Ishtory

What is it that allows us to spend no more than a single second looking into the darkness of our own hearts before fear itself pushes us away from the very thing which we have come to examine? Is it the certain knowledge that we will most certainly be no match for the things which lurk deep in the souls of most men and therefore deep in the souls of some of our number? How many persons can we profess to be without giving credence to the idea that each of us suffer our own unique afflictions and that the commonness of our common maladies serves only to mark us as one and the same, not many, but one, a minion of a deranged and sweetly corrupted mind's vision of a flawed perfect reality.

Lash out. The silence like darkness serving only to stifle the few gasps of precious creativity left in the shallows of a once deep well. Cry. For those who are losing that which they knew they could never really have. Piece of mind, peace of soul, pieces of little things we do control, slipping from our stolen grip like memories of dreams from our waking moments. Lonely is the man who lives only for himself. Lonely is the dog who lives only for his master. Lonely is the world which keeps on spinning while everyone in it wishes only to stand still.

Severed from the body of errors to which it had previously given life the idle heart beats in a slow rhythmic staccato calling out to someone, anyone, to give it purpose. Fear fills the void left by once lingering necessity. Objects at rest cower from the inevitable.

Take comfort in the knowledge that people such as we exist so that you may feel better about yourself.

There is no light...we run on.

Hello There Mr.Poe...

"In night my dream divide the parts of me which live and die for only I to see what lies the world will know of me." - T.O. Hob



Maybe it's all that's (not) going on. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's everything.



I've been dreaming a lot again lately.


Some wild wild dreams, others sort of normal but sort of nice. It's been strange. Everything is getting blurry again.

Work has been...ok. Nothing spectacular but I'm finally holding my own after three years of constantly feeling like I was drowning. I've always been able to point towards the numbers, point towards the facts, and say that was how I knew I was doing well. But there was always some way for the old man to discourage that. Within the next few weeks I will have cleared up the majority of the financial problems he left me, we'll set a new high watermark for liquid assets in the company, and we'll have a better idea if the projections I've made for next year are going to come through or not...if they do it will be our best year ever. There's still a lot wrong, still a lot I have to do, but for the first time I won't have to craft a fantastic argument about anything I've done. I can just say, "Here's a million dollars. Now leave me alone." Ha, that's sort of nice when you think about it. Of course he's smart enough to know that he's lost this argument and he's already started in on a new one about the future of the company. I somehow think that screaming, "When is enough enough?" Isn't going to persuade him.

I got my Marek Malik game used stick on Monday. And I know nobody gives a shit about Marek Malik but it was the stick used to score the last home goal of the 2007 regular season. A day later I was able to acquire the jersey he was wearing when he scored the goal so it makes a nice little set. I also will be acquiring three autographed Henrik Lundqvist Jersey's, a Lundqvist puck, a Eddie Giacomin puck and picture. And a few other random things including the lineup card from the final game of the Rangers sweep of the Thrashers last month, their first playoff series victory in over ten years. Big things for that team next year...guaranteed.

Tim is in London this week, a place I've always wanted to go but have never been able to make it to. He knows this and of course will rub it in my face as soon as he gets back. I won't let it bother me though, someday I'll get there. And if not...well, it is what it is.

The two hour season finale of Lost the other night was one of my favorite tv episodes ever. Heroes finale on Monday was good, but not as good as the rest of the season. Lost was the opposite. While I wasn't as harsh on it as others were this year, it was clear that the season finale was f'ing superb. And how hot did Evangeline Lilly look in the flash-forward? We really need to get this girl on a series where she's not stuck on a deserted island so she could dress up a little on a regular basis. Ha, hey, that was almost straight of me.

I stayed up all night last night and went to see the new Pirates of the Carribean movie. Spider-Man 3 was a big let down, this was not. It rocked. And not just because Keira Knightley is f'ing gorgeous, but because it was actually a good movie.

I don't know guys, I'm not saying things are going great, or that things are looking up. I'm just saying I had a good week after what, despite my best efforts, was a bad week last week.

I'm still all fucked up...but it could be worse.

Right?

Used to Ways

Now this is the law of the jungle-as old and as true as the sky...

Maybe it used to be that I was different. I don't know.

I struggle fifteen seconds at a time now, beating back the darkness that creeps up on me still...but it's different.

There was a time when I fought it with raw power, using every ounce of strength I had to come out on top. It used to leave me tired, and beat down. Then I outsmarted it. I danced around that shit, tossing an occasional jab, just enough to keep it at bay. And as it lingered an arms length away I laughed at it, just to show I wasn't afraid.

But Blow One Blaring Trumpet Note Of Sun, To Go With Me, To The Darkness Where I Go...

