"I empty a bottle, I feel a bit free"

What to do now?

The existential crisis creeps on towards some unknown climax. I do hope that it will be a good one. I wish someone had an inkling of advice on this issue. And not the usual. I want someone to look at me and say, "Hey! You'd be perfect for _______!". That's not going to happen though, so it's back to looking through the classifieds.

Maybe I didn't think this whole move thing through all that well. That's part of living though. Seeing as Cali has about 10% unemployment, this may not be the best time to be looking for work. Maybe it's time to go to Europe for a while. Or something. Just be occupied.

At every turn I am discouraged by what I find. There is this unknown tyranny which pervades my life, but I cannot confront it, or even understand it. It's just there. That shortness of breath at the unknown. Nerves. I'm nervous about my own life.

I'm not getting any younger either. A lot of people my age have kids, steady jobs, a future. I have none of those things. I've worked odd jobs, have no love interest, and at this point, no future. I'm hoping to get into a grad program, but still...

Well, here's to hoping something good happens in the next few months.

Last night I could not sleep. I sat up. I watched some hulu, deciding to watch an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", season 1. My room mate and I have been working our way through the series bit by bit. I got into it at season 3, so there is a lot of character background that I haven't seen, but I've inferred from the last three seasons. Anyway, I'm watching this thing last night, and I realize why I'm awake.

I've been thinking about the past a lot of late. John, my oldest current living friend, is in San Diego for six weeks. I haven't really seen him for a year or two, but we got to hang out last weekend. It was a good time, and refreshing as all hell to catch up with him. The more things change, the more they stay the same. But something has been nagging me. While watching Buffy, I realized that I miss being a youngster. I miss going to school. I miss all those stupid things.

There's one sort of memory moment that sticks out for me. It's Halloween, or close to it. The Simpson's Halloween Special is on, and I'm standing in my kitchen. I'm a teenager, I don't remember exactly how old, but let's say 15. Ten years ago. John and I are going out to do something. The air is that crisp, cold kind, that you only get in New England during the fall. It's cold, but not cold enough that it keeps kids inside. In fact, the cold, the bare trees, the clear sky and full moon...that's Halloween. Not store bought decorations, but that coolness, that primal fear, like the colonials felt. That's Halloween. But the memory goes on. We cruise around. We swipe a pumpkin, or something, and smash it up. Hell, it might have been one of our friend's pumpkins.

I also think of those times. Knowledge was key. Everyday there was just this great influx of new information. That's so hard to do these days. People don't want to talk about the Great War or the past. They want to discuss the new, the current, the unbending reality in which we live. It's so boring. But then, those days we could relish in the new information. IT was our reality.

The awkward chasing of girls, the crushes, the heart ache, all that stuff. The puppy dog way that it all went down. The inevitable break that would occur. It was all so simple, it was all so vivid, confusing, infuriating. It was truly living.

Have you ever wondered how a newborn feels? Grasping at something that's completely unknown and trying to understand? That's what being a teenager is like, except that we know something better is beyond, and we can't truly cope with all the things that are going on. But looking back...

Looking back I realize that those times were wonderful. The reckless way we tackled life, the stupid things we did. We were learning, pushing our limits. And the sad thing is that we can never go back. We are forever pushing forwards towards our inevitable end. I'll never be able to capture the warmth of that kitchen, the cool air, the existential crisis of being that was adolescence. Are things better now? Not really. Now I know where I was going before. I've arrived, to a degree, and it's frustrating. Is there no more room to grow? I know there are things to do, kids, marriage, the whole thing. But that enjoyable time, being a kid, is truly gone. I miss it. I miss the stupidity of it. I miss it oh so very much.

Been a while, back, and still as lost as ever.

The End.

