ENERGY

I can feel it pulsing and flowing through my body it starts in my chest and works it's way throughout my veins until I can feel it gently tingling in my legs and my eyes are being tugged open mercilessly and my fingers tremble and my jaw quivers as I stumble over words and sentences flow past my lips without breaks or periods

:)

I love you, downstairs neighbors.
I love the shitty god damn music you play at all hours of the day.
I love how when you speak/yell at each other it sounds like you're actually IN my apartment.
But most of all, I love listening to you vomit in your bathroom at two in the morning on a Wednesday after a heavy night of drinking.

That's why I'm cranking my guitar amp to eleven and blasting you with the heaviest death metal licks I know.
Have a nice day.

Desire

My love, you will kill me one day.
It's a beautiful thing really, the very nature of our relationship will be the death of the two of us, but I don't mind.

When I hold you I feel like the world just melts around me. Before I knew your tender touch, your curves, your smell, the world was grey and barren. I've been burned a couple times by my desire, and each time it leaves me bitter and tainted. I wonder what it was that ended the relationship. In the end it always comes back to me. I spend weeks, months festering in my own self-loathing, feeling the blackened pit where my heart used to be crumble and collapse, completely powerless against my own despair.

I wonder if it's even worth it, to go out of my way and seek out love again. I wonder how I could trade a temporary moment of sheer bliss for months of torment, question the very nature of my own happiness. Am I even capable anymore of existing without you? Of living a fulfilling life without the constant reassurance of your presence?

And then I look at you, hold you, feel you pressed against my lips, and forget everything.

Bacon, I love you.

Road Trip, Final Installment

The next day's drive was only 330 miles or so, so I didn't set my alarm for the morning. When I woke up I headed down to a park I had seen on the side of the road on the drive to Pier W. I headed down some stairs and walked out onto an old pier jutting out from the beach with a bagel and cream cheese. I took my time eating, carefully avoiding the lapping waves and seagull crap as I gazed out across Lake Erie. After a good 20 minutes or so I jumped back in the car and entered the highway for the last time. The drive went so smoothly I forgot to stop for lunch, and the gray storm clouds and rain which had dogged me from the moment I entered Nebraska finally let up. It was a beautiful day as I entered Pennsylvania, and once I got into the hills of Upstate New York I really started to get excited. When I saw the first sign for Ithaca I almost yelled with glee. Our old Golden Retriever Jenny used to bark and scurry around in excitement in the back of our car when we were making our final approach to our cabin in Idaho, and I suspect I felt a comparable emotion as the end of the trip finally came in sight.

I saw Cornell in the distance first, and then I started passing a few familiar stores until I finally got within sight of the main section of town. I stayed in my friend Connor's house that night, since I got there a day early after cutting out NYC from the itinerary, but the next day I helped him and his housemates move out (since it was a sublet and their lease had ended), and they in turn helped me move my stuff upstairs. Walking through the front door for the first time filled me with absolute elation, and the place is still as cool as I remember it being way back in February. It is a little creaky and rickety, the fridge is way too big for the kitchen, and the walls in the living room seem to have undergone at least four or five very unprofessional college kid paint jobs, judging by the various missed spots on the walls and accidental brush strokes on the molding. None of the previous residents seem to have ever heard of painter's tape before. But there's an undeniable charm to the place, and the location can't be beat. I'm going to very thoroughly enjoy living here.

I took almost three hundred photos along the way. Every 100 miles I'd take a photo of both me and the scenery. Uploading all of those would take forever, though, so here are a select few of the ones I took, plus some shots of the apartment and the Commons. For some asinine reason Photobucket decided to send the ones I rotated right side up to the front of the list, but aside for the first three all the photos are in order. The itinerary I took for the trip can be viewed here.

I'm glad I made the drive, but I wish I'd taken a bit more of an interesting route. Grandpa recommended staying "on the blue roads," and if I did it again I think I'd seriously consider doing that. The only big city I passed through on the entire trip was Cleveland, but aside for that all of the little towns along the way were pretty much identical. Their economies depended entirely on the highway for survival, and didn't have much going for them culturally. I guess you can only experience so much of America at 70 MPH, but there'd probably be quite a bit more to see and experience on the less traveled roads.

