Generally Discontent

And away we go! Zoom! Uh. Finally on the bus to Hartford, CT, after a busy morning. Packing, cleaning up, making sure I have everything (I do)(I think), saying bye to me bruddah Jason, blah blah blah.

Abused BU’s computer lab one final time, got an email from Motherboar’s Kenny saying that the band loved the sketches I did for their t-shirt design. Woo! Now I just have to figure out how I’m gonna draw it while on the road. Hm. Missed seeing Carly one last time because I am a dork for not calling her cell phone (according to her)(well, I am). Ah well, I’d just be annoying, saying bye five hundred times and she’d smack me and then I’d have to call the cops and get a restraining order and, shit, there are only so many hours in the day, y’know?

Anyway, I got the bus station after a slow, sad cab ride through Boston. Someone had a bumper sticker that said UNLESS YOU’RE A HEMMORHOID GET OFF MY ASS! but I didn’t get a picture of it, dammit. Had McDonald’s, got my ticket (I had a 15% off coupon! Woo!), got on the bus. Aaaaaand left late, because the bus wouldn’t, um, move. More to the point, the handicap access door was loose, so the Cliff Clavin-like bus driver couldn’t put the bus in gear.

The handicap access door I am sitting next to, of course. So if I fall out of the bus, this is gonna be a really fucking short journal. Ah well. If that happens, they better give me another coupon.

I got a piece of hamburger stuck in my teeth and it’s pissing me off. At least I got some music to listen to, which is good because I have two college girls sitting behind me, and they’re of the TAK LOUDLY ABOUT AMAZINGLY UNINTERESTING THINGS!!! variety. Fun!

So, what the hell am I doing? I mean, seriously. I keep saying I don’t know what I’m doing, but is that true? All I know is that for the first time in a long time, I can foresee no particular future beyond where the next bed I crash in is going to be. Beyond that, nuthin’. It’s weird. A blank slate or a fog bank obscuring. I have no idea.

I guess this is an attempt at a purge. Forcing out the black acidic sludge of lethargy, the stuff that greases spinning wheels, gums up my works. The shit that has permeated me like a cancer on all levels of my existence. Only way to get it out is to take it to an unfamiliar place where it will draw itself up, unsure, afraid, where I can take it out back and put it down.

Christ, I’m trying to sneak up on myself. How monumentally stupid can I be? Wait, don’t answer that.

Well, no matter my motives and fears, this is pretty exciting. I’m excited! Back out on the road, pretty much, moving, sunlit trees blurring by.

Although, this soundtrack of Blind Guardian mixed with SHUT UP COLLEGE GIRLS really isn’t helping. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! Ho hum. I want a smoke.

Oh wait, they’re med students of some sort, going over exercises or something.

Girl One: “So, I wanna know why the baby is brain dead!”
Girl Two: “The baby is brain dead because the baby is dead!”
Girl One: “.................Oh!”

Almost in Hartford, thank christ.

Posted by CosmoDNA at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And away we go! Well, sorta. Okay, not really. Goddamn I hate people sometimes. Bleh.

Posted by CosmoDNA at 03:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So what about the people who are letting me mooch off them? Gosh, they’re nice. But what do they think of this lunacy I’m embarking on? Hell, I’m invading their lives, right? Maybe they don’t see it that way, but I know that no matter how much you want guests, you eventually want them to leave. Or maybe that’s just me because I hate people. Who knows?

Guess my biggest concern is being a nuisance. Maybe not at first – people wouldn’t offer if they didn’t want me staying, right? But what if I do one wrong thing, refuse someone’s cooking, fuck I don’t know. Really, I’m not all that concerned about it. I’m generally not a disruptive person.

Maybe that’s my problem. If I go to someone’s house and act all polite and wash dishes and pick up after myself, ten years from now no one will remember my visit. But what if I go nuts? Walk around in my underwear, shit on the lawn, puke on the cat? Then I’ll be remembered! They’ll say, “Hey, remember that fucker Josh who stayed with us?” “Oh god, don’t speak that name! I never got the stains out of the cat!” Infamy, baby!

Posted by CosmoDNA at 08:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here in the middle of BU’s campus, waiting for Carly so’s we can go to Best Buy and get her an Xbox game. Nice day, cool in the shade finally, wearing my new sneakers. Phone, camera, and MP3 player charged up. Ready for anything!

