reminder:

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another. WALTER ELLIOT (1888-1958)

two hours of backspacing.

previously scheduled programming

As if the day couldn't be shit enough, I've gotta read that Dave Mustaine, he (once) of Metallica and Megadeath fame, is endorsing Rick Santorum for president. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/megadeth-singer-endorses-rick-santorum-calls-newt-gingrich-164220697.html
A couple of things here: first, Mustaine's support? His endorsement? Is someone actually looking to him for voting suggestions? Jesus. Next, Santorum? Bad enough you identify as a Republican, you elitist second string musician, but you're gonna pick the young conservative christian who'd be the first to throw you in jail for any number of offenses, starting with the cover art for your albums. Mustaine is impressed that Santorum "took time to be with his daughter when she was sick". Sooooo, the main character trait we are looking for in the president of the United States of America is his unique ability to show concern for his own offspring? Well, that opens the field up pretty wide. I mean, so you have to have the natural instinct to protect your young, and bingo! Bob's your Uncle. Sam, apparently. It's not that I don't value that trait - it's that I think there is more to being an effective leader of the moderate police state we have going on right now. I also don't think that Not Being Newt is a valid reason to be the POTUS either. I mean, it will probably come to that, but in terms of using reason to endorse a Republican candidate it's a little terrifying. The fact that the most prominent Republican is also one of the most decisive is telling on it's own, throw in a little of the patented Repubo-loony-tunes Bible-thumpers, and it just becomes painful.
Santorum is so many flavors of bad that it's hard to even get the energy to go over the list; suffice it to say that if it's a knee-jerk conservative christian platitude, he foams all over it (hah! a joke, but only if you've googled "santorum") and that his staunch anti-choice, anti-civil rights, anti-anything that isn't in his favorite episode of Fox news and his own twisted interpretation of "moral values" attitude is bad news. But I suppose dimwitted metal dudes against Newt (DWMDAN) have to exist on this mortal coil for some reason, and it would seem that endorsing Santorum is it. Capricious god indeed.
I don't know what is more horrifying: the fact that Dave Mustaine feels it necessary to alert the half dozen fans he has left that he's a conservative Republican moron, or the fact that Yahoo news finds it relevant as news.
No, I know, the answer is b. I mean it's Dave Mustaine of Megadeath, you know, the band that isn't Metallica.Who, honestly cares? I mean, other than me, and Kevin Seconds who is currently taking on critics on FB right now who are accusing him and his ilk (that'd be my ilk, as well) about standing by and doing nothing during the Reagan years. DOING NOTHING. Honestly, kids, learn your history.
(insert stock Lars-bashing comment here. I just don't have the energy tonight).
Arsenal lost, and lost badly (that is we played for shit) today - it doesn't look good for when they come to ours in the second leg. we'd have to score 5 goals to win, and to be honest, there's just no way we're gonna do that against InterfrackingMilan.Even at home. Bye bye champs league.
((thursday update: our dishwasher, Renato has recently begun chatting with me - the subject: Arsenal. He is a Real Madrid fan, so certainly he understands the emotional nature of incredibly talented, but highly sensitive players - but it's funny, today he even told me that we might win against Inter in the next leg. From his mouth to RVP's ears, truly))
Then there's the homsickness. It was bad enough when I was simply marking time until April because I was saving money and trying to spackle my resume back together. You know, missing the family, the city, my friends, that sort of thing. The hopeful anticipation of being able to start a new job (I do love a new job, all the opportunity, the possibility, learning new things) - yes, I was bored, and yes I was pretty much just punching the clock feeling pretty invisible, but at least there was a certain resignation to the routine acceptance.
Now? Now I've got true love coursing through my veins again - homesick isn't even close to the heightened irritation and frustration I feel over just about every facet of my day to day rountine now. It's amazing how perspective can change everything. 8 weeks ago, I had no idea SMRGE even knew where I lived, much less gave a thought to how I was. I was not-especially blissfully going through my days fully accepting that he was happy without me. Sure, I fantasized that he might be unhappy and would somehow manage to call me because he needed to tell me that - fully thinking it was sheer folly. That it was just another little story I told myself to distract myself from the reality of having been thwarted in finding love with CG. I wanted to believe that I had been right about SMRGE, even though all evidence showed otherwise...until January 6th.
