The Junkie Blues

Yesterday my oldest cousin died. He was twenty-seven, he had a baby, his wife had an affair with his best friend, and after living for the last couple years as an alcoholic, he broke out of the cocoon and turned into a junkie.

It’s been more than five years since I saw him in the flesh, or even talked to him, so I had no idea he was riding the Oxycontin dragon. I’m sad, but not surprised. There were subterranean rumblings of his imminent self-destruction: He’d been a hard core booze hound for years.

And self-destruction runs in the blood, generations back, but that’s a topic for another time.

When I was a kid we’d all meet on Christmas at my Grandma’s house in Sacramento. On a day just like today we’d all sit in a dimly lit living room that smelled like fresh pine and my Grandpa’s chewing tobacco and my Grandma’s cooking.

There we are, I see us now, tearing into glittering paper excited and grinning from ear to ear, the whole thing caught in grainy and uneven perfection on one of those clunky early camcorders. Those tapes still exist, and I watch them every once in awhile.

Ryan always smiled first and he never stopped moving. While I’d sit in a corner watching the world go by, he’d be wading through the deepest part of the river, going head first into the strongest current. When we were kids anyway, he was one of the most genuinely generous people I knew.

As the years went on I saw him less and less. My family moved to Washington State, his stayed in California. Our moms would trade Christmas letters and family pictures. Each year, his smile wasn’t quite as big, and his eyes got harder.

The last time I saw him, it was a photograph. Him and his wife at their wedding, standing in Hawaii with the ocean in the background as the sun went down. He looked confused.

His father went to Hawaii, where my cousin lived for the last seven years of his life, to rescue him. He brought his son back to the United States, and it was at eleven o’clock at night after he returned to where they hoped he’d be safe, when he was probably strung out and crashing and desperate to score a hit at the truck stop on the other side that he took a mad dash across the highway.

Maybe he wanted to end it all. I wouldn’t be surprised. He tossed his fate at the mercy of timing and he wasn’t one of the lucky ones. In the last lane, before his feet pounded onto the opposite shoulder, a car hit him.

It makes it less painful to believe that the last thing he thought — what I’d be thinking if I were in his shoes — as the fender smashed into him and he sailed and bounced down the asphalt, before losing consciousness for the last time on the wings of the only high that never ends, it was: Finally, it’s over.

I wish it could have been anyone but you, Ryan.

Even more tragic than your death, it’s the last couple years of your life that I grieve for. That is a pain so intense that seconds feel like days, so ravenous and raging that it feels as if the world is opening up under your feet with every step and swallowing all the hope and light in the world before it has even been generated. Your soul feels like a hall of mirrors that has been frozen in time and space at the exact moment that it is smashed into a million pieces by the supersonic scream of a jet, and you are left to wander with bleeding ears through an enervated wasteland that cuts to the bone at every wrong turn.

You weren’t one of the lucky ones, Ryan, but I was, and I feel guilty about that. Because that’s all it is, more than gravity or anything that’s ascribable to science, that’s keeping us glued to this rock, free to breathe one more second, one more hour, one more day.

Luck.

If I believed in god I’d say I’ll see you on the other side, but I won’t. So rest in peace, Rye’. We’ll all be joining you sooner we ever thought we would.

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NOTE: This is a re-post from the blog I used to keep on my website. I had to discontinue keeping it there, as every time my hard drive crashed or required reformatting, I had to start from scratch recreating all the entries (even though I had the text backed up), because iWeb sucks. Since I moved my blog here I've been in the slow process of reposting all my old entries, and wanted to make sure this eulogy made it onto the new space.

WAKE UP AMERICA

At the Democratic National Convention yesterday, Dennis Kucinich delivered the speech of his life. I turned it into a techno mix. Enjoy:

Disappointment

It happens. I've overcome plenty of disappointments. If I had a tally sheet for the number of times I've been on the cusp of victory only to see it crumble at the last minute, I'd cover a piece of college-ruled notebook paper. Easy.

So, the latest in the string is nothing new. It's just one of those things: My initial reservations and concerns proved completely founded. When the big letdown came, I'd been mentally prepared for two months. That great delay, the two month waiting period, is the mechanism that spurred the reservations and slapped armor on my mental defenses.

Time to pick up and move on.

The key in this life is not in counting the disappointments, aching over every little defeat, but to savor those rare moments when the clouds part and the blinding light of success, and vindication, and the realization of dreams coalesce into one shining moment of beautiful accomplishment.

Those are the moments I turn to when I'm down and out. Those few precious and well polished memories keep me going. It is inescapable that every worthwhile individual success is built on deep and solid foundation of initial failure, soul crushing doubt, and rejection.

So it goes.

Old Joe

"Put it before them briefly so they will read it,
clearly so they will appreciate it,
picturesquely so they will remember it and,
above all, accurately so they will be
guided by its light."

~ Joseph Pulitzer

I should be watching the DNC, but I'm reading instead

'Do tell it at once!' cried Nastasya Filippovna gaily.

'I've never heard it either!' put in Ferdischenko. 'C'est du nouveau.'

'Ardalion Alexandrovich!' Once again came Nina Alexandrovna's beseeching voice.

'Daddy, someone wants to see you!' shouted Kolya.