-ccmas

ps: some stuff has happened, but in all honesty, it doesn't matter all that much. None of this really matters. I find myself feeling like that more and more as the days go by. It's like I have this promising future something out there, but I just have to wait, and fuck, I'm not feeling patient! I really would like for things to really ramp up now, but it's always wait wait wait. Everytime I really get that itch to hit the road something comes up, but it's always far enough away that it irks me. Now I've got a gig doing some PA work. But it's 2 weeks away. In the meantime, I will thrash and claw at what I consider to be my situation, thinking about how much I want to be doing something, but also considering how little satisfaction I've found in just about everything that I've done for the past 2 years. Give me an upside. To say I've been in a funk is an understatement. To say that I'll ever get out of it would be the greatest news anyone ever told me.

I also have this constant fear that someone is going to sneak up behind me whenever I really get into typing. Maybe with a knife, maybe just to poke me. But I get that odd feeling, and it really freaks me out.

I am a bundle of neurotic energy. Look, and be dazzled. Woo.

The Red Sox won the world series today. Whoopie. You know what's more annoying than a Yankee fan? A Red Sox fan. They think that because they suffered so long that their entitled to something. Guess what? A lot of teams wait a long time to win. The Rangers waited 54 years to win a cup. After they won, the fans weren't dicks. They were just the same old fans. Wait, does this mean that the majority of Red Sox fans are dicks with an overinflated estimation of the importance of their team in the greater geopolitical scene? Maybe. All I know is the asshole ones and the new ones really, really get my goat. Same with Yankees fans. We'll see who the real Yankees fans are next year, when they rebuild.

Fuck, this is so worthless. But it is making me feel better.

Current Injury Report:

Partially torn ligament in my right knee
Mystery bruise on my right forearm that makes holding anything take a lot of effort
Right shoulder hurting with the cold, still making that clicking noise
Left ankle: some sort of neurological thing where I have constant pain in my heel
Neck pain: thanks to that car crash I get this a lot. Feels like I need to crack it, but can't.
And I have a cold.

Mainly I just want the ankle thing to go away. When I get up in the morning I can't really move it. Also have this on spot on my shinbone that always hurts. Had an X-ray done of my knee for the ligament and they said there was nothing wrong, yet it still hurts. Goddamnit.

On the bright side, Grad school applications are going ok. I'm in pretty good health, and I have no outstanding debt looming over my head. Apple stock has been through the roof, so I have a little cash to play with. I have a modicum of a social life. I have friends who I cherish and care for deeply, and a dog which always makes me laugh and smile.

Still no girl. I do have hockey, though with the abuse I take from that I might as well be dating Ike Turner.

Really, I'm just full of this greater feeling about everything that I know everyone else has had. It's that feeling where you want to do everything but you can't do anything, so you feel useless and want to vanish completely. Basically, right this moment, I feel like I am 15 again. Only now I know what music to listen to. Smiths/Radiohead here I come!

How've you been? That's always my favorite question.

Screw kid I've got nothing going. Think I'll move to Finland or some other cold place, then to the desert. It'll be like icing/heating a bad ankle.

This is a sick society. People are reactionary and dumb. They read to much into things, and not enough into others.

"Oh a troop surge is bad." Duh. It's a bad thing, it's a bad time. Learn from Vietnam, in all ways. If you're going to pull out of a situation that you fucked up, at least clean house a bit before you do so. That way the government can try to instill some order before crumpling when you pull out the carpet. I hate the war. My cousin flew a helicopter in it while his 2 little girls wondered where daddy was. Thing is we're in the shit now. We can't just pull out, we can't go on. We need to establish some form of order THEN leave. This is where troops come in. It's counter intuitive, but it makes sense. Let the underage drinkers actually go after the men that are doing the most harm, and try and settle this thing up some. We've made a nasty bed. We might as well change the sheets before we make the independent nation of Iraq sleep in it.

Oh, and Dems: make up your fucking mind about something. Don't be stupid. We've had enough of that over the past few years. We need GOOD leadership, not people fucking around with each other trying to show how morally superior they are. Don't play the partisan game, don't fall into that trap.

I swear the longer I live here the more I want to get out. But then it's everywhere. Bickering, racism, stupidity, monotony. It never ends. Really, what is the point? What is the point at all?

