"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action."
- Hamlet

I never considered myself intelligent. I wasn’t smart or intellectual. Nor was I a nerd. I was inquisitive but never resourceful enough to find real answers. I was nosy so I pried. Still not finding answers. But I was, and still am, stubbornly obsessive. That’s not in a creepy and dangerous manner – although it depends on who you ask. I am terribly persistent and usually with tasks that lead to no end. I mean, there are ends, but I usually never find them.

What was it that they say about insanity? Trying and failing is understandable. Repeatedly trying the same efforts and getting the same failed outcomes makes people think you’re drinking the crazy juice.

This isn’t so serious. Not as serious as this sounds. But during those mornings when I should be working or being productive or be generally living beyond the subconscious breathing, I am figuratively banging my head on the wall. Over. And over. Over a crossword puzzle.

One day, it was 46 across. Another it was 27 down. Another week, and being relentlessly frustrating, it was 1 across. Yes. The first clue that they give and BAM you already hit a roadblock.

I’m not sure what’s more frustrating – not answering the first clue and effectively giving up a homerun on the first pitch. Rough way to start especially since games are often won with unrelenting confidence. Or, is it working through a tough puzzle hammering out the colloquialisms and 5 word combinations, only to find yourself in that corner in the bottom right of the puzzle.

What’s worse? Not having a chance to play the game or working it until the end and not being able to close out the deal?

There was one puzzle in particular that haunts me. No, really. It haunts me because it taunted and gave and taunted and gave and taunted until I couldn’t take it anymore and had to put the puzzle down. I reached my stop and exited the train. I left it there on the seat. I really lost all hope and excitement that the puzzle would be worth it.

I went about my business in the city – soaking in the chill and sunny day. Paid no attention to a daunting task (I know, I know.. JUST a crossword puzzle) that bothered me so much. Was it because I quit? Was it because I wasted time on the puzzle? Every newspaper has two. Or more.

By the time I had to take the train to leave, I was content. I had washed myself of my earlier failure with an otherwise good day. I knocked out a Sudoku. I worked the brain teaser. Lots of puzzles that day and I took them down. Others, I didn’t even notice. And I bought a book that spoke to my soul. It was non-fiction. It was directive. It demanded nothing of induction. And, I was planning to read it on my way home.

The car was empty. Normally, I’d find my seat with my back to the window facing away from the inner rail so I could watch the life of the world pass by. Instead, I found my seat in a row. It was in the middle of the car facing backwards – I watched the world as I passed it instead of looking ahead. It was a ½ second delay to the real life broadcast. Since no one was in the room, I placed my leg on the seat and looked across the other seat parallel to mine. There was a folded newspaper with the business section talking about the housing boom. This happened a while back.

I decided to grab the newspaper and flip it around to the lifestyle section where the comics and games were found. There it was. The same puzzle from the day’s paper. Blank.

58 Across stared at me. It was a 6 letter word with a clue of “Titanic oversight”. The tail end of the word completed two short down words but I couldn’t capture them, with all the options, without 58 Across. I also knew that the word had to do with the well-known story of Titanic. It must’ve been about the sinking. Something like that. Or was it.

I stared at the letter and pondered the clue for the rest of the 10 minutes on my home. As I approached the stop, I had already filed through the various possibilities that could come forward, but nothing fit right. And when the doors opened, I stayed in my seat. I was determined to figure out the word by the next stop that was merely 2 minutes away – a 7 block walk.

And finally, like bad movies usually show, I resolved my situation. “R-U-D-D-E-R”. It was as simple as that. The rudder on the Titanic was infamously – and maybe even incorrectly noted as – too small to help turn the Titanic sharply enough o avoid the iceberg that caused its demise. But, if anything, the slightly too small of a rudder plus the multitude of arrogant decisions in the design of the ship and the captaining of it qualified as oversight – tragic oversight.

