Maybe there's less energy to go around in general as people age. I think it has more to do with developing an identity. Fandom is steadily fading year by year. It will never go away entirely. Football Sunday will still be football Sunday. The Steelers will always be fun to watch and their games against the Ravens will always be my favorite games to watch and if they make the playoffs I'll watch those games too. The Pirates are still the Pirates. When I stumble across a game on the radio or on television I'll listen in or sit down for an hour or two to take them in. The Penguins will still be the Penguins. Their games will still be a lot of fun to listen to on the radio, especially on the radio. Listening to hockey on the radio is one of those things that's actually more entertaining and exciting than watching it on television.
Fandom will not completely go away, but as I have more things to get done and have built a life in Pittsburgh I feel connected with the city without needing to feel like I have to embrace and demonstrate that connection through waving a sports flag. Sitting in front of a computer screen, waiting for a fantasy draft to start, I had a moment where I heard a voice in my head say "what the hell am I doing" and I closed the screen. No fantasy sports this year. It's extraneous. It's plastic. I realized I didn't want to spend weekdays keeping an eye on waiver wires and fretting about teams I don't care about at all. I follow the Steelers and that's good enough for me.
There's not much more to enjoy about your local teams besides watching them play once in a while and feeling a little civic pride when they win and a little let down if they lose. However, as you grow into a person with your own loves and affections for the place that you live, your civic pride comes less and less from what happens to your sports teams and more and more from what you do within and around your town and city.
Two years ago, a Steelers loss could make the entire rest of my week until the next game absolutely miserable. Three years ago, it was misery, screaming at the television and throwing things at the walls of my apartment. The following year was screaming misery and jubilation and throwing things. The following year, fandom faded to shouting at the television and occasionally jumping up and down. This year, I'll probably still shout at the t.v. from time to time, but other than that, it'll just be a fun diversion once a week for the Fall and Winter. I know some of the roster, but it's not encyclopedic knowledge the way it used to be. I don't know when they play the Ravens, but I'll find out and probably mark the games on my calendar.
I'll still buy the occasional Black and Gold trinket as years go by. I'll still go out of my way to hear about some sports news every day. I'm going to be a fan for life. As I get older, the fanatic in me fades away and I'm not unhappy to see it go.
/// Jimmy Pol - "Steelers Fight Song"
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
Showing posts with label pittsburgh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pittsburgh. Show all posts
10/23/15
The Best Thing
about Pittsburgh, after the shimmering emerald castles of summer fade, is the mass of gold and bronze and shining yellow and burned jade flags waving across the hilltops in autumn. I wish I could stop my truck in traffic, get out, stand in the bed and take panoramic photographs for you.
11/6/11
Cycling, Greyhounds, Inherited Vision and Home
Walking home from the Greyhound station downtown I was sincerely struck by the beauty of the river and my new home town. I haven't really felt homesick for a place as much as I feel homesick for Pittsburgh whenever I'm gone for a long time. It's not like I miss the people. I can count the number of people that I see and know on one hand that's gone through a meat grinder and lost two digits. I get homesick for the atmosphere. The lack of pomp and circumstance. Of course there's the college town part of Pittsburgh, but the part plays a lot bigger than it is. I don't miss that scene or the people that frequent it religiously all that much.
Sure it was great to play drinking games and have laughs and dress up on halloween and all that shit. Sure it was great to get anxious on Sunday when you know papers are due and oh so many tests next week and I haven't studied at all but you know you'll do well enough to get a decent grade, but you need something to worry about so you don't feel like a waste of life and loan money, or trust fund money, or whatever the fuck money has gotten you in there. I do miss the drinking games and the general camaraderie largely absent in life after age twenty two when people decide what they really want to do and the doing of that thing does not include meeting you every weekend to exchange war stories and play fighting and choruses of the songs you have in common and hitting on the birds. Everyone grows up eventually and it makes me sad, because my investment schedule definitely does not include the things people my age are supposed to value which puts me at direct odds with what those people want to do. Not by choice. Everyone inherits vision to some degree and I was fortunate or unfortunate enough to inherit a vision of the future that is not worlds apart, but different enough to make common ground a scratch and tumble affair at best. I don't know where to find the people that share my vision, because I spent all of my time with people who didn't share that vision, but shared temporary past times that I thought would last forever.
