2000-04-04 :: 02:40:54

feeling the pain among the airplanes

[ Written on 04/03/00 ]

Soundtrack: Bloodhound Gang, "One Fierce Beer Coaster"; silence; Matthew Sweet, "100% Fun"; Afghan Whigs, "1965"; Esthero, "Breath From Another"; Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen, "Theme From Mission: Impossible" single; Love Nut, "Baltimucho!"

Say you were to be me. You say goodbye to your parents and thank them for making break smooth and good, leaving quickly because you have three carry-on bags and the ticket checker hasn't noticed your minor infraction. You look down at your book and you leave DC. You glance up in Newark. You watch people for an hour, see a pretty mother with a sad face who looks like life hasn't gone the way she planned, oblivious young son in tow. Hear the snippets of lives of those careening by you on the airline go-carts and on foot. Watch the father as he forcefully pushes his son along the jetway and tersely chides him at the urinal, forgetting that he is a boy and not a man. You sit down and eat the sub and pie your dad packed for you ever so thoughtfully (saving the second slice for later), watching the stewardess with the red hair by whom you almost sat before you second-guessed yourself. In mid-sandwich, you take a picture of yourself and those around you in the reflective roof at the food court. You watch the girl with the cartilage piercings handwrite her journal and wonder about what she is writing in a journal to which you will never have access. You sit in a metal man-machine and climb into the air and your body is lifted across the country and shot out again in another city. You scrounge together a group with which to share the taxi fare and the cabbie rips you off anyway, but you are home.

Home is a funny word for me now, since I suppose I have two. Here, the context of home is "school home." Dorm home.

This is the second time in recent memory that I have flown next to a pilot. The last time I was literally next to the guy and I read his copy of Details with Angelina Jolie on the cover - the "Desire" issue. He told me about some burger joint in Newport whose name I forget as well as a liquor store that sells "near expiration date" goods on the cheap. I think it's Newport Liquor, or something imaginative like that. He told me that he was never worried flying, never fretting about being responsible for a fuselage full of passengers (incredible). I didn't talk much to this one (across the aisle); I was reading and I've gotten to the point flying where I really don't care about the "alone in a crowd syndrome." Neither of them had seen Fight Club, which I inquired about because of the "airplane safety card" parody.

But now it's 2:30AM and time to turn in. More on the flipside.

[ brief additions and edits @ 3:00PM in between classes ]

[ picked up again @ 8:30PM ]

I can't believe how the day passes by.

Good news for the web. Ticketmaster sucks a lot, as this ridiculous suit demonstrated. I saw Matthew Sweet at the 9:30 Club shortly before I returned (Friday, to be specific), and the damnable Ticketbastard charges totaled up to what another ticket would have cost. I know the 9:30 is meant to be an all-ages club (it's the owner's "philosophy" since he wasn't able to enjoy shows as a tot), but $20 tickets with $6.50 "handling" and $10 parking and $2 (with tip) coatcheck, well, you would have to be one hooked up, rich-ass kid to see many shows there for the hell of it. Not to mention the fact that it's in the middle of an area that burned to the ground in the 1960's and hasn't really been rebuilt (cheap real estate in the house!). Kids and hipster twentysomethings from the suburbs rush in and mangle the racial demographic for a few hours on one block, then rush back out in a stampede to safety.

I took Pa�l for his birthday, and his little brother came along. It was a fine time with its surreal moments. We ran into this girl Joanna with whom Pa�l had a very brief thing a little while ago. She's from New Jersey, and she's going to his school next year. Given that the show was in DC, it wasn't exactly a meeting one would expect, but she was visiting a friend at Catholic and they happened to be going to the show, so our groups met up. Joanna was very flirty with the both of us, but we kept it cool. I'm sure she gets a lot of comments on her hair; it's a coppery red and hangs long in near-sausage curls. It's how Pa�l found her in the dark reddish nightclub light. From the basement level, I hopped in the payphone and phoned home, then found some spare change on the floor and rang Kim[berly] up. I suppose I proved my "realness" with that and managing to find her friend Julie (at the show). That wasn't too hard since I picked at exactly how long her "short" hair was when we were on the phone, and we settled on about an inch and a half. Julie was waiting by the backdoor for Matthew's exit and I told her Kim said "hi" on our hurried way to get to the car, not wanting to have it locked inside since they close 15 minutes (so they say) after the show is over. Hm, Julie thought my name was Josh. Haha, I sure don't get that enough.

