current musical selection: The Cult - Beyond Good and Evil [album]

It feels good to dig up some old [or just merely forgotten] records and cd's and just blare them at 11/10 notches doesn't it? With no one else home today, I did just that... so if my neighbors are reading this: thanks for not calling the police.

Nothing better than hearing something coming out of the speakers, other than Brittney, Nu-metal or some sappy 3-chord "R&B" [read: Rap without Balls] rip off [read: sampled] from some lame ass 70s funk band... finally I get to hear some real, descent, hard rock and roll... plenty of Stones, the Cult, GnR [as always] and Deep Purple... no crap. Today, although I had nothing else better to do... I had no time for the usual air[over]play of crap.

Hearing some of those parts made me think about some of the good old times... memories attach themselves in the oddest circumstances. Sometimes I hear just a chorus or maybe even only a small snippet of song, and it brings back so much... not only the music, but also what was going on the last time I remember it. Memories aren't so bad, even if the times were... I guess I see the memories as good; and the bad memories as just baggage. Baggage is heavy, its cumbersome, its a loaded term... and generally its not something you want to carry with you... you'd give it a nicer term. You'd call it 'luggage' or 'essentials'; not baggage. No, baggage is the bulk rate shit-sack of every bad, resentful and unpleasant thing that creeps back into your psyche under the auspices of a memory.

You never see it coming. Hell its all got the same postmarkings, right? I mean, you cant tell what it is until you open it all up, and there it is... right in your mind; and its there and its not going away. And you just dread the time it takes before it vanishes, because your stuck remembering and watching and just reliving experiences that you've wanted to forget... but the baggage system doesn't work quite like that I've found. Your baggage has your address. Your baggage always finds its way back to you. And sometimes, other people will even help bring it to you... you didn't want to forget anything anyway, did you?

Random thoughts on thoughts today I guess. A lot of times I catch myself doing that. Hanging up on the past. Memories do attach to the oddest of places. I can remember quite vividly once, probably when I was about 9 years old... somewhere on vacation, in the middle of nowhere.. It was hot, dry, humid.. The kind of days you go swimming on, or eat ice cream. But we're not. We're in this, stinking, wooden collapsing structure; crammed to the gunwales full of crap... old crap, assorted crap, pictures of crap. That's what it all looks like when your 9. You just want to stop looking at it. So instead you run through the place, looking at everything as fast as you can, thinking maybe that when your done looking, you'll get to leave. All the while, my parents aren't paying attention. For whatever reason, my mom is talking shop with this hag of an old woman... the woman must be 90, long gray stringy hair down to her waist, with glasses and wrinkled skin; but still could weigh more than 100 pounds, even in her white flannel night-gown, which she's wearing at mid afternoon still. No, no one is watching, not even me. Then I run into it. Literally. The first time I really ever remembered a casket. I can remember looking at it, and wondering why you'd build a table with hinges... then I get to walking around and looking at it, and I realize what it was. It creeped me out just a bit. But I kept exploring it, eventually climbing on it partway, and realizing there is a glass pane in the lid. That's when I lost it. I could look into see a rotting corpse, I ran down isle, which threaded its self back and around the store to find my dad. They all laughed. Later I did too. Just the sheer madness of why some old antique collector [a bit antiquated herself] would have a casket with a window in it... but I remember it; although I'm sure she wouldn't. And probably not my parents either. But people do help with your baggage too.

I also remember talking with an ex-girl friend on the phone, late one night. All beyond the hate and anger stage, id prepared myself and was striving for the 'friendship' stage that would inevitably develop, due to my infatuation with her. She started talking about nothing. Well, it to her was something, but to me was nothing. She talked about how she hated her roommate, how much she drank the night before; she talked about how she was found half unconscious, vomiting all over herself, clearly from alcohol poisoning. All of it to her was something. It was fun, it was a game, and it was enjoyable to share with me. She giggled, and laughed. And I thought it was nothing. Nothing at all to be proud about, or brag about, with the bravado of 'yeah it was soooo cool' to me it was the kind of incident that might make a seasoned alcoholic work for sobriety. But not to her. To her this was something. So I listened. Appalled, and terrified for her and at her; but I only listened. Even as she tells me how she wakes up the next morning without any clothes on, in some guys bed. Apparently they freaked out when they found her, and just decided the paramedics and campus security would ruin the party, so they treated her. Jocks treated her. She was apparently thrown in a cold shower, stripped, and thrown into bed to sober up. But the giggling re-emerges when she tells me, that when she wakes up, she realizes that she's not even wearing underwear, and some random guy gets embarrassed when he has to create a reason for taking them off her. But she giggles when telling me about it. Maybe even when it was happening too, I'm not sure. I wasn't listening real well; I was sitting on the floor, in the dark, trying to imagine how she could find this all humorous, let alone worth telling me. She wasn't using it as a crutch, or as a coping strategy to relate this to me; no she was in fact, genuinely amused by her story and predicament. I remember then, looking up as the music in the changer switched cd's, its loud, heavy clunk seemed to last for minutes, until it started. Then I heard the song start.

