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i texted her last week, desperate and stoned, and told her that i missed her. even apologizing and conceding that i understand how things are, i didn’t mean to send it. i just wanted to type it out. i wanted to see the words written out in front of me. but then i hit send. and when she replied i was too afraid to open it. i let it sit there all morning, embarassed and afraid. i don’t know what i feared her saying, something, anything, scared just to know she’d caught me in this vulnerable moment. but she was as kind as always. I know. That’s okay. I miss you as well. It’s not selfish or stupid. I miss you too. and whether or not she meant what she said is beyond me now, if she truly misses me or ever really cared for me in the first place, i don’t know. it seems unecessarily destructive to ruin what we had retroactively with this sort of insecurity. i wish i could just take her words at face value, know that i loved and was loved in return, even if only temporarily. even if time and space and circumstance got in between us. but i’m trying to choose to believe what she said. i want to believe that if things were different, if we were somewhere else in some other time that things wouldn’t be this way. but it’s been over a week since then and over a month since she’s gone and i feel like it’s time for me to accept it. i’ll still miss her, i know that. but this is the way things are now. this is what she needs, or wants, or whatever, and i’ll let her have it. i understand that the past is familiar, and familiarity breeds comfort. i know that i wish i could crawl back in time to valentines day or the record store or the lazy evenings spent drinking beer and watching movies on the couch. i want them because i was happy then, happier than i can remember being. i think we fear the future like some sort of crooked casino. like we’d rather just stick to what we have because no one ever really wins. i think it’s hard for me to believe that i’ll ever find someone that makes me feel like she did again. but i know i felt like that before i met her and, though it took a long time, she came eventually. and so i hold out hope for the future. though i hold this hope with the reservation that i no longer return to my habit of falling into relationships with people i don’t care about. there have been far too many times where i’ve accepted advances out of loneliness. no, going forward i’m not looking for her replacement. i’m not looking for anybody. i am going to persist doing and being what i always have and, if along the way that meshes with the doing and being of someone else, good. but i have friends, i have my jobs, i have my pet projects and my hobbies and time to be alone and music and films and drugs and alcohol and places to go and people to meet. and i can’t afford to spend any more time thinking about what’s already settled. she was the sweetest, kindest, funniest, prettiest, and most talented girl i’ve ever known and i’m grateful that i got to spend what time with her i did. i wish it could have lasted longer, but it didn’t. i know that i’m not done with pangs of loneliness or the desire to text her late at night, but i’ll get there eventually. and hopefully she finds whatever she needs to find without me; finds a place to live, finds a way to do what she loves doing, has friends and people that care about her, and kills whatever sadness is lurking there. when we broke up, a freind of mine asked me if i loved her. at the time i thought that question was stupid, her and i had only dated a few months. but thinking over these last few weeks, i feel like i might have loved her. but perhaps its for the best i didn’t realize it sooner. i know it and that’s what’s important. however, if time and space and circumstance ever bring us back together, i’ll make sure she knows it too.

xxxxxxx,

I saw this card while trying to find a mailing envelope, I thought it was dumb enough to send along.

Thank you for letting me borrow xxx xxxxxx. It really was beautifully written and very pleasant to read. I enjoyed it quite a bit and I don’t think I ever would have gotten the chance without it. So, thanks!

And don’t worry about getting xxxxx xx xxxxxx back to me, honestly. I mean, if you finish it and get a chance, I appreciate it, but I’ve already read it. I don’t often reread books (even ones as deserving of it as xxxxx xx xxxxxx). I’d really rather see it get passed along to someone who can use it for something other than a decoration. I’m always finding and losing books, I’m sure its space will be filled soon enough. xxx xxxxxx just seemed pretty special to you, so I figured it was important that I return it.

I also included some skittles. There was space in the box and I figured I should do my (small) part to help you out of your funk. (I think funk is a delightful word for something so awful so I try to use it as often as possible; see: gulag). They aren’t much, but maybe they’ll make today better. You’re so remarkably kind and sweet and talented, just the best person really, and I know how rotten it feels to want to lie down and die, so just know that I’m rooting for you and your recovery. And of course you know this but, as always, if I can ever be of any help please just let me know, I’d be happy to. I know there isn’t much I (or anyone, really) can do to help you, but all the same.