People aside I get homesick for the fabric of where it is that I am. The smell of it. The starry sky that just won't quit. The bridges and hills and the chopped sidewalks. The bad architecture and the good and the fact that the people there make it work and shut the fuck up about it. The low rent, maybe low brow, of it all. The fact that I don't have to make 20,000 dollars to live a life with amenities and enough security to know that I won't be ass out on the street living out of bus station rest rooms if I don't pull in 32,000 dollars a year, much less 18,000. I miss that I can go do just about anything I want a couple times a month if it's expensive and most everything else I can do at will when I'm there and working.
As I'm walking home and crossing the last bridge across the river to my town I can see the stars sitting in the water like giants blue white lilly pads looking for frogs and it's the calmest I've seen it in a while and, yeah, it made me misty. No neon lights, no car clogged Saturday night streets. Just hills rising on either side dotted with orange street lights and a few windows and an empty bridge. The moon on my shoulder, the river at my feet. It was beautiful. It is beautiful. I could walk out to that bridge every day and it would never get old. The only thing I wanted more was a joint, a cooler with a couple 40s, and a fishing rod to pass the time til sunrise. I love Pittsburgh. She makes me wicked homesick.
The only downside was the Greyhound ride from Philadelphia. I took the fools gold. I grabbed the open seat with a few open seats around it and sure enough a family sat around me. A couple of fat mothers and their snotty kid and baby and dazed and confused husband. Not a problem. I had headphones. So I thought. Immune to crying stinky children being changed in the aisle. The real problem was the extremely portly mother. Nothing against big girls, but if you can't sleep on a red eye without falling over on the person next to you and wedging your purse into my hip and lolling your arms against my ribs, I will have a problem with you.
The worst part wasn't that she baby talked to the baby for two hours. My problem wasn't that the baby kept smacking my arms and kicking my thighs while I tried to make myself as small as possible. My problem wasn't even that she refused to acknoledge that allowing her baby to run rough shod over a complete stranger was probably a bad idea, as I had to continuously repeat aloud "do not strangle them" to keep myself in my seat and facing away. Verbal reminders keep me in line. My problem was that she kept leaning herself on me with enough perfume to hide a skunk in her vagina and have the world none the wiser.
Honestly, I would rather people smelled like people. People stink. It's part of being human. Everybody has their odor. I can deal with it. Hell, I wrestled in highschool. Ever been in a practically air tight, pad walled, wrestling room for three sweaty, teen funked, hours with unwashed knee pads, shoes, singlets and sweats everywhere? Hell, ever been locked in a 90 degree house with elephantine parents spending entire days sweating into a couch with the windows locked tight and you on the top floor where all the heat and stench gathers regardless of what you do? People stink. I would rather smell your feet after a twenty mile run than stomach whatever essence of flower musk from some far off land synthesized in a lab and sprayed on rabbits. It was hard enough to breath. I had to get out on the rest stop and smoke just to get the odor out of my nostrils for ten minutes before diving back into the air freshened nightmare.
Eventually, between the run amok children, the lolling woman leaning me so hard into the wall I thought I would pop through the emergency window like a turd through a clenched bum hours away from a stall, and the perfume I took the passive aggressive route. I read a book. I was the only one on the bus reading. Got the book out and hit that light switch and within an hour the seat next to me was vacant. Had to pat myself on the back for that act of cunning. And then I put the arm rest down for good measure. I can sleep sitting stock still. Doesn't bother me. Luckily enough it bothered them enough to get every last one of them to piss off.
But anyway, wanted to mention cycling. I almost high sided the other day. A low side fall is alright. You take the shortest path from your seat to the ground. Not terrible usually. High siding is a different story. High siding is flipping over the top of your cycle. Not laying it down and going down with it, but hitting something or wrenching it in such a way that you come over the top and land. Hard.
I was coming down a nice winder. Nice tight sweeps in heavy traffic. It's usually not a problem, but I was coming to a tight sidewinder that I flirted with about a dozen times. I pushed it hard and it took it softer on rainy days, but I felt comfortable enough to give the old all or nothing pass. The pace setter. The pass that would define how I judged my future success or failure navigating it in coming months.
