New Twitter

Will update from my new twitter more often than here... simple not around internet with this job.  In North Carolina for fire training atm.  Next week is camping and prescribed burns in Virginia's Great Dismal Swamp.  Loving my Phoenix crew and this job. Next update from Halfdrawnfish through twitter. peace.

Urgent Message

So I just have a few minutes again but have an important message for anyone who is keeping track of the tax cuts being deliberated in Washington right now.  As of March 7 the entire Americorps program could be shut down or significantly cut all across America.  Republicans in the house are trying slice our programs, NCCC included, because they think what we do is no longer necessary in America.  While I support the need to reduce our national debt this is a bad idea on many fronts.  In 2005 Americorps NCCC was on the verge of being cut but because of hurricane Katrina America realized the need for service members to be prepared for such disasters and community volunteer work.  This has kept us alive for five years now but once again we may be seeing the last of our program.  Current Americorps' members hands are tied - we cannot participate in the campaign to keep the program because of our non-political stance but if anyone is looking to help please call your local representative and tell them America needs funding for volunteers ready to help their neighbors through Americorps Vista and NCCC.  We spend only 2.5 million dollars on our local campus every year while trillions of dollars have been spent on unnecessary and illegal wars in the Middle East.  Tell your representative that the little we spend on these programs creates armies of volunteers ready at the drop of the hat to work for peace.  I'll let everyone know what happens after the bill is passed and is sent to the White House.  Thank you for your help!

I thought I would have all the time in the world to get online and keep up with my favorite TV shows, music and this blog but it turns out I'm filling every minute of my time here.  This is a good thing.  These past several months have been a recovery from many years of sadness and down time.  Now I am taking up responsibilities like the people I once envied and it feels great, all-be-it exhausting.  It even hurts a little to be typing this because my arms are so sore.  Yesterday, per routine, I woke up at 5:00 A.M. and ran two miles with my fire teammate outside, another two inside and then weight lifting for about 45 minutes.  Americorps NCCC picks a handful of women and men from the 213 to be trained as woodland firefighters.  I tried out, wrote a letter of interest and got in which means I have to work out every day to be fit for assignments we receive throughout the year.  We hear that several from the team end up working for the DNR or Fish and Wildlife Refuge as firefighters.  Apparently it pays well.  Immediately after my morning training I eat a quick breakfast, fix my lunch and jump in my team van which takes us to a local community center.  Here we are being trained under the Red Cross for how specifically to set up, run and take down shelters in case of disaster.  This runs all the way to 4:00 P.M. and includes lectures and several exercises that give us hands on experience before we actually go out and participate in disaster relief.  We get back at 5:00 and my team immediately has PT (physical training) so I run up and change, run back and work out for another 45 - 60 minutes.  Make and eat dinner while doing laundry.  Clean up. Then each team member has individual meetings with my team leader for positions of leadership from 8 - 10:00 P.M.  I stay up and make lunch for today and then head to bed only to wake up again this morning at 5:00 and start the whole routine over again.  Time is precious.  There is none.  Training is still another three weeks from over before we go out on Spikes, or long-term community/disaster projects.  But we still are involved in the community and are busy getting in ISP (Independent Service Projects) hours, 12 this week for me.  Somehow I have to fit this into a schedule that has no holes.  Also this weekend my team is joining four others in going to D.C. to work with intercity youth at a swim meet.  Monday is off for President's Day but I have already signed up for an ISP having something to do with Legos (I don't know) so in all reality there is never time off, never time when we are not involved in training or community projects.

The people here are a surprise from my first suppositions.  The faculty and team leaders are, for the most part, very chill and in general our age (mine is younger than me - weird) so they are easy to get along with and are busier than we are.  The NCCC volunteers, 213, are a mix of about every personality.  A solid handful are either here because their parents made them come or are brought in from Job Corps.  Americorps policy is to be completely open to anyone coming in as long as they have the ability to work hard.  This is very good but very bad at the same time.  It allows those who otherwise might not be able to do this kind of work to be accepted but also lets in a lot of rotten apples.  It becomes very frustrating when the days become long but I've tolerated a lot in these past few years and so keep my peace.  I have a good group of friends now that are nothing short of brilliant, entertaining, forward thinking, individuals that push me to work harder and become a better person.  They are inclusive and uplifting - as a phrase recently picked up, they don't yuck my yum.  A lot of volunteers who have never lived in close quarters or done hard work or even lived outside of high school tend to complain quite a bit about the living circumstances or people they don't get along with, but these friends of mine are always looking for the virtue beyond complaint and I have decided to carry that baton with them.  I am just getting used to my new team which I will have for the rest of the year.  Two teams actually, my main team which I'll be going on spikes with and my fire team which will be going to further training in North Caroline on March 12 and then doing prescribed burns or fire fighting out West if disaster happens to strike this year.  My personal team is pretty solid and relaxed which I am thankful for and my fire crew is nothing short of phenomenal.  I will really enjoy our training together.  I have also signed up for special roles within my team that I will find out if I got in today at some point.  We are doing driving exercises and some other training today that I cant remember.  I have to keep a schedule on me during the day to keep up with everything but left it in the room to come get the ever so rare internet signal to write this and check my email, facebook, etc.  Every day is a new lesson, new friend and new experience and I can't remember them all but they are exciting and I have no idea what each day will bring.   I've gotten my punk ass off the streets.

Americorps NCCC

This is just a quick update to keep in touch with my latest journey.  Last summer when things were so bad I signed up for Americorps NCCC under the direction of a friend.  After going through all the paper work and waiting all I heard back was that I was wait-listed and would find out soon if I was getting in.  Months passed and I chose the internship at Agape Community instead.  Last Tuesday I unexpectedly heard from Americorps again.  Apparently there was a grant that allowed the program to hire on almost a hundred more members for the East coast branch of NCCC.  So one week later and I find myself sitting at the end of the hall of an old VA hospital wing in Perryville, Maryland wondering how things can change so quickly.

NCCC stands for national civilian community corps, a group of 18 - 24 year olds who are trained in natural disaster, CPR, firefighting, education and various other specialties.  The last group who came through here aided in the Katrina rebuild and other national efforts when they weren't here in Eastern efforts.  There is an impressively diverse group of people here that have kept me on my toes.  I've already started picking up a lot of sign language on account of a deaf kid in my barracks.  It's not even 24 hours later.  So I can't say what to expect but it looks like I'll be here for a few weeks in training and then head out to who knows where.  I could be living out of a tent for the greater part of this year.  The pay is decent and I'll get a lot of money taken off my student loans not to mention free room and board.  I think I'll use it to save up for this Winter, maybe move to California or look into the Peace Corps.... anywhere but the absurd world that tells you to pay this and do that.  I'll be working hard here and that should be the price of life.

There's a sergeant telling me it's time for lunch now... more later.

HDF

Losing a Whole Year

The routine we went through our last few years in school was a comfort against the bitterness and angst of life at our age.  After class each day I would gather my things, books, computer and notes from the previous day's lectures and walk the quarter mile from the West side of Holy Cross's campus to East side of Notre Dame's across the road.  Even before dinner was ready at my own dining hall I fled to the university that was not my own.  My campus was a no smoking zone so I would wait till I reached the road dividing the two school's to light up my cig.  Then through the outer parking lots, the Rocke gym, Howard Hall, CoMo, Sorin Hall and the grass in front of the golden dome I would smoke away.  The trip was so familiar that I would always burn out just as I reached the ashtray in front of Crowley Hall of music where I would bring the pianists I dated to see the Steinway.  In the student center I studied what I cared to study (often little to do with my classes) before dinner back at my dorm.  By that time I was ready for night, to be in Siegfried sipping wine or rum with Ryan.  Starting on Fridays and Saturdays and quickly becoming earlier in the week Ryan and I ritually drank and listened to music at the expense of our well-being, morality and personal finances.  It was a way of removing ourselves from misery and sustaining a hobby at the same time.  Every hour or so we took a break from the 5.1 surround and Christmas lights that absorbed the room and stumbled downstairs to talk and smoke.  The feeling was oftentimes the same - like coming out of a club and becoming overwhelmed by the buzz of silence and desolation of a late campus.  It was the perfect time for open discussion.  We were drunk.  We were quenched with music. We were honest.  On one occasion we instituted the discussion of existence and religion.  "Why do you believe in god?" I asked.  "Because there is music." he said.  I couldn't think of a better way to express my love for sound - because it made me believe in god.

