Day 62

Weird, I was wondering when I would get myself involved in a shitty mood on this trip, and hey here we are. Today was one of those ten hour driving days. I drove 568 miles. The original plan was to stay at my ex-girlfriend, and current good friend Jodie’s place in Oklahoma City. I was pretty excited to spend some time with the cat that I spent years with, in lots of older pics here...Raoul. I got here no problem, well aside from the endless drive...We went right out to eat at some cool taco place that was packed. Her boyfriend called and basically that was the end of us hanging out. Long story short here I am at a sketchy motel, in my second room. I felt like I could have kept driving another few hours after that happened; mainly because I was pissed I drove that whole distance only to get sidelined by foolishness and jealousy, etc. Whatever. Tomorrow I will keep driving and moving east, so who cares in the long run? I know we’ll still remain good friends long after this fool moves on anyway.


The drive today was long and seemed to never end, but I think the worst stretch may be done. I am trying to get in the space I was in the first two days before this shit happened tonight as it was making it easier to move ahead. I don’t want any kind of distractions by people I don’t know. Or from people I know.

Otherwise, the trip has been great. Yesterday was kind of a good and bad day. Good as I got to see that giant Meteor Crater outside of Flagstaff. It was truly huge and to think that something that big hit the earth is pretty intense. Why do I feel like I wrote that somewhere else? The rest of the drive involved an hour and half traffic jam that was a result of some rocks falling in the road. I spent a good chunk of the traffic on the phone with G to the point that when I got to the part of the traffic jam where I drove by the AWESOME PILE OF ROCKS THAT FELL IN THE ROAD I did not take any pictures of it like I should have! After all that time in a traffic jam in which we talked about how intense it would have been if when you got to the “Ground Zero” of the traffic jam there were just hundreds of dead horses or coyotes in the road that all ran in the road at once.

Anyway, no energy to write or deal with pictures or be funny right now. Should sleep, so that's what we'll do.

Day 2: In Brief

Have a ton to write about, but since yesterday was a big time suck and I only drove 343 miles, I have to make up for it today. I am in Albuquerque, and need to make it to Oklahoma City later. If you look at that on a map it's far. I thought it was closer! Anyway, yeah. I'll do an update most likely tomorrow.

Also, people out in this area of the country are weird.

Day 1: With My Back to the Sunset

03/30/10 - Flagstaff, AZ


Today was the first day of the rest of my, no, today was the first day of this road trip back to Massachusetts. I left at 1:40 PM, got to Flagstaff at exactly 9:00, missing 24 which was apparently on at 8:00 PM! I drove 487 miles total which isn’t really much. Wait, is it? It felt like it went by pretty fast. I filled the car to the fucking brim. I had more stuff than I thought, and of course my book and cd collection is sitting in storage there to be shipped back at some point. I literally had a garbage bag filled to the point of ripping with sneakers and shoes. I bought two new pair of sneakers in Boston last week. Took them on an airplane back to California, never wore them, and now am driving them back to Boston where there i

(I actually fell asleep while typing last night and have no idea what was to come in that sentence!)



So here I am early morning in Flagstaff. I slept about three hours last night. Per usual, I had a shitty bed...mixed with lifting all of these heavy boxes, etc yesterday did me in I guess. I also can't breathe here at all...the elevation here gets to you if you are just passing through. Thank christ I don't smoke, last time I was through here was a nightmare.

So this place, I hate driving at night in areas I am not familiar with. The last couple of hours of the drive were through the mountains in the dark and aside from the bright as shit moon as the sign post ahead it was kind of shitty. I got to that point of seeing little things running across the road from driving all day into the night. This room I found was reasonably priced and it’s on Rt 66 which hopefully today I will be a little more leisurely on. Must be noted that if you are driving on Rt 40 in this area you are going parallel with Rt 66 so if you get off the highway to stay somewhere you are most likely staying on Rt 66 and you can surely find souvenirs anywhere. This is my third time on this road now, or rather on a road that runs next to Rt 66. The charm has not worn off, at least when you drive by some of the old school neon signs.

One bonus on the trip was a stretch of Rt 40 runs north/south instead of east/west so I had the sunset to my left for a good amount of time. The rest of the trip my back will be to the sunset which is kind of depressing in more ways than one.

I found the downtown/old town area of Flagstaff last night and had a brief dinner in some pizza place. There is a little snow on the ground here and frankly yesterday wasn’t really tourist day. The brief encounters I have had with other people have all proved slightly odd aside from the girl at the counter here when I checked in. Guy at the pizza place had this weird “yeah whatever” shoulder shrugging attitude that was one of many reasons I didn’t like Los Angeles. I stopped into a gas station to get gas and coffee before coming back to the room and an Asian woman was in there going on about aspirin or something nonsensical. The guy at counter, after she leaves is like “I have no idea what she was saying” I racistly said “yeah, you never know what THOSE PEOPLE are saying do you?”. No I didn’t really say that, but I thought it just now. He continues...”this guy came in the other day asking if I spoke some language of some country right next to Germany...and I was like ‘sorry I don’t’ and he got mad at ME”. This story seemed like it was going to get even less exciting so I just excused myself and was out.



