jan||even: why do we stop at stop signs?

do they mean chris cross, or upset? ~ jan ’16 ColVil/Durhamtown

it’s the unspoken social contract, eh? a community’s agreed upon acceptable behavior?

Contracts. Agreements. Norms.
Understandings. Beliefs. Concepts. Wishes.
Secrets.

Want to know a secret?
I do the exact same thing that I end up taking righteous umbrage at, rolling (cautiously) through neighborhood stop signs.

Want to hear another one?
When I get frustrated at things not going according to my desires/wishes/plan (which is really good plan, let me assure you – really all inclusive, conscientious goalpost where everyone gets to a happy/better place) –  I yell. Loudly. With much emotion, and vitriol. And anger. And not all that much control.

Turns out on the far side of my late 30s, I’m kind of a royal asshole.

Did you know that about me?

‘Cause it took a few extra serious moments over the past few years for me to come to that unassailable conclusion.
Sadly, see me blather on the time I killed my Mitsubishi Ramona. Sigh.

I literally had to be sitting in a car, on fire, to think ‘huh, I may need help’ – turns out that was a very good thought. Turns out Anger Kills – turns out I am very lucky, I am very loved. Nearly 18 months along this particular path, I’m at the point where I can say “wow, I’m going to have to work hard on this.”

My friends have not – thank god – had to sit in a car that was on fire.
My friends, their acquaintances & loved ones have the knowledge, the ability, and the history to understand that counsel is needed at certain times in life.

All of us understand what it takes to make a goal, the effort and time and hard work it takes.
Ask me about my brave run through a bear-filled forest over on Duke’s West Campus.

It took effort and a willingness to sweat in public

It took friends and family to get my ass out from behind my computer

It took kind new awesome peeps and some duck tape

It took watermelon and fancy nails 🙂

Hard work. A goal. Support. Willingness to suffer. Willingness to show the unappealing side in public. That got me to 5K in under an hour!! AND I lived to tell the tale!!

Huh, perhaps somewhere in this world they have Group Therapy Runs, eh? Only slightly more appealing than the Legal Grind shop in LA; good coffee, but not $50 for a cup and 30 mins of legal advice good. Except for those who needed the legal help.

Pretty sure I don’t want to be an asshole; certainly don’t want to be one to Boo, or to my friends, or to my family. But there I am. Blending misconceptions with blissful ignorance and intense focus on things not at all important. Self-images that are bruised and damaged from times long lost to common memory.

Not that the facts couldn’t have been read by any semi-intelligent observer. But … you’d have had to have been pretty close to Hobbit House to hear it. Or LexHause. Or HellHouse. Or Planb126. Or our nice place out Arcadia way … (or quietly at Dan & I’s MoVill digs, can’t really recall our Shady grove tone; Knoxburg days … maybe?? Oh, Sunnyville days – er, yeah. Sorry Pam, et al …)

So what happens next? Where does this path take me? Once you can get your head around the truth – the fact – that you’re not the best person you want to be. Once you can stop distracting yourself with all the interesting things you can do with your time as a human on Earth in the 21st century, how do you go forward? Ever – seemingly at times forever – onward, sometimes forward. Been saying that for a bit.

But I did get up this morning and feed Hali and walk her about our damp yard.

did she want to get up? no. want kibble … well, duh – yes, always, please!!

Going to help out friends with their weekend joys, then run off and work at Manbites Dog tonight.

Love & Information this weekend …

Come Monday morn, I’ll be back at the office, grinding away at the bills. Because … I’m all grown up, right?

Somewhere along the line the promise that the world is run by adults who knew what they were doing kind of fell apart. Don’t think I was raised a fool, but have been very foolish for a very long time.

Here in the present day, we stop at stop signs. Because sometimes the cross traffic will not stop, and the resulting outcome of a game of physics is bad. Real bad.

//minor tie into yesterday’s amazing David Bowie love-a-thon on KEXP, listening to Macklemore + Lewis’ “Growing Up (Sloane’s Song)” … //
“The quickest way to happiness? Learning to be selfless
Ask more questions, talk about yourself less
Study David Bowie, James Baldwin and 2Pac
Watch the sun set with best friends from a rooftop
Wear a helmet, don’t be stupid,jaywalk, but look before you do it
If it snows, go outside, build a jump, get some help
Get a sled, thrash the hill with your friends, ’til it melts
Go to festivals, camp, fall in love and dance
You’re only young once, my loved one, this is your chance
Take risks, cause life moves so fast”

Sure, I’ll take advice from lyrics – have all my life.

“I’m still growing up” the chorus echoes as the song runs out …

Well, this rambled a bit. My friends need fewer assholes in their lives. We all do. So I hope – and it’s not with a concrete vision of how it turns out – that I continue to grow this year, to add to my abilities & skills this year, perhaps to keep up at this word-smithing, to become better at hitting the goal of the idea I’d like to share with you all.