We're really slaves to a society that doesn't love us, that doesn't value us at all. What we do on a day to day basis does not matter. Will the world end if I don't enter my data? Will the world end if little Jimmy fails his test? NO. None of this matters, not one bit. How did we become so sick? Where talking heads tell us what to think and we consume what is offered? How did we become so ill that the only way we really feel anything is through a box and flickering lights? There is hope for us, for life, but not much. This blog is just another cog in the machine, just another way of keeping us drawn in. There is much contradiction to be found.

Personally, all I want is a dog and the desert. Creature comforts. To write. To be engaged in a good conversation about something more than the weather. To have that would make me happier than all the PS3s and money filled suitcases in the world.

Angrily yours, but never to be,

-ccm

"Heaven restores you in life?"

I was digging through some things from my junior year of college that I hadn't ever unpacked, a true sign of my laziness and neglect. I found these tins that once housed these French cookies, from France. Maxims bakery or some such thing. Good little morsels. One tin had pencils in it, one had silverware, and the other had little knicknacks and baubles. The bauble tin was the one that gave me a little bit of a pause.

I found a cheap little ring in it. Soft metal, horribly bent out of shape and actually broken in one spot. It has some sort of Celtic-y design on it. I looked at that and was just taken out of it for a moment. I had found a relic from a long lost relationship that I had completely forgotten about. Then memories just came back like a flood.

Speaking of floods, I had a dream that my kitchen flooded. I was standing there and suddenly all this water just came washing over me. I don't think I was scared, not panicky at least, but there was something mildly calming as all the water came in. All I could focus on were the other people in the house and how this would be terribly inconvenient for them if they wanted some coffee.

Back to the ring. I looked at it and in every misshapen centimeter I could conjure a memory, those rose tinted kind that when you really think hard on them you realize they're not as good as they seem. The ring is the physical embodiment of reading an old journal where you pine on and on for someone. Read that when you're removed from that love and that affection and it all seems so childish, so dependent, so foolish.

But in that foolishness I see something that was good then, in spite of all the issues and fights and drag out brawls, the bawling and the baggage. There was that kernel of pure childish love. I'm convinced most people can't have really rational relationships until much later in life. There are some wonderful exceptions that I know of, but for the most part we get too caught up in the emotion of the whole thing to realize when something is going wrong. When we're young we miss the signs. We want to make things work. Sometimes though, the bravest thing in the world is just quitting.

Funny how kids in love can point to Iraq. Funny that indeed.

The ring itself (though) was a gift. It was the first thing that I had ever gotten from someone who said they loved me. I remember one night we were in a Stop and Shop and got some sparkling cider, myself and Shannon. The cap needed a bottle opener, and not realizing how soft the ring was I tried to pop the top with it. It bent horribly, I mean it went from round to very, very oval. I remember feeling such shame at messing up the ring, and trying to hide it until we got back to her house and I could run to the bathroom and try and reshape it. I don't know if she ever caught on or not, but that was the beauty of that time. It didn't matter. We had each other and that was all the world was.

Now there are things like employment, taxes, money, insurance to take minds away from each other. I wonder about people who really fall for each other now. I wonder how they make it work. So many married people I know say it was the worst thing they ever did, and they're happily married. They just can see that they limited themselves, got tied down. Love does that to us, ties us down.

For however long I've maintained this bloody thing I've spoken of love a lot. It's just always been a driving force behind almost everything in my mind. It makes people do things that they would never do otherwise. For women, men, nations, objects...people will do irrational things for this concept of love. I think more irrationality comes from love than hate. There is a cold logic to hate. A problem exists so I eliminate (kill) it. Love is nebulous and frightening in the way that it's constructive, therefore difficult. There is no logic to it, though it's very simple on paper. It's just a step above like and one below obsession.

That's all I have for now though. It has been a while, and I feel like this post is incoherrent enough to meet the high standards of this blog.

I wonder what I'm going to do with this ring and all it symbolizes...

-CCMAS

It's always a funny experience to realize that the songs that you hold so dear are known by everyone, and they'll sing along to them at a concert. It's like you're being outed or something. This comes about thanks to Radiohead videos on Youtube.com. I look up a song I like and it gets played not only at almost every show, but gets a huge pop from the crowd. And they all sing. Somehow it seems a little less special to me now, like everyone knows. They all have their own silly associations with it: first kisses, car wrecks, being punched in the face. Everyone's different, but the same. Makes you think a bit.