Hit the Continental breakfast this morning which is basically a scam invented by muslims to trick white America into yeah I don’t know where I am going with this. This may have been one of the worst ones I have ever been to in my life though. It was literally three loaves of white bread, some cereal and not orange juice but orange DRINK. LIke they have at McDonalds! I of course had some toast, but really?

Leaving California and further away from her is growing more difficult as hours go by it seems. Spending hours a day by myself in the car listening to music and looking at nature is great and all, but at the end of the day I am going to dwell on shit for too long and get myself into a place I don’t need to be in.

Over the Hills

Granada Hills, CA - 3/27/10

Last weekend in LA. Tonight doing a get together with the few people I know out here and will probably end up leaving Monday morning, but maybe tomorrow. The main problem on my mind at this point though...what song will be the first song played on what should be kind of an epic journey? I feel kind of unprepared for this trip, which is kind of good. Once I start over thinking these things they get to be a pain in the ass. I know the numbers of the highways I have to go on, and I am driving east, that's all I really need to know.

Blue One

Can barely keep my eyes open and I’m surrounded by boxes and bins and piles of music and notebooks and toys and everything else I own. Everything spread out on the floor and couch. I have been throwing stuff out as well. I like shedding items, throwing things out I don’t need to see anymore. Being sentimental is one thing, I’ll hold on to cards and that kind of thing. Some of the things I collect myself through the years though, if I even have to ask the question “do I really need this?” I throw it out. The second something is questioned you usually know the answer immediately. This happens with other things too. I’ll deal with all that later though.

How many times a year can you experience being let down? I will move ahead and out of the way though. I can’t watch games or listen for promises that never happen. I can’t sit around and wait for things to happen if people can’t stay at the same speed. I wait and grit my teeth too often. I wait and make outrageous faces and look to the sky for some sort of answer that doesn’t exist. It has always been this so why would it ever change?

I can’t listen to “sad” music right now. Well, I have been listening to Nick Drake among a number of piano players, but avoiding a whole slew of songs that were all okay like a week ago. The closer I get to this thing the harder it is getting to get to it. I look and feel like complete shit right now, so it will be nice to disappear into the middle of the country for a week, even though I’ll obviously be iPhoned and interneted and Twittered, etc. the whole time.( I may actually vomit tonight. Ugh.)I made a couple of minor changes to this trip today that I think will be better in the long run.

Was going to try to watch the sunset here before I leave but couldn’t do it; I really wanted to do that on my last trip to the central coast but we never got around to it. That’s the only way I’ll ever want to see one. Not by myself in Los Angeles. No fucking way.

We had this from a nice bench.

Orange

Back when I discovered the internet in 1979 or whenever it was I got into this whole personals thing, which in retrospect...umm, “eh”. I met this chick though, and she loved Bud Powell and Ella and Ben Webster (!), Coleman Hawkins, etc. I thought the internet was the best thing ever because of this. I assumed the internet would be like real life where every mix tape for the rest of your life will contain Galaxie 500 or Broadcast. I was excited at the prospect of making a “The Cole Porter Songbook” Mix CD, etc. The woman was a jazz singer who also taught singing.

We met up and umm, hit it off personally I guess. I have to say physically, it wasn’t happening. We ended up hanging out maybe two more times, the last time being an afternoon seeing “Patch Adams”. Ouch. At one point in the midst of us hanging out I lent her a few CD’s.Not really that big of a deal...One of the CD’s though, was from a box set. The mighty Miles Davis - Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 8-CD Set. I paid top dollar for this box of awesomeness and wasn’t going to have my copy of the Miles Davis - Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 8-CD Set be this weird deformed stepchild missing a disc.

I think the “relationship” ended weird and I didn’t want to call her and ask for the discs, it seemed too shallow. She was a music person so she probably would have understood. for whatever reason though, I didn’t want to call her up. So I did what any normal person would do. I waited a few months and then called her...

Hey it’s Christian, do you remember be?

Oh yeah...hi

Umm, so...are you still giving vocal lessons?

Yeah I am

I’d like to take vocal lessons from you

Oh...okay sure

So I started taking vocal lessons from this girl who gave them out of her house. I figured I’d go to about four or five and at some point casually ask for the discs. I remember even seeing the discs safe and secure in her apartment around the second lesson or so. I kind of started really getting into these lessons though! There are cassette tapes of me in my possession of me singing My Funny Valentine, Since I Fell For You, etc, accompanied by a piano. I would never let a single person hear these tapes, but it’s nice to know they exist.

I eventually did get the discs, but continued the lessons for almost half a year and stopped. My career as a smooth vocalist will commence soon. The End.

[][][][]




03/24/10 - Granada Hills, CA
Landed here and don’t really feel like I am “home” whatsoever. I never quite felt that here as much as I wanted to. It is hot and stuffy here and everything is too far away from everything else. I couldn’t take another six days here, so it’s good that I only have five left. Kind of running out of feelings here too. Wait does even make sense? I feel like this was a long vacation or something. Like I wasn’t really meant to be here anyway. I see through them all and their fake eyes and sunny dispositions. I like the New England I saw when I was just there. Small, easy to get around, and filled with complete fucking assholes.

