Expansionism (Unfolding Saga, Pt. 1)

"Last night I did the right thing by not drinking and not smoking that last cigarette I wanted," I thought when my eyes opened. I rolled over and picked up my phone to check the time. 7:30AM. The music on Ryan's clock radio was gingerly waltzing it's way through his bedroom door, past Juneau, and over to the side of the couch where I was laying, alone. The sun was already up but wasn't high enough to spill into the room through the windows behind the couch. The windows, again, were half open and a cool breeze blew through them, intermittently, but somehow I was still quite warm. I threw off my blanket and lay listening to the faintest trickle of Duke Ellington, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, or somebody copping off all three or more of them.

Eventually I sat up. I'd gone to bed again without brushing my teeth; my mouth was dry, again, and had a warm, sick taste. "Why am I always feeling like I can't catch my breath," I thought as I straightened my back and breathed in deep. A small crackle in the lung led to another which was actually the crackle that triggered a pretty lengthy and productive cough. It'd been like this for days, every morning, a long snort and an excess of mucous needing to be placed somewhere; a napkin, a paper towel, the toilet. A cough and a loosened piece of lung glue and the question of, what do I do with you now that I've finally caught you!

Adam Is Angry

Ball and Biscuit

4th of july parade in baltimore

Gentlemen

Saturday Photo Excursion

As usual; today was supposed to be a photo excursion in Balti. Instead it was driving around through the slums, seeing things we've never seen before and not daring to get out and photograph it, then pulling into the places we felt used to, and pulling out the cameras. It's a terrible habit to get into. There is so much of this city that goes unpublished here. So many parts of the concrete jungle that, had we gotten out of the car, we could have told stories about. Geoff remarked at the man laying on the porch in Curtis Bay, pulling a blanket up over him with his teeth. He got creeped out at dusk by the oil can with a fire burning it in the midst of a automobile graveyard where a man sat in his truck watching us drive slowly by. This city is easy to watch from your car window, like no other murder capital you've ever lived in. It's all safe from the car. You can even wave to the people walking on the street in the absolute worst parts of town and they wave back! Where are the days, Tadpole, of sitting down with people and talking to them and learning about their life and then taking their picture? And then handing them a New Testament, or an apple, or whatever the hell they thought was something they could get from us in exchange for being invited into their life for a half hour? I need a safe risk. From the screen of the car window I watch this city go by. And then, when it's easy, when there is no one around or when I'm in MY zone (a la Steve Bishop, Sr) I pull the camera out and I snap this:

After a long trip through East Balti-more, into Essex and Middle River, we went down Ponca St. to this old haunt, which is safely nestled under an overpass like you'd find in Shockoe Bottom, only this one is next to a huge factory where x, y, and z is produced or manufactured or destroyed and there are no bars or any signs of civilization other than a truck stop and an industrial wonderland built on chemicals and filth. In my mind I kept thinking, "What kind of wife works there? What kind of wife works there?"

As we pulled away Geoff plainly asked out loud, "What kind of wife works there?" and still nobody can answer that question other than to exchange the word "no" for the word "what".

After leaving there it wasn't more than 2 miles to this:

Harpers Ferry

Quotes To Remember

"Let's remember, they are foreign language teachers, and by definition, irrational."--LBSS US history teacher Mr. Kelly

"There's only two kinds of men in this world-men who work and men who dig."-words of wisdom from an old, black deadhead at RFK 6/25/93

"Skinheads don't hurl!"--spoken by a drunk punk outside a ska show at 15th and Irving NW

"My door is a jug."-Sean Sullivan

"S**t in your hat and call it curls."-more from the 930 club

"The smell of beer reminds me of my family."-Charity Lorenzo

"I know you're in there addicting kids to drugs and teasing them."-Mighty Car

"I just had a vision of me beating my wife."-Amir Noori (10/3/94)

"It's all ethylized."-Amy Andrews

"Tom, you're turning into me."-Amir

"In high school no one ever called me to hang out on weekends but I still had a goodtime."-Ryan

"Do you ever get hot dick?"-Matt Six

"Amir, you're a packer."-Amy Andrews

"Don't f**k with the phone."-R.A. Eddy speaking to Kev

'Where's that dorky friend of your's?"- Hibbs lunchlady
"He's at work."-me
"Tell him I said he is a dork."-lunch lady

"What sort of effect does Florida have."-Amy

"Who the f**k called Santo Domingo?!"-Matt -Kev's roomie

"I punched a hole in the wall and said F-you."-Amir

"Girls just use you."-Johnson Hall bathroom graffiti

Old 9:30 Club Bathroom Graffiti

"The armadillo is nature's little tank."