Of course there is a fucking minivan charging up my ass. I don't know what it is about drivers. It's like they feel they aren't driving as well as they can unless they can chase down a bicycle as though the bicycle is somehow superior in grip when in fact it is superior in dense traffic patterns and perhaps marginally more nimble, but on open roads all the advantages go to having more contact patches. And an engine. So I take the turn tight. Too tight. I have too much speed and my apex misses the ideal by several feet and I come wide toward the road's shoulder and I can see the early morning gravel from rain wash the night before not yet cleared by a day of traffic and I am coming straight for it with a big white van charging in behind me expecting me to hold the line.
The gravel and sand are two wheels mortal enemy next to ice which usually equals instant low sides, but I see it coming so I'm sliding and correcting and sliding and correcting trying to slow down enough without taking too much of my tires capacity to steer and grip by over braking and as I basically fish tail the curb is coming up and I feel that sick few seconds when you know someone is about to blind side check you straight into the hockey arena boards. As I'm trail braking and correcting I can see my wheels jamming the curb and me flipping into the fence in what would have been the worst accident I've had to date, but I pull it together and recover about six inches out and get up off my saddle and chug with everything I'm worth to keep the van from pasting me.
It sucked. I damn near shat myself with the effort and nerve racking tension. Why do I mention it? In short, certain turns don't care what you're driving or riding. I'm pretty sure part of the reason the van didn't cream me was because she had to slow down to take the bend too and I didn't think about that. The sharpness of it. Had I been riding or driving anything I'm pretty sure the fastest that hairpin could have been taken was probably ten or fifteen miles an hour without aero package grade downforce keeping you glued. And I need to keep that in mind when I'm riding too. I know I can't out maneuver most cars on open sweepers and pins, but I also need to remind myself not to push too hard, because when the turns get tight enough, they can't out maneuver me either. And I guess that's part of the human experience too. When things get tight enough the only thing that matters is how much downforce you can generate, not what drives you.
///Junkie XL - "War" on the road of life there are drivers and there are the driven
Sure it was great to play drinking games and have laughs and dress up on halloween and all that shit. Sure it was great to get anxious on Sunday when you know papers are due and oh so many tests next week and I haven't studied at all but you know you'll do well enough to get a decent grade, but you need something to worry about so you don't feel like a waste of life and loan money, or trust fund money, or whatever the fuck money has gotten you in there. I do miss the drinking games and the general camaraderie largely absent in life after age twenty two when people decide what they really want to do and the doing of that thing does not include meeting you every weekend to exchange war stories and play fighting and choruses of the songs you have in common and hitting on the birds. Everyone grows up eventually and it makes me sad, because my investment schedule definitely does not include the things people my age are supposed to value which puts me at direct odds with what those people want to do. Not by choice. Everyone inherits vision to some degree and I was fortunate or unfortunate enough to inherit a vision of the future that is not worlds apart, but different enough to make common ground a scratch and tumble affair at best. I don't know where to find the people that share my vision, because I spent all of my time with people who didn't share that vision, but shared temporary past times that I thought would last forever.
People aside I get homesick for the fabric of where it is that I am. The smell of it. The starry sky that just won't quit. The bridges and hills and the chopped sidewalks. The bad architecture and the good and the fact that the people there make it work and shut the fuck up about it. The low rent, maybe low brow, of it all. The fact that I don't have to make 20,000 dollars to live a life with amenities and enough security to know that I won't be ass out on the street living out of bus station rest rooms if I don't pull in 32,000 dollars a year, much less 18,000. I miss that I can go do just about anything I want a couple times a month if it's expensive and most everything else I can do at will when I'm there and working.
As I'm walking home and crossing the last bridge across the river to my town I can see the stars sitting in the water like giants blue white lilly pads looking for frogs and it's the calmest I've seen it in a while and, yeah, it made me misty. No neon lights, no car clogged Saturday night streets. Just hills rising on either side dotted with orange street lights and a few windows and an empty bridge. The moon on my shoulder, the river at my feet. It was beautiful. It is beautiful. I could walk out to that bridge every day and it would never get old. The only thing I wanted more was a joint, a cooler with a couple 40s, and a fishing rod to pass the time til sunrise. I love Pittsburgh. She makes me wicked homesick.
