N is for Nostradamus...

I could tell from the beginning that this wasn't going to turn out the way I had thought. There is the smell of sulfur in the air. I put it there. I'm burning wood matches to stay awake. They are in a rectangle box from a bar named after half of my yearly income. That half of my yearly income shares its name with a bar is suiting. I have the shakes from the last five or six years, but probably more from the last five or six months. I can really see them right now; I am spinning the matches as they burn towards my fingertips so the chard part twists to give a physical presentation of the twisting of the chambers of my heart and the tightening of the muscles around it. There is no solace in the sweaty can that almost slips out of my hand to empty its contents on my keyboard. Nothing changes with that. I still shake. She still doesn't call. I write more though, and I guess you have to be tortured to be a tortured artist. My four chambers are quitting on me. They used to make these: passion, desire, courage and love. Now they sleep through their shifts. There must be holes in them, letting all the good things out. It hurts when it beats. It hurts when it thinks. It hurts when it feels. It hurts because it feels like waste.

It isn't though. Not even close.

It is life.

And today it is great.

14/26

Minus the dancing - Video Day

My life is just like this video. Minus the dancing. And the pregnant girlfriend. And the fire escape. And Rod Stewart. But other than that, exactly the same.

"Young hearts be free tonight, time is on your side"

Fuckin' A, Rod Stewart, Fuckin' A.

I was thinking about that, the young hearts part. And I'm pretty sure he meant young as in age, especially with the running away and parties and all of that. But I prefer him to mean young as freshly in love. When it first starts to happen, when you wake up for the first time thinking about them, when you call them for the first time just to hear them talk, or when you make plans to do nothing but bask in their presence, you are young. You act irrational, like a teenager. You save their text messages/emails/voice mails and go over them over and over again. You think of the tiniest ways to make them smile, or make their day that much better. It is such a great feeling. Until it fades.

But I'm thinking it doesn't have to fade, right?

Young hearts be free tonight, time is on your side indeed.

the neverending battle of will and want

the want: a pile of my possessions in the desert catching fire.
the will: a dirty bedroom floor.

the want: a single-finger salute to my bosses.
the will: a reverse goatee.

the want: writing new songs and singing them in circles with friends.
the will: practice? are we talking about practice?

the want: a family dinner.
the will: fake chicken, plastic plates, dr pepper.

the want: more life moments from john cusack movies.
the will: more life moments from a bootlegged movie.

the want: more.
the will: less.

almost a second chance

I spent 20 minutes trying to find the right music to play while I wrote this. It ended up being Hey Mercedes.

I am not one to have a large backpack full of regrets, more like a wallet, a little kid wallet. I remember when I got my first wallet, it was a shitty red nylon one, and it had some change, a dollar or two, a picture of my parents and something with my address on it. Stupid little thing. Anyways, my "regret wallet" is mostly empty. I put events/people/places into it occasionally, and after a few years/months/days/minutes I take them out, realizing I am happy where I am now, and I wouldn't be here with/without that thing.

I do regret not buying the last Jawbreaker album when I found out about them in junior high and they were still together, but I probably would have sold it back at some point to buy a korn record, so I am actually ok with it. Besides, who would have wanted to be that cool in junior high? (HA!)

The main regret tormentor has always been my involvement with the fairer sex. Not the ones I actually stumbled into some sort of relationship but the ones I didn't. And not the ones I didn't because they saw behind the curtain or I wasn't boxing my weight, but the ones who because of circumstances it was impossible.

I had a girlfriend. They had a boyfriend. They lived in another state/country. They were married. I didn't know there name. I was moving away. They were moving home.

It's not even really a regret, actually. It's a what-if? What if any of those mitigating factors were gone and something could have happened, even for a night?

Most of these girls are very long gone and forgotten, thrown out with the boxes of pictures/address books/childhood memorabilia I have left at the dump during one of my many moves. Names and faces blur together. Did I meet them in a store, or under a tree, or at a friends apartment, or never at all?

Those chances never present themselves again.

Except this time.

I might have a second chance at a first shot.