I have had people, doctors, other suffererers, tell me that what I have is a type of clinical depression and that I should have it checked out, and like I do with anything that afflicts me I laughed at that. And like everything else I didn't get it checked out. I considered the facts on my own, and made my own decision. If I don't let myself be depressed how can it be depression? If I can stop it on my own, how can it be a sickness? If I won't let it hurt me, how can it be a problem? Everyone gets a little sad now and then. So I made my own decision. Granny used to say the only reason to have guns is so you could stick to them...and I have. I beat it back at every corner and though the melancholy often swallows me whole, it never beats me. And I rest easy in the knowledge that it never will.

So Huge So Hopeless To Conceive As These That Twice Befell, Parting Is All We Know Of Heaven, And All We Need Of Hell...

Life can be a struggle. Not my life in particular. I would never dare to say that. But life in general I suppose. And as I watch everyone struggle through I just think to myself, "You poor bastards, you just don't get it yet do you?" Because if they knew, if only they knew.

And The Heart Must Pause To Breathe, And Love Itself Have Rest...

I started writing this on Thursday morning. It seems like eons ago. Thursday night we got together to send off our old friend House, who is moving to Oklahoma to become whatever it is that people become when the move to places like Oklahoma. It's sad that we only get together for stuff like that mostly anymore. To say goodbye to someone we care about, or say hello to someone we used to. I've seen Gonzo three times in the last seven days. It's been a really long time since that last happened. That's sad too, considering I used to see him every day. It was damn near 3 A.M. by the time I got home Thursday night, glad to have seen everyone, but heavy with the knowledge that a good friend was about to go away. 7 A.M. all hell broke loose. Things didn't quiet down for the next 14 hours. A little over an hour after I got out of work Vilaboy, Jere, House and I were heading down to New Brunswick to see Gonzo's band play. You see when it comes to support and attention from his friends Gonzo is sort of a needy bitch. And we all love him for it. But it makes him the only one of us that is like that. My friends? We don't discuss our feelings. We don't go to each other's shit. We don't give a fuck about what the others do for a living, or how they spend their free time, or what they want to do with their lives. We care about each other...and have for a very long time now. And as gay as that sounds, it's nice. With the exception of one or two people who have drifted off, I hang out with the exact same ten or so guys that I hung out with over ten years ago. We don't see each other as much, we don't get everyone together as often, but that bond is still there...how many people can say that?

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same...

Something is stirring inside of me...it makes me feel vulnerable and scared. It's not new, it's just more persistent. Standing in a hot crowded bar in New Brunswick I was happy, but I could feel them coming. When The Darkness hit me I knew there was nothing I could do for the moment. Just grit my teeth and ride it out. The Fix came next, just drilling into my skull over and over again. By the time The One I Would Call Vertigo, But I Don't began I was already over. And then I found something. Like so many times before a beautiful face out of the crowd saved me. I don't know who she was, probably never will. Don't really care to. But for a second it was something to focus on, something to beat back The Afflictions. It didn't work for long, but if kept me afloat just long enough to survive. Which in the end is what it's really all about. So I suppose I owe yet another thank you to yet another stranger. I don't even mind so much this time.

Sleep on, sleep on, some fairy dream Perchance is woven in thy sleep — But, O, thy spirit, calm, serene, Must wake to weep...

This week was the drop off. We'd been doing so well with the Antioch group, but this week I just felt it all tip over the cliff. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's not over. But through no fault of anyone I fear it is. I wish I could say I did all I could, but we would both know that was a lie. Just because it's over, doesn't mean it's finished. Doesn't change the way I feel about any of it.

You shall be taken sweetly again and soothed with slow tears, you shall be loved enough...

My heart hurts. But not in a sad way. Just in a way that lets me know it's all almost over now. That everything is about to change. Part Six is almost over. Part Seven is ready to begin. The beginning of the end is beginning...here we go again.

In the beginning there were saints and there were sinners, there was good and there was evil, there was right and there was wrong. And then, with time, those lines which had divided blurred and the certainty which had defined the world was no longer.

The Big BooM

Oh God it hurts.

Don't ask me to explain it, don't ask me to make sense of it.

God knows I can't. Better...I know I can't.

It shouldn't have happened like this because it shouldn't have happened in the first place.

It's not just that it wasn't meant to be...but that the simple notion that it ever could be is enough to ruin everything.

Little kids dream of saving the world.

Nobody dreams of ending it.

Such is life.

A + B = ?

A- I had an awkward little feeling just a little while ago. It left me somewhat sad. Somewhat lonely. Like I was missing someone...