The only downside was the Greyhound ride from Philadelphia. I took the fools gold. I grabbed the open seat with a few open seats around it and sure enough a family sat around me. A couple of fat mothers and their snotty kid and baby and dazed and confused husband. Not a problem. I had headphones. So I thought. Immune to crying stinky children being changed in the aisle. The real problem was the extremely portly mother. Nothing against big girls, but if you can't sleep on a red eye without falling over on the person next to you and wedging your purse into my hip and lolling your arms against my ribs, I will have a problem with you.
The worst part wasn't that she baby talked to the baby for two hours. My problem wasn't that the baby kept smacking my arms and kicking my thighs while I tried to make myself as small as possible. My problem wasn't even that she refused to acknoledge that allowing her baby to run rough shod over a complete stranger was probably a bad idea, as I had to continuously repeat aloud "do not strangle them" to keep myself in my seat and facing away. Verbal reminders keep me in line. My problem was that she kept leaning herself on me with enough perfume to hide a skunk in her vagina and have the world none the wiser.
Honestly, I would rather people smelled like people. People stink. It's part of being human. Everybody has their odor. I can deal with it. Hell, I wrestled in highschool. Ever been in a practically air tight, pad walled, wrestling room for three sweaty, teen funked, hours with unwashed knee pads, shoes, singlets and sweats everywhere? Hell, ever been locked in a 90 degree house with elephantine parents spending entire days sweating into a couch with the windows locked tight and you on the top floor where all the heat and stench gathers regardless of what you do? People stink. I would rather smell your feet after a twenty mile run than stomach whatever essence of flower musk from some far off land synthesized in a lab and sprayed on rabbits. It was hard enough to breath. I had to get out on the rest stop and smoke just to get the odor out of my nostrils for ten minutes before diving back into the air freshened nightmare.
Eventually, between the run amok children, the lolling woman leaning me so hard into the wall I thought I would pop through the emergency window like a turd through a clenched bum hours away from a stall, and the perfume I took the passive aggressive route. I read a book. I was the only one on the bus reading. Got the book out and hit that light switch and within an hour the seat next to me was vacant. Had to pat myself on the back for that act of cunning. And then I put the arm rest down for good measure. I can sleep sitting stock still. Doesn't bother me. Luckily enough it bothered them enough to get every last one of them to piss off.
But anyway, wanted to mention cycling. I almost high sided the other day. A low side fall is alright. You take the shortest path from your seat to the ground. Not terrible usually. High siding is a different story. High siding is flipping over the top of your cycle. Not laying it down and going down with it, but hitting something or wrenching it in such a way that you come over the top and land. Hard.
I was coming down a nice winder. Nice tight sweeps in heavy traffic. It's usually not a problem, but I was coming to a tight sidewinder that I flirted with about a dozen times. I pushed it hard and it took it softer on rainy days, but I felt comfortable enough to give the old all or nothing pass. The pace setter. The pass that would define how I judged my future success or failure navigating it in coming months.
Of course there is a fucking minivan charging up my ass. I don't know what it is about drivers. It's like they feel they aren't driving as well as they can unless they can chase down a bicycle as though the bicycle is somehow superior in grip when in fact it is superior in dense traffic patterns and perhaps marginally more nimble, but on open roads all the advantages go to having more contact patches. And an engine. So I take the turn tight. Too tight. I have too much speed and my apex misses the ideal by several feet and I come wide toward the road's shoulder and I can see the early morning gravel from rain wash the night before not yet cleared by a day of traffic and I am coming straight for it with a big white van charging in behind me expecting me to hold the line.
The gravel and sand are two wheels mortal enemy next to ice which usually equals instant low sides, but I see it coming so I'm sliding and correcting and sliding and correcting trying to slow down enough without taking too much of my tires capacity to steer and grip by over braking and as I basically fish tail the curb is coming up and I feel that sick few seconds when you know someone is about to blind side check you straight into the hockey arena boards. As I'm trail braking and correcting I can see my wheels jamming the curb and me flipping into the fence in what would have been the worst accident I've had to date, but I pull it together and recover about six inches out and get up off my saddle and chug with everything I'm worth to keep the van from pasting me.