I know it’ll take effort. I know I’ll fail – probably a lot. But … this is the important thing I guess I’ve been unwrapping – if I don’t take a gander at what ‘forward’ might be (what I want it to be) then I just may be stuck in the ‘onward’ phase for much longer than I want to be, going places that only hamper the efforts of all those who are near and dear to me.

Be good to yourselves – look for the signs that you might want to heed, be it for societal benefits (no, really – stop) or for the betterment of your best self.

ciao,

“Keep Calm and Carry On” or “Keep Calm … and Cupcakes!”

+++
PS – so, know how in a wood shop you can take a really good piece of lumber, work on it for hours/days, and turn it into something beautiful and useful?

Well, in the ‘word shop’, so to speak, you also get the saw dust and wood chips you’d find in the real world. I’ll try to find a broom and sweep these up next time, but hey – who knows, you might find a shaving down here that looks EXACTLY like Aunt Edna – how weird, right? However, you’re just as likely to find a pale copy of Walt’s ‘Handy Dandy First Aid rag’, or perhaps a tip of a finger. But just the tip.
::s::

I become oh so livid at those idiots who roll right through the stop sign outside Hobbit House. Don’t they KNOW??!! Dangerous. Kids to be harmed. Cars to smash into. They are obviously wreckless assholes who need to be not only told that, but punished – fines, jail time, very bad words associated with their characters, notes placed in the PERMANENT RECORD, even.

wait – that’s not really a secret.

That I am just as bad at certain stop signs, which are placed, as far as I can tell, willy nilly in spots that obviously there’s never any kids playing. or cars on inbound vectors to the crossroads of havoc and mayhem. So I kinda slow down, do a nice California roll through, and carry on. Perhaps I AM the wayward son. I know that I hold myself to be a very good driver. I know I am observant.

But I do exactly what I take umbrage at. How come? That’s weird, isn’t it?

{{12:13p + 9 Jan 2016 = Saturday noon || Scott spins Marc Cogman’s ‘You’ll Never Work In This Town Again’ from Albatross … ’cause holy shit he’s a talented musician/writer…}}

I”m back … it was a bit tough to focus and write yesterday. ‘Cause it turns out the David Bowie – he’s a god. Us mere mortals are lucky bastards to be able to listen to his gifts. Just kind of amazing.

But back to you – how the fuck are you?

+++ every thing below here is PURE GOLD!!! – but … well, did you know that gold is naturally found stuffed deep inside other rocks? and that it’s not like a granite boulder with a perfectly formed gold bar inside – nope. Just like what you find below 🙂  +++

//ok – I will have to get back to how the fuck we make the world a better place TODAY, but first I’m gonna have to speak to the fact that KEXP’s John In the Morning Show is celebrating Intergalactic David Bowie Day right now, leading with a new track from his new album (dropped today) – followed up with Major Tom … and I’m dropped hard – HARD – into 1985/6 upstate new york, dark winter days, odd teen daze, Bowie tapes in my rust colored Nova as I drove way too many hours around small parts of Oneida county … crisp clear winter nights, snow for miles, Diamond Dogs, or Changes, or Dream Jeanie … Blood got me to this; Blood almost always gets me to a good place in music. So much thanks to the great Pacific Northwest this morn for a really good dose of nostalgia. I’ll shortly descend the paths into ‘what the hell was I doing?’ which takes me to ‘what the hell am I still doing?’ … which will be stopped by my calm adult voice saying ‘hey, you made it to here. don’t be so hard on yourself. it’s all pretty ok, frankly, all things concerned. go get a cuppa, settle down, rock out in your mind to some of Bowie’s best – Ziggy, perhaps? – and get back to work’. I like my adult voice.//

gah – turn and face the strange changes! there’s some damn good advice
things change – you change – and though controlling how you react is one way of thinking about it, as a human/animal, it’s really hard. Really hard.

Sometimes it takes a near tragedy for you to stop. Not because it’s a good idea, a social construct, the law. It’s time to stop out of self preservation – ask me how I know.

@9:53, Ziggy transports me back to … can’t afford the ticket back from suffragette city … blasting Route 171 in the nova … where the hell was I going??

NOw I’m told that Bowie influenced Reed/VU??!! well damn …

{8:57a + 8 Jan 2016 = Friday morn || unknown overnight DJ at KEXP spins Trentemoller’s Take Me Into Your Skin from The Last Resort that was Released in 2006 by Flat Recordings}
{Intergalactic David Bowie Day || god I love KEXP… thanks John R.!!}

{David Bowie’s Suffragate City from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars totally amazing! @ 9:53a + 8 Jan ’16}

{Ziggy Stardust … wow – holy fucking wow. @10:09a}

{er, Iggy, the passenger, produced by Bowie. Well fuck … @10:37a)