Kermit

"Perfection is my direction".  I'm just getting there very slowly.  I'm on a skateboard in the bike lane on the side of the highway and somehow I need to get onto a motorcycle and get into the fast lane or else I'm going to be late.  The GRE is what I'm talking about.

I'm supposed to take it within the next couple of weeks and I am not prepared at all.  Every time my parents call they ask about how I'm doing with getting into classes and I tell them "oh you know I've been studying and reading and stuff", which is true but since they ask every time they call it must seem to them that that's all I am doing and that I'm going to do great on the test.  Not true.  Actually, it's quite the opposite.

I have been studying here and there, kind of leisurely, like I'm in the mall window shopping, picking up drinks along the way and stopping to chat with people as I make my way to the store I went there for.  And then I forget what I'm there for and head in different directions.  Awful study habits.  You'd think I just graduated high school.  Not even, because I don't remember any of the easy math problems from freshman year.  "How do you find the area of a triangle?"  I'm freakin' retarded.  And then they expect me to remember particulars of readings from my undergrad to make myself sound scholarly. 

I dunno. I mean it's been almost two years since I was in classes.  I'm trying to cram all this new old information into my brain again.  I'm trying to click on refresh on the scroll bar and it looks like the connection is down.  Am I going senile already?  Did I
drink away those cells?  I could have sworn I had a ton left to spare.  I feel like these past two years have really taken a toll on my mind and body.  A broken toe, two pulled hamstrings, a drunken stay overnight in a hospital, brainwashing, insomnia etc... I'm kind of scared.  They say that you are basically the person that you will be for the rest of your life by age 25.  That means that if I don't change my ways within the next year or so I will be stuck as this lazy drunken fool on the side of the road with no master's degree, rambling about nonsense that no one cares to hear about trying to scrounge up change to buy a forty.  Or A, just one, can of beer.

Would you throw me a quarter if you saw me on the side of the road with a sign that read "will sing song in Kermit D. Frogg voice for change?" You better, that's my
drinking money.

Toileep Time

I've been spending a lot of my time lately on the toilet.  Not doing anything gross that you guys don't want to hear about and I would not want to write about but just sitting there clothed.  Well not just sitting, sitting with my elbows on my thighs and my face in my hands and sleeping.  I did this a lot in basic training to get away from the drill sergeants who would not let us sleep during the day, and I've made a habit of doing it at work when I need a quick pick me up to get through the night. 

I normally spend about 1 full hour of my time working here on the toilet.  Not, working on the toilet, but at work on the toilet.  Not all at once but split up throughout the 12 hour work schedule.  Today I went a little overboard and fell asleep for about an hour and a half.  When I woke up my leg was asleep and I had drool dripping from the side of my mouth.  I think I may have even been snoring.  I was rudely awakened by a person conducting his own personal business in the
neighboring stall.  Gross, I know.  I was a little offended that he would even dare disrupt my naptime to do something so wretched and vile.

It seems that I've had many a job that I could sleep at while I was working.  For those of you I worked at NBC with I'm sure you recall the bin that I would hole myself up in for much of the day sleeping off my hangover underneath our equipment.  I worked as a shoe salesman for awhile and would sleep in the back on top of the boxes whenever the store was going a little slow.  I was a trainer for awhile and had my own office in the back which I utilized on numerous occasions.  And there is always that time I got caught sleeping in the phone booth while I was working as a market research interviewer in the mall for a company called Car-Lene Research.

I think sleep is a very important part of life but don't think it should have to be done on your own time.  Why waste time with sleeping when those are valuable hours that you could be doing something a lot more productive?  For instance yesterday I decided to not sleep at all.  Instead I spent hour upon hour conducting needless transactions on a video game and saving none of my progress.  That was time well spent.  What would I have accomplished if I had slept?  Nothing. 

After I was done with that I spent about an hour and a half writing an email only to erase it without sending it to the recipient.  That was more time well spent. It was about as well spent as the next two hours I spent staring at the wall or pacing about my room looking for something to do.  Boy am I glad I didn't sleep.  Because if I slept in my nice warm comfortable bed with all of those pillows and complete darkness then I would not have been able to sleep on the toilet today in the bright cold bathroom in the basement of the building that I work and wake up with a dead leg and a rank smell permeating my nostrils.  And then I'd probably be happy now.  And who really wants to be happy at 4:30 in the morning?

