Wintry Mix & Ghostly Presence
[written Saturday afternoon before the sun came back out]
El Nino is blowing through Texas early this year. We've gotten a series of 'Canadian / Arctic' fronts through here also, causing chaos and panic in a wintry ice and snow mix that seems to happen every 3-4 years. The heavy wet snow that piled up on Wednesday seemed to catch the whole metro area off guard. It was a week filled with constant weather updates ["It's still snowing / raining/ cold and we're expecting / not expecting a freeze blah blah..."] and the channels all had closure crawlers working overtime. I all ready know the overland route [5 bridges] to work and take my time when stuff like this hits. I am "essential personnel" and HAVE to go in, though they pay us bonus time for days like that.
It was really nice to see some snow on the ground and piled up on the cars and houses - not just the usual dusting that we usually get around here. On the icy nights, I could look out from our second story window at work and see the trees twinkling with ice on the branches and trunks - under the harsh white lights in our parking lot, they looked very pretty, though I had to think about the huge pecan tree in my back yard weighed down with the same ice... I am sure they would have just sparkled in the sunlight if we'd had any recently. That's what I hate - no sun. I think that's why my hibernation / hide instinct has kicked in, as if I am solar powered or something. Yes, I know there is a "seasonal Affective Disorder" with a treatment of sitting under sunlamps...
Now it's just raining. A slow, steady, small drops dripping dreary kind of weekend. The kind of weekend to stay home and make chili or a pot of home made soup of a batch of home made spaghetti sauce and play some cards... maybe hit a movie or bowling alley before everyone gets stir crazy. The bare trees that looked so pretty covered in the crystalline ice now just stand shivering in the cold rain that dots the puddles at their feet. A few evergreens dripping with moisture hold onto the hope that spring will be here sooner than it will.
I had a dream about one of those ghosts the other night. This person is one of those people that used to pop in and out of my life every two or three years, when she was between husbands / long term relationships. We'd catch up and talk about dating, a couple of times we got hot and heavy, but then she'd disappear again. A very beautiful girl, but a little flaky. She doesn't mean any harm, but she disappointed me last time she popped in and basically burned her bridge with me.
But despite this disappointment and all I know about her, I still find myself bending over backwards to make a connection in this dream. Is it my subconscious still boiling over with an unfulfilled lust for this woman? I don't dream about other ex-lovers or almost lovers - why this one?
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Ghosts
I have been [well, HAD been; I finished the book before the Blog piece] plowing through John Irving's latest, Until I Find You. It's typical John Irving about some really weird characters with all kinds of dysfunctions, but no bears in this one.
Anyway, I came across a line that set the squeaky wheel in my head to spinning. "Many women become crazy because they can't get over the first man they fall in love with, Jack."
I had a girlfriend in 1st grade, like a lot of you probably did. She was a cute little girl, long brown hair, slightly oriental eyes, little chubby in a cherubic way. Her name was Jessica. Oh, she was a real cutie! Even then I seemed to be a bit of a romantic; I remember people telling me it was so sweet when I lifted up her Halloween mask and kissed her. [I do not remember this, of course.] We got broken up when she got left behind in the first grade. To this day, I do not know how one gets left behind in the first grade, but she did. I seem to recall we had a special ed class in our little school in Charleston WV and I think she got put into that group, but the memory of a kid can be tricky. A couple of years later I moved over onto her street, McGovern Lane. She lived at the top of the cul-de-sac, my best friend, Theodore "Mark" Swanson lived about four doors down. In the year and a half I lived there, I do not ever recall seeing her outside playing or walking home from school with us.
No, she was not the first girl I was ever in love with, but she's the first person I can recall that became a ghost to me, someone who only exists in my memory. In chasing this down I even visited the My Space and Runion.com sites for the high school we would have gone to in West Virginia looking for Mark, but I didn't find him. I saw Mark last in 1984 - we stopped in Charleston and looked him up, still at the same house and my sister's best friend from that time. I guess we knew they were there because we would still trade infrequent letters. [Mark was the first person to mention the Sugarhill gang and Rapper's Delight to me in like 82; maybe he became a rap records mogul! I've said before how Charleston WV and Wichita KS are towns people spend a couple of years at on their way up corporate ladders, maybe that's what happened to Jessica, too.
