last year at this time we were crushed by a snowstorm; the streets were swollen with snow for days, but it was ok, no one was really going anywhere anyway.
right now we're having a bit of a thaw, and this is the first not-completely-white christmas we've had in buffalo in a number of years.
funny what a difference a year makes. christmas, last year, was one of the first times in months i had spoken to or seen my family after they had kicked me out of the house. i was shocked to see how old they looked. people can age in four or five months. or maybe it was just that i hadn't realized that they were getting older until the lifelong images of them that i've been holding in my head really came smack up against reality for the first time. your eyes tend to gloss over ageing process when you look at someone everyday.
i never intended to spend christmas with my folks that year. i was still mad at them for showing me the door and giving me the boot. i don't know what it was that made me stick around; maybe it was the memory of bygone christmases, that, though they shrink back into the past, still dangle within sight, like a sprig of mistletoe above a doorway. i love the christmases of my childhood; i'd give anything to run into them again. going through the doorway of my parents house and hanging about seemed the only way to do it.
now, as i get older, the excitement of christmas morning fades: supposedly i am too old to play with toys now, but the real reason i don't ask for any is because there aren't any good ones in the toy aisle anymore. the prospect of presents thrills me less and less. to be honest, i could go without gifts altogether, as long as i had the people i love around me. (although, i have to stop myself here and say that the clothes i received this year came at the right time to the right fellow -- i haven't had any new clothes in years, or at least that's what the holes my jeans seem to say when anyone looks at them...) but really...i have no burning desires for "stuff" the way i once did as a kid. there's stuff i want; i might buy it for myself, or i may never get it, but i'm not breaking down over it.
the thing i'm loving more and more about christmas are these things: seeing people, friends, family members, anyone that i don't get to normally see and running into them at the holidays, and spending a little time with them, or a lot, depending on how busy they are, catching up and reminiscing. it helps to know that those people are never lost, though you might have no clue where they are or what they're doing throughout the rest of the year.
i also can't get enough of giving people exactly the gift they never knew they wanted but can't stop smiling over. it makes christmas shopping tough, laborious, torturous -- but it has never not been worth the effort. i love giving presents. as a kid, i never thought it was possible to enjoy giving someone else a gift. i sure as hell never thought i would enjoy it so much, and certainly never thought i'd enjoy it more than getting something i wanted. the gifts i've given that i feel the worst about have been gifts that never went to good and joyful use. but there is nothing like the feeling of matching the perfect gift with the perfect person. of course, i hate paying money -- i am poor, and a pack of gum at the convenient store would sting my pocketbook.............but for christmas, it's worth it. there have been christmases where i couldn't buy gifts, and those have been some of the most depressing, sickening christmases i've ever had.
i love christmas; i love everything about it. i love the broken taboo of red and green right next to each other; i love snow on the ground, frosted windows, the stuff that lyrics to holiday music is made of. and yes, i even love the holiday music. its the only time we ever get to listen to jazz in abundance (and now, whenever i hear jazz of any kind, i can't help but think of christmas), and the greatest vocalists in pop music history always turn up to lend their voices to the season. christmas is perpetual. there is always a Christmas Carole, there are always chestnuts roasting, there is always Peter Billingsly, always roast beast, always a tree that glows in the living room all through the night, the anchor of our christmas morning.
this is the darkest, coldest time of the year, and yet a celebration, a high water mark. and even if we can't count back through each christmas with a perfect memory, still, somehow we know it isn't the same as it was way back when. Christmas is a paradox. it is cyclical, ever returning, but also cumulative. its meaning is abstract from the act, the ritual of christmas; christmas itself is a memory. at its most basic, it celebrates the paradox of the Incarnation -- of God becoming flesh. for two thousand years it has been gaining the momentum of meaning it now has, accumulating barnacles of significance, or thick, twisting ivies that cling and add to the ritual. some argue that it obscures the true meaning of christmas. i think it makes it more interesting, garnishes it, seasons it and, at last allows us to see the nature of something that changes, and is yet perpetual.