I fell for Third Eye Blind before I knew who they were.  I was ten and had just purchased a little radio about the size of an iPod and a set of headphones so I could always be in touch with the latest songs.  Before discovering that I could listen to whomever I wished without my parents knowing about it all I heard were the 60's and 70's mild rock that my mom and dad bought.  On my tiny radio I began tuning into the local college station that allowed cursing and sexual reference without the FCC being aware.  At night and under my covers I slipped the right and left channels into my ears and flipped the switch and started scanning.  I felt so rebellious.  In March of that year Ben Folds released Whatever and Ever Amen, an album that changed my perspective and changed my attitude toward authority.  My sister and I had the CD but never let our parents know that some of the songs had cursing or else they would make us throw it away.  When they were gone we put the album in and played it through till we learned all the lyrics and every song became a close friend.  On my radio my innocent rebellion continued.  I heard Jumper and Semi-Charmed Life and Graduate, the songs that introduced everyone to 3EB whether they later admitted liking these songs or not.  In 1997 I had no idea that these were all from the same band.  My sister, who had an account with BMG (It was all the rage back then) was the one who bought the self titled album.  I never heard her play it and probably wouldn't have put it in the CD player even if I saw it because the name sounded so bizarre to me at the time.  A third eye sounded grotesque and the fact that it was blind was a little unsettling.  My minds eye was catastrophically undereducated and under experienced.  My sister apparently didn't like the band and offered it to me one day when she was cleaning out her collection.  I don't know why I took it from her but free music and the number of CDs one owned was a status symbol if nothing else.  It was the first time I heard Losing A Whole Year, the first song on the first album.  I didn't like it - I didn't dislike it.  But I heard Jumper and Semi-Charmed Life  and How's it Going to Be (another one from the radio) all on one CD from the same band and was instantly swimming with disbelief that these people all created these great songs in one go!  And so I continued to listen and eventually sank into the greatness of the surrounding songs.  Not one was worth skipping.

Along the same time I was starting my lust of a relationship with music - a love affair like any other that compelled me to hate what I endeared most.  I don't know what got into me but I never wanted music to be loud and I was tired of hearing the same thing over and over again.  I missed a lot of concerts my parents attended because I couldn't stand committing to the loud and constant noises.  Stomp, a percussion band, came to town but I turned down the offer to go.  I deeply regret not going but I later got the chance to see them when my episode passed.  In the car my parents would listen to Dave Matthews or other jam bands but I couldn't stand it.  Eventually they learned to play it quietly and with the fade toward the front of the car where they were seated.  On the oppose extreme, when I was alone in my room, I soaked in the music of the mid to late 90's like a shroud covering me from the outside world, letting me die into beautifully chaotic sounds.  Eventually Third Eye Blind released their second album, Blue, and I took to it like I did anything at the time, hating it at first listen so that I could drown in it the second and third and eternal times thereafter.  There were songs in the Third Eye Blind collection now to claim them as my favorite band and great influence on life.  I was student of scripture under my parents, under my religion and was told that the bible held every answer to every difficulty I could expect.  I expected and experienced many difficulties and turned to Christ but only received my answers from the music.  I felt different, more able to deal with life after coming out of a session with this band.  Their lyrics understood me and and said, "fuck it, there is still beauty in life - so come experience it with us."

By album three, too many years later, I had a full-time job and was jamming with a work buddy, a friend of mine from younger days.  He had a drum kit and I had just purchased a cheap, red, faux strat electric guitar.  I had borrowed an amp from a friend of a friend who was in prison and couldn't use it for a few years.  When I learned he liked Third Eye Blind I went out and bought the sheet music for the first two albums so that we could play a few songs together.  We both sang Wounded all the time and wanted to work it out.  My respect for the lead guitarist (I hadn't learned the names of the band members yet because I honestly didn't care who they were.  I loved the music) rose along with my disappointment that I couldn't on any level play the music that was so eloquently and skillfully laid out on the pages of notes.  All of my favorite songs were in different tunings and I hadn't dared try to work them out.  I had just started playing guitar and hadn't taken lessons so I sucked and would rather admire the work of the masters than attempt it myself.  When Out Of The Vein came out Westley and I waiting outside the doors of Target, missing school, so that we could buy the album.  At the time Target released albums half priced on the day of any release and we were poor.  It was the first time I anticipated the release of any band and it was exhilarating to be a part of something social, something new in a life moved by seclusion and grey.   Though not what I had expected from 3EB, OOTV slowly found resonance with my current affairs and offered me something to scream to when life became difficult.  Time passed, I left home, loved a girl - lost a girl and wound up in college.  I hadn't listened to 3EB in awhile, having exchanged their voices for the sounds of my new life, love and friends.  That first year in school I became ultra-challenged to experience everything, study my brains out and try to get the girl back.  Soon I discovered MyTunes Redux and began listen to everything I could get my hands on that wasn't hiphop or rap or country.  I often forgot about my favorite band until a few weeks into school when Third Eye Blind came to campus for a show.  I went, first row, touched the lead singer's arm, screamed the lyrics and went back to listening to them with new fervor.  Time passed again and SJ passed it with me.

Year two came in school and I met Ryan who, unknown to me, was in the front row at the same show the year before.  Also unknown to me was that his favorite band was also Third Eye Blind.  We didn't like each other at first. The first time I visited his dorm room in Siegfried was awkward and I wanted to leave but I noticed a shirt laying across his chair with familiar words: Third Eye Blind.  What?  He liked their music.  We became instant friends and music was our number one topic.  I was still discovering the infinite world of music but it always came back to our favorite and most related songs.  We shared the release of new 3EB tunes and the long expected fourth album.  At the same time we started befriending fellow fans across the world and talking to them most nights.  By year three we were going to shows and meeting members of TVCY and Assembly, two 3EB groups online.  I still keep in touch with many of them.  Not long ago the band split up and remains as a broken and jaded version of it's former self.  I think by now the music is just as jaded and broken.  Third Eye Blind is not the most talented band by any measure and they are not who I listen to most anymore but they are a part of my life that can be returned at any moment.  When all the other music runs into cacophony and grey I type in the words to iTunes and start at the beginning, Losing A Whole Year.  I've lost many years but none of them could sink my passion for a band and sound that stays a backbone to so many experiences.  They are entrenched in the playlists of love and hate,  struggle and peace.  As a friend so eloquently defined: to be added later... apparently.

Thursday

This is another post I ripped off an old blog of mine.  I don't know why I wrote it.  I can't remember if I'm suppose to be Ed or Thursday.  


Thursdays. For being the sort of day that bore a facade of subtlety, it masqueraded about in such flamboyant apparel to Edward, so as to suggest that is was rather quite the Friday-like character. This was no surprise to him. For years now, Thursday had been stopping by every week, like a bad friend who only remembers you at the most inopportune occasions. Looking to curb its most desirous appetite for evil, Thursday tried sneaking up on Edward as he was waking up during his ritualistic morning cup of tea. Edward knew he was there, though, he knew it from the very moment his alarm bells chimed "Oh, For the Last Time," yet another time. Sitting there, he did not even fancy the thought of turning around and facing the beast, instead, he stared into the clouds of his earl gray, feeling the deep breath of Thursday raising the hairs on his neck.

Feeling the rich warm steam from the mug, Ed forced his mind to relax. Knowing the attack from behind would come soon, he took advantage of the short blissful contents of the moment -- and then it came. It was in the form of a phone call, and it nearly made Ed spew the sip he had just taken. Regretting the decision to free his mind for a moment, he stood and turned to the phone on the wall. At times he had wondered why exactly he bothered speaking to the man on the other side, it was no longer an emergency that he come in early, it had now become the schedule of events, and in the background it was Thursday who stood laughing. 

