Bridge to Somewhere

The trip out of town was a long one, with considerable stretches of barren wilderness that second guesed a mans wanderlust. The world was silent when Collins left sometime between 4 and 5 am and the sounds around him became keen, like expositioned writing. The stone dust crunched beneath his shoes and his car door had a familiar creek, albeit more intricate than any time prior. The gas even smelled of gas when he turned the engine over. The cold had a way of doing that on those early spring days where the warm of the sun was sandwiched between the hollow coldness of its absence.

He found an AM station that came in poorly over the speakers and turned it down till it became a babbling hum that came through but wasn’t comprehensible. This wasn’t a time to think, it was a time to do, to go and there wasn’t a considerable time to waste. He left nothing behind, his debts were paid off, his things had mostly stayed in the car to begin with, and the rest he bundled in a blanket and threw in the backseat.


The road was silent and empty, the cracked windows gave a roar to the wind that wasn’t there and the thick wall of pine trees that lined the road prevented the sun from turning the windshield into a kaleidoscope. The last thing he’d pass before leaving town was the train tracks that carried the materials of the steel mill and the parts for the factory, a breakfast place that wouldn’t open until noon to account for services, a blinding white church that appeared to hold no more than 50, and a gas station. The only sign of life for miles in either direction. He’d filled up last night but stopped in to grab a coffee and a refill on a half pack of cigarettes.

The man at the counter looked up with a half glance that still managed to look shocked.

“can I help you” he mumbled has the other half of his lips worked to hold the filter in his mouth.

“pack a malboros.” He turned back to finish pouring the coffee and stir in the sugar. “and this.”

“family vacation?” He turned back from looking out at the car with a loss of expression that made it hard to tell if he was joking.

“yep. Disney world.”

The man at the counter choked out a laugh like it was stuck in his throat. “you fillin up?”

“that’s it.”


When he pulled away, the neon sign for American Spirits glowed in his rearview with its Native American smokes the peace pipe. The last frontier at the end of the run was a bridge out of town, named after Senator Bird from WV, made more elaborate because it connected two states over a river 200 feet below it. It was the last bridge out of town, glowing in the rising sun, and seemingly brilliant in its modern architecture. He rolled the window down to let in the coming warmth and turned the radio up slightly. He dragged out the end of his cigarette and crushed it into the steel ashtray from days gone by. He flicked the crushed butt from the window off of the bridge letting it almost float down to the river below to extinguish the dying flame and carry it off into the great Atlantic to rejoin with whatever nature it came from. The rows of street lamps faded into the distance behind him he threw on sunglasses as the sun hit the windshield and exploded into a thousand points of light.

He kinda looked like Farley Granger with his hair slicked back
She says I'm a sucker for a fella in a cowboy hat
How far are you going he said depends on what you mean
He says I'm only stopping here to get some gasoline
I'm guess I'm going thataway just as long as it's paved - Tom Waits

A eulogy too late

I’ve never left flowers on my grandfather grave. In fact, I haven’t seen the plot, and I didn’t attend the funeral. I went to the wake, but I opted not to go to anything else. If it matters, he wasn’t even my biological grandfather.

At the wake I watched love turn ugly an already somber event. One of my cousins, who’d had her own troubles in life, wore jeans which drew the wrath of my aunt.

“its so disrespectful” she said. I wondered if my grandfather would have noticed.

I remembered the morning the call came in. My father, who’s never been a man for crisis woke me an hour prior to my normal routine. Half-conscious, I clamored for the phone thinking it was my alarm, thinking I was late and when I got there I answered the phone expecting the explode on my family for not waiting another 6 minutes.

“your grandfathers dead.” The line came through in a voice with a timbre that wondered what to do next.

“this is how you wake me up?”

“well what am I supposed to do Bren.”

“alright well let me call you back once I’ve showered.”