sitting here, in an unseasonably thawed buffalo, at my family's house, laughing with the parents i vowed to never speak to again, watching them open my presents on a rainy christmas sunday is revealing. they are older. i am wiser. it is nothing like last year, or the year before it. but today, christmas present, is christmas, and a day of remembering. it is a day of honoring the past, remembering through, and around and with the lore of the season. christmas present is inflected by christmas past, and i hold it dear for what it has been. and i wonder at what a different thing, a changed and new thing it will be, when it happens upon us again.
merry christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Friday, December 23, 2005
advent
hi folks.
merry christmas.
if you're not christian, merry christmas anyway.
(the thought struck me today that on st. patrick's day, "everyone is irish," and that's ok. "everyone is christian at christmas" is something people have a problem with. i say: just have fun with it. its a good time, a good excuse to eat a lot, a good excuse for presents and days off from work, if nothing else. and oh, the glorious music!)
anyways, this isn't meant to be a long post: i'm just hear to say the blogging equivalent of "i've got a crap on deck that could choke a donkey..." i've been itching to post something here for a few days, and i have either been at work, wishing i was unconscious, or at home, unconscious.
so, things to look forward to at written off:
"the umbrellas of cherbourg"
my friend lauren
ben folds lyrics
seasonal musings
the drama that is my life
and ever and always: more reasons not to have a girlfriend.
stay tuned.
its all coming....
...
....
.......
............aaaaaaaaaaany minute now......
love you
happy high holy days.
-p
merry christmas.
if you're not christian, merry christmas anyway.
(the thought struck me today that on st. patrick's day, "everyone is irish," and that's ok. "everyone is christian at christmas" is something people have a problem with. i say: just have fun with it. its a good time, a good excuse to eat a lot, a good excuse for presents and days off from work, if nothing else. and oh, the glorious music!)
anyways, this isn't meant to be a long post: i'm just hear to say the blogging equivalent of "i've got a crap on deck that could choke a donkey..." i've been itching to post something here for a few days, and i have either been at work, wishing i was unconscious, or at home, unconscious.
so, things to look forward to at written off:
"the umbrellas of cherbourg"
my friend lauren
ben folds lyrics
seasonal musings
the drama that is my life
and ever and always: more reasons not to have a girlfriend.
stay tuned.
its all coming....
...
....
.......
............aaaaaaaaaaany minute now......
love you
happy high holy days.
-p
Thursday, December 15, 2005
...there is also hope where there is no life.
lately, i've been feeling like a sick dog.
i have a friend who told me, recently, that dogs, when they die, try to find the lowest lying ground to lay down and wait. from my only experience with a dying dog, i know this to be true: my dog, sully, spent a lot of time just lying in the basement before he died. we weren't sure what was wrong with him, but a few days later we took him to the vet. when they opened him up, his intestines were full of tumors, and we had him put to sleep. or, rather, my parents had him put to sleep. i didn't know he was gone until he was gone. that was four years ago; i was twenty one; i cried like a baby.
at any rate, i've been feeling like a sick dog, quitting to the basement. i get up, and i go to work, and when i'm there i check my life at the door, because work is stressful enough as it is without loading baggage on top. i am happy at work. when i'm at work, i'm in work-land. life there is simple. get to the tables on time. talk about the specials. bring over drinks. take the orders. send them to the kitchen after calculating how long it will take rose to be ready to cook them and how soon i will need them. whatever other adjustments there are along the way, however often i feel like i'll never be able to get things done in the time i have to them, i know the world inside caffe espresso won't come crashing down. however close we come to the apocalypse at 4401 transit road, all is never lost, and so far i've made it out alive everytime.
i'm more comfortable with situations that threaten my job than i am with situations that threaten my life. there is no cigarette break from life, there is no punching out of life and coming back early the next morning to finish the stuff you left undone last night. anything that threatens the stability of my life amounts to being life threatening...the bags that i walk out of work with, the bags with no other door to check them at, no room to unpack them at. the rest of my life is a juggling act, a gypsy life.