It sucked. I damn near shat myself with the effort and nerve racking tension. Why do I mention it? In short, certain turns don't care what you're driving or riding. I'm pretty sure part of the reason the van didn't cream me was because she had to slow down to take the bend too and I didn't think about that. The sharpness of it. Had I been riding or driving anything I'm pretty sure the fastest that hairpin could have been taken was probably ten or fifteen miles an hour without aero package grade downforce keeping you glued. And I need to keep that in mind when I'm riding too. I know I can't out maneuver most cars on open sweepers and pins, but I also need to remind myself not to push too hard, because when the turns get tight enough, they can't out maneuver me either. And I guess that's part of the human experience too. When things get tight enough the only thing that matters is how much downforce you can generate, not what drives you.
///Junkie XL - "War" on the road of life there are drivers and there are the driven
7/27/11
dear (______):
Dear new life in Pittsburgh,
you've given me the short end of the stick. But you know what? I'm okay with that. There's no other place I'd rather be and no other set of human beings I'd rather be around to struggle with.
Yours lovingly,
a bat shit crazy human being
you've given me the short end of the stick. But you know what? I'm okay with that. There's no other place I'd rather be and no other set of human beings I'd rather be around to struggle with.
Yours lovingly,
a bat shit crazy human being
4/2/11
Counting Down Seconds
Counting down the seconds until I have to go outside again. It helps when it's dark out. It feels like there are two inch diameter screws pushing into the space behind my ears and doing their best to touch in the middle.
The wind blows up through the corner of my building where all the boiler rooms and utility closets align. I'm pretty sure I could climb down through the entire building to the basement through there. I'm pretty sure whatever's in the basement can climb up if it wanted to. I try not to think about that space. Sometimes I come home and that door is open. The lock on it is broken. Or maybe it never worked. I stuff socks in the door jamb to keep it shut, but socks don't have magical powers and it doesn't stay shut. I'm thinking about nailing it up.
Yesterday I was working so hard I started drooling and I didn't realize it until I felt the little tug on your shirt that tells you your taco just let a glob of skin temperature oil loose on the middle of your chest. I took it down a notch. The work is hard, but not hard enough. I like it when it's demanding. It helps me forget who I am. I'm no longer me. I'm levers and pulleys and little motors and wires and for loops and if then switches and I love that. Part of me wants that to be all. To rip away from the rest in a maniac's pursuit of perfectly synchronized movement. I'm clumsy. But when I've memorized all the actions it feels so good to make the calls to the functions and then revise them knowing they can't become worse.
I'm thinking about teaching myself to be a butcher, since I didn't get the post. It would be a fun pastime. By the time I can afford to buy the animals I'll be able to afford a freezer to put the parts in and have a nice place for all the tools too. Then I can extend the work from my job through the anxiety of my home and feel that relaxedness roll through me again. But that's a little ways off. It'll be fun.
I had this dream that I went forward in time to the same burned out bakery next to the house I want to buy. The house with the door boarded up in the front and all the doors and balconies open in the back where there was a fire that started at the furnace exhaust and worked it's way forward across the roof and slashed through the face of the third floor like a stroke of side armed bull whip. The place wasn't lived in. Or at least, when I looked in the one open window at ground level I didn't see any blankets in there. The day was already getting on by the time I came to and walked next door so I decided to head East toward the blight and see if I bought any property down that way since I didn't end up taking the home in the shadow of the bakery after all. It was a long walk and things were turning the blue gray of a rainy evening going dark for coming overcast more than precession. I came to the fields of weeds and tumble bricks and lost shopping bags and knit hats from past years turned into multicolored sidewalk band aids glued to the ground by leaves and dog pee and I started stopping at each building standing singular and appearing unoccupied, but none of them were mine. It took me an entire season to move as far ahead as I did and the trees were shedding and blowing across the ground and I was watching them go when my eye took on charcoal writing on the wide boards of a porch with empty windows. There was writing everywhere and it cut and curled like the shadows of crossing tree limbs if the sun were striking at first daylight. I didn't know whose house it was, but I had to know who would trace the veins of a building like that so I walking across another field where a home was knocked down into it's basement and covered over with dirt and crossed a street empty of cars and kicked an empty milk carton on my way up the stairs. There was thick black writing everywhere and on every single step and some dead vines that tried to impress, but were cut at the roots and left to rot. I went inside through the window into the dimness and walked through a living room that sagged in the middle where rain must have collected year in and year out. Walking along the walls to avoid the softest parts of the floor I found a sleeping bag with me inside and I took off my gloves to maintain a slip free grip and I started strangling myself until I felt my larynx collapse like a matchbox and I knelt there squeezing as hard as I could waiting for my eyes to open, but they never did. I left. I went back to the bakery beneath a starless sky and I didn't lay down to go back to my own time until the rain threatened earlier started to fall and I felt peaceful. I slept so good. And then I woke up.