'It's a silly story, it can be told in no time', began the general complacently. 'Two years ago, yes it was! A bit less, just after the opening of the new railway -- I was on some personal business of great importance in connection with giving up the service (I was already in mufti at the time). I got a first-class ticket, got in, sat down, and had a smoke. I mean I carried on smoking the cigar I'd started earlier. I was on my own in the carriage. Smoking wasn't forbidden, but it wasn't allowed either; it was sort of half-allowed, the usual thing, depending who it was. The window was down. Suddenly, just before the whistle went, two ladies got in with a lap-dog just opposite me; they were late; one gorgeously decked out in blue; the other quieter, black silk with a cape. Not at all bad-looking, gave me a rather haughty look and talked in English. I just carried on smoking of course. That is I thought about it, but I went on smoking anyway, out of the window as it was open. The lap-dog was resting on the blue lady's knees, it was the size of my fist, little black thing, white paws, you don't see many of them. Silver collar with something written on it. I just sat. I noticed the ladies getting annoyed about the cigar of course. One stared at me through her lorgnette, tortoiseshell. I still didn't do anything: because they didn't say a thing! If they'd said something, given me warning, or just asked me, there is such a thing as human speech after all! But not a word... All of a sudden, as I say, without the slightest indication, not a hint of a warning, just as if she'd taken leave of her senses, the blue lady grabs my cigar and out it goes through the window. The train races on, me staring like a half-wit. The woman was wild; really wild, in a savage state; a well-grown woman, incidentally, tall and stout, fair-haired and rosy-cheeked (too rosy even); her eyes were flashing at me. Without a word, and with extreme courtesy, the most perfect and most exquisitely refined courtesy, I leaned over to the dog, picked it up delicately by the collar with two fingers, and slung it out the window after my cigar! One squeal! The train goes rushing on...'

'You monster!' cried Nastasya Filipovna, laughing and clapping her hands like a little girl.

--The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Vote Different 2.0

Apple's 1984 Superbowl ad, with a 1984 theme, was a classic. I was two when it aired, so I can't say I remember it. But I saw it years ago, and it's one of those timeless pieces of footage that sock you in the gut just as hard every time.

Before the primaries kicked off in 2007, an Obama supporter made a Hillary version of the ad, which was brilliant. No one had put McCain's face into the same environment yet, so, I did:

Information Overload -or- Here's Why Sometimes, Blogging, Writing, and Thinking in General Feel Futile

I know. I know exactly what all you English majors are thinking, and it's, "But my professors pounded in me a deep and profound loathing of capitalized phrases as a rhetorical device, so your title sucks, and the rest of your little blog post by association."

Whatever. Just...go.

Anyway, for you people out there who didn't torpedo your financial security for something you could have learned simply by reading extensively, I'm bad at blogging. I understand.

It's not that I don't like writing. I do. I also like having an audience, and I'm not shy about pimping out the scrawny children of my imagination. Two things that go hand-in-hand if you want to be a writer, as in, someone who earns the majority of their bread by what they write.

So then, you'd think it'd be easier to sit my ass in a text box for about forty-five minutes a day to think up something to say. Pass along some nugget I dug up, pitch in with my opinion on a latest happening here or there that I feel real honest-to-god passion about.

The problem is, I'm fucking saturated with information, and I'm so busy trying to keep up I don't have any frickin' time to gin up dedicated excitement for any one thing. For example, at the moment, there are a number of things I find entertaining or enlightening:

At 1:50 in this video, an amazing propane explosion rocks the horizon. It's the kind of thing you'd probably never see prior to about three or four years ago.

Then, this is a great little gag. Haha. Get it? Sure you do.

Here we have some atheist toast.

Ah, getting a little more serious here. Yeah. While this is going on, our valiant leader is hard at work, preventing the imminent collapse of the free world under the influences of religious extremism, elementary foreign policy fuckups, and terrible fiscal restraint.

And here we go, to top it off, a dollop of science.

On each one of these things, I could write an entire blog entry. I could tell you why each one had special significance. Only, there are about a thousand of these things that flash across my computer screen every day, and I don't know where to start.

By one line of reasoning, if I really cared about my craft and career and whatever else, I'd make these regular entries. I'd be disciplined and organized and efficient. At 9:30 AM, every morning, I'd log on, scan the aggregator headlines (more weight and attention is automatically given to Reddit over Digg), and think up quick, witty, and penetrating analysis of the day's events. Then I'd apply myself with diligent assiduity to my latest work of fiction until lunch, at which point I would break, eat for exactly an hour while reading a book or magazine, write for five more hours, then retire to the living room to pay bills, drink wine, watch television, or pick up a book.

Which would be great, but in all essential areas diametrically opposed to my personality. It's not that I abhor discipline, but find that my creative output waxes and wanes. I go through periods of intense involvement and then lose interest precipitously. That's not counting regular wage earning work I have to do, simply because I can't afford not to at this point in my life. So while I'm keeping an eye on a book in the pipeline and I'm thinking about my next one and I'm trying to figure out what video I want to make next and I'm trying to get around to this movie script I want to write and I'm writing articles for a trade magazine and the local paper. Well, after all that, blogging, which I consider a sort of creative outlet, just usually isn't on the radar at the end of the day.

Maybe if I regarded it more mechanically, I'd do it more often. It wouldn't be so much work. But then, who's reading? Like outer space, in cyberspace, the empty wasteland separating objects of significance from one another far outweighs the objects of significance.