Anyways, I don’t mean to come across as too overbearing, or pandering, or annoying - and please tell me if I am, I can never tell - but I do really hope things get better for you.

I need to write it all down while it's still here, while the details are still vivid. I want to remember this. Her, me, this room, this street, these windows, the walls, everything. I don't want to forget any of it. I don't expect things to go badly, but if they ever do, I want to keep this with me. I don't want to forget this. Because here she is. And here I am. Here. In this messy apartment, in this snowy city. And it's hard to believe I'm not in Amherst, in the library maybe, alone. Or home. But here. Providence, Rhode Island. With her. I'm very happy. Happy to wake up yesterday in the same place, here, in this bed, in her apartment. Happy to wake up very slowly, wait, pause, kiss me, we're up, pause, back to bed, repeat. Happy to go down to the cafe with the mural-ed walls, eating eggs and homefries, drinking coffee. Then back up to the apartment, with cartoons and games and working, just sharing space framed by snowfall, casual, easy. I think it was in those quiet moments, the silent ones where we just existed next to one another, that I decided I might love her. The comfort and the tranquility of just being near. Not touching, not talking, just basking in the proximity of another person. Just to feel them nearby. It's special and rare. There was no discomfort, There was no searching for words or remarks or a compulsory hand running along the spine. Just comfortable silence. That silence eventually broken by a kiss, and a kiss broken by an idea, and that idea leaving traces of soap and water and finger trails over every inch as we returned to the cartoons again comfortable, electric, and cleaned only to melt into one another in that way that only our youth knows how. Beautifully and slowly and synchronized. Pooling side by side in little puddles when all is said and done. Then redress, and out into the night. Hand in hand, laughing and sliding and falling. Coffee in the dim light of a beautiful restaurant. Sipped slowly and broken up by pretending to be all the fancy people adjacent. Laughing. And, then back again, in bed and watching tv. Then tv off and talking. Hours and hours, just talking. What books we liked as children, the mannerisms of our friends, and we we got to be there, talking side by side like that. And, finally, sleep. She's up and brushing her teeth now, but this was a good day.

i told her everything. the topic had come up and i figured sooner or later she'd know, so why not tonight? and so i spilled it all out in careful, slow text messages, a controlled burn of everything i was afraid to tell her. and when i couldn't possibly squeeze another drop of confession, just as i was certain i had gone too far. she replied. 15 minutes later. a lot of words and tears and emoticons that boiled down to understanding, empathy and "me too"s. since then she's gone to bed. and im here, drinking my coffee spiked and feeling deliriously excited for the future, next weekend, and everything beyond. i want her here. i want her to laugh at my dumb jokes. i want to hug her for being. i want to hear the words spill right from her mouth so i know they're real. i want her to script herself, say what she said, and i want to tell everything her all over again. i want to be there for the tears this time. i tried to write everything down in one of my shoddy reviews, this time of spiritualized's ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space , but i didnt.

i think i'm in love, but i'm terrified by all of the things she doesn't know.

david bowie - hunky dory (1971)

