On a good day...

Even on a good day I have a hard time planning for the future. My future, any future. I've never been especially convinced that me, the country, the planet is going to last much longer, so I have, for....let's call it 50 years at this point, not really done much in the way of increasing my longevity or security. Kids, let this GenX poster child show you how to live life by the seat of your pants, and for a little bit, it's fun and exciting. Then is excruciating and confusing, and now? Now it's just day after day of WHY? Why bother? Why this? Why now? My mom would have been 81 today, and in the last months of her life she made it crystal clear she did not want to be around post-80 years old. Physically, I totally get it - having your skin suit just deteriorate in real time is a bummer. That said, I do have such a morbid curiosity about how terrible things are gonna get, and also how much longer these moron Americans who were born post cell-phones continue to ignore the WEALTH of historical evidence around them and just wander mindlessly into the AI void as the planet gets hotter while the servers clunk away sucking resources (water, primarily) that humans need. I am kind of obssessed with the amount of footage that is available from 100 years ago now. We are the first generations to be able to know what people looked and sounded like in real time. It seems to just have launched us in to a loop, and I find it fascinating. For thousands of years, people went about their lives never having their likeness really out in the world. Sure, if you were super wealthy, or a notable figure of some sort (your Mozarts, your Lois the VIII, that sort of thing) there would be paintings. Or random sculptures of people, wall paintings of general life - but did Steve from 1482 ever have a clutch of drawings on parchment of his wife and kids and what they did on that picnic in June? They did not. Even just 200 years ago, it was linoprint and handbills to communicate. News in newspapers was at least a day old, if not longer. Now, we are assaulted with constant information, constant reminders of all the lives that are going on around us, and this inordinate pressure to post our representation too, or be lost in the mix. I spend a lot of time now walking the dog in the nearby cemetary, and I think a lot about what happens there. Already, I can track the people who visit immediately after a burial; but there is one older Asian woman in a white SUV who parks almost every weekday at what appears to be her son's grave - she's almost always there when we typically walk at 4pm. I visited his headstone on the weekend when she was not there and he was interred last year. There are graves that are 75 years old that appear to never have flowers. Graves that are 15, 20 years old that get fresh flowers periodically through the year (holidays, obviously). It makes me wonder what the point of the markers is, really? Because, sure, 100 years later, someone could be walking their dog and look down and say "Huh, wonder what ol' Rolf did for a living?" and then moves on. Not many people will be in a cemetary regularly like me (or maybe, in this new reality people will look to these places as safe spaces away from traffic and random chaos). So you would be recognized as being someone who did exist, for a minute, by someone who had no idea who you were. I like to imagine a scenario like in Ricky Gervais' show After Life, where his daily visitation of his wife's recent grave leads him to a friendship with an older woman who also does a daily visit with her husband who had passed years before, and yet she still stopped by to say hi, but had also had moved on and found a new partner to share her current life happens in the real world as well. Is that important? Have we ever shared with our family stories about other people's names and existance, if we never met them, or experienced them? That is what history is made of, after all, and it almost feels like no one is interested in history any longer. My mom will vanish from memory when we are gone - I guess my nephews (at least 2 of them, who were lucky enough to spend 5+ formative years with her) may occasionally reference her, and probably in much more favorable light than I referenced her parents. Ok, that's not entirely true, I generally have good thnings to say about my Gramps, but Grams? Yeah, oddly not so cheerful. I remember her though, and can still tell stories and remember her voice (sort of). It's weird though, because we didn't own any footage (or at least any I've been able to see, the old tapes my mom held on to wouldn't play in her VCR) of them, so all of the experiences we shared are all just memories in our heads. Dreams, really. Did those things happen? I read old journals and sometimes I can remember the events, but not always, and recently, names of people do not ring bells. Things you think you'll remember forever fall away, but some stuff sticks forever, and it's not the stuff you expect. I wish to hell I could remember details of being on Serbian TV, you think that would have stuck, would have been a big deal. Of drinking beer under the Eiffel Tower, of what the Norwegian Ferries felt like. What the streets of Arhus were like. Oslo. More of France. I am thankful I have the photos I do, and that my eye was drawn to ephemera, but I also wish I had more of a journalistic eye and had taken more photos of places and people. Anyway. My head lately feels like it's going to explode, and that's not just figuratively; the Afrikkaner refugees being greeted by the Deputy Sectratary of State? Relocated to IDAHO? So now we are just recruiting Nazis because they are trying to cleanse this country? Fucking terrible humans. Clearly this administration is trying to use every hour of the next year convincing all of us who value kindness and creativity and diversity (yep, I said it) out of the country on our own dime. If that doesn't work, of course they will eventually come for us too. I mean me, thanks to the Student Loan takeback, I'm back on the precipice of not having social security, and being garnished for my last 5 years of working. Classic American Republican bullshit. I just do not, and will not ever understand the fear of people who vote for this oppressive control in their lives. I've never understood it, this need to be told a story to explain why bad shit happens - it seems crystal clear to me that most bad shit happens because of human greed. Greed for power, greed for money, just greed to be the person who has all the toys. The one who always wants the ball. It always comes down to that shit.

