In Preparation for this Next Change

The anxieties and the letting go of them. The wish for snow and getting rain. Wishes in an empty tumbled glass, a stomping taxi ride home- sometimes alone, many times not. Staying in the sun too long to burn, or being burned unwanted by the lights.
This is too, too vague. I'll come back to this and many more stories, as I have many to tell and all I can carry with me is memory. I have learned.

"I see their knavery. This is to make an ass of me. To fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, do what they can. I will work up and down here. And I will sing that they shall hear. That I am not, I am not afraid. I am not afraid."

Though my hands grow tough and my ears furry and long, I will press on in this great task. I am not afraid. I will read. A Winter's Tale, Amazing Adventures, Dreamboy. Great, and then more.

A few steps back, several forward.
In a direction only you and fate and any poor fool that has the courage to push you can say. A dance regardless. Whether blithe and green or gray, heavy with awkward bags. A trudging along.
We'll struggle forward, we'll push through.
As long as there's music, the dance will never cease.

Re: what's up Matt?

so i'm writing this now (so late? so earlY?) only because i've been fortunate (or un-?) to find myself in an introspective mood. i don't want to be that guy that beats around the bush with people as i've often been. i don't want to be dragging people around, being socialable un-had acquaintances with every guy on the block. what i mean to say is, i want to try and begin to learn to be someone that can know themself to see a feeling in them and then, by choice, commit to it. own it. i really enjoyed having lunch with you and chatting, cuddling too on that dreary day. and i want to commit to the feeling of saying that i do not want to pursue anything more than a friendship with you. cuddling is always nice, but i hate-- i hate-- being-- ...having dragged it out for so many people i've truly grown to care about. i want to tell you this so i won't leave you waiting around for more. because i just don't think i'm in a state to give you more right now. i'll apologize for not being the gutsy guy to say something like this over the phone, or in person even. but i really do want to give you that, that honesty, as i'm figuring it out for myself.
as you can see i'm still very much in a lifepath of figuring myself out, if that can ever be done. most people tell me to just relax and let it be. we'll see though. stay tuned.

Crash Reported

Just got off the phone with the Koeppel VW Service stooge.
$439.00 for the 80k, $420 and $350 for the front and rear brake pads that need replacing, $76 to repair the broken center console, $203 to repair the broken seatbelt lock, $470 to replace the missing front grille. Feels like some American Express ad, "Priceless" should follow this list. But alas, Koeppel VW does not accept Amex. Grr.

So I'm essentially paying $2000 to get my car fixed to sell for what I'll probably only get $6000, which, after paying a few debts and moving costs, I'll be left with about $1000 to plop into my forsaken savings. I'll attempt to step back from the jarring practicalities of things and calmly nurse feelings of any fulfillment my darling bug has brought me over the past four years.

I flip through the CarFax Vehicle History Report I printed from online, basically summarizing, in a few short pages, nearly every recorded affair my car has been through.
5/27/02 - Vehicle Sold
9/10/03 - 21,999 miles - Vehicle Serviced (surely there had to be some non-recorded service prior to this)
03/11/04 - Accident Reported in Brevard County, Vehicle involved in crash or collision, Vehicle functional

05/13/04 - 34,766 - Vehicle Serviced
03/07/07 - 69,503 - NJ DMV - Title issued or updated, New owner reported
12/29/07 - 75,601 - Vehicle Serviced, Brake Light Switch replaced

Some gal named Kelly is telling me I can get $7,365, but something in me, or rather, everyone else's judgment, is telling me to bump it down a grand or two. I flip back to 3/11/04 and, in trying to recall, the slew of un-recorded accidents resurfaces.

You rarely remember those moments where you're sitting in stillness inside your vehicle thinking of where the two of you will go and what will change for you because of it. But this particular time, I did. There was a moment's pause before I turned the ignition. It was only a mile to the Southgate apartments from my apartment at the time, random impulse trip to hang out with Derek. Misty Oak Drive, Babcock St, University Blvd, and Albermarle Street. Speed limit was 25. I was going it. Campus apartments on the left; Low income apartments on the right. Halfway down the street, a kid on his bike came sailing out--he might as well have been sailing, suddenly taken aloft into the sky as my the rounded hood of my beetle collided with his body and his bike. They rolled and his left stunt peg turned my windshield opaque with a shatter proof crackle pattern. Endless instants later, post-the loudest scream that ever escaped me, my physical reaction kicked in, and a slammed break just barely kept him from rolling all the way over the dome of my car. He flew what could easily be fifty feet forward in front of the car. Other cars stopped behind me. Blood stained his dark body. My only fortune was the responsiveness of everyone else. Friends from his neighborhood came to his side and determined he was still breathing. They surrounded him. I think I saw him move. In my tangential mind, crying mothers cradling his body screamed at me as her tears pooled at my ankles, blood on my shoes. 911 was already called by the people in the cars behind me and they told me it was an accident because I wasn't sure. A crowd of students on the other side of the street formed. In my mind, Sharks and the Jets. I stood, ambiguous, justice in deliberation, with a hand on my forehead, longer hair pushed back--making gestures of what I hoped would be taken as affectedness. I called Jon and Derek. The start and destination. They came and consoled me. A helicopter landed on the baseball field to take the boy away. Firetrucks and police cars. A photo was taken of my car that would appear in an article in the campus paper the next week. I gave my perspective for the report. Dozens milled about. I let myself be taken care of, be taken home. My car let the tow truck hook up by it's battered face and take it away.

