random people from the Internet grow old in front of you as you grow old in front of them
Seems like I wrote this tweet in August 2016.
It’s been pinned on my vaguely feel profile page for a few months now. Seems most accurate to the ‘spirit’ of vaguely feel.
What is the spirit of ‘vaguely feel’? It is a warm blend of nostalgia, relaxed observations and digital modernity, like using your iPad in front of a campfire.
What was the ‘genesis’ of this digital expression? Seems like I was thinking about the near-recent past, in that I was communicating ‘semi-regularly’ with writers online who I would only know online, save for a few random occasions. Then many of these ppl ‘faded’ away or ‘moved on’ or found their stable friend groups and here I am still writing with a different community of people.
Sometimes I think about these people and may search for them via the most popular or semi-popular social networks to see what is happening, and they have found jobs or marriages or new lifestyles that may suit them better. These people have grown ‘older,’ not necessarily ‘old’ and I’ve been a witness to it, even though it doesn’t really matter that I witnessed it.
What is growing ‘older’ anyway? Such a modern question to ask. ‘Growing old’ in our modern society seems to be losing the privilege of being able to to ‘indulge’ interesting ideas and once you no longer have that ‘privilege’ you become ‘old’, i.e. with no longer the time to ‘pursue’ random cultural facts such as ‘not listening to as many new bands.’ Someone could become old at 21 for instance if they become married or have children or have a very demanding jobs, while many people may never grow ‘old’ but who knows.
vaguely feel like there should be Tindr for neighbors
My old neighborhood is kinda like the original Nintendo of Nashville.
I mean Woodbine (my old neighborhood) was good…at one time. Then it kinda fell off — and now there’s this weird nostalgic desire for it, after everyone else upgraded to their new neighborhood, but the NES is like creaky and doesn’t have HDMI hookups.
Like you have to blow on Woodbine to get it to work properly. The location is great, the taco trucks are awesome, a library was only a mile away.
But what really made Woodbine — the neighbors.
There’s the guy with the goat. He would always walk the goat. And then somebody who wore a half watermelon on his head. Then of course the man who plays the tuba in the tunnel because trolls in his backyard told him, too.
There should be a Tindr for neighbors.
Swipe left on goat man.
Swipe left on melon head man.
Swipe right on Tuba Man, but left on his trolls.
I lived in Woodbine for six years and never felt threatened or in trouble or anything.
Except once my neighbor Tommy (swipe right on Tommy…good guy) said he was outside and someone ran off my porch right at him, asking for money and a ride downtown (it wasn’t me). I asked where he came from and Tommy said he didn’t know, just out of the dark.
My other neighbor Randall let us use his secret backyard cabin all the time, it was like no one knew it was there (except the trolls maybe?). Swipe right on Randall, too. Randall swears the cabin was randomly built by one of his friends, but it was like a studio apartment with nice fixtures, it was nicer than our house.
The neighbor next to Tommy is named Marvin and once Marvin told me how some coyotes came down on our street and he kind of rubbed his foot in the gravel or something to make noise and they left. Marvin had a lot of guns, I know that. I think he shot a dog or a squirrel once — that’s kind of a big difference, but I can’t remember.
Hmmm…Marvin. Generally, good guy. Swipe right.
Another neighbor, Jakob, is like a podcast king. His podcast is actually called Neighbors, which is kinda confusing to explain — but really it was only my problem, Jakob didn’t have that many real neighbors talking about his podcast.
Swipe right.
Other neighbors — Eric who owns a burrito truck, Bob and his brother who live down the street, the people with the random junk in their front yard all the time, Miss Joan who made my daughter a quilt.
Remember
that guy from Kroger…
???
He lived closer to me than I’d like to admit. I’d walk my dogs and I’d see him sitting out front of this house. He had a couple of dogs, one who couldn’t walk on its hind legs. After awhile I came by and realized that half the house had burned out, and this guy was still living in the garage apartment with his dog who could barely walk.