Driving back here I go by places that remind me of last September, last November and this past February. Some of the best times I had here for the most part. My head is in sixty-five thousand different parts of the state and country at this point to keep looking backwards. I have some sort of fire burning now and if I even try to put it out I’ll be fucked for good. It doesn’t mean I have any idea what I’m doing at any given point. it doesn’t mean I don’t think about secret inside jokes and nicknames and pictures I need to take and songs I could have sang all day long.

...............

I light shit on fire now. I can’t dwell on anything shitty when it happens. I made a list of all the things I want to do and all the things I need to do. I’ll mix them up and go through them as I need to. The first order of business is to stop writing about it right this second as it sounds like a fucking self help book.

My Only Friend

From here on out when I need a good friend to be there at any time, in any state in the United States of America. When I need to count on something it will be music it will never let me down. I let people down and they all let me down but also I am happier than I could ever imagine being with this realization comes the truth about-

Have no idea what I am talking about there or if I need to finish it.




"An Exorcise"

I see these eyes outside of my window

I see them hiding out there with hundreds of secret lives

I see them tossing around a football

I see them dropping the kids off at school

Late at night memories come out and the demon shows up

I see the eyes outside of my window

When the eyes disappear and I have long since faked a slumber

I awake and sneak out

I have a dagger

I have a dagger made of fire and hatred and resentment and rage and whatever else it needs

I sneak into the house

When they are all sleeping

I will silently end the life of him

I will slip into the bedroom and watch the innocent wife sleep

I will walk past the children

Like a bad ass dude out of a twelve minute long Doors song

I will walk down the hall

He will never know what happened

The best part of this

His family will wake to this nightmare

Enjoy this nightmare for all eternity innocent family

I will slip back to my nightmare filled sleep

Slip out of town quick fast and in a hurry early

I will slip past police and and tissue covered faces

I will slip past children finally free

I will make it out of here and never come back

I will feel free and like I have finally exorcised anything inside me

I will feel like the man I always needed to be

Confident

Getting shit done

Watching this motherfucker bleed out while his wife dreams of knitting and chicken dinners

Watching years later as she eats ten thousand lonely dinners in a row

Watching this motherfucker die in front of me

Let him look me dead in the eye while I hold his mouth closed

The last thing he will see is my eyes

The last thing he will feel will be nothingness

The last thing I will feel is power and life

Rippinest Town Pt IV, V & VI

03/21/10

Successful if not useless trip out here as it turned out I didn’t need to actually be here. I still have two more full days which are already “booked” by friends for the most part.

(this thinks that that noises is made when beast is on top of machine and rips it open pulling wires out in a wild fashion screaming to the skies at how it has destroyed the communication device once and for all and nothing bad can ever be transmitted straight to it’s heart and/or soul nothing will ever have ability to communicate with it this is the way it wanted and needed to be no time or room for emotion or opinions or feelings or anything just actions happening things falling over and being picked up and that is it there is no good idea or bad idea at this point so it just moves forward or backwards whichever way they tell it to move when he dreams of it though he pictures the beast he sent down to reprogram it to this new mode celebrating atop of machine)

Going back to California for less than a week. I have no real desire to at this point. If I had known I didn’t actually need to be here I would have left there already and been on my way here I think. How boring are those sentences right there?



03/22/10

The sky is all grey here as is my general mood. I go back on Wednesday and then feel like I’ll be in limbo for less than a week and then leave. It looks like I will have a job interview when I come back via a friend. I really need to find a place to live immediately after that if I can get a job quick like a fox. It appears my living situation will be pretty dire indeed. I purposely put myself into that situation so I could hopefully move faster. For whatever reason I seem to enjoy getting myself into these situations that will test me. for instance quitting smoking two weeks before having to drive my girlfriend of seven years back to her home in Oklahoma while she ignored me and was kind of a jerk to me for that whole ride. We are now good friends. But that ride sucked and would have been a perfect place to have numerous cigarettes...so wouldn’t have the next trip a couple of weeks later driving by myself across the country and leaving everything I knew and loved back here. I should have been smoking a trillion cigarettes a day on that trip.



3/23/10

Have no idea what it says above up there. Man it stops ringing though, my head and then this weird sensation like all of a sudden one ear goes “deaf” or real quiet. I wish this would happen in life outside of my head like all of a sudden one noise would stop happening. Every morning here I have woken up in pain in my back, with a head full of cloudy ideas and whatever I think passes for happiness and contentment. Last night had two different “nights”. Hung out with one friend who seems to hate life and I guess with some of the shit she goes through I can’t blame her completely. Getting involved with shitty dudes by accident. Second part of the night was spent up north with a friend who loves life or so you would think. We hit a bar and a girl I knew a long time ago was singing cover songs with the band, and doing a good job of it. Listening to drunk people blabber on about shit though, man that gets tired doesn’t it?

