Order

Dick: I guess it looks as if you're reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?
Rob: No...
Dick: Not alphabetical...
Rob: Nope...
Dick: What?
Rob: Autobiographical.
Dick: No fucking way.

Taking mental stock of outstanding items, chores, or to dos, happens naturally with me, on a constant basis. In spite of myself, I'm always striving toward greater standards of order and organization. Not purposely -- I don't "care" in a thoughtful way -- but rather it just happens instinctively without any real effort. Which is particularly noxious, I think, because that means that haphazardness is a skill I have to work toward, and reliability and stability are natural. So I'm always projecting an air of concern that honestly doesn't exist in me, and it seems like I'm interested in "fixing" things or making things "better" when in fact I'm not thinking about it at all. It's just happening without effort. I often worry that this call toward order has made me appear weak -- like I am investing more energy and effort than others. But, truly, it takes more effort for me to do nothing, than to do something.

So I spend a lot of time revisiting certain "messes" and cleaning them in greater detail. Like my nearly unruly music collection. This morning I started organizing and reordering a few items and what happened? I was done with that chore so quickly that I felt like I "should" do something else. So I started making a mix -- what I used to accurately refer to as a "tape" but is now called a "playlist". Blech! The very notion of that analog to digital shift makes me nauseous. Without an actual tape, the whole mix-making process loses something of the tangible effort and work that made it so fucking laborious and personal of a process.

In the past, when I sat down to make a "tape" -- I never sat. Instead it was all physical work. I was up and down, pacing around my room, playing tracks on cds on one stereo, then moving to the tape deck, recording, playing back. Listening to more tracks on a separate machine trying to pick the songs and get the order -- the flow from one track to the next -- exactly right. Making sure the song selections and transitions were on the level with the intentions of the mix (who it was for, why it was being made, what I wanted it to convey, etc.). As Rob so clearly states in High Fidelity "the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing." And it is. You have to be careful, you have to listen to the words, to the music, to the message that is translated in subtleties of the fade from one song into the next. You have to pay attention to band names, song titles, possible innuendo and intended or unintended interpretations. Sometimes a mix is a straight-shooting monologue and other times it's a coy invitation.

Taking a note from Rob's handbook - it's a delicate thing that no amount of order can arrange neatly. But without the work of the tape making, the playlist arranging loses some of its meaning and power. After all, it's a lot easier to click and drag a track than to rewind to the right spot and rerecord. So in a certain way I'm not sure that mixes have the same reach that they once did and that is just yet one more tragic truth of modernity that makes me feel totally out of order.

All The Posts I Was Supposed to Write

I've been on a bit of a writing hiatus the past 6 months or so. I think, mainly, because I'm uncomfortable with many of my thoughts and therefore, unsure about immortalizing them in the printed word - either shared or privately. It's as if, if I don't record them, they don't exist and then I don't have to deal with how confusing they are.

So, what's so wrong with where my head's been at? Nothing. It's all normal, nearly 30, contemplating the universe, the same old bs... But I don't like questioning myself and how I went from there to here and what the next square target should be. I much prefer being in the know. Yeah, don't we all? Instead, I'm thinking about the painful, overwhelming passing of time, and that facts that...

I started college 10 years ago. I have 2 classes left and will be done with grad school. I haven't talked to my brother in at least 7 months. My sister in at least 4. I am in debt to the tune of a figure that if I typed it would make me throw up. I have lived in South Florida for 4 years and 8 months -- some of that time I was happy. I have spent the past 25 years contemplating the universe and still don't seem to have any answers. 9 years ago I lived in a house I hated, but the summer was beautiful there -- since then I have had progressively more and more intense feelings of uncertainty about the future. I have been an adult -- on my own and unsure -- for 8 full years, but I still feel like I'm 15 and that any minute, as summer sets in, I'm going to drive to Bubbling Brook, sit on the back of a car, eat ice cream and talk until curfew about love without fear.

I used to believe in such things. I really did. Now I am walled up and afraid. So much so, that I don't like writing things down.

Is It Any Wonder I Never Figured It Out?

I was thinking this morning about My So Called Life probably one of the most pivotal 19 hours of my life -- probably the 19 hours that I have relived most often and can even relive (unlike the moments and events that occurred in my "actual" life) and that meant the most in the foundation of me and who I am. Beyond any other cultural moments in my existence, being 15 in 1994 and watching that show was like a "pinprick to my heart" (to steal a quote from the Indigo Girls). Talk about defining moments in time and "formative" years -- that show is the very fabric of my understanding of the world -- it's confusing, untrustworthy, and treacherous -- and relationships -- they are misunderstood, miscommunicated, painful, and open-ended, left hanging...

Open-ended? Right at the major moment of climax, right when there may have been resolution or clarity, the show was canceled. So is it any wonder that I never figured out how to relate to others or how to make progress in my life? The only teacher I had, left me right before the cram for the final exam, so I never took the test, and I never passed to the next year. I'm still stuck in limbo at 15 waiting to learn how to grow up and become something other than an awkward, insecure, introvert who hides behind a big mouth and loud hair.

At nearly 30, I relate better to the culture of early-nineties teens than I do to my well-adjusted peers who all seem to have been more focused on 90210 than the depressing and spiritually-tortured so-called world of Claire and Co, that apparently I'm still struggling in. If only we had episodes 20+ that could have, in the tradition of sitcoms, finally wrapped it all up and made sense of the noise.

Solution to Friend Going Beyond Insult....

Breathe, breathe.... breathe more. Wait a week, at least, to respond. Anything I say now will only end the friendship.

Completing a Much Dreaded Task

The older I get, the more I hate doing things for people. Even people I like.

I think I burnt out on charity too early in life.

And with that, I give up on trying...

Not Like It's the Second Time Around or Something "Magikal" Like That...

Didn't realize this post was never posted - was supposed to go up on Easter. Oh, well, better late then never....

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UGH!

Everything is closed today. Flat out closed. Not Starbucks, praise the heavens. But everything else. And I, for one, am ticked off. Why in 2008 must we observe random pagan holidays so much so that we cannot participate in normal everyday business and commerce? I have credit cards and I want to use them, damn it.

The problem is -- and I know I'm not alone here -- that I live in a world where I have 2 days per week during which I have the option to be a normal human being. The other 5 are spent working 12+ hour days and driving a horrendously long commute alone in a car on a highway listening to solitary music of my choosing. For those 5 days I'm in a complete bubble and totally unaware of the rest of the world. On the weekend I get to find out what I've been missing. These are not the days to screw with me by closing shop in observance of a day that frankly, with each passing year is less and less spectacular. I mean COME ON... Nothing miraculous has happened in 2000+ years, and, really, the world has gone to shit, doesn't that, in it of itself, tell us all something about the nature of the accuracies or inaccuracies of a primitive people's storytelling???

And, that aside why does someone else's holiday mean that I can't have a day doing normal, productive errands? Why do I have to pause and contemplate the nothingness I feel in the universe just so 33% of the world can imagine that once upon a time, long ago, something magikal happened in Oz?

Suicide by Fitness Center

I had the unbelievable honor and privilege of seeing Joyce Carol Oates speak not once, but twice, in the past week. Live. Speak live. In the same room as me.

On the second occurrence she read 90% of one of her newest pieces of short fiction "Suicide by Fitness Center".

Joyce Carol Oates may be the funniest, most brilliant woman in the country. I'm riveted still by the feeling of listening to her read.