Family Trees

I run from home,
Run from my home.
I run from home
To find my own.
I run away from the
Path laid down for me.
If I can't find my own,
I'll make my own.

Surrounded by all of these,
All of these, falling from the trees.
Guess that's why we
call them leafs.
I guess that's what
You could call me.

We leave our family trees.
We leave all we've ever known,
A place we once called our home.
Now we're on our own,
Now we're all alone,
Better then where we were before.
To find something better,
To find something more.

They're no good for us
We're no good for them.
Leave for good never see them again.
All is well, I've bid my farewells.
Fared them well, fared me go to hell.
A bit confused a bit upset
I said, "I've been there that's why I left.

I started fresh
I began a new.
Planted my own tree
And yes it grew
Tall and stong and
It wont branch out to you.
When I think of you
I'll think only who.

I ran from home,
Ran from my home.
I ran from home
To find my own.
I ran away from the
Path laid down for me.
Couldn't find my own
So I made my own.

We were once stuck
To our family trees.
But, now we're free
Now that we're leafs.

Sometimes I feel alone

Today I am alone.
It always comes back to this,
when I realize it's my fault that
I
have
nobody
left
to
talk
to,
and the only voice I hear
is the one in my head,
the one that I just don't trust.

So why should anybody else trust it either?

Moleskine musings

I'm sitting under a tree somewhere in New Jersey, on my way to New York for a day. I woke up at 5 am, somehow got myself to DC, and got on a bus. The fat gay man behind me has pulled my hair, kicked my seat and pushed his empty Gatorade bottle into my head. Why are you drinking Gatorade? Playing some secret competitive sport back there? There's a truck that once housed animals bound for slaughter over there. I wonder if any of them are still alive.

"You'd remind me I brought it all upon myself... but shrug off that middle-class chip on your shoulder and stick with me a little longer."

There's something calming about knowing that you've got regrets in your pocket. About knowing that youve already tackled a lot of issues and learned a lot about yourself through doing so. Everyone grows. Its inevitable. Youve just got to learn from everything that happens to you in life and make yourself better. Or much worse until you have no choice but to pick up all the shattered pieces. Maybe thats a view skewed by lifelong privilege.

failed lists. so much to do. so little drive. but always driven. always driven towards something more than oneself. what will we become? streaking hubs of knowledge set up by founding fathers. we have all this need for speed but we know not what we're rushing towards. closer to god is the thing. we travel through the world without ever really knowing how we arrive anywhere. we all feel lost because we dont know how we get anywhere. we live in bubbles, bubbles we know. but we know nothing of the outside world. we've created these hells we now love. innovation is destroying us.

Saying Goodbye

Saying goodbye has always been a struggle for me; the bigger the moment the harder the cat squeezes my tongue and the less and less I vocalize the thoughts that seem to strangle my consciousness. Before any signs of separation appear I feel the strings pulling my friends from me and I feel the cords of depression tighten around my mind. Before any hints of separation show, I slowly sober up to the realization that our time together is limited. I realize this limitation and talk with a little more vigor, crack jokes with a little more edge and hug my girlfriend harder as the time nears, fully aware of the withdrawal I’ll face when they leave. Time slows down and my thoughts grind to a halt, centralizing on the goodbye that is approaching. As the conversation winds down and fate drags my friends their separate ways I stand in my spot, emotionally and physically sinking into quicksand.

I'm in it up to my knees when they talk about their upcoming plans, by the time they bring up their future obligations it’s risen to my chest. I stand there, devoting all my energy to verbalizing the millions of things I want to tell my friends. I stand listing and organizing those million thoughts, trying to find words that don’t exist that allow me to tell my friends what they really mean to me. When the time finally comes and they leave I stand there, caged in my own mind. My friends exchange cordials, slap hands and plan their nights and walk away with no weight on their shoulders while I stand there like a statue; deaf, dumb and weighted down. I mutter generic statements, wish them luck and slap hands-- my body knows what's expected and what to do-- but my heart refuses to play along. If my brain knows the words to say what my heart is shouting they get lost, searching for the courage to hatch. It’s like sticking a square peg into a round hole; anything forced just breaks and becomes useless.

I say goodbye, but goodbye is the last thing on my mind and in my heart. The same fate that blessed me with a school full of amazing friends cursed me with the inability to show how truly thankful I am for them. I stand by as my friend turns on his truck and drives out of the Marshall lot, and effectively my life. I stand there as if I had never known that person, like they had just been a neighbor or nuisance in my life, still in shock of what is happening and trying to put that into words. All of my friends, everyone I’ve been blessed with meeting has affected and improved my life. The cruelest fact I'll ever know is that I only have so many goodbyes with my friends before the last chance to show what they mean to you slips through your fingers into the cold earth. My deepest fear is that when the time comes for the final goodbyes, I'll say and show no more than I ever have.

My friends walk away to start their afternoons or the rest of their lives, but I stand there stuck in the moment and the past. My friends walk away and stay an important part of my life, but they never know more about that. I stand by and survive more goodbyes a day than I care to think about, and each one passes more painfully and less completely than before. Before the feelings of loss set in, I think about how I couldn't verbalize the feelings in my heart, and how deeply I wish I can make my next opportunity count. I sit there and think of things I’ll never say and of actions I’ll never do, searching in vain for the magical words than can even give a semblance of how I feel about the people in my life. My heart doesn't know that my friends have left but my brain does; bluntly aware of the loss. My heart still rings from the fun I've had while my brain slowly wraps around my sentencing of its sudden solitude.

