How demented am I? Well…

If anyone is really following this blog then they know I have a pretty active mind. It either pours like the cute bartender on .25 cent beers at your local college pub, or is somewhere on Mars wondering how it got there, as I’m left absent-minded on Earth.

Over the years I’ve had some pretty good rants, fantasies, thoughts of chance and even some pretty good plots probably taken abstractly from my childhood watching The Young and the Restless, or other cliche’ shows over the years, however, I find this special exert of my life to be one of the most extraordinary.

As it has been said before, my friend from the weber-nets and I are in constant chat, at least six hours a day are spent discussing everything from women to the proper entrance to a performance review meeting at your place of work, and how spiking a desk lamp will immediately grab their attention of how psyched you are to be there today.

But for reasons of some ass-jerk who couldn’t write code to save the human race or a tape worm who’s telling him exactly what to write, this friend has been absent to my chats lately. So, before I packed up my things to end my day, I transcribed a short tale, which can be seen here:

//

Frog: do you want to say anything to me, or should I just expect you home late again? I’ll be sitting in the dark, at the table, with a cold dinner that I prepared for you next to the burnt out candles in my tuxedo….

glaring

glaring in the dark

watching the knob of the front door

aching to hear the familiar scratch of the metal key bump its pins to unlock the pathway to my broken heart.

Friend: lol.

aw.

LOL

unlock the pathway to my broken heart…

you’re too good at that

Frog: I’ll shed that single tear when you have the half look of surprise and disappointment in yourself. You didn’t realize what this was, or what your life was doing to mine, but when I turn away slowly and proceed to the bags neatly packed by the broom closet, you won’t have the heart to say a word, just hold your head in your hands, and wonder where it all went wrong.

Friend: you could write dashboard confessional songs

Frog: the pain will be too unbearable to know i finally went through with my ultimate plan, sure, now you know, I wasn’t really kidding, but when we would end the fight in tears of joy from ribbing each other on the small things you pushed my threats into just gestures of grandure.

now you’ll know, you’ll know it was all real

and everything you have taken for granted has decided to move on.

was it all worth it? //

All of that, from nowhere.

Yes I’ve done drugs, and yes I’ve drank, but the best of me comes out in my own sobriety. In fact, I think the reason subdue myself to the naughty nature of substance is in fear of what I could really be possible of accomplishing with my mind.

The most brilliant minds walk that thin line of insanity and brilliance. I think it’s the substance that ends them or creates their best moments occurs right when either the absence or the fulfillment of one or the other makes them lean far enough over that line that they will eventually fall into one area.

The question is, which side is better?

I don’t know if that will ever be answered, but until then, I’ll continue to walk the line.

Banks

The financial system is fucked.

From the government bail outs to your local run of the mill bank. Everyone is out to take your money and they don’t care how they do it.

I had called US Bank twice to get my automatic payments in order and they couldn’t even remember to correctly get my eff’n new address and information right!

What the hell.

The way I see it, mattress stuffing money would be better than trusting these ‘banks’ to watch our funds.

Oh, US Bank has a great racket going. They take automatic payments from the wrong account, over draft the account, charge you $35 for over drafting, THEN, THEN… $8 a day on top of that until you pay your way out of the deficit they put you in. Nice.

Here’s my word to all of you out there with major bank accounts in these tough economic times, read the news.

No, not Fox, or MSNBC, but BBC America. Or just the BBC. They tell it the way it is without bias and will keep you informed which institution is going to eff ya in the A or going to help you get back on your feet.

These days I don’t know many people who can just loose $8 a day because of some error on their part.

Watch your finances like they were your children, because these vultures are hovering from the moment they shake your hand and say “welcome to X bank” . They don’t care about you, they care about their ends, and which means they’ll do what they can to stick it in your end.

Changes

Its been a while. A long while.

This isn’t the first for me… You just get droughts or maybe sometimes life gets to heavy to even to talk about, or so heavy that you don’t know what to talk about, so instead you pick up a bottle, a needle, a joint… whatever gets you off this plane and into another frame of mind.