it didn't look like a record store from the outside, ill give her that much. even at street level the only indication that anything had been there at all was a wooden cut-out of a record adorned with an arrow pointing down the stairs. it didn't bother her though, that was enough apparently, and so i followed her down. but now, in a little brick basement foyer, there was a door. red and wooden and covered in graffiti, i don't blame her for pausing. it looked as if the last signs of life had been gutted out of here ages ago. i hesitated too. turned the knob slowly, pushed it open even slower, and despite the dim light and heaps of trash, the animals could be heard playing from the end of a hallway. she followed me this time. at the end of the hallway was a record store pulled right from high fidelity. rows and rows and rows of vinyl and tapes and cds in boxes, on shelves, in stacks, with a little old man tucked in the corner on a laptop bobbing his head along to the music and smiling. we were there for an hour at the least but i had lost all concept of time, "look at this!", "look at this one!", "look!", again and again. running up to each other like giddy kids, pushing lps in faces and grinning, alternately pointing them out of sincerity, or irony, or just to see what the other had to say. laughing or genuinely interested or "blank would love this". it felt as though it had always been this way. i took a deep breath, everything was in it's right place, and exhaled. record after record after record. we must have gone through a thousand, maybe even a million. but, when the time finally came, it was bowie: the essentials she settled on. the first track: changes. it immediately took me back to not too long before, driving home from her house in the pouring rain on the last night before she'd leave for school again, feeling like i'd blown it, missed my chance, the familiar feeling of distance and time peeling people away like bandaids. bowie's changes was on the radio and, despondently, i hummed along. that night i went to the pier alone. it was freezing and raining and 2am, but i was drawn to the ocean. standing, doubting, thinking, folding, crumpling and uncrumpling myself to the sound of waves crashing. before seeing her that night i'd had my worst panic attack since high school. it had nothing to do with her, but i thought about it anyways, being frantic and loathing and desperate, trapped in my own skin. but now i was here, storm gently raging, beating loudly on the pier. i wish i had said something to her, stayed a few minutes longer. i took a moment to remember her sitting at the top of the stairs in her house, head cocked to one side, me with my hand on the doorknob at the bottom, half out the door. we talked like that a while. just simple things. "drive safe" "have fun at school" "text me when you get home" "i will" "it's really bad out there" on and on. nothing romantic, no all important goodbye, i could feel regret setting in again, a familiar discomfort. in the weeks that followed i must have listened to hunky dory a dozen times. the first four tracks especially, changes, oh! you pretty things, eight line poem, and life on mars?, being the go to soundtrack for anything. and here she was again, unknowing of my attachment, holding the song in her hands and smiling. she didnt end up getting the record, deciding that three dollars wasnt enough to use a card for, she put it back on the shelf and we left. i followed her back through the dim hallway, back through the red wooden door, back into the little brick room there underground. but she didn't go up the stairs. she looked around the little brick room as if she'd never seen it before. seeing the dimness, the grungy walls, the yellow haze of it all, stark and unapologetic in front of her. conventionally disgusting, somehow it became romantic. her, standing there, bright eyed as anyone i'd ever known, facing me with a smirk, there, framed by chipped brick and trash and cigarette butts, face illuminated by the glow of underground. she was so beautiful. and, no matter how old i get, i hope that feeling of first kiss is never lost. standing there, confused and panicked, knowing what's going to happen, yet, somehow, still doubting. making quick glances to the staircase, her face, past her, zone out, zone in, back to the staircase, back to her face. it's in those moments where i am most childlike. naive and standing there, frozen, nervous, embarrassed, vulnerable. the head feels blank, no thoughts, just a visceral pounding in the chest and some sort of cosmic magnetism pulling all things gracefully through time, and all things towards those sorts of beautiful conclusions. she smiled and pulled me back to earth, reducing what i had convinced myself was entirely indescribable into a single question: "do you want to kiss me?" and, with that simple question, everything was right. changes, the self-loathing feeling of driving in that rain, new year's eve, her sitting on the staircase, the pier, all of it. i fell into the relief of it all, "yes". and we melted. there, in the doorway of this dingy record store, there in that little brick room beneath the streets full of people rushing around and the sky above. beneath everything we melted. and when the world subsequently went silent, and every moving thing became still, i took her hand, and lead her up the stairs. this album has always been important to me. it's beautiful and melodic and strange and so many things. but now, for better or worse, it will always be tethered to her. tethered to that moment underground. i woke up for the first time in amherst again this morning. she's 100 miles away somewhere, probably sleeping. but i'm here, listening to hunky dory, and everything is ok. thank you, bowie.

when i left for school in august i was hovering around 220-ish pounds. i weighed myself yesterday at 158.5 pounds. i'm not sure if i should be happy or concerned or in the market for a new bathroom scale or what. people had made comments that lead me to believe that there was a noticeable difference, but i couldnt it until the numbers were there. wow.