On the Move

I haven't been to San Fran yet but will one day.  I'm actually thinking San Diego or LA.  But that's close enough.

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?--It's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by.  But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

I've realized in recent years that this is the exact moment in life that I live for.  It's what keeps me looking forward to the next day.  I live for that moment when I will leave everything that I know and I'm comfortable with to experience something completely different and to start over.  I like new starts.  Once I get comfortable I get bored.  I think it's a way for me to connect with the child within me and to never grow up.

When you are a kid you experience the whole world like you have never seen it before.  You look at the trees around you and the people.  You notice the cracks in the sidewalk and the lovers holding hands in the park. That's where the thought ends.  You don't need to know anything else.  You don't contemplate the larger concepts.  You take things as they are and that is all.  But as an adult you take in as many aspects of the city to see where this all fits in the bigger picture.  You try to make yourself comfortable again in your new surroundings.  It's our nature.  It's the same reason why I try to relate everyone I meet to someone I met somewhere else in my life.  Once you're comfortable though, you abandon all of these child-like observations.  You know the world around you.  The ever day things that used to excite you are now dull in comparison to the places that you could be.  So you need to venture to different parts of the city to find this excitement.  But most of the time you don't and you get stuck in a routine.  A comfortable, uninteresting routine; the routine of life.  And it bores the hell out of you.

Or maybe this is all just me.  Maybe it's my supposed ADHD that drives me to new things.  Maybe it's my own dull existence that bores the hell out of me.  Hey who knows, maybe I do have SAD and I need some "light treatment".  I'm not sure what it is.  But I do know that it's only been about 6 months and I need to escape.  I need to be where the action is.  Not in Iraq, I was thinking like Cuba.  Maybe I can live on a cane farm and push weight for a drug lord with an automatic rifle ducking in bushes as helicopters fly overhead and low crawling to a ditch where I take fire from the authorities and throw grenades to buy time before running to the wilderness and to a river where I hold my breath for an immense period of time not possible for any other human being, to escape.  Or just off the Miami coast where I'll shark hunt and party all night long in salsa clubs where the dim red lights and frilled skirts and shirts give me images of Spain and all the guys with the outdated pompadours that know how to dance get the girls.  That's where I want to be.  I want to see that.  I want to experience that.  I want to smell the shark blood in between my finger nails and taste the gunpowder on my lip.  What's it like to work for a drug cartel?  Could you ever imagine how rewarding it must be to gut a creature that is feared by most of the United States because of the movie Jaws?

I don't even really need that much excitement.  A new club or bar or restaurant would do.  All of my friends here want to go to the all of the same damn places.  They're comfortable there.  They know the bartenders, they've studied each cranny of the bathroom stall and they've got their favorite spots.  Great.  If I wanted familiarity I'd go home and drink in my room alone while watching Animal House and crushing beer cans on my forehead.  Where are these peoples’ zest for life?  Where are the troublemakers that created their own excitement everywhere they went that I used to surround myself around?  And why does my friend Maurice love huge ugly women?

I guess I'll never understand some things.  But I do know that it has something to do with growing up and I'm having a hard time with it.  Where's Tinkerbell when you really need her?

Night Creature

Tell me if I'm crazy:

For the most part there is not one moment of sadness that I encounter in the summertime.  I can't even think of one instance when I was not excited about every second of life this past summer or the past few summers for that matter.  But once winter hits this depression sets in.  But it isn't a constant depression.  It's this depression that comes and goes in a matter of minutes, seconds even.  And to a certain extent it can be controlled.

For the past few weeks I've been pretty much submerged in darkness because of my schedule.  I haven't been seeing much of the daytime hours. My world has been a lot like Batman's.  But yesterday I did not go to sleep until 2 pm and I saw a whole new world that has been denied to me nestled in those early hours which I normally spend comatose when I have them off.  A hopeful and excited air replaced that cold, yucky, loneliness that I’ve been feeling in the nighttime.  I was still alone but for some reason it was a good loneliness.  I felt like a crusader at the beginning of
a long voyage.  The world seemed small and I felt like I was in control of it all and big things lay ahead.  I don't know what big things but they were BIG, humongous even, Gigantic!  Trust me on this one.