I got over Jessica [I was 6!], but there are other ghosts in my head. I'll not bore you with all the details. If I tell you now, you'll have no reason to keep reading, will you? Some of them are like Jessica and then Mark and other people's names who spring to mind when I think of that time: Mike Mire, Tim Carrico, Mike Max, the Klapproth twins Christine and Dorothy... Or thinking about the years in Arlington that start with the late Renee Childs, Ernest McKnight, Jose Medrano, Greg Hill, Claudia Soto... or the Young Jr. High years with Mark Lederman, Gary Deordio, Donna Bartolucci, Robin Hatfield, Shefanie Sheehan... One ghost sets off an atomic chain reaction in your head. Then suddenly for a few minutes you're seeing faces and remembering places and things you haven't thought of in years.
There's also scary ghosts in there, humiliating ghosts of those girls way out of my league who would laugh at me or ignore a bookworm like me. The people who were mean to me, too cool for me in high school as I tried to find my own identity and my own group to fit in with. Some people I dated and thought I'd made some connection with but it wasn't what I thought. People who broke my heart and made me think they were 'the one that got away.'
But there's also the thought that I am a ghost in someone's head. Not just old friends who could never know where I am now, maybe looking on My Space and places like that for someone they once knew. A younger, skinnier version of me they went to school with. Someone who thought they made some connection but it wasn't what they expected. Is there someone out there with their version of Marty's "why did you have to tell that gay ass Chasing Amy / Laura Cozart story?"
I guess it made me wonder if we ever get over our first loves, but I guess that would depend on how one defines that wouldn't it? I never thought I'd get over some people, I never thought some people I really hurt would ever stop haunting me, but they did. I've put a lot of ghosts to bed over that last year. Now they only haunt me when I'm my drunkest, loneliest.
So I say it again:
Do you believe in ghosts?
No?
How about memories?
- me 1997
I have been [well, HAD been; I finished the book before the Blog piece] plowing through John Irving's latest, Until I Find You. It's typical John Irving about some really weird characters with all kinds of dysfunctions, but no bears in this one.
Anyway, I came across a line that set the squeaky wheel in my head to spinning. "Many women become crazy because they can't get over the first man they fall in love with, Jack."
I had a girlfriend in 1st grade, like a lot of you probably did. She was a cute little girl, long brown hair, slightly oriental eyes, little chubby in a cherubic way. Her name was Jessica. Oh, she was a real cutie! Even then I seemed to be a bit of a romantic; I remember people telling me it was so sweet when I lifted up her Halloween mask and kissed her. [I do not remember this, of course.] We got broken up when she got left behind in the first grade. To this day, I do not know how one gets left behind in the first grade, but she did. I seem to recall we had a special ed class in our little school in Charleston WV and I think she got put into that group, but the memory of a kid can be tricky. A couple of years later I moved over onto her street, McGovern Lane. She lived at the top of the cul-de-sac, my best friend, Theodore "Mark" Swanson lived about four doors down. In the year and a half I lived there, I do not ever recall seeing her outside playing or walking home from school with us.
No, she was not the first girl I was ever in love with, but she's the first person I can recall that became a ghost to me, someone who only exists in my memory. In chasing this down I even visited the My Space and Runion.com sites for the high school we would have gone to in West Virginia looking for Mark, but I didn't find him. I saw Mark last in 1984 - we stopped in Charleston and looked him up, still at the same house and my sister's best friend from that time. I guess we knew they were there because we would still trade infrequent letters. [Mark was the first person to mention the Sugarhill gang and Rapper's Delight to me in like 82; maybe he became a rap records mogul! I've said before how Charleston WV and Wichita KS are towns people spend a couple of years at on their way up corporate ladders, maybe that's what happened to Jessica, too.