Then it all changed. It turned out I was right, and all the ensuing conversations and communication have been amazing and wonderful. Valentine's day (actually, VD-eve for me) was amazing, was able to put together a package of love for SMRGE that he appreciated just as I hoped he would. He brightened a day that generally brings out the grinch in me, by simply sending me lovely little things to perk me up  - sunny, smiley roses (a plant! so I can bring them with me! they will grow with us!), a special mug to enjoy tea and dream of Time Lords with - just sweet, simple things to remind me of him. Which is great....
Except for the homesickness. It has become so much more now. It's a ticking bomb in my head - we talk every day, even if just briefly at his lunch break (my early morning) and the connection between us is so fundamental, so elemental, it makes waiting really eat away at my patience. He's luckily surrounded by friends - my best pals are 2.5 hours away. My loneliness is magnified in the shadow of our rekindled romance. The fact that more lengthy daily chats are made difficult or impossible due to our schedules only makes it more frustrating.
I mean, yes, I have some friends here - but they live in the City and I do not, and given my schedule, I don't really see them as much as I would if I didn't live in the 'burbs. My fault, I know.
The work schedule is a big issue and was the main reason I'd planned to return home in the Spring anyway.As easy as this job is - it's just too segregating to work this shift, even before this new development. The constant feeling of time slipping by has become so much more profound as I try and match my life schedule up with SMRGE's right now. I had mentioned to just about everyone I know that I feared I'd become a hermit working swing shift with only one other coworker (I mean, hell, at least if your are at Kinko's and worked this shift, or at a normal restaurant, you'd at least be working with a dozen other people who you could hang out with after work even if all that was open were bars or whatever. At least there were other people to talk to and have fun with, I have only the Gleek to talk to for the bulk of our shift), and one fact is screaming at me in this moment.
I'm so amazingly lonely, and now, lovesick on top of it. I mean, the good news, of course, is that I know now how much SMRGE loves me and cherishes our connection. The bad news is that being here denies me the ability to take immediate steps to begin spending physical time with him now that I know he wants to be with me again too is maddening. I am trying to behave in a consistent manner in terms of keeping actual life things under control, to treat my employer with respect, and my landlord as well.
 I shouldn't just cut and run - but holy crap do I want to. Seriously. I have a pretty profound history of moving - at last count I believe I have lived at 15 addresses in the last 26 years. I've had 28 different employers since my first job in high school. I tend to land on my feet.
I'm pretty sure that's a pattern.
I also tend not to stay in any one thing long enough to get to settled. If I stay in the same city, even for 10 years, I'll move house, change jobs, whatever, constantly hitting "refresh" - before that was even a thing.
It's weird to think he's created a life for himself, been at the same job, had the same friends and stuff for most of the time we've been apart. Me? I've been the same old cork, bobbing along on the sea of life.
Dear dog, that's stretching a metaphor.
It's so fucking hard right now. And I know this is about perception, and I know that in a week, SMRGE and I will be nose-to-nose in Real Life again, and yes, that's nerve-wracking as well. It's been almost 10 years - and I do worry about the superficial things that girls worry about...though I trust in the understanding of him knowing who I am, what I look like, how I sound, all those things. Still though, getting older is tough.
My ability to maintain some calm and not immediately panic and assume the worst case scenario is being honed like a razor currently. Practicing Patience has never been so challenging as it is right now. Even as SMRGE said in an email tonight, we both share the same worries, surely (indeed every item on his list, including some random dental issues are on my list as well). So together we'll figure it out. A plan will be laid to get this tent packed up and outta here. Pronto.I just need to figure a way to keep my paranoid demons at bay - they are rearing their ugly heads and I'm so tense that I'm letting it affect me. Writing about it usually helps, so, yeah, here's that.
Ok, I am now going to go curl up with Jon Stewart and Ricky Gervais and try to erase the "news" that seeped into my brain today and replace it with some day-old current events presented with panache and wit.