I stepped out of the train at the next stop as I had accomplished my headache of a miniscule task for the day and felt irrelevant. Thinking of the Titanic’s story was transcendent. With the ship – full sails (although it had none) ahead was destined for disaster because of faulty decision-making. It couldn’t stop. It couldn’t turn. And down in the freezing water it went – immortalized now in stories that only remind us of the ship’s size versus the extent of the death that ship was responsible for. Those were thousands of lives stuck in their situations. Me? I’m on person that chooses to run through in mud.

Although it provided some needed perspective, 58 Across really ended up being worthless. Life moved on. During my oversight – the world moved on without me.

posted by: breakfast boy

Bell's ringing @ 1:06 AM

 0 hands raised

“The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up is hard to do. It takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick it off with a killer to grab attention. Then you gotta take it up a notch. But you don't want to blow your wad. So then you gotta cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.” Rob, “High Fidelity”

I never thought this day would come.

Who would’ve thought that it was real. So much.. too much.. I thought. And now, here I am. Staring at you. You, full of my love, my anger, my outlet. You, full. Completely full.

I love you, 30gb 5th Gen ipod video. And now, I’ve filled you up with so many songs, pictures, and movies that any new slew of content presents itself as a constant fork in the road. And here I am with new music to add and hard decisions to make.

There are songs that I never listen to. I think some of these songs have been on my ipod since I first bought her. (Yes, she’s a her. She’s Laura. See “High Fidelity”.) These songs, thriving in ever ignored playlists, are pieces of an identity that I, maybe, had four years ago, and, more likely, one that I was desperately grabbing at to become. Or maintain.

Underground hip hop. The lyrics. The beats. The freshness. The antithesis of the what the radio world had succumbed to once the record companies bought all the utilities, all the railroads, and Park Place and Broadway. It was the counter culture that I needed to tap into my veins as I was evolving from snot-nosed College student into, sorta, blue suited professional. I was never going to be a soulless cog of the machine and El-P, Immortal Technique, and Non-Phixion were gonna make sure I kept to that promise.

Then there are other pieces of who I was way back when – an artist, an unapologetic love-fiend, a suburban hippie of the 21st Century – a lover of craft and organic beats. Then there are the remnants of loves left unrequited: the punk list for her that sparkled in irreverence, the dancehall list for her that oozed sex appeal in her subdued chill, and that 90’s alternative list for her that made angst fun for angst’s sake.

But, four years since, I still hold them in my soul, but I don’t bump them in my ears.

Have I changed? Have my tastes changed? I can listen to any of these songs to this day, but I don’t.

Instead, I’ve been on a steady diet of the music from high school – the original era of MY hip hop, the slow jams, and the nostalgia – and the WB style pop that oozes so much self-indulgent pity that I can’t help but feel sorry for myself and love it.

But that’s not the question at hand. The answer I seek is the decision of which songs to remove from my ipod, and effectively remove from my heart’s memory. It’s the truth, right? Who in their right mind needs access to 30gbs of music at any given whim? These songs are the only pieces we have left of some people in our past, some eras of our lives, and even some core parts of ourselves. When we’re clearing memory on our drives we’re actually erasing the memories from our being. Yeah, they’ll be there forever, but songs bring us right back to every happy accident, every worrisome night, and every sharp jab that our hearts have had to suffer. The immediate timewarp to each physically emotional moment will be gone.

I suppose I can remove the aforementioned ghosttowned playlists – the ones that still exist but inhabit none of my attention or dedication. That’s simple. But after those are gone, what next? Inevitably, I’ll pick up more music and approach this same dilemma. To who am I going to say goodbye? Or what part of me will officially be so distant that it deserves its Viking funeral?

Okay. The other truism to this situation is that it’s not as big of a deal as I am making it out to be. Digital media can be backed up hundreds of times on hundreds of drives. I can easily upload music that I’ve removed in the past. I get that. But this is a bit of an existential moment. Consciously boxing days gone by means that you should have worthy experiences to take their places. But, does that really happen?

