10-15-13 North Charleston, SC

Another night alone with my thoughts in another hotel room. Seems to be something of a recurring theme for me, tough to shake those blues when you've only got yourself to confer with. The whirring metallic hum of the air conditioner box below the window is a droning reassurance that some things stay the same. There's something different about the ones in hotels, I grow to miss them when I'm home for too long. Not the way one longs for a friend or favored possession, just a nagging dearth of a thing you just can't put your finger on. People back home think I'm crazy for that kind of shit; they think the stories are cute, and chuckle at the odd parts, but ultimately think I'm nuts. Maybe they're right.
Lately I'm public enemy number one, bearer of all ill will, source of and reason for everyone's problems. Some people are so sure that even I catch myself looking around for remnants of the black cloud I rode in on. Just a fleeting wisp might be enough, just to see it. No such luck however. Guess I'll just have to settle for being a somewhat less than iconic harbinger of strife and unrest. Never did care much for them anyway. Sometimes you want a situation to work out so badly, with every fiber and sinew of your being, that you haul that pick handle so long and crank it so hard, until it shreds apart in your hands,sending a rain of splinters and dust all about you. They lodge themselves in your palms, and find their way stuck into your soul. People must love the sight, they never seem to tire of watching a man trying to pick them loose, nor do they stifle their enjoyment in musing at his predicament. It must be a sweet sight looking out at a man in conflict with himself, holding that cell door shut on themselves as he struggles and spits and grunts and groans to pry them loose in spite of themselves. You can't drag someone out of the mud if they think they're floating on sunshine.

Marginalized

It seems so orderly to sort people and things into lists, functions, and groups. Life makes more sense when you reduce it to a set of neat little integers. Everything has form and function, and action so precise and predictable that you could set your watch or calibrate your gps to it.
Life doesn't quite work like that however, the shades of grey throw an infinite paw-full of monkey wrenches into the works. People don't break down cleanly, as much as it might do for them to do so. The social weight, or lack thereof, tied to a number is too much for the human soul to bear. People fit very poorly into file folders, no matter how much they might enjoy their time spent inside of one.
People fool themselves into thinking they have freedom; only so far as one can dodge falling meteorites 

9-19-13 Sunrise, Fl

Early AM at the hotel, big day tomorrow, gotta make it happen. Walking into work today was tough, it's not easy stepping into your own size 10 1/2s when you feel like you can barely feel like stepping into a woman's 6. Everyone looks at the big guy for stability, like an anchor to a ship, or a lighthouse on a rugged outcropping. It's not easy being that guy every day, and today I didn't feel like it. Tomorrow doesn't look a whole lot better.
Pressure makes things easier though. You know where you stand when everyone else is cooking the same as you are. Nowhere else to go when you have your back against the wall.
Things seem more distant lately, reality keeps slipping on me. I keep seeing the things I want to see, only to find reality infinitely more depressing. Guess its best not to get one's hopes up, keep things level, even, neat.

6-19-11 On a flight to Phoenix

06:19 - flight to Phoenix, a stopover on the long march back to the road. Plane's full of little bastards fidgeting about, doing their part to make sure the tension level doesn't drop too low. Airport was strangely aggro, from pulling up to the curb, to the ever present security shuffling and bumbling. Usually SD is more mellow, noteworthy for its refreshingly calm demeanor in the world of airline tedium.
Didn't sleep much, couple hours at best, stayed up too late getting the bags to just the right weight. The look that dominated the face of the lady at the counter when lifting them seemed to indicate that I got it right. Stomach is a mess, feels like a hand grenade in a subduction zone; good thing this flight came through with the aisle seat. At least there are some new tunes on the ipod, managed to snag some Satyricon and checking out Cage the Elephant. Usually the shit they play on the radio is miserable, but I'm digging this one so far. I'm sure most of the Norwegian stuff will get the digital axe. What happened to that band? Their early stuff was good, but all the newer stuff they played live was total garbage. Don't know if I'm getting pickier, or bands are sucking more.
Kinda bummed to leave So Cal again, some really good friends there. This break was a lame fuckaround though, not very productive, mostly gave in to vices and personal demons. Reaffirmed my severe lack of tact and relationship skills. Crom there are some righteous girls back home, probably better that I have to leave. At some point in life you start to realize what you're good at. Every mile from home nods in approval, I don't belong there, as much fun as it seems to stay a while. I suck at domesticated life; the little things everyone seem to take for granted grow into lingering, daunting impossibilities. Like a soldier or an inmate, institutionalized lifestyle has taken hold. You can feel when it's got you in its grip. Sometimes you fight it, but most often just relax into its rocky palms, rest your head on its shifting pillows of granite, and keep rolling. I'm good at traveling, working, and not looking back for too long. You have to be in this business, those who aren't don't last too long. I'm good at being gone, much better at it than being there, wherever that may happen to be. If you practice these things long enough your skills start to grow at an alarming pace. It seems to come naturally, and isn't easily shaken off. Each trip back home is a doleful reminder of what I'm just not cut out for, things probably better left safely outside my grasp.
Looking forward to getting back to work, getting back to what I know, what I'm actually good at. You say your goodbyes, and tell people that you'll miss them, but their lives keep going. They aren't the sort of wax museum you might like them to be, remaining motionless and immaculate until your imminent return. Only your memories remain constant and unwavering in the face of certain reality, somehow bittersweet enough in that amber glow to pervade your thoughts, and blindly hope against hope that things will be as they were, or how you might have liked them to be. Sooner or later reality always takes over; the grass may be greener over there, but it is, in fact, over there, not here. Better to get to work on your own little patch than to ruminate and plan fantasy voyages to some other little plot on the horizon back the way you came.