This phone doesn’t stop ringing and making noise like a woman’s phone. A woman on a phone, with a phone...is there something less annoying? I wonder in the future how many Divorces will happen because of cell phones.

I kind of had to slow down writing here a bit and spend more time seeing things and hearing things and feeling things. Things should be pretty good when I come back. I have a potential job interview close to where I’ll be living and although everyone seems to be exactly the same and some people friends and family will never change, it will be nice to be around familiar ground. Also, how stupid am I coming to Massachusetts in March and not bringing a jacket?



Three dreams I had out here this week:

1) I am on some highway and there is some sort of commotion going on between cars along side of me and beside me. I look in the rear view mirror and a salmon colored van has spun out and is blocking the two lanes. The side door slides open and a figure in black waves a handgun. I speed up.

2) I am in a large Victorian house looking for G. I am opening all sorts of doors and going into weird rooms. I go on the roof and have to climb weird little fences arranged in order on the roof. I attempt to open the door of a room and hear her voice and a man laughing and shut the door. I can’t find my way out of the house.

3) I am in some weird office building/lab place with my friend SS. We are trying to escape the building and there are horrifying creatures/zombies chasing us and popping out of doorways. We escape the building only to be surrounded by these monsters outside. I lose my friend and am on my own. This dream as well as the others all woke me up.

This place I am staying in, it’s a nightmare. I will hopefully not even return to this little island when I move back here. There is nothing here that I want to remember. The whole place is an empty dark grey place. We spent a lifetime at the beach here as a child covered in sun and salt water and you know dinosaur toys and seafood and toy trucks and hopes of becoming a fireman or whatever little kids think they want to be. When we returned a few years later after going to California things got shitty. I try not to think of this whole thing happening when I experience a similar “moving back to MA from CA” in a few weeks. I hate driving through the town I hate driving to the town and I hate driving out of the town. Wait, I like driving out of the town I think. Anyway, the point of this is, waking from a nightmare in this tiny room that is also a nightmare is...well, a nightmare.

When I see things as clear as I do now and when I run into these issues I have to immediately destroy them. If I don’t they will surely destroy me. Noise and eye candy and things I never needed to see in the first place and letters never meant to be sent waiting for me to do something. I’ll never get out ‘these blues alive if I don’t have an incinerator in my brain on twenty-four hours a day.

See, They All Stay

Another blank screen and glazed over eyes of mine trying to get everything out for some reason. Well, yeah. I feel like I have been getting two hours of sleep a night on this trip. Today was especially long. After an early delicious breakfast with AR where our waitress looked like Robert Duvall and our host looked like Don Juan I spent time working on this writing thing I have been doing for a few months now, met up with “the guys” for lunch and then went to AR’s work for dinner with everyone where we had I think seventeen people at the table. Was nice to see everyone, although a big group like that at a table makes it hard to talk to everyone, and/or sometimes you feel as if you completely ignore someone for no reason. Overwhelmed with voices and everything and nobody asked why I was moving home. This is good. I dig these people and this place. I had some good times where I just was, but at the end of the day, I hope that place falls into the fucking Pacific Ocean at this point. The charm of that place has pretty much worn off at this point. Even the pictures, I am tired of looking at them. The only thing that moves me right now is what I feel like having myself moved by at any given moment. This is the idea of driving across country by myself again in a little over a week, not smoking, making this person I know laugh, some music and whatever color the sky is that day. These things that moved me before, I’ll keep them going for a while I’m sure, but for the most part, none of it is going to move me much at all.



All of this espresso inside me and my eyes keep falling down. When I drive I won’t be able to have this laptop open anymore. It’s too much now. None of this shit is important, writing letters to people, writing anonymous letters to people I don’t know across the country swapping stories and ideas about “what exactly is going on here”, going over the line (?) but having fun with it. I don’t care anymore and sure writing here and there to get it all out feels good, but so doesn’t pure silence.

They Don't Get The Rare One

I see them coming in and out of here all day

Together, alone, together, alone

I see them twenty years ago and ten years ago and fifteen minutes ago

Images of drives up and down different coasts on the United States

Memories of freezing cold mornings

Hot dry and dusty afternoons

Early evenings with the fading sun turning their hair to gold

I hurt every single one of them and they have no idea

I keep secrets they will never know

I throw an obvious scent down on the left and go right

I hurt every single one of them before they can even consider hurting me

These disgusting situations

These intense conversations and cries for help

All of them a facade as I turn to the right and make decisions for other people

I pull them one direction so they can’t see what is happening the other direction

They come in and out of my head all day

I imagine what I can do

I imagine ways to destroy them all

I remember every single instance

I have notebooks filled with the most horrible ideas

Worse poetry and prose than this

A bunch of sentences and short ideas with no flow at all like this one right here it just looks cooler and is easier to read

They are all out of my head now, all of them

I have to push them

Please leave my head please leave my head please leave my head be gone be gone be somewhere else please I beg of you