There is an old poem about not fitting in anywhere, and how when you die you won't fit in heaven. You just won't accept it. Then there's this idea that the French have of not being comfortable in your own skin. I often think about that. What a damning situation to be in. You can cover your skin with all sorts of things, but it'll always be there. You'll be haunted to your grave by yourself, always trying to feel normal, but never really knowing that you're there. I wonder if we're all still growing into our skins, and whether we'll ever fill out our birthday suits. Confidence in ones self. That's a trait that I often find myself angered by.

It's not that I don't like when people know what they want, quite the contrary. I like people who know who they are, and are cool with that. People who are comfortable in their skin. Nothing is better. It's when that confidence becomes the end, and all encounters are just a means to it. When you have a conversation to show how cool you are, or this crazy thing that you did, that's when I start to get angry, or upset, or just despondent. After all, these are the kinds of people that run the world, that claim to be "Alphas", natural leaders. Not true, says I.

To me, there is a distinct beauty in the recognition of the outlandish as normal. When something really odd happens to me, something that is strange, I tend to just treat it as another thing. There's something I love about that. Life will go on with or without us, and any event is only as important as you make it out to be. I've been trapped by forest fires, in a car chase or two, in a plane that's come really close to crashing. These are things. They don't control or define me. If people want to know about them, I'll give them all the details. I just won't bring it up unless prompted. Maybe this is why I have trouble writing fiction.

The glaring contradiction is this little space though. It serves as my soapbox to talk about things, yet it isn't for anyone, but it is. I've been through this before. I feel slightly dirty about writing things here, but it's so damn enjoyable to actually write words. They're my first love and my greatest love. I should have been an English major then, but in spite of this, they hold a sway over my life. Someday soon I'll write something I can be proud of. In the meantime, I'm going to keep plucking away at this until I feel warmed up enough to take the plunge.

Until I get something meaningful back into my routine,

-ccmas

It feels like winter, but it should be spring.

There is something inspirational to the soul about enjoying something that's always there. Living in New England for most of my life I all but ignore the "color". The trees change their clothes, drop trou, and the winter comes. Driving tonight, I learned to enjoy it again.

The Magnetic Fields album "69 Love Songs, Volume 2" was on the 'pod. I was wearing my old Old Navy jacket and just taking in the night, driving much slower than normal. Not a single other car was on the road, and for once I could cruise at a relaxing 35 in a 40, enjoying to often somber sounds of the band. Love is all they sing about on that album, obviously, putting me into that romantic mood I sometimes let peek out. Then I heard something sounding like static. Then I heard more of it. I checked the radio to see if the ipod dock was getting a bad signal, but nothing. Then it hit me.

I was driving over leaves. Hundreds of dried up leaves. They were coming down like snow.

Suddenly the air hit me, cool and moist. Getting home didn't matter much at all anymore. I just wanted to drive and see these amazing things falling from the trees. All I could think of was being a kid again and jumping in leaf piles, and the little bits of broken leaves that would stick to your socks. Twigs in my hair, leaves on my socks. A kids as close to an adult as a bush. Something innocent came back into my life, and I really don't want to lose it, but I know I will. I know that I'll wake up tomorrow and be the same person I was this morning. I know that I won't be able to share this with anyone, not the experience at least. There is something perfect in the complete privacy of the moment, but the knowledge that other know it too. It's like this shared unconsciousness that we all have, at least the ones that grew up in this region, where the air would go cold before school started and the balmy 60 degrees of the spring seemed like 90.

There is this shame that I feel in moments like this. It's that knowledge that years ago I could dwell on nights like these for weeks, revelling in the wonder of it. Now I cannot. Even if I try to, I'm faking it. I'm forcing sincerity. These moments are like water on a duck's back, and while I try and hold on, they just slip away. If I could meet me now I don't think I would like me much. I'd have a much better time of things, but I think that cynical little tumor in my life grew into something bigger, and that there's no way to remove it or even tone it down. Maybe it's growing up. Maybe that innocence being lost is a shared experience, like broken leaves, one that we all have but never talk about. I hope so. I don't want to be the only one that's broken their own heart.