Just like getting older makes you live life differently, it also makes you listen to music differently; especially considering that we are getting folded into having full libraries in the palm of our hands. Gone are the days of buying one or two albums at a time and listening to them from beginning to end – we would pop them into our decks and vibe until the vibe got repeated too much (or if they were so good they made it onto our special mixtapes or cds). Nowadays, we buy singles at the 99cent clip and if we do buy albums most of us hit the shuffle button and don’t listen to the journey of the tracks the way the artists intended them to be heard.

Our mixtapes and cds had 17 to 20 songs at most. Our playlists are infinite. How do we make relationships with most of the music we now encounter inconspicuously? Yes, there will always be the song that was playing when you first realize the person in front of you was worthy of a playlist and the song that played last in the rental car that you and your homies took for a road trip. Those persist. Those become part of our lives. But the rest? Good luck. They’re as anonymous as the hundreds of new people we pass on our commute to and from work everyday.

And maybe that’s what this ipod issue is really about. There is warmth and reality in old songs no matter how much they’re not listened to. But new music? It’s cold. It passes. It’s lost in the crowd – just like we are.

Maybe I’m scared of losing touch with that love – the love that I felt – that I knew. Immature and fleeting love was real no matter how unfounded. Adult love is complicated with rules and reasons-not-to.

But here we are. I want to put in this new Nas. This new U2. This newly explored pre-Funkadelic Parliament.

I have to say goodbye to someone and hope for the ever elusive connection in my “nowadays”. My now-a-daze.

We can’t live in the past, nor do I want to. But I can still feel – at least one more time – for the people and those experiences that meant so much at some point before because I’m sure I’ll never feel that way again.

posted by: breakfast boy

Bell's ringing @ 9:38 PM

 0 hands raised

"I want to feel what love is. I want you to show me." - Foreigner

"Fuck Most Haunted. Fuck Supernatural. Fuck Blair Witch Project. Okay? I've been into this before all that shit was even made!"

That's what I say to all the haters. The doubters. My friends who think I'm full of shit. I've endured all the jokes about the Stay Puft Marshmellow man and all that stuff. It's okay. I believe even if they think I'm full of crap.

"Isn't it dangerous," they ask.

Definitely. Running around the dark in old rundown buildings. Rabies. Infections. Running into a dirty ass wall.

"Aren't there better ways to get your jollies?" they probably think to themselves. Judging me. They patronize me by listening to the stories then turn away snickering about how a 27 year old's still knee deep in childish mystery adventures like Encylopedia Brown starring in a 90s slasher flick. But it's not about jollies. Not about jolts.

This is about proof. Evidence that humanity transcends anatomy. That the rudimentary emotions, that we sometimes feel kill us actually, allow us to exist beyond physical life. I'm looking for the metaphysical pathways where our souls roam in eternity.

See.

Right there.

Your eyes rolled. This is where I lose people.

Paranormal investigating? It piques interest. Capturing activity? Naysayers check out the door. But to consider this some spiritual bath? Now here is where most people just consider me nuts. It's apparently divine to talk to a holy spirit and reincarnation if you're praying with beads, but if you mix the same ideas with a digital voice recorder or an EMF* detector then you're foolish loser.

"When do you think you'll stop?" most folks ask if they get past the judgment.

When I find her.

"Who?"

The Sentient. The female spirit who, when encountered, bridges you from our physical scientific plane to an alternate atmosphere where the emotions of the dead remain thriving.

They say that she chooses who she encounters. She's a conscious spirit that finds her haunts. Very, very selectively.

"So, she's just as picky as any other female?" the guys usually snicker.

What can I say? I snicker too.

"How do you know she'll choose you?"

A sign. I was backpacking once. I was about half a day behind my friends so I was trying to catch up. In the middle of the night I ran out of my camp to take a leak, and when I came back I saw a mist. It was a glowing mist and it wasn't static. As I got closer it slowly moved deeper into the trees. I followed it before it floated away over a ridge.

It was her.

