2004-04-07 - 2:23 a.m. - grow

driving through the neighborhoods tonight i couldn't help but think about being born. not the act of being born, because no person can remember that, but what i was born into. heaven. i never had the kind of stories that defined so many people i look up to. i never had any moments of real fear or dread. everything was given to me, and i took it all, openly.

somehow, with so much being given, something started to feel wrong. there was a frustration that began to pervade everything we did. and it wasn't just me, i know that. that is why i say we. and i hear people talk about the things they did to figure out where this frustration came from, bands and zines started, stances were invented, but we didn't have the impetous for such things. im not even sure what that impetous would have been. so instead of raging, we just found ways to slide between the cracks and let ourselves go unnoticed in a world we felt at odds with (maybe this is what it means when your teenager goes from straight a's to a lot of c's in a matter of months, not drugs, but a desire to disappear). and so we slipped between the cracks into a world of night times and practical jokes that everyone though were fun, but which in some way were an honest expression of our frustration.

then i moved to bowling green and met some people who changed me. who showed me that just slipping through the cracks was not enough. these people had already picked apart that uneasiness that i could only begin to cope with my listening to screeching weasel records, and written entire beautiful records about it. beautiful records about what it is to get stuck, and what it is to break through into things that feel good, on your own terms. and how things are going to feel hopelessly fucked up sometimes, that's what it means to live, but that the fucked up feelings aren't your fault, aren't anybody's fault, only the fault of living at odds with a culture that demands you buy things you don't need, can't afford, could never, ever begin to need. that makes you afraid of your faults and weaknesses. so you fight against the fucked up feelings by doing what you can to make your own space, and find your own way.

i cant live at home in this world anymore.

a friend of mine once wrote something in his diary about how someone was reinventing all of the possible stances of the heart in unbrekable ways, but that this was a waste of time, and why not just invent entirely new ones.

this is what we want.

this is what i want.

im tired of knowing that my entire life has been a gift and that i haven't had to work for anything. im tired of everything being easy. and maybe that sounds a little bit ungrateful but where are all of the good memories from this time? or where are all of the bad ones, for that matter? i can tell you stories about being bullied in junior high, being pushed down in the clay around a dugout so that it left red-brown stains on my white baseball pants, and how the fucker who pushed me told everyone i had diareah and everyone made fun of me all day, and one kid even stole my favorite white sox cap and spit in it. but that story doesn't really mean anything. and i can also tell you about the time i had some wierd insignificant crush on this girl when i was a freshman in high school, and how she lived in the same neighborhood as my friend, brendan, and how on his birthday it started snowing so nick sanders and i went for a walk and we walked by her house and i just felt this longing that i could not even begin to understand, and unserstand less even now, remembering what i do about the girl. but still that walk was utterly gorgeous and one of the first times i ever looked at everything around me and pulled it apart to its atoms and said, 'this moment hurts a little bit, but its so very beautiful.' and how that was an important moment to who i am, but really it is entirely meaningless also.

And there was that other night, humid and thick when we said our i love yous and got lost in the woods, waded through water up to our waists, and we went to Tim Horton's and someone, brendan or dan maybe, took a picture of us and it's a little blurry, but i still have it, and sometimes i pull it out and look at it and remember the beauty of that night and how good that beauty felt even when it hurt so hard later. i hope you are well. i hope you have a good life.

you need to try and fail.

thats what it takes to make a life. you need to hurt, real hurt.

we all know this. and honestly, i hope i never fail. but i will at some point. maybe i'm failng right now.

but here is to inventing our own heart stances and sticking to them.

let us sleep just far enough away from every angry sound the city makes.

xoxo

listen to: his name is alive, flashpapr, black dice, iron and wine, modest mouse.

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