I picked up the bottle. It wasn’t a mistake, it was the signal that I had to leave.

As I watched myself drowning in a the last drink of a glass I couldn’t face myself without a wince of pain. What happened to me…

A little less than a month from the end of my first twenty five, here I was, an engineer, hucking hot dogs and greens fees for his sister, who was so amazing to me that I… I can’t tell you how proud of her I am. She’s been through a lot too, and she’s far from a dummy. But she had problems too, big problems. Now here I am, after a summer of working weekends for her for extra cash and my parents begging me to just come home and lick my wounds after being unemployed for over five months, that I say ‘Only if my sis gives me more hours…’ She couldn’t afford it, the course couldn’t, she knew it, but because she has (and I can only imagine it only growing bigger) an enormous heart and knew I needed a break. She gave me the hours at the cost of her payroll and because of that, I went home.

I wasn’t happy.

But now as I look back I still am grateful of what she gave me, she gave me the last insight that I needed to take charge.

Getting drunk cause I could, cause I would, cause, fuck. What the hell am I going to do?

It got worse. Much worse.

I couldn’t function without having a few drinks before work. I needed it. I needed to light up the show. Otherwise I’d be a drone of absence. I’d be ten feet from you, but three thousand miles away, wondering where it all went wrong.

Where did it go wrong? Was it me? Was it the economy? The Government?

Its easy to put blame on anything else but even harder to take matters in your own hands.

Sure, it was great to get that check for unemployment every week. More money than I needed,  but not what I needed.

I wanted to work. I don’t want to get my money. I want to earn my money.

Only problems is that in our economy the jobs that I could get were falling $100-$150 less a week at a forty hour week job than what I was getting for sitting on my ass, watching GSN (Game Show Network).

Yeah, I had fun. I had great friends. They took me in, I cleaned their house, they let me live for free, and trust me, they really appreciated someone as neat as me… They had dust bunnies larger than the actual bunnies they kept as pets.

I had already been rafting twice that year and the last time I went my friend told me he might have a job for me, nothing much, but its a foot in.

As I’m looking at the bottom of this glass, wishing the last of the late Sunday hackers would just leave so I could close, grab a six pack and walk down the hill to my folk’s home where a buffet of food would be waiting for me and the usual Sunday cartoons with my dad would conspire (if he was awake, and I always wish he would be… we never connected, but the older I get… the more he lets me into his life, I realize, we’re not that different).

I know the answer.

I can’t do this anymore. All I’ve gained in these passing months other than pity are 20lbs.

I called my friend, I got the interview and I got the job. Sure, its four states away from my home. Sure, I’m throwing my hat into the wind, a part-time job that I’m still over qualified for, but will keep my brain active and not complacent withe beverage in my hand. I get the job.

I pack whatever I can into my car and say ‘Goodbye’.

Never what happened next could I have imagined, praise.

“Go” they say, with hope in their eyes.

They, the ones that love me, give me well wishes as I depart for the farthest distance ever from everything and everyone I called home.

To a shot in the dark.

To a generosity from one of the best people I have ever met and has ever been a friend to me.

I had lost a lot in the last six months. My job. My home. My kids (ferrets). My sobriety… but I haven’t lost my friends and family. At when I was right at the brink, I got the push I needed to end this chapter.

To end the First Twenty Five.

Then I turned twenty six…

I wonder whats next.

Who Will Live for Us?

Who will live for us?

Our parents? Our friends? Our wives? Our… lovers?

What keeps you where you are? A job? A house? A cat? A mortgage?

We are the masters of our own destiny. Or.. are we?

I’ve talked often about the feelings of control. Is our past the architect of the blue prints of our future? Are our thoughts and feelings nothing more than the creation of our past experiences?

Do you hate your life?

Do you want something more?

Do you have the power to control it?

Yes.

Yes and yes and YES AGAIN.

Maybe we have our feelings to guide us, but only we control our own bodies to MOVE us.

Put yourself in the place you are now, but then again, I guess you are already there.

Are you… Happy?

Are you… Content?

