Rise of the Man-Eating Vendetta Tree

On a disheveled king bed under the whirring of ceiling fans in a big empty house at the edge of the Phoenix suburbs is where our hero lies, night after night, contemplating life; glad for new opportunities.

I see how it happens now.

You don't agree to it, you just slowly run out of other options. Its a surprise, like a Jack in a box; sometimes its funny, and sometimes its startling. Sometimes the handle is defective, like a pin on a grenade; you crank it and nothing comes out, but you keep turning it, possessed by horrible anticipation. Years can go by while you work even harder, making time go by faster, afraid you are going to miss something that you have already missed.

Something happens after the death of your childhood. I don't mean the transition to adulthood - I'm referring to the experience of looking back over your shoulder, down the mountain at the now-unreachable city that was your home for your entire life and realizing that you've got to figure a way to extract all of the emotion from that place and transport as much of it as you can to wherever you're going before the image of it completely falls out of your sight and you're left with a bunch of confusing new feelings that you have no emotional frame of reference for.

In our backyard in the 80s there was this huge old tire that someone had cut open and made into a decorative piece for the flowerbed. In a dream I had as a teenager I witnessed a rape occur in that tire from the kitchen window that looked down on it. That was shortly after I had my first brush with death.

In 1991 at Children's Hospital of Detroit a ten-year-old me lay bandaged from head to toe, jacked on morphine, unknowingly fighting textbook odds against a rare form of illness associated with complications like blindness and death. Slowly over the years after recovery, my skin went back to its normal color, my doctor visits stopped, and I forgot all about it. It was like burying a bomb; instead of exploding, it sprouted.

It grew into a destructive and terrifying thing nobody had a name for.

Exnolalovers Unite!

I always say the same thing about New Orleans, LA....

The thought usually comes somewhere along that endless bridge over the swampland just west of the city, "I don't know when I'm ever going to get back to this place." And then I immediately begin to miss it. Its been over ten years since I left that city and although it was the right thing to do I never quite got over it. Feelings linger in me, waiting for my ears to catch just a snippet of some popular song of that era as a cue to crescendo. (Train's Meet Virginia comes to mind). I would bet its probably like that for a lot of ex-NOLA-lovers.

We stumbled into Snake and Jake's one night. It was years ago already and I don't even remember how we got there. This was during my fearful antisocial years when I needed heavy alcohol to heavily socially lubricate myself. I couldnt recognize it as a bar in my drunkenness. It looked like somebody's burned out garage. In my state it must have looked something like the house of a cartoon witch - deep within a forest of old old oak trees. I flirted heavily with a girl from DC that I didn't find attractive at all and about the only thing I remember was our conversation.

"Dude. Don't move to DC. Ever. Don't do it."

In that cramped space under a number enough strands of christmas lights to violate at least three city codes we talked about how New Orleans was dirty, and how we loved it just for that. How living in New Orleans made you feel connected with people in a way that living in other places did not; Detroit and DC in particular. If you can swing it, New Orleans is a great place to live. I just couldn't swing it. Not when I was 18.

I wonder sometimes now what it would be like to live there at 30. The city is so tiny that you can't help but feel that its your own. Take a walk down any one of those crooked, deserted streets just after the sun goes down and listen for it; the sound of expectation, the anticipation of more noise. It could be any noise. The roll and pop of the streetcar. The bass of a car stereo system passing by. Voices singing. Hours may go by in between these events, but something else will come. Always. Find a seat in some off-the-beaten-path bar after midnight and the cast of characters in it will continue to rotate.

New Orleans is unstoppable. Age hasn't stopped it. Modernization hasn't stopped it. Not even hurricanes have stopped it. Even now the city bounces back with a vengeance. Newly swept and painted streets tell hundred-some-year-old stories from a new perspective. Even the newest blacktop gives way to cobblestone in spots. People still talk to you, even if you are a stranger. This unfaltering spirit is what gives the town such character; sought after like a fountain of youth. Reflecting on it now makes me want to go back. Soon, I hope.

Remembering/Forgetting two of the hardest years of my life

When I was 25 I was addicted.

