Goodbye 105th Street.
Hello 149th Street.

It's moving day.

On nights like this, the city starts to loom:
It's tow'ring structures block the darken'd skies;
My cozy home becomes a lonely room;
The constant noise sounds not like but joy, but sighs;
Yearning eaves where bouncing boughs once stood
Line dirty streets where once were charming lanes;
My hands in pockets pressed, a coat, a hood,
Not lacking warmth but feeling chills the same;
Every block I pass feels longer still,
And every face I spy is turned from me;
The air is close with stench of urban swill
And every word I write seems heresy.
What else to do but laugh? I can't outrun!
Flashbacks to teenage angst are so much fun.

OK then. I was requested by Alice K. Park (Freshman Class President) to list five of my favorite songs. I think the actual prompt was a little more severe-- it was desired that I would list my five absolute most favoritist songs ever, but for me that's an impossibility. And not just because "favoritist" isn't a word.

So here, in no particular order, are five songs that I really really like a whole lot.

1. Song: Rhapsody in Blue
Who wrote it?: George Gershwin
Who performed it?: A symphony orchestra near you.

What's so great about it?: It's just so... glorious! Christina Lee also had this on her list, and I left a comment saying that it might be the best American song ever written. Then again, I know next to nothing about music theory. I just know that hearing that song thrills me. There's majesty in it.

2. Song: Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone
Who wrote it?: Jeff Mangum
Who performed it?: Neutral Milk Hotel

What's so great about it?: Really two songs in one (as the title implies), Gardenhead does a hell of a lot in a short 3:14. Beginning with a driving beat and powerful guitar chords, and weaving its way into a melodious (nearly heartbreaking) second movement, this is one of the few songs that ever made me audibly exclaim the first time I listened to it. I was alone, in the car, and actually yelled out "YEAH!" at one point. Song lyrics, separated from the song itself, so rarely translate well. But I think the lyrics to this particular song do. For instance, the portion that made me yell was:
"We ride roller-coasters into the ocean
We feel no emotion as we spiral down to the world
And I guess it's worth your time, 'cause there's some lives you live
And some you leave behind.
It gets hard to explain."

The man is a poet, pure and simple and responsible for what I can say without hesitation is my most favoritist album ever (right now), In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

3. Song: Undone - The Sweater Song
Who wrote it?: Rivers Cuomo
Who performed it?: Weezer

What's so great about it?: Exquisite blend of form and content, the guitars on "Undone" are played in a weaving pattern. That way, when the song breaks down and the guitar pattern begins to fall apart, the woven song is coming undone just like the sweater in the song. The song breaks itself down while breaking its subject down. Just. Effing. Brilliant. Plus it simply rocks hard.

4. Song: O Ignis Spiritus Paracliti
Who wrote it?: Hildegard von Bingen
Who performed it?: Sequentia (and a whole lot of nuns over the past millennium)

What's so great about it?: We've been over this.

5. Song: Hand in My Pocket
Who wrote it?: Alanis Morisette
Who performed it?: She did

You're kidding me right?: Nope.
For real?: For real.
What the hell, Dave?: I have argued that this is the defining song of my generation. Some people try to play the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" card, but I think that doesn't... really... work. I think Tori's cover of "Teen Spirit" is closer than Nirvana's original (not to detract from the excellence of that song... it may be anthemic, it's just not defining, as I see things). We don't need to harp on it, but Nirvana's song is sort of making fun of us. "Hand in My Pocket" is a celebration of how contradicted we (I, I guess) feel about almost everything. She lists contradictions, and it ends with an "Oh, well. What the hell are we going to do about it but get on with our lives?" If protest songs defined much of my parents' generation (or if that's what they claim in retrospect, at any rate), I feel like a song that celebrates acceptance of confusion sort of nails it for us. It's a shame it got played to the point where it became cheesy. I don't think it is though. If you haven't listened to it in a while, it might be time for another listen.