Is all that is there in this world? To be happy? To be content?

Do you want to settle? Do you want everything to just be ‘Okay’ ?

Will you reach forward for a dream, a hope, a long shot and smirk if it fails and remark ‘at least I tried’ ?

I’ll try. No. I’ll do.

Failing is another form of learning. Hopefully we learn the hardest failures from others and won’t repeat their mistakes, their torn up blue prints. Their.. misfortunes.

But will we look to their victories? Will we seize their triumphs? Will we see another who was with out a chance that reached the stars and think ‘I can do that’ ?

Another day, another way, another chance to be what you want to be.

Hate your job? Quit.

Hate your house? Sell it.

Hate where you are right now as you read this? … go pee and come back, finish my rant.

THEN MOVE!

Take a walk! Go for a run! Pick up your effin’ trailer and just drive till you’re tired!

I can’t tell you how to live. Your parents showed you a life that they lived. Only you can make the story that you will call your life.

Will you look back and say ‘Boy… I wish I would have…’

Or say what I want to say as I welt away.. ‘I remember when…’ and before I tell the story,I’ll smirk… the smirk of a boy who stole a cookie from the cookie jar… cause that’s what I’m doing… I’m stealing from life’s cookie jar.

Building A Love

So many of us fall into the stereotype of the order of life: Go to school, go to college, get a girl/boyfriend, graduate, get a job, get married, have a family…

Some don’t do it in that exact order. I’ve known people that get married before they graduate, but most are immediately after they graduate.

Why do they want to get married so young, with so much debt? Not all will graduate with thousands and thousands of dollars of debt but most will.

Are they so in love that they can not be away from each other and a ring is the only way to stay connected? Will looking at that band bring back the feelings of how they feel about each other even when they’re away? Is it because they can’t live with out each other that makes them want to have a formal commitment to another? Do the words “I do” mean the same thing as “I won’t leave you” ?

A man I once worked with said that he was a bonified bachelor. There was no woman who could tame him. He was rough to the bone and ate nails for breakfast… until he met his wife. He told me that when he saw her, he knew that she was the one. I joked by saying “Finally found someone you could live with, huh?” and he slyly smiled with his retort

“You can live with just about anyone… but its about finding the person you can’t live without.”

Words to live by.

But here and now at this young age people get married with nothing to their name but a hope and a dream, the American Dream. One to start a family and build a life full of memories good and bad. To take vacations and watch their kids grow. But where does it start? In a parents basement, with just enough money to pay the bills? Driving a $500 salvage back and forth to work? Is it all worth it when you come home to that beautiful face that you’ve made a formal commitment?

Is a love built between two people when the times are the best or the times that are worse? When you have nothing but the socks on your feet and a bowl of Ramen for dinner do we build the bonds that will strengthen our love? Because we have each other, do we desire anything more? Will riches make our love grow? Or is it when times are the worst that we realize all that we have and all that we need is right there in front of us?

When we look back at our lives in our latest years will we smile upon the most fruitful times or the toughest? Is that when we felt our love was the strongest? Is it because we suffered together make us closer forever?

To quote from Snow Patrol “…but I can barely see your face in front of mine… and it is knowing you that are there that makes me fine…”

My Old (mental) Apartment

I lost my cd’s, twice. Over 400 disc’s have been stolen.

But before I get into that, yes, I’ve been late on a post. I’m sorry. If anyone reads this regularly or knows me, you’ve know I’ve been in a bad place. Not dangerous, just not… me.

But that’s where this comes in to play. I found a piece of myself that I had lost. If anyone has gathered much from my other posts, then you know how I feel. I’m an emotional being, I’d be lost if I wasn’t thriving on music, emotion, thought…

Friday night I traveled back. Like an fading dream into the dawn of a new day I fought for the thought and I was born into a time I almost forgot. I Youtube’d every track I could remember, desperately feeding on a childhood lost in song and heartbreak. One spent on long nights working alone. Raking the courses sand traps, cleaning up the lushes left over drippings and scraps after a day basking in the sun of glutton.

