Prince of Why

I survived the Grand Canyon. I’m going to write down my story soon in an attempt to capture what was both a very personal and a very life-changing experience for me. I equate it to taking the Bar Exam – many people take and pass that stupid fucking test every year. In a lot of ways, its the same exact story told over and over again, minor variations on a theme. But to the individual taking that test, this is their (hopefully) one story of the anguish and triumph, the experiene that encompasses and changes every aspect of their being, even if that same story is being played out a thousand times over in unison. That will be my Grand Canyon story, and it will always be one of the most important things I ever did in my life. I hope everyone who hikes that beast feels the same way.

But tonight I simply wanted to chime in with a thought that has been plaguing me all day now. Something I placed in the trash bin but never bothered to actually empty. Something that somehow made its way back onto my shelf.

I’m not a very good person.

This isn’t some cry for affection or attention, some need for an online hug. Truth is, even the best of those I know are fallible. We all make mistakes in life, and hurt people we love, and do things we will regret forever. Or neglect to do the things we should have done. It doesn’t make us bad people. It doesn’t stink of some grandiose Evil inherent in our spiritual soul. It just makes us people.

But there’s a special spot reserved for me.

This isn’t novel. This is an ongoing dilemma for me. I’m always fascinated with people who are multilingual. The thing that blows my mind is how you can know multiple languages, but fundamentally think in one language. There is a base language that your mind works in, and no matter how much French or Mandarin you pick up, the analytical self will always default to that single language. Its completely unshakable. It is so inherent to the way your brain works as to become part of the actual machinery itself. It is a part of your intellectual identity, inseparable from the self.

For me, that inherent machinery is a healthy dose of self-loathing.

This doesn’t make me unique. This is not somehow insightful for anyone else – those who know me well have seen it for years, and those reflecting on the idea see it as a binary issue: either you are inherently self-loathing, or you are not. I don’t expect many of the people I know would relate to it. Call it recognition of a pattern deep-seated, deeply ingrained from youthful traumas and missed opportunities for affirmation. A youth misspent in overachieving in the hopes of approval, trying to fix things that, while logically were never my fault or within my power to control, nonetheless felt like the effects of my causality: existence.

Here’s some perspective: in June of 2001 my mother was on a flight next to a woman who was crying. My mother asked the woman what was wrong. The woman had been dating a man of “Middle Eastern descent” for several years. The man was kind, had a lot of money, and had treated her as a queen. Then, suddenly, the man wrote her a letter, saying he could never see her again. The woman spoke of how odd it was – the man and his friends had been taking piloting lessons and none of them had jobs but all had gobs of money. And then he just disappeared – his house, where he lived with his friends, was deserted and there was no forwarding address. The woman cried and my mom thought how odd this story was – middle eastern men with lots of money, taking lessons to learn to fly.

When my mom first told me this story, she had tears in her eyes. I asked her why she was crying, and she said, “Don’t you see? If I had said something, if I had done something … I could have prevented 9-11!”

Yep. My mom believes that on some level, 9-11 was her fault.

This is the stock from which I am sprung.

I tend to overdo it with my new friends. I gush about how wonderful it is to have a new friend, how unexpected and wonderful. I know how corny it must seem, how overbearing and ridiculous. But that doesn’t make it any less true. I never expect people to like me, or to want to have me around. My closest friends can attest to how long it has taken me to stop questioning their motives in being my friend – what gains to you achieve? What possible benefit is there to having me around?

Henri disagreed with me so vehemently. He says I am so likable, so compassionate. I say I care too much about things that don’t matter, expect too much of people and then blame myself when they let me down. I sit and wait for everyone to leave.

Inevitably, they all do.

None of this matters, of course. Just smatterings and ramblings after a tough day of being me.

All of the best things I’ve written down have been quotes from someone else. But right now, my life is a whirlwind of things to love and hate, to be proud and ashamed of. I will continue as I have, the Year of Saying Yes.

I am a leaf on the wind – watch how I soar.

This isn’t going where you might think.

It starts with a passion.

