"Live in New York City once,
but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once,
but leave before it makes you soft.
Travel."
-- From the Commencement Address Kurt Vonnegut never gave (or wrote) (version for you illiterate music lovers here)
It’s been six months. What happened? Somewhere along the line I lost my sense of humor, or humour for you of the limey persuasion. It wasn’t even in the last place I saw it. Things were bad, and as is usually the case when things get bad, one denies vociferously (that’s right, I said vociferously!) that anything is bad.
In my last entry, or more accurately in the flame war that followed my last entry, I basically lost my shit. In a nutshell, I was grossly insulted by the fact that someone thought I was insulting them when I believed that was anything but the case and felt there was no need to explain that because it wasn’t my problem they thought I had insulted them, it was theirs.
Here’s the funny part: I waged this flame war at work, on company time, when I supposed to be doing other things that weren’t getting done. I was noticeably upset by it. Couldn’t this have waited for a time after work when I had cooled down? Fuck no! I’d been slapped with a duelin’ glove and I was going to strike back with righteous indignation immediately. After all was said and done, I just stopped posting. I didn’t need this shit, and if those offended couldn’t figure it out on their own then fuck ‘em. There was a point to all this: something about participating in a game on my own terms that my friends played that I had heretofore shunned and not being able to take it or some demented raison d’etre like that.
Odd, over
the top, and vaguely smelling of Bullshit (get past 2:20
on the clip, please). Then again, I always thought the Trojan War, which was
triggered by the abduction of Helen, to be odd, over the top and vaguely
smelling of Bullshit. And World War I? Who the fuck really cared about the Archduke Ferdinand anyway?
So, I apologize for allowing myself to fall off the face of the earth. And I apologize for losing my sense of humor. It’s taken a while to get it back, or at least recognize some semblance of it.
It’s six months
later. I am in a different place. Literally. I moved to San Francisco from New
York City. My girlfriend landed a sweet
gig out here, and we both felt it was only a matter of time before one of
us would be arrested for stabbing someone in the neck on the subway. Since I
believe in long-distance relationships the same way I believe in the Tooth
Fairy, I took the blind leap, left “the best job I ever had” (truly) to risk
being a character in an Otis
Redding song, because when you get down to it, I wasn’t happy in doing what I
was doing and where I was doing it anymore. I’d always had the childhood dream of
living in New York City as a writer, but like a character out of The Monkey’s Paw, I
hadn’t been specific enough. Plus, Kurt Vonnegut died in
April so there was little chance of me running into him anymore.
What am I
doing now? For now, I am a well-kept man who makes a mean split-pea soup and a chickpea-mushroom lasagna from scratch. I have someone in my life whom I truly love, even though
love isn’t the same as what I took it to mean 10 to 20 years ago, and I’m actually
in a place where I can appreciate all this for what it is. I’m looking for
something that’ll occupy me outside of the house -- an “occupation” as it were -- that doesn’t suck the soul out of me, so I can no longer conveniently use it
as an excuse for not having the energy to write what I’d rather be writing. And
the writing that I have been doing thus far has been the kind I want to do. You
won’t see it here for now because I’m still old-school, or insecure, or afraid
the Kaiser will steal my string, that way.
I have to admit that when I stopped posting to VOX, I stopped reading it save for Soo’s rare posts that I had RSS’ed beforehand and the odd post that Soo had forwarded me in a loving attempt to persuade me to stop being such a dick. With that said, if there is something in the last six months I missed that I MUST read, please call the link to my attention.
Will I go from being a pompous, arrogant New Yorker Patrick Bateman-Wannabe to a smug, self-satisfied San Franciscan Karl Marx Brother overnight? Probably not. Eventually. Perhaps. I already wear flip-flops with socks on occasion because they’re comfortable. We all know that’s the slippery slope.
If you’ve missed me, then you have my deepest gratitude. If you haven’t, then why the fuck did you read this far? I’ll try not to let another six months go by without saying anything. Even if it is to launch egregious ad hominem attacks on my friends without shame. Sure, I’m not above it. It’s the fun I haven’t been allowing myself. And if they decide they want to castigate me for my change of heart, well, that just shows they’re big pussies anyway.
And since I have no appreciation for music whatsoever, this is the piece of trash I most recently bought from iTunes that makes me as happy as a little girl.
Take care, y’all. ]]>