"Yes... Yes... Uh-huh, yes, quite alright. Yes, okay, cheerio." With a wry smile, Edward turned toward Thursday who was bent over his chair, drunk with laughter. After a moments hesitation, Ed decided not to say anything at all. Thursday, feeling the time was right, looked back at Ed ready to add salt to his recurring weekday wound. 


"Ah, my good friend, it is merely an eclipse of the real world I give you. You should not blame me, I am only doing my job, besides, I just make up for all the bloody charity that Friday feeds you. Ha ha ha, quite the pity it must come again, eh old chap?" 


Something was dreadfully wrong this day, however, and Thursday saw it coming his way. Ed, without a word, stepped back toward his chair and pushed in faulty friend aside. "I must get back to my tea," he thought, "why spoil the day with cold leaves?" Thursday, knowing all too well the lump of happiness before him, suddenly back off to the other side of the table.


 "Work was canceled today, wasn't it?" he said sadly, "Well? speak up!" But Edward just leaned back and let the warm sensual liquid pour down his throat, trying not to let his smile show through. 


"You know, Thursday..."


"Please, call me Thur."


"You know, Thursday," he repeated, "it's about time that you be on your way, I have quite a bit of absolutely nothing to do, and I would appreciate it if you would just go take a leap day! Friday will be coming around soon, and she never likes to have the other days of the week around. So, good day."

Thursday knew his place now and slumped over as he walked for the door. Today would just be one of those days. It was always people like Edward that seemed to come around every week spoiling his fun, like a bad friend..."

Mad Bomber 4

Seriously, the army service ribbon?  They were just asking for it.

On This Martin Luther King Jr. Day

It's MLK Jr. Day and I feel I should say a quick word about the influence he has had on my personal outlook on life.  The first I heard of him in my youngest days was at school rather than in home or church conversations.  There is a strong reason for this.  In the home of Jehovah's Witnesses the names of the famous are often spoken of with amendments and subtexts.  An instance of this can be seen in how I was taught about the Pope and of Mother Theresa.  "They are the old man and the old woman," my parents would say, "they are the beast and the harlot."  Of course they would recognize the good deeds of these two individuals but only in passing, the overlooked and unremembered bits.  For King there were perhaps a few more statements of good.  "He spoke for justice and equality but he should not be followed for the man he was because of his extramarital affairs and other sins.  Seriously, they might as well have simply been racist.  It was a short distance from the religious and social separation they were implying.  To know someone for who they really are is a great blessing and makes the good they work for that much more inspiring.  Like the named and recognized saints of the Christian church the bold lives of men and women new and old are made livable, possible by the sinning laity.  King's message was tangible, though supremely weighted,  by those he spoke for and among.  He was a man.  He is a symbol.  He is a saint, sins included.

This morning at the breakfast table the interns and Brayton discussed the education we receive in public schooling about figures like King.  For all that he stood for and preached the lone message that sunk into us from school was that he worked for civil rights and gave a speech, something about a dream.  I remember the crackling recording of this speech and little more from my own public education.  But social justice was but a tithe for a much larger message, one in which he spoke for more, of nonviolent love and response to a world of hate, violence and over-empowered government.  Before leaving for a series of talks at a church in North Hampton in Massachusetts, we listened to recordings of King to get us pumped for the day.  Beyond social justice he spoke of patient resistance to our own government who at the time was warring in Vietnam.  He spoke of Gandhi and Nietzsche and Jesus, men (and certainly uncounted and unspoken women) who were believable, successful, realistic humans working for peace in a way never shown by any governmental system ever created.  I thought of the warmongering taking place today by our own United States.  In a war both illegal by U.S. law of the original invasions and certainly by the international law of the United Nations we are celebrating as American people the efforts of a man who was adamantly seeking nonviolent forms of piece.  If we had only heeded his vision in the sixties thing of how that era of LBJ would have changed in the history books.  Think of how this uncalled for war in Afghanistan and now unrest in Palestine will look in the decades to come when we realize our mistake.  We have already done enough damage, too much to redeem our actions, but we can make a statement in such a way as King, "At the center of non-violence stands the principle of Love."  Love is not a soft emotion - it is a powerful motivator of peace in a time when we need powerful people to show it.   

Mad Bomber 3

Parking must have been a bitch.

Half Drawn Fish (Part 2)

With each passing year and experience we are meant to grow in wisdom alongside age.  This pattern makes adolescents and grown-ups of us at each step of the way.  Children, in that we have yet to learn from what is to come and adults in the things that have already passed.  Throughout my childhood I managed to grow steadily in my maturity - never exceeding the standard of my age, but also never under the line to any significant degree.  I certainly had my moments of childishness such as the time I thought it good and fitting to take all the boxes of cereal in the cabinet, pour the entire contents in the couch cushions and proceeded to jump up and down on them just to be sure to cause my mother hell.  My brilliantly evolved brain conveniently forgot this ever happened  and my mothers brain put it on a list of things to eventually tell my first girlfriend.  I'm sure somewhere on that list is the time I broke the sliding door the first day in our first house by running at full speed through what I thought was the open end (I was 15) and the time I took a large black bag of half our kitchen supplies to the dump thinking it was garbage.  (I really miss those popsicle makers)  Outside of those moments I managed to stay the status quo.  Thinking back I feel it was a necessary place for me to be.  My father was continually struggling with his manic depression, my mother always trying to deal with my father and my sister - well, she never really had a chance for normalcy hard as she tried.  Somehow with all the troubles the rest of my family had I managed to slip under the radar.  My parents eventually conceded to trusting me entirely so that they had more time to worry about their own selves.  This turned out to be a blessing for me, but a curse for them once they realized how I had betrayed them.  On June 2, 2005 the static of my of youth burst into a whirlwind of defiance and action that was unlike me in every possible way.  The good natured boy who civilly obeyed and secured trust fell like a stone, suddenly and painfully, hurting myself and everyone I had ever loved.

*                    *                    *

The first thing we can remember in our childhood is always an interesting story.  It says something about us - how far back we can think, who was there, how we felt.  It becomes a defining characteristic of our later selves, kind of like what brand of peanut butter we were raised with.  Everyone is part of a group, crunching or smooth, JIF or Peter Pan, and they will stick by that tradition without ever realizing it.  Timothy, the oldest in a group of friends I never quite belonged to entirely, claimed on several occasions that he could remember all the way back to his birth.  Coming out of his mother he says he saw his dad standing there upside-down.  I could never grasp whether or not he was kidding.  My first memories don't go back quite that far but they do exist in faint glimpses of the very early days.  With all the years of torment I would eventually go through I had no room for the memories of my past.  I eventually lost almost complete track of what things were like.  But ever so slowly I have built pieces that were seemingly lost for good.  I have begun to put together the shapes of the places I lived, one a trailer another a hotel, the colors and smells trigger a response now when I come into similar environments.  Just yesterday I was dealing with kerosene when I suddenly recalled a kerosene heater we used in one of the trailers when the heat stopped working.  It was my task to go out and siphon the fluid from the portable can into the tank of the heater and clean up the accumulation of  burnt dust and debris that inevitably built up around the heater.  The smell was powerful and filled every room of the small trailer.  I don't understand a lot of what was happening in those days, the things my parents wouldn't let on to save us from heartbreak.  But something about that smell reminded me of the destitution we sometimes found ourselves.  The year we moved to Atlanta was filled with the presence of poverty even with the shield my mother used to hide us from the truth.  Sometimes we would receive packages of what I can only assume was a comfort where little light shown.  My father's parents never really loved him and my mother's parents often didn't trust him because of his illness.  Both my parent's were regularly ridiculed and looked down upon by the church they attended, often their only source of human contact as their families didn't live nearby.  But for reasons I still cannot understand my sister and I were thought of as somehow separate from them.  We would be loved in ways that were not shown to my parents and we received gifts of toys and comfort that may have been better spend toward rent and food.  I don't know how much help my parents received but I do know that when times sunk to the lowest possible place there was something that made the next day come.  The congregation that hated them so much would put together small amounts of money for their benefit.  But I don't think it was as much for heeding the call of the poor as it was feeding the beast of superiority within the network of families that composed the church.  I have no doubt I misunderstand and misinterpret many things in the early days but still many things became painfully clear when I went through my own suffering and when I realized people I had known for who they really were.