it was september, highschool, i must have been 17 at the time, maybe younger. i was in one of those drugstores with that half sterile/half disheveled feeling of being a single tier above convenience store. my shift next door wouldn't start for another 45 minutes. i remember everything about this moment. i remember the way the afternoon sun made the frosted glass of the windows glow the color of daylight. i remember the viscous motions of the cashier and stockboy as if they were operating this store in some sort of dream. and i remember the visceral punch my stomach recoiled with when i found the greeting cards. she'd hadn't been gone six months yet, but she was with someone new, and here i was, sad and desperate for any hope of return in front of a wall of packaged sentiment. so for the next 45 minutes i stood there reading card after card. funny cards, sad cards, cards with cute animals, cards with vintage photographs, anything that called her name, etc. i don't remember what card i bought or what i wrote on it (likely blotted out of my memory as some sub-conscious last line of defense to salvage any shred of self-respect), i do, however, recall driving to the bookstore later. i got a book i thought she'd like. i was so pleased with myself. this was a foolproof plan. i don't remember exactly what she said. probably something to the tune "thank you, how nice" or something similar. but without even going through the trouble of remembering i can recall that it wasn't the end-of-film-protagonist/romantic interest-reunite-over-romantic-gesture i had been hoping for. just confused gratitude and probably the single most pathetic moment of my life. i spent the next few weeks trying to talk to her before limping into my corner and throwing in the towel. and for the next year i clung to the desperate notion she might finally recognize what it had all meant and make it all worth it. almost exactly a year after signing my name to the card i found myself in the living room of a friend. with afternoon daylight and viscous lethargy that mirrored that day in the drugstore, we made out on the couch. for the next year i would bounce aimless through moments that i had only ever seen in movies, investing skin and touch and thoughts in people who were just as likely to return a kiss as they were to remind you how little you're worth. in a way, it was romantic. something beautiful in the way lonely people cling to each other, alternately fucking and cursing at one another, lovelessly pressing themselves into the future with the hope of something better on the horizon. it's a special kind of love. i don't know why i wrote this. i guess ive been thinking about it a lot lately. how pathetic it was that i believed that it was a greeting card separating her from me, like that transaction was going to change her mind. how simultaneously pathetic and pretty every subsequent month was, moments of genuine affection spliced with the invasion of preferable lovers. maybe it's because, for the first time in years, i feel like im at the outset of something fairy tale and exciting. maybe this is my way of filing the past away. maybe i dont want to forget. maybe its because i havent slept and im drunk off of my own insomnia. i dont know.

coma cinema - posthumous release (2013)

i took a long walk last night. i had been laying in bed staring at the ceiling, too wired, too electric to sleep. laying there in a drone of excitement, dread, and joy at the idea of new year's, her smile, and the lights in the city. the fear of future, the thrill of getting better, and the idea of once again sitting there in her little room sipping tea and watching her flipping the record again and again. and, when you're laying there like that, all wound up over things you can't do a thing about, well, sometimes you just need to get up and go. i didn't listen to this album as i walked last night. i actually listened to it for the first time this morning. but, sitting here, listening to it repetitively start to finish, it's perfect. i left my house and felt sick. in this past year i have become and done so many things i always hated. because here i am, 19, studying math and physics, smoking and drinking, and trying my best to reconcile every fragment of mistake and regret i've ever cultivated inside of myself. the past, the present, the future all with their own ghosts and creeping things that infest nights like this. i felt as though i was falling, sinking into some sort of irredeemable, inescapable plughole that would swallow me, make me cold and hollow, and spit me out. so i took a seat on a bench downtown. i watched the traffic lights change for no one. i watched as the clouds painted a ring of light around the moon. i watched the trees shiver in the cold. i worried about money and how little of it i had left. i worried about my ability to let go of whatever part of me had needed to write. i worried about wasting myself in alcohol and hazy bedrooms. i worried about how i presented myself to her, the constant question of whether or not who she's seeing is me or some manufactured version of myself tailored for her approval. i sat there a while. and, just like the bed at home, i got up and went. except things were different now. it was if i had slit a part of me open, finally found the part of me that had stockpiled all of my neurosis and panic, cut it, and let it bleed. and i left it there in a puddle on the sidewalk there in front of the courthouse. i walked away without it. it wasn't a big moment. it wasn't revolutionary. it was just like waking up from a nightmare. suddenly i eased myself of every terrible thing in there. as i walked i could feel every footstep, every stride making firm contact with the pavement and moving me forward. i could see the stars and my parents and a million older versions of myself. i could see every person i had every loved, or liked, or hated. i accepted everything i could not change and all of the things i chose not to. i wanted to find a rotary phone and call her, imagine the real wires, the real electricity that connected her to me and me to her. everything came back to me like the pulses of a heartbeat. new year's eve, new year's day, boston, amherst, the lights, the couch, the blue juice, the bagel, the hats, the budweiser sweater, and that text. i hadn't forgotten, but it felt as though i was remembering it a long time in the future. a time when i looked back and saw this as the moment it all came together. and here i was, a tiny cog in a great, great big machine. i looked down at the trash littering the sidewalk and gutters and it almost made sense. these shapeless, formless, useless pieces of garbage without owner or origin. they fit. the shitty convenience stores and cop cars and graffiti made sense. i could accept it. and i remembered just a few nights before, stopping at a traffic light near her house and looking at her as i played the song i knew she'd love. she was smiling. head back, curled up, and smiling. this girl. this person, such a departure from who i am, yet a perfect opposing hemisphere. her hand resting on my hand, her head resting on my shoulder, all of these winks and hearts she signs her words with, all of the subtle gestures she gives, and yet, somehow, when and if it ends before it can begin, it'll be ok. i'll be ok this time. and that is how i know this year is different. i know i will be ok. that is what this album is to me. it is acceptance. it is having something pretty in your hands and being able to put it down. it is release through the death of who you were, and accepting who you will become. "our old man says he's living in hell // well you checked yourself in // you can check yourself out // i was born knowing one thing // i was born."

