Running from Fall, Houses and Homes

I’ve always had this thing with fall.  It borders on dislike.  Cool temperatures and dropping leaves make me nervous.  Among my strongest memories of anything, ever, is the shadow of a bare treebranch cast against the wall of my room, my first fall on my own.  Raining, the sky two or three shades brighter than night all day.  I drove to the outskirts of town to pick up an album that was supposed to be delivered to the Cottage–what we called the house I lived in– that never arrived.  I listened to that album, Team Sleep’s eponymous, a lot through that fall, and consistently since then.  It was my last semester of undergrad.  Walking out of the student center one night the notion crossed my mind that maybe my life had just ended. Maybe I’d gone past the point at which I could change lives. Anyway.

My favorite Team Sleep song, Blvd. Nights.  It was my ringtone for a long time, a clarion, meant it was time to get up, time to move, to go to work, to whatever.  Winters were a big deal at the Cottage, too.  The house was very shoddily built.  I miss days wrapped in white, blankets and walls and the snow outside.

Being in southern California, I avoid these things.  Riverside has a long season that fitfully replicates fall tree by tree, rains on occasion.  There’s snow on the mountains for several months.  I’m about to go back to that.  I was ready for it when I saw a tree across the street from my father’s house begin to turn.  Running outside town earlier this week the trees along Rt. 29 were falling, yellow, and the sky had gone cloudy and cold.  I worry that I’ve eaten the lotus, like I said I wouldn’t.  Falling asleep in the California sun sounds wonderful.  I’ll be in a new house, with my best friend of the time, and I’ll have money.  I got a TAship.  No more scrounging for food, doing without new music. Holding off on books. There’s a girl there I’d like to spoil. I don’t know if she’ll let me. We had evenings of absinthe and pie before I left, platonic, and of course 2,000 miles away things get romantic.  I’m not counting on anything for my return.  I and California seem to be prone to failure in that regard.

I miss houses. Places. I miss the condo where I had some of the darkest times of my life. I could live in California forever and it will always be those tall palms against the sky, enclosed by the complex. Their sound at night, and the freeway, and the pool. Sleeping on the floor. I miss the sound of my bare feet on the kitchen tile. I miss turkey on wheat with mustard, ramen with sesame oil. Walking out of the kitchen to the little back patio and hoping for the rainbow I saw the first morning I spent there.  What an experiment this has been.

This is a cathartic exercise for me tonight, so forgive me if I go a little long.  Have some more good music:

Skip to about 1:15 or so for the actual music. Though the beginning is cute. That’s Richmond Fontaine, a band out of Portland, like most good bands these days. The lead singer writes books, apparently.

I’m feeling my age lately. When I hurt something I tend to hurt multiple things, so I’ve hurt my leg and wrist, now maybe my knee, too. And I’ve been thinking about what happens after this year. Not hard, but thinking. Where to go. What to do. At some point does my life have to come to heel to expectation? I don’t think so, but you hear it enough from people around you, you begin to wonder. Again, not hard. I don’t owe anyone a stable job and income. I’m perfectly content with feeding myself and keeping myself sheltered, and that does not take a lot of money. Nebraska has a strong economy, among the wreck that is America. And I want to go there badly.

I’ve been thinking about being a writer as part of my personality. I had a long conversation with an Evangelical who knew me back when I was the same, and I didn’t set him straight. I wanted to see what he’d say when he felt he was with a kindred spirit. Quite Beckian. But that’s not the point. It was easy enough to talk with him, and even argue, from his point of view, veering left when I felt I could. I might have made him doubt just a little that Obama is Muslim. Anyway. I think of this as being part and parcel with writing, being able to insert myself into a mindset that is not my own. Obviously, I guess, when I put it that way. I’m writing the sequel to My Wakeup, and it is incredibly easy to slip into the head of this hollowed out war veteran. All characters have parts of you in them, but the emptiness I feel when writing him is not mine, it’s his. It’s pretty wild.

The year went by fast. A bad year. Some calendars of my own say it’s not quite over.  But close. I’m still struggling with this whole being good thing.  Sometimes I am, sometimes not. I guess that’s okay. Lately I’ve been on the brink of apathy, and that’s not okay. But a month or two off might do me some good.  The Antagonist suggested I get “In Sleep” tattooed on me someplace. I’m not quite there yet, that low, that tired. I’ll leave you with the quote that inspired it, though, because it’s so brilliant.

From A Farewell to Arms:

“I had hoped for something more.”
“Defeat?”
“No. Something more.”
“There isn’t anything more. Except victory. It may be worse.”
“I hoped for a long time for victory.”
“Me too.”
“Now I don’t know.”
“It has to be one or the other.”
“I don’t believe in defeat. Though it may be better.”
“What do you believe in?”

“In sleep.” I said.

Go to Fuck Yeah, Hemingway, for more.