*                    *                    *

My parents were the fourth generation of a form of Christianity that sprung up in the 19th century around New England.  A group of bible students in the United States angered by the dense mess of ritual and tradition covering Catholicism, Lutheranism and Calvinism (among many long-lived Christian faiths) came together to rework scripture and Christianity from the ground up.  Most of these small groups waned in the decades of false prophesy of end times that were so often made by these groups, but a few survived and are well attended today.  The group my family followed were the Jehovah's Witnesses, instituted by Charles T. Russel.  My mother, Amy Rochelle Biddlecome, was the oldest of three sisters and two brothers.  Her father, my grandfather, was an elder in a congregation at a time when there was only one leading per church.  I think he was most conservative with her upbringing and she lived her younger days trying to live up to the strict council of her father and of the very primitive religion he taught her.  I speculate, based on what I saw of her growing up, that she feared stepping outside the lines of Witnesses doctrine based more on her upbringing than of her reasoned faith.  To do so may not have brought as much wrath with it as I think she expected, but she never took the chance regardless.  I remember at one point my parents telling each other the most incomprehensible thing they could think of.  My father said it was seeing my mother with a beer in her hand and my mother said it was seeing herself leaving the faith.  The tragedy of leaving the Witnesses for her was worse than the pain and uncertainty of death.  It is that very fear that conservative religions play into their members from childhood.  My father was raised with two parents who strayed in and out of the Witnesses fairly casually from what he told my sister and I.  His mother would sometimes take him and his brother to church when his father didn't but that seemed to have been rare during many years.  That family of four, my father, his brother and their parents, was the classic case of dysfunction.  I remember being told stories of how my grandfather treated my father and the things his brother put people through.  His father moved them from house to house and school to school on an almost yearly basis.  My father attended something like 8 distinct school before graduating.  Though my father was older than his brother Tom he was not the favorite or even liked by his dad.  My dad was awkward and nerdy in his younger days, brilliant, but not able to rise above the books he read and the things he knew.  The insult to that injury was his own dad constantly making fun of him for tripping over his own feet (Must run in the family.  I used to trip over my own feet because I couldn't keep them straight.  I think it's genetic) and calling him despicable names to his face, putting him down to the level of nothingness.  Tom, on the other hand, a weasel by anybody's standards was favored and given the benefit of his father's love and affection.  After high school he wanted to be a stronger part of the faith that his parents had strayed from.  He had been reading scripture and interpretation alongside every publication the Witnesses had publish (Which there were many even then)  but his dad had plans for him to go to college, something that the Witnesses often frown upon.  I don't remember how it got to this point but their argument over this issue led to a battle of strengths.  Jesse Sr was tall and strong.  He had worked in construction for a large part of his life and knew how to handle himself, especially against a skinny guy like my dad who never had any intention of needed to overpower anybody.  It was decided that if his dad could carry Jesse Jr. the many miles into the local town with my dad struggling the whole way then he would agree to attend college, but if he was unable then Jesse Jr. would enroll full-time in the public ministry of the Witnesses.  Before the day was out my grandfather caught my dad unaware, held him down, duct taped him hand and foot and dragged him the whole way.  My father was helpless but could not stand up for himself and say what was right.  He attended one semester only.  Never could I understand why he still loved them so much and why he put so much of his heart and head in their hands.  His brother worked here and there always jobs nobody could understand how he could be qualified for.  Once a professor, once as a gold smith for the government.  He ended up marrying a deaf woman called Celeste.  She was beautiful and sweet and endured the years of abuse and cheating till she finally set herself free.  He later would fake marriages, hiring actors to play the parts of priests and best men, shams that women were helpless to see through.  When my grandfather died and his brother left my father became a much different person for awhile.  I had spent time with Jesse Sr both in his first marriage and in his second and at a time when death seems the most bewildering thing possible to a young boy I did not cry or feel sorry or change whatsoever.  It was a relief to put his ignorance and hate to the dust.  But I had a father who was good to me so I had not really lost what my father had.

The few details I have of my parents meeting and dating are few but they speak well of how things turned out for them.  They both attended the same high school.  Jesse spent his lunch break alone, a pariah from the rest, reading his books and scripture.  Amy, bound to her duty to find a faithful Jehovah's Witness, chose him as her mate.  That's the way things go more or less with Witnesses.  Very often the first person you date is the person you end up marrying.  Of course my parents went in and out of the relationship in the ignorance befitting their age and religion.  My father would later tell us that Amy was a walking cliche of relationships, one after another after another.  I think he held on to that so long because he needed to believe that he wasn't the only nerd, the only one who didn't know how to participate in social circumstances.  My mother hated him for remembering.  They had my sister and three and a half years later had me.  At some point between those two births my father began showing signs of his illness, a type of manic depressive bipolar condition.  Many things happened in the years of my childhood till early teens that were twined with the journey my dad took to get better.  I fault him now for few things and none of them are on account of his illness.  I tell myself that what he did to my mother, my sister and I was uncontrollable and an imbalance of chemicals, not because I want to believe that but because I have gone through many of the same thing he had, though under different circumstances.  At one point he left the church, the unspeakable thing, and ran off somewhere.  My family moved to find him.  When he was home it was temporary.  If there was a fight he would run off again and we would have to drive around around for hours looking for him to make sure he wasn't in trouble.  In vague clouds of memory I can see my mother putting chairs and stool up against the door handles to keep him from coming home drunk.  He never used physical violent against any of us.  I don't believe that he did.  He was unable to control his decisions but deep inside there was love and reason that he could not show.  We made a lot of mistakes along the way driving for hours and hours looking for doctors who could ease the pain but only following a fools path.  Many years later he found the balance but by that time it was too late to fix what was broken.  There was an instilled pain that never left the eyes.  My mother stayed with him throughout the most horrible parts and their was love.  Despite that I could see both my parents dying inside knowing what they had missed and they wore their failures on their chest where everybody could see.

*                    *                    *

My first relationships were with my sister and mother and very soon just my mother.  Alexis, my sister, was dealt her own hand of illness and could not be a part of my life for many years.  Before that we would play and make-believe together.  Often in her room we would set up blankets and chairs to act as a ship on the voyage to a faraway island.  Her barbies and cabbage-patch dolls were our shipmates and story lines.  But that time period was short lived and soon her own mental anguish overcame most sibling civility.  I was never really told what the problem was - maybe something passed down from my dad - and I never asked years later when we were close.  What I remember is Alexis growing cold and impatient whenever I was around her.  I would follow her to her room thinking we'd play like we always did but she was always unhappy and would often yell and scream at me for following her.  She kept alone and stopped trusting anybody with what was going on inside.  I think from most outside perspectives nobody would notice what was wrong.  Children go berserk all the time.  But in our house my sister and I never talked back, never raised our voices and never made a stand against the authority of our parents.  Not like the children I was raised with anyway.  So when my sister lost control it was something to be dealt with.  My parents took her kicking and screaming and clawing at the door frame to the doctor.  Her time in high school was the worst.  She never had someone throw her a saving rope.  In school she was not allowed friends by the 'virtue' of the faith and the few girls at our Church her age were worthless by many standards.  I was told she left high school after her freshman year when several lesbians started giving her so much trouble.  Homeschooling was little better and ended up extending her dreaded educational experience for over a year longer than if she would have stayed in school.  I did my best to stay out of her way but I was an early teenage boy and couldn't help to torment her more than she already endured.  In a family troubled by illness, conservative virtue and fear my sister and I dealt with life much differently.  Where I held the trouble inside and hid from everything she wore her woulds on every visible part of her self.  The anger she showed before had turned into a permanent scowl on her face.  Her eyebrows never relaxed and she never looked you in the face.  I remember hating the immutable expression she posed not knowing that it was formed by an inner angst that wasn't given the chance to be set free.  With nowhere else to turn she found two boys to rest her comfort, one my uncle and the other his friend, whom she ended up marrying after I left home.  Both of these boys I had a large amount of respect for but what Alexis really needed was someone much stronger, not just kinder.  Now, when I think about her I fear for her.