I see them all day in pictures and in memories of a thousand meals

Sitting across from each other laughing at my jokes

Watching the room

Watching your hands and how they lie

Watching your eyes and how they lie

Watching myself

Making sure all my stories are dotted and crossed

Making sure I cleaned up all of my messes

Laughing to myself about nothing

There is space between all of them

There are stories that accompany every single one of them

There is bullshit that will accompany every single one in the future

There are lies that are happening now that will be told to me five years from now

Right this very minute thousands of miles from me is not me

Right this very minute the sweetest man I thought I could be is not me

Right this very minute in another place every song and word I wrote never existed

Right now this very minute way over there I feel like I have been torn in half

Right now, and probably for the next day or two my head will operate

My head will create quite possibly the worst possible things I could ever imagine

All of these nightmares will ruin my weekend

All of these dreams I had

All of these dreams I wrote down

All of these ideas and plans I had

They were incorrectly written

All those nights when nightmares were my reality

I dreamed of her and I by the water

The moon over the bay is half full

I fell asleep to this every night for months in Massachusetts

My only escape route was this dream

My only good dream, every night

If I create a new dream, will it remain just that?

God I hope.

Rippinest Town Pt III

Well after 2:00 AM and I’ve had thirteen shots of espresso today and still annoyed myself by hearing some grown man at the coffee place say “expresso”. Really people, how hard is that word to say? There isn’t even a letter that looks like an “x” in it. Drives me up the fucking wall. Worse than “supposebly”.

Have spent every extra minute here writing for what reason? I have no idea. This evening had a nice dinner with my two friends who weren’t born in the United States (Matt and Crystal), which I thought of briefly while we were hanging out. Not that exciting of a fact about them though really, but anyway, we had a great time and went back to their apartment and talked about music and politics and travel and drank espresso based drinks and now here I am, seven hours away from the reason I came out here for this trip. I think I lied to most people I know and said I had some “family thing”. Heh. Anyway, yeah so that is tomorrow morning and then the rest of the weekend who knows. This trip is kind of worth it in a way. Even though I am coming back in a week it kind of gave me that one last chance to say “yeah I think I’m going to stay in California”. I already knew the second I decided to move back here that staying in California wasn’t an option no matter what happened. This is where I want to be which is all that matters. People out here and out there and what they think, well it has no bearing on anything I will ever do again.



I am writing way too much online lately. Oof (?).

I am going to document my trip across the country again like I did here before The original idea for this blog was mostly to write when I went on road trips or any kind of vacation which I tend to do quite a bit. I get a little obsessive and want to track everything like when I moved out there last August and I listed every single song I listened to on the way out to California which I gathered from an Excel sheet. I dumped playlists in it every night from the iPod. If I happened to listen to an actual CD I would write that down and add it in myself. I originally planned (there is definitely someone or something stirring outside this house up and around the windows. The two windows in this tiny bedroom look out into complete pitch black. I am a 40 year old guy that people tend to say looks “mean” or whatever and you could not pay me any amount of money to open the curtains right now and look out there. If I did that whatever/whoever it is would surely jump up and start banging on the window or break through it and grab me to pull me outside to meet my fate...perhaps the real reason I came out here for this trip [!]) to also put music in this file that I heard in gas stations and restaurants, hotel lobbies and department stores but decided against it at the last minute. This time around (whatever it is out there is sounds like something keeps sighing and clicking some weird like old crackity tape machine thing, and then when I go to look around the room I see these old dolls and crucifix on the wall and man I just don’t want to be in this room) though I have come up with some easier ideas. I am going to do some video stuff, maybe with me talking I have no idea I hate what I look like and sound like so who knows if I will do that. I also have ideas for writing exercises. Well, I have a list of “rules” I made for driving across the country at one point. So maybe doing one each of those and talking about it might at least give me some sort of focus rather than writing this (yeah okay I get it you’re out there) and that about how lonely I am and boo hoo my life is no fun. I have some “games” to keep myself entertained....maybe something like “Let’s wear this Eyehategod shirt in Texas and see what happens”, etc.

Speaking of keeping myself entertained and generally being kind of a jerk. A week or so ago. Fuck I hate bad drivers and I am not going to blame it on LA or Boston as they are everywhere. It’s a cliche, I”m probably a bad driver to someone else, who cares though? So I am in this parking lot where my mail box is and I am pulling out and this guy in a LIncoln Town Car just breezes through the stop sign like he never even considered stopping an option. Of course I did that thing where I jumped out a little like I was going to just go and he had to swerve out of the way. I didn’t really have anything else to do for the rest of the day so I decided I would follow the guy and just “keep it real” as I like to call it. He eventually pulled into a parking space and I pulled a U-Turn. I then slowly at drive-by-shooting speed I drove past his car and held my phone out the passenger side window and “took a picture” of his car and license plate. He has just gotten out of the car and then noticed me, I then pointed the camera at him and “took his picture” and the guy stood there with his mouth kind of agape. He was maybe in his late 60’s, white shorts, moustache, typical asshole. I then sped off and saw he was just standing there the whole time as I pulled away. I then got nervous he was going to call the police and thought they would confiscate my phone and see that I did not take a picture of this poor fuck who doesn’t understand stop signs, but really I wonder what could have happened? Wow how weak of a person am I for kind of harassing some guy to feel better about myself. Actually I did it because that guy was shit.