I opened my curtains and my blinds and played happy music all morning as I studied and read.  Eventually I got tired and decided to take a 15-minute nap.  The 15-minute nap turned into a six-hour dead sleep.   The phone rang a bunch of times.  Sometimes I heard it and did not answer and other times I was oblivious.  I woke up and it was dark outside and the depression started to set in again. 

I closed my blinds and decided to take a walk; the loneliness was sticking me in my ribs.  Once outside I decided to come back in because it was cold and nothing seemed as it did in the daytime.  All the goodness that was floating around was now under the rocks and grass and in the cracks in the concrete.  The rabbits were hiding and the coyotes were hunting.  The main lobby of the dorm was empty and suddenly I felt like the lead character in the first scene of 28 days later.  I felt like I was the only one in the building.  I went back to my room and nothing felt comfortable.  I turned on all of my lights put on the TV and for a moment.  My TV keeps me company sometimes on these cold winter nights.  But this was just a temporary fix.  I knew I would have to come up with something else soon.

When I became bored with the movie I scoured the room in search of my inhaler.  My depression inhaler.  I needed something to do.  I put some Sublime on.  "Life is too short so love the one you've got..."  And there it was.  I felt my spirits rise up and begin to float on towards the ceiling.  One song made everything better. I was happy again.  But the song ended and I became sad once again.  So I played it again.  And then I played it again, and I played it again, and then again and again and again and then I... well I played it a bunch more times.  I must have played the song 57 times before switching to "Island in the Sun" which I played for a total of 63 times straight.  I was happy pretty much the rest of night.  When morning hit I was home free.

I feel like a werewolf trying to survive the night without killing something.  Just trying to hold on until daytime comes and makes everything better again. I've become a real creature of the night.  I've always considered myself a night owl but this is ridiculous.  When there is nothing to do and it is dark I should be sleeping, not fighting off depression.  Where did this depression come from anyway?  Tell whoever sent it I don't want it anymore. Tell them to take it back; It's ugly, and I have no use for it.

Toys R Us

"Toys R Us" has brainwashed my generation.  Their song that promised fun and excitement in every corner if you just heeded their plea to not grow up is the source of our countries woes.  I say that they are the most responsible for this lost generation that I am a part of.  A generation where 85 percent of the males age 18-35 play video games.  An age where college graduates are still fit only to work as bartenders or waiters or cashiers.  A generation that is taking on responsibilities that were normally taken on by people in their early twenties at an older and older age.  This is a generation that is refusing to grow up and I have embraced the trend.

My father had his first child (me) when he was 20.  By my age (24) he had already begun the career, which he plans to retire from next April.  I could not imagine myself with a child at my age.  Am I a grown up?  I don't really consider myself an adult just yet.  Do kids look at me like I'm not one of them anymore?
Because I am.  I hope they see that.  The day I have to grow up will be a sad day, because then I won't be a Toys R us kid anymore.  I won't be able to sit at the kids’ table and all fun will cease from that point on.  I'll have to start wearing grown up clothes and combing my hair different.  I'll always have to be the voice of reason instead of the protagonist of anarchy in the household.  I'll have to start saying things like, "stop that" and "go to your room" or threaten them with "I'll call your mother." 

I don't want to ever do that.  I want to be the cool older kid who the other kids try to be like.  I want to be the one that the parents yell at for getting their children all hyper.  I want to play hide and seek and ghosts in the graveyard and ride my bike to the park to play basketball and never work.  And I want naptime because those building blocks make my mind weary.

But something tells me those days are coming to an end.  When I used to go to stores like Wal-Mart or Kmart or JC Pennys kids saw me as one of them.  They would continue running around underneath the clothes and throwing things around.  I wasn't a threat to them.  Now, they look at me with fear in their eyes like I'm going to tell on them.  "No kid you don't understand" I feel like whispering, "I'm one of you".  But they don't see that.  All they see is the receding hairline and wrinkles under my eyes.  It's like they think I'm a spy.  Maybe I am, but I'm on their side.  Why can't they see this?