Swipe left on that guy I guess.
But if I got to choose…
If I got to choose my neighbors, I probably wouldn’t have chosen anyone that’s different from me.
That’d be a shame.
Hey! I wrote a small book about Woodbine. It’s super cool. Normally it’s a few bucks, but enter the code “bam” and you’ll get it way cheap— nice nice.
vaguely feel that these $400 tires i used for 2 days may have saved my life(?)
my 2003 saturn vue squealed and squeaked.
every time i made a turn or hit a slight curve, the tires would yell.
i took my car to a tire place and said something about the tires and the alignment, and they said “yeah sure” we can do that.
this place is near my work, which makes it convenient for me.
i decided on this day to buy new tires for this car, something i don’t usually do. i thought the squealing tires was because i kept buying used tires.
that wasn’t the problem, though.
they put new tires on there and mentioned something about the car’s frame being very rusty, and i drove the car home that day on the interstate, drove it back to work the next day, drove it to lunch and then drove back to work from lunch. i turned onto the street where my office is located and the car started shuddering.
violent shuddering…
like the car was fighting for its life out of a sinkhole.
i pulled the car into a random parking lot, ironically across the street from a DIFFERENT tire store. i couldn’t tell anything was wrong.
i started the car again only for the same thing to happen. it was almost impossible to drive. i pulled into the DIFFERENT tire store and realized the problem: the tire was shredding.
or shedding. little pieces, like spaghetti…
were peeling off of the tire. the tire jutted into the wheel well so hard, that the frame of my car was destroying the tire.
my brand new, day-old tire.
i walked to the ORIGINAL tire store while my car was parked at the DIFFERENT tire store.
i asked if they had a tow truck and they said no, that i’d have to tow it 250 yards or put the spare on.
i walked back to the DIFFERENT tire store and started my car. i backed out of the spot, moved it forward, watching the tire spew off tiny spaghetti bits all over the parking lot.
it made a lot of noise, many people turned to look at me.
i didn’t wave, i grimaced.
the spaghetti ran out…
my tire completely deflated on a short overpass within spitting distance of the ORIGINAL tire place. i was in the middle and had to change the tire.
i yanked up the hatchback and found the spare.
after approximately three to thirty minutes, the spare was on. the shredded spaghetti tire was in the back.
i drove to the ORIGINAL tire place and dumped off my 2003 Saturn Vue.
i said they did something to the tires. the put on the jacks and said that no, the tire was okay but the rusted subframe had split in half.
my car was like a plank…
bowing in the middle and the tires on the end of the board were leaning too far in, scraping the wheel well. the board had snapped.
if it had snapped on the interstate, i’d be in a bad accident. and badly hurt.
if it had snapped while my two kids under three years old were in there, i would have felt horrible.
better yet, because i work in the suburbs and suburbs are like not cool in regards to stuff like this couldn’t take back my “used after 25 miles” tires that were brand new the day before. you can’t sell used tires in the suburbs they said.
i was stuck.
… fixing it would cost at least two or three thousand dollars.
the car was barely worth $1000 and i was stupid because i had put $400+ dollars worth of new tires on a car that was worth approximately that.
the next few days were also stupid, because…
i was also in the middle of selling my house. i didn’t have time for this.
i didn’t have time to have a 2003 saturn vue sit on cinderblocks at the house i was trying to sell while i peddled used tires to random barely-legal tire places in my own non-suburban neighborhood.
i left the car at the ORIGINAL tire place. i called a junk hauler. i was cutting my losses.
my life almost changed for the worst. but it didn’t.
i could’ve been in a horrible crash on the interstate.
my two children could’ve been hurt…or worst.
that would’ve affected my wife, my house, my job, not to mention the way my life would proceed from then out.
my life almost changed for the worst. but it didn’t.
maybe that was worth the $400.