one bag for the social shambles my life is -- the loose ends of ties cut, the search for true friends, and true family, the burden of building a core of people who can really know me, fighting against the lust i have to decieve them, to steer them around the landmines of my personality.
one bag for the spiritual, religious, creative experience that has taken a quarter of a century to start revealing itself to me, that is constantly tearing apart and re-raising what i think my life is, and what i think life in general means...full of secret compartments stuffed with words and the weight of all of their connotative, denotative, historical, etymological, linguistomysticism -- the tools for my self performed, exploratory surgery on the meaning of my life, the bricks and mortar for building my life, the iron girders that allow it to reach heights heretofor only dreamed. the art of my life, to take an old familiar thing and make it new and give it a spirit of meaning, to give it significance.
one bag full of the academic tragedy that was my semester, full of the fear that i won't be able to pull my academic career out of the nose dive i've somehow let it slip into, full of the fear that won't be able to recover, that i will have dashed opportunity into the side of a mountain in the chaos of one semester. my life, my livelihood may not ever recover. i don't want to be stuck in the meaninglessness of a lowpaying job working off a college education that amounts only to a lifetime of debt. i could have gone to grad school, gotten my docorate, and been paid to do it...
one bag full of rapacious sexuality, sometimes just barely in check
one bag full of perpetual financial disaster
one bag full of ego alternating between pride and low self esteem
one carry-on of loneliness; i carry it wherever i go. on planes, i buy it a ticket and sit it in the seat next to me.
i'm tired of carrying this stuff. tired of juggling it. at work i'm hardly bothered by it, but at the end of the day i come home, and i just want some place to store it for awhile.
one day i can't help but think it will drop, all around me; i'll fudge the act, the bags will drop, and my life will come crashing down. it feels inevitable -- you can only have so many things hanging in the air before gravity gets ahold of them. the only time it stops is when you die. you bring your bags to the basement, you stack them in the corner, you wait, and finally, you get some rest.
funny; i've been staying in my parents basement on and off for the past few weeks. it is perfectly dark down there. i could sleep for ages.
i'm not suicidal. but death is the door to new things. death is only half an equation, and yes, it is an ultimate end, but the beginning of some journey that we don't yet know. death as a metaphor fascinates me. death as a potential for reinvention, as a way of coming back, as a route, the only route, to resurrection.
i expect i will be staying down in my parent's basement for a few days longer, until the year dies. i'll come up and out and look foreward to a new year, a new life, more hope, more sunshine, more strength in the bones of my new body to carry my bags, to continue juggling them, to continue on in this gypsy life, and finally make it mean something.
i have a friend who told me, recently, that dogs, when they die, try to find the lowest lying ground to lay down and wait. from my only experience with a dying dog, i know this to be true: my dog, sully, spent a lot of time just lying in the basement before he died. we weren't sure what was wrong with him, but a few days later we took him to the vet. when they opened him up, his intestines were full of tumors, and we had him put to sleep. or, rather, my parents had him put to sleep. i didn't know he was gone until he was gone. that was four years ago; i was twenty one; i cried like a baby.
at any rate, i've been feeling like a sick dog, quitting to the basement. i get up, and i go to work, and when i'm there i check my life at the door, because work is stressful enough as it is without loading baggage on top. i am happy at work. when i'm at work, i'm in work-land. life there is simple. get to the tables on time. talk about the specials. bring over drinks. take the orders. send them to the kitchen after calculating how long it will take rose to be ready to cook them and how soon i will need them. whatever other adjustments there are along the way, however often i feel like i'll never be able to get things done in the time i have to them, i know the world inside caffe espresso won't come crashing down. however close we come to the apocalypse at 4401 transit road, all is never lost, and so far i've made it out alive everytime.