I guess I'd be skeptical too.  "Why does this old dude want to hang out with us?  Why isn't he doing adult things with the rest of the grown ups?"  Am I one of them now?  A grown up?  Don't tell me it's true.  I don't want to grow up.  I'm a Toys R Us kid. 

Old Softie

"Nope.  That's a big nope on that one dad."

This was my sister's response to my father's request for her to clean her room.  My father then went on to demand that she get upstairs and clean her room "this instant" (was the phrase he used to use when I was still living there).  But my sister told him to leave her alone because she was busy (talking to her friends on instant messenger).  She said she would do it later and told him to iron her work shirt for her.  He complied.

Astonished, is the best word I can think of for my reaction to this story that my mother told me yesterday. There was a time when my father would have beaten any one that would dare try to oppose his tyranny.  i remember once getting a bloody nose for trying to finish my paper on the computer when he told me to go to bed.  I remember being grounded for wearing socks in the house (I was supposed to wear slippers or go barefoot).  I remember a time when my father would not only put me to work on whatever needed to be done in the house but would also put my friends to work.  Who was going to say no those threatening eyes? 

I did once.  I had a girlfriend sleep over the house without my parents knowing and then woke up in the morning and tried to sneak off with my father's jeep to take her home.  As I was pulling out of the driveway my father was at his window screaming for me to "get my ass back in the house".  I took off anyway and when I got back to the house I had my father pulling me out of the vehicle by my ear and into the house.  My father had already called the cops on me and said I had stolen his car.  My mother called and reported that it had been returned and to dismiss the charges.  I was only gone maybe twenty minutes.

Admittedly my situation was a little worse than just saying no to cleaning my room but he reacted this way with everything that I did.  To him, me saying no to anything that he said to do was just as bad as me assaulting him with a crow bar.  What he did to me after that was just self defense. He was the ruler of that household and what he said was the law in the house.  Anyone who dare oppose it will bear the wrath of an alpha male on a rampage.

Now he irons my sisters shirts for her and cleans her room because she's busy talking on instant messenger and he would not want to interrupt her important schedule.  My sisters laugh at him and poke fun.  He gets emotional when the Yankees lose and will mope around for days.  He doesn't argue his points much in the house because he's always outnumbered by the women who have taken over and have fresh smelling things all over the living room and fufu balls in the shower and twenty pairs of shoes at the bottom of the stairs which he organizes at regular intervals during the day after my sisters drop them.  He cooks dinner and is offended if someone doesn't like what he's cooked and refuses to ever cook again until my sister gets on his lap and rubs his head and tells him that she loves him
and his cooking and gives him a big kiss and tells him to give her money so that she could get some new shirt or shoes or purse or her nails done or gas and promises to clean her room just after she gets the money and purchases whatever it is that she is trying to purchase at that moment.  Where did my father go?

I don't know where he went.  But I do know that when I go home now I feel him grabbing for me trying to get me to come back home so that he is not so outnumbered. I feel him begging me to save him.  He has become a servant in his "castle".  There was a coupe when I left the house for school years ago and he has been trying to regain control ever since.  But it's not a democracy and even if it was he'd be outvoted.

He retires next year and has been bragging about it to the rest of the family.  No one wants him to because that'll mean he'll be lurking around the house disrupting the power that they have gained, finding the little secrets that they were able to hide from him these past few years.  My sisters usually just tell him to shut up and call him annoying when he talks about how many months of work he has left.  I just hope I don't come home one day and see him knitting on a rocking chair with Oprah on and a cake in the oven.  I don't think I could take that.

Family

I don't know how many of you have read the book on the road by Jack Kerouak but I'm in the middle of my second time through.  I'm at the point where Sal is on his way back home after his first travels across the country.  He's already met and stayed with the Mexican girl and how now decided that it's time for him to go back home... to New York... in October and suddenly I got real homesick.  It doesn't matter how much fun that I'm having or how many people I've met or how exciting and interesting my life is at the moment, I will always get homesick around this time of year.