If you liked this post, please recommend it! I’m Josh Spilker, a writer and author. I blog about the writing process at Create, Make, Write For more like this, sign up for my newsletter here.
vaguely feel like using this etch-a-sketch that i found in my shed before moving
i found this etch-a-sketch when i was cleaning out my shed.
this shed was mine for six years. i never put an etch-a-sketch in there. it is from the previous owner. (now the previous-previous owner.)
feel like i’ve “missed out” on some fun sketches.
feel like i’ve “missed out” on turning some knobs.
i used to have an etch-a-sketch growing up. not this one, though.
there were six years of potential sketches just sitting in my shed, and now i will never be able to etch a sketch into the etch-a-sketch while standing in my shed.
who put the etch-a-sketch on the top shelf of my shed?
why did they believe this was a good place for the etch-a-sketch?
i was tired of these questions, with no place in my new home for an orphaned etch-a-sketch that was abandoned in a previous relationship.
but, on the way to my trash can, i thought was some hope. i thought the knobs would work.
a hotel is across the street from my office. sometimes i go outside, and walk across the street to the hotel. i’ll sit in the lobby for a minute and get a glass of water. the seat i choose is usually an overstuffed one. i’ll check my email and Google Now using their free internet. if there is a USA Today, I will read it for a minute to understand the current temperature of American nothingness.
when I used to work in New Orleans, I would go to the big hotels on Canal St. everyday before work and sit down and read the USA Today there, too. mostly the sports. that was before smartphones, if you can believe it.
the hotel across the street from my office is by a suburban business park, and I’m not sure why anyone would want to stay in a hotel here, unless you were on business. but then i see families carrying luggage and small children into the hotel, and i can think of a million better ways to spend a vacation.
but i’ve also stayed in suburban hotels to visit family or whatever. i am so quick to judge. i am the worst.
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Josh Spilker is a writer and author from Nashville, TN. >>>>>>>>>
As a fan, you know the artists so intimately, you know their thoughts and hopes, you think. Then, you create expectations for those people, forming super-egos out of them and conflate their place to something legendary and epic. However, when fans interact with the artist, the artist does not see individuals like them, but as a crashing wave. The artist knows that you are nothing special, but the artist knows that you think they are special, except the artist doesn’t feel as special as the fans think they are. There is an appreciation gap and it can be frustrating for the artist. They themselves become mad because they do not feel like they are achieving all that they need to be to justify the fans’ adoration. This will be a more common problem as more micro-celebrities groomed by the Internet become wedged into ever-smaller spheres of fandom
you feel slightly embarrassed.
One time you were trying to get back into tennis and joined a friendly league and played someone who beat you badly and then after the match you asked if he wanted to hit around some more and he said no and then you packed up your things and watched him go hit with some other people. That’s how you feel
Colin Herd lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. Three full collections of his poetry have come out: too ok (Blazevox, 2011), Glovebox (Knives, Forks and Spoons, 2014) and Oberwildling - with SJ Fowler (Austrian Cultural Forum, 2015)
“I remembered buying a pizza from Tesco and I wrote about it” by Peppy Ooze
A cloudless dusk at the No Hope bus-stop: My face had like crumbled and I dunno if I was crying but Max handed us a joint and I said: Nah.
Soon a single-decker came.
We got on and sat and I wanted to be invisible but a man in a lot of denim began eyeing me and yet when I eyed him his gaze would dart elsewhere.
Don’t remember much else.
The bus crawling on the Expressway, Max pointed at Villa Park.
Remember that Liverpool game?
With old John Barnes, I said trying to smile.
I glanced at denim-man then switched off my phone. I returned to headspace.
We’d debarked into the flows of the crowd, in fact, in Birmingham, when I next spoke, saying: I’m on buprenorphine. Fucked up big time on it with Suze, but I didn’t wanna tell The Earwig. I didn’t want him knowing both of us are fucked.
What I do, said Max, is snort mine.
That’ll wreck your sinuses. A silly habit from prison I bet.
Then we went in Tesco.