"Quit pissing on the toilet seat you assholes. I'm trying to do drugs in here and I want to sit down."

recorded 5/1/93 at Yo La Tengo show

Proud elf'in Kev.

"Your Name is Angry"

One of these is actually from "Lost"


Tom is angry with McCord and seeks him out in a bar. He finds him sitting on the toilet in a toilet cubicle. Tom lifts him off the toilet seat and pins him ...

Tom is angry; Tom is an obnoxious S.O.B. with a foul mouth; Tom undoubtedly has some reason for hating women so deeply

Anyway, today Tom is angry with nemesis Jeri because she wants some information about how county government spends our money. ...

Tom is angry with Dusty for hiding the gun, and demands that there be no more secrets

Tom brings Kyle home and Tom is angry at him and wants to set ground rules and lay down the law,

When Tom is angry (eg, if he receives a negative report on his behavior) he has a tendency to rip his papers into shreds; ...

Tom is angry and has given up on the law being just.

Tom is angry because on my website at www.InsiderCarSecrets.com. I teach people how play the car buying game and come out on top

Tom is angry and suggests Ben is losing it, saying they should have killed them for real instead of firing bullets into the sand. ...

Duel Ford Escorts

It was October of 1996. A fine fall weekend to leave Richmond behind in search of something wilder and colder. Ryan and I left the city late afternoon and were cruising down the Blue Ridge Parkway before long. We watched grand sunsets and grew hungry by Roanoke where we pulled off the road at an unusually fancy restaurant for the middle of nowhere where I dined on fliet mignon with crawfish in a cream sauce on top, and I don't know what he ate. By midnight we were atop Grandfather Mtn outside Boone, NC where he headed to the backseat and we both stretched out for a night's slumber in the Buick as was our tradition. In the morning we hiked at Linville Falls where they filmed "Last of the Mohicans" and then began our route home by crossing into Tennessee and cutting up into VA near Damascus. We got on 58 East which took us through Grayson County along the border. We stopped at the general store above to get snickers and pepsis. While inside we heard a long bearded man say "I wouldn't have shot the dogs if I'd known they were the boys." Outside as we pulled away, we couldn't help but notice two dogs walking around on the roof of the building. It was a fine trip.

What Flame of Recca Are You?

What Flame of Recca Character Are You?


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Digital Camel 3

It's been a while since I've put together a mix cd and posted it. So, here is Digital Camel 3. This one's for you. The great thing is, if there's something you don't like, you don't have to listen to it!
UPDATE: Careful, it's a pop superstorm.

Somebody Please Help Me

I'm having too much fun tonight, working on making Digital Camel 3, uploading tons of pics to Flickr. Go check it out. The pics are easiest to browse by set. Digital Camel 3 is coming soon.

The Revolution Will Not Be Watered Down

Remember this One, Insect?

What I did at School Today

1. Celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday with a kindergarteners by making cooking pot hats and real single serve apple pies that were delicious.
2. Bit my tongue when a colleague lied about rigging a 2nd grade class president election
3. Discussed the merits of the free crayons that accompany kid's meals at Red Robin with a 2nd Grader (our consensus was they are vastly inferior to Crayola)
4. Helped a young girl write a paper about the superiority of cows over chickens
5. Ate a cold roast beef sandwich while reading the op-ed page
6. laminated nothing
7. Left right on time

Some amazing photos of our favorite place.

The pasta pic Kev posted reminded me of this. I'm making a magnet out of this.

For You

Tonight the moon is Waxing Gibbous.

A Letter to Uncrowded Highways (5/3/93)

