The undead of fashion

Every three or four years it comes back. Stories of old tell the tale of a fashion fop who one day -- on the night of a full moon -- gave birth to a woeful style. He strolled into town, the whisp-whisp of his thighs unbeknownced to him carrying the tune of forever damnation.

This cadaverous craze, this deceased dernier cri, this rigor mortis rage -- it's come back to life once again and I feel it's my job to send it packing to the abhorrent realm from which it spawned.

I'm speaking of course of corduroy.

I'm out shopping and I'll see it on a shelf, or on a rack, hanging there, mocking good taste and common sense. No, it won't look good on you. Yes, your friends will laugh. You'll never pass ninja school if everyone can hear you coming. What are you thinking?

You kill it and it only comes back stronger, more potent.

It's as if someone says, "you know what I haven't heard in a while? Corduroy." And like all abominations, as these words are spoken -- as if some kind of demonic decree proclaimed -- the being's rotting corpse is reanimated to plague Gaps and Old Navys everywhere.

Not on my watch sister.

*the SHUCK-SHUCK pump of a shotgun*

Not on my watch.

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Lollypops

There's a woman in my office who has a wooden pumpkin on her desk filled with tootsie-pops. I can't stop eating them. They're the only thing keeping me sane today.

In every sense of the expression, I'm maxed out. I've hit my limit of things I can deal with at one time.

Tootsie-pops are making it better.

With all the happenings lately I almost forgot, tonight is anime and video game night with Bone. I can't wait.

It'll probably be the last one for a couple of weeks while I recover from the surgery I go in for next week. We're gonna make this one count. This weekend's gotta count too. I don't think I'll be going out for a while. I can't imagine I'll feel too "pretty" anytime soon.

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Milestones in the fold

These days my entire life unfolds like an origami crane. It all started with a plain sheet of rice paper, and now, even though the material is the same, it's something much more complex. These days it seems I'm forced to examine each fold, each step that brought me closer to what I now resemble. This is about deconstructing. This is about things that happened a long time ago.

In the ocean, a shark has to be constantly moving in order to stay alive. I have to remember that. I have to keep moving.

The last couple of weeks, it's like someone upstairs pushed the fuck-his-shit-up button. The range of emotions I've gone through have completely run the gamut. Black, white, shades of gray, you name it, chances are I've felt it and dealt with it. My life wasn't perfect, don't get me wrong, but things were going, smoothly. I was forgetting what I learned a long time ago.

Don't ever get too comfortable.

They say: that which does not kill you, only makes you stronger. Well, I should be approaching critical-mass sometime soon. On present course I'll be getting super powers next week. I can't fucking wait.

I say: that thing, the one that makes you stronger, it usually does get you in the end. It rings true about your past, it's never completely gone.

I think by now everyone knows what happened between Kelly and I. I'll spare you all the re-cap, I'm sure I'll be blogging about it for a good while anyways. This isn't about that. This is about the past, remember? It's only because these things all happened in the same week that they're being lumped together.

They also say: when a door closes, a window opens. Well, I wasn't expecting this window to open. This fourteen year old window I apparently forgot to lock.

So what happens when someone you've hated for fourteen years pops back into your life and apologizes? Someone who was your best friend for a long time, who just up and vanished one day. Taking with him an assortment from your mother's jewelry box. And what happens if you had that person wrongfully accused the entire time? For fourteen years! This person has been the beneficiary of most of your anger and hurt. This person who was your best friend and one day up and vanished, taking with him everything you ever trusted or thought was sacred. Friendship, honesty, truth, they're all just words. What if -- come to find out -- you've been hating the wrong person all along?

Well, this happens. It starts about 13 posts down and just gets deeper and deeper.

Yesterday, everyone who checked those comments had a front row seat in the theater of my past. This is shit I haven't thought about for years. A wound that was sutured a long time ago only to be rent open again. Made fresh.

Don't get me wrong, we were kids, we all were. Kids do stupid shit, I know that. But this is an event that haunted me my entire life. I never stopped thinking about it. A milestone. If someone I called friend -- a friend above all other friends -- could do this to me, then what's the world worth?

That was the day I grew up, and for a time, I stopped trusting everyone. Don't ever get too comfortable, I'd always say.

After that -- for what seemed like forever to a fourteen year old -- I didn't have friends. I didn't go out of my way to even make new friends. Sometimes its a dangerous thing to be left alone with only your subconscious to guide you. Your mind can wander, you can get caught up in thoughts of revenge. I was really hurt.

It's funny, we had this great friendship, him and I, but now I strain to remember anything but him leaving and the events that lead up to that departure. I can't for the life of me remember the good times. They're just not there. I'm sure at one point they existed but I just can't recall them with any solidity. They're overshadowed, shaded out.

