It Starts, V2

I am in consolable. Malcontent. And for some reason spewing thoughts into the ever-loving internet is better than a file I will keep on my computer. I admit it, I want someone to find this. I highly doubt it, but if you do, feel free to land a post or something. Anyhow, basic situation, then on to the meat. My best friend of 17 years is fuckin' up his life and there is nothing I can do about it. To boot, my other roommate is a calculating homo of a different mental volition. Tonight he is no help and only makes me feel as though I'm dragging him through the mud. And I told him this and he ignored me. I believe he is exactly what the bi-polar prophet of a girl I'm in love with once warned me of becoming. Try as I might I haven't, and his steely self preservation and constant thought of the greater good only make me feel as though I am failing at life. He's right, there is a certain aspect of my personality which insists on burdening itself on others, and so I come to the blog to burden away. Have my glory and my pain, blah blah. On to the meat. For those of you keeping up, I'm turning a new leaf with this. For those of you reading this in backlog, I am going to write my autobiography. But I don't know it that well, so feel free to chime in. Offer advice, criticism, corrections or whatever you've got. I'm happy to accept it all. So here it is, the best part I hope to some day cut and paste into a novel heavily based on my life. I've already written the first part. HOME It started with Becky. No, that’s not true; it started when I went to Emerson College. No, it stats with Jim. And Dan. After the lost year. Or my parents divorce. Or on my grandmother's farm. With Erin the second time around. No, my first memories. No, the Castle. No, childhood in New Hampshire. My mother was working in a Chinese restaurant. At the time my father was driving a logging truck for his father, who was building roads for logging companies and in Montana there are few restaurants between giant stretches of plains or mountains. At the time she was working the bar where she like to sip Diet Coke all night pretending it was the drinks men bought her while she pocketed their fee. Putting the money to better use I can only assume, but more likely staving her drunkenness for a more appropriate time. My father had stopped in to get some food and sat at the bar. When he left, bills on the table, his number was etched to the dollars he left. Now, if you've ever worked in the restaurant industry, you know you don't take customers home and more importantly you don't call them back. Whore though my mother hopes to be, she's an honest girl and held to the coda. His scripted dollar spent as well as the rest she made that night. She regales that she found him attractive and charming, but that is no reason to chase a truck driver and in hind sight I can't say she was right on either count anyway. It wasn't until weeks later that she would even consider dating him. In fact, until the next time they met. It was very the Reader's Digest When Harry Met Sally. The next time they met my mother was dating a smoke-jumper, one of those men who leap from planes to fight fire for only the glory of saving trees. He was handsome and kind, but apparently lacked the savior-faire my mother needed. The ever present need for her parents to disapprove would be my guess. Regardless, they went out for dinner. Dinner in a restaurant my trucker father was also taking his meal at. On an excuse to the bathroom my mother left him number on a dollar bill at his table and the tables turned. Needless to say, my father had always worked for the family business and not bothered to wait tables. Shortly thereafter they were dating and shortly after that Mount Saint Helen's blew and they were married. And shortly after that they were married. I would never say that my mother loved my father. She may have mentioned it once or twice, but there have been men my mother loved which she should be far more ashamed and mentions with more passion and hurt than my father. She always told me they were a case of east meets west in the worst way. He always said he hoped she wasn't corrupting my view of him and she should have stuck it out. Things would have gotten better. Which I suppose is a relative statement. What she did love was the idea of him. Loving ideas seems to be a genetic quality. I was later accused of that, without much knowledge of my father. That isn't to say I never saw him, but as I put it to him shortly after the buy out, we never had a relationship. I made my yearly two week visitation and saw the family every other Christmas, but much of the time I spent was on the job or baking cookies with my grandmother. Only to learn later that love is bound distinctly by a sense of loss. My father was so desperate to be my father that he spent much of our time together regaling advice. He would tell me many quotes as if I were to commit them to memory, compared to my mother who would spend much of her life keeping me out of trouble which I would warp into quotes. I'm sure I still remember some of the things he said, just not in the way he intended. I remember his chin, as it is now mine. I remember his opinions of investing. I remember his dreams for the future and his hope for a family and all the trappings of a traditional life. It was this idea that my mother fell in love with. My mother came from America. Her maiden name was Jones. Her parents had scraped their way up from the gutter to become a successful real-estate agent and the upper management of IBM. If the Jones family has a mythology, it is the perception I carry of the American dream. Their son would later be every success they ever wanted, only to leave them with no grandchildren and a begrudging phone call every Sunday as America went in the direction of singular independence. My mother however would become the black sheep, desperately trying to seek the life they had set for her in any way she knew how. She was the daughter of a dead generation and, without gloating, I can say she raised me as the last of a hope-ridden generation. I firmly believe Jaci raised me more as herself than her child. As every parent, she wanted for me what she never had. But in this case it wasn't a better job and the social standing to make my mark. She raised me with an un-abiding love. (for those of you reading this as a blog, I'm changing subjects drastically. Read as you wish, there is no permanence to this.) I never met my great-grandfather per se. I was in his presence and he was the last to die, but what lives on of him, was legend, not story. His house was filthy as his down-trodden wife became incapable of keeping up with the day-to-day and his hate for the world drove him on. This was the kind of man who hired convicts, note not ex-cons but actual imprisoned -victs. He was certain they would keep in line because he showed them a demonstration before each new crew. Bailing twine, though meant to hold together the fragile locks of straw together, is designed to hold intense weight. As each new group would arrive he would take them out to the hay loft on his farm and strip some twine from a fresh bale. In front of them, he would wrap the entire length around his bicep as tightly as he could. He would explain to the men why they were there, what they were to do, and the rules of his farm. Then he would clench his fist tightening his grip around the very air in the room. With the seething of his muscles alone, he would burst the twine, a silent dare to violate the laws he had set forth. That evening he would stand on his porch and kill a fresh deer for his family's meal. That was the same gun he held to my grandmothers head to encourage plowing and celibacy.

it starts

in the fisrt blog, i would like to say something poetic. so i'll save it for later. instead, in this pre-quil of a blog i'll evoke a poetic device instead, by typing in a lower case. stay tuned.