I got over Jessica [I was 6!], but there are other ghosts in my head. I'll not bore you with all the details. If I tell you now, you'll have no reason to keep reading, will you? Some of them are like Jessica and then Mark and other people's names who spring to mind when I think of that time: Mike Mire, Tim Carrico, Mike Max, the Klapproth twins Christine and Dorothy... Or thinking about the years in Arlington that start with the late Renee Childs, Ernest McKnight, Jose Medrano, Greg Hill, Claudia Soto... or the Young Jr. High years with Mark Lederman, Gary Deordio, Donna Bartolucci, Robin Hatfield, Shefanie Sheehan... One ghost sets off an atomic chain reaction in your head. Then suddenly for a few minutes you're seeing faces and remembering places and things you haven't thought of in years.
There's also scary ghosts in there, humiliating ghosts of those girls way out of my league who would laugh at me or ignore a bookworm like me. The people who were mean to me, too cool for me in high school as I tried to find my own identity and my own group to fit in with. Some people I dated and thought I'd made some connection with but it wasn't what I thought. People who broke my heart and made me think they were 'the one that got away.'
But there's also the thought that I am a ghost in someone's head. Not just old friends who could never know where I am now, maybe looking on My Space and places like that for someone they once knew. A younger, skinnier version of me they went to school with. Someone who thought they made some connection but it wasn't what they expected. Is there someone out there with their version of Marty's "why did you have to tell that gay ass Chasing Amy / Laura Cozart story?"
I guess it made me wonder if we ever get over our first loves, but I guess that would depend on how one defines that wouldn't it? I never thought I'd get over some people, I never thought some people I really hurt would ever stop haunting me, but they did. I've put a lot of ghosts to bed over that last year. Now they only haunt me when I'm my drunkest, loneliest.
So I say it again:
Do you believe in ghosts?
No?
How about memories?
- me 1997
Monday, January 01, 2007
First Burst of Music Snobbery of 2007 [For Barbara]
Okay, so I was at a NYE party with a bunch of thirtysomethings, sometimes in charge of the music after people play the Bee Gees too loud and before we got into a 70's Disco Ball Retro Fest... after I made a mistake of leaving my post and mingling for a while, my father's wife Barbabra took over [again] and was playing something by a band called Rusted Root, which she declared "the greatest song EVER." Of course I know better.
First of all, we all have our favorite little underground bands that only you and your friends know about. For me, those discovery years were 1984 - 1989 when me and my firends haunted record stores and I was working in one for a couple of years. Amongst my bands like this are the Rave Ups, the Rainmakers, R.E.M., the Replacements, Del Fuegos, Faster Pussycat, Lone Justice and the Long Ryders. These are bands that you keep the records forever because they struck a nerve with you at an age and a time that they were just right. I also like some bands less popular / quirky albums beacause they struck me this way, like Time by ELO and the Cars Panorama.
Now I also bought a lot of stuff that I've sold off since then, things that didn't age so well like Ratt, Poison, Cinderella and Motley Crue. To some people those albums are classics; to me they're just... not right anymore. Tastes change.
In the early 90s I got into the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers and long loopy jam band music. But about ten years later, my taste changed again and I dumped a lot of that stuff, too. I was no longer interested in listening to 20 minute noodling jams for the two or three minutes of a good idea in there somewhere. I also think that's why I don't get into a lot of jazz with long solos anymore.
Did I at one time utter a phrase like "Dark Star [or Whipping Post or Wild Side or Lack of Communication] is the best song EVER?" Knowing me, probably not. I have always had a music snob's appreciation for the history of music, even at a young age. Maybe some Kiss song when I was 12, but even them we were discovering things like Bohemiam Rhapsody and Hey Jude. Even now I am still finding songs and gems of albums I missed like Prefab Sprout's Two Wheels Good, Martha Wainwright, Cat Power... now I'm more interested in songs than leather pants, volume and light shows.
I hear you out there. Well, Music Snob, you're saying, just what IS the best song ever? Hey, there's a billion pages in cyberspace devoted to arguments like this. I've put some of my favorites out there, too and some of the pretenders that you all get duped into saying beacuse it's cool [read: Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the best Beatles album, Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, the Who's Tommy, anything by Cream, anything other than Loaded by the Velvet Underground...]. I have my favorites, some popular, [Like A Rolling Stone, Jumping Jack Flash, London Calling, Strawberry Fields Forever, Def Leppard's Photograph] some just me out there on a limb by myself [Can't Hardly Wait by the Replacements, Since You're Gone by the Cars, Stay (Faraway, So Close) by U2].