the antlers - familiars (2014)

for the record, i don't know why i'm doing this. i guess at a fundamental level it's for my own sake. i don't care if anyone reads this or sees it or whatever. i guess i just like where i am right now. i like who i am right now, caught in the wake between who i was and who i so desperately want to be. i'm optimistic. i'm sad and lonely and pathetic, but i'm optimistic. and i think i'm improving. so, more than anything, i think this serves as a preservative, a sort of photo album i can look back through and remember who i am now. i think familiars captures that really, really well. the whole thing is draped in this dream-like veil, where nearly every song feels like it could serve as the backdrop to some sort of fairy tale. everything feels lucid, magical, yet - somehow - elusive. like the after-dream moments spent trying to remember. trying to figure out if it was real. trying to separate what was real from what was imagined. and, though this definitely isn't the antler's best work, it's definitely a very different, entirely separate effort than their other albums. i can tell this album is familiars and not burst apart or hospice or whatever, which, regardless of whether or not it's "better" or "worse" than its predecessors is an entirely valid and important part of the artistry on its own. these guys managed to make an album that doesn't sound quite like any other in their discography without compromising the sound that makes them the band that they are. however the antler's are a band that hold a very special place for me just simply in terms of the music they create. i have tried very hard over the course of time to avoid trying to share them with other people who will then become irreversibly tethered to them mentally for me, and instead just leave them a secret i share with myself.

there are just too many songs that i feel intimately attached to. like, for example, epilogue off of hospice is a song that i lived via a relationship i was in. i can feel that nightmarish need to go crawling back to someone who is only going to chew you up and spit you out. that feeling of being buried alive and waking up next to their ghost:

"when i try to move my arms sometimes, they weight too much to lift. // i think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift) // but you return to me at night // just when i think that i may have fallen asleep // your face is up against mine // and i'm too terrified to speak // you're screaming // and cursing // and angry // and hurting me // and then smiling // and crying // apologizing..."

and, yes, i am aware that this is less a discussion of familiars and is instead just me babbling on and on about things vaguely centered around the album, but that is what i have intended. people get too bogged down with music. they dissect it, make it political, partition it into scraps and forget that really, at the most basic level, our relationship with the music we love is forged by our own interactions, our own connections, all of these things that exhume what makes us human. this album is the soundtrack to walking aimlessly on a sunday morning. everyone else everywhere is sleeping. there is a profound feeling of bright isolation. there are moments of reflection. there are glimpses of nostalgia. it is soft, gentle, careful, and accepting, like an arm around the shoulder, a pat on the back. the rest of the antler's work always has a secret feeling of darkness to it, something deep inside that feels afraid of itself, but this one, as far as i can tell, is the only album of theirs that feels decidedly not afraid. it has a feeling of innocence, of security, of empathy and understanding. the album is almost over now and, despite there being so much more that could be said, that's not how these things work. when the lights go up, the movie is over. and whether or not you feel like there could be just a little more, a little something to entice the "what happens next?" that isn't how this works. when it's over, it's over. and i feel like familiars carries that idea. you can never catch the dream as it slips away. when it's gone, it's gone, and it isn't ever coming back. but that's ok.