So there you have it. A very bizarre mix.

This morning, on the south side of 103rd st between 3rd Avenue and Lexington Avenue, there were something like 900,000 people asking for petition signers. In honesty, it was closer to ten or twelve. As I walked West toward the subway station, the first two approached me: "Are you a registered Democrat?" I shook my head without saying anything. I *am* a registered Democrat, but I also see that they're getting signatures to run a particular candidate. I don't know the man, I know nothing about him, and I won't be a resident of this district when elections come up. I just didn't want to be bothered.

But then, of course, since they're all there working the subway thoroughfare, and since nobody was stopping, none of the petitioners were busy with clients. So all of them--all ten or twelve of them--asked all passersby "Are you a registered Democrat? Are you a registered Democrat? Take thirty seconds to sign a petition? Are you a registered Democrat?" It appeared (I may have overlooked them) that there were no petitioners on the other side of the street, and I hadn't met any coming up to 103rd. They all seemed to be smushed into that block, on one side of the street. So as I passed the last three people, I said "You should spread out." This guy in a suit said, "Yeah? It's a free country."

It's a free country? What the hell, right?

Now, I knew that I should just keep walking and let the guy be a dick (to give him the benefit of the doubt, it's possible that he'd been harassed all morning and didn't really listen to what I said). I knew I knew I knew that I should just keep walking. But I took off my headphones, turned around, and walked back to him. Here's what happened:

Dave: Did you just say 'it's a free country?' I know it's a free country. I'm trying to help you. You're all standing in a row, and it might be better if you spread out.

Suit: Well that's politics. (he turns away from me)

Dave: Hey, I'm trying to help you, and you're being really snarky with me. (I was able at the time to self-edit. I really wanted to say, "Well, if your candidate is as much of a dick as you are, I hope he dies of malaria." OK, I wasn't really thinking that. But I seriously started to say "real asshole," but was able to engage in an on-the-fly downgrade to "snarky.")

Suit: (cutting me off) You have a good day. You have a good day.

And then he turned away again.

What the hell? Why did he immediately assume that I was trying to badger him? I went door to door in a suburban neighborhood in another state trying to get people to go vote. I'm not against canvassing. But I had my own, individually assigned blocks to cover. If everyone working for the Kerry campaign had gone around to all the same houses, over and over, twelve doorbell rings in a row, not only wouldn't those people have been as likely to vote, they probably would have wished us malaria-related deaths.

Again, I try not to let this stuff affect me. But somehow I'm still thinking about it hours later.

Currently Reading:


Recently Finished Reading:



Two sentence review of Freakonomics: Very interesting, but WAY too short to justify paying the hardcover price. Head to the library, or wait a year.

As has been mentioned previously, the six-ish month period following college graduation last May was a bit of a rough time for me. I was attempting to write all sorts of things, and ended up being unhappy with pretty much the lot of it. I had this thing planned out, what I was calling an "Experiment in Long Form Fiction" so that I could avoid saying that I was trying to "write a book," which just sounds hideously self-important to me. I suppose the first step on the road to becoming a successful writer is to stop putting myself down for wanting to be a writer. Writers have to write something, dig? So if I'm too embarrassed to say that I'm working on a book, or working on a screenplay, it's going to be a pretty embarrassing existence.

I've since scrapped the E.L.F.F. because I reread The Broom of the System and realized that I had aped something like %86 of the plot from that book. I had done this without realizing it, though it came as little surprise; in such an artistic funk and in such an impressionable state... there were characterizations and plot points that were simply too close for comfort. However, the basic idea still interests me and I think that I will come back to it at some point. I just need to rework some plotting and some characters and then maybe take another stab at it. After the Maple thing is done (we're very close to a complete first draft), there are a couple of other projects I have in mind (not the least of which is the screenplay version of the Maple thing), and then maybe I'll revisit this.