valentine time

el dorado

At the behest of SMRGE (and my own nagging conscience) I set the Rickenbacker out of the case and placed it on the stand tonight – where it admittedly hasn’t been at all in this house , (I have taken it out about once a year, just to dink around when drunk and melancholy about a life once lived) though it did live out in K2’s house and in the townhouse (where it stood sentry in the extra bedroom, where Scraps chose to sleep at night once she became too sensitive to sleep on the bed with me). I kept it out like a piece of art though, rarely touching it. It was just comforting to have it there…for a while. I had the SG out as well, and for almost 3 months, played the 3 chords I knew, and strummed like crazy. I had to sell that guitar though, because the only real history I had with it was entwined with SMRGE and I was in the business, then, of un-entwining. Also, I needed cash. Two of the great truths of musicianship, poverty and instruments as short term equity.

I would never sell the bass. It is…a singular reminder of a time and space that I inhabit always. It was my passport to a life I never imagined living, and even now, sometimes feel like it’s something I read about once, or a movie I saw a long time ago. The history I have with it, is all mine, with plenty of guest stars along the way, but the memories it evokes are not bound to anyone else or place, just me, and it together. As SMRGE reminded me this evening, an old friend who has been through so many adventures.

It is the only bass you see me playing in photos (though I also briefly had a baby blue Epiphone, and also very, very briefly a Fender, but both felt so foreign and I never really felt the need to have a “back up “ bass, so I shed them both in short order) – with the exception of the one photo I have of my very first gig. My very first gig was opening for DOA at the Depot in Arcata, California.

That show I rocked a ¾ size bass that was I believe gleaned from a Sears store in Eureka, or somewhere similar. It was all we could afford and enabled me to learn the songs a little faster. I played with DOA three times in the first year I played in Agent 86….and then once more in Seattle…and then never again.

((Joey is selling the DOA van (“Reid Fleming”) – they’ve had it for 23 years. I remember (and experienced one of my earliest sensations of dying while) riding in the step van they had before that. It’s amazing to think about those times. Visiting Vancouver was one of the great early joys of my punk rock life – visitng the World’s Fair with DOA’s manager Ken, and his girlfriend at the time, Kris. Watching fireworks from Dave Gregg’s front porch just across the road from the Expo fairgrounds. As we drank beer and talked politics and did various controlled substances, I remember Dave telling us that everyone one of the fireworks was the cost of a hospital bed that the government was spending.))

The Rickenbacker found me wandering in a music store in Dupont Circle in Washington DC. We had just relocated, and per usual, we were hunting for a drummer and a practice space. I hadn’t planned to get a new bass, but as I recall, when I was cajoled into trying out basses, it was the El Dorado that called to me. Heavy, and with a completely different profile than the typical Rick basses, it also sounded incredible through a Marshall, a warm sound that I like to call brown. It made me feel feminine, that bass – I felt like I was rocking a bigger instrument, that it could protect me from the onslaught that might come. I liked that no one had ever seemed to have seen one before. I’m a sucker for unique looks.

What’s hard about this is that…I have all these really brief memories of so many shows, but not a lot of coherent ones. What I suppose is most important is how comfortable I became with that bass, even if I wasn’t comfortable with the actual playing of it. That sounds odd, right? That I was comofortable with it, and yet not? Put it like this: when I knew what I was playing, there was nothing better than making that sweet rumble, and of having its weight around my shoulder.

So many stories, and yet it’s all fragments. What’s most pressing right now, is getting back in touch with it – I have been considering all the different things I did to try and ease the pain over the years, and one of them was to set aside my personal connection to music in that way. My appreciation and love for instruments and the people who create with them is still alive and well, just not especially well-tended. That is changing, things are reawakening all around me, and for that I am pleased.