I can’t remember the last time I felt a passion. I’m tingling with it right now. I feel like I woke up one morning recently and remembered that I speak a different language. Not one that I learned over years of study, but one that I always knew. The language of my thoughts. The language I communicate through. Somehow I forgot, and everything was this secondary, translated form of communication. Nothing felt right the way I said it, or thought it, or felt it.

And then I remembered what it’s like to feel passion.

Do not assume this is anything uncharacteristic or romantic (which I acknowledge would be completely characteristic of me – I do fall in love frequently and easily in an objectifying way). My passion is a simple thing – a band. I recently came into possession of the entire catalog of a band that I had neglected to research and procure for years. I lack the words to properly describe it all without it sounding like anything other than an obsession. But I promise, its more than that. Its touching, and moving, and tear-inducing, and speaking to soul-parts. It’s such that I will talk about it endlessly if asked, but will never try to push it onto another person, for feel of taking their rejection of the music as a rejection of my person.

Its that kind of connection.

We all have those connections in life. Our things. Our people. Ourselves. That which, when stacked into a pile, starts to become a pile of things shaped exactly like us. All of those things that, on an infinitesimal level, are the very molecules of matter that makes us ourselves. Here’s another large heap!

I have to say that its been a very selfish year. I say that not in a self-demeaning way. I think, on some level, it’s what I needed to get to where I am right now. But it has been a year of me me me me me me me me me me me me.

That’s been changing.

It’s not my place to speak about the woes and troubles of others. But we’ve now reached an age in our lives when trouble doesn’t come as frequently, but it comes more profoundly. In the last two weeks, several friends have had their lives affected in unspeakable ways. The drama of our youth was fickle and overblown and in some ways contrived. The troubles of adulthood strike hard and deep. With just enough years under our belts, the things that can hurt us now hurt not only our status quo, but reach back to our pasts to rip away something we believed to be forever. Friends, loved ones, memories.

I am not the only one who has felt pain. I have spent too long in that place. As life continues, life continues to hurt sometimes. I have to leave this place to make room for others who are in need, who hurt. I’ve taken this spotlight for too long. And I don’t need it anymore.

I don’t mean to find solace in that. I am not self-assured by the hurting of other people. More so, it just served as a check on my status quo. Its no longer me who is the one most in need. It’s no longer me who hurts. It’s time to be there for someone else, instead of constantly asking for someone to be there for me. It’s time to let my friends be there for someone else.

This is a good thing. This is the realization of strength, and progress.

This is the way life goes now:

I woke up with a minor hangover. Its unlikely it was the beers. Its likely it was the bourbons. I had just enough time to shower, throw on some clothes and rush to McDonald’s before breakfast ended, then jump on the Metro to head to Courthouse. For the first time ever, I carried coffee with me on the Metro, and kept looking over my shoulder for fear that the “Food and Drink Metro Cops” would find me and ticket me for my indiscretion. Thankfully, I made it.

The car battery was dead. To start and run the vehicle, Micah kept the battery from his boat plugged in. We couldn’t stop the car at Rudey’s house, and I will tell the story as if we had to keep coasting up and down Rudey’s street while he ran alongside the car, tossing in the car seat and buckling Mr. Muscles in while we coasted up and down again. Then we headed to Rudey’s parent’s house to board the boat.

We boated towards Tim’s Rivershore for lunch. I say “towards” because we got almost there, stopped to gas up at the bikini gas station (not a joke), and then the sky turned black. The Nothing was closer than I had ever seen it. Wisely, we high-tailed it back to the Elder Rudey’s where we decided on a more casual lunch of Gin & Tonics, Wine, Beer and food from the earth. Literally. The food was pulled from the garden, cleaned, cooked, and served.

Except the salmon and steak. That was pulled from the freezer.

Anyway, what follows are some pictures from this lunch.

The thing I wanted to say, though, was this: today reminded me of how lucky I am to be alive, and to have the life I have. Today was an experience that grew out of mishaps and complications. And it, for whatever reason, was my favorite day I can remember for years. At one point, riding the chop and admiring the mansions on the banks of the river, I just smiled and turned to Micah and said, with as much genuine affection and love as I have have ever felt – “Life is effing good, man. Life is effing good.”

It is. And I am so sorry that I forgot that for so long. I hope I never end up in that dark place again, so full of hate and loathing and apathy for myself and my existence.