i'm more comfortable with situations that threaten my job than i am with situations that threaten my life. there is no cigarette break from life, there is no punching out of life and coming back early the next morning to finish the stuff you left undone last night. anything that threatens the stability of my life amounts to being life threatening...the bags that i walk out of work with, the bags with no other door to check them at, no room to unpack them at. the rest of my life is a juggling act, a gypsy life.
one bag for the social shambles my life is -- the loose ends of ties cut, the search for true friends, and true family, the burden of building a core of people who can really know me, fighting against the lust i have to decieve them, to steer them around the landmines of my personality.
one bag for the spiritual, religious, creative experience that has taken a quarter of a century to start revealing itself to me, that is constantly tearing apart and re-raising what i think my life is, and what i think life in general means...full of secret compartments stuffed with words and the weight of all of their connotative, denotative, historical, etymological, linguistomysticism -- the tools for my self performed, exploratory surgery on the meaning of my life, the bricks and mortar for building my life, the iron girders that allow it to reach heights heretofor only dreamed. the art of my life, to take an old familiar thing and make it new and give it a spirit of meaning, to give it significance.
one bag full of the academic tragedy that was my semester, full of the fear that i won't be able to pull my academic career out of the nose dive i've somehow let it slip into, full of the fear that won't be able to recover, that i will have dashed opportunity into the side of a mountain in the chaos of one semester. my life, my livelihood may not ever recover. i don't want to be stuck in the meaninglessness of a lowpaying job working off a college education that amounts only to a lifetime of debt. i could have gone to grad school, gotten my docorate, and been paid to do it...
one bag full of rapacious sexuality, sometimes just barely in check
one bag full of perpetual financial disaster
one bag full of ego alternating between pride and low self esteem
one carry-on of loneliness; i carry it wherever i go. on planes, i buy it a ticket and sit it in the seat next to me.
i'm tired of carrying this stuff. tired of juggling it. at work i'm hardly bothered by it, but at the end of the day i come home, and i just want some place to store it for awhile.
one day i can't help but think it will drop, all around me; i'll fudge the act, the bags will drop, and my life will come crashing down. it feels inevitable -- you can only have so many things hanging in the air before gravity gets ahold of them. the only time it stops is when you die. you bring your bags to the basement, you stack them in the corner, you wait, and finally, you get some rest.
funny; i've been staying in my parents basement on and off for the past few weeks. it is perfectly dark down there. i could sleep for ages.
i'm not suicidal. but death is the door to new things. death is only half an equation, and yes, it is an ultimate end, but the beginning of some journey that we don't yet know. death as a metaphor fascinates me. death as a potential for reinvention, as a way of coming back, as a route, the only route, to resurrection.
i expect i will be staying down in my parent's basement for a few days longer, until the year dies. i'll come up and out and look foreward to a new year, a new life, more hope, more sunshine, more strength in the bones of my new body to carry my bags, to continue juggling them, to continue on in this gypsy life, and finally make it mean something.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Friday, December 02, 2005
makin a list...
nice
a rush of newly rehired cute girls at work
naughty
my boss, for being so certifiably crazy, its leaking out her head and infecting everyone else. as much as i love her and she reminds me of my Sitti (also freaking nuts), she is driving me insane to the point that i want a customer to rob us and shoot me in the face.
nice
mom and dad, for helping me out with rides to and from work throughout my town-of-amherst-induced vehicular immobilzation.
naughty
town of amherst, for suspending my licsense, and forcing me to buy over $100 in cab rides in the last two weeks, whose fares often exceeded the money i made at work that day. had i the power, i would condemn thee to the weeping and gnashing of thy teeth in the lake of fire, until thou wouldst beggest of me thy salvation -- and, being the merciful being that i am, i would grant it to thee -- provided that thou still hast the manual dexterity and presence of mind to fill out two forms, arrive at court on the appointed date and time (certain to be scheduled directly in the midst of thy daily tasks of boulder rolling, attempted thirst quenching and liver-pecking), wait one week, call the appropriate office to schedule thy education which shall teach thee how not to get thyself thrown into a lake of fire (as if thou couldst not figure it out on thine own), and, within two weeks of said education session, pay the fine of more-money-than-you-have-dollars, and unreasonable cents. and anticipate no kindness from me towards thee, expect not my favour -- thou hast forced me to get up off of my fat ass for five whole minutes to condescend and talk to thee, thou lawbreaker! -- and when i returneth mine ass to mine comfy, rolly chair, it shall be cold. how dare thee?