i'm still writing. i'm just done writing for an audience. i know that no one was ever sitting at the edge of their chairs for the next installment of whatever i had in store but, for my own sake, i'm putting that out there: i'm done. there is just too much in the way of trendiness and popularity for me to ever think that this would be a substantial outlet for me. maybe it's just cynicism, but i can't help but feel that most of the literary communities i've belonged to were more about style than substance. success would come to those who could contribute to an aesthetic, or rephrase a popular opinion, or whatever. i wanted writing to be about ideas. i wanted it to be about human beings and whatever universal truths were tucked away in all of our little unfamiliar places. i wanted it to be something more than these pretentious quips and hive-mind ideals. whatever, peace out. i'm repurposing this into nonfiction/editorial/personal/whatever i feel like. my first project is going to be going through my record collection alphabetically, and responding to the albums therein.

i still hate myself a lot. but a lot less than before. so i guess that's kinda progress.

a girl sculpted from sparks and bubblegum.

the film ends. it always ends. and when it ends there are people there. and sounds. and a million other things that i could pretend weren't there while it was playing. because i wasn't here. i was there. i don't wish i was somewhere else. i just wish i wasn't here.

it's sorta like the arctic. that's what it reminds me of. this infinite space, this space only existing through the contrast of light and dark. this place with no context. it isn't cold though. it's cool, definitely not a warm place by any means, but you aren't cold. and the only thing that gives any idea of temperature is a breeze that traverses the whole plane. some great, almost magnetic, force that pushes across everything. and no matter where you are, where you walk to, or wherever you go, you're always at the precipice of some giant void, always at the lip of a cliff, staring off the edge into whatever is below. and in the air there lingers a droning. a single note, loud and mechanical and whirring. it's pervasive and it touches upon everything. it isn't loud or painful, but enough to envelop, enough to resonate on the skin. and you are alone here forever. this is where you live. there is where you wake up. this is where you go to sleep. if you have a voice you do not know its sound, but you've never spoken, so you do not know. you might not even have a mouth. there are no mirrors. you don't know what you look like. you don't know anything about yourself. where you were born, when or how you got here, nothing. there is just space and some sort of vague illusion of time. but there is no time really, because you don't age here and nothing changes. everything is static. you might be nothing. just some sort of echo a real person left behind. bouncing around through this limitless tundra. if you imagine hard enough you might even be able to will yourself into nonexistence. but you don't. there are stars above you. faint twinkling lights caught in your zenith. they serve as mystic explanations for this senseless place. they are real, tangible places, you could go there. there is a way to get there. there has to be a way to get there. there is someone on those stars. and you can almost remember them. it is day. there is sunlight on their face. they are smiling. they are offering a hand, and you accept by offering your own. but they are a million miles away and you are alone here. there has to be a way to get there. a rocketship, a helicopter, a bicycle, a television remote, something. you won't find it. you know you won't find it. but you search until the day you stop searching.

why isn't it ever ok to be mean? hmm? i mean it has to be justified sometimes right? nothing violent, nothing cruel, nothing terribly destructive. something more akin to a very constructive (proverbial) slap of the face. just something harsh and sharp enough to make someone realize how stupid or ridiculous they're being. but it makes you a villain. everyone must be nice to one another, even when being nice causes more harm than being mean. whatever.

i am too good at being alone to be anything else. the inside of my head is a comfortable and familiar place. even when the little man in there wants company, knows that he needs company, he won't leave the comfort of being in there all by himself. he'll just sit up there, scribble his plans in a little black notebook, cross things out as he meets his own quotas for the day, and put himself to sleep when he's all done. he never writes anything about making friends or talking to strangers in his little book, there is no place for those things. it is only in times of great discomfort does he willingly reach out of these parameters of comfort and offer so much as an attempt to pull someone in there with him.

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