Life truly is wonderful, and I am finding out what Home really is.

You can still see the dirt on the veggies from the GD ground they were just pulled from.

Phallic Squash!

G&Ts in progress.

Trub limes.

Da's potato boil.

The lunch spread. The yellow tomatoes were unbelievable.

The aftermath. Wine, beer, coffee, cordials, chocolate cookies, stomachache.

• Crystal Castles makes for really good Metroing music
• I need to watch more MST3K
• I go use the bathroom to pee, and I thoroughly wash my hands with soap and hot water for a good minute or two. Guy in stall at the same time comes out of stall, doesn’t flush, and walks right out. Somewhere in between is the right amount of cleanliness.
• When in an important meeting with your boss’ boss’ boss, it’s terribly distracting that your godson and the high school version of his dad are staring at you from pictures on her desk the entire time!
• Lafayette, IN does not sound like a fun place to visit. I was informed there are a lot of engineers there. It reminded me of that thing that ever nerdy person I know who was in a Masters or PhD program has said to me one time or another: “Oh man, you might think [physicists] are boring, but NOBODY parties like [physicists]!” Apparently nobody parties like anybody. I wonder if engineers all believe nobody parties like them. In my experience, these sorts of parties usually involve a 12-pack of Coors Light split between 5 people … I am not looking forward to this trial in Lafayette, IN.
• Cat’s love boxes more than anything in the world. Kir is going to be pissed when you throw that thing away. Just let her keep it, and keep putting catnip in it so she’ll get all zonked out and not bite you for attention.
• When your apartment is so small, “taking a night to clean up,” including sweeping, mopping, recycling, cat litter and possibly even laundry will take well under an hour. Except the laundry. That takes about an hour and a half. Don’t include that on the list when you write this fact down – it’ll ruin the impact.
• It has been surprisingly easy to transition to two spaces after a period at work, only one space after a period in the rest of my life. I feel kind of rebellious, like I have a secret life outside of work.
• Beards get terribly itchy at one point. People who quit at this point are pussies. The itch is how you know the beard is working.
• Rudesy has promised to handle the more important aspects of your future funeral. Specifically, he is going to tell the story of the 40% joke. He also says he’ll do his best to get it put on my tombstone (note: mention that you’d rather not be buried but would love an awesome statue with a plaque that reads: We Miss Our Friend. “What is that, 40% off?”)
• If you die having never done anything funnier than the 40% joke, you’ve still lived a more fulfilling life than most. Know that you one time achieved greatness.
• Seriously … that guy pooped! I could smell it! How could he not have washed his hands?!

The act of making new friends has made me so apprehensive about using this blog. Its not that there’s been a front – life really has been good. I’m living in that state of constant amazement every day. I’ve even made strides towards rebuilding burned bridges, with the simple act of pulling over in the middle of a huffy puffy run to make sure everything is okay with people who I once counted surely as friends, and to take advice on drinking coconut water (which I bought immediately, thank you for the rec)

But I am definitely hiding parts of things. I think I want to make everyone else feel better. I want everyone to know that the worst possible scenario is not really an option.

Its always been the problem – I love recklessly, and unrequitedly. Popular sentiment would lead me to believe that we all have self-doubt. We all feel lonely sometimes.

There’s nothing profound in what I write, or what I feel, or how I live. But it feels profound, because no one else I know expresses it. The failing is, as always, on me. People are not meant to regurgitate these sorts of things. We tamp it down and hope and pray that it will pass. And for most, it does. But why should I feel insecure for feeling and expressing this way? There may be an entire unspoken judgment on how I choose to express, but I like to believe that someone appreciates it and likes that I do it.

I think that’s why people love music – someone expresses, though lyric and sound, the precise emotion you feel at that time. Its why we all collect so much music – a song for every emotional timbre. At the end of my days, I hope to be able to express myself purely through playing a series of songs to my loved ones. Right now I feel “In the Morning of the Magicians.” Earlier I was feeling “Bedouin Dress.” Later I will probably feel “Surf Wax America.”

I lean back to think about what to write next, and my cat, sitting on the back of my chair, begins to nuzzle my head. What is unrequited love, truly? Who really needs who?