Don't shake your head. Believe me.

"Why didn't she stay around to bring you to the emotional plane?"

Why? She's playing hard to get? Making me earn it? Afraid of commitment? Maybe she didn't like my hair when it was messed up like that in the middle of the night.

The smirk tells me you're asking if I really believe that.

I do.

And I'm going to keep chasing her until I can't anymore.

"Like, until your dead?"

Something like that.

The window for her to find me closes when I'm 30.

Now, you're laughing and you think this was all a joke. Like it was some allegory about the fear of not finding love before the magical age of 30.

That's fine. Laugh all you want.

She'll find me sooner than later once she realizes I'm here.

posted by: breakfast boy

Bell's ringing @ 11:18 PM

 0 hands raised

One reason Rob missed Laura (in High Fidelity): "3. smell/taste - self explanatory, human chemistry and senses - it feels like home."

Earlier today, I met up with Reyna at the Debbie Gibson cafe downtown. We call it that because, for some strange iPod luck, we tend to run into a Debbie Gibson song there. Maybe I shouldn't refer to it as luck. Whatever.

We both had work to do and instead of leaving it at the office, we decided to waste away our rapidly deteriorating social lives and took it home with us. In this case, we brought it to Debbie.

Since college we'd tried this: public tables, public seating, public noise, public safe zone for work? Yeah right. Instead, we ended up gabbing about a bunch of silly stuff from reminiscing to times long left behind to those steps into the future that everyone but us seemed to be striding towards.

Don't get it wrong. It wasn't some mundane, woe-be-us regret-fest. We were celebrating - I mean, at least as much as you can with a laptop's bulb shining on your forehead instead of natural sun and the threat of some silly nostalgiaphile unleashing some awesomely bad pop starlet into our otherwise perfect pool of limbo.

"What's that one line about changing and staying the same?" I asked Reyna.

"When you don't change, you stay the same?" she replied with a smirk.

"Oh. The more things change - the more things stay the same. Heard that before?" I asked her.

"It sounds familiar. Why? Feel like changing something?"

"Things don't change. Same shit. New day." My energy somehow exited stage left without any pomp. Circumstance it did have though. And the reason why Reyna's been one of my best friends ever was her response:

"Who is the girl and what you do this time?"

"Snickers." Yes, snickers. I can see your face scrunch in agonizing nothingness the way Reyna's did.

"What, she liked Snickers? So, you broke up with her like that?" Reyna knew. Me. She knew me. But she was wrong, partially. At least this time.

Holly liked Snickers. Reyna was right about that part. But this time, it didn't matter. I'd like to say that this was the first time that the sum - the person in all - overcame those parts that have all too frequently chased me away from otherwise beautiful women. But it wasn't. This happened before. There was Church girl in high school. There was Sorority girl in college. They were the ones who screamed "totally wrong for me" but for some odd reason I couldn't turn away.

So Holly liked Snickers and I hate them. She loved dark chocolate and white wine. She watched CSI but criticized Law and Order. She swore by her Matchbox 20 mp3 collection. I mean, she's a super cute chick but any one of those "situations" would usually kick-start my "be-the-weirded-out-guy" senses let alone all three (plus more!)

"So what was it with her?" Reyna asked.

"Can I say 'it just felt right' without you alluding to her boobs or something?"

"No." She was serious.

"Well, she had great boobs. But they weren't the story." I was serious, too.

It wasn't anything at the beginning. I thought she was hot. We had some common interests: mainly tobasco and red bell peppers (not necessarily together). So, I was drawn to her on the obvious superficial levels. As the days and weeks went on though, we found ourselves in some more serious conversations between banter and bitching about gas prices and dog owners that don't clean up after their pooches.

She threw a lot of baggage out there. I felt like I was playing Asteroid and she was trying to destroy my ship. You know, like she was trying to test me how genuine my affection was. So, I don't know if it was my competitive spirit, but all of those things just pulled me further in. Even though my head was convinced that I didn't want to deal with that drama, the rest of my body couldn't resist. Truth: when I thought of her, when we were near each other, I felt a tinge on the inside of torso.