It’s a sort of reverse shyness, the social equivalent to deer staring at headlights, an innate inability to come to terms with whose company I've just lost. I've stood by three of my best friends' come to terms with a worse hand than I've ever seen life deal anyone, failing three times to do the one thing on my mind. I have gained more respect for these three people than for anyone else I’ve ever met but I’ve been able to express less to them, I’ve tried to handle their goodbyes with the same calm that they so inherently have. I've stood there and seen three of my friends handle an incredibly unfair situation with more composure than I had ever seen. I've packed up three cars with three people's shattered college existences, ripped out of their day-to-day lives with unsettling quickness and acceptance. I've said three goodbyes and told three friends roughly three percent of what I really think about them. I’ve said goodbye to people I will very likely not see for months, but I can only muster a goodbye like I’m seeing them for dinner.

And so I sat outside after my last goodbye yesterday. Piling pity onto pity and cigarette butt onto cigarette butt I got a call from my father. My father, who is the epitome of my unsaid goodbyes, lost his friend Creighton to a sudden heart attack. Creighton had been my fathers best friend from the moment he met until last night; any interesting story my dad has ever told me has starred Creighton, normally as the lead role. My father, who is the rock of Gibraltar to me, was more shaken than I had ever seen him, and had called me looking both for consolation and to give advice. On a whim my father had decided to call his best friend for the first time in a few months, a friendship severed by different careers and locales. His friend had passed away mere minutes after he had talked to my father on the phone.

My father was overcome not by the incredible and unfathomable grief of losing his best friend, but by the gratitude that he felt for having called his friend one last time. After they had a standard conversation where they caught up with each others lives they said their goodbyes and prepared to go about their lives which had grown 4,000 miles apart. After the standard goodbye, my father thanked Creighton for what he had given and done for my father. He told me in a weaker voice than I had ever heard him use that he had realized how important Creighton had been to his life, how much he had impacted it and how much my father owed who he was and how he became that man to him. My father had no idea that Creighton was in poor health (he wasn’t), he had just decided to thank his friend for being his friend. I have never seen my father so affected as he was by these two feelings; of loss and of gratitude for that last chance.

After we had talked about Creighton my dad took a deep breath and gave me the only advice he has even given me regarding my friends; tell them that you care about them, tell them that you owe who and what you are to them, and do it often because you never know when you lose that chance. Every goodbye is a struggle for me, but now I understand that it is also a important chance to show how much you care for someone.

I write songs on the guitar instead of studying.

Repetition

I came to this town,
Didn’t think I would get high again
Every day’s the same,
Just another I scrape by again
Leaves are changing color,
I see them in my mind again

They’re so free, oh
To be free, oh
That would be me

Falling leaves,
Spinning, dancing, singing
In my head again
I don’t want to leave my bed again

Trees breathe,
Whisper, murmur, sighing
In my head again
They’re hoping that I won’t forget again

I won’t forget I’m free
I won’t forget to be

Standing in the river I light a cigarette again
Sitting side by side, you tried to hold my hand again
Reflections in the water, capturing my gaze again

I’m so free, oh
To be free, oh
That would be me

Memories,
Playing, looping, soaring
Through my head again
I can’t get that song out of my thoughts again
It plays, rewinds, repeats that day again

Back when we were so free
Back when we climbed trees

Sunsets,
Reflecting, shining, sinking
Through the leaves again
I can’t wait for them to turn green again

The spring always sets me free
The spring will let me be

Circle of chairs, where we’ll always sit again
Battling the cold, don’t want to go inside again
Bumming cigarettes, we’re always running out again

We’re so free, oh
To be free, oh
So free

The seasons,
Shifting, turning, burning
Across that sky again
I think I felt the earth turn again

When the birds return I’ll set them free
I remember the cage that once held me

The reasons,
Chasing, holding, changing
My own mind again
Déjà vu decisions that I make again

One day I’ll decide to be free
A shooting star will come for me

I’ll be free, oh
To be free, oh
That would be me

I grasp the dry paper with withered lips and inhale
a hot dry breath
held in
then released into the night
everything is quiet
and blank
in that cloud of smoke drifting to join the constellations
leaves skitter across the ground
and in the rustling of the trees
I hear the voices of those
who are gone.

I found an iPod.

I'm selling it for a record player.

This just happened.

Lean back in your ch--no, lean back even more.
Farther than that. No.
Further than that. Yes.
Lean back so far you can feel your shoulderblades
cut into the upholstery.
Pop rip pop! The seams tear apart now.
Now, on a part of your face, it seems two tears
have appeared.
We can name them Payne and Payne,
twins that share a name
it's got a 'y' and an 'e' and a capital 'P' but
sounds sometimes sacrifice spellings.
SSSS! The air squeezes out of the cushion now.
Now, the blood rushes to your head, it's so far back,
down and looking up;
up at the escaping poly-blend clouds--that's what was inside,
besides air,
floating around your neck,
whimsical but kind of itchy.
What will it feel like when you fall? you think
only a few more inches now, a few degrees
till your knees will be straight
and the Paynes will have packed up
and you'll be in the ground trying to remember
if there was a tipping point.