The show itself was a lot of fun. I hadn't been to the 9:30 in a while and I've been dying to see Matthew Sweet for some time now. All of us horsed around and generally acted like morons having a blast and rocking out. Eventually it was rock overload, but that was fine - I had my earplugs in full effect (well, I cheated a little, okay, but no major ringing). "100% Fun" was one of my first CD's and I still play it all the time. I wish he'd done "Smog Moon," but you take what you can get. His drummer was drunk as all hell; Matthew dissed the club for not getting the drums miked [micced?] properly and Ric (the drummer) kept tossing his sticks and grabbing new ones - seemed very surly. One nearly hit the VIP area.

I thought about the phone call a bit; it is interesting how people choose to socially interact because of diaries, and what the net brings to modern social interaction. There are big net superstars that run together, as evidenced by the SXSW stuff I've seen along with the vanity sites (joesmith.com, etc.) through which I've passed. In a more general sense, however, the transition from net contact to a "real world" method of contact seems to be one society doesn't quite know how to do yet unless it's in some kind of giant jamboree or carefully planned meeting. The net doesn't lend itself to a casual meeting the way a phone call does. Diarists will leave email and voicemail contacts, maybe even AIM or ICQ information, sometimes pictures (sometimes lots of them). But there is always a distance placed in between two people by monitors and a net connection. Online journals are a terrific approach-avoidance: pay attention to me, love me, but never meet me, never hug me. And then there is the question of what you know and what you don't know - for example, Kim knew precisely where I was and what my surroundings looked like. I know what she looks like (a [safe] bet hedged on [many] web-based pictures), but not a thing about where she is or what her home is like. So we had a quick conversation between a disembodied voice coming from the 9:30 and a voice paired with a face without any context. Smashing! Maybe I'll call you from here, someday. Probably not, however, as chances are I lack your phone number.

Pa�l (and his brother) slept over that night and the next day we were supposed to do dinner with two other friends of his but that ended up not happening due to technical parental difficulties. I did what I could to make something of his birthday dinner. We ended up eating pizza that I paid for with a check that I had forgotten I had in my wallet (!), IBC root beer, cupcakes, and brownies while playing Base Wars on the Nintendo with his brother. It was totally retro and a hell of a lot of fun; it reminded me of the sleepover days and sneaking down the creaky steps of my old house into the kitchen for more candy than we were ever supposed to eat. It's hard when you know someone is upset on a day that should be a good one - given the circumstances, I improvised as best I could. I think I have to credit my Dad with those instincts along with my recently calmed down demeanor. Before we left Pa�l's house, we watched a Man Show about practical jokes and I remembered yet another reason why I hate the wannabe cable service at school - no Comedy Central.

Being home from college yields a power struggle with parents. You are convinced you should be able to do whatever you want since you can do that at school, they are convinced that you can't when you are on their turf. Sherri and I have discussed that in depth quite a bit. I talked to Pa�l about some of the other stuff I had mentioned to Sherri. I was asking her about all of these "big questions" that seem to be looming in the minds of angsty young adults and college students galore. "Is it enough," I inquired, "to ask these questions and realize there is no 'great answer' and be happy that you are smart enough to ask them but then move on and just live life?"

"I think it's okay to live with the pain, to feel the pain, it's a good thing. There is a pain to integration, but you don't let it overwhelm you," she said (or rather, I paraphrase, at this point).

"But then who perceives more truly? The child who has an unblemished sense of things, or the scarred, the experienced individual?"

"That's a good question." She paused. "I think there is a beauty at each step... There are a lot of bad realities out there. You have to find the one that works for you."

I told her about some of the experiences I'd been going through recently. She talked about how people find their protection - but that must not overcome the ability to be honest and open/vulnerable, it just means you make it a little harder while not letting that part die off. A time for games, and a time for purity. More of the balancing act, the integration.