The whole thing made me wonder how many unsolved murders are suicides. It's probably in horrible taste. I'm sure someone somewhere is probably being brutally raped and murdered by someone else who will never be caught. Maybe I'm already on some course for that to happen to me in my bids to connect with people I don't know. But how many people are killed by their time traveling suicidal selves. I don't want to meet myself. Not yet anyway, but I'm counting down the seconds until I have to go outside. I need some time to work on things. I hope I get some time off soon, even though I don't want it. My head hurts.
///Groove Armada - "At The River" Let's dance a little. Please? Don't make me dance by myself again.
The wind blows up through the corner of my building where all the boiler rooms and utility closets align. I'm pretty sure I could climb down through the entire building to the basement through there. I'm pretty sure whatever's in the basement can climb up if it wanted to. I try not to think about that space. Sometimes I come home and that door is open. The lock on it is broken. Or maybe it never worked. I stuff socks in the door jamb to keep it shut, but socks don't have magical powers and it doesn't stay shut. I'm thinking about nailing it up.
Yesterday I was working so hard I started drooling and I didn't realize it until I felt the little tug on your shirt that tells you your taco just let a glob of skin temperature oil loose on the middle of your chest. I took it down a notch. The work is hard, but not hard enough. I like it when it's demanding. It helps me forget who I am. I'm no longer me. I'm levers and pulleys and little motors and wires and for loops and if then switches and I love that. Part of me wants that to be all. To rip away from the rest in a maniac's pursuit of perfectly synchronized movement. I'm clumsy. But when I've memorized all the actions it feels so good to make the calls to the functions and then revise them knowing they can't become worse.
I'm thinking about teaching myself to be a butcher, since I didn't get the post. It would be a fun pastime. By the time I can afford to buy the animals I'll be able to afford a freezer to put the parts in and have a nice place for all the tools too. Then I can extend the work from my job through the anxiety of my home and feel that relaxedness roll through me again. But that's a little ways off. It'll be fun.
I had this dream that I went forward in time to the same burned out bakery next to the house I want to buy. The house with the door boarded up in the front and all the doors and balconies open in the back where there was a fire that started at the furnace exhaust and worked it's way forward across the roof and slashed through the face of the third floor like a stroke of side armed bull whip. The place wasn't lived in. Or at least, when I looked in the one open window at ground level I didn't see any blankets in there. The day was already getting on by the time I came to and walked next door so I decided to head East toward the blight and see if I bought any property down that way since I didn't end up taking the home in the shadow of the bakery after all. It was a long walk and things were turning the blue gray of a rainy evening going dark for coming overcast more than precession. I came to the fields of weeds and tumble bricks and lost shopping bags and knit hats from past years turned into multicolored sidewalk band aids glued to the ground by leaves and dog pee and I started stopping at each building standing singular and appearing unoccupied, but none of them were mine. It took me an entire season to move as far ahead as I did and the trees were shedding and blowing across the ground and I was watching them go when my eye took on charcoal writing on the wide boards of a porch with empty windows. There was writing everywhere and it cut and curled like the shadows of crossing tree limbs if the sun were striking at first daylight. I didn't know whose house it was, but I had to know who would trace the veins of a building like that so I walking across another field where a home was knocked down into it's basement and covered over with dirt and crossed a street empty of cars and kicked an empty milk carton on my way up the stairs. There was thick black writing everywhere and on every single step and some dead vines that tried to impress, but were cut at the roots and left to rot. I went inside through the window into the dimness and walked through a living room that sagged in the middle where rain must have collected year in and year out. Walking along the walls to avoid the softest parts of the floor I found a sleeping bag with me inside and I took off my gloves to maintain a slip free grip and I started strangling myself until I felt my larynx collapse like a matchbox and I knelt there squeezing as hard as I could waiting for my eyes to open, but they never did. I left. I went back to the bakery beneath a starless sky and I didn't lay down to go back to my own time until the rain threatened earlier started to fall and I felt peaceful. I slept so good. And then I woke up.