Alone. I listened.

Alone. I molded.

Alone. I cried.

Were these borrowed feelings? Were these thoughts that I adopted my own because I didn’t have any to call mine? Love. Regret. Sorrow. Fear…

But when I heard these songs again recently I interpreted them differently. I give you, “The Old Apartment”

(Lyrics by Barenaked Ladies, interpretations by the Frog)

“Broke into the old apartment
This is where we used to live
Broken glass, broke and hungry
Broken hearts and broken bones
This is where we used to live

Why did you paint the walls?
Why did you clean the floor?
Why did you plaster over the hole I punched in the door?
This is where we used to live
Why did you keep the mousetrap?
Why did you keep the dishrack?
these things used to be mine
I guess they still are, I want them back

Broke into the old apartment
Forty-two stairs from the street
Crooked landing, crooked landlord
Narrow laneway filled with crooks
This is where we used to live

Why did they pave the lawn?
why did they change the locks?
Why did I have to break it, I only came here to talk
This is where we used to live

How is the neighbour downstairs?
How is her temper this year?
I turned up your TV and stomped on the floor just for fun
I know we don’t live here anymore
We bought an old house on the Danforth
She loves me and her body keeps me warm
I’m happy here
But this is where we used to live

Broke into the old apartment
Tore the phone out of the wall
Only memories, fading memories
Blending into dull tableaux

I want them back”
—I take this as my life revisited after I changed. I used to be a sad body of emptiness. I would be alone for weeks, wishing for another to come and be my lover. Now reopening these feelings are like reopening the doors of their old apartment. My broken life that once was, where did I leave it? Alone and just starting on my own in my adolescence I was but nothing among millions. Here now, in the future I’ve out grown the desperation of being down and out and always a buck short but shine on. When one door closes I break open a wall.

Who are we without our experiences? Where would be without a childhood, good or bad? Like those times I’ve left behind for greener pastures (or so I think) we are nothing more than what we were molded from once before.

I didn’t mean to break into these emotions, I only came here to talk.

Have you forgotten where you came from? Have you lost your memories… fading memories… I want them back.

Besides, this is where I used to live.

I want them back.

I want them back…

It was a request

So it wasn’t an actual request, but I always post in my IM status bar when I get a new blog up. The old status from yesterday was up and my buddy, who recently started reading my post asked if I had another one up. I didn’t, but figured I could make up something. I could go somewhere with nothing. Its basically how my life works anyways.

He had some good points on my blogs however. I was really excited that he actually read them. He’s one of the few people in my life that I hold dear and close and we actually get each other. In a very weird way. Here’s the catch though: I’ve only recently met him in person twice.

That’s right. One of my closest friends has been in my life since we were maybe fourteen or fifteen years old and we had only recently met each other. Hell, I think it was two years ago when he officially visited me. I was working at Philips I believe and staying back at home at my parents place. Then it was decided we had to finally meet. Him, a young strapping lad (what the hell does that mean anyways? Strapping? Does that mean he wears suspenders? I have not a clue. I could use Ubiquity to define the word, but I’m in the middle of something here. My fingers don’t like to stop when they get going. Side bar: I only use the first finger of my right hand and my full left hand to type. Pretty odd huh? I think its a hybrid of my old hunt and peck routine and a actual typing class I took in the twelfth grade. Not sure, but I still can type around 80 or 90 words a minute. Maybe more. My biggest downfall is spelling, or if you ask my current boss, grammar is my biggest downfall. Wow, got way off track there)

So yeah, this dude and I pretty much share everything together. There are no holds barred. (what the hell does that even mean? How do you hold a bar, or bar a hold.. whatever)

I’ve told him things about my life I have never told another single person. Ever. I’m dead serious. We share such intricate parts of our lives together and yet have never met. We thought it was quite the Internet phenomenon that two people could make such an impact on another and be so close yet so far to them.