To cigarettes, no. Alcohol - that was earlier. Hardcore drugs, not quite. When I was 25 I was addicted to Houston, Texas. I couldn't get enough.

Houston is a very large, very full city full of warm smiling people and 24 hour restaurants of every different sort. There's no zoning in the city proper so the streets are all crooked, cracked, and disproportional, kind of like some of the houses, and the people also. The residents of Houston, TX are unlike any you meet anywhere else. They look different, they act different, and some of them talk a little bit different. People are very interesting looking and beautiful; dark exotic combinations of Hispanic and Asian genes. And you also have your standard silver-haired Texecutives and Bottle Blondes with tits to Jupiter; all with varying degrees of southern twang, and all friendly. I loved every bit of it and I still do.

I don't get there as much anymore but I think probably the greatest memories I have from my 20s, which are going to end in a minute (an event for which I will not shed a single tear as I am probably the happiest person in the history of the universe to be turning 30; believe it), originated in Houston. The last time I drank until I puked was in Houston, TX (hopefully we will leave this memory fondly in place in Houston and not drag it to another city to be revisited any time soon). Alexa and I kicked ass at the pool table that night too. I sank 6 or 7 shots in a row and then fucked up by scratching on the 8 ball - not uncommon for me. The first time I played piano for a large audience and got PAID was there at Leon's lounge and it occurred on some out of tune baby grand with a collection of perfect strangers who threw money at me for playing pretty much the only songs I can well enough; Love Song and Wicked Game. I drank for free that night. And of course, my best memories are of the friends I met from going there time after time.

I couldn't make friends in my own city. The reason why used to be a mystery to me, one that I grieved over. It wasn't rocket science. Being young, and new to a strange place so different from the one where I grew up with its cacti and sand in lieu of green trees and gray skies, one where I didn't really know a single soul, still carrying a strong residue of my awkward teenage years provided an atmosphere that catered to retreat. I tried and tried to break out of my shell and just kept getting more exhausted. Something was wrong, and as grateful as I was (and still am) to have had the support of a few coworkers holding me up, this kind of support was not very well-received as it was received under some very false pretenses.

But thats done now. Its a new day. I'm reflecting because I managed to stir up a very strong memory tonight on one of my tragic melodramatic trips down memory lane. I happened to drive by the apartment complex where I used to live and so I swung in, parked the car and took a little walk. Most of the people I knew there are gone; thats how it goes with apartments. The doors and walls of all of the units had been painted these varying lush and somewhat red versions of terra cotta (these colors are popular here, who knows what they're called - blood in the sand, perhaps?) from their former color, which I don't even remember now.

It looked good. There was a candy machine and a coke machine next to the ancient pepsi machine out by the pool - which I never used until I moved out. I strolled past them on the path up to my old place - apartment 1023. I proceeded past it, as I'm obviously not going to go in and camp out in front of the couch drinking diet pepsi all night and playing guitar like I would have if I lived there, passing the apartment next to it, which seemed to no longer be inhabited by the nice elderly German lady who was my neighbor (she was in her 80s), and the apartment next to that (which no longer had the plants I had become so accustomed to seeing out on the front porch) toward the parking lot. I couldnt even remember which spot had been mine.

I've forgotten much of it already, but somehow I get this feeling that the apartment itself has not. I almost want to knock on the door and ask the newbies if they can feel my emotional stain still in place. I guess I didn't realize it at the time, but I was very unhappy within those 700 square feet of space. Maybe they ought to rub the place down with sage. As I came back down the walk though, heading toward my car, I did remember one thing. In early 2007, after returning from a refreshing week in Houston where we had celebrated a new friend's 24th birthday that has lived on in legend ever since, I strolled down that path with my suitcase behind me, popping and rolling over the squares of sidewalk, to find my lease renewal within the jaws of the clip on the wall just beside my door handle. I remember sitting in Alexa's car that morning in Houston, telling a friend how much I did not want to return to Phoenix and seeing the lease hanging by my door just cemented it into place.

Thankfully its a new day (with many new people ;) Thankfully my life is in a better place; one thats more comfortable. Someone I still respect a lot told me once that when it comes to jobs and cities and..well, everything, "You're going to move around until you're comfortable." Since then I've learned to be watchful of the things that make me uncomfortable. Its tricky business.

