and it's you

i'm sorry i never told you this the other day:

you were my favorite. you are my favorite.

because with you, i could always do anything, and achieve anything.
the world seemed endless and open together.
because you're so smart, intelligent, attractive, exciting, and somehow managed to make me feel special and worth all that distance between us. you challenged me intellectually, emotionally, and you are so invigorating! you made me feel confident. sometimes, in my deepest thoughts, i saw us growing old together, which excited me and scared me senseless. but you never hesitated to show me how a real relationship is done.

because we dressed up and took a taxicab.
and ate great italian food that you cooked.
because we held hands.
and kissed under a tree in the moonlight with nothing but the both of us and the soft rustle of lapping water.

because when i finally saw you again, one look into those pretty eyes of yours melted my heart, where it eventually seemed to solidify between my throat and my stomach.

i forgot about all that bad stuff, and how much of an idiot i am. how emotionally young i was, and probably am.

so please believe me when i confess these things into the abyss.
i want to write you.
i should write you.

i can see you, after the good times, looking at me right now, shaking your head, and giving me some piece of advice that is all too true about myself. saying that i curb emotions and take the easy way out.

i would write you.
but.
i saw it in your eyes when you looked at me. you don't care anymore. you've moved on, and i am 'that silly, silly boy' in your life. those eyes, once alive, just looked like they were...tolerating me.

as we hugged at the end of the night, for that millisecond, i remembered the good times when we laughed and danced and ate, and drank, and cooked together. for once, i felt so safe when i was so far away from any family. i remembered exploring together, and having the feelings between us be so damn casual, and easy. conversation flowed and being with you was so easy. is so easy. and as we hugged, i found myself living in that moment, feeling like i never wanted to let go, i just wanted to sit there in your calming embrace, waiting for my dreary life to lift out and for the sun to shine as brightly as it did when we were together. because looking back at it all, it was wonderful.

it's odd that i should say this, but you really do deserve better.
you deserve someone as amazing as you are.
someone who won't fuck up and be a child.
and then look back with sad regret.

too late

sitting at my work desk, listening to my customary radio station,
"and now we're going to plan an oldie..."

and as the piano-heavy beginning goes through my earphones, my brain sparked.

it wasn't all that long ago, but it was ages ago.

it was ages ago that you sent me that message, called me.
it wasn't that long ago that we talked. for hours, for days.

it wasn't that long ago that i was being softly pushed over by the sound of your voice.
you relied on me, appreciated my advice, and i just loved talking to you, i loved being your support through that rough time.
i looked forward to that every day. it was my drug.

"i found a great new band, they're called 'onerepublic'"
now, this was before anyone had even heard of onerepublic, before their album, before 'apologize' even had 10,000 listens on myspace. i listened, i loved. I loved that it reminded me of you, it brought me back to our conversations.

you seemed to have such a solid grasp on your emotions, and wouldn't hesitate to make me feel so unbelievably special.

i continued listening, and as i was listening one afternoon, you called. we talked midday just because you felt like chatting. nothing pressing, nothing wild- just wanted to say hello. i don't know why i appreciated that so much, but i did. and i don't know why that stands out so much in my memory of that time, but it does.

it was so good to finally see you at that conference we were both looking forward to- so good to finally hug you and talk in person, and be together.

but it was too bad that as i was leaving, i could feel that this was the end. after finally being together, this was somehow the end. i could feel your disconnect. i knew it was there. that was how it started.

and you didn't call back.
and then we didn't talk so much.

and before i know it, i'm feeling stupid for not realizing earlier that i was no longer who you were talking to, who you were confiding in. i wasn't so special anymore.

and after dead-end calls and text messages, i had no where to turn to.
so i began the painful process of forgetting, of covering up and putting the walls back up. but everytime that song played, a few bricks fell out of those walls.

and i will say that i never appreciated you referring to our friendship as you "dealing with" me when talking with mutual friends. never have, never will.

and if i saw you today, i would just want to say, plainly, "you're an ass." but i know that i would look in those eyes of yours and long for nothing more than that short time that things were....wonderful.

i hate that it's so ironic and oddly out of some lifetime movie, but...it really is too late to apologize.
and after 2ish years, i really don't care.
but you're still an ass.

entertainment

...and tomorrow, i'll be watching the following from row F:


all mankind are now your brothers.