Well, ready for sitting on my ass, anyway. It’s strange watching all these students mill about, beginning their journey into education. Or their journey into beer pong, the limit of Febreeze vs. pot smoke, roofies, and several thousand gallons of puke. But education is in there somewhere. They begin their journey as I begin mine, though never the twain shall meet. I can identify with them no more than I can identify with moon people, though I have a sneaking suspicion that I probably have more in common with moon people.

Anyway, the point is that I am heading off to my own education. Reeducation in the School of Life! Yeah! I’m majoring in Self-Reconstruction with a minor in Introspection, man! I’m gonna graduate with honors, get a master’s in Experience! Head of a class of one! Paying off student loans from…uh. I ran out of shitty metaphors.

Maybe the real point is that college girls are hot, and goddamn do I love tits!

Posted by CosmoDNA at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Not knowing what I’m getting myself into certainly is exciting, but I also know I’ll be in safe environments. At least as first. Maybe at some point I’ll freak out and stray from the already shaky path I’m on. I dunno.

But I’m sad, a little bit. Sorta numb, really. Staying at mom’s, I’m in a slow transitional state that doesn’t seem real. I feel like I’m waiting for my ride to show up, constantly. Bah.

Got everything I need, pretty much, and anything else can be gotten later. Just waiting to breathe again, take in new air, do stuff a little differently. Or a lot. Who knows? Maybe this will all just be boring and I’ll want to go home and resume my rut. Naw. But I feel the echoes of my old life clawing at me, saying, “C’mon man, just sit down, you don’t have to do a damn thing. Just…don’t…move.”

It’s good that I’m doing it this way, then. I won’t have a chance to get too comfortable. Forcing myself to do something. Above all else, it’s what I need lest I truly become that broken, rusted piece of machinery collecting dust in the corner, forgotten, never again being an important thing. Hell.

I’m sure if I could think like a normal person, none of this would be happening. But where’s the fun in that? Anyway, I bought some new underwear today, so look out world!

Posted by CosmoDNA at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m not awake enough for this crap. I’m in that funk-that-is-not-a-funk place right now, that Void, as Vani called it. It’s that place you reach when you’re going away and you don’t have enough to keep you occupied. And the things you could be doing are menial and mundane, and you’ll get to them later. Fun.

When I was going to Europe, I described the feeing as being split in half, part of me already over there, leaving a ghost of the real me stateside to tend to all the boring tasks and preparations. I took a lot more poetic liberties back then, I think.

Guess it’s the same feeling now, but my focus has changed. My motives are different. Instead of chasing love halfway across the world, I’m launching a preemptive strike against my own oblivion. I’ve felt for some time now that if I continue on the path I’m on, I’ll be dead within two years. Maybe not physically dead, but it might as well be that. Nothing left but an empty automaton. No thanks.

Damn, how dramatic, huh? I’m doing my best not to sound whiney and angsty and all those things that are so cool at sixteen but pretty pathetic at thirty-three. Just stating the facts as I see ‘em, I guess. But that doesn’t mean that what I say can’t come across the wrong way. I made a comment to Carly about how when I get back around Christmas, I’m just going to blink out of existence at the stroke of midnight, New Year’s Eve. A poor joke, I was merely saying that I had no idea what I would be doing after the end of the year, that’s all. But the look on her face was heartbreaking. Bah. I never said I consider the feelings of others before I open my stupid mouth and start talking, did I?

It’s just that, until a few weeks ago, I was pestered with a feeling I can only describe as doom. Doom in my life. An ending unlike any ending I’ve ever faced. Not only a close to this chapter of my life, but a close to the whole book. Jeez, that makes me sound suicidal, huh?

But I’m not. Not in the slightest.

As far as I can tell, this just means that I’m truly at a point where I have no idea what’s next. A total blank slate, a new book is beginning, et cetera, et cetera, blah blah metaphor. It’s strange, but I’m doing my best to welcome it without flinching too much.

This is all just a by-product of being free after years of a self-imposed imprisonment. I’ve been a rut for as long as I can remember, and simply can’t accept that this rut may very well be what my life is, despite the evidence. I think I can do better than that.

But I can’t make any vows save for this: I’ll just keep going, I’ll see what I can see, and with a little luck I’ll find something neat. No promises of reinvention, betterment, complete changes of attitude, words, words, words. No more “Gotta get my shit together”-ing, gotta do this, gotta do that. I am who I am, and who I am is who I always will be. God damn you if you don’t like it. And that’s that.

Posted by CosmoDNA at 07:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)