nice
my co-worker, kristin, for giving me a ride home the other night, even though she was sick, and it was out of her way. she is a trooper and champ.
naughty
my co-worker, jim, for totally pulling a no-call, no-show that day and making me work a double, so that i had no other options to get a ride home besides a $25 cab and kristin, who wouldn't let me take the cab. also, he is better looking, and younger and more buff than i am. so he can just bite me twice as hard. douchebag.
naughty
my job -- for making me miss school weeks at a time, because i am a nice guy and i bail them out every day because they are short during the day shift, and they take it for granted and i can't get anything done, and this is going to be the worst semester i have ever had in college -- and not just "i didn't get straight A's like i usually do" bad -- i'm talking, "i haven't done this bad since i barely graduated highschool" bad.
naughty
school. for screwing me over and making my life difficult every chance it gets. for: sending my traffic bill to a collection agency. for: not acknowledging when i paid off my account with the collection agency. for: placing my school account on hold because they had not recognized my payment. for: not letting me drop a class that i never took (and will likely end up paying for) because they put my account on hold. for: the mysterious new hold on my account that won't let me register for my spring classes. for: somehow taking just a little bit longer than forever until they sent my loan refunds back to me. for: not sending my financial aid information through on time because somehow i lost status as an american citizen over the summer. for: making me bring in a birth certificate to prove to them i was born in the US of fricking A. for: making me order a new birth certificate from albany, because i couldn't find my original...(guess what i found after paying the fee for the new certificate?) for: putting me in direct conflict with my job, my desire to do well in school, and the rest of my life. thank you, buff state, for being efficient only in the areas of wasting my time, and being whiny bureaucratic pussies. you totally suck.
nice
kiran, for being a guy i would do anything for and who would do anything for me
naughty
the army, for sending him to iraq
nice
Jeniffer Ulrich and Jen Miller for managing to be new friends even though i know they'd rather have more from me.
naughty
me, for unintentionally leading on Julie Randolph...i actually do like her like that, but i can't have a girlfriend right now...and for somewhat intentionally leading on Mary G. sometimes, i'm a bad person.
nice
starting Goethe's the Sorrows of Young Werther
naughty
not finishing Goethe's the Sorrows of Young Werther, even though i only have 30 pages to go. (i am such a yutz. i call myself an english major?)
nice
God, giving me things i truly don't deserve. and seriously. if you only knew. i don't mean this in a cotton candy way, the way everyone else invariably does. this is some for real type shit. like, "vincent, we should be dead, we should be fucking dead."
naughty
not deserving anything God gives me.
nice
my family, in Albany...because i have them
naughty
me, for never seeing, calling, writing, visiting, or anything them enough. sorry. :(
nice
me, for finally figuring out what i want out of life
naughty
the world, for being the obstacle course in that's in my way.
and lastly...
nice
Aaron Sorkin, for having a new play, a new movie, and a new tv show set to release all within one year. i love that guy.
naughty
me, for not being Aaron Sorkin. that guy is such a bastard
and that's m' list folks. i've checked it twice.
a rush of newly rehired cute girls at work
naughty
my boss, for being so certifiably crazy, its leaking out her head and infecting everyone else. as much as i love her and she reminds me of my Sitti (also freaking nuts), she is driving me insane to the point that i want a customer to rob us and shoot me in the face.
nice
mom and dad, for helping me out with rides to and from work throughout my town-of-amherst-induced vehicular immobilzation.