So, I guess Barbara can have her Rusted Root favorite song and I guess I will have to live with that, for now. Notice, I aid I will live with it, not necessarily respect that nor try to explain to her the error of her ways and show her the light to be found in the wide wide world of rock and roll. Some of you know I love a challenge, like continuing to stick up for Ryan Adams' Gold album as brilliance. [Yes, everything Ryan's done since seems calculated to try and make him a rock star, but Gold is just a slab of not quite too pretentious [yet] rock and roll!] My work is cut out for me.
Happy New Year, everyone. Hope you all find equally challenging and hopefully rewarding things this year.
Chaz
Okay, so I was at a NYE party with a bunch of thirtysomethings, sometimes in charge of the music after people play the Bee Gees too loud and before we got into a 70's Disco Ball Retro Fest... after I made a mistake of leaving my post and mingling for a while, my father's wife Barbabra took over [again] and was playing something by a band called Rusted Root, which she declared "the greatest song EVER." Of course I know better.
First of all, we all have our favorite little underground bands that only you and your friends know about. For me, those discovery years were 1984 - 1989 when me and my firends haunted record stores and I was working in one for a couple of years. Amongst my bands like this are the Rave Ups, the Rainmakers, R.E.M., the Replacements, Del Fuegos, Faster Pussycat, Lone Justice and the Long Ryders. These are bands that you keep the records forever because they struck a nerve with you at an age and a time that they were just right. I also like some bands less popular / quirky albums beacause they struck me this way, like Time by ELO and the Cars Panorama.
Now I also bought a lot of stuff that I've sold off since then, things that didn't age so well like Ratt, Poison, Cinderella and Motley Crue. To some people those albums are classics; to me they're just... not right anymore. Tastes change.
In the early 90s I got into the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers and long loopy jam band music. But about ten years later, my taste changed again and I dumped a lot of that stuff, too. I was no longer interested in listening to 20 minute noodling jams for the two or three minutes of a good idea in there somewhere. I also think that's why I don't get into a lot of jazz with long solos anymore.
Did I at one time utter a phrase like "Dark Star [or Whipping Post or Wild Side or Lack of Communication] is the best song EVER?" Knowing me, probably not. I have always had a music snob's appreciation for the history of music, even at a young age. Maybe some Kiss song when I was 12, but even them we were discovering things like Bohemiam Rhapsody and Hey Jude. Even now I am still finding songs and gems of albums I missed like Prefab Sprout's Two Wheels Good, Martha Wainwright, Cat Power... now I'm more interested in songs than leather pants, volume and light shows.
I hear you out there. Well, Music Snob, you're saying, just what IS the best song ever? Hey, there's a billion pages in cyberspace devoted to arguments like this. I've put some of my favorites out there, too and some of the pretenders that you all get duped into saying beacuse it's cool [read: Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the best Beatles album, Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, the Who's Tommy, anything by Cream, anything other than Loaded by the Velvet Underground...]. I have my favorites, some popular, [Like A Rolling Stone, Jumping Jack Flash, London Calling, Strawberry Fields Forever, Def Leppard's Photograph] some just me out there on a limb by myself [Can't Hardly Wait by the Replacements, Since You're Gone by the Cars, Stay (Faraway, So Close) by U2].
So, I guess Barbara can have her Rusted Root favorite song and I guess I will have to live with that, for now. Notice, I aid I will live with it, not necessarily respect that nor try to explain to her the error of her ways and show her the light to be found in the wide wide world of rock and roll. Some of you know I love a challenge, like continuing to stick up for Ryan Adams' Gold album as brilliance. [Yes, everything Ryan's done since seems calculated to try and make him a rock star, but Gold is just a slab of not quite too pretentious [yet] rock and roll!] My work is cut out for me.
Happy New Year, everyone. Hope you all find equally challenging and hopefully rewarding things this year.
Chaz