We thought about going public, having a study done on us. Its weird though, cause I talk to him for around six hours a day. A day! So if  there comes a day when he won’t be in, or I the same, we warn each other. I actually worry. He worries. We text each other on our phones to make sure the other is alright. I mean, this is a serious friendship public, yet our only physical relationship was reduced to a total of I think six days out of the past ten or eleven years.

Isn’t that amazing?

It makes you think what really defines anything physical in the world. We exchange our inner most thoughts and feelings through 0’s and 1’s that travel through the Internets magical tubes (thanks Al Gore) and yet that’s all there is required to hold what we have so dear.

In case you are wondering, we are a very straight pair. He and I respectfully have significant others that contain legitimate lady parts. Seriously. Haven’t you read this blog about my heart ache and woe of the ‘fairer’ of the sexes? Well… doesn’t that seem straight enough?

But here we are, two people hundreds of miles away yet our conversations strike deep to our inner selves. Arising feelings of happiness, sadness, and even… security.

I suppose the real magic is that no matter what happens in our lives, as long as we have the tubes we can never be separated. This bond we share is so new to the world, but look at what is has created. Its made two strangers two best friends.

The ironical part of the Internet, and what has been discussed widely among the blogosphere is the irony in the technology we hold. We become more and more entangled in each others lives through Facespace and Mybook, but more detached in the physical sense.

I think our relationship is the exception. Our distance and lack of physical proximity never had foothold of the relationship we harbor. In fact, its kind of weird when we are right next to each other. It wears off after a little bit. We realize we don’t have a keyboard and our mouths can do more than actually laugh when one of us cracks the other up.

So there you go man. I told you I could take nothing and make it into a 814 word post. 816. Do numbers count? 819. Done. 820.

Another rant to find what it means

After speaking with an ex and trying to figure out why I am never happy in relationships I decided that I would take my usual jabber jawing from the IM window and bring it over to my neglected blog. My poor blog.

I ended up leaving her, a second time because I didn’t have the feelings I thought I should, or would have in a relationship, one that actually was ‘right’ if there is such thing. A final touch of a reason to go back to school and finish my degree at ONU was because another girl I was smitten for was attending there. I later realized it was a large mistake in personal judgment.

I was an idiot I thought I saw something that wasn’t there, and I didn’t know if what I had with the girl I was leaving was anything more than just a casual friendship. Like I said, I was and am still looking for something probably that I will never find.

I look at my friends, and I see one relationship where they met, and they just are great together. Then I see another one where the guy got with this girl after he was broken hearten about his last relationship and just married her because he thought it was the right thing to do, or whatever.

Then there is another one where they’re falling apart because she treats him like a real jerk when all he wants to do is please her, but he is never right. And now there is a baby in the picture and it would be murder to him to hurt either one of the most important women in his life to end the relationship

So, there are all these examples of what could happen, and its scary to choose one and say “here goes nothing”, lets hope for the best.

It would be nice if there was a sign of some sort that everything, even though the waters will get choppy, will work out with them in the end.

I’ve become a cynic, I know. A bit jaded even at the way I act when it comes to relationships. Telling people that I don’t care if they get bitchy at me, I won’t put up with it cause there are a million people out there in the end, 2:1 female to male ratio really, and I don’t need that crap.

Its almost like I’m giving the women a personal challenge in order to see if they can please me enough so I won’t toss them to the side and pick out another one… based on.. what? Physique? Great bodies don’t necessarily equal great partners for life. Lust, perhaps.

I don’t think I’ll find a sign, and the current relationship I’m in came out as kind of an accident, and then moved so fast that the next thing I knew I was living with her. Another first for myself. Of course, I am living with other people, and I think that her and I together would have a great home if it was just the two of us because of our cooking and cleaning styles. Unfortunately she is very sick, and it makes me unhappy that we can’t enjoy anything together anymore because of her illness.  She granted me the ability to leave the relationship, but I don’t think that is the right thing to do. I think I’ll stay. I know that down under her pain and suffering is someone that really cares about me. Hell, she even asked me what it was about me that kept her around. She even admits to getting bored with a relationship after a few months and sticks around because of fear of hurting the other person.