Looking at you in the mirror...you smile, and I wonder why you couldn't do that to others.
Too many mad May nights of telephone conversation guitar plucking tales being told of Baroque art madmen ravers all the insanities of this little town. The phone like a handholding reaching out for others in hope of conversation but I can always just talk to myself and pretend I'm you like I do most of the time anyway. But the sun is gone, a shallow evening of moon splintering the clouds like the hands of El Greco as satellite beams of beauty power draw a purple silhouette against the popping trees of May. and all this up and down crazy back roads listening to James Brown yelling "I feel good!", to the fifty passengers in the back of my brain all sharing one seatbelt. And turning around at Clifton Store crossroads I hear Midnight Oil shouts of support for the monarchy, and the sun sets on your old empire with me shining brighter than my Indian killing ancestors could've ever imagined in their tree chopping Massachusetts turkey howls in other seasons, other days of this faded night Americana where old fork in the road mice filled barns still catch my eyes and lying on the docks at the shores of my free mind I saw water mingle into the current of sunshine and all was perfect in those spinning skies. Leave your Exxon card before you drive off to the setting suns of laid back New Mexico and its pink canyons with your windows down smoking a cigarette, and happy little REM songs move you past the pueblo apartments where they did laundry and ate beans while Europe choked on its plague of black burning Londons. And I shall come to your wild London but at my own willingness and I shall run its streets with a flower in my breast pocket drinking Coca Cola flying off into where Pink Floyd might've bumped into the Beatles who were in a time warp chatting with Oliver Cromwell as he chopped off the heads of those afraid to dance with color. The madcap postal service of love sending out postcards of half regretted glances and other twilight flirtations that make spring so livable despite the mosquito air and its water sweating air conditioner days where we all wondered at our radio ballgame of possibilities while a beach ball was removed from right field: some boy out there with dad, hot dog, and scorecard of all the Detroit baseball days licking mustard to himself and only thoughts of "will they walk him?" fill his diamond mind. Oh to be there in that industrial city respite looking in on million dollar dreamboys playing their beautiful poetry in the grass of my remembrance! In the flowerbeds where digital fantasies can't reach me I'm still that way but we can only blow on the magic of so many dandelions until our hopes are floating away with the seeds to root in some other mind where my reality won't interfere. Oh, but barefoot rocky stream walking and song singing of Bob Dylan to the circling hawk sky of our Bull Run wonderful hideaway where we would go for a walk beside a telling current and its Indian campfire stories so long poured out so we could sleep in guilt, but on swamp gas nights of beaver knawing there's still a hillside prophet firelight glimmering somehwere near that wild train bridge where we threw rocks at the trestles till the rains came, and we found our sleeping snake baby of faraway trail sunnings where no hobo trespassing solitary bather might've found so much young reptilia just snoozing beside the tracks running out to all the Ohios and Fredericks of Baltimore's night bag where all this will be headed in the end-me, in the rowhouses of urban uprising eating crackers listening to the radio and watching "Gumby". But back in our prairie adventure-oh fishing eyed bald eagle watch my line tugged at by little sunny your food not mine to catch and the spring brushes against my legs and my bare arms of goodbye April rejoice in the warmth of Julys not so far away. Be nice if you, girl, were with me to swallow all the sunny days of flower pastures where I now dream of walking in my sedentary confinement late night indoor pondering sessions. In lunatic binges of inspiration I thought you might care to hear my thoughts on these matters...

One Moment In Denver

Ryan has introduced me to a ton of music I've never heard before. Some months ago, on the suggestion of some blogger, I downloaded a couple of songs by Great Lake Swimmers. The person who wrote about them wrote in such a way that made them sound compelling, so much so that after a few seconds of listening I just went ahead and downloaded whatever was posted. I always meant to catch back up with those songs and purposefully listen to them but I never did.

The other night I was sitting on Ryan's couch, a corner couch. He and Dawn were sitting on the other side of the couch looking on the internet together for a place to go backpacking. Outside it had turned from dusk to dark. We had driven that day up to Vail and back. His large condominium windows were half open and a breeze was blowing and my sinuses were sore and this song came on his stereo while I was staring straight ahead at the wall behind his television.

My mind wandered to the lyrics, the ones I could hear over their speculation, as I listened to the music and my mind went away. I had asked Ryan the day before who the band was and he'd told me it was Great Lake Swimmers. It was song number 4 on Ongiara. I mentioned to Ryan later that I really liked that song, before I fully understood the lyrics. "I do too," he said. Later at the airport I sat down and turned the laptop on so I could listen closer to the lyrics. They were basically what I thought they were, without knowing what they were beforehand, because it comes through in the music. Or they mean what you want them to mean. Or both. I don't know what the song means to Ryan. I can guarantee it means something completely different to him than it does to me. It'll mean something totally different to you, probably, too. The problem is, I took the song and made it an MPEG-4 which may only play on iTunes. If you can't get it to play let me know and I'll try to fix it. It's only up for a week. And you should go buy the album whether you can hear the music or not.

In Retrospect (time heals all wounds)

I woke up from this dream yesterday morning where my last dream words were: "Is it un Beethoven or una Beethoven?"

Saturday Evening in Alexandria