I was a man born for crisis. I over think things, I think too much, but when there isn’t time, and you just react, that’s where I shine. In times like this, I don’t feel much. I just end up thinking that you have to appear strong for everyone else. Someone needs to act rationally. Too much hemming and hawing might lead to some paltry disrespect of the man. Let the details be handled, let the other greave.

I went to Late Shakespeare that day and let Hamlet wash over me, but that was all I could take. I skipped German class and went home. I called my mother.

“whats going on?”

“well the wake is tomorrow”

“come get me, I’ll be there”

I told Erin I should get down there and see my grandmother soon. I thought I would ask, depending on her mood to see the tombstone.

I’m sure other people had planted flowers, I’m sure some had left wreaths, and prayed for his soul. I still never have, but for what my opinion counts; for whatever this counts, I think about him constantly.

There are plenty of men in my life, old guys that have come before me in the bloodline. None in my generation, but there are uncles, and my father. I even know a few great uncles for what their worth, and some of them I look up to. Some of them I should look up to, and some I wisely don’t. Still, I always think of my grandfather.

I would never tell the man this, I don’t know if he could handle it, but rarely do I think “what would my father do” in this situation.

My grandfather was a man of no great acclaim, he never stood high above the crowd, he never asked for very much, and it’s a crushing sadness to think that he could weather tremendous strife, never say a word, and complain even less. In that way, I think he shined brighter than anyone else I’ve come across not because of where he stood when things were going, but where everyone did when they weren’t.

To me, temperance is a gift I was not blessed with, but its one that I can’t take my eye off of. They say that God, whatever he is, works in mysterious ways. While I was not given a cool hand, I’m blessed to have an example to learn from, and in many ways I feel that its worked to my advantage to study and witness its virtue.

In all the words we never spoke to one another, in all the lost time I wouldn’t know what to do with if I could get it back, he’s still the most enduring and revitalizing figure I’ve come across. That he went back at 40 to get his high school diploma, that he worked three jobs to support a family, half of which he inherited. A man with no wants apparent to eye or ear, but one who would spin records on his head at the holidays and sing, a man who would draw Casper in condensation on his windshield from his morning coffee; A poor immigrant who had never seen the middle class, but would still ask “I wonder what the poor people are doing today” every holiday dinner.

Its easy to see this as a sentimental story. If we all just hold out, we’ll over come, right? I don’t really know, I never looked at that aspect. What mattered most to me, and one thing I heard the President-Elect say the other night was that he never got too high when things were good, and he never got too low when they were bad. He was reliable. If I were a novelist, I’d mention that across from their house was the Atlantic Ocean right there in the south end of New Bedford, and across from their house was a rock that jutted out from the surface, slightly crooked facing northeast ever since I was a child. He lived inside the flood gates, the ones that saved the city if there was a flood and the rising tide was closing in. His house would have been gone, but it never happened.

I’ve never thought of it that way, but that rock that had seen countless decades, a pack of seals and Frank Sinatra’s boat was the best way to explain him. It takes a lot of words to say I miss my grandfather, but that just wouldn’t do him justice. He was a gardener, he had passed it on to his children, and I can’t bother to water the spiderplants. And I’ve never left the easter lillys on his stone, but I think I’ll carry that rock with me, not just through life, but into the heart of my deepest lows, and times of suffocating solace, I’ll remember I could have it far worse, I could have it much graver, and I could always take it much better, survive smarter, and never say a word.

Ryan Seacrest is the enemy

When I was a young lad, I took up a paper route. It wasn't like your paper route, I would imagine. Placate me here for a second, I'm guessing yours was a neighborhood deal that you either wanted or your parents made you get to instill some responsibility. You knew your neighbors names and called them Mr. or Ms. [last name], you earned a little extra spending cash for the concession stand down by the ball field and every Christmas you got excited because most folks on the street would give you a little holiday money, because you'd been so helpful all year round. You were a fucking eagle scout.

If that's you, and I'm guessing it is because that was every ones route in my neighborhood when I was growing up, then we in fact did not have the same paper route.