I used to pray to God in the heavens above for someone to love me… anyone. I felt so alone. Now, I have tossed aside many great relationships, hurting and doing to them what I feared would always happen to me. Sometimes you do get exactly what you wish for, I just hope I can figure it out. I’m only a quarter of a century old… I suppose it isn’t over till its over.

Hop on.

Some sort of torture

So I had another dream last night of a love past.

It was all too real as I held her close.

Feeling like I was home again, her body pressed close to mine as we seemed to meld together closing our eyes… nothing else seemed to matter.

Why is it that in our younger days we are blind to the simple joys and comforts that we take for granted? If you’re happy, but find fault, look deep into the fault that stands before you. Is it really that important to you? Can you not live your life because of it? Or is it mearely a challenge to overcome?

I fear it is all too late for us.

I faught so hard for her for so many years, but because of ignorant thoughts and self rightous ‘revenge’ I lost what may have been–could have been–was…

Or, or is it the stigma of that first love that always holds true in our heart. Whether we keep it or cast it out, will it forever haunt our hearts and our dreams? Is it fate for the first to always be there reminding us not to make the same mistakes, or to forgive when all we want is to take up arms and start a fight?

What have I learned from our relationship and what can I take away to build on another?

Is it only now that I can see all I had because I’ve lost it (forever)? Is it the longing of what was once good blinding me from solidified and perhaps just reasons for breaking up so long ago?

Maybe my dream wasn’t torture. Maybe it was a blessing. Reminding me that I am mearely human, and the thoughts of love that I swore were lost forever still reside deep in me.

Is some force deep in my very existence crying out for me to allow myself to love again? Is the warm beat of my once passionate heart trying to break the icy grasp of my jaded mind?

Even though she won’t read this, thank you… As much as it hurts to say, I haven’t felt that good in a very long time.

If there is a reason for everything…

So its been quite a while since I’ve posted.

Its been quite a while since I’ve had time to really write anything. I even stopped exercising for a little bit (6 weeks) and the results were treacherous! But through the last quarter of college I’ve noticed more people telling me that ‘things happen for a reason.

Do they? Or is it coincidence? Maybe a mix of both?

I can trace my life back to when I was in 7th grade watching TV with a buddy of mine and we saw a card game advertised: Magic: The Gathering.

‘Wow’ we thought, ‘we should play that!’

Yes, almost every detail of my life can be traced back to that day. Odd?

Kinda.

Fun?

You betcha.

Its always neat to look back and smile at the antics, the crazy mishaps and the debauchery that my cohorts and I have been through. But then the question arises… were they predetermined to happen?

What if the results of my previous encounters, before the 7th grade, aligned the next set of years. Or did I not have any control over these actions?

I don’t truly believe in the ‘everything happens for a reason’ philosophy. I believe that I am who I am today because of what I have done and what was done to me.

But to what extent? I chose my college and major in less than 2 minutes one afternoon. Was it meant to be? Did my dad ask me the right day to choose so I got into ONU at exactly the last minute?

Maybe there is a mix between predetermination and past experience. Perhaps we have every option available to us in a more existential way than our parents told us. Instead of ‘we can be everything’ we are ‘everything’ and we are only experiencing  one of the outcomes in *this* reality. Maybe in an infinite others I’m not writing this blog. Or I wrote it differently.

I was going to make it a blog about how the women in my life have molded me into what I am and what I have done, instead I’ve only mentioned it and took another route.

All of these… these.. moments, decisions, people, actions, reactions are they all happening because of something we did or something we need to do? Did they all happen at the same time but we’re only conscious of one out come?

Is there a right or wrong out come? Does each actions reaction redefine the concluding life of a person? Are we just an algorithm of space and time that is constantly being recalculated? What would the world be like if we realigned all the pieces slightly tilted a different direction? Could the difference of here and now be a result of someone else where and when?

Maybe what Lewis Black over heard was a justifying statement: Maybe it really was the fault of her horse that the girl had to spend another year in college.

I suppose I can start telling people now that if it wasn’t for Magic, I’d never been an mechanical engineer.