The Golden Age

Sitting under the shade of a red, weathered sun umbrella outside a little coffee shop, I exchange a knowing glance with a tall, twenty-something camp counselor as he leads his group of boys along the shop fronts. They're on a scavenger hunt I think; when they were on the other side of the Commons he checked off a few things on his list that the boys had found: Barney and Charlotte's Web in the window of a used bookstore. He mentions something about needing a cattle-prod to keep them in check, and they scream in amusement, quickly returning to laughing and yelling incoherently about nothing in particular.

I feel the burns on my fingers from the coffee mug as I turn the page of my book:

Page 242
"Frodo found himself walking with Gandalf. 'This is the Hall of Fire.' said the wizard. 'Here you will hear many songs and tales--if you can keep awake. But except on high days it usually stands empty and quiet, and people come here who wish for peace and thought. There is always a fire here, all year round, but there is little other light.'"

The patterns of clouds passing over the sun flow across the pages as the sentences roll by. A man with dreadlocks down to his knees greets one of his friends sitting in the amphitheater. His friend has been there for a while now, his head bend over the neck of his guitar, bespecktacled eyes picking out the same five chords over and over, periodically looking up and acknowledging the passers-by. A little down the way a man raises his fists in victory and grins at his opponent over a chessboard, clearing the pieces off of the table and declaring, "It's all mine!" Even further down a woman sits in conference with a bronze statue seated at a table, frozen in time, left hand spread out over notebooks and folders, right hand gripping a cup of coffee.

Birds chirp,
Couples chat,
A topless woman walks down from one end of the Commons to another, holding her t-shirt carelessly in one hand.

And I live here?

Road Trip, Installment 2

Utah is very interesting for a number of unique reasons, but one of the things I like most about it is the mountains. They're big, very pretty, and give you something to look at in addition to helping you orient yourself. These mountains lasted for about an hour as I set out up Parley's Canyon, and once I hit Wyoming America became one gigantic pancake of a landscape. I had some conception of the vast breadth of the flatlands, but no idea of how incredibly unchanging the scenery can be. From Wyoming right up until New York there were nothing but corn fields and farms for as far as the eye could see. Even the slightest little hill became very interesting.

Sitting down in a car for eight hours a day, which may seem daunting at first, is actually not as bad as it seems. At first I was a little worrisome to think about how long it would actually take to drive the 650 miles from Salt Lake to Nebraska on the first day, but once I sat down the miles just flew by. I even found myself getting into a little bit of a frenzy, intentionally not stopping at gas stations to take rests to see how far I could actually go in a sitting. By the end I think I was averaging about 200 to 300 miles at a time, only stopping twice a day for gas or to make myself a sandwich. Getting 35 to 40 miles per gallon also helped me stay on the road; there's no better incentive for continuing on when you don't actually have to stop!

The towns I stayed in weren't terribly interesting. I picked North Platte, Nebraska completely arbitrarily. Initially I had planned on staying Cheyenne, Wyoming, but that didn't seem far enough to go on the first day, and I didn't want to have to make up the distance on the other days and completely wear myself out. North Platte was a funny little town. The hotel I was staying at was in the center of a big collection of other hotels, and there were about three local restaurants I could find in the dozens of chain restaurants surrounding them. Beyond the tourist/traveler section of town were just flat little suburbs.

Davenport, Iowa didn't have a lot going on either. I chose it because I thought I recognized the name from the Music Man, I think at one point it's mentioned that Harold Hill is from Davenport. Instead of a whole assortment of hotels there was just one lonely little one right off of I-80. Downtown seemed to consist of a modest little strip mall along the side of the main road, and everything else was houses and farms. For dinner that night I indulged myself with my one stop at a fast food restaurant, and chose McDonalds. You could tell the place was well patronized; it was absolutely gigantic. There was a big dining area with a bunch of booths and nooks with tables in them, and there was a little kids section as well with chairs shaped like Ronald McDonald, all facing a television showing a Disney cartoon. Oh to grow up in middle America.