Anyway, the whole point of this thing is that there's a part of what I wrote during that shitty period that I'm awfully proud of. I really, really like it, and so I'm going to share it with you. I had about three times this amount written, but have thrown all of that out (I kept a copy, it's just not for public viewing *ever*). Friends from high school and regular livejournal readers may notice that one of the characters is named after one of my friends from high school (Hi Christina!), but this should not be taken to imply that the character is at all based on her. It's just that Christina Lee is such a kick-ass name that I knew at some point I'd be using it. So either apologies or congratulations to her, depending on how she feels about it.

Anyway, here's what I was working on:

“It’s literally unbelievable.”
“I know.”
“I want to make it absolutely clear that I don’t mean this in the colloquial sense. I mean that I literally cannot believe it.”
“Seriously, I know.”
“I have been in school for as long as I can remember. My first memories are of school… lunchboxes and recess. Worksheets. Chalkboards. How can this period of life be over?”
“For good.”
“Forever.”
“Forever and ever and ever.”
“How are we to deal with this? How? What options remain for we, the now undeniably adult, conscious, and conscientious citizens of this, our great and powerful nation?”
“Should that be ‘for us’?”
“For us. For we. For you and… I? Me?”
“Sebastian Pierce?”
“Yes, Christina Knockbauer?”
“We deal with this by drinking ourselves into an absolute stupor.”
“That, my dear Christina Knockbauer, will suffice for tonight. But what shall we do when sad autumn rolls ‘round and there is naught in store for us but long, lonely days?”
“Sebastian Pierce, there will be nothing for it but to obtain jobs.”
“Jobs?”
“Legitimate work.”
“You’re speaking of gainful employment?”
“Yes.”
“Trading our time and energy for paychecks?”
“Long backbreaking hours. Retail. Or food services. Yes. Employment.”
“A most terrifying prospect.”
“Dreadful. Horrifying.”
“There will be no more class schedules? No more Spring Breaks?”
“We will have two weeks off out of fifty-two, if we are lucky.”
“Must it be that way?”
“Verily it must.”
“Jobs. Christina Knockbauer, I never thought it would come to this. That will the beginning of it all, won’t it?”
“Dead-end jobs.”
“Sadness. Loneliness. Dreams of the lives we thought we would lead.”
“Wasted talent. Potential unachieved.”
“Annual raises and Christmas bonuses.”
“Should that be ‘boni’?”
“Bonuses.”
“We will become bored with our lives, ourselves, and each other.”
“Hopelessly bored.”
“The highlight of our year will be purchasing his and hers twin barca-loungers.”
“We will have children to try to ease the pain, the loneliness.”
“We will become bored with our children.”
“We will attend countless soccer matches, PTA meetings, school concerts, feigning interest while growing exponentially bitterer at our uninteresting, banal lives.”
“I’m almost certain that should be more ‘more bitter’ and not ‘bitterer’.”
“We will begin to hate one another.”
“I will force you into marriage counseling.”
“You will be annoyed by my reluctance to attend.”
“Counseling will certainly fail.”
”We will get divorced, terribly.”
“We will fight tooth and nail for custody of the children, not because we love them but just to spite one another.”
“Our children will learn to loath us and, once out of the house, will cut off all communication.”
“We will age.”
“We will age quickly.”
“We will grow ugly. Alone and ugly. Retirement at age eighty-one from our useless, empty, worthless jobs, having done nothing at any time to make the world a better place.”
“We will sit in our now ancient barca-loungers, watching reruns of The Price is Right.”
“We will eat unflavored yogurt, purchased with coupons. Our homes will smell of mildew and mothballs.”
“We will attempt to reconnect with our children, to meet our grandchildren.”
“We will fail.”
“We will finally, finally die miserably, alone and broke. We will be found by a neighbor unable to withstand the stench of death emanating from under our cracked, withered, unpainted doors.”
“Our rotting corpses will be cremated.”
