Probably a bad idea.

Two years now. She asked me to set my alarm so I could make sure she made it to work on time at 5am. Her and my roommate continued to hang out in the living room as I went to bed. Just a week before she was over again. My roommate had his new camera out filming us doing stupid things. He pointed the camera at me as I was looking over at her, her back turned to me. I said to the camera, “I cant help it, I love that girl.” We had dated and broken up twice now over the preceding couple years. It seemed, to me anyway, that it was just about that season for round three. I had deep reservations about the idea, but she was what I knew and no one else seemed interested. At four I got up to wake her. I found the two of them under a blanket on my couch. Clothes on the floor. Even immersed in that scene I was too naive to really believe that this could be happening. I remember asking her if she kissed him. Kissed him. God, I'm an idiot. Really, Eric, people do these things and they do not think of you when they do them. I sat right there in the living room as she dressed and left. He tried to hobble together the first in a series of incoherent explanations all of which left the blame safely out of his jurisdiction. I sat quietly smoking. The house suddenly was lit up and shaking around him. I listened. He began to rifle on about how he could do something like this to me. He asked me if I thought he should move out. After a long moment of thought I said that he should. Again I sat quietly on my chair next to the couch as he began to pull out his mattress, then his box spring into the kitchen. 5am now. He stopped and came over to me and calmly asked me why it is that I think he should move out. I answered that I cannot trust him anymore.
He grabbed his coat and left. Everything stopped. I continued to sit and stare at his bed, now piled up against the refrigerator we had decorated earlier in the year with spray paint, glue and a blow torch. It was a good house. Conducive to both creativity and social gatherings. We had our things which annoyed each other but overall it was good. Until this morning, two years ago. He left in a huff. He was so drunk but continued to text me as he drove. He started talking like he was going to kill himself. I actually started to worry about him. We talked and I calmed him down. He came back and I could not fall asleep until I heard him come into the house.

I went to work in the morning and he was passed out on that couch. Later that day he tried to say that this all happened because he was an alcoholic and I, I should have seen that earlier. Then it was that her and him have known each other longer than I had known her, they were old friends and this kind of thing happens between them occasionally. This keeps getting better and better for me. To this day I am not sure if it really is the worst thing anyone has done to me or if it is just that there are distinct lines of blame. The victim, me, is clearly defined. All I did was get out of bed. Its the kind of chiaroscuro not usually visible in the single pantone swatch that is ordinary life. I do not know if I was really upset or wanted be really upset.

Things calmed down. I kept my distance. He was my best friend and it was no longer. Soon we were hanging out again. Going for drinks in the neighborhood we talked about anything but. At this time I as trying to open my own business. That failed. I wanted out of the job that I had, as much as I loved it I needed to make a little more money. So I started working in a warehouse. Selecting orders at the Whole Foods Distribution Center that delivered most of the food to all 29 stores in the midwest, I sometimes worked 13 hours a day, no less than 10 hours, 5 days a week. I was never home and that was fine. I literally worked my ass off. I lost a lot of weight. Normally come home, drink a bunch of vodka and pass out around 4am. One night he came home as I was drunk in my room on the computer. He came in, uninvited as usual. The subject of my art and music was on his mind and he launched into a two hour, relentless diatribe on how every single piece of work I have ever done was the most untalented, unintelligent and uninspired piece of shit he has ever seen. Citing example and opinions of my friends. He bashed things I had not even started or finished yet. Cutting down with x-acto like precision on everything I had poured my heart into. Likening all of my paintings as unfit to cover holes in the wall and all of my music(none of which he had EVER heard) was bland and trite. This was my best friend. To say I was hurt is to say the least. He nailed it. He hit my insecurities with such laser guided force it was as if he knew me better than anyone, saw what I was and chose to destroy me. In the years since the only logic I can lay upon it is some kind of lame Tyler Durden style resurrection through destruction. He thought there may be more, something better inside me that could not come out with my current brain. So he decided to infect it with his sociopathic wisdom. I was done. Completely wiped out. One afternoon I put all my things in storage and moved back to my parents with a suitcase and an inflatable mattress that I spent the next year sleeping on. I did not even remind anyone about my birthday and let 29 slip by without celebration. A few weeks later I lived in Alabama. With nothing but all the time in the world to think about it.

It has been two years and only now have I felt comfortable to start making music of my own and art of my own again. But still everything I make goes under his scrutiny in my mind. Constantly am I torn between making making interesting fun things and work with gravitas. Something possibly bigger than myself, drawn from places I cannot normally see. These are things I wish to make but fail to realize.

It was not until my last trip north that I got an apology I believed. I am a better man for it. I still speak to her occasionally. I have found the capability to forgive. Even now I hesitate writing about it. It does not feel like me. Or something that happened to me. This is someone else's history I recall. I feel detached from it. Despite the craziness I cherish my life in Arkansas. This story is what brought me here, the people of Little Rock are what kept me.