"No lies," I could see Reyna starting to lose belief. She rarely ever saw me like that.

"You sure it wasn't just your.. uh.. urges getting the best of you?" she asked.

No lies. Those, i don't know what to call them... chills, caught me off guard myself. There was just a honesty in her touch - her gaze that smacked me silly.

But somewhere along the line, she gradually kept stepping away. Slightly each time until she finally just said it wouldn't work even though I think she didn't give it a chance. I mean, how do you ignore chemistry like that?

I just thought that this time was finally it. I thought she was the symbol that I had overcome whatever emotional baggage was driving my quirky dismissals of perfectly wonderful people.

"I'm tired of being a recall," I told Reyna in a much more serious tone.

"Recall?"

"You know. Defective merchandise. It gets recalled. Usually, it's exchanged for one with the bugs fixed. Not me. There's no patch for me."

"Let me ask you a question. Don't take it the wrong way."

I nod.

"Have you given a thought to the possibility that all this melancholy is less about the chemistry you have with her and more to do with her representing yet another failed relationship?"

"Does it ever get easier? If it's not her, then it's me."

I don't think I'm ready to accept that.

"I'm overcome just thinking about it," I said to Reyna. "Get it?" She looked clueless so I cleared it up for her. "Van Morrison? Brown Eyed Girl?"

"Oh. OOHHHH." She got it. And seemingly more.

"Huh?" I didn't get the more

"The EYES. The fricking eyes. It's always the eyes for you."

"I can't deny that. I get lost in them."

Reyna paused for a second. Then she rolled her eyes.

"You get LOST IN HER EYES?!" She just looked at me with a mischievous grin like I wasn't getting something. What was the punchline?

"Dude!" she continued, "'LOST IN YOUR EYES'! The Debbie Gibson song?"

"I think I feel sick."

I exhaled. It's rarely a good day when your emotions are riding shotgun on a Debbie Gibson karaoke-eternalized pop ballad.

God damn you, Debbie Gibson cafe.

posted by: breakfast boy

Bell's ringing @ 10:48 PM

 0 hands raised

There's nothing like it. You look down at stacks of checks in front of you, you push them forward and say those three words - I'm all in. The gut tells you this is the one - the hand of a lifetime. Next thing you know, you're looking at an inside straight draw with salvation coming on the river. Somewhere along the way, you got careless, forgot about the odds, and now only got one out.

She was that once-in-a-lifetime hand. The one pot that would make you walk away from the game if you took it down. But she was a hand I had no business playing. You know, on those poker shows, they show you the percentages of each player. I always felt sorry for the guy whose percentage lowers with each card, oblivious to the eight percent he's riding. Yet he still calls bets, even raises for God's sake. Somehow he thinks - no, believes he do the improbable.

Then the river card. I don't remember much of what happened after. I saw flashes, then heard cheers. I heard the word congratulations and shook some hands. Then I walked away, into the darkness.

I've thought about that hand since - not obsessively, I don't think. My friends would ask if I'd ever go all in again on gut feeling. You know, she used to say love was a calculated risk, not reckless like poker...well, bad poker anyway. You say I'm all in, but how different is it from saying those other three words? I think I would.

posted by: proper villain

Bell's ringing @ 11:49 PM

 0 hands raised

Of the many things she said that enchanted me the one statement that always made me gag was when she compared her addiction to her ex-boyfriend to that of someone dealing with a health deteriorating drug-related disease. I thought, "shit, are you so lost in your self-victimization you didn't realize that what just said wasn't only ridiculous but incredibly insensitive?"

I AWOKE from a cough. As they say, a lung came up.

It was freezing in her room even though a beautiful Spring day was approaching our world in about 20 minutes. It wasn't any warmer in the sheets. A chilling draft ran down the contour of my spine to remind me where I was. A long 4 hours ago the same bed was as muggy and dangerous as Jurassic Park.