“Ashes disposed of without ceremony.”
“And that will be that.”
“Amen.”
“But for now, Sebastian Pierce.”
“Yes, for now Christina Knockbauer?”
“We will wear the robes of our college graduation proudly.”
“Forever.”
“Yes, forever. Wait, forever what?”
“I hereby swear that I will wear these college graduation robes until forced by act of God or Congress to remove them.”
“I shall be your witness.”
“These lovely purple robes shall define me, proof to everyone my whole long, useless life that once I achieved something great.”
“Something expensive.”
”Something great and expensive. These purple robes, this square black hat, this golden tassel will show the world that once my life was new, the road stretching before me glistening with opportunity!”
“These robes will grow dirty. You will outgrow them in the obesity of middle age, and finally shrink too small.”
“I will wear the dirty, tattered remnants then.”
“Promise?”
“Promise!”
“Sebastian Pierce?”
“Yes, Christina Knockbauer?”
“Tell me you love me before we go into this party.”
“I will love you even after we go into this party.”
“You really ought to be ashamed of yourself for that joke.”
“I am.”
“A joke worthy of my father.”
“Thank you?”
“OK, now for real this time.”
“Christina Knockbauer, I love you dearly.”
“Forever?”
“Certainly for now.”
“I suppose that will have to suffice.”
“Now let us go into this party celebrating our great and expensive achievement, celebrating our entrance into the real world, and let us drink cheap, shitty beer until we pass out of all conscious thought.”
“To our final night!”
“To our final night!”
***
I sat on the roof drinking chardonnay out of a translucent plastic cup. Looking out over the park the sky was just beginning to lighten. Finally. The chartreuse cup had my name written on it in black magic marker. The birds were actually chirping in the trees below me, just audible over the sound of the various car alarms in the vicinity. My name was spelled wrong on the cup. I took another sip of shitty wine, grimaced, and then just drained the rest in one large gulp. Another car alarm started down on 6th St. in that constant repeating alarm cycle like a goddamned Casio sampler from hell. The girl at the entrance to the party had spelled my name “Sabastion,” and I had seen no point in correcting her. I saw Chazz six stories below me turn the corner onto Ave. A and unlock the front door. The sky was moving from dark blue to more like middling cyan. Morning was coming.
It had been a long night.
Behind me on the roof, the Christinas were stretched out on a red and white checkered tablecloth or blanket that one of them had purchased as an ironic nod toward your standard Americana folksy picnic image. It reminded me more of chintzy stereotypical Italian restaurants. Christina Knockbauer’s eyes were closed. She had been dozing fitfully since we had come back here after that party—that awful, awful, loud party. I couldn’t tell if she was sleeping now. Her knees were drawn into her chest and her hair fell across her eyes. I smiled in spite of myself. Christina Lee sat leaning against the southern wall of the roof deck, lazily smoking a cigarette and staring up at the maybe one visible star. She exhaled loudly and turned her eyes toward me.
“That was some party was it not?” She spoke slowly and carefully, her head certainly ringing just as mine was.
“We definitely went out with a bang. Too much of a bang. I didn’t believe it was possible to imbibe that much alcohol. I’m shocked, but also not a little amazed. We’re still conscious.”
Christina Knockbauer shouted in her sleep. Christina Lee and I both jumped before we realized what had happened, as C.K. sat up sharply and shook her head, muttering lightly to herself. She began to massage her eyelids.
“There were many, many people at that party Sebastian. There was much music and dancing. Alcohol flowed freely. I myself drank far more than my healthy share… Christina Knockbauer, is everything OK? You scared the shit out of me.”
“Me too.”
C.K. stretched heavily, almost violently. “I’m fine. I just started to fade out here and I really don’t want to fall asleep on the roof.”