I liked the way she put things so succinctly. It resolved [for now] a lot of the macro-worries that had been flitting around my mind and she said it in such a way that it meant more than just saying "Seek a balance and blahblahblah hippie-speak blah." It's odd to have so many "soundbites" leap out at me in a brief moment and stick, but they rang true. Talking to Sherri is always good.

A lot of the angst and questions came from conversations along the lines of the ones I had with Mike (from CTY). I remember him saying "consciousness is discretized," a word of his invention, I believe. It's true, though. Everything you see is merely a code for some number representing some particular wavelength of visual light. Everything is being filtered through a sensory system that distorts "true" perception. It's all a bunch of sensory snapshots that your brain fills in with educated guesses when telling you "what's out there." Language bars you from ever capturing all of it quite right. Mike was worrying about calling things "indescribable," for then you have already described them. It was all very Platonic and a giant mess of logic and philosophy and digging a miserable hole. You get to the point where you want to throw your hands in the air and consider yourself as a giant sensory organism no better than an overgrown flagellum. You're a brain being supported by some hunk of muscle and a skeleton, trying to pass your genes on to a new generation. You aren't doing enough. You aren't achieving in the rat race. How will you resolve any of this if thousands of years of humans haven't managed to understand piddle shit about life itself? "Instant mental breakdown, just add stress!"

In polysci, the prof opened with a joke about three umpires at the World Series. He said it was the entirety of the course, and that isn't a joke, but here it is. The first is a rookie; never before has he been in the championships. The second is a veteran; he's been there a few times. The third is the most senior umpire in the league, and is revered by all. They call the game and leave together, having a conversation. The first umpire says, "I called it like I saw it." The second umpire says, "I called it like it really was." And the third umpire says "Nothing happened until I called it." There's some perspective on perception for you. Or, at the very least, perspective on legal matters.

I think I am moving out of the period where I didn't care too much about dealing with people for a while. People are poking out of the woodwork again. I saw Blythe over break for the first time in ages. She lives two floors above me but we never see each other. We were supposed to get coffee sometime a few weeks ago at her suggestion, but she flaked out. So I suggested we do something over break. We discussed quite a few things, among them: the line between forgive and forget, the fragility of the brain (ever seen an epileptic seizure?) and drugs, and acting irrationally. That last one was something I hammered on, talking about the difference between knowing and knowing, particularly when you set on a path of irrationality after having been on one of rationality. The tangent, of course, is the point at which what you have defined to be the rule suddenly changes when you make a single exception. That's something I've been thinking about quite a bit lately: what makes you so nonchalant about something of which you have been so wary as soon as the rule breaks once?

She and I seem to be setting a precedent of wings and ribs at Clyde's of Reston; this was our second time ordered a nearly identical meal - save my getting apple pie instead of pecan. The waitress was a real doll. Everything was "done!" as soon as we asked for something and she rushed our order, as requested. She didn't charge me for the cheddar cheese (quite good) on the apple pie and gave Blythe a free cup of coffee to boot. When I asked her for her name, she thought I was going to report her to the manager (!). I assured her it was for complementary purposes only. She happened to run by me when I was telling the manager how nice she'd been and was genuinely shocked that I had said something. That was a warm-fuzzy feeling, but it also made me wonder how many people take the time to complement good service. Besides her, I'd had a really good waitress when I took my sister out for a snack - she gave me my soup for free, even after I pointed out her mistake on the bill. Snacktacular!

I forgot how much I love They Might Be Giants, but going home and listening to all the tapes is a good reminder. Even my "turn the stereo down" dad listened to "Apollo 18" and "Flood" and found things to enjoy during our road trip. And now, I want to see Boom Boom Satellites.

Oh ho, I've got it made:

Brent (12:42:49 AM): dude lets find russian brides

Jordan (12:43:08 AM): WORD

Yeah, and was everyone there blind? Why was no one talking to the girl on the left?

And now, to close with an email snippet from Brett (during break), whose words I always enjoy:

"I'm back in vegas until wednesday. It is as material and transient and fucked-up a city as ever... you should visit sometime, before it gets destroyed for its sins."