I think what I miss most is my sisters.  They're like my partners in crime.  I've grown up teaching them how to get away with the bad things that all kids do and telling them of my misadventures yet always trying to instill a good set of values.  It's weird how much influence you have as an older brother.  I've been telling my sisters for years that I want to move to California and I swear I get a little tear in my eye when I hear their plans for the future that involve them moving to California so that we can all be together.  I'm so proud of them for every little accomplishment that they have and for their strong sense of family.  My older-younger sister Jessica really wanted to go away for college next year but decided to stay because my younger-younger sister Alyssa said that she would miss her a lot if she left.

I picture the three of us in California and what our lives would be like.  My sisters would both be in college at that point and I should be getting settled teaching or writing or doing what I do now.  I'd be able to be their source of advice through some very important years of their life and for a period of time we'd be like a united family again only different, getting ready for a brand new stage in all of our lives. We are each trying to grow into adulthood together and help each other along as the stupid little pitfalls of life hit us and try to bring us down. 

There has been speculation lately as to whether I will be able to travel home this Christmas to spend it with my family.  Being the rookie here I get the short end of the stick with leave time.  I've been fighting to get those days off and they are trying to help me out because they realize how important it is to me but I'm not sure whether the trip will happen.  My sister said that she refused to open presents without me present, and that she would wait until I came home if it came to that, or that the whole family would come over here to visit me and ski this Christmas.  In essence she has decided to boycott Christmas this year if I can't come home or if they can't come here, just that little firecracker in her soul trying to make things happen.

It's funny because a lot that I have learned in my life has come through books and movies and sit-coms.  Not that my parents haven't taught me a lot and done their best to bring me up right.  I've just taken a lot from the different mediums of entertainment that I've engulfed myself in over the years and apply it to my life when I can.  A huge part of my "entertainment-upbringing" is contained in both the book and the movie the Godfather.  Not that I go around killing people or having people kiss my finger. It's more of the humanistic values and behaviors, the lessons about how to conduct business and everyday life. The older I get the more apparent and relevant this becomes and I find myself strictly adhering to many of their rules of guidance. 

I like to think of myself as a young Michael Corleone taking over the family that was never involved in organized crime.  I'm turning into what Michael Corleone was supposed to be.  Before his father was shot and the war broke out.  Before he took it upon himself to take care of the family business and abandon the normal life that had been afforded to him by his father.  I'm the Michael Corleone that never had to flee to Sicily but plans to visit Sicily out of curiosity in my roots.

I was told recently that I didn't act like the typical Italian.  Well part of that may be that I am not full Italian but actually more Hispanic than anything else but my counter was that the side of Italian that I am like is not the stereotypical one that is shown most often on the television screen.  I'm not a very possessive person.  I don't have the stereotypical Italian accent (which is really a New York Brooklyn or Bronx accent).  I don't wear a big gold chain around my neck and walk around in a jumpsuit.  And I definitely don't drive a Camaro with a bat in the back.  But my uncle does.

Jujubes

Jujubees.  Green Jujubees.  That is what I want right now.  But I can't have them.  Oh, I can have them later if I still want them but by that time I won't want them anymore.  That's the way things always seem to work out for me.  We have tons of candy here.  I don't mean to brag but I'm the one in charge of the snack fund here.  What I say goes when it comes to candy and other assorted snacks.  I do all of the purchasing. I do all of the stocking.  If somebody wants any kind of candy, I'm the man to come to.  I guess I'm the Candyman.  So I am the only one to blame for there not being any Jujubes down here.  See, the thing is if there were Jujubes down here I probably wouldn't want them.  I don't think anyone ever really wants Jujubes.  The main source of the Jujube empire's funds come from those stupid little quarter fed machines outside of Wal-Mart or inside your barbershop.  Those filthy machines that are probably loaded by dirty truckers who pick their nose the whole ride over and don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom.  They are what the Jujube makers thrive on.  But for some unknown reason I have a fucking craving for green, GREEN Jujubes.  Not one of those red ones that try to taste like cherry but really taste like cough syrup, not one of those yellow ones whose lemon flavor lacks punch and definitely not one of those orange ones that taste like tang with no sugar.  No I want green Jujubes.  The scrumptious lime flavored  chewy candy that is sweet enough to fulfill the diabetes that I don't have yet sour enough to make the back of my tongue dry up and develop bumps.  That is what would make me happy right now.