*                    *                    *

Through great amounts of pain come even greater feats of love and it was this turn around that saved my sister and I from at least a few years of the impossible life.  By the time I reached high school I was becoming more and more active with the Jehovah's Witnesses.  Among several responsibilities I took on were the part-time and then full-time public ministries known as pioneering.  My father did this when he was younger and then passed it on to my sister who now both convinced me to participate.  Pioneering didn't pay and in fact often took what little money we had.  It cost food, gas and supplies but most importantly time.  Between the ministry and school I also had to work.  In the end my schooling suffered, I was always tired and I struggled to fill the hours necessary for the door-to-door work and bible studies.  I hated it but never admitted I didn't enjoy god's work.  It was my sister who helped me out by driving for miles and miles and hours an hours to fill my time.  We began working together and then we began playing together again.  In the two years before I left home we had regular schedules together for the ministry, meals and tennis at the high school.  She started buying me the things I couldn't afford, clothes and food, gas and cell phone service.  Things were not just good but very good between us.  It was always a fear of my dad that Alexis and I would never be close as his own brother was not close with him.  He always used his life as an example - don't become like Tom and I, we don't even know each other.  She admitted once that she did these things for me because of the years we were not close, something she blamed herself for.  I've never known two siblings who were so close to one another as her and I, and never have I met someone so determined to turn a relationship around.  It is for this reason that it breaks my heart so much and brings me to tears even now to know that I would end up using every part of our closeness to betray her.  She was the first person in my family to say, "I will not speak to you ever again."  I swallowed those words in the discomfort of an unfamiliar room - one drink after another until I could no longer remember why it was my chest hurt so bad.

*                    *                    *

It's hard write about my own young life without the relationships of my family and even then it's not easy.  For one I cannot remember very much.  Out of all the people I knew growing up, people whose names I used on a daily basis, I strain to remember their names and most often ever fail to remember.  I can usually call to mind half of them but sometimes not even their last names.  Imagine a close friend, someone you have spent almost twenty years knowing and living with, and then within a few short years of not hearing from them completely forgetting who they were, down to their very names.  This is what has happened with me.  I was good kid causing far less trouble than most my age but I lacked in many areas.  I was quite shy, especially when very young, and feared adults, the foreign sights they were.  My friends composed of two boys and a girl, Christopher, Wesley and a girl I can't remember the name of.  They only lasted a few years and then moved away leaving me with nobody for a considerable time.  My parents would not let me spend time with anybody not a Jehovah's Witness and then would rarely allow me time with the boys in the congregation.  I was so distant from them and they so close to one another that I was included in the group out of pity more than of any kind of camaraderie.   I felt the loneliness of this constantly.  

From as far back as I can remember till around the age of 15 I was alone within myself.  Few things changed outside of failing at school, tempting myself with friendships I could never own and hating every facet of the faith I said I loved so much.  This faith, this religion infiltrated every thought and action and made me admit things I never felt in my heart.  My dad would sometimes ask why it was we believed in the true faith.  It was a bullshit question.  What was I going to say?  "No, I think this is rubbish?"  Of course I bought into all of it.  I really did believe that the Jehovah's Witnesses had the answer to every conceivable question.  But I did not enjoy the faith I was raised in and I had little desire to confirm the answers I was given through Witness publications like the Watchtower and Awake, countless brochures, tracts, books, videos, news and scriptural interpretation.  To be in the Truth, as being a Witness is known by, means covering your life with that faith to an extreme sense.  I knew there was no way out.  I did not desire anyway out.  And yet this subtle sense that I knew was telling me something was wrong.  The books were boring, even scripture, and did not answer the questions of life I had.  The ministry was exhausting, cash draining, and never led to any benefit for anyone.  The congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses were, for the most part (and I certainly separate particular members), little educated, enthralled with themselves and generally robots doing what they were programmed for.  I was a robot, yes, but there was a spark as well.  I became very close to Laurel Lehr, an elder in the congregation who was friends with my dad when they were younger.  Laurel had lost his wife and was living with his daughters family when I first came to know him well.  Before that the only contact we had was minimal and I most feared him because I could never remember his name.  He once made a nice comment about my hair (which I spent hours on when I was little trying to get it to look just like my uncle's with the perfectly combed wave in front) and I grew angry that he would mention something I was so self-conscious about.  Come to think of it I should have known then a part of myself was gay.  Far too much time grooming. We became close when I started asking for responsibilities at our weekly meetings (church) and then worked with him in the ministry for several years.  He was a high school drop out and unable to understand a lot of basic concepts but I loved him as a friend for how selfless he was in the most genuine way possible.  His grandson was the next person I endeared as a friend.  Michael was among the group of boys I was not allowed to hang out with but we began hanging out every Thursday night at the local pizza hut along with usually one or two others and my sister.  It was he who introduced me to coffee, work ethic and driving gloves.  For that and the consciousness he paid toward me I am eternally grateful.  As of two weeks ago he still hasn't replied to my repeated contact.  Neither have the others.  Most certainly not my sister.  The rest of the people in that church were lost without knowing and little worth my time.  Some never liked me for who I was and no other reason and the rest were complacent and nothing more.  

*                    *                    *

The jobs I have had are a good backbone to the path that led me to leaving that life of family, friends, faith and home.  The first job I had that was continuous was with a moving and auctioning service.  I got it through my friend Wesley's dad who had both moved away when I was little.  I hadn't spoken to Wesley in years but we started up our friendship quickly and only as a surface convenience.  I got my license and started driving after I had worked there for a few years.  It was my first taste of independence and one I abused.  I was a rebel underneath, at least for a Witness.  I spent all my money on tea, peach schnapps, gas and a suede jacket to match an Aussie hat.  I used my independence with the car I was driving, a 1994 black Jeep Wrangler, to see friends I wasn't allowed to have, get places on time without my family, buy condoms,  cigarettes and the most rebellious things I could think of.  It sounds cheesy because it is.  This was small time but for a Witness I was doing the unthinkable.   It only would get worse.  I also used the independence of the Jeep to perform my first suicide attempt.  After growing deeply frustrated with my mother's repeated ignorance of the boy I was and her constant hurtful statements I drove at full speed into an embankment on a Friday morning on the last day of the semester at school.  It was a complete failure.  I had unbuckled my seatbelt and aimed for an oncoming car mistakenly thinking it would double the speed of impact.  I was going pretty fast and was unfamiliar with icy roads at the time.  I missed the car and instead started sliding sideways on the road, quickly sliding off into the embankment and rolling over several times before coming to rest.  I was tossed around the inside of the Jeep like a rag doll and blacked out from a concussion when my head slammed into the windshield on the passenger side.  My mother thought I was just driving recklessly.  She was unaware of too much.  After that I needed a more stable job to pay for the damage to the Jeep and for the ministry I was still in.  This is when I walked into a store my sister had worked at for years, Goody's, and asked for an application.  Within a year of that moment I would have fallen in love and committed to leaving behind every piece of my past.  This action is the true beginning, a birth for me and a dying for my family.  Everything before it would end up being meaningless while causing me six years of anguish, suicide attempts, alcoholism, drugs, sex, theft, journeys and dead ends.

Mad Bomber 2

There are no good antonyms for 'funny'.  'Jim Davis' is the closest match.

Mad Bomber

Just messing around with webcomic possibilities.  I get that this isn't funny.

Half Drawn Fish (Part 1)

At the edge, where the tree line made a dense cut into the valley below, I stopped, too frightened to enter without caution.  I was exhausted and exhilarated, face hot and flushed red.  I knew out of the corner of my mind that something wasn't right, like a very real dream where you perceive but accept the oddity--until later when you realize how fucked up the experience was.  This was as real as I could accept for the moment and the sweat dripping from my forehead and into my eyes clarified that this was not a dream.  Not this time.  I took a hesitant step into the overgrown brush.  I would have to make my own path through here.  What was I looking for? I'm chasing somebody, but why?  Lights, I was looking for dots of lights.  For the past hour I had seen them flickering just behind me or on the other side of the street wherever I walked.  The people with lights always turned into a stone or mailbox or bush whenever I turned around to eye them.  I was done with the insanity so why did they have to keep following me?  They never chased me, no, not that I could remember anyway.  They just followed.  FBI maybe.  I can't even remember what it is I've done that is so bad.  They were after me, I had done something.  Maybe they had something to do with the snakes.  They were still coming and going but at this moment I am free from the biting sods.