B-I was reading through my oldest blog posts and found a link to the WRSU webpage, I clicked on it. It was the first time in a long time I visited the page. I was greeted by the sound of an old friends voice. Much like I lost touch with most of the people from WRSU I haven't seen or heard from Julie since graduation. And it came as a bit of a shock to be hearing a voice I heard so many times live in the studio projecting through my computers speakers right here in my office. I chuckled a little and wondered what she's been up to these past three years. But I wasn't ready for what came next. As soon as her voice stopped a voice far more familiar started...my own. And god damn if it wasn't strange to be hearing my own voice coming through those speakers, or me thinking about the day so many years ago where we'd recorded the sounders. I don't miss all that, but I still sort of miss the people. Shit I'm getting old.

C- Yesterday was an expensive day. $20 for a haircut @ Diamond Bridge Barbershop. $250 for three t-shirts, three pairs of jeans, three pairs of underwear and three pairs of socks @ The Big and Tall Store. $35 for two books @ Barnes and Noble. $550 for a Nintendo Wii, an extra controller, WarioWarez, Legend of Zelda, SpiderMan 3 and Guitar Hero II for 360 @ GameStop. $75 for gas @ Hess. $99 for tickets to SpiderMan 3 @ Route 4 Tenplex (although to be fair the tickets are for today...) $60 for the Delahoya v. Mayweather fight. That's over a grand easy for no apparent reason.

D- Why the fuck am I lettering each idea?

E- I had my head shaved again yesterday, the barber slipped a little and now I have a nice bald spot on the back of my head. The DeLahoya v. Mayweather fight was ok, but nothing spectacular. I started to play Guitar Hero II before realizing that even when it's a video game that requires no musical talent...I still have no rhythm.

And the reason I've been typing this whole time just went away...so I'm out.

A Beginning?

I guess it all starts with me acknowledging that the whole world doesn't revolve around me.

Not that I ever thought it did mind you.

Just that...well I guess it had always been a possibility.

See very little of what I do directly affects other people, it's not that it can't, it's just that it doesn't. By design usually. By default occasionally.

I try to be a low impact kind of guy. I don't want to leave my mark anywhere, this isn't three years ago. I just want to survive. Part of that is not messing with other people's lives.

You want to be a crackhead? Ok.

You want to be a bum without a job living at home with your parents when you're thirty? Go Ahead.

You want to go around screwing everything that walks while crying about how messed up your life is? Fine by me.

It's not that it's ok, and it's certainly not that I don't care, it's just that...

I can't save the world.

No matter how much I want to.

People get hurt. People hurt themselves. Bad shit happens.

Get it?

Doesn't matter who you are, or what you do...bad shit happens.

Cynical? Maybe. True? Definitely.

And it's not because the world is this horrible place, it's not through any real fault of our own, it just is.

I was almost childlike for a long time. When someone close to me was sad I wondered what I did to upset them. When they were happy I wondered if I had done something well. When they were angry I wondered what I had done wrong. And when they were disinterested I wondered why I wasn't good enough for them.

I made the horrible mistake of assuming that I, in some way, mattered.

And then the pendulum swings. They're sad, I did nothing to upset them. They're happy, I did nothing right. They're angry, I did nothing wrong.

I had removed myself from every aspect of the scenario, I had ensured that I would never matter.

And so it went.

Now it all left a rather sick feeling in my stomach, like drinking cough medicine while still having yogurt in your mouth or more appropriately watching a truly horrible man doing rather normal nice things.

Saddam Hussein playing with small children. Pol Pot writing Christmas Cards. Hitler eating an ice cream cone.

Awful.

Yet there I stood. Exactly where, at some point, I had decided to be.

I was cold. I had cared about nothing for so long. Didn't even really care about myself.

What next?

I never meant to hurt anyone. Never meant to save myself at the expense of harming someone else. It just went that way though.

God damn.

This isn't three years ago...I know I can't save the world anymore.

That doesn't mean I don't still want to.

So I guess it all starts with me acknowledging that the whole world doesn't revolve around me.

Not that I ever thought it did mind you.

But there was...a beginning...where I stood screaming up at the new night sky on a cool spring day challenging God to let it all make sense, "I get it. It's not me, it was never me, it will never be me. But who gives a shit? I don't care. I don't. I know it can never be me, but that doesn't mean I can't help them. Don't you get it? All I want to do is help them. I don't care if it's not me. I get it! Really I do. I swear. I'll let it go, I won't talk about it anymore, I won't think about it anymore. I won't try anymore. Just...just let me help them. Just...help me help them. I promise...that'll be it. That will be the end."

I forget this is my world sometimes. Forget that it's my show.

I forget that the whole world doesn't revolve around me.

The whole world doesn't revolve around me.

Right?