Or a girl.  And not one of these Hawaiin girls with fake blue or purple or green eyes and twenty other guys on her list.  And not a red-head who likes to get naked everywhere and show off all 13 of her below the waist piercings.  And definitely not that one whose already caused me too much heartache to endure.  No, I want a sweet girl.  I want a sweet down to earth girlthat enjoys the little things in life.  A girl that has as much love to give as I do.  A girl that is open-minded and likes my choice of movies or at least watches them and then argues with me about why she doesn't like them.  I want a girl just as spontaneous and erratic as myself.  I want A girl, not ten that all bug me in one way or another.  Just one that doesn't bug me at all and will sit by the fireplace or burning notebooks in the corner of my room this winter with me drinking hot chocolate and eating smores, watching thought provoking films and then wrestling with me.  Why don't I get these girls anymore?  Are there any left?  Or do I just come off as a man-whore and scare them away?  I'm not sure but somewhere along the line the sweet girls disappeared from my life or stopped looking at me as a possible mate. 

So I'm left with these other ones.  The desperate blonde that hugs and kisses me without any indication that I'm into her and the Russian who comes over to watch movies in skimpy shorts wagging her tail and thinks that I am all about her when I'm not.  The unattainable Hawaiian.  The insecure Asian.  The pierced red-head.  The rebounding bartender.  The "free-spirited" ex... And what I'm ultimately left with in the end is nothing.  I'm left looking for the next girl that may wind up filling my heart with joy causing bumps on the back of my tongue but will probably end up just being added to the list of unwanted Jujubees.

Ecstasy and Bitterness

I've recently started night shifts at twelve hour intervals 7pm - 7 am.  It's a peculiar thing because I'm ALWAYS up when everyone else is asleep now.  Before it was just weekends and the occasional visit during the week but now I stay up even when there isn't much to do but stay up.  That isn't the case right now.  I'm "working" which basically consists of me reading and talking and writing emails.  Occasionally I browse the internet looking at different travel deals to remote places of the world and pretend I am there.  Not that Colorado is bad but I guess I'm just never completely satisfied.  I wish sometimes I could just live like a nomad travelling around to different remote parts of the world discovering beautiful things for the first time that have been discovered over and over the past thousands of years but feeling like I was the first… and with a dog.  I may wear a hooded cloak with a satchel around my waist with different antidotes for curing any physical or mental ailments that may afflict me along the way and I'll grow out a bushy beard and grow my hair long and I just may change my name to Jesus only not pronounced G zuss.  I would pronounce it Hey Zeus and I would stop talking in any coherent language so that Americans who know no better will think I'm Spanish and Spanish who know a little better will think I'm deaf.  What will confuse them all will be the Reebok pumps that I will insist to wear at all times of the day and night.  That's what I really want sometimes.


And sometimes I want a fun-loving horse rider who is skilled in the ancient Chinese art of acupuncture that she learned at in Mexico to be my wife and make me oatmeal in the morning which I gladly accept but feed to the dog instead because I hate oatmeal but don't have the heart to tell her because I love the way she looks in the morning with her hair draped over one shoulder and her short shorts as she mixes the two apple cinnamon packets with the warm milk.  Who would top that every morning?  Not me.  The macaroni necklace making business that we both share duties running will not begin until after the dog has eaten all of my oatmeal which sometimes takes hours because she likes to do the crossword puzzle with her feet up on the chair and her hair in a pony-tail sometimes
before making love on the floor or on the dryer or washer or on the porch before taking a shower, which is the only time I can get rid of the remaining oatmeal chunks that I haven't nibbled away in my pretending to like it.  And when all is said and done and the day is about to end it won't because we'd spend hours laying in the grass staring at the stars at the vast eternity that lay before our eyes and talking about things that have no real meaning or too much meaning to fully grasp.

But that's just the way I picture things.  The reality is that you spend years and years looking for this ideal and no matter how close you get to it or think you've found it the shittiness of the real world is inevitable.  You realize after years and years of being together that things don't work out anymore and you split up and get divorced like the other 75 percent of people in America, just as life should be getting good for you and you look to your children for support and understanding because they are the only people left in this world who really do love and care for you as much as you deserve to be.  And the rest of your life is spent in solitude, living alone with other people for the rest of your existence and wishing that you never had those dreams of a perfect existence.  I guess that's just life.