Lights.  For a moment I catch two or three moving in and out of the vertical shadows about a hundred feet down.  This is going to be risky.  My heart was beating so hard it offset the rhythm of my breathing and I had to start taking conscious gasps for oxygen.  I glanced behind me and saw the playground with the community center in the background.  Yesterday I had been crawling up to the porch on my hands and knees, hiding from the cops.  They knew I was there.  Why didn't they get me when they had the chance?  I hated this game.  Cat and mouse--I'm being pawed and toyed with.  That must be why my new pants are torn to shreds - I had been hiding from the cops for hours last night.  I must have passed out up there.  How many hours had it been before I got home?  How long have I been out now.  They're going to worry if I'm out too late.  They know something is up.  I can't though, I have to end this now before I lose it like I did yesterday.  I need to catch one of these bastards and end it.

I take a few more steps and slip on the light covering of foliage lain on the steep valley, falling on my side and sliding down a few yards.  I panic thinking they'll get me while I'm down and unable to fight. For a few seconds nothing happens.  It could have been an hour for all I know.  I'm wide awake but my muscles are screaming from overuse and strain.  I can't move them.  Yesterday was too much to handle.  Why did I decide to leave the house this evening?  Oh right, the snakes.  They were relentless.  I make another effort to stand up but end up sliding farther down the valley.  Another few tries with the same results.  Now the underbrush is scraping against my skin through the holes in my jeans and I start to bleed.  But I can't feel any pain other than shear dread.  They must be right on top of me by now!  Where am I?  I don't know.  I don't know.  How can I not know where I am?  This must be a dream.  No, it's a nightmare.  I finally manage to get up on two feet.  As long as I lean against a solid tree I'll be fine or at least able to defend myself.  I don't dare look up to see the points of light so near.  I forget them.  With all the effort it took to stand I forget about my motive too and just stare down at the ground that is getting increasingly darker as the sun sets behind the mountains of the San Francisco State refuge.

I loved this place like anyone loves a dream finally come true.  It is never what you expect from all your time in expectation but you set aside incorrect notions for the sake of the dream just so you don't have to admit this isn't what you really wanted.  For over a month I had routines that made this lifestyle possible.  At least once (and often two or three times) a week I would wake up early, make myself breakfast before anyone awoke and walk down to the bay.  I like to have solitude with my morning meal so that no one can hear me crunch the cereal that is inevitably too loud for grace.  It's an embarrassing trait that always goes unnoticed along with all my other obsessive compulsions.  After I'm done I quietly pack my backpack.  I don't want to wake anyone before I go.  They think I'm absurd taking these extravagantly long, solitary strolls.  In goes a book, my iPod and headphones and usually some fruit or other food to eat later on.  And of course cigarettes.  I light up my cig and look into the pack to see how many I have left.  Just a couple and a lucky.  I should stop by the gas station on the way out but they don't have my favorite flavor.  I should wait till later and find a place that sells them.

Camel Turkish Silvers - It's worth the extra walk and bucks to have something I can melt into when I smoke instead of just pulling the cig to my mouth as a matter of routine.  About a year earlier I started smoking Silvers because of Elena, a girl I had met through a friend of mine.  I thought she was pretty cool.  She worked in the student forum back at college and was usually identified with her dreaded hair, very unlike the Notre Dame style of preppy clothes and the ever so universal UGG boots.  Fucking conformists.  Her and I ended up bonding over half studied homework and a free pizza from Sbarro in the basement where she worked, a perk of her job.  One of my fondest memories of that year was driving to the 7 Eleven on Douglas Road with Elena to buy Silvers (my first time trying them) then sitting on the sidewalk out front smoking in the warmth of the late summer sun.  Elena showed me how the cigarette paper magically burned around the letters on the side of the cig so that for a brief moment you could see the words 'Turkish Silver' illuminated in glowing orange until the wind or time would clear the evidence of the magic.  I really miss those simple moments but every time I light up I get a warm feeling from the memory.

As I recall Elena and I ended our friendship later that year when I got drunk and texted her for a spare cig after watching the ending to Six Feet Under.  She refused to give me a cig even if I offered to pay for it and walk all the way to her dorm.  In hindsight we both admitted the stupidity on both our parts but never talked much after that.  Rory, my best friend who was with me at the time, never forgave her or spoke to her either.  We were idiots.  We both had a habit of dispensing with our friends when they weren't like us in every possible way.  If he and I weren't so much the same I think we would have been alone through most of college.  We were the only people we could stand most days and some days not even that.  We ended up calling one of his ex's for a ride to the station.  A saving grace.  That was another habit of ours; calling ex girlfriends for favors. Neither of us could seem to appreciate what we had presently but we got a lot of free rides and reminders that we were complete assholes.

In California I would set out down the road with my addiction in hand and sun at my back.  It was an eight mile walk up and down steep hills through San Mateo and Foster City before I would see water.  In my head I would be thinking about morality and existential philosophies and relationships. Thoughts that were constantly doing math inside my skull.  It was either a head full of a thousand little thoughts or one driving idea that I absolutely had to figure out and articulate.  The previous semester of college I started to see the schools shrink about the mental fatigue I was getting. I felt like such an egocentric asshole when I told him I was having so much trouble because I thought too much.  It was a truthful problem though.  At times I would be overcome with an ecstasy of thought patterns that kept growing and growing and growing.  Even though I knew it was all metaphysical I still became scared that my brain would tear through my head to make room for all I was trying to fit in it.  The shrink was a brother of Holy Cross Congregation and very reassuring that nothing was wrong at all.  I only half believed him at the time but should have known he wasn't who I should have been talking to when he suggest I smoke more pot.

The exhaustion must have been more in my head than in my legs because the eight miles often would pass with nothing to show for it but lost weight and something about which to write.  By the time I came to the rocky edge of the bay I was too tired to turn right around and make the uphill walk back home.  So I enjoyed the reward, the immense San Francisco Bay and San Mateo bridge (one of the largest bridges in the world).  Out of my pack I took the much needed fruit and cig but the book and music stayed inside.  I wanted to hear and feel everything these moments had to offer.  Especially since I would be there alone, every time.  This was my dream, or at least one I had agreed upon with my best friend.  We wanted, and still want, to be at the beach together with wine and music and surfing the Californian waves for as long as possible.  The simple things.  This isn't Souther California, the Pacific Ocean, no wine or music or surf boards or even each other but it's the closest I've come so far to having the dream I wanted.  Despite the beautiful scenery, I have to admit it's lonely and the falling sun means that I'll be walking home in the dark.  Another eight miles.  I would go through this routine as often as I could.

On the other days I was looking for work, a task I thought would be much easier than it turned out.  Recently I was hired at a local Subway and had gone through training and was just about to work my first full day as a sandwich maker.  I was nervous.  While it might not be that difficult of work I had too many other things on my mind to concentrate on what I was suppose to be doing.  I made a lot of mistakes but my manager was really nice and didn't give me a hard time.  She reminded me of that girl who has a tattoo show on TV.  She had a lot of piercings in all the places that managers weren't suppose to have and tattoos on almost every visible part of showing skin.  Only in California was this okay.  I loved it.  But my first day would turn out to be one of a hundred hellish experiences that I went through that summer.  My best friend more than once would referred to me as Job from Hebrew scripture.  I suppose in some ways he was right, but the only thing Job did was exist at the wrong time.  I, on the other hand, had no such record with God or with morality.  This plight was deserved.