See I got my paper route under the guise of responsibility when I was in the 7th grade, I was roughly 13 and despite having been on the payroll of the Catholic Church and my uncles landscaping business, I apparently still needed to learn the virtue of a hard day's work. Or in this case days, because my paper route was born out of my mother inability to handle money. She's screwed herself into debt to a considerable degree and this was her way of making some extra money. It was slave labor. We made $5 for three days of work. At least the church gave me $3 a game when I'd help out at CYO.

The route grew in number every month because we needed more and more money. (Once a financial moron, always a financial moron). We'd start Friday afternoon when school got out, and we drove to all the mailboxes. At its height the number of houses we were to stop at had peeked just over 1,000 and it encompassed 5 surrounding towns. My mother would drive, while the person riding shotgun would hang the papers on the hook or run them up to the door, and the person in the back, amidst a sea of folded and bagged newspapers would fold and stuff until we switched. Obviously, my mother always drove.

I should mention here that this wasn't the home town paper. This was the paper you got when you didn't get the hometown paper. It was a glorified tabloid that no one really wanted, so you'd have to ninja the paper to their property because if they caught you, they would undoubtedly cancel, and you'd be down revenue. As I mentioned above, we couldn't be down revenue.

This inevitably led to problems. During the winter months, papers might occasionally land in the snow in someone's front yard. Complaints erupted at the Gazette when spring rolled around and large swaths of suburbia discovered their own mini-compost pile sitting in their front yard when they ran it over with their lawn mower. Numbers dropped but we pressed on. For an entire year, we sucked down hot chocolates and suffered through Casey Kasums top 100. I've heard more Mariah Carey and Boys II Men than I would ever hope to again in my life.

Somewhere close to the 1 year mark we were fired. Well, my mother was fired we were sort of along for the ride. The people that finally chased us down were still being counted to save revenue, but the papers were mounting in our basement, until we were getting close to capacity and my father went ape shit. Instead my mother went to the little league field to dump a bunch of papers in their dumpster, but the privately owned field saw her do it and decided to give the gazette a call. Some would call it terminated, but my brother and I saw it as liberation. And in hindsight, I think I've discovered why he's never held a job for more than a month in his life.

Conversations in Time

I was thinking I would, because I'm lazy and their interesting, post conversations. I'd also be able to post anything I've said in the last 2 weeks, picking the dialouge that seems most organic, or makes the most interesting points.

That being said, Cathy and I have always had one of the better relationships, and therefore, better conversations. We pay no attention to the frequency of conversation and don't always have to say something for it to be understood by the other. Theres a feeling on my end that she doesn't need to walk a mile in my shoes because I feel like shes lived in my head. Which seems to be hers as well.

The following is a conversation about the dying counter-culture style of humor...


9:18 AM me: so exactly how many donations come in on the day after christmas?

9:19 AM Catherine: so far? zilch

9:20 AM me: yeah I'd imagine

9:21 AM Catherine: how many new memberships?

i imagine that won't kick in until new years, when people pretend they have ambition

me: sadly, two. I've given a tour, and upped a corporate account

9:22 AM because with the Y, in a place like this, people think this is furthering their worth as people

9:23 AM Newton's a bitch to describe but their the type of people who worked a soup kitchen yesterday as a family to teach their kids good morals

9:24 AM and today, the people of Newton say to their significant others [phrase used in hetero couples as well] "you know, I've been meaning to join the Y, I ought to get in shape"

"but what about the compost pile you wanted to start?"