Crowded by the products and the light I weaved between student kinds of people as I got Greek yoghurt, my nut muesli, proper but own-brand coffee, a multipack of Baked Walkers crisps.
Howling The Earwig is dead. I put in the basket this five quid ham and zombie-cheese pizza, 20% unreal basil.
I jog to Barnes & Noble in the rain through a system of parks connected by a stream. The stream is a tributary to a very large river that empties itself into an even larger one–maybe going to the ocean, somewhere. I carry lots of water in with me. Perusing the Fiction/Literature section, I see
PALO ALTO
by
JAMES FRANCO
. I pull it cause it feels like the right thing to do. My hands find their way around its shape and texture, its supple edges. I take a moment to appreciate all of its aesthetic qualities. It’s a Tuesday and I am in love. I sit on the floor, behind a shelf, with the intention of reading. I lay my backpack down beside me. Remember it’s against the rules to sit on the floor. I know this because I’ve been here and this has happened to me before but I decide, fuck it. Who will stop me? Obama? Decide that if Obama walks over and tells me to stand up, I’ll probably listen. Decide that it’s not worth it for me to cause a dusie over something so silly, no matter how important it seems to me. Acknowledge that it’s not my divine right to sit on the floor of this Barnes & Noble. Recognize that it’s pretty dope I’m here to begin with. Think that if they were to bar me entrance, then I may have an actual problem. Doubt that this can even happen. Vow to do everything within my power not to
let
it happen. Imagine myself, in that case, starting my own bookstore. Imagine that I wouldn’t want to give my business to a bookstore that didn’t welcome it. Muses that my bookstore will be far greater than Barnes & Noble. Or it won’t. Odds are, it won’t. Maybe, if i’m fortunate, it’ll take generations upon generations for my hypothetical bookstore to even somewhat rival that of Barnes & Noble. But I’ll be damned if I don’t try. At least that’s what I tell myself. I may be damned either way but if I don’t try, then I’m damned for sure. I’ll never know. The workers at Barnes & Noble most likely don’t make the rules. They enforce them because if they didn’t, then they’d risk losing their jobs; and why should anyone risk losing a job so that you can enjoy the luxury of sitting on the floor, whenever/wherever you please? I like Barnes & Noble, I decide. It certainly isn’t a perfect bookstore and doesn’t always have everything I want, but it’s the closest one to me for now. I mean, there’s always the public library. But if I’m being honest, I’d much rather be at Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Noble has Starbucks. The baristas at the Barnes & Noble Starbucks are beautiful. One, a brunette who looks like Selena Gomez, smiles nervously as she rings up my Fiji water. This is before I post up behind my shelf. I am holding
PALO ALTO
in my right hand. The book is apart of my flesh, its words my blood, as I grasp it with a firm tenderness. It’s Spring and I can smell bagels in the air. Selena Gomez and I exchange one last, minute glance that lasts a tiny eternity before I bounce with my water. Incidentally, I’m able to recognize that she knows the book. Don’t ask me to explain the hunch. Feel an overwhelming impulse to go back and converse with her about the book, but that may spoil it. The look in her eyes says enough. Besides, she’s working and I wouldn’t want to get her in trouble. I let the moment pass and gather my water in search for a secluded spot to sprawl out. I guess that most people would very much rather be at Barnes & Noble, even though there are rules that they don’t necessarily agree with. There are probably stricter rules at the library anyway. What a thought. I think I’ll stick with Barnes & Noble for now. When I sat down, it was with the intention to read
PALO ALTO
by
JAMES FRANCO
, but all I’ve done since then is hold the book in my hands and inspect it a bit, feel it, run my fingers across its edges and contours, down its rough, vulnerable spine, in between the
thwack
of its refreshingly smooth, soft pages, moist with rainwater from being pressed against my soaked hoodie–my cold, tender chest. I feel myself release it and stand up. A lot of emotions pass through me. I don’t have to read the book, because I already know the words by heart. I am
2087
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