suburbia

Having made the great escape (pilgrammage? exodus?) to the wilds of Everett to live cheaper and easier is, as expected weird. It's nice in that a lot of the things that were starting to grate on me downtown are now gone. With that thosugh is also so many of the daily routine interactions with people that I had grown used to and often looked forward to. I mean there are always pros and cons to any move - no one knows that better than me. This time though, it's been 12+ years since I last pulled up stakes, and I'd be lying if I said this time wasn't especially odd. For so many reasons, really - mostly because I moved in to mom's old place and while my brothers and I did initially remove a lot of the obvious stuff that wouldn't be needed (her clothes, furniture, loads of duplicate tools and stuff she had acquired) as soon as I flipped and decided it was in my best financial (and if we're being honest, emotional) interest to do so, they tapped out on the overall removal place to give me time to "sort throught" stuff. I had a million dollar view, but you can't eat a view, and the building was shit. Water randomly not working at least once a month (or at least losing hot water),the potential for the roaches to return at any moment, elevators being down (not to mention constantly defiled in such a wide variety of ways, every weekend, it made your head spin) and having to hike 12 floors....it was all just getting tiresome. The junkies outside (though that may change with Yarn Dragon going in and being a presence, but still - PSQ gonna PSQ) especially were just a daily reminder of the Fall of America. Living through late-stage capitalism (defunding forests, educational grants hotlines for LGBT youth testing of food safety; ( this isn't even adressing the wholesale disappearing of people off the streets) has kind of forced me to hunker down, and I guess I'm glad I have a relatively cheap place to hunker down. That said, it also induges my biggest weakness: drinking alone. Especially with a nice big kitchen to cook in, and handy stores within a mile? My love for a glass of red wine (or three) with food is a sticky situation that I'm gonna have to be careful with. Having a brother whose most serious hobby is collecting whiskeies (so, cruising liquor stores) also isn't a great thing if I can't rein in my "just do it" attitude, because I now have found a taste for tequila, which doesn't hit like wine or whiskey. Anyway, we'll see how it goes. How much of a serious hermit I become. That said - sleeping a whole night with no sirens is AMAZING. No random shouting throughout the night, no gunshots, cars racing around, all of it. Which leads me to a lot of dreaming - which was rare in the last 2 years downtown, unless I was heavily sedated with edibles. But up here, I'm dreaming like I am making up for lost time and my brain is hilariously inventive, and then sometimes steadily on-brand. I'm considering taking up a dream hournal. Here? On paper? Not sure yet. But everything from driving boats with Green Day to last night fighting forest fires with Brad - endlessly entertaining dreams, I just wish they'd last longer. Maybe, as my sleep pattern adjuststs they will.

Pathetic.