These things sometimes come in a form I do not expect.

Phoenix, Take 7

Its the sixth anniversary of my move to Phoenix.

6 whole years. Bring it on #7.

You Don't Have to Fuck These People or Raise Their Babies.

Its always like this

Me and a cup of tea. Dim lighting. The clock hour hand swung back around onto the single digit side. There's something refreshing about the night.

And something exhausting. When you work your life away; I enjoy it though. If I wasn't constantly preoccupied with something I would be a puddle of mess. My mind finds things to be preoccupied with; its who I am. I don't have a facebook, I just remain a ghost, lingering in the background of other peoples photos. You don't need to know who I am.

I liked it when it was my journal. Then it was my livejournal. Then it was myspace - which was cool because there were pictures and music. Facebook was the beginning of a new terrain I didn't want to cross into, especially with my job being where it was. DId you know that 1 out of 5 divorces are because of facebook. How many people are fired because of it? Thats the last thing I need is for one of my friends to write something absolutely ha-larious on my wall that my coworkers do not think is hilarious. Thats why I have 2 phones too. That, and I sell drugs, of course.

I just need to write. I need to sort this out and I have learned the hard way that I need to do it courteously and not involve other people that are not going to understand it in it. This is my deal. I had a long conversation with a coworker today, who is one hell of a resource, about the psychology of business. Business is all psychology. Its not evil that you have to become a different person for your job, its just reality, because your job is not - Reality that is.

Your job is not who you are. You don't have to fuck these people or raise their babies. You don't have to arrange their funerals even though sometimes you would like to ;) These are hard lessons to learn. Its a good thing I learned them fairly quick. This is also why celebrities are also always getting called out for being dipshits and douchebags; people really don't understand that they are real people forced to live their lives in front of a camera. Count me out.

And Hollywood.....has inspired a lot of great songs and movies. Like a good friend of mine said, "I loved it until I lived there." I'll keep my Lover City, Phoenix AZ, although San Diego is quite seductive even though there is never any place to park.

In a lot of ways I feel about my writing the way I feel about my job; I don't need to do it to be funny. I don't need to do it to be cool. I love it when I do manage to do these things and hope I hone the craft enough to one day put it on display. But I don't need a lot of people to see it. I don't need it to make people like me like I don't need to play the guitar to try to be sexy (even though it does feel good every once in awhile even if I only do it on weeknights in my bed in front of my cats and a portable DVD player with Penelope Cruz all over its ass trying to get me used to the way the Spanish language sounds when its spoken out loud)...

I just kind of need it to help me get back on track after my quarterlife quake.

One of my old friends is a successful entrepreneur.

One of my old friends is a biotech research manager.

One of my old friends is in a famous band.

I don't talk to any of them; I just stalk them online every now and again.

The enormous pride that I feel at knowing these incredible people is....well...its enormous.

I used to sit tight at moments of recollection like this, trying like hell to avoid the intense feeling that my life had somehow gone astray.

I don't feel like that anymore.

But every once in awhile...for a second...I feel like I was stuck for a few years of my life.

Its not a good feeling. It was so much worse when I was actually there and in denial of it.

Denial in a way is worse than the inability to realize your dream because its the inability to realize reality, and then, in a sense, its better, because in your own reality, you can create your own dream.

Yes this is what I spent nights awake thinking about..

I was so stupid.

Don't be stupid; surround yourself with people who have class. Intelligence.

Surround yourself with people who will tell you what they think, even if it might hurt a little.

Be true to yourself so that you can find the people who will like you for who you are, make way for the opportunities that will benefit you, and live the life that will suit you - one that you will enjoy.

Because it might not last long.

And if thats too negative for you than clap your hands, Tinkerbell.

Clap them until they bleed.

There are no kids in this house,

and there never will be. At least not while I'm in it.

Its not sad. More of a relief.

I used to tell myself I didn't like kids. But I do.

Then I used to say I couldn't be a dad. Maybe I could.

I don't really care about the dad part - its the lifestyle I'm not cut out for.

I like quiet too much (and expensive ties).