Gatorfan Chris wants a dog. I told her I am seriously considering getting a dog myself. She said, “Dogs are like nature’s cockblock. You’ll always have something to get home to.” I thought about that for a while, decided there is some future where I will be available and want to have all the free time to be on dates or something. I was sure she was right.

Today I put on my sunglasses on my walk home from the Metro because LCD Soundsystem made me sad and all I could think of was Maddy, and tears were close to flowing. I’m sure you don’t know, but Maddy is the perfect, most insecure and neurotic and anxious dog ever. When I see her, rarely now, she still remembers me, and wiggles and squeals and wags and simply loves to see me. I am always afraid she going to pee in her excitement. I resolved to myself today: who cares?! Being with someone else is not all its cracked up to be! I have friends who I love and who love me as much as they can be expected to. I have no hopes of being worthwhile to someone else anymore – life has shown me otherwise. Why not the Spinster’s life?! A dog and a cat, perhaps? Or why not more? To know the love of another being, even if only through a need for my feeding and walking and changing of litter and being around? What’s wrong with wanting to be appreciated just for being around?

I made dinner tonight for the Bohlins. Mid-risotto, I got a call. I was needed. And I don’t want to overplay it – I wasn’t needed, I was available. It’s no specific version of me or what I offer that was needed, but I was there when someone was in need. And on some level, that felt decent

I’ve always been one to tell people how much I appreciate them and why. Recently, my friends have begun doing this too. The cynic in me thinks they’re reacting to my obvious need. But on some level I’m starting to see that we all really do need one another. Whether we express it easily or not, the love we feel for one another is based on some level of realizing how deprived we’d be without one another. Or realizing, in a moment, how lucky we are that they were there when we really needed them.

Maybe someone will actually need me some day. Or maybe people already do, and I’m just too blind to see it.

Its all helping. Like I said, there’s a lot of front being put up. Whatever they say about me, I hope they will also say that I tried very hard to be there for the people  I loved. Even if that love wasn’t needed.

I recently discovered that I have an overwhelming attachment to Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.” Listening to it the other evening, I actually started weeping a bit.

I recognize that I am a sentimental, nostalgic person at heart, but something about this album, its absence in my life and the life that it was present for, the disconnect between the two, the outcomes unexpected and disappointments, the people come and gone since. How unbelievably long ago that life was! How unbelievably far away! How different that person was.

There was a time. That was the soundtrack to a life. I wonder if those people would even believe this is where things would get to.

It comes in more than one shape. Oh, the sadness you will experience! But oh, too, the joys you cannot even fathom! You are young, and you shine, and you feed yourself on hope. The real experiences will be so much better than anything you are imagining. Different, but not disappointing.

Oh, to be in Innisfree again.

N8r’s birthday was the best excuse to act like a 25 year old again.

Except 25 year-olds don’t typically go to bed by midnight.

Something that my newer friends don’t always know about me is that I will push the bounds of proper/publicly appropriate behavior in order to make others laugh. And by others, I often mean myself. I don’t think my friends last night were nearly as amused as I was by the hot sauce incident …

We golfed all day. I made my special Bloody Maries, AKA Ceasars, and the racist beverage cart girl was well-compensated for all the domestic cold ones. After a not-actually-out-of-character piss-poor front 9, I pretty much rage quit golf forever. I scored the best 9 of my life on the back. Golf can kiss my ass. I’ll be playing again next week I am sure …

We followed up golf with a quick viewing of Party Rock Anthem, then off we went for an impromptu Wings Crawl around Silver Spring. The first place, an Irish joint, had regular wings and “volcano” wings. The regular wings were spicy like a tomato. The Volcano wings, which I expected to actually be spewing forth molten hot sauce and sulphur, were instead the regular wings with a shaking of red pepper flakes on them. No faces were melted.

It was the spirit of this disappointment that lead to the good decision to order “These Will Kill You” style of wings at Quarry House. Pride comes before the fall.

A direct result of the many many beers I can’t say what lead me to keep eating the wings after the first one proved much spicier than I could handle. These were legit hot. Like habanero hot. Lips went from tingling to throbbing pain within a few minutes. My finger tips began to burn with a real heat. But lord, they were so good!