You two, I love you but I don't miss you.

I don't want that

So much sound.

First the neighborhood of dogs were shouting a chorus of “what the fuck are you looking at?” to each other. It would die down for a minute. Then one of the bigger dogs would get huffy about how the light reflected off a certain thing and voices its disgust, thusly. The dog next door, not to be out done, joins in. Across the street the tiny one speaks up, but only timidly at first. Next a few moments of all out canine rage. Until each respective parent admonishes out the screen door does the octet hush. An hour rolls by.
The crickets call. The dogs are now so pissed. An open air board room of clashing opinions, back and forth the crickets want it one way, the dogs another. Then...then the cicadas. Oh shit-thanks. The chairmans of the board have seemed to arrive. Looks like I am not the only animal in Stifft Station creeped out by cicadas.
A few weeks ago a mother and her two young daughters came up to the deli. It was post-lunch. I greeted them with my usual effervescent self. The older of the two girls (she was maybe four) looked right at me and said, “I got this, for YOU.” In her hand a fully intact, petrified cicada shell. Skinny legs and all. As she was setting it on the counter- immediately flashes of bleach soaked rags and flame throwers came to mind in order to sanitize the area- I was trying to say something as to not offend this young lady yet let her know that I, just me personally, am not really into, you know...scary fucking bugs. Shawn, my best friend from kindergarten until about fifth grade was really into collecting insects and shooting guns. I cannot really say what I was totally into at that time, but it definitely was not that. I went along because he was the only boy my age willing to hang out with me and his parents tolerated my ballooning need to be anywhere but my house.
So I says to this little girl, desperately scrambling for the most delicate of phrases, “ I......I..........I don't want...that.”
The little girl immediately turns dejectedly and walks away. The mother is just cracking up.
I really do try to be nice and please everyone. Once in a while though you just have to break a girls heart.

Why I love Matt Beachboard

Yesterday I could not whistle for a while. That is, for a time I lost the ability to whistle no matter how I tried. The sound would not come. So I focused harder, then stopped and relaxed, eased up on the gas. Still nothing. I waited a minute then attempted to sneak up on whatever was thrusting silence. Now I am not an accomplished whistler by any means, despite the title. The Teriffic Whistler name(consciously mis-spelled, I thought it clever at the time) comes from The Catcher in the Rye. Say what you will about the fit for middle school brochure on teen alienation and the F word, its an old favorite. There is a part in which he is talking about one of his schoolmates that is a bore, a jock, I guess. However, this kid, Harris Macklin, happens to be a phenomenal whistler. Acrobatic yet tender, mastering all music genres. But this kid only performed when he thought no one was listening, much how I prefer to work. Holden went on to say that maybe everyone, despite being painfully irritating in person is, behind closed doors, a secretly terrific whistler. Much how I would like people to think of me. “Man, this guy better be good at something.” they think as I talk aimlessly at them. I demonstrated for Christine my lack of ability, she laughed, but at this point I was beginning to be overcome by actual medical concern. A checklist of what I had eaten that day or the night before. I had taken some ibuprofen that morning. Was I dehydrated? Over-hydrated? Is this the first, normally neglected, sign of exhaustion? I told Matt and he, being him, heard me but did not actually listen to what I was saying. He began to teach me, step by step, how one whistles. “Yes....I know...yeah,” I tried to interject but, bless his heart, the man does love the sound of his own voice. I did not forget how to whistle. I did not leave that particular tool at home that day. It felt as though one of the local Wiccans just got Baby's First Spell book. “Thou shall not create tone with air through thine lips, pursed.” An hour later it was back without a note from the nurse. No explanation. Delightfully out of key once again. At full rich titanium silver quality. Ahh, I was so excited I showed Matt, “Your mouth is more scruntched up than it was before.” Yes, Matt. You are right.

Apples and Trees.