Hey I Fixed Your Bicycle

Listening to these women and men go on and on and on and on and on and on about he and she and she and he is all too much. “The Game” and all that goes along with it seems no fun to me or at least what these people do, just spending day after day and night after night talking and thinking about other people one person two people three people. I’m trying to get myself so far away from anything remotely like this, although where I have a penis and not a vagina I guess it shouldn’t be too hard.



You come in here and start spitting out noise at everyone in here. Things nobody wanted to ever hear, questions nobody wanted to answer. I don’t have anything to give you and the energy you are trying to bounce off the walls in here is making me hurt. I see you every other day as I have been watching you for months now. Now that I have secretly infiltrated your life and everything you do. The people you know the people you work with the people you go away on trips with the people you have dinners with the websites you visit the music you listen to. I have it all in a spread sheet. I keep tabs on everything. Yeah when you come in to my head and make things go from 20 mph to 85 mph it makes me a bad person. It turns me into some guy I don’t know. I turn into a worse person than I already am, doing things to deliberately hurt others, doing things to confuse others and doing things to drive myself even more crazier. I feel like I could really hurt and ruin lives with information and a head full of fire every other week. When I get to that point where I need to punch the whole earth in the face and knock it into the sun, when I feel like I need to do that I picture all the noise you make and how quite it will be when I finally make it happen.

I feel good out here right now. I think I am most excited about the great unknown. This has always pushed me to better places. I am coming back here with no real idea of what is going to happen which is exactly the way I need it to be. When I take my drive across country to come back here in (wow) twelve days I have an idea of where I need to do, I have the highways in my head memorized (40 to 44 to 70 to 71 to 90 to the Atlantic Ocean) so I don’t even need a map or a GPS unit and I will try and do that again. When I initially moved here last August I did not use a map or a GPS unit and just kind of “played it by ear”. This time I can’t call home for help, and I won’t ask for advice. If I don’t do every single thing and make every single decision by myself from here on out, there is no reason to be making this move back here. At least that’s the way i see it. I am haunted and possessed by someone I don’t know or recognize. Coming back here is the only way to exorcise it.

It's Colder in California

I've been in a pretty good mood lately, or since I got here. I am still pretty sure there is a vast conspiracy against me and I'm being lied to on a daily basis though, so yeah. This takes place all day indoors outdoors here there on long winding roads I don't know exist and in outer space if you catch my drift. I have secret codes figured out where I am actually...well I'm not going to reveal anything here.

Rippinest Town Pt II

These Massachusetts fucks out here. Well, not fucks, but I did notice something here which I guess I never picked up on, or maybe I did and that’s why I am moving back. Yeah that makes it sound more interesting. Driving through Salem and Lynn and that kind of area you see people who are trying to cross the street at 11:02 AM and making eye contact with you like they want something from you, and then if you’re walking out and about they are there, arms reaching out at you. The scary guys I’m talking about. You see them all around Lynn or Salem, you see in their eyes that they are really crazy. You see in their eyes if they are truly evil bad people. In California I never felt this. it is a cliche to talk about things being fake etc there which isn’t always the truth. I didn’t hang around places where “fake” people were. But...I never really felt like someone was really fucking crazy, where you have that fear inside you that shoots through you when you make eye contact with one of these people. Out here every once in a while you see one of these people and they scare you. At least me, although I’m kind of a pussy. But, this “real” thing I think...makes me feel more comfortable here. Maybe I thought of some people and situations as “fake” because there are so many actors around trying to be someone else for a day.

Have no idea what I’m talking about really. Wow. Speaking of that though, another difference I have been feeling. So last week I went up to what they call “The Central Coast” of California for a brief trip. The drive up there is breathtaking, not as breathtaking as it gets once you are immediately north of where we were (Grover Beach, San Luis Obispo, etc). Once you hit Big Sur and the cliffs up there on the Pacific Coast Highway all bets are off for where the best place to be at that very moment is. I wish I could have made it up there but it wasn’t in the program money wise or “emotionally-wise”. That whole area of the state from here on out is going to hold this bittersweet memory with me forever. That drive up the coast though from Malibu north is really nice, the mountains on your right of all different colors, green, yellow, brown, etc. If you have the luck of having a crystal clear day it is the best place you could possibly be. So I made sure to drive slow and take it in while I took the ride there and the more somber drive home. Taking pictures anywhere on that road is great but really there isn’t anything like taking the drive and seeing it with your eyes and ears and nose and mouth. Driving on that one day and then driving along the Atlantic Ocean last night and listening to music in the car the ocean felt like a different ocean all together. You notice a difference, but for whatever reason, last night it felt way different. Maybe because I know this coast like the back of my hand, and I love it but it doesn’t have the same feeling as that California one. That one feels real or something.

The other thing different here is how I feel. I’m not going to get into too much heavy personal shit on a public blog like this, but actually forget it.

I feel like my head is racing here in Massachusetts and I'm not making much sense. This trip feels like a blurry little piece of 2010 I will probably soon forget happened.