I coughed again. The whole night prior was swimming in my mouth: from the first Patron shot to the fifth last cigarette of the night. Oh, and she still was sweetening my lips too.

What was it about her? What was it that made me arrive at this same place even after every time I told myself the last was already one too late? Before the obligatory regret began to rattle my brain (or it could've been the dehydration - by now, it's happened so much that I can't tell the difference) she moved. Suddenly my back had regained warmth. And I broke.

"I can't fucking do this anymore," I muttered to myself but loud enough for her to take notice.

Unfazed, she turned around and pulled her arm around my bare shoulder. I sat up.

"I'm gonna smoke."

"What's wrong?" she asked - like she didn't know.

"How many times are we going to wake up to this before we realize we shouldn't fall asleep to it?" I said. The frustration had settled into my mood.

She stayed silent.

"I need a cigarette."

A year ago, all of this silly sex shit was fine. Shots, sweat, sex, sleep. Rinse and repeat. But things have changed. She talks about family and happiness, but leaves my name out of the equation. The dudes that made it into the punchline of those designs of the future, have come and gone. Literally. Each time, she knew where to cover her losses. We were all the safety nets - the defacto morning after "what the fucks" to cover up the "tracks" from her so-called addiction. Yep. We are all rebounds. I'm just the championed sucker.

I coughed again as I stepped onto the sidewalk under the window of her bedroom. It really was a beautiful day outside. I never understood what was wrong with the air in that room.

I coughed a few more times. Fucking cigarettes. I took a final drag and flicked the butt into a tin can filled about a quarter way up with stale rain water from the storm three weeks ago. "Someone's gotta clean that up sometime," I thought to myself, "but it ain't gonna be me."

I stretched under the increasingly blue sky, inhaled the freshness of a new day, and unleashed a string of coughing so strong my eyes were burning as badly as my chest.

"I really have to quit this shit," I grumbled to myself. Then I walked back upstairs to the cold room and crawled into bed to find warmth.

posted by: breakfast boy

Bell's ringing @ 9:38 PM

 0 hands raised

I earned this one. I'm not going to pluck it out to a) further thin my hair, or b)kid myself that there aren't a dozen more. Besides. I earned them. This one here, behind my left ear. That's "David". I didn't know what ipso facto meant when it counted most during student teaching, ipso facto, I'd never forget its meaning. This one on top, at my crown? The wiry short one that sticks up when all my other hair is neat in place on a rare day? That is "Rosa". She got good grades, passed the exit exam, and after we practiced day in and day out until she could write a flawless essay about the proudest day in her life, graduating from middle school in Mexico, she was denied the chance to cross the stage at graduation because she couldn't write a perfect essay in 70 minutes. "Rosa" who struggled through school all day, didn't have her papers, and worked all night cleaning offices at 17. "Mo" moves around a lot. I used to pluck him out, but the next day I'd see him. Class clown. Clowned so much that the one day he was serious, and he responded to the prompt, "If you could walk a day in my shoes..." everyone laughed. And he responded, "Why are you laughing?" And put his head down. This one is the one that was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got expelled. I didn't help him. And while sometimes I think if I watched the Breakfast Club, I could see Principal Vernon's point of view for once, I carry these gray hairs and refuse to dye them as I kiss my twenties good bye. They are little ghosts of lives I carry among those lives for which I was/am entrusted for 54 minutes, 5 days a week for 180 days. I wouldn't want them gone for anything.

posted by: Ms.Kirwin

Bell's ringing @ 9:46 PM

 0 hands raised

Middle School was crazy for all of us. We were kids. We wanted to be adults, but still be kids at the same time. For most of us, it was the craziest time of our lives. When I got through high school I thought it would be done. How the hell am I back there in my 20s?

Welcome to the 19th Grade. It's back to the Middle School for us adults.

Bell's ringing @ 1:45 PM

 0 hands raised