“I think it’s a little late for that.”
“I know… I know…”
I reached for my keys instinctively and was shocked to find that I didn’t have a pocket. “You can go down into the apartment if you like. Sleep on the bed.” My pocket was just under my robe. Oh right. I was still wearing my robe.
C. Lee continued: “I think the blood alcohol level of the room was somewhere in the mid-high to really-high region. We’ll go with mid-to-high-high.”
Chazz burst out onto the roof in that breathless way he has that always seems like he’s coming to warn you there’s like a monster or assassin bearing down on him, and I was startled for the second time in as many minutes. I’m pretty sure at this point that Chazz plans out the first thing he’s going to say and wants to make sure attention is entirely on him, but I haven’t yet run that theory by him.
“I love this effin’ city. Dude, it’s like 4:41 AM and I’m carrying an oven fresh pizza up onto my roof. I’m talking like pizza fresh from an actual coal oven.”
“Um… holler? Or something? But Chazz, I’m pretty sure that nobody’s burning coal in any oven around here.”
Christina Knockbauer’s brow furrowed. “Where have you been?”
Chazz paused for a moment and made a show of staring slowly at the pizza box in his hands. “I have no idea.” He reached up and scratched his head, pondering. “It seems my memory has just completely abandoned me.”
“Shutup.”
“Who wants a slice?”
I exhaled heartily and stood. My head had continued down the road from intense spinning and had settled into the just lightly teetering stage. “Nothing like piping hot pie to wash down crappy chardonnay.”
C. Lee scraped a pebble up from the roof and threw it at me. “Next time you pick the wine then, Pierce.”
C.K. smiled, suddenly. “Hey guys, look… the sun’s almost up.” She glanced over at me for a moment, winked, and turned back to the sky, which was still moving gradually upward on the blue scale.
Chazz winked at her. “Yeah, C.K., it has a tendency to do that in the morning.”
“Oh, I just woke up stop being mean to me.”
“Young Charles, I believe I will have a slice of that pie. Charlie. Chuckabulls. Chazz Palminteri.”
“Have one then, Sebby Sebby.”
“What time is your flight, Sebastian?” Christina Knockbauer began to pull her hair into a ponytail and looked at me expectantly. I tossed her a rubber band from around my wrist and she smiled playfully.
“I actually don’t remember… something weird… like 5:04 or something.”
“P.M.?”
“I certainly hope so. Otherwise I’m going to be awfully late.”
C.K. pulled a cigarette out of her purse, struck three matches before the wind allowed her to light it. “Sebastian Pierce, I forgot how long you’re going to be away from us.”
Chazz sat down with his slice and Christina Lee immediately positioned herself to invite cuddling. Chazz chewed away, oblivious. I laughed out loud. “Christina Knockbauer, I have no idea. It won’t be more than a week at most. I might honestly kill myself if I had to stay there any longer.”
“You flying home with your family?” C. Lee had a slight edge in her voice as she watched Chazz eat. She finally grabbed the pizza from his hands, placed it back in the box, moved herself onto his lap, and placed his hand on her head.
“Hey, I was eating that!”
“Shut up and hug me!”
“Sebastian, seriously now. You need to take off that cap and gown. You look like a total dipshit. You’ve looked like a total dipshit all night. You embarrassed yourself at that party in that dipshit outfit.”
“I doubt many people will remember what they themselves were wearing at that party, let alone what Sebastian Pierce was wearing. The chemicals at that party will almost certainly affect long-term memory. And short-term memory. I’m actually having difficulty remembering the purpose of that den of debauchery.”
“Chazz, laundry has become a bit of a sour issue for me. I did that whole I-know-I’m-going-home-soon-so-I’ll-just-wait-and-do-my-laundry-there-oh-shit-I-over-estimated-how-long-my-clean-clothing-would-last-type-thing. I’m chock out of clean clothes. Plus I’m making a public statement.”
“A public statement that you’re a dipshit.”
“You’re not hugging me enough!”
“And no, I’m flying back alone.”
