, dancing, crying, fighting, whatever. But I didn't see any of this happen. I was standing behind a table playing the soundtrack for most of the night. I enjoy doing this, but it got me thinking.

More days and nights lately my mind is somewhere else. It is in kitchens of houses on streets with numbers for names. It is in car rides, bus depots, airport terminals and standing on docks. Its at weddings, funerals, hospitals, gravesides, baseball games, and graduations. It is at the beach, in a lake, at a waterfall, beside a cliff, on a peak, in the desert and lost. It is holding hands, kissing, fucking, punching, crying, hugging, celebrating, singing and dancing with girls, women, men, boys, family, friends, coworkers, bosses and alone.

But I can't prove it. There are pictures somewhere, in some box or some landfill or sitting in a drawer undeveloped. There is video, maybe, in a format that no one could possibly still play. No one took minutes though. No one wrote a description in journal to be cataloged and referred to by someone someday to prove/disprove my existence. But I was there.

And fuck them if they don't believe me.

I meant everything. Even when I lied, or stole, or cheated, or whatever thing didn't seem right; I meant it. Every kiss, every tear, every thrust, every hug, every joke, every curse, every compliment, every erection, every stare filled with anger/passion/pain, every song, every mistake, every regret (no regrets, no looking back at sinking ships). All of it. I did it, I felt it, and I meant it.

You can't find it in photographs. You cant find it a video. You can't find it in a third hand story. It is all in my heart and my head.

There are nouns I have forgotten. They come back into my head every once in a while. I still care about them. There are things here I have forgotten to say. But if I said everything I had to say, I would have nothing left for tomorrow, nothing left for this.

But there is one thing.

Happy Birthday Zane.

Don't stand there, participate. I am sure you already are.

How are things on the west coast...

Works over, almost. I'm laying down in the Togo waiting area. It's
strange, this is how my nights used to always start, closing at
Chilis. Then it would be out to find a backyard or a bar, meet up with
a girl I loved, wanted to love, or love to hate. We drive somewhere,
anywhere, or my place. One night stands. Engagements. Cuddling.
Dancing. Those used to be my nights. And where did they get me?

Well, when I leave here tonight it's off to a backyard, and then maybe
kisses in an alley or a room, shots and pints and who knows.

Hearts, Bones, Nooses, Promises and the other things I break or are broken

Valentines Day is first my mother's birthday. It is everything else second. I like making lists, so I have a list today and a story tomorrow, for Zane's birthday.

• Girls who may or may not have been my valentine during school: Miyoko, Lisa, Ashley, Raquel, Kimi, Christine, Tami and Jessica. I am wrong on some of those.
• Places I have spent Valentines day: Lancaster, Palmdale, Chicago, Riverside, Hume Lake, Northridge, Canoga Park, Maxdons, and Blarney Cove
• All Alkaline Trio songs are about today, especially when I listen to them on Valentines Day
• This list is shitty.
  

If I had a soothsayer, they would say to watch out for today.

I am making this day, February 8th, my mortal enemy.

I left the house for class tonight, and the lights bounced off my windshield in a certain way, and the air rushed out of my lungs, and my shoulders got real heavy. Things got bad. It took me 11 tries in 5 different spots to parallel park, I was late for class, so I came to the library to write.

I am learning lessons about you, February 8th, I will get you in a couple of years.

P.S. Check the archives, that makes this all better.

When you could be here, you are slipping away...

Football season is almost over. That has to do with this, and it has to do with nothing. I have a heart full of things to say, a mouth full of things to discuss, a soul full of things to be ashamed of, but today is not those day. Today is the day for this...

I passed a funeral procession today. Well, almost.

The Peppers I spend my time these days is a lot like the Pepper's I used to spend my time. The one where I complained about facial hair and bosses and I made mixes to loose my job to. They are remarkably similar, at least in lay out.

Today, just before I got out, the small part of the restaurant was filled with people. They all knew each other, or at least knew of each other. And they all wore black.

There are specifics to this that I do not know. There are rumors about these people that I have heard, but this is neither the time or place to talk about why they were sitting together in an awkward combination at the Pepper's that employs me. I just know that, for the few hours on this Saturday, before the end of football season, they were united by something given to them by a man. He might have been a boy, he might have been a giant. We are all of these things at various times. But whatever this man was: boy, god, fuck-up, lover, cousin or friend; these people all thought it best to remember him on this Saturday. And I too, will remember him, in my own way.

I have been fortunate in not knowing the sting of death, personally, in these years I am stringing together. I feel like I have mentioned this before, in this place, but I am not sure. But this is what I have, for him, the gentlemen who probably left us too soon. The fucked up thing is that we don't know if it was too soon or too late...

30th street east was very close to the house I grew up in. On that street sat two landmarks that I have been thinking about all day, before the bad news, before the funeral, before I got out of bed. They were both places of death. Maybe someone died there, I am not sure, but they were dead. I knew this at seven, when I first walked through the desert to them, to figure out their geography, to make up a history that would suit them, now that they were almost gone. One was a large concrete silo/fireplace and some woodwork. It had to be a house, no, a home. There was a father, he worked to hard, and a mother, who loved to much, and one day it collapsed under its own weight. The same thing happened to my parents, but our house stood up, I saw it the other day. It freaked me out. The other place had a concrete pool that I used to try to skateboard in. There were problems everywhere. One, I was a horrible skateboarder. Two, there was dirt everywhere, and no lip. Some kid told me once that was where they kept their water, they didn't have a well. That seemed insane to me. Evaporation in the desert would have made any effort worthless. I guess it doesn't matter now. Why?

All of those places got torn down. The two I mentioned, the rest I didn't; they are all gone. They got replaced by track homes in the real estate boom. We all know that went bust, now those homes sit empty, and the places of desert life before it was a life are gone. No kid is going to wander out and find the remenants of a home from 90 years previous. Not like I did, but what is the actual difference. The places I held dear didn't mean to me what they meant to the people who lived in my favorite places to visit, and neither my home to them.

There was some point after high school, but before I became the person that I am most days of the week, that my father was in a funeral. It was a guy he worked with. The name escapes me, if I even knew it before he passed, but he is dead. My dad picked me up for something, I couldn't even tell you if I had to, I don't remember what it was. But in the car, a car I would later drive into the ground and get 600 dollars from the state from, was still a sticker in the window that said "procession". It was very strange to me that people had decided that mass producing a sticker for a funeral procession would be a great way to make money, but they did, and they did. This story doesn't seem to make much sense right now, but let me try to tie this all together...

Death doesn't show his face in my life that often. That makes me happy. But everything seems to fall to commerce. I was amazed at the number of people who showed up for this man's funeral. I am sure there were more than who showed up to Peppers, but they all seemed to care. And I think they all cried.

And that is all I want.

A lot of tear stained faces.

Because they will take EVERYTHING else away from us.

Everything.