How I'm Spending My Christmas Break

feel like I'm living in the plot of this movie

Wednesday evening reunion with Frank, T, and B at the condo -- as soon as I step in the door it's like I never left. Friday night date at the Penn -- Christmas Vacation with popcorn, pepsi, swedish fish and a nerds rope; then an unexpected pleasant reunion with a friend I hadn't seen in years (due to a personal feud), went to sleep that night as happy as I'd been in some time. Saturday night, Christmas Eve at Aunt Mary's and Uncle Paul's in Ann Arbor (a tradition now, but when I was a child Christmas Eve rotated amongst the aunts) -- it felt good this year, as I was for the first time able to proudly boast of my exploits in the North, hiking, camping, teaching, writing my novel. Strange to think that only last Christmas I was lamenting the rut I was stuck in, how stressed I was between work travel and vacation plans with the girlfriend's family, how stuck I felt in my hometown again. Spent a late Christmas Eve night with Frank's cat Dika (they were out of town to Taylor's hometown for Christmas), jamming and brainstorming how I was going to cut a 20,000 word novella into a 5,000 word short story by mid-January. The cat woke me up at 5:00 a.m. on Christmas morn, and I spent dawn watching both "Scrooged" and "A Christmas Story" before venturing over to Millwood for Christmas with the fam, in dire need of coffee.

Some things really never do change. Yesterday, I joined some buddies at the bar to watch the Lions on Monday Night Football, only to be reminded of why I've never felt any sort of loyalty to my local pro team; afterwards, I'm the only one sober so I drive to bowling in Canton, talk writing with Adam's brother Brian, a songwriter from Texas in town for the holidays, watch my friends stumble drunkenly across the bowling lanes. These nights seem so much more enjoyable now that I'm detached from the scene in my Northern winter abode. Woke up today around 1:30 in the afternoon, remembering a line from "Beautiful Girls" -- "what we've been doing lately is smoking massive amounts of drugs, binging on Entemmann's and listening to old Pink Floyd cd's". Just like I left you.

Home for the Holidays

There's such a big difference between being home for the holidays and living in your hometown for the holidays. Upon arriving home, I heard about an old family friend who, like myself, has spent much of her adult life struggling with substance abuse and mental health issues. She won't be coming to Michigan for the holidays after all. Heard this song driving home from my cousin Frank's late last night, the festive lights on the houses passing by in colorful blurs, and it made me think of her. I'm grateful to be home for the Holidays; it was only earlier this year that I was pretty lost myself.

My heart goes out to you, wherever your are, M.

I don't want to understand this horror

There's a weight in your eyes

I can't admit

Everybody ends up here

in bottles

But the name tag's the last thing you wanted

As the world explodes

We fall out of it

And we can't let it go

Because this will not go away

There's a house built out in space

I can't see the thief that lives inside of your head

But I can be some courage at the side of your bed

And I don't know what's happening

And I can't pretend

But I can be your

be your

Someone help us understand

Who ordered

This disgusting arrangement of time and the end

I don't wanna hear who walked on water

'Cause the hallways are empty

Clocks tick

As the world implodes

We fall into it

And we can't go home

Because this will not go away

There's a house built out in space

It's a long long getaway

It's a long long getaway

Make it home again

Make it home again

- Our Lady Peace, "Thief"

First Winter Up North

Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. Winter here in a big way; snows for days and days. Lake effect snow descends upon the windblown streets like a fog. Mornings, trying to warm up next to the electrical heat vents, I often find myself looking out my apartment window to Lake Superior on the horizon, a single smokestack on its shore waving an endless handkerchief of black smoke, satisfied in the simple knowledge that I finally fucking did it. Another day stuck inside, tea on the stove top and a book on the rug, but I'm here in the Upper Peninsula.

Life starting to happen fast for me up here.

Circa 2004

Unknown, talk to unknown

Ever, lasts forever

Well it's a sharp shock to your soft side

Summer moon, catch your shut eye

In your room

In my room

In your room

In my room

Louder, lips speak louder

Better, back together

Still it's a sharp shock to your soft side

Summer moon, catch your shut eye

In your room

In my room

In your room

In my room

What's the time?

What's the day?

Gonna leave me?

What's the time?

What's the place?

Go and leave me

What's the time?

What's the day?

Gonna leave me?

What's the time?

What's the place?

Go and leave me out

leave me out

leave me out

leave me out

Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, "Soft Shock"

(rec by K)

Great Writing

"At one point, tacking out of Annapolis, [my father] said, "you've got the habit of leaving things unsaid, of shoving things under the rug."

I was startled, unnerved.

"Maybe it's inherited," he added.

I wondered what things he had in mind. He seemed to mean resentments. Did I have so many?

Once upon a time, I'd secretly blamed him for my miseries, for the anguish that plagued me through my college years after Caryn left me. My notion was, that his devotion to my mother -- his emotional dependence on her -- had set me a bad example and given me a model for love that ended up devastating me. But I had abandoned that idea, that ludicrous resentment, long ago. There were plenty of things I was actually glad I left unsaid. Still, the comment haunted me. It haunts me today -- all the things I wish I had said, when I had the chance."

- William Finnegan, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

"Writing felt like it justified, barely, my existence -- this extremity of obscurity I had perversely chosen."

William Finnegan, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

The Pale Blue Dot

A couple days after the loss, my brother Patrick mentioned "The Pale Blue Dot". 

"That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there -- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, that delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in this great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."

- Carl Sagan

1994