This country is an embarrassment to itself. Honestly only 3 days in and I'm already at code-red disgusted and angry, and to be honest do not have the bandwidth to watch this bullshit take hold, again. If it's going to be anarchy, then fine: gut all the stuff, and tax the fuck out of the rich. But this bullshit where the offensively wealthy jet-set are going to exploit a system they are bent on taking apart? No. Nope. Not into it. I have been skeptical of this governemnt and racist excuse for a country all my life, and periodically think (in those brief moments where Mandela became president of SA or a woman under 40 became President of New Zealand, etc) that maybe there was hope for us. But then, social media rotted America's brains and now everyone thinks they are smarter than they really are, and that they all will be rich and famous one day. I hate this place, and to be honest don't even really know where to go, because it appears to be happening everywhere. Brand new passport in hand, and all I wanna do is vanish into the Italian countryside.

Brief respite.

 Why J Robbins' voice and demeanor has such a soothing effect on me is a mystery, but having found a new podcast interview with him yesterday (two hours worth!) right when I was really in a bit of a downturn in the last few weeks was a genuine treat. 

He reminds me so much of how it felt to be part of something that absolutely changed, or better, formed the way I navigate the world. Certainly, since I didn't stay part of the scene or active as a musician and neglected to carve myself a niche as a promoter or producer of a zine, website, podcast or other tangible thing my path has been different, and yet when I listen to him, the same.

Similarly, or maybe coincidentally, K Harrop posted a quick story about K Cobain, wondering what he might have been like if he had lived, it was her phrasing about how weird or hard it is to believe that any of that happened, 30 years ago. She and I should have been better friends, to be honest. We still have occasional positive interactions online and the few times over the years that we had been in contact was always far more positive than anything that happened in high school. We are weirdos - two different flavors, but weirdos nonetheless. Remembering a time when that was who punk rockers were: weirdos. its not too common these days.

good medicine

http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/thu-september-26-2013-chris-fischer why i'm happy to be as old as i am.

Letters I never sent.

Hey Mike, You know, I used to send so many letters. Remember all the pen pals I had when we met in college? Maybe you didn't notice - but I'm pretty sure you knew about a few of them, and there were a couple, like d. who I probably didn't mention much. I was thinking about you this weekend, in a way I hadn't in a long time, or maybe, conciously, ever. Oddly, I was watching a clip of Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran playing acoustically together in London on the weekend. They have been friends for a long time - I'm not an expert on the fandom, but from what I can gleen it seems like they go back a bit. Certainly, they are the same age and seem to both be products of the same giant ass viral bubble that made rockstars about a decade ago. Anyway, watching them play, doing acoustic versions of songs they'd both written, watching them interact - it made me nostalgic for being onstage with you.
I assume, whereever you are now, you may already know that while I think about you often, it isn't always about us as a couple. It is usually, about the intensity of life in general, or places we traveled, or people we knew together. This was different, in a way that I haven't felt in a really long time. My brain was immediately filled with memories of you writing songs in our apartments or rooms. The way you sat, cross-legged, but not lotus; it was a weird thing you did specifically on the floor. Your SG tucked against your tummy, your head bent so it was parallel to the floor - your hair (when it was long enough) flopping in your face (I have one photo from Serbia when your hair had gotten crazy long and you were also smoking and coughing that is burned into my memory, but so many more, like when we were stuck at the garage in the field in France, or in our apartment in DC, or the room in Silver Spring, or jeez - even the bedroom in Eugene!) and you'd strum, then be reaching over to write the notation down with the lyrics. I loved you so much in such specific moments, you literally created a formative way of looking at a partner - for good and for not so good, obviously. What's weird for me is how warm the memory felt, how comforting and the longing I had to just have that feeling again. While it was sort of expanding, I remembered how it felt to sing backing vocals with you, and the occasional times we would be looking at each other onstage (it didn't happen much, you were the focal point and me and whatever drummer didn't have much to offer the crowds) or the occasions when you would tell me it was a good gig. Remember that show in Belguim when the kids sang with us completely out of the blue? Oh, it also happened the other day when a clip of Neil Young doing Keep On Rockin' on SNL in '89 showed up in my feed - goddamn that song was fun to play. You had such a good sense for so long about music and punk rock. It's sad it kind of morphed into a weird paranoia and desperation. You would have been stoked that you got a mention in the LV music rag though after you died. People were really kind on your FB too - until the new whip got into a fistfight with the baby momma. Ah well. Anyway, thanks for being part of my life Mike, I wish I had tried harder to be me, instead of being so fucking scared all the time about how ugly I was.