"well I can do that after"

9:29 AM Catherine: ha

too bad you didn't think of stufff white people like first

9:32 AM me: Oh god, I read that blog once and thought it was a sham

I like so little of that, which I took to mean I wasn't white

9:33 AM I think I was just hit on by a divcorcee (how the F do you spell that)

Catherine: megh and i talked about how it was basically stuff urban liberal arts

educated yuppies like

but yes, our friend katherine grew up in newton and enjoys mocking it

9:34 AM her idea of fun is people watching at the whole foods and taking notes for later

me: yeah thats exactly right, no one in Kansas likes any of that shit

Catherine: it's really just for coastal elitist types

9:36 AM me: that, by the way, is the death knell, the apex, the jump the shark

moment when the indie humor stopped its accent

call Ian Micheal Black and tell him he's about to loose his job

9:37 AM Michael Ian Black, whatever, see he's already forgettable

Catherine: it's just so obvious

and not remotely clever

9:38 AM me: the comedy from that scene is just mailing it in at this point, its going through the motions and I expect 2 years of stuff we're "supposed to laugh at" until it finally becomes apparent that this isn't funny and some new movement rises up

9:39 AM I'm going to post this part of the conversation on the blog because I'm too lazy to write it again

9:40 AM Catherine: although i still have a soft spot for someecards
becuase it's just so damn good at calling out those things

9:41 AM http://www.someecards.com/upload/newest/just_wondering_if_we_still.html

9:43 AM me: I think thats different though, the toolboxes over at Best Week Ever are
feigning sincerity on things that they were sincere about in the 50's, so the only difference is the implication

Catherine: i jumped ship on that and headed to the soup a while ago
me: with these e-cards, I feel like its traditional comedy where people are asking questions that are supposed to be out there

9:44 AM Catherine: i think there's a way to poke holes in the whole urban educated professional experience and be clever, which someecards does
vs, as you point out, bwe, which has been running out of steam for years


9 minutes

9:53 AM me: I can't figure the guy at The Soup out, but what i think I like about him is he's not afraid to make a terrible joke
and i admire that
9:54 AM that safe, "i had a writing team help me with my jokes" stuff is for the birds
the only one who can handle a writing team is Conan

Sad Day

So I finished reading the David Brook article, Lost in the Crowd

Between that and my daily run through the blogosphere and this article, I’ve realized the reason my hit count is low, is because I have no focus. I think I need to give myself a consistent base, maybe start a new blog, and continue here, writing what I want.

Fuck if I know what I’ll focus on though. I’d honestly like to explore my W.A.S.P.ier side. Any suggestions?

=(

Manners and Logic

Let talk about the word “welcome” as seen in such phrases as “you’re welcome.” They have mats and wagons for it. It’s the corner stone of good customer service and is the general successor to “thank you.” Therein lies the problem.

I’m concerned that its fallen out of logic with is use in the common lexicon. Lets review;


wel⋅come   /ˈwɛlkəm/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [wel-kuhm] Show IPA Pronunciation

interjection, noun, verb, -comed, -com⋅ing, adjective

–interjection 1. (a word of kindly greeting, as to one whose arrival gives pleasure): Welcome, stranger!

–noun 2. a kindly greeting or reception, as to one whose arrival gives pleasure: to give someone a warm welcome.

–verb (used with object) 3. to greet the arrival of (a person, guests, etc.) with pleasure or kindly courtesy.

4. to receive or accept with pleasure; regard as pleasant or good: to welcome a change.

5. to meet, accept, or receive (an action, challenge, person, etc.) in a specified, esp. unfriendly, manner: They welcomed him with hisses and catcalls.

–adjective 6. gladly received, as one whose arrival gives pleasure: a welcome visitor.

7. agreeable, as something arriving, occurring, or experienced: a welcome rest.

8. given full right by the cordial consent of others: She is welcome to try it.

9. without obligation for the courtesy or favor received (used as a conventional response to expressions of thanks): You're quite welcome.

—Idiom10. wear out one's welcome, to make one's visits so frequent or of such long duration that they become offensive: Your cousins have long since worn out their welcome.

It’s more than evident the word welcome has both a genial nature to it, as well as a state of change associate with it; ones feeling in a location, both emotional or physical, and occasionally location as well.

But the person uttering the phrase it would seem has to have some form of authority to grant you this welcome. Whether its “you’re welcome here” or “you’ve been welcomed into the family,” the person has to have some authority. At this point in the breakdown, that seems logical. But take this and apply it to the last time you said “you’re welcome” or the last time it was said to you.