The other day I realized I have not spoken to my dad in over a year. In my family that is not so unusual. Even when I lived at home we could go weeks without seeing each other. Most of our conversations were not much more intimate than those shared with a recognized grocery cashier. Really the only time he was interested in what I was doing was when I was building something like a bookshelf out of a baby grand piano shell. When I was about 23 he picked up the guitar again. He never played as I grew up but I think he dabbled a bit before I was born. He bought a pretty nice acoustic and spent a good amount of time in the garage he built, practicing. I was and am impressed how well he played so quickly. So we talked about guitars a lot. Having been in bands since I was 15, guitar talk is the cornerstone of 90% of my conversations, and also the time for my girl friends to find someone more interesting to hang out with for a while. The love of a specific amp or guitar or pedal or tube brand or string diameter is the basis for most of my current friendships. If I met a woman playing a Rickenbacker through a blackface Fender amp you would have to keep me off my knees, hopelessly proposing. My dad liked to jam with his buddies every other weekend. Mostly playing Chicago and Peter Gabriel songs. Stuff I could get behind. I stepped in a couple times. The guy that hosted had a Rhodes and an Hammond X3, which I was told is the first solid-state version of the B3. It sounded amazing and is the closest I have ever been to playing a B3. They drank Old Style and smoked weed. The latter never in front of me. I figured out my dad smoked weed the first time it was smoked in my presence. I learned from a MASH episode that the sense of smell is the strongest memory inducer. Still to this day if I smell almond extract I think of my grandmother's kitchen. I was thirteen and my best friend's older brother smoked in front of me. Immediately I was sent back to an image of me just out of diapers with my dad in the basement. It was a revelation likened to the feeling of being hit in the face with a fly swatter. Not long after, the hunt for the stash was in affect. On a bright summer afternoon it was found. In exchange for a few hits one of the older boys rolled it into a joint for me. A skill I have yet to master. Oh. My. God. In the succeeding years I had not been much of a smoker. A hit or two here and there. I pretty much abandoned it all together for ten years. Only smoking with trusted people in the appropriate situation and with quality grade. Never had I encountered a blend as potent as my fathers contribution. That afternoon was spent behind a curtain, the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose. As if I had become a dogs tongue after a dozen fetches. I recall regaining consciousness in a bathtub of room temperature water. After that I found more pleasure selling my dads weed rather than smoking it. Turns out I do not so much enjoy handing over large chunks of my day to oblivion. I could sell a nickels worth for twenty bucks. That is how good it was. I funded a trip to Six Flags with a dime bag. He may well have known but never, never broached the subject. How does a good natured guy such as my father bring himself to accuse his fifteen year old son of ganking his good stuff? Well, time has indeed told, he could not find a way. Good for me. Having been the subject of my fathers rage, luckily, in only verbal outbursts, I consider it a gift from the gods that I was cunning enough to not get caught doing much worthy of anything more than a spanking. About six years ago I was living at home and it just-so-happened I had to do some work on my Mexican made 72 Telecaster Re-issue, blonde, semi hollow body with the F hole, upgraded pick-ups. I played 11s at the time. A small allen wrench was needed to adjust the string height. Dad was in garage and I knew the door was locked. I had a key but out of respect and fear of an uncomfortable conversation, I knocked on the garage door. This time however I was in a reckless, kamikaze even, mood. In one swift motion I unlocked the door and walked in, like I owned the place.

Whatever my dad had in his hand, he threw it. In a direction and trajectory, I imagine, my dad tried very hard to remember. Parts per million, was a phrase that came to mind. How much oxygen could be left in here? A question I glanced at. Busted. I walked in determined to find the proper tool for my task. I felt like a nature photographer in the midst of a lion devouring a conquered gazelle. “Oh, pardon me, excuse me while I just....” Intentionally I took my time. More practically I could have taken the bag back into my room but instead I stood at the bench carefully choosing the select few that could perform the task. In the next few seconds the cloud of smoke was replaced by the pulsing, flexing, tension of my fathers will to remove me from the room. Somewhere, a joint was disappearing. Here, I stood in the way. Purposefully I combed over the angled hexagonal shafts, admiring their six sided beauty. Science is awesome. Finally, he erupted. As I anticipated. “Ju..Jus....Just take them all inside!” So I did. Like a good son should.

Not me

Bella is a ten year old girl that runs the restaurant I work at. She is the daughter of Manel, a friend of ours. Manel will come in and hang out while Bella serves gelato or runs the register. She gets mad at me if I try to step in and you know, do my job. Bella is occasionally useful when understaffed and busy. Its like having half an employee. In exchange she is supplied with all the pepperoni she wants.

The other day I was sitting down for a minute before my shift started. Bella wanted to know what was in my big messenger bag. I started to tell her but soon became easier to open it up. Along with deodorant, cologne, iPod, digital sound recorder, magazines, extra shirt, bike pump and tools was my sketch pad. A big one I just bought the day before, it only had one sketch in it. Just the beginnings of an idea. She wanted to see it. I said no. I dont like to show people anything unfinished. I feel awkward enough trying to communicate on a daily basis with the usual series of syllables that is my every day speech, much less visual interpretations of random ideas plucked from my own synapses. She began to whine. I mean literally whine, like a puppy. So I showed her. It is a rough sketch of an idea I want to do a photo of then translate to a woodcut. She looked at it and said, "hmm.....I....no, it's good ....it's just....not for...me.

Without a doubt the most honest and accurate judgment of my work I have ever received.

The only thing I ever wrote that I liked.