Looking up from my suffering and confusion I see no more dots of light and I begin to think about turning around and heading back.  I can save this fight for another night if I am graced with another day of life yet.  I start to move my legs which still are throbbing from the day of unrest and chasing when I see a familiar sight coming toward me.  The lights.  They are now gathering and heading my way instead of going the other direction as had been happening.  They were no longer fleeing from me but seeing how injured I was were now making their way for the kill.  I finally snap and start screaming for help.  "They're after me!  They're after me!"  But nobody is around this time of day to hear the shrills and calls for help.  Closer. Closer.  Almost on top of me but my legs won't move very quickly and every time I try to get up the steep hill I fall and slide nearer to the enemies.  I am done for.  There is no hope left.  This is the end and look at the state in which I'm going to die! I'm friendless, broke and have no way out. I'm going to die.

Time behaves in peculiar ways when you are dreaming.  They act the same when you're high.  So the length of time it took to call 911 on my cell, connect with the operator and explain that I was going to die and that I needed help, was long enough that my hallucinated enemies never made it to my body.  I don't know how long it took for the cops to find me but by the time they did my body was lifeless, caked in mud, bloody and scarred.  The officer who found me had to climb down and drag me up to the park where another cop was waiting.  One held me up because I couldn't stand on my own while the other asked me questions that I never thought would be directed my way.  I had only heard them on TV where it was the criminals and worthless men who had to answer.  No sir, I don't have anything sharp in my pockets.  No sir, I don't have any drugs on me.  No sir, I haven't been taking any drugs.  I don't think the most gullible person on earth would have believed my lies.  So I tell him that I have done drugs in the past just so that I could save some face from my worthlessness.  Admitting fault, even in the hands of the law, draws temporary relief and at that moment I took anything I could get.  To this day I don't know why I wasn't arrested and locked up.  The officer who took my license (which I had used earlier to drive on the highway at high speeds just after peaking from my recent fix) just looked at my out-of-state name and gave it back.  I don't think they ever checked out to see if I had a record.  But this is California.  The state where you can smoke weed in front of police in public and feel safe but then be ridiculed for smoking a cigarette because it is 'bad for your health'.  Fuck them, but tonight it saved my ass.  The cop who found me asks where I live--just a few blocks away--while the other gets back in the car.  He walks me back to my place where I was staying with friends talking to me the whole way while his partner drives slowly beside us.  The whole painful walk had me terrified.  So far I had gotten off okay but I wasn't sure what he would do when we got back to my place.  I thought for a minute about walking up to one of the neighbors houses and feigning nobody home.  But I walk up to my regular drive and stopped.  I tell the cop that this is my place and wait to see what move he makes next.  All he says is to get some rest and stay inside till the morning.  That's it.  I could have kissed him.  But the horror had just begun and every break I caught from then on was the one that kept me above death.

They must have thought I was just high on pot and had a bad trip or something. But smoking pot was petting kittens to what really happened. Several weeks earlier Rory, my best friend, had flown in from Maryland to spend a few days with me in the Bay and then drive down to San Luis Obispo to see Karen and then on to Los Angeles to check out some film schools, AFI, USC and UCLA.  He had been into film for a long time and I had started to help him with film projects as they came up.  I even worked on occasion at this club on campus that had small bands come through.  It was my job to either help film or direct the show from an A/V room in the back.  We connected with film and music and it turned out that I loved the work, hard as it was at times, and thought about making a career of it myself.  I needed to see my friend again even then before things got bad.

The last semester of school was torturous and never-ending.  At some point between sophomore and junior year I had grown frustrated with what I was learning in my religion and philosophy classes.  My major.  Every class was just an argument between me and my professors or no dialogue at all, which was a sign that I had lost so much interest in what I was learning that it wasn't even worth voicing my opinions.  It had been a messed up several years of sacrifice that led me to giving up my own ambitions to devote my life to the Catholic Church, which I was assured would answer my questions and give me life if only I put in my entire faith.  Another leap. Now I was seriously question the decision I had made both in lifestyle and in academia.  There is much on that later but for now it is only important to know that the despair from years of torment were coming to a head that summer.  I just needed a friend.

I was staying with Alex, a friend of mine from school, who was tired of the same shit I was at the time and a good friend to talk to for sanity.  She invited me to stay with her and her mother for the summer in San Mateo in exchange for company, cooking and the occasional cleaning.  She was in a bad place herself at the time and rarely left the house, an experience that I could relate to.  The semester before I often had trouble mustering the strength to walk out my dorm room door for class.  It wasn't that I didn't want to go (which at times I suppose I didn't) or that I was a slacker; I simply couldn't overcome the sense of impending doom I got from leaving the comfort of my room.  Some times I would stay in my room and catch up with the professor later and sometimes I left for class.  I always ended up regretting either decision.  I suppose that is why I was at Notre Dame, across the street, so much instead of my home campus at Holy Cross.  It was a place to get away but still be around people who could keep up with conversation so to speak.  I had a love for knowledge and a hatred for ignorance.  At college I saw too much of the later and knowledge wasn't what I was looking for in the end.  It drove me crazy.  Alex had had enough and was staying permanently in California, permanently in her house.

As I recall it was just her mother and I who drove to SFO to pick up Rory from the airport.  She may have mustered the courage I often could not at school and come with us but the specific details of those days faded when the shit started to happen.  I think Rory was a little nervous in staying in the house.  We were all fucked up in one way or another those days and the need to get out of that funk sometimes trumped the need for camaraderie with fellow miserable friends.  Rory and I ended up driving Alex's mom's car downtown that night and finding an Irish pub.  I think it was to remind us of the closest home we had back on campus.  The friendship that bound us so closely was still tight but not intense that summer.  We were fed up with misery and couldn't see enough into each other enough to make our time together anything more than just a comfort.  We ended up buying some cigarettes at a CVS downtown and walked to a place called O'Neill's a few blocks away.  Inside we ordered Guinness because of our special mid-summer reunion (a tradition between us) and sat down at a booth in the back.

Rory only liked to order dark beer when he wasn't planning on getting drunk and tonight we had to stay sober since we had to drive back.

Rather he had to drive back.  At the time I was driving on a suspended license because I had a ticket I couldn't pay for and then I didn't receive my new license plate paperwork in the mail so I was caught again for being past due and had to pay an extra fine and got my card taken away.  All I had now was a state ID from when I went to Rome on a class trip the March before.  The only reason I had cash for the beer was because I sold my Macbook a few weeks before.  I couldn't find a job as I said and I was running too low on funds to purchase cigs and, eventually, a flight back to Indiana.  I got six hundred for a machine I paid twelve hundred for the year before but I didn't care.  Before the summer was up I had spend all that money on... I don't remember but probably alcohol, drugs and cigarettes.  I think the only reasonable purchase I had made that summer was a $60 pair of headphones and a bottle of California's finest dessert wines somewhere between Atascadero and Templeton. 

The bar was decorated the way pubs are when they want to look like genuine Irish pub but end up looking like Irish Applebees' with rugby playing on the TVs and several maps of Ireland.  The Irish must use these maps when they're too sloshed to find their way home.  Or maybe this isn't a genuine pub.  Regardless, what we thought we'd feel there wasn't what we wanted.  Back home we were regulars at a placed called Corby's, an American pub made famous by being filmed in the movie Rudy.  There was nothing special about this place compared to most pubs but we made it ours.  Every Thursday without fail we would manage our way to Corby's to smoke, fail at pool and talk about how much we wished we weren't with our girlfriends.  We made a lot of confessions in that bar and had a lot of good laughs.  I think we tend to forget about all the sorrow and silence that went along with it too.  It's better just to remember the good times.  The next summer when I was still dealing with the aftermath Rory flew back to Notre Dame for his graduation and called me up so we could hang out in Corby's one last time.  (A joke among us was that we had multiple last meetings at Corby's that never seemed to hold.  But this time it seemed it would really be the last time. And it was, so far)  I was starting to lose everything at that time, including my sanity.  I had no job, just lost my car and was beginning to see the door close at the end of the tunnel.  I take a car that a friend graciously let me borrow and drove up to see him, needing the time together more than anybody knew.  But not even halfway there the car broke in a very unfixable way and I never made it to see him.