There are a lot of times you can remember things... remembering seems to be the neutral gear of it all. It pre-curses 1st, with throws you headlong into some good memories... or it jams your teeth together, when it rips you straight into reverse, straight back to reclaim the baggage that you lost.

ain't it fun~
s.

current musical selection: Rolling Stones - Some Girls [album]

Something is really starting to make me dread this comming school term... as i was sitting and thinking about whats come and gone, i keep forcing myself to look ahead to what will come; and it isnt necessarily going to be the best of times.

with the entire ARH cloud looming closer still, and with the pesky interference of grades and coursework still poking about; it seems i wont have much, if any, free time to speak of. im not sure i like that idea. although last year was probably nearly as busy, i still managed to create time to sit and relax, and just be around people and friends when i chose. im doubting this years schedule will again afford me such luxury.

obviously this is a pretty negative thought for me; but i think its more of a bring down to my friends. we all moved onto the same floor, within about oh 15 feet of each other, for the continued commradory... which i think will be lacking me. granted i will be around at times, but i think we both will have had similar expectations of which, i dont think, it will be possible for me to live up to.

i suppose i should also mention my personal life is bound to suffer some more as well, due to the workaholic nature of what ill be doing... but thats not really much of a concession to make, especially if you lived my [lack of] dating life. its funny how everyone always mentions that "some day you'll find the one" to me thats extremely freightening... not the notion of a match, though that too is pretty ludacris, but more over the notion that there is one out there... one, singular, uno, one. granted im sure its not intentioned that way, but why do we say it that way? surely it cant be meant that way, hell half this country's marriages end in divorce, and who knows how many of the remaining half are not plagued by infidelity or periods of mutual separation, both in mind and body, from one another. to me the thought of only having that 'one' possibility seems much more bleek than the million to one it ought to be... still its not like a billion to one odds are much more favorable.

the whole subject of marriage has been topic for many of my rants in real life conversation... forcing many people to become overly insecure and objective over my thoughts, but ill save most of you here, by-passing most of that for now. but what i will say is that marriage has been so down-graded in the past 2 generations in this country, that i seriously question why anyone would want to get married anymore? i know that people themselves definitely question this. marriage is something now which is a multi-billion dollar business... both getting married and getting un-married. infact weve created so many divorces and grounds for divorce, that its no wonder the divorce rate is what it is. honestly i think the underlying fault of all this has been the "me first" and "liberation" movements of the past 40 years. we push and push for me, me, me; and when marriage becomes 'too hard' or 'irreconsilable' we call it quits, and move on to number 2-4. honestly what was happening about 700 years ago, before we started issuing divorces? were people any more happy? were domestic disputes really that less frequent? i doubt it. life was harder then, more taxing on ones existence, and honestly domestic disputes and random wife beatings were quite abit more likely to ocurr; so then why the move to divorce in mass groves now? i mean, it sounds to the logical person, that divorces or similar remedy should have been abundant in those times, and they werent; what changed? us. weve demanded upon ourselves as a culture that everything has got to revolve around our ears. everything comes 'custom fit' now a days, everyone has to look unique and different, even in the trends they utilize to be unique [read: body piercing, tattooing, slut-tastic appearal]. even our scientific institutions have to be riddled with uniqueness for us; every disease now has a fancy 5-dollar name, and most likely will be recomended to a 'specialist' for consultation... ill be damned, but i havent seen the physical from of the homo-sapiens as documented as remarkedly changed as the way we treat it now. but, i digress... we want these fancy ailments; its more sympathy, its more distinction, its more dignity in a morbid fashion. to say im deathly ill, or to say i have cancer, or to say i have hodgkins based non-lymphomic degenerative carcinoma; realisitically mean the same thing. but today, we urge the last term, it makes us an astute, special sounding paitent; for which we can further 'tailor' our treatments to.

back to the marriage question next time, lets first see this through; we push everything to the ME level. is this what i want; if not, its not acceptable any longer. look at boob-jobs... the operation of limited execution maybe 10 years ago, is now so abundant in our culture, id suggest keeping any woman with moderately large mammories away from any open flames for fear of combustion!, but the excuse is always the same, "i did it for me" [although im sure their current 'friend' aka sexual partner, probably values them as well] but it all has to revolve around the ME level again. Why didnt you vote?-- well it doesnt affect ME. Why do you exercise?-- well it will make men notice ME. Why do you dump your boyfriend?-- he was smothering ME. damn you Oprah Winfrey. your sappy shit "take a momment for us" vignetes and preachings in your multi-million circulating sources have sucked the culture out of our country, and reduced it to MEs. and thats what we have now really. MEs. just a crowd of people, who scream the desire to be more individualistic than the person next to them; just in the name of individuality. it should be pretty clear to see we carry this over to our relationships as well, shouldnt it? When your boyfriend 'smothers' you, what does that mean? probably something tragic like, he didnt want to watch "Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood" with you and your mother, or that watching "Sex In the City" with you would only be tolerable if Sarah Jessica Parker threw a boob out once in a while... smothering you means only that we dont want to accept, and take second seat to your ME attitude approach to life. if your man beats you, i suppose thats a good reason to walk out on him; but because he doesnt want thursday morning yoga classes with you isnt. besides, all of you dress alike in the class, how is he supposed to find you? oh i forget.. you just scream 'ITS ME' like everyone else. forget you all. but dont worry, im not done with this topic.


ain't it fun~

s.