It looks like he's got some kids now and is into all the same things I am. It's funny how fourteen years can go by with great distance between two people and somehow -- through experiences they shared together -- they come out alike. I just wish I could remember some of the good ones.

I really want to forgive him now, I do. I really want to like him, but I know I can never trust him, ever. It's just not in me to do so. I know my limits and I'll never set myself up for that fall ever again.

I have to keep moving.

These are the folds that shape us into who we are. The things under our skin no one sees, forming us. We're malleable under the pressure of our own experiences. We're folded. We all are.

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Throwing matchsticks at the sun

I had a really great weekend and a not so great this morning.

God, this weekend was so awesome! I went into Baltimore on Friday night and rampaged with Jon, Kevin and Scott. It was great, so great in fact that I ended up crashing up there. Good times equals not driving, not thinking, and just cutting loose. I felt like I was really falling back into the single life with relative ease. The transition was going smoothly. After all, it's been almost three weeks now, and if you want to count the tail end of the relationship where I could feel her gone already, it's been way longer than that.

Saturday was kinda botched from the start but everything was salvaged and went well. Corinne came down to my neck of the woods and her, Dennis and I kicked it up in Annapolis. I vaguely remember someone trying to paper, rock, scissors her away from us. The creep factor was high. It was a good night but I still don't like Tsunami. Sorry Dennis, I never will.

Sunday I went to the Renaissance Festival with all the guys. Drinking two dollar beers. Being subjected to the horrifying reality that most of the people who dress up should not be dressed in anything except a burlap bag. These aren't so much costumes as they are anatomy lessons. Some of these people have elbows one would mistake for knees in a blind taste test. The anomaly known only as the shelf-boob might be the most disgusting thing I've ever seen, next to watching Jon eat a turkey leg, at which I almost honked. Really... really.

So yeah, a good weekend. This morning, not so good.

I guess I'm still dealing with things. Part of me thinks she's gonna come walking through that door anytime now, but obviously she's not. I woke up two times during the night last night from dreams where her and I were still together. One was so vivid I actually reached over and felt the emptiness of the bed next to me. It's been three weeks since we've shared a bed but this morning it really hit home. She's gone, really, really gone. But in my dreams, we were happy and still, one.

This is Phantom Limb Syndrome where an amputee who has lost an arm or a leg can still feel his or her fingers or toes. Residual feeling still haunting them long after the use of that limb is gone. It still itches, it still tickles and even though it's not there physically, it still has feeling.

It's not ever completely gone and maybe it never will be.

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Two things that are great

The first is a comic my friend Jon found.


Dr. McNinja
Go there, read it, pee yourself.

The second is an album called The Mouse and the Mask by Danger Doom, a collaboration between Danger Mouse and MF Doom.


It's teh aw3s0m3. I am sofa king we todd did.
Love the Master Shake voicemail messages.

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This is making friday totally worth it.

This is too great not to share! Sorry, I promise to get back to my usual dour posts in due time. This is really making me laugh though. Thanks Dennis!

http://thecasualfriday.blogspot.com/

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Walls

It's done. Time to put the walls back up. I haven't seen em in a while, I'm sure they could use some dusting. Gotta clean up the china in the china shop too.

Talked to D a lot tonight.

Honestly, I'm fine. As weird as it sounds I know everything is gonna turn out for the better, whatever that might be. People are people, you can't blame them for doing what they feel in their heart is right, no matter how much it hurts or doesn't make sense to you.

I wish her luck in finding what is missing.

I will miss her.

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Analogies

You hear a song and immediately you’re in love. You play it constantly, and every time you do it gives you goose bumps. You can’t get enough. You sing it at the top of your lungs. It might make you laugh. It might make you cry. You feel alive when you hear it. You tell other people how much you love it. It’s perfect. By you, it can do no wrong.

Then you start hearing it on the radio, in TV commercials. Pretty soon it’s everywhere and at first you like it, though you can’t get away from it. You tell people this is your song, but saying this loses meaning. Now, it’s everyone’s song. People on the street, babies in commercials, at the sports arena, they’re all singing along and it’s overwhelming. You take hearing it for granted. The goose bumps are gone, it’s not special anymore.

Then one day it just happens, first you hate the melody, then you hate the lyrics. Pretty soon hearing the first few chords is enough to send you into a rage. Every time you hear it you immediately change the station or turn it off. You can’t even remember why you liked it in the first place. You don’t know what you ever saw in it. You tell other people how much you hate that song. By you, it can do no right.

You’re burned out.