I wrote this the morning they took my dementia infested Grandmother, my father's mother, to the nursing home. The last day I would see her alive. This happened just weeks after returning home from three weeks on the road with Midstates and the American Princes. Up until now whaich was maybe the happiest three weeks of my life. At that point she had been at my house for about a year. No longer able to care for, feed or trusted to do anything herself. Maybe I was just that happy to be away that long. She had been alone since my grandfather divorced her in 1982. I wrote him a letter in January telling him about my travels and the robbery/shooting. I explained I had a great girl and was really happy and wanted to talk to him more often than the once-a-decade family reunions. I havent heard back yet.


Mon, Jun. 12th, 2006, 07:11 am
Where is the V in ne’er-do-well?
6:04am

The screaming started again
Right on schedule

It is cold in my room
Cool for this time of year
The window needs more effort than I want to give
In order to get it to compromise itself by closing all the way

She howls like a spoiled girl
Til I hear her head hit the floor
Above me

Silence

I had never wished someone would die before
Of my own family
An ever further thought
Till today

I was disappointed
When I heard her start talking again
Slightly quieter than before

My dad

Said something yesterday
He said it twice

He yelled back
He pushed her down
He may have punched her
I didn’t want to ask

They are coming
I can hear it
She is calmer with strangers

He meant it

She said she hated us
She meant it

She said it twice
As they helped her down the stairs
She walks slowly
I think there is something wrong with her foot

Another man at the door
At this moment
She called him Jack and yelled at him

The look on his face was kinda funny

But if I would have laughed then
I would have lost it

I did anyway
After what my aunt said
She said she would rather have cancer
She said it twice

I believe it is the only time in human history
That phrase was uttered
With sincerity

I had to return to my room

With the open window
To cry alone

I wondered why I could not cry with my family
With my dad
It seemed like he would see it
As a weakness

He thought I was weak
Or at least gay
I wanted to be there, for him

But that just isn’t the way it is

The ambulance, fire and police wait
Till the end of the street
To turn their sirens back on

Yesterday
As he was coming up the stairs

After picking her up
After dragging her inside
After she threw herself on the ground

He said
If I ever get like that
Shoot me
Shoot me

He said it twice.

Seven Months

Words have eluded me for a while now. December 16th was my last post. What has happened? Nothing to speak of, I suppose. A relationship entered and exited. Justice was served. Friendships forged. Businesses created. Songs written. Drinks drunk.

A couple weeks ago, a Sunday, I had to get my bike from the practice space. I needed to get to work that evening. So I walked. I cant get over how much I love walking long distances. Images immediately enter of monks with walking sticks from those old Japanese woodcuts. Walking and meditating. Its the only activity that really lets my mind wander. Yet it takes a certain amount of steps before I get past the "thinking about thinking" stage and really let loose. That Sunday I had my headphones on and thought the most apropos soundtrack for my hot summer Arkansas walk was Ride the Lightning. I could be seen walking past the capitol laughing to myself marching to 'Fight Fire with Fire.' It just so happens that most of the songs on that record match the beats per minute of my natural walking tempo. So it became easy to step along with Lars.

Yesterday I met a group of 21 cyclists headed from New York to California on a 52 day ride across the states. These people were amazing. Allison was so inspiring. She was the first into town and happened to find me at the Station. I fed her and we started talking. I gave her a list of bike shops and bars to hit. We all hung out that night. I wanted to take a week or two off and hit the road the next day at 5am with her.

Today I could not wait to ride. After work I fixed up the Bianchi and headed to Argenta to see Marcus and Michael do a set on the street. It was great. They rocked out some real blues while Marcus and Dede's two kids ran around banging pipes and the ground with their drum sticks. As the sun went down their set ended. I took the river trail down to the Big Dam Bridge. In the sections where the trees blocked out the moonlight my eyes could hardly adjust to find the road. I began to get thoughts of being jumped and robbed out there alone under the cover of darkness. The low light allowed my mind to hallucinate men trying to jump out at me from the trees. I rode fast hoping to trace the winding narrow road. Begging for light I finally emerged in to the well lit bridge entrance. I managed to take the entire trip so far and the entire length of the bridge with out shifting from high gear. I am getting stronger. It wasnt until I made my way to Cantrell and up Cedar Hill Rd that I finally shifted down. Hard ride up. Its so preferable to take a difficult ride when you have no idea what is around the next turn. There is nothing to dread. It is truly living in the moment. There is no turning around only dealing with that which is immediately confronting me. No thinking just moving. Muscles screaming. Finally, thank you, I found Kavanaugh. I headed downhill towards home. One final sprint. This bike is so fast, I must have been doing 30-32mph.

In front of my house I slow to a stop. My left foot gets stuck in the cage. Halfway to the ground, it was too fast to smile but upon reflection and in slow motion I let go and enjoyed the breeze before I hit the ground.