The whole thing made me wonder how many unsolved murders are suicides. It's probably in horrible taste. I'm sure someone somewhere is probably being brutally raped and murdered by someone else who will never be caught. Maybe I'm already on some course for that to happen to me in my bids to connect with people I don't know. But how many people are killed by their time traveling suicidal selves. I don't want to meet myself. Not yet anyway, but I'm counting down the seconds until I have to go outside. I need some time to work on things. I hope I get some time off soon, even though I don't want it. My head hurts.
///Groove Armada - "At The River" Let's dance a little. Please? Don't make me dance by myself again.
3/19/11
Yikes. Oh Wait, Everything's Still Fine
Well, the hit parade came to a punch drunk halt. And my relationship with my job has also been resolved. It's fallen back into just another place I go and do stuff and wait to come back here and live again. Which is nice. Disappointing, but nice. It was a great honeymoon Both things coincided. It did, however (I'm littering balled up conjunctions), let me see what is possibly the only upside of sending and spending people to University study: it puts them in direct contact with similar people. Even if not similar, people possessing the capacity to understand human complexity, or maybe just ... ah whatever. Universities are full of people who do not have that capacity, but if you need that and have the money, it's where you'll have your best shot of connecting with the world and a purpose and those kinds of people. Which is neat.
I thought the internal interview went awesome, but what I realize now is that not answering the questions with made up situations no more complex than See Spot Run with Little House on the Prairie moral endings means the HR woman, who more than once asked the same question, was not understanding what I was trying to say. I should have picked up on it when she said "I don't understand how the conflict was resolved with the coworker," after I explained that through introspection I understood that my disagreement wasn't between the coworker and I as workers, but between my ethics and her practices and as such only needed an attitude adjustment on my part because, according to the union agreement and policy book, she wasn't technically doing anything wrong by not staying later than her shift regardless of the amount of work still left to be completed.
I've got to learn how to lie on these things. Or learn how to get into situations specifically to create simple answers to questions like "talk about a time you had a disagreement with a co-worker". Possibly both. I think the next time I'm at work I'll just throw cans at the manager and then we can talk about why I disagreed with his right to life and then we'll resolve the conflict by... no that's too complex. I can't even orchestrate the dumb two dimensional conflicts I'm supposed to be getting into. At any rate, it's nice to know this position has gone as far as it will so I can relax and poke around for something that pays a little better and let's me use my brain parts as much as my hands, and what's even nicer is that it's not as ridiculously urgent as when I had to punch out of New York or die.
Waking up today has been alright though. Took a personal day. I can get away with three of them every 90 days without getting written up and having a little sad is as good a reason as any. Also duct taping a butcher knife to your back, going to work, and stabbing the shit out of everyone and then beating them to death with a 15 pound chain and lock while they bleed out is probably a good reason to stay home and have some self reflection too. All of us talked about it and the consensus is that it's their loss, some of me more angrily than other parts. It was kind of funny hearing the collective gasp in my head and the one that said "see told ya" when I opened the email with the bad news. It probably also didn't help my chances that the Ass Mngr butt into the room I was interviewing in over the phone and spent several minutes loud talking at me how he was upset with me for having an interview instead of finishing my shift and banging around the office for several minutes before leaving in a huff. So I'm glad. Yesterday was way too good for too many reasons and I'm still feeling high and it's a thin world out there, but I'm okay with that. I'll find the depth I want eventually. In the meantime I'm gonna lace up and keep loving this Pittsburgh weather.
///David Bowie - "Space Oddity" "...here am I sitting in my tin can far above the Moon / Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do..."
