Category: Uncategorized

I went back to the “Anthology of American Folk Music” today, the one that Harry Smith did. I was listening through while at work getting ready for my “man club” meeting tonight: a listening party.
I knew that day that you played the Carter Family’s “Single Girl, Married Girl” that I had heard it before, but couldn’t place where. Then on the 5th disc of the set, there it is. It took me back to not when I first got the “Anthology” but to when I was listening to it in your living room. I like the song so much, but I don’t feel that it’s appropriate for the man club, and furthermore I would have to explain why I included, something I am having to think too much about for all of the songs I am including. This one I don’t have to think as much about, but I don’t want to tell my reasons.
I have to say some of the best times I have had with you have been in the last year. I miss all of the physical stuff and all of that, a lot, but I really enjoyed the way we got along during this time. The way we talked and things didn’t have to be as loaded with resentment and guilt.
These songs remind me of the last year and I can just smile, and I could just cry. I’ll try the former.

Did a simple thing like taking melatonin tonight. Have to work the early shift tomorrow and need to force myself to go to sleep. If I just think about you, toned, red t-shirt, floppy-haired, fighting sleep like a baby, longing for it – I can finally smile. I like tucking you into bed. I need to do the same for myself now.

Don’t know why I spent time this weekend walking down the razor edge cliff of sorting and viewing digital photos. I filled up many compact flash cards with ones of you, I know now. I was worried I would fall off the ledge and go spiraling down. I should not look at the photos, at least not yet. But like a moth to a flame, I could not resist.
Lo and behold though, I realized that it didn’t hurt like I thought it would. It’s almost as though the anticipation of the pain of a life without you was worse than the actuality of it. Not that it doesn’t hurt. I miss you immensely and still don’t want to think this is forever, but I knew I would be okay when I saw this one poorly-taken photo, and it made me laugh a little. You are smiling, Yo La Tengo shirt, latch-hook project in lap, blurry like big foot.

When you are not with me, remember and keep me close. If you do not feel me, concentrate a little and I am there. There’s this song that I can’t stop listening to that makes 3/4 sense, and that’s good enough. It’s a divorce song, or a 3/4 divorce song for me. It says about 3/4 of what I feel about you. The truth, lies, heartbreak, and all.

So I was lending this book to K the other night. It’s a book about Jackie O. Cultural studies. She and her mother saw the dresses at a museum once and she’s all about it. I met the author once right after I was of age. We were both drinking at a party in his honor. I spent the rest of the night in the corner, planning my escape route.
When I gave her the book I briefly flipped through the pages an realized I had stowed photos in between the pages. I think they are photos that you saw once: Amanda in bra and panties, Robert with more hair, Amanda’s prom picture etc. I think you tried to show my mother the more interesting of the photos once.
I took your picture once while you had on less clothes than that, and I believe you were un-encumbered with the whole thing. You don’t look happy, but not sad either. I don’t know. Those pictures are gone, but not in my mind. I can conjure with ease.
But tonight I first got weepy, like I can do at times, about Amanda again. It wasn’t the half naked pictures. It really was that prom photo. The one of her before I knew her, but the one that looks like her about the time I met her. I guess I am getting so old. I really knew her shortly after a prom photo? When did I come to know you? Seems like ages ago now.
The bra and panties was taken while on the Outer Banks. I used to take trips like that. I used to want to take trips like that. I wanted to take that trip with you, sans needing intimate photographic coverage. Those photos just make you think too much. They just make you want even when want is not what you need, because need and want are such different things, right?
Or are they. I sit here tonight looking at those photos and missing something I don’t desire any more, but desiring something that I have no photos immediately available of. I know it’s a broken record, but I wish you were here tonight. It gets lonely (yadda yadda yadda). I’ve got pictures in my mind. I wish when I went in that other room, there was more than loose sheets and pillows to discover.
I think of you in that way still, but mostly I think of you happy. Hopefully, I’ve said something that made things different, and the look you give moves all of the stars around the sky – at least a little.
I’m such a sap.

There’s too many dudes that feel the way I do about you. Are you worth all these songs? It would be easier if what Chris says is true. She thinks you love me. I ain’t that man, or am I? I know I deserve you as much as you deserve me. And that’s flipping this whole thing on its head. Take me to your friends and let’s be married. Let’s be married and be happy. And when we’re happy there’s nothing beyond us.
I miss you when I sleep. Especially these days.

You, see I awake, but not really. This is a dream. I have marshmallows in my ears and I am trying to roast them, but I keep singeing my sideburns. There’s a topless mermaid trying to put on a sweater, and two kids bouncing on an abandoned box spring. A dude, 6’3″ and blonde, tosses a racquetball at my head, and I violently shift and avoid being hit, only to lose the marshmallow which falls into the fire, and promptly melts. I can hear whippoorwills in the trees some half mile off. I am taking a walk in the woods with a gray figure. I climb a poplar tree, or what I believe to be a poplar tree, a 100 foot sapling. I lose my grip and start to fall again. I awake and it’s the back of your head I am looking at. Then I awake and it’s that damn down pillow again.

I am still so in love with you. When you leave, I don’t want you to. When you are not with me, I want you to be. When I am away, I want to come back to you. I am ashamed.

Tornadoes tore through downtown and a few surrounding neighborhoods here in Atlanta last night. My experience with it was just of some hail falling at my house with heavy rain, a cancelled trip to the bar, and not much else so far. Apparently my office, the CNN Center, was heavily damaged, but when I checked my work email just a few minutes ago, I was told that we would be back open for business on Monday. I hope all of the news will just hold off until then. If you were planning to do something newsworthy, please wait.
The upside of this is that the electricity at my house did not even blink during the storm. This in a neighborhood where the whole power grid will often fail when just one neighbor adjusts his or her thermostat in the summer. Not even a flicker during this storm and it was one of the worst I have seen in the 4 years I have lived here.
And now, since it is an election year, we have to find someone to blame for the storm, and I am pointing our finger at the Georgia Governor, Sonny Perdue. If you do not recall, back in November the governor held a prayer vigil on the steps of the capitol to pray for relief from the drought that is going on in Georgia.
A few days later, lo and behold, it rained. My friends joked that of course Sonny had consulted with weather.com before deciding when to plan his vigil so that he could increase the likelihood of his “rayers” being answered. It all seemed a fluke.
But wait a few months, it seems as if his prayers have been answered now. Just a few months later. God works in mysterious ways. At the governor’s behest, He has been sending us enough water in a 48 hour period to singlehandedly cut the drought damage in half. In the process, it took part of the roof of the Georgia Dome, the World Congress Center, windows at the CNN Center, and 20 houses in the Cabbagetown neighborhood.
Thanks Sonny! Be a little more careful with the state-sponsored prayers in the future.

At the end of the night this is what there is: you there wanting something; me here wanting you. The whole world of this galaxy in between. Maybe one day the will all amount to something. At the end of the day, or perhaps, the very next morning.