....growing up is weird.

eurotrash

musically, i haven't found anything worth noting in a long time.
i've been standing by the old stand-by's. ugh.

and as i slowly get used to the shock of moving to such a foreign place, a small rocket exploded in my front yard.

i was admittedly in kind of a rut, emotionally, surroundings, at work, in general.
i was playing around with my widgets on my work computer (thank you so much, apple) and i was looking through this one that had a ton of radio stations.
being bored with my usual morning talk radio podcast, i decided to log onto the widget and try some new babes out.

damn, not working.

damn, updated it and still not working.

damn, not working but i can get a small list which has "bbc" on it.

oooh, i look up "bbc radio" and get excited, knowing that this is my friend tony's favorite news organization. i'm down with the news, i suppose.

little did i know that what awaited me on the other side of the stereo speakers would lead to two of the best days i've had since i arrived in boston.

bbc radio 1 seems to be a pandora station that is tuned to my exact tastes. the dj's are wonderful, funny, and all have british/scottish accents.
in a word, wonderful.

and i know my way around foreign radio. i listened to a station out of paris for a while with few positive results, other than listening to the most beautiful language in the world. virgin radio:dubai is pretty good but overrun with american top 40's hits. but "bbc radio 1" by far trumps every other radio station that i have listened to. ever. it's so....hip, cutting edge. i listened for an hour or two and wrote down nearly every song.

it was so odd to hear a long that i LOVED after a song that i LOVED, both of them, i am hearing for the first time.

my iTuned library is swelling, as is my ipod!

one of my odd favorites: la roux
'quicksand' is a brilliant morning song,
'i'm not your toy' for the afternoon.



oh, i don't want this to stop.
and this wasn't the beginning, but this certainly tipped the scales.
this has certainly fixed my emotional rut and i could not get to sleep last night because i was dreaming about design. designing something, anything.

gross.

but i love it.

and now i have a complete obsession with moving to the UK.
which i never really had, even after coming back.

i think that some part of me things, if i can move to new england, i can move to england.

oh, taxes!

on life

"independence"

i've come to the conclusion that the term is a lot scarier than i originally imagined.

whenever i would lament about an action, my dad would always say, simply, in his usual fatherly-advice tone, "hindsight is 20/20." although it gave me no comfort, i knew he was right.

perhaps it was this way of childhood that set-up my incessant "20/20 hindsight" view of life.
for instance, growing up, i loathed my hometown, my homestate. i let my mom know that as soon as i was of age, i was outta there! it was only after i left for an extended period that i began to long for the comforts of home. the safety net of being home. and i began to appreciate the goodness of my hometown, my homestate. It is a place full of memories and roots in a world that is so full of new places. After traveling for so long, it was those hometown nooks, crannies, avenues, and alleys that held special memories that I began to appreciate, and longed to be in, to inhabit.
Even exploring with someone else meant a shared experience. perhaps i would call years later and start out with "remember that time that we..."
on the other hand..."living in the past"
...but i think this is different. appreciating the past, with an eye for the future. remembering roots and springing from them to someplace/somewhere new.

and as i make my transition to independence, i have good days and bad days.
but am i really ready to be a big boy?
pay my own bills, be responsible for all of my debt? buy myself a car? buy myself a house? find myself a someone and live happily ever after?

this one threw me for a loop. moving across the country.
it's so.....permament.
this is both good and bad.
in the good column, i get to lead my own life, be my own man, start fresh, buy my own things, not to mention being employed in an ultra-unemployment time, i could write a million more things on this list.
but in the....difficult column, i am indeed independent and alone. i realize that this is somewhat temporary, but i need to look forward and become the brian i am meant to be. i need to look past my grievances and hold the now close.