This morning I held the door for a woman at Dunkin Donuts. She said thank you and that’s fine, thank you seem normal, but if I hadn’t been a cranky yank who’d been out walking in the hail for 15 minutes my “yep” might have been “you’re welcome.” You’ve heard it, its not outside the realm of normality to use that there, but does it make sense?

What am I welcoming her to? The dunkin donuts? The act of me holding the door? One doesn’t make sense and the other is well out of my jurisdiction. I don’t have any relation to Dunkin Donuts save for my patronage and on this point we’re of equal rank. If I’m welcome, she’s welcome. And if I’m not, I don’t have the authority to hand it out.

That point is over the top, but I’m trying to lay this out as clearly as it can be. The only instance that I could think of, in which “You’re welcome” should logically be a response is when someone has brought you into their home, and the sad thing is, in this one situation that I find it reasonable to say this, the roles out to be reversed. That is to say, you’d say “Thank you” when someone has told you that You’re welcome in my home.”

I’m not trying to say that this should be put into effect. I don’t have an agenda here save for the analysis of words, and I feel I’ve done my part. Nothing heavy, just something to think about.

Some men like to hear the cannonballs roaring

Dear Moira,

Those dreams are back again, and their just as dark. I have these images of the van, and riding against the side wall, feeling every repair on the highway and Günter jets across the city into the west village. We’re always late for a gig, but as soon as I realize I’m in the back of a hollowed out service fan, I’m suddenly back on stage playing this infernal horn, sweating in the bright lights; it runs down my face and I fail on this note and it rallies these kids. I don’t know ‘em and I couldn’t care less but I feed off them. I play this same refrain they know by heart but they loose their minds.

I took a ride down to the Charles yesterday where sofie and I first read books, and returned them when we finished. I just stood on the edge of this freezing river and let the old cigar smoke fade into the icey winds of the city. I thought of her out there in Peru and I still wonder if she thinks about me. This city is litter with people I’d known for a night, or a season, a semester, or a coffee and I still never run into them but 2 years on I still wonder if in some distant village I’m on their mind.

At this point in my life I no longer feel like I’m a man on a journey in one of these burgeoning bergs, I am Boston, I know all of its streets, and I’ve seen its bars that line up on Mass Ave. like the clubs sold out. They banned smoking at the CanTab and it just ain’t the same they say, but who cares…if smoke makes the bar it wasn’t that good in the first place. Last night I watched the green line come in behind the billboards near the Science Museum and it was an old familiar melody of a bad karaoke song. There’s a bench in Kennedy park where Charlotte and I shivered together and since I was the thickest, I kept her warm. Thinking of that makes me laugh, but I’m always crestfallen when I see that bench. Once when we’d parted ways I went back, bored and sat on that same bench but the day was too abandoned and I had to leave.

I still remember that first city place we got in July, when the screen door overlooking the back parking lot let in the summer mid-day. I knew Boston before the sun, and after it left and I spent two hour everyday on the highway. I felt like a stranger in my own apartment but god it was amazing. Like I’d gone up to the mountain at night to sleep, and each morning come roaring down to deal with Taunton. At night I would take the long way up through the financial district on 93 and come crashing through the O’Neil tunnel playing achillies last stand and I felt like I was going places. 5 years on, the challenges are different. Those girls in different in other cities are still out there, but I don’t still burn for them. I thought of them every day, all of them, but somewhere along the line it became a career life only. Today I want to get paid to write and I’m going back to teach.

All my dreams are gone now Moira, I’m well fed and I sleep with the heat on and a humidifier so I don’t dry out. The sweat is gone, its just a crick in my back when I slipped on the ice. 8 hours later my world is perfect. All I have now is bad metaphors and stories. I’d like to be more serious but I feel what I feel and these burning passions of yesterdays better get me a fucking publishing deal.