I thought the internal interview went awesome, but what I realize now is that not answering the questions with made up situations no more complex than See Spot Run with Little House on the Prairie moral endings means the HR woman, who more than once asked the same question, was not understanding what I was trying to say. I should have picked up on it when she said "I don't understand how the conflict was resolved with the coworker," after I explained that through introspection I understood that my disagreement wasn't between the coworker and I as workers, but between my ethics and her practices and as such only needed an attitude adjustment on my part because, according to the union agreement and policy book, she wasn't technically doing anything wrong by not staying later than her shift regardless of the amount of work still left to be completed.
I've got to learn how to lie on these things. Or learn how to get into situations specifically to create simple answers to questions like "talk about a time you had a disagreement with a co-worker". Possibly both. I think the next time I'm at work I'll just throw cans at the manager and then we can talk about why I disagreed with his right to life and then we'll resolve the conflict by... no that's too complex. I can't even orchestrate the dumb two dimensional conflicts I'm supposed to be getting into. At any rate, it's nice to know this position has gone as far as it will so I can relax and poke around for something that pays a little better and let's me use my brain parts as much as my hands, and what's even nicer is that it's not as ridiculously urgent as when I had to punch out of New York or die.
Waking up today has been alright though. Took a personal day. I can get away with three of them every 90 days without getting written up and having a little sad is as good a reason as any. Also duct taping a butcher knife to your back, going to work, and stabbing the shit out of everyone and then beating them to death with a 15 pound chain and lock while they bleed out is probably a good reason to stay home and have some self reflection too. All of us talked about it and the consensus is that it's their loss, some of me more angrily than other parts. It was kind of funny hearing the collective gasp in my head and the one that said "see told ya" when I opened the email with the bad news. It probably also didn't help my chances that the Ass Mngr butt into the room I was interviewing in over the phone and spent several minutes loud talking at me how he was upset with me for having an interview instead of finishing my shift and banging around the office for several minutes before leaving in a huff. So I'm glad. Yesterday was way too good for too many reasons and I'm still feeling high and it's a thin world out there, but I'm okay with that. I'll find the depth I want eventually. In the meantime I'm gonna lace up and keep loving this Pittsburgh weather.
///David Bowie - "Space Oddity" "...here am I sitting in my tin can far above the Moon / Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do..."
2/17/11
dear (______):
Dear Pittsburgh,
I can feel again. Thanks so much. I almost walked into traffic today watching stars on my way home from work while the sun started to come up over the hills just east of Wilkinsburg. The clouds hanging just above the window dotted hills were like thick palette knife stroked oil scarves while the sky began its slow shift from black to spilled ink blue to this tarred aquamarine behind and above them. New York is flat soda in a dixie cup. You're champagne in a green stainless thermos.
I can feel again. Thanks so much. I almost walked into traffic today watching stars on my way home from work while the sun started to come up over the hills just east of Wilkinsburg. The clouds hanging just above the window dotted hills were like thick palette knife stroked oil scarves while the sky began its slow shift from black to spilled ink blue to this tarred aquamarine behind and above them. New York is flat soda in a dixie cup. You're champagne in a green stainless thermos.
2/10/11
dear (______):
Dear Pittsburgh Steelers,
It was a good year. Seriously. The entire season was handicapped like no other team in the league except maybe the Packers in one of the most difficult divisions to win except maybe the AFC East and we still kicked ass. And at least you showed us that Dixon can play. Please please please address the gaping hole behind Troy Polamalu at safety with a decent mid-round draft pick. Sweet cracklin' Jesus on a barbecue spit, I would like to not shit a brick every time he almost stubs his toe.
xoxo,
fan for life
p.s. I'm still mad at you.
It was a good year. Seriously. The entire season was handicapped like no other team in the league except maybe the Packers in one of the most difficult divisions to win except maybe the AFC East and we still kicked ass. And at least you showed us that Dixon can play. Please please please address the gaping hole behind Troy Polamalu at safety with a decent mid-round draft pick. Sweet cracklin' Jesus on a barbecue spit, I would like to not shit a brick every time he almost stubs his toe.
xoxo,
fan for life
p.s. I'm still mad at you.
3/22/10
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