ypsilanti's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- one less graveyard, one more wish was it really this time last year that i lived in the cold, smoky cement of your basement? sad and sorry black sheets hanging up in the place of walls, not really concealing anything as they were too far apart and too little material to strech across the room? and the drums and amps set up for tuesday and thursday nights, making the floor shake but not always waking you up? and it took me driving into williamsport, pennsylvania, home of my family to remember instantly the last time i was here, and get those memories flipped on like a switch.. november right into january was a time of constant extreme energy and also extreme decline. the sound of early '80s electro and oddball funk stars was all i could listen to, and there were christmas lights, new pants, polaroid film and never any reason to fall asleep. what happens now? something brand new. i miss you. i drove here in a fashion not unlike asking you to dance. it never gets any less frightening or less deadly. the windsheild wipers don't work. they were for a little bit, but then they stopped altogether. there was so much snow that at one point the only thing i could possibly do was pull off the highway into a gas station and eat half a package of cookies. it was like life or death. then when the snow stopped i got back on the road, and everyone slowed down again, moving into the passing lane at 10 mph. this was strange because the roads were clear and the sky was too.. about a mile up in the right hand lane was a car completley engulfed in flames, burning bright orange with no signs of stopping. and no sign of help anywhere in the miles between highway exits. you know how you're supposed to hold your breath when you drive by a graveyard until you see a white house? well, someone told me that when i was younger, and i always did it, even when there was nothing but farms and fields, and it seemed like a lot of suffocating for a simple superstition. today i felt like i witnessed the serious, desperate cousin of that old children's game, holding my breath to the direct left of an exploded car, heat sliding into my vehicle and smoke being blown in the direction i was going by the wind, waiting for a white house, or a sign that the graveyard wasn't in front of me or behind me, directly. i hope the passengers of the car made it out alive. i have no idea. pleased to meet you. i miss(ed) you. we're going to find out the meaning of feeling good, and we're going to stay there as long as we think we should. i know it's new. so new it seems like it could be something in the corner of your eye, or something somebody said that you didn't hear correctly, and can't really believe they said what you think they said, or maybe more like a dream that goes on so long you start to understand it as your real life, and react accordingly. it goes on like this until you wake up and have to re-orient yourself to the different, lackluster realities of your waking world. but in something new like this, it's impossible that it would happen without all the struggling work of our pasts, miraculously and thanklessly fucking up our lives for the past however-many years, leading us in such ridiculous, off-the-mark paths for what seemed like eternities. and here we are, ingrateful idiots, making plans and brushing off this "new" little thing as though it hadn't taken all of our lives to perfect and isolate just so, just precisely and meticulously so that all the stars would line up directly above our hands.. quick, while we still have time.. stop holding your breath. instantanious now. (clap your hands everybody, if you got what it takes.) 05:31:00 - 2000-11-23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||