Friends and roommates and lovers came to my side. The boy would be fine. Lawsuits for the apartment complex and it's botanical blindspot would follow for two years. Statements were required of me. My car came out of the body shop with a new face two weeks later. That's the most we've faced together.

And even since I have moved up here to NJ/NY there have been countless adventures she's carried me on. We drive to Redhook to sample local street vendor fare. Rockaway beach. I drive to Deleware Water Gap, camping and rafting. To Albany for a frost-bitten Glover tap performance or to Windham Mountain for disgruntled boarding incidents. To Niagra Falls. In my mind I lay out the map of the roads I have traversed in my minty scarab, here and there, back in Florida, and many roads in between.

When it comes to orientating, the mood of the map-reader colors the map itself. The ability to conjure, the willingness to fill in the blanks, the urgency with which one needs to know--all contribute to what the map becomes in the hands of the inspired imaginer; an instrument of destiny. It can involve public, national destinies, or simply a familial geography or history, a goad to take the transforming journey on which you meet the person or see the landscape or have the experiences that changes if not a life, then at least a trajectory. It is hard to look at a map without sensing, in our bones, private hopes and secret fears about change. In my Mercator daydreams, I see: An erasure, perhaps, of the laid-down lines of the past. A willingness to draw new meridians. A reconfiguration of the private globe. A silent earthquake.

- from "I, Mercator" by Stephen S. Hall

Cornfed

So I'm back.

The wedding and my four days of being wrapped up in it was exhilirating. I often have this strange bittersweet observation of pieces and parcels of the seemingly endless staions and terminals of my life as it has progressed. Though, they are broken and jarred about as some uncared for dig site; where I can pick up a rock or handful of dirt and understand what shaped it, as similar forces shaped me.

I see things from my past that I hardly remember, but that seemed to trigger an attraction in something familiar to it in chapters that were to follow.

My best friend from high school (undoubtably holding the title for the long haul) says to me while we wait in the wendys drive-thru on the morning of his wedding, after having purchased some starfruit, a monkey, and all the ingredients for the peach sangria: "I feel like as we get older things move slower and slower.". On afterthought, I figure this sentiment of his could have his amazing moments-future wife and all of the carpe diem-moments they have shared as it's contributing factor, but my immediate response flipped it all around- embracing our precipice-clenching pasts and the futuility of our memories to grasp them forever. "maybe it's just because of hindsight. The more we progress, the greater the past contains and the harder it is for memory to grasp it, thus making it seem to fly by faster and faster and more memories are built up- and conversely making the present progression of things seem slower and slower. ..I think I now lean toward his understanding of it.

In some unnameable dis-order, I was able to, among the passing of endless not-so-remembered faces, experience:

- another father and son...and father...and father.

- crabs and crazy relatives I had met as a different boy in a past life

- Seville, the mega-(straight)bar of pcola, dueling pianos, with a beautiful bartender (derek)

- Being a best man but not; none of the typical responsibilties of getting to be by the guys side through the thick of it, straightening ties and combing hair, making sure the punch gets made and the music goes off without a hitch.

- Emerald City the mega-(gay)bar of pcola, dead before 1130 and not the same as you rememeber, though the thrill of confident compasrison is worth it.

- Staying up the night following the wedding, not to get wasted and party but to sit in the hotel lobby with the best man, bridesmaid, videographer, and random others chatting about philosophy and concepts of culture and society, religion and politics til 6am.

- Noting that the men I see down there always seem so much better-fed than the average guys in the northeast; hulking, worn, cornfed boys with handsome lilting accents that makes you you remember the awkward adolescent days of your first attractions.

Despite my seeingly unavoidable list-making, I still hang onto a giant cloud of goodfeeling that my best friend, the man that shared some of his kind, honest soul, that I probably wouldn't have made it through grade school without, is now with his match, a woman of equal caliber in giggle-cry humor and zest and such an overwhelming amount of love and goodness-- so lucky a guy am I to have been able to stand next to them on the threshold of this great new adventure.