This place I am staying. It’s definitely haunted. I don’t really believe in shit getting haunted or anything like that but man this place is something creepy. Hearing things out in the rest of the house. When you turn the lights off in this room it’s pitch black. Not a sliver of light makes it through the relatively thin curtains. Here is what the room I’m staying in looks like.





and then there's this thing that stares down at me while I sleep. Please kill me now.

Rippinest Town Pt I

Imagine the worst U2 song you can possibly imagine, multiply that by ten and then have Jack Johnson sing background vocals while wearing six thousand white UMASS baseball hats at once outside of a Starbucks. That is what my third solo album will sound like.

Flew into Boston a few hours ago and as usual, at least the five years or so, I always play Radiohead on the headphones for the last half hour or so. I mysteriously don’t have Kid A on my iPod for whatever reason. I was somehow able to avoid taking them off throughout the whole landing. I mean really, would a person listening to an iPod REALLY mess up a landing, I hate that rule.



Imagine the worst possible Bob Seger song, but sung from the top of the Washington Monument, which is now covered in swastikas and portraits of John McCain. At the end of the song a gigantic bald eagle swoops down over the crowd and vomits the blood of every single Goddamned fucking Iraqi baby all over everyone. This is what I want the music to play right after I kill someone if I ever get to kill a human being at some point. Like if there was an apocalypse or I was attacked, not just a random deal.

Oh yeah so Radiohead on the plane, good times. I spent the majority of the trip listening to Mouth of the Architect who I can’t get enough of right now. I have been in that mopey mood lately and listening to them and Mono, Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, etc. I think I have had my fill of delay pedals at this point. I also jammed the new Converge, Daughters and...I can’t remember. Oh Interpol. Maybe I should get out more and stop being such a fucking pussy.

Imagine the worst possible Her Space Holiday album cover divided by the pattern on your current girlfriend’s shower curtain multiplied by seven. Now imagine wearing a sweater that looks like that.

So the flight was fine for the most part. I used to bring multiple books and magazines, etc and then realized the best way to make the trip go fast is to not sleep at all the night before and then play music in your head and fall asleep. This works for me, although I did read for a few minutes. Man this book is intense (especially the piece on Billy Eckstine), check it out if you’re a music person, or pop culture person.

Imagine the worst Kanye West song you could ever imagine hearing, which is pretty much any of them, now imagine the song is being played through speakers made of Lady Gaga’s skin, which was just removed in front of a classroom full of Mexican children who have no idea who their father is. This is the type of music I would like to hear right before I jump off a bridge.

I can’t write much more as the battery on this laptop is almost done. I left the power supply at a hotel in Grover Beach, CA over the weekend and am having it Fed Ex’d to here in Massachusetts. I hope it comes tomorrow; I at least need to write a few hours a day, mostly just nothing, to myself, but it makes the day go better. Today on the plane I briefly wrote in the notepad thing on my iPhone and then realized how ridiculous it was and went back to sleep.



I guess I’ll get back to complaining about women or how my Joy Division CD's got scratched or whatever tomorrow.

How Do They Sleep At Night?

One night a long time ago I died for a few minute or something like that. Whatever they said, passed out in the living room. This dude thought I was going to fuck his girlfriend (I was) and well, yeah I died for a couple of minutes.

That whole situation should have been some sort of indication, or what I see in the afternoon here. Early evening dinners in shitty chain restaurants and a husband stares into the distance while his wife eyes around the restaurant wondering how she lives such an empty existence with this man sitting across from here. The guy just ran out of something at one point, just gave up the fight and cashed in his Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders posters and Lone Ranger trading cards. The seven minute drive back to the house he listens to sports radio and she plays Tetris on her cell phone he gave her four years ago.



One night a long time ago I passed out and fell out of a car. Granted the car was parked, but still. I have a scar from this on my nose still. We were sitting in some car outside of a 7-11, probably as high as a kite. Up to nothing really.

I should have learned then that the more I sit around and don’t do a thing, the less I have to live. I guess I was making myself healthier a tiny bit at a time, but completely failing in every other aspect. Imagine a time when I thought of going out to do things all the time every night. Like maybe 19 years old telling jokes about who knows what. I would have been listening to The Jam or The Specials around that age. The whole world surrounded by rock and roll, no internet and books about dragons or Hitler.



I was rightfully paranoid when I entered the woods. I have been paranoid since I can’t remember when. Everything, nothing supernatural or anything like that. What you see though, on a daily basis. That stuff makes me paranoid and delusional. Any kind of hunch there is something scary and unsavory there, even the slightest little one, I am always right on about it. Even half asleep as they float around my head right before I trail off, I see them.



If this is all actually real and not just some cooked up movie I wrote in five months. If this is all some kind of elaborate plan eventually removed from my brain. If this is how it is from here on out I will truly lose faith in too many things to count on one hand. At least mirrors exist, they make me stronger and they definitely make them weaker. There is no possible way anyone is making eye contact with themselves in 2010.

