I like stories built like houses, strong on the bottom, moving upwards towards the top.
Not stories; like modern paintings, with brush strokes that have no basis on the brush strokes before them. But are only built for people to marvel at, and not for people to reside in.
I was using StumbleUpon tonight. I found a site, a joke site. The jokes were funny, and I got to thinking. The site seemed old, sort of quaint. Not very snazzy.
A lot of the newer sites are like desperate whores. They plead for you to click on them, and “just stay awhile…”. So pathetic. I miss the old sites, the ones who were there to show you something nifty, yet utterly peripheral to your life.
These new-fangled sites are so sad.
I’m a carpenter.
My mother wants a skylight. She decided on a opening light that will have a splayed opening into her small studio. Today I cut a hole in her perfectly good roof and put the skylight in. It really is a lovely addition to her small studio.
It’s lovely to be able to spend a few hours and change someone’s life.
I am depressed.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been depressed, I’ve lived with it since I entered puberty. A time coincidently, that was the end of my parents marriage and the beginning of ten years smoking pot five times a day. I don’t smoke any more, and my parents are still very divorced.
Being depressed for me is like being underwater and having 50 pounds of lead strapped to my back. I can think fine. I am just very tired, and slow to move. I find that I would rather sit alone all day, than interact with anything or anybody.
I release myself momentarily from my previous obligations, as I entered into said obligations in a state very different. I find that fulfilling the obligations of the non-depressed is near impossible for the afflicted.
Dealing with acquaintances is painful, mostly for them. Most people are very uncomfortable with other people being depressed, and without thinking try to help. What they don’t realize is that if the depression is biochemically based, they have about the same amount of probability helping me, as they do talking someone out of cancer. It’s hard to be around people that care about me. I can see them trying hard to ‘do the right thing’. Most of them are very friendly, though some are obviously out of their depth.
The most difficult thing for me is comparing my performance to that of when I am not depressed. It is often easy for me to be acidic in my appraisal of my own shortcomings. I am highly critical, and become humiliated when I pit an observation of myself, in the shackles of this dreary lethargy, against the idea of a man unencumbered.
I am scared. As I drove home last night with my girlfriend, I related to her how I felt. I was quiet for a bit, which is unusual. I watched the split yellow lines scamper past me on the road at night. I told her I didn’t know what to do, with a certain desperation. I think that is what is most disarming, is the feeling of the inability to change one’s own state, true or not. I teared up. She tried to console me, but I wasn’t really upset, just an voicing the thing I was afraid of.
I, as a person, am afraid of losing control. As a young man, it is scary to watch one’s own life fall short. It is hard to let go of how it should be, and make do with the energy one actually possesses.
I am also writing this to alleviate the pressure I feel to write perky posts, feel good posts. I hope they come, but in order to put words up, I’ll have to be real.
I used to play a game called Bolo on my mom’s old LC II.
It’s the only thing I want for my gaming pleasure on my MacBook. I’ve tried Q emulation for winBolo, but don’t have a copy of XP to install. CrossOver doesn’t work. I get the program running, but the screen doesn’t show the map. SO CLOSE!!! Darwine does not work, there is some conflict with a font, and OpenGL. God. So I tried Fink, and Fink Commander for linBolo. Nothing.
Now I’m tring Basilisk II and SheepShaver. These are my last chances before I’ll have to set up a linux box just to play Bolo.
Oh, and xBolo crashes on me and I can’t even get nuBolo to download.
I wish it would “just work”.
Well, after logging onto the bolo irc chat, I was able to finally download nuBolo…. Hallelujah!! ha ha, now I wish my brother wasn’t on the east coast so I could play with him!!!
wonderful though… 
Just got home from a dinner with my mother, her boyfriend, my fiancee, her father and mother.
And now I’m on the phone with my brother talking about my dad.
If my grandparents call now, I won’t be surprised.
I feel tired, and I bet the majority of the people at dinner feel the same. It was a coarse meeting. People were stretched and it was obvious that this wasn’t the natural grouping for these people.
I was aggressive to say the least, maybe to a fault. My mom was actually very diplomatic, her boyfriend strained to contain himself, something I cannot say about my fiancée’s father. A man who does not seem to understand the idea of self restraint in uncertain company. Our two families are as far apart politically as possible, so far that they come back around to meet on certain issues; much to the disdain of her father. I am aware that I am not taking care to keep the peace with her father.
My mother told a story about when I came into her office at the local University with dreadlocks, bare feet and a pet rat in my clothes… very nice!
Well, I know this is a true rambler, but I wanted to put something down, maybe I’ll come back later and reflect.
Instead of eating, I’ll go hungry. I’ll hold off taking a piss. I’ll not do the laundry.
And it doesn’t feel great. I mean, I have a toilet. I put it in just for pissing. And shitting too, but yeah, being able to piss was a major reason for hacking together the copper and plastic tubes that make that toilet work.
So maybe control is more valuable to me than ease. I feel like I’m just the janitor when all I do is take care of myself. But when I abstain from the things that are obviously necessary, then I feel like I am really in charge. And then I can take the time to figure out how to get through the period of discomfort I’ve found myself in.
To be rendered useless, is that my destiny? Is that where my glory lays? Will I rest when my desire to create a life full of meaning has quieted down, and I’m willing to abide my human limitations?
Or am I just void of goals?
I don’t want to be the janitor, but I’m starting to think that that’s what I am.
I’m starting to think that I’m just the guy who takes care of the human I’m inside of. And all my desires to be some fucking special case are just a waste of time. Not that that has stopped me! Ha, ha. I’m the king of wasting time!
I’m presently sitting in a local coffeeshop. There is the high whine of the coffee machinery in the air above me, the people thanking each other, and clinking silverware and mugs. The light slants in through the leaves and the Halloween themed window paintings.
There is talk about the future behind me.
I don’t want to talk to people. Do I find it more comforting to have people to ignore, than to be completely anonymous?
I’ve lived in this town more than 20 years. I am defined by the memories here. I feel as if I can reach out and touch the buildings to help me remember who I am, often to my detriment. The alleys drone on about my indiscretions. I remember the view from the rooftops, the feeling of freedom when I was 13 and 14; high, and high. And people become cartoons, the leading image of an amalgamation of sharp, protruding memories.
Would I be weakened moving to a city? Some place where the walls stared back at me mutely. Where my desire to be defined by my surroundings would be added to a queue longer than most of my hometown’s streets?
How do people who have lived as a ‘persona’ in their respective hometowns deal with a move to a new city?