I don't want to drive my SUV to costco on Sundays...

Its just not me; I aim to travel the world.

A friend in the inner circle called and told me she was pregnant.

I was ecstatic.

I have more fun watching my friends have kids than almost anything.

Marriages...jobs....divorce... thats all just routine stuff

(Don't tell anyone but I do get excited about divorce).

I thought this stuff was all going to be so foreign when I was young but it seems like more of the same shit really...

I want the different shit.

On Being a Fraud

The night had that liquid velvet feeling.

Sadness really is a disease; recovery is slow, and little by little, you gain use of parts (of your mind) that stopped working.

I'm glad I was never 'one of the guys.'

Dudes talk about the absolute dumbest shit.

And fist bumps? Yea....I've expressed how I feel about that in text messages.

(Comic gold that will not be shared in an uncopyrighted arena such as blogger)

I don't have a facebook.

I never wanted one.

My mind is an ever-changing story.

When you miss 4 or 5 chapters, seriously, do yourself a favor and put the book down.

There will be no hard feelings about it. It just is what it is; The Past.

They say 1 in 5 divorces is brought on because of facebook.

Are they sure its just 1?

Like my neighbor at work said the other day, "its not even an accident waiting to happen - its already happened....you know what I mean?"

He always says "you know what I mean."

Its like the way I always say "Basically"

Creatures of habit we all are.

Your feelings might change, but your instinct is more stubborn.

Feelings and instinct are not the same thing.

When the two contradict eachother, its hard to figure out which needs to change.

My instincts were always pretty solid.

Feelings on the other hand....not so much, huh?

Convincing yourself and others around you that you are not who you are is tricky business.

If you get really good at it, you kind of become the new person.

Eventually, you will be confronted by the old person, and the old person may even win the confrontation and decide to take the control back.

If this happens, everyone that met you as the new person might is at a loss.

But you are at more of one, because you are the one who knows what a fraud you are.

Sleep, and other things I like...

Do you think famous people ever dream about being anonymous?

Working a job at a bank, maybe, or in a hospital overnight - so they can come home and watch movies and drink coffee all day?

Its not bad really.

Normal life is not bad.

Its sort of like that old saying, 'You don't have to have a lot of money to have style.'

I guess you don't have to have a lot of profile to live a large life.

I like music, but I think I like quiet even more; thats probably why I gravitated toward writing as a hobby. But I always wanted to be in a band.

Come to think of it, I don't really know why anymore; I don't envy my friends in bands.

Not really. (Maybe a little)

You always work with someone thats not as committed as you, spending time in bars - gravitating toward a late-night lifestyle, doing songs that probably at least half-bore-the-shit-out-of-you at least half of the time.

I just want to learn a few songs and take them to an open mic.

I used to give myself these guilt trips; I was like a walking guilt trip.

Regretting that I hadn't done this or that with my life, that I wasn't here or there by this age.

29 is still pretty young.

When your car goes into the ditch, I guess there's no point in focusing where you're not going - the focus should be on getting your car out of the fucking ditch.

My car was in the ditch for awhile....

Not being depressed is probably the single greatest thing I ever did for myself;

Picking a puddle of mess up off the floor and having enough clout to say,

"This is NOT how I'm about to roll for another decade."

If you stay in one room too long, not only will the carpet get vacuumed around you, the housekeepers will expect you to remain there as well.

Surround yourself by people who move you.

Become someone who moves.

If you find someone to get in your way, ask them to kindly step out of it, move around them, or lastly, move them.

Just be careful - they will resist.

I like my early mornings, the gym, and my little office where nobody ever bothers me...

even though I get lonely back there sometimes.

I like my house with my 2 cats (its technically their house)

And I like my summer trips to California, and Texas.

I love Santa Monica Pier, and I love my friends and my parents.

And life, even if it was a struggle to get this one,

Or maybe because it was a struggle to get this one.

I haven't written in a long time, or played any music.

I guess I was lucky; I was given an opportunity that was entirely different and it entirely changed my thinking.

Like that saying, 'Its the journey, not the destination.'

After two hallmark card sayings in one entry thats probably a good place to stop.

I also love my sleep. :) ZZzzz