“Oh right right. Your family didn’t make it out here did they?” C. Lee tugged on his arm. Chazz looked at her in frustration.“If I hug you any goddamned tighter I’ll break your ribs. Seriously.”
“No, they didn’t make it.” Christina Knockbauer eyed Chazz and Christina Lee jealously, and gave me a look that was at once both incredibly adorable and physically threatening. I sat on the blanket and let her move into me. I scratched her head gently and she purred at me.
“OK. This is better.”
“You have to put your cigarette out though.”
She moved to extinguish it, but C. Lee snatched it from her fingers and began to inhale. C.K. released her last breath of smoke and I coughed exaggeratedly.
She smirked at me. “Whatever.”
I grabbed a slice out of the box and ate with my left hand, scratching her head with my right.
“You’re lucky. You know that Sebastian? I wished on the morning star that my parents wouldn’t come. I prayed to deities both major and minor. I invoked the Norse pantheon and Zeus. I wrote my congressman. What I would have given for my parents to stay out of this.”
Chazz: “Woot.”
C.K.: “Woot.”
“Seriously, how did you convince them not to come? I really could have done without the added pressure.”
“I know, it was pretty nice. Christina Knockbauer’s family was way more than I could handle as is. Ow! Stop that!
“Don’t make fun of my family!”
“I actually didn’t have to convince them not to come. I’m not sure they were ever going to. My brother’s graduation is also this weekend and I think they wanted to be there, instead.”
“Your parents have two kids in college?” C. Lee paused. “Plus, I didn’t know you had a brother. What else are you hiding from me? Charles Palminteri if you don’t put that pizza down and hug me I will throw you bodily from the roof, and then batoon you about the face and neck with the nearest stick. I am not fucking around.”
“Other than the international espionage, I’m not hiding anything from anyone.”
Chazz: “Boo!”
“Yikes. Sorry. And he’s not in college. He’s graduating from middle school.”
Chazz and C. Lee stared at me. I looked away, at the sky that was getting lighter still. The pause in conversation continued despite how much I wished it would end. The breeze felt heavenly on my face. C.K. grabbed my hand, and stroked it surreptitiously. Finally C. Lee brought blessed relief to the awkward silence.
“I’m sorry, Pierce, I’m not sure I heard you right. Your parents skipped your college graduation so that they could attend your brother’s junior high school graduation?”
“Yeah.”
“Like graduation from eighth grade is what you mean. Into like ninth grade.”
“Eh.”
Chazz took the cigarette from C. Lee and took the last puff before extinguishing it against the wall behind him. “It’s not all that surprising. You haven’t met them.”
“You met them?”
“Briefly.”
“Hey Christina Knockbauer!” I shook her gently. “Are you still with us?”
“I’m just watching the sun rise. I think it’s about to come up. Any minute now.”
“I would think they would have wanted to see their huge investment paid off.”
“I bet his school cost more than mine, Christina Lee.”
“Ah.”
C.K. sat up and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “It’s coming up!”
“That’s an expensive junior high school, Sebastian.”
“Well…”
The first spoke of the sun had indeed crested over the buildings across the park. Chazz and C. Lee turned to watch the brightening sky. There were cheek-to-cheek smiles all around.
C.K. turned my head toward her. “Kiss me.”
I did, but stopped abruptly. “You taste like smoke.”
“You taste like sausage grease. Shut up and kiss me.”
I did, properly this time. I saw Chazz grip C. Lee’s hand. Christina Knockbauer’s hand ran softly down the back of my head. The wind picked up and sent my plastic cup skittering across the rooftop. The sun raised itself a bit higher. I smiled into the kiss. C.K. broke it and leaned into me.
“Hey guys?” I said. Everyone turned and looked at me expectantly. I hesitated. “Nothing. Never mind.”
The sun rose a little higher. I stroked C.K.’s hair. A motorcycle roared down the street and like nine car alarms started at once, their screams heralding the coming of the day.
Morning had arrived.