Dream: AM 9/11/08

on a journey, with backpack (black)...walking, ((having just started Gentlemen of the Road)), walking the boyscout summer camp trail, circumstances and motives unremembered, a huge cart of some sort led by a dog and a dying buffalo, that falls over...but then is forced to get back up again, the cart is a huge surreal red carriage of some sort that has a small wheel at the front that upon a revolution, via an attached rubber-like driveshaft, rotates another wheel towards the top of the carriage that is actually a corn husker, you see now that the freeform carriage is actually a corn husking device, now in travel-mode, headed to a field to gather corn - there is a driver at teh top front and a man on the back edge of the carriage - unclear details - you follow it along until you come to the trail that, more familiar, is the road/trail alongside the field on the to piano teacher's old house, just outside of Defuniak, you remmeber why you'd be going this way, to reach the creek that you and albert/dixie once tried to find. you veer right off the road, and it's more developed here, a fence into a residential area, you try to stay on the public areas to find a way to move forward to access the creek, in the 'corner' just to the right of the fence is a building where black people are gathered outside, its a funeral home, you work your way around the building to the small road, paved, that follows behind it- the back of the building is smooth and covered in black glass, the road looks like a dead end - but the houses are all low income families. you get to where the road ends, but rather than a culdesac it becomes a opening to a park or series of trails. a couple of groups of people (white) are returning from a trail walk and regrouping, you slip in, but not before stopping to use your iphone to locate where you are in relation to where you believe the creek to be. the functions shift and become troublesome and there is some brief confusion/interaction between the people around you who are gathering and boarding a carriage/or car?.
(sometime between then and some unremembered duration, things change drastically)
At some point, you receive advice from an unremembered wise non-tourist character.... that to reach my destination i strive to reach, i must have a particular elf/fairy (?) accompany me. apparently he can be summoned from a nearby stump that seems to grow up out of the ground. he emerges and there is a puzzle i must solve first on a manuscript or a board? to begin my journey. i'm not sure if the buffalo is with me or if the fairy takes the shape of a small animal (the buffalo was never that big), but i have engaged an animal-like companion somepoint close to this. at one point the puzzle bores me and i need to take a break, but i am lying on a animal-skin bed in a natural setting and put the book of the current puzzle of the whole story itself down and say i need a break, and there's a tv embedded in a tree truck and start to watch a different story, but it's the same one, so there's mixed media messages here, that i can't quite pick out. just before the puzzle was delivered (looks alot like mahjong-with overlapping symboled tiles), i was explained the nature of the journey and what would have to happen to me- it seems i would have to undergo some sort of adaptation to be able to manage the trip. so, eager to do so and get on my way, the transformation slipped up upon me rather early on, but slowly without my noticing- signaled by a moment when the elf/fairy-guide, who in his early moments upon emerging looked like a stirring energy sandwiched between two half-shells, small almost like a broken open nut-- he looks at me and i, in turn see my 'character' and with admiration, remarks on how well my changes are going. already there is hocks of hair around my feet and lower arms, i have a more hearty tone, filling out my tshirt, and stronger jawline/visage. either its the growing muscle tone or sense of pride, my chest swells. the journey, back in this natural setting of resting the first night (?), i cuddle up in the animal skin bedding with my companion, the new companion animal or elf-turned-pigmy donkey , i'm not sure. i wakeup with the images somewhere along this point.

A Matter of Principle

So, landing in Tallahassee all excited that I'm finally back home for the week, and eager to get into a car, because let's face it, that's really the only way to move around in my neck 'a the woods, I rush over to the line of car rental counters, luggage in tow. No cars. None of the companies. Apparently the day immediately following a hurricane, everyone rents cars. So I am forced to call the lovely Jordan to come pick me up. I keep trying the different rental counters with no luck. She's outside in her groovy bumblebee yellow Hyundai Accent. With Silk. We head over to Silk's apartment (Jordan now lives in P'city) so I can get online to see if there's any damn rental place open this dreary, wet sunday afternoon. Avis has another location in Tally, so we head that way.
Once there, I see a cute little Hybrid sitting in the lot. I want it. Go in, and after about 20 minutes of red tape, I am told I can have the Hybrid but it's gonna cost $89.99 extra per day. So much for incentive to help the environment. I decide without thinking to splurge. 15 more minutes of keyboard clacking. "Oh sorry sir, I can't give you the Hybrid because you're not 25." Okay, so now there's an age limit on trying to do something helpful. Or at least try it out. Ugh, so apparently because it's a specialty car, it has all these limitations.

Avis site lists the car as a specialty vehicle, which is all well and good, but look further...

Additionally, the following restrictions also will apply for renters between the ages of 21-24: Renters of luxury, Mini-Vans, 12-Passenger Vans, Specialty, and Full-Size SUVs, Premium SUVs will not be permitted.

So I don't get my little Hybrid, but instead a Nissan Versa. Which, although kinda boxy, is very comfy and has nice get-up-and-go and, best of all: I get from Tally to Defunk (about 120 miles) in about a third of a tank! Frustrations aside, I'm happy as I pull into ye olde abode of youth, where my dad's F150 and my mom's Ford Excursion sit glaring.

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