You know how they say you should wear goggles and gloves when cutting hot peppers? And they joke about washing your hands before using the bathroom? They should also include a provision about not dipping your fingers in hot sauce and then deliberately “gold bonding” yourself to make people laugh.

To be fair, it was really really funny (to me) for like 5 full minutes.

20 minutes later, I was in the bathroom at Quarry House, which is to date the very worst bathroom I have ever visited in my life. My entire body felt like it was on fire. I was drunk, and the sweat was so copious I looked like I had jumped into a pool. And I was starting to panic a bit. Somehow I convinced myself that if I could just pee, I would evacuate the hot from my body.

Yes, I recognize how logical that is.

Let me say this: when your hands are still covered in hot sauce oils, you should probably wash them two or even three times before attempting to pee. Or, if you’re me, you could also try washing them zero times.

When I finally returned to the table, I looked an absolute mess. I am sure my friends assumed I had been puking or explosion-pooping or planning a complex heist given how long I was gone. When one commented on how good I looked (something like “you look like you’re about to die), I simply whimpered words along the lines of “you don’t know how this feels.”

Remember those five minutes of laughter, that were almost entirely just me laughing about putting hot sauce on my junk?

Totally worth it.

I’m travelling to Chicago for my first ever hearing. As of Tuesday, I will officially be a litigator – not in the sense of “my job may someday require it” but in a very real, “I just had my first litigation” sense. Its fucking awesome. Two days from now, I will be able to say “yes, I totally did it.”

It’s humbling.

I know the Mole wants my reviews of the few games I have been able to play, but for now I don’t have the time I need to wax on dick jokes (Shadows of the Damned) or boobs (Catherine). I promise a solid review of each sometime in the future…

It was an amazing weekend. Two in a row. I can’t explain it beyond this bewildering feeling that I don’t understand what the hell I was doing with myself before I was doing all of these things. I am surrounded, for now, with a plethora (that word means what I think it means) of opportunities. Sincere thanks to Micah and Christine, who I haven’t come up with blog names for yet but I don’t think they actually read this anyway so they won’t know …

I’m going to bed tonight so full of something more than contentment… the fact that I fly tomorrow to Chicago for my first hearing isn’t really registering. More so, its how mundane the thing is where I am travelling to Chicago tomorrow is –  that somehow doesn’t even register as a big deal.

Life got so different.

No one cares, I know But to me, it continues to be amazing.

Do check out the Google+ pics, which made me laugh the entire time I took them and which really won’t be funny at all to anyone else at all. Regardless, it was a great weekend.

And PS – Matt, I’m in for your birthday.

I started my new hours this week. It’s not terribly complicated, but I have an impossible time explaining it succinctly. Basically, if I work 8 additional hours over my two week pay period, I earn a day off. So I started coming in an hour earlier every day but stay until my regular time. Now, based on these hours, every first Friday of the pay period I get out at 4:30, and every second Friday of the pay period I am off.

Yes, I have three day weekends every other weekend now.

But as I adjust to this process, I’m fairly certain I am losing my mind. I’ve lost all sense of time and timing. I cannot tell if I have been here for hours or days. I have stubble on my chin, though I’m fairly positive I shaved this morning. My clothes appear to be wrinkled and untucked, my tie loose and hanging, top buttons undone. My face is pinched in a perplexing squint, switching focus to one eye for now, the other later. The coffee in my veins doesn’t wake me so much as shake me anymore.

When I got to work, I opened Gmail. At some point I noticed my status message read “Underwear loungin’.” I double-checked to see if I was in the office. To see if I really was wearing pants. I was.

Its absurd that one hour less of sleep, one hour earlier in the day feels like a whole new universe. It should be night now. It should be winter. It should be Christmas. It should be my birthday.

Instead, the windowless room provides an endless, false midday, devoid of dawn or dusk.

I keep thinking of this Stephen King short story, “The 10 o’clock People.” Some perfect combination of sleep deprivation, nicotine, coffee, booze and exercise has been intermingling in my system now for weeks. Its making me aware of things I had never seen before. Way less about monsters running the country, though.  More self-reflective.

Perhaps I am merely looking for excuses to explain why recently, I don’t trust my instincts worth a damn.