4-26-11 Cedar Park, Tx

So once again it comes, the end of another tour, the passing of another season in the life of a roadie. So many people have come and gone, it gets so hard to remember all the ways your heart has swayed since the last time you had a break. A break... What is it? A great man once said that we get no rest, not like normal men; that we must be pleased with the sweet wind that blows in the south of every man's heart. That wind blows across the hills, the same ones that have followed me since youth, the same low growth festooned with the dry brush and chapparral of my formative years. So seldom do I see them now that they often seem just a mere reminder of a youth since passed by, forgotten, and trampled into the dust and loam. Now and again the breeze kicks up a scant reminder, a brief scent of trails long since left for nought; a time long ago, when even the dry winds from the plane tasted so alive and full of auspice. Not so long ago do the memories taste of a mouth full of sand, charging headlong into the wind, cursing the fates for daring to put the grit between one's teeth so. Chomping at the bit we charged at a future yet unknown, lunging headstrong to a life we could not know. Now, trodden as our paths may well be, I pause to ask of my fellow travelers; how well did I know you? And how well do you know me?
Tonight I put my arm around another soul, who did not indeed recoil in fear, shock, or horror, but instead put hers around me, and proceeded to join my recount of superficial woes, as only the most truly benevolent being could. Tonight three souls embraced me and told me not to leave; but troubled as I am, could not oblige their pleas. For I love their hearts, and cherish them beyond my own, but can't imagine a world where they both know and love mine, enough to cease them to recoil from the debt and guilt laden upon none but my own.

4-9-11 Worcester, Pa

Those agents of oblivion, the ones that flare your nostrils with ferocious air, and fill your heart with pride and dignity. To venture forth into the world, henceforth unencumbered by guilt and avarice so too often hindrances to the human condition, a blessing and shattering of steelbound bonds. A shedding of morality, guilt, and predisposed conditioning represents freedom and strength in human form and thought. Liberation from societal bonds wrought through decades and centuries of cultural privation begets the singular joy of individual jubilation and the adoration of self. Little compares to the preciousness and awareness of self, when compared to the weakness and conformity of the world at large. Woe to you, oh man, who consent to the governance and moral latitude of the masses, for truly are ye led astray by the will and intentions of your brothers. Only through the selfless celebration and sanctification of self are we truly free to recognize the grandeur of ourselves in the world. Our deeds form the coven of holiness to our own judgment of the sanctimonious; our wants and needs congeal the crux of our own collective rights and wrongs. Nothing so strong as the necessity of self and collective self can form the soul determinance of right and wrong for a core group of individuals willing to incur the costs, sow the seeds, and reap the harvests of a labor so human, a toil so necessary for a collective of individuals seeking rational collective determinance.

3-27-11 Lexington, Ky

Never was the world so warm that sorrow and discontent would not grow,
never was the ground so cold that the snow could freeze and linger forever.
I've never been the bud bound to blossom in a crowded room,
never been the one to charm a crowd and lift their hazy gloom.
For those feats lie with another man, and never will be mine to own,
for mine is a path less traveled, a seed less apt to be sown.
Lonesome is the path to walk, which most might fear to tread,
solitude unknown to most, whose path they fear and dread.
But I'll remain, unafraid, to forge my own path through thick and thin,
Knowing only that my one and only strength comes not from without, but from within.

Tonight I said goodbye to and old and longstanding friend, knowing that maybe I didn't mean as much to them as they might have meant to me. When you guard yourself and keep yourself within yourself, you're bound to be the biggest investor in your own personal stake, doomed to fail at social graces, cursed to be misunderstood and dismissed by those around you. Kickin it in the college scene once again served only to remind me how much I really don't belong to the throng, and proved a fateful reminder that people aren't my thing. The casual encounter, professional banter, and so seldom anything more, that's my lot in life, nevermore. Making that connection to others that everyone else seems so easily to be able to make, or at very least to fake, seems so alien and foreign that the bar dwellers and socialite denizens may as well have been speaking in tongues.
Kickin it in Lexington has been cool, but like every other stay, bitterness and wanderlust prevail, and now it's time to leave. No shortage of watering holes and eateries does this town harbor, a short walk yielding intrigue after innebriated and intoxicating intrigue. Like many hubs of bohemian academic centrism and pursuit, indulgence holds sway during the day, and rules by night. Lazy days embroiled in a hangover, burnt off by the most carefree of culinary advent, followed by more of that which crafted the waking turmoil of the morning's first painful light of day. Don't believe me? Try beignets dusted liberally with powdered sugar, embroiled in close combat with fresh fruit, reinforced with a porcine blanket of smokey bliss. Or maybe cajun-laced shrimp, living it large in gumbo fashion atop grits and a duo of sauces better known in meals served much later in the day. The folks at Doodles on 3rd St. dished em out with a smile and inquisitive pride signifying immediately not only quality, but the determination of those on their own path to glory and greatness.

How bout the ability of a college town to push cultural dining boundaries? Some may scoff at the notion, but you can get decent Korean digs in the heart of Kentucky, and the folks at Han Woo Ri, in the whitest looking page out of a Better Homes magazine have meekly thrown down their fermented, and slightly vinegary gauntlet.