Vacations

03/11/10 - 4:07 PM

Have some extra time before she gets here to sit around and watch these crackers sitting in Starbucks, along with, me, a fellow cracker. This is the beginning of what will be a few weeks of not standing still. I enjoy this lifestyle better than whatever one I was living in MA before I left and whatever one I was living here for the last few months. Spending a couple of (bittersweet?) days up here on the central coast with her, going back to Boston this coming Tuesday for a week, and then driving out there on the 30th of March, so not much sleeping in a bed that collects dust underneath it. I wonder how slow I can get down to when I get back there. This should be a nice couple of days with her. If not I will be even more sad than ever. There’s no reason why it won’t be anything but good…at least that’s my intention.

Watching and listening to these people. Definitely “Californians”


(and then the next thing you know)
03/12/10 - 3:35 AM

Have no idea how the fuck I am going to do this. I can’t sleep and can’t breathe in this room right now. I’m overwhelmed with this whole situation, per usual. Who does this to themselves? Puts themselves through this?

We walked around downtown at the farmers market. It kind of reminded me of how great it would be to walk around the Topsfield Fair with her all buttoned up in some nice coat. Steam getting laughed out of her face in the cold. Red cheeks and all that good stuff. Fuck.



03/13/10 - 3:48 AM

We had a nice day out today out and about in this area on the water, off the water, etc. The way the mountains line the coast make everything ocean side that much nicer. You have this gigantic wall of earth that you neglect, and then the vast blue ocean and the way the sun hit today and her smile and laugh and the music in the car and taking pictures and eating lunch on the water.

I still can’t really handle that tomorrow I’ll leave here and probably never come back to this place, at least for a long time. My head anyway. I can’t be where I was in September, August, July, all of those months when everything was just a little different. Another night here I’ll never get to sleep, drive off into the distance tomorrow and just wait around twiddling my fingers for days. I’m kind of an asshole and deserve to have shitty things happen to me. This situation though, well. I feel like such a fucking idiotic moron, and who knows, I could have no idea what I am talking about, but really, it doesn’t matter anymore

Keep seeing weird shadows fly around the room here while she sleeps over there. I can’t ever get to sleep at the same time. I have to come here and get something out of me before sleep

It’s warm in here, way too warm to sleep
It’s freezing in here, way too cold to sleep
I doubt I could ever really explain how shitty I feel
I don’t have enough fingers to type it out
I don’t have enough hours left to explain it out
I just know exactly how I feel
I know how I’ve felt, which can’t be wrong
Sometimes I apparently make
(fuck, what the hell am I doing?)



+++++++++++++++++
3/13/10 – late afternoon
That was worse than I thought it would be. Eating lunch and then saying goodbye, no real view of anything in the future; Just walking away and waving and her blowing me a kiss and me driving back down here to “try again” at making myself happy. Nobody is ever going to want to sit around and wait for me to be normal. I feel like I have exhausted any chance at “love” at this point in time. I feel like I should pack it in with these at this point. They are hard to walk away from, and this one has truly been the hardest. In a few weeks I will drive across country by myself, further and further away from her wondering what the hell I just did, or feeling like the happiest guy in the world. Whatever the case or feeling I have that morning I leave here the intensity of this whole thing has proven to be too much for me and I really need that week by myself to let it all sink in, but oh God do I already miss her. I should probably drive home now and play some music loud so I can put my head somewhere else for the day.

Back From There

...? I have these visions when I fall in and out of sleep of me falling to my knees on a beach and someone without a face saying “Oh God, there is light pouring out of your pockets” and then I see it and black out. The person is terrified. I see the light though and it's intense. A big gray rocky beach with menacing cliffs and waves.

Sometimes, I sleepwalk and sometimes sleepwrite.

------------------



“The Minute We Hit Kentucky”

Whatever it is I ever see in them

Whatever it is that ever takes control of me and my head when I am with them

It’s invisible and hopefully gone by the time I am five minutes out of town

I have never wanted to run away from a place and idea more than I do right now

I lie to myself and tell myself I enjoy this and enjoy that

I can yes myself to death when I know every single thing that goes on

I read and spy on these weak ass men and their fat scorned wives home alone every other night weeping into their coffee mug with the horse on it

Broken boned and broken willed

Relying on friends to pick them up and tell them how much he sucks

These poor dumb women have no idea

I sit on roofs and watch them all, sinners and people I should never rub shoulders with

I tempt myself to write songs and letters

I realize I never need any of that

I have eyes, ears, and a nose

I have a steady history of just being too nice for my own good

Getting shit on and whatever else the next morning

I can sit and lie about how I feel

That’s the only thing I can lie about really

I can’t put these elaborate stories together like women do

Well I can, I just don’t

I can tell them all that I am doing well and there’s nothing to worry about but really

I’ll never fully get to sleep tonight

I’m beyond any point of caring if I burn a trillion bridges from here to the next galaxy

I want to go home

Never come back to this fucking place my head is at again

When I truly wish bad luck upon my true enemies

The ones who got in my way

The ones who fucked me up from the other side of the world

When I wish pain with the power of a trillion suns upon them and their loved ones

I hope it comes quick and with a fury so intense they never smile again

Sugar Cookie

I am truly sad.