Until the next time we speak, until I figure things out and feel like talking more, until something happens that is of note,

-Chris

So nothing new from me for a while, and there are some new things to speak of. For one, I finally drove cross country with a little help from my friends. That will be elaborated on in the future. For another, I live in CT again. Feel better in general. I can say that very easily. Even with bruises and bumps from my rekindled love affair with ice hockey, I can say it.

Now to get life going again. I mean, in a meaningful direction. I have some leads, as always, and am hoping for the best. Part time's just not doing it for me anymore. Law is looking like something that may be worth following, as is the ol' newspaper industry. As a sort of failsafe, I'm going to try and become a JET. That means moving to Japan for a year. Could be a good adventure, if I go for it.

I haven't updated this thing in the longest time, and it makes me wonder if anyone will actually read it. I'm sure some people still chack in from time to time, as it often provides an up to date and detailed presentation of my life.

You ever notice that one of your arms is more developed than the other? My right one is getting way bigger. Have to balance that out before it looks too weird. Also, get a haircut.

-ccmas

Really, unforseen fires will rage with an ire that you cannot comprehend. They will burn brighter than the north start and devour the world. They will be known as "brit-pop", and there will be no escape.

I've got not much to say at this time, but the mere realization that what I have been missing is embracing that odd world view that I do hold so dear. Something that it is , is the way to look at the world through an eye full of sublime terror, and to see a thing that is wildly humourous and often abrasive. When I feel this, when I connect with it, things seem more interesting, and the possibilities seem endless, and entertaining. Music swells, and the doors open. There I see my love and devotion, there I see saving.

But that is just romanticized babble, coming from a man who hasn't written anything worth reading in 2 years. I've been trying, but I've been on a dry streak, though I can feel something coming back. It feels like there is this thing in the distance that I'm creeping towards, but I'm almost afraid to get there. I wonder what it is, and why I fear, but I can't stop. This is a good thing. When I hit that point in my mind, something will snap into place and I'll fall into gear and make something. That's the way it works.

It's like the death of Dali. When he loved money and not art. He would dab 3 dots of colour on a canvas while in the tub then splash water on it. He would then sign his name, quipping, "well that one will sell for 40k". It is easy to make nothing in a short time and call it art, but hard to really make art.

A mentor once told me that if writing were easy, everyone would do it. I've probably said this before, but when you are really writing something good, when you are firing on all cylinders you will be completely worn out by the end of your session. You will want nothing more than a good bed. This is not pouring over every word trying to make the perfect phrase, but this is pouring yourself out onto the terrifying blankness and creating a whole world in words. That is powerful. Even god had to rest on the seventh day. What he made was physical. Mere mortals like us can only make the ephemeral.

But this is like everything else I love. I put time and effort into it, working to be good, but it will never move beyond something that I love and devote to. I am not sure that I ever would want it to. I mean, I would love recognition, but at the same time I have an aversion to it. My birthday is in a day, and while I want to get people together for it, it is not the reason. I want to see people. I don't want people to venerate me, I've never wanted that. I shrivel in the gaze of others. I prefer the background or the shadows. It's safer there.

But there it is and there it's done. With nothing left to say here, I slink back into those shadows. The writings on this page are publicly private, and I enjoy that. I like people having an eye into how I think. I don't know that I think any differently from people, but it's nice to just throw stuff out there sometimes. It's gotten me in trouble before, and it probably will again. I cannot really make sense of it, and how it fits into my aversion of attention, but oh well. It's here for those who want to peek, it's there for those who don't.

-ccmas

Farquar slang tobalt
Schultly varslblard kadant
hulti itslamamam gusto gus

gusto gus still loki, loki still lanked
lanked furstors, feersteered, festuned
Filtingh ghatsley gholus, jibiliante

inkolo akala, sibliotic cimbilsim
motorek hublibut rewagh.

-Chris