I was going to stay with someone in Cleveland, and was going to venture out of my way to head down to NYC to see a few of my friends in VoiceStream and to get shown around the city, but both of those plans ended up falling through at the last minute, so I ended up just staying in another hotel outside of Cleveland for the last night. For dinner I headed off to the Pier W restaurant, which had a great view of Lake Erie, and was right across the bay from downtown Cleveland. The place had complimentary valet parking, and as I was walking down the stairs from the entrance an elevator opened up with trio of old businessmen discussing whether money was being allocated properly in the Company. They all had suits on, I on the other hand was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and the shirt had stains on it. I couldn't help but chuckle a little as I was lead past the other patrons by the hostess, feeling the incredulous looks on the back of my neck. Dinner, a 16 ounce steak, was served on a square plate. Dessert was creme brule with chocolate shaving on the top, with strawberry wafers arranged artfully in whipped cream on the side. It was incredibly expensive, but absolutely delicious, and the view was incomparable.

Teh Road

(This is an email I sent out to my family, it's a summary of the trip from SLC to Ithaca. I'm gonna post it in installments because of the length, so it might read a little awkwardly, but whatevs.)

Well, after an intense four day drive across the United States from SLC to Ithaca I'm all moved into my new apartment in the Commons. The Commons used to the main street in Ithaca, but was closed off to traffic and is now a two block pedestrian zone. It's full of little local shops and restaurants and bars, and there are tons of people out just walking around or hanging out when the weather is nice. As I type I'm sitting in my living room, which overlooks the western end of the Commons, and it is so damn cool to be able to say that!

To begin, fitting a year's worth of things into my little four-door Saturn proved quite tricky. Dad was a very shrewd car loader though, and with his assistance we fit all of my clothes, guitar and guitar paraphernalia, coolers and boxes with food for the road, and various other boxes full of of stuff into the trunk and backseat, along with a pretty sizable and very heavy TV securely strapped in with seat belts.

Initially I was pretty worried about the trip, as I'd never driven more than a few hundred miles in a sitting before. I had awful visions in the days before the trip of me rolling my car somewhere in Nebraska, having to escape the wreck by dragging myself over broken glass and twisted metal as the car burst into flames. I was also completely paranoid that my car was going to get broken into and all my stuff taken. Both mom and dad had told me in the days leading up to the trip about a friend who was moving to Boston with his wife for grad school. After leaving their car and U-Haul trailer unattended for a few minutes they came back to find the trailer had been snatched. I laid awake for many hours thinking about this, wondering where to park my car in big cities, thinking about how to hide the fact that I had a car very obviously packed to the brim with expensive things.

I started out in silence in the morning as I made my way from my dad's to my mom's house to say goodbye, and as I drove along I heard a mysterious squeaking coming from the right side of the car. I hadn't heard it the day before, and was completely at a loss for what it could be. The only thing I could think of was that my brakes were worn too thin, and that the feelers were scratching along at the rotor of the wheel, warning me that the brakes were almost gone. Thoughts of having to end the trip early, rescheduling hotel reservations and calling friends in different cities to cancel meetings swirled around in my head. At a stoplight I jiggled around with a few things stashed in the front seat. The squeaking was, of course, a pot lid rattling on top of a pot. I grabbed the lid and slotted it somewhere in the back seat, and traveled on in silence.

Catalogue of things the two crazy people in the alleyway behind my apartment yell at each other while I'm trying to sleep:

"This country has given EVERYTHING to you, and you dare disrespect it?!"

"I'm gonna light you on fire!"

"I've been fucked by the best, and that's why you're angry at me! That's jealousy! That's what Paul Newman said!"
"Fuck Paul Newman!"

They're out there every night. I've got half a mind to sick the police on them to shut them up. To be updated as more random things get shouted in the night.