From the heart, my heart

We laid on a couch, in that old house, and cried. We listened to Paul Baribeau and cried. The two of us went to that old bar with Bill and drank grandpa's drink because grandpa had been dead for weeks and no one told us.

We sat on the curb in front of the other old house and smoked cigarettes the best we could. We sucked too hard, or not enough. We called Tony and tears ran down our face and ash covered our hands and we thought this is how you feel, when something dies; when something goes away. But we went to bed alone and didn't know what to do.

We sat in a garage today, thinking about where you had gone. We played the songs that had meant everything; and the new ones that helped us pull your skin back and see you.

And we knew you were gone. And you were never coming back.

We replayed the conversations from your porch; to find our missteps.

We scanned photographs in our head to see where the cracks started.

We didn't find them.

We opened boxes we threw away three addresses ago. We retold stories to bring us closer. We put things in our skin that were supposed to bring us together, keep us together; they just remind me we are all gone.

So we will steal a smoke from our sleeping love. And we will send thoughts or prayers or whatever your way. And know we will never speak; but hope we are wrong.

a post that was started two days ago

My computer is next to my bed. It is on an upsidedown milk crate. (They were out of cinderblock.) A night or two ago I decided that instead of sleeping I would drink a 32oz beer and try to find something on the internet about the Antelope Valley that would make me want to stay, or at least appreciate it. My jumping off place was Flickr. I searched through tags, looked at profiles, went to people's myspace profiles, went to their blogs, looked at groups and sets, picture after picture after picture.

I had seen it all before.

I'm ok with it, actually. The Antelope Valley is familiar. Too familiar. There are probably little pockets of interesting that I haven't found, but I don't even care to look anymore. It is the same people doing the same things in the same places.

I know that my new home will eventually become the same thing, but there is the possibility of it not turning into that for at least a year, and that seems nice.

There was a fire down the street today, that was nice.

i keep wanting to blog....

about how the antelope valley is stuck in 1986 with the amount of blow that seems to be going into people's noses, but then I realize it's probably not that interesting to anyone who isn't from here or isn't doing it. It seems people who enjoy their coke enjoy the fact that they do it almost as much as doing the actual drug, and that doesn't even compare to how excited they are to tell you about it.

Which is funny, because I like being a drunk, and talking about it, but I don't see it as that big of a deal. Must be all of that christian hypocrisy left over from the glory days.

God bless the Antelope Valley, I wish it was closer to the ocean so my dreams of it falling in wouldn't be so far fetched.

It took all I had to not quote that live song.

I left two bars tonight.

Both times there was lightning, but it was far away, somewhere else.

And it is always somewhere else.

I want to drive to the lightning, be rained on, hear the thunder, see the flash.

But I am stuck in this valley. No lightning, no thunder, no rain, nothing.

This valley is dead and it is dragging me with it.

where have I been? not so sure

Yesterday I did a little slip and sliding. Yup, i's awesome.

About every 3 months get this urge to move. Sometimes its to another part of the glorious Antelope Valley (Rattling the Kettle - They call it Antelope Valley because the first high school here was Antelope Valley, not because of dead animals!) Rarely it's to another country. Most of the time it is to one of a couple cities. It used to be Boulder, CO. Then it was Chicago, IL. Now it's Seattle, WA. (For a hot second it was Minneapolis, MN) I think I still would love to live in Chicago, but someone stole it from me right under my nose. Boulder, or rather Denver, is the same distance from both sets of my parents and from Lancaster, my eternal home. Which makes it very appealing. But I am gonna stick around for a while.

The nice thing about these urges is they always happen when I feel my life is getting super shitty. And at that same point a series of things happen that remind me life is actually ok and I have a great group of friends here.

It will happen someday, and it will be fun, and then I'll be back.