i suppose that my heart is a little sad.
i love my friends, i love getting coffee, chatting, brief encounters,
they are my context.
and i have no context here.
i am.....new.

it's so weird having your entire life a phone call away.

and in a land that holds the smartest people in the land, it's hard to hold my own being so insecure and newly hatched. recent banter with work people held the discussion of where we all would want to live, to which i chime in "i don't think i could ever live south of the mason-dixon" to which one of them said something along the lines of "i agree, but it would be so freeing because it seems like they don't really worry so much about self-reflection." although generalized, it got my brain a-churning.
it brought to mind two lives:
southerner:
sitting on the porch, plucking at a banjo with 3-4 best friends around, singing, drinking, laughing.
new englander:
sitting at a windowside table, late evening out, quiet lighting beside the book while reading and writing a little.

but then my thought process implodes on itself. who actually does that shit? aren't there drunks in new england? aren't there intellectuals in the south?
i hate generalizations, yet i find myself relying on them to form a majority of my thoughts and conversation.

i guess i'm just doing a little soul searching.
the who-am-i who-do-i-want-to-be type.

so i guess my goal is to know what to appreciate when it happens, instead of appreciating it.....later.


in other news, my family visited me!
it turned my mind upside down, and brought the comforts of home to my new location.
i'm still deciding if this will make living out here easier, or harder.
stay tuned.

i loved being with them. too much.
i need to make a beeline for the midwest. stat!

i'm off to watch a favorite: benjamin button while having a glass of wine. and self-reflect while drinking. happy medium?

the couch

it's days like today that make me want to jump into a time machine, spin for a bit, and get out. get out to anytime before june, 09.

and appreciate everything about the time, day, year, that i was home.
i don't think it's homesickness.

it's just...being so damn far away.
and it was a rough day.
and i suppose that i'm just looking for a piece of comfort. something that is so abounding in a few cities 2000 miles away.

new england

rarely am i bewitched so fully by a song.

outside the cars are beeping out a song just in your honour.
and though they do not know it,
all mankind are now your brothers.
and thus the cathedral had spoken, wishing well to all our sinners.
and with a sigh grew silent.

sigh.
now that things have calmed down:
i have my apartment in order,
i am getting used to the job,
i am knowing the area that i live in,
i am reading those books i have longed to read for so long,
i am eating healthy,
i am exercising regularly.

i can't see an end to it.

don't get me wrong, i enjoy it here.......
but i can't help but be discouraged by how....ordinary it all is.
how ordinary i feel.

i get up, i go to work, i eat, i do something menial, i sleep.
day in, day out.
as long as i shall live.

my life comes in packets. breakfast, coffee break, lunch, 4 hour afternoon of work, evening diet coke, evening run, etc. i can change one slightly.

excuse me, excitement, please come visit me during the week like you used to.
i am 3 weeks into the "rest of my life" phase and all i can see is planning vacations and time off and looking forward to the weekends. the weekends never last long enough.
how ordinary and suburban it all is.

oh my god, oh my god, is this it?
is this really it?

but perhaps this job, area, phase are just transitional. perhaps this is all quite more temporary than i think.

i can't help but see myself, old, aged, gray, chatting with an old friend about the good 'ol days and saying, quite simply "yeah, and then i got that job and haven't really been able to do anything crazy for a while"

work is full of tired faces. faces that have been working too long, too hard, and faces that didn't enjoy their weekends as much as they should have.
faces not full of life, imagination.
faces full of business.

is this the creative outlet i look for,
is this a group of too-worn professionals,
or, my biggest fear...
if this a group of overworked young people that never had the balls to switch over to what they really wanted?

is this a time of decisive decision?
but the unknown is so....unknown.
having nothing below my feet is frightening.