naughty
town of amherst, for suspending my licsense, and forcing me to buy over $100 in cab rides in the last two weeks, whose fares often exceeded the money i made at work that day. had i the power, i would condemn thee to the weeping and gnashing of thy teeth in the lake of fire, until thou wouldst beggest of me thy salvation -- and, being the merciful being that i am, i would grant it to thee -- provided that thou still hast the manual dexterity and presence of mind to fill out two forms, arrive at court on the appointed date and time (certain to be scheduled directly in the midst of thy daily tasks of boulder rolling, attempted thirst quenching and liver-pecking), wait one week, call the appropriate office to schedule thy education which shall teach thee how not to get thyself thrown into a lake of fire (as if thou couldst not figure it out on thine own), and, within two weeks of said education session, pay the fine of more-money-than-you-have-dollars, and unreasonable cents. and anticipate no kindness from me towards thee, expect not my favour -- thou hast forced me to get up off of my fat ass for five whole minutes to condescend and talk to thee, thou lawbreaker! -- and when i returneth mine ass to mine comfy, rolly chair, it shall be cold. how dare thee?
nice
my co-worker, kristin, for giving me a ride home the other night, even though she was sick, and it was out of her way. she is a trooper and champ.
naughty
my co-worker, jim, for totally pulling a no-call, no-show that day and making me work a double, so that i had no other options to get a ride home besides a $25 cab and kristin, who wouldn't let me take the cab. also, he is better looking, and younger and more buff than i am. so he can just bite me twice as hard. douchebag.
naughty
my job -- for making me miss school weeks at a time, because i am a nice guy and i bail them out every day because they are short during the day shift, and they take it for granted and i can't get anything done, and this is going to be the worst semester i have ever had in college -- and not just "i didn't get straight A's like i usually do" bad -- i'm talking, "i haven't done this bad since i barely graduated highschool" bad.
naughty
school. for screwing me over and making my life difficult every chance it gets. for: sending my traffic bill to a collection agency. for: not acknowledging when i paid off my account with the collection agency. for: placing my school account on hold because they had not recognized my payment. for: not letting me drop a class that i never took (and will likely end up paying for) because they put my account on hold. for: the mysterious new hold on my account that won't let me register for my spring classes. for: somehow taking just a little bit longer than forever until they sent my loan refunds back to me. for: not sending my financial aid information through on time because somehow i lost status as an american citizen over the summer. for: making me bring in a birth certificate to prove to them i was born in the US of fricking A. for: making me order a new birth certificate from albany, because i couldn't find my original...(guess what i found after paying the fee for the new certificate?) for: putting me in direct conflict with my job, my desire to do well in school, and the rest of my life. thank you, buff state, for being efficient only in the areas of wasting my time, and being whiny bureaucratic pussies. you totally suck.
nice
kiran, for being a guy i would do anything for and who would do anything for me
naughty
the army, for sending him to iraq
nice
Jeniffer Ulrich and Jen Miller for managing to be new friends even though i know they'd rather have more from me.
naughty
me, for unintentionally leading on Julie Randolph...i actually do like her like that, but i can't have a girlfriend right now...and for somewhat intentionally leading on Mary G. sometimes, i'm a bad person.
nice
starting Goethe's the Sorrows of Young Werther
naughty
not finishing Goethe's the Sorrows of Young Werther, even though i only have 30 pages to go. (i am such a yutz. i call myself an english major?)
nice
God, giving me things i truly don't deserve. and seriously. if you only knew. i don't mean this in a cotton candy way, the way everyone else invariably does. this is some for real type shit. like, "vincent, we should be dead, we should be fucking dead."
naughty
not deserving anything God gives me.
nice
my family, in Albany...because i have them
naughty
me, for never seeing, calling, writing, visiting, or anything them enough. sorry. :(
nice
me, for finally figuring out what i want out of life
naughty
the world, for being the obstacle course in that's in my way.
and lastly...
nice
Aaron Sorkin, for having a new play, a new movie, and a new tv show set to release all within one year. i love that guy.
naughty
me, for not being Aaron Sorkin. that guy is such a bastard
and that's m' list folks. i've checked it twice.
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