The following day we all thought it was best to get out of the house and see the city before driving down south to see Karen.  Even Alex said she would go with us to San Francisco and show us around.  So the three of us piled into her bright yellow Beetle and drove out to see the sights.  Our first stop was the Golden Gate Bridge.    Something tells me that whether we spoke of it or not we all thought about what it would be like to jump over the side and forgetting everything.  Before walking back to the car I came within moments of jumping over the side myself, but not because I wanted to kill myself, rather, Rory and I found a brand new Blackberry down below on the other side of the railing that was dying to be taken under the law of 'finders keepers'.  I tried so hard to reach through the spaces in the railing but it was just enough out.  Even the gangling arms and legs on Rory couldn't manage.  I could hop on the other side and get it easily but I would be putting my life within inches of death - which I wasn't ready for quite yet - and the guard would surely be on us quickly enough.  This bridge is the number one location for suicide in the world.  On record more than one person jumps every two weeks.  But that's just the record, which is taken off one side of the bridge and only during daylight.  There is a film out called The Bridge about this problem.  The director placed a 24 hour camera on the bridge for months, capturing many suicides, failed suicides and attempted suicides where the person was caught or talked out of making the leap.  This place is still one of a few outlets I keep in the back of my mind.  My last effort was to swing my new headphones down over the railing and try to move the phone a bit closer to reach.  It never ended up working and we had to leave for lunch but to this stay I still have the orange-red paint of the Golden Gate still scratched into my headphones.

Lunch was at a place called Harvey's near Haight-Ashbury, named after Harvey Milk, a hero in this area and in history.  You might have seen the movie about him.  On the drive there I was famished and looking forward to sitting down to some greasy fries and a cheeseburger.  We passed through a lot of steep, hilly streets on the way there, looking for a parking space, going through areas that look typically like San Francisco.  It wasn't until we hit the Haight District that things became bewilderingly different.  Rainbow flags, head shops and well dressed gay men and women everywhere!  I didn't admit it to anyone at the time but I felt comfortable here in a way I had never been before.  I was home.  After lunch we all walked down Haight street to a few stores and picked up some booze.  The lead singer for Third Eye Blind, Stephen Jenkins, was from around here and wrote a lyric about walking Haight Street to the store.  It was this band that broke the indifference of Rory and my relationship and it just so happened to be our favorite, so we followed the lyric in action to deepen a part of our time there and with each other.  Just before sunset we brought the alcohol, plenty of cigarettes and ourselves to a beach along the coast to watch the sun touch the ocean and slowly sink into the night.  Part of my dream came true for that hour as we inhaled the deep salty air and cigarettes, chasing each moment with a swig from the can.  Rory and I would end up reliving these beach scenes several times over the next couple of years in different parts of the country but I think this time stood out as special.  I think it was the mountains coming right out to sea.  We had both talked about how much that meant to our senses.  Or maybe it was the fact that it was our first time on the beach together in California.  A taste that there might be hope in the future after all.

The next day we woke up around sunrise and Alex drove Rory and I down to San Jose where Karen was going to pick us up.  I had taken the train down here about a month before to see a free Third Eye Blind show in a park.  I nearly died that day sneaking in and out of various gang territory I had stumbled into.  The more I think about that summer the more I remember times I nearly died while lost.  But the show was great fun and added to my repertoire of 3eb shows.  Karen was already there when we arrived (late) so we hurriedly transfered our bags and said our goodbyes to Alex.  It took about three hours to drive from there to Templeton where she lived.  We broke the silence with the new Dane Cook CD which was a disappointment but it let us relax before getting to her place.  Karen was my first friend at Holy Cross College beyond my roommates and people I already knew from Notre Dame.  She sat one seat behind me and to the right in my Introduction to Philosophy class with Professor Gareau.  She was cute.  Long, dark hair and brown eyes, a sweet smile.  I ended up being in love with her that whole first semester, but nothing more than an awkward date and frustration came from it.  The next year she started dating Rory before we met and the three of us began hanging out all the time.  Now they were on and off dating (still) and it gave the two of us an excuse to go see her and make use of her pool house.  That week spend drinking wine and smoking cigars in her hot tub would be the calm before the storm.  We toured many of the local wineries, got as drunk as possible and made sure we wouldn't forget what we had being here.  After visiting some of her friends in San Luis and a very odd game of Cranium with a stupid, peeing dog we drove down to LA to check out the scene and look into some grad schools for Rory.  We had fun at Santa Monica beach, walked around the Six Feet Under exterior set and were in generally pissy moods the whole time.  Even the booze, cigs and alcohol weren't enough to make the hotel any fun.  I was happy to get back and pretty soon it was all over.  Rory was gone and I was back in San Mateo about to find a job.  It was then that things got bad.

She Would Not Cry If She Understood

This is a page from a collection of over a hundred posts I recently came across beginning in Mid-2005 through part of college.  I thought I would start bringing some of these out to be seen.  I completely forgot about all of this.


Earlier today I was folding laundry when I stopped and thought awhile about a particular gray shirt. While nothing is necessarily special about the shirt, it holds a fond memory of my father. He was always good at trivia and used it to win free tickets through the local radio stations. When he was younger the city newspaper featured him for his ridiculous amount of winnings, calling him the Trivia Pig. In the summer of 2006 he won preview tickets to the new Mission Impossible movie and invited me along. While walking through the door they gave us gray shirts that said M:I:III 05:05:06.

Folding the shirt and adding it to the pile I thought awhile about that date. The summer of 2006 was quite awhile after I had left the house. At that time I didn't get to spend much time with my family and when I did it was almost always with my dad. I think my mom knew I didn't want to spend time with her. That is not to say that I didn't before this whole mess. Before, I would gladly spend time with her. We had a common interest in woodworking and design. Whenever the house was in need of repair or we were making additions I was recruited as a helping hand. Her voice still echoes in my thoughts, "You were the one I trusted when daddy had problems... you were the one I could talk to." In the year or so that we were allowed to talk this theme was brought up over and over again. That and the crying. It was for this reason that I avoided her afterwards. When she would cry so hard that she couldn't breath what was I to say. I couldn't help her because not even I understood.

I used to think that it was her motherly emotions she couldn't control. Perhaps this is still a reason, but I think now there is some larger matter involved. It is the very same reason that I no longer cry over lost faith. Suddenly realizing that your faith is nearly completely misguided has a huge impact on the emotions. Not only because God becomes something different, but also because your complete reality changes. I say suddenly because when something is life-changing, several months to a year is instant. Even months after leaving the faith I was hit with new understanding. Imagine thinking that you would live on earth for eternity, growing up with this idea, and then finally understanding that this would not happen. To understand heaven and hell; these things are destructive, they cannot be taken in one single pill. Our minds simply cannot handle it.

But the truth, though hard to swallow, is beautiful. I understand that now and do not cry over the bitter change. If my mother knew that she would react the same. I worry for her. Everything is not lost, but she doesn't know that. She doesn't know that her son isn't dead, that he is very much alive. Seventeen years of doctrine was difficult enough to change, her forty-five years may be unchangeable, but there is still hope. How do you convince someone like this that you don't worship the devil just because you're Catholic? But even if understanding is possible a yet great questions arises. Will I still love the people I once knew?

I recently read a book that says a boys first heartache always comes from his father. I suppose this may be true but the hardest heartache most certainly comes from a girl he falls in love with. My heart's first scar came from the very girl that showed me the way to Catholicism. After four years of knowing her and several years of dealing with the battles and heartbreak of losing my family, we no longer speak. I suppose we've gone without speaking before, but never this long and to this extent. I never thought it was possible to stop loving her or even to stop missing her, but I have forgotten these things. There isn't even a blank place in my heart for her like there once was. It is very strange to know that you cannot even be a friend of someone you once had such an attachment to. It is the very same with my mother and father and sister. My sister most of all. Her and I had such a closeness that our friends constantly mentioned it. Now, as before, it's only strangeness, a feeling that you can only talk to the memory of her but with a grim mask and speech.

As a Catholic, I should want them to join me in my faith, but I don't. I don't because I would feel lonelier with them than without. I don't want to realize that my sister is gone from my memory. I don't want to realize that I have missed out on so many lives. I don't want to remember my little cousin's name. This blank space keeps me with greater company.