It takes time but after the hype has died down -- and this is years I’m talking about here, long after no one plays it anymore -- you’ll hear it again and remember why you loved it. How it made you feel the first time you heard it. When and where you were, how much it meant to you. Then the memories come rushing over you like a burst dam.

Love might bend and sway the way a tree branch does in a thunderstorm, but it never breaks. It never goes away.

Of course, it’s easy to reconnect with a song.
All you have to do is listen.

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Ellipsis...

That curious punctuation of which I am so fond. Those three little periods that tell you things aren't over. That there is a chance to continue where you left off. It's a pause... A break... A place to rest and think about the meaning of the sentence before.

Sometimes we all need an ellipsis.

This week my life changed in a way I never thought possible. So this weekend, unlike last weekend, I got out of the house. I had to. During the entire three days -- and not counting sleeping -- I may have been alone for only two hours. I surrounded myself with great people and it has helped me so much.

Friday I saw Serenity at the West Nursery theater with Scott and Kevin. After, we caught some tacos at a place by BWI I never knew existed. The menu was exactly the same as a place in Annapolis called El Toro Bravo. A combination number 10 -- two tacos, rice and beans -- is the same as a combination number 10 at El Toro. It was mildly bizarre since they are in no way related.

After we ate we ended up in Fells Point. Trying to get into a place called Max's we decided it was too crowded and headed over to a place called Friends. It was a good night. Drinking, playing pool, reflecting. The movie was good. The tacos were good. It was a good night.

Saturday Jon took his LSAT. He called me when he was done and we spent the entire day hanging out. He picked up the Capcom Greatest Hits Collection for Xbox and we played some of the classics for a while. It felt good to zone out to some good ole' fashioned mayhem. I however, still suck at Street Fighter. Some things never change.

We decided to grab some dinner in Annapolis at El Toro Bravo. Yeah, two nights in a row for me. This was around 4:00pm. We sat and ordered a pitcher of margarita, a pitcher we would soon realize we couldn't finish. I got my usual, a number 10, two tacos, rice and beans. Much like the evening prior, I was only able to eat one taco.

We spent an hour just catching up and trying to get our moneys worth out of the pitcher we were so eager to order. Later we decided to walk around and found a little shop I'd never noticed before, we spent some time in there and then went back to the appartment to wait for Dennis to get home.

Dennis strolled in around 9:30pm and after some deciding about where the night was to take us we headed off to Baltimore. We were meeting Kevin at Brewer's Art which later changed to Club Charles about half way there.

It all started out normal enough, drinking, talking, bar-hoping, but it was the end of the night that proved to be the most, different.

We closed a bar called The 13th Floor at the Belvedere Hotel. It's, get this, on the 13th floor, clever I know. They were playing some great Latin music and a Scottish wedding party was there dancing it up. Not something you see everyday, men in kilts dancing, doing the merengue.

That's not the odd part though.

After we left we were walking back to the car and I remembered there was a late night sushi place right around the corner. I had been there once before a long time ago. It's just a nice place to put an end to the evening. It's chill, they play techno and you can relax. Anyways, I felt like something was pulling me there. That there was something there I needed to do or see. So, I made the suggestion that we go and we did.

Now, I'm not a sushi eater but it's been something Kelly has always wanted me to try. She told me that I'd like a spicy tuna roll and when I saw it on the menu I ordered it right away. This weekend was not about forgetting.

So there we were, me, Dennis and Jon, ordering sushi at 2:30am and sitting at the bar when suddenly I look up and on this little 24 inch TV right in-front of us is the tail end of a movie called Garden State.

This movie holds more meaning for me than anyone knows. In this movie is a song that I will only associate with one person for the rest of my life. If there was a movie that was 'our' movie, this would be it. And I came in right at the end, during the speech about the ellipsis. About how people need space and time to think, to reflect. About how lives have been changed in such a short period of time that it becomes too scary to bear but if you can face it, things can only get better. Roll credits.

Why this movie? Of all movies, and of all parts to come in on, why here? Why now? I couldn't help the feeling that I needed to see this again. That I needed to be told this, to be reminded.

Saturday night -- enjoying a spicy tuna roll at a late night sushi bar in the middle of Baltimore -- I was reminded of something greater than myself. That something is going on, there are things in this world that don't just happen. Things that are to be, will be, and vice versa. It was somewhat of a comfort.

The ride home was quiet. Dennis drove and I peered out the passenger window. It was foggy and just above us the street lights reflected what I could only describe as an ocean. It's waves rolled over our heads and for a moment I lost myself to it. It's upside-down world reminded me of my own. The mist had turned into a phantom blanket that covered our little town with an iridescent, undulating calm.

What will happen, will happen. And that's okay.

This weekend was not about forgetting, sometimes we all need an ellipsis.

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