"So I enjoy every day, every moment and I thank the god of doggies for the chance to see your little face turn white." -French Beagle-owning Insta influencer on the absolute joy one should gain from having an older dog; especially if your dog has gone through health scares, or dangerous situations.

out of the dark caves of time

Am I the only person who looks at old photos (I mean, proper old, like 50 years or more) and tries to imagine what that person in the photo's life was like, or even what they were thinking in that captured moment. I'm not sure if it's because I looked through a lens for so long, or what my weird obsession with people is but I'm always inordinately curious about what people are thinking, why they do what they do. My biggest regret is not having more time to pursue this, but that being said, maybe I'll just fuck off and go back to school. In the meantime, I will just, I guess, continue to ruminate. Literally, and figuratively, as once again, the Spring Crud has infiltrated my lungs and I am coughing, have a ridiculously itchy throat and just wanna go to sleep. Ideally for like 10 years, and just wake up, none the wiser, none the older, just well-rested and ready to do battle. No such luck though. Instead, I am chewing on old personal bullshit.Yep, Daddy Issues. They are a mountain I climb, and then get to a ledge and feel like it's futile at best to continue. At any rate: here I am again. This time, courtesy the TV show in it's final season, Succession.
Now, this show ostensibly has nothing to do with me, or my life experience. It's all about a super-wealthy family who control a media empire.
However, what all the siblings share is a debilitating (in various ways) level of need for their father's approval. That part has always resonated, but the most recent episode, where they kill off the old man really struck me in an odd way that actually took about a day to come to the surface (so to speak).
My father keeled over during his second heart attack while working his post-retirement hobby/job at a classic car lot. I was at the family house (which was the largest in the neighborhood, and looking back, I often wonder if people assumed we had more money than we really did - which was my father's goal, I think: to appear wealthy and successful as quickly and easily as possible) with my mom, it was a Saturday. My younger brother swears he was there as well, and perhaps he was (downstairs maybe?) but I can't for the life of me remember much other than being in the kitchen when my mom answered the phone and my dad's coworker explaining that he had collapsed and they had called the ambulance.
I can't remember either if they told her then that he was dead, but I remember that she got directions to a hospital in Edmonds, and I drove there. I remember (distantly) being confused and panicky, but also, much like the Roy siblings in the show, oddly concerned about what we were really being told.
Being told your dad is dead by a third party is disorienting, to be sure. To travel to the hospital and find him cold on a gurney is a sudden shock that I have never really processed. Watching a somewhat similar scene unfold on TV to some really terrible characters who, much like my own family (though for somewhat different reasons) are wholly unable to physically express emotion or comfort, really hit a damn nerve.
It's just picking at a scab, essentially, and I am nothing if not a mental scab-picker. It's weird when your family just wasn't all that close. We didn't do a lot of things together, as a unit, especially once we moved to Seattle from Southern California.

Leaves are falling.

While it's not as melodramatic as sawing off my own thrumb, or having a brain too big for my skull, over the weekend the gel in my eyeball has lost viscosity, and now it is a veritable snowglobe in my right eyeball. I've always had floaters, but this is something else: it's layered and makes for some horrible headaches given that I spend a major portion of my days typing into the big shiny screen all day, much less trying to read an actual page. Unfortunate. Not as bad as it could be, and apparently, according to the opthamologist "just part of the aging process - though it is a little early for you to be experiencing this much flux" apparently nothing I can fix, or stop doing to make it better. I blame the mainlining of certain powdery drugs for all physical maladies, and this is no different. Addnedum: It turned out, 5 days later, to be a detached retina, and only a quick detour on the way to work to the opthomologist followed by emergency surgery kept sight in my right eye. It's wonky, and having to keep your head parallel to the earth for 72 hours is not as easy as it might sound - and having a weird gas bubble in the eyeball as it refills with fluid is about as distracting as it sounds. It is a hell of a way to get 2 weeks away from work (though one week was me working from home, because I am nothing if not a masochist).