3-3-14 Ft. Wayne, In

Late afternoon walk through the tundra. Sidewalks a smothered memory of the fall, frosted over with icy layers of winter, it's a choose your own adventure of snow drifts. Just passing through, a sore thumb in shorts shuffling through the powder and brown slush. Thrift store, old music shop piled high with cables and relics of gear curled my lips to a smile. Sifting through preamps and dusty jewel cases, book stores and Asian grocery. The exotic odors carried my senses back to far off lands and other times.
The China buffet, long a hobby of mine seemed warm enough. Inside veneered in faux marble, granite, and a whole quarry of thinly simulated textures. Red, white, and blue lights scream a patriotism only an immigrant could really appreciate. Lost in thought, I pondered the crab on the steam table, the pink/grey tuna under industrious led lighting. People of commerce and science study marine life like the buffet diner studies the orderly rows of greasy bounty. Think they know the dwindling catch is ending up as a red tong fly-by in a Midwest feed trough? Is it wrong to have cheap fish? Should cheap sushi even be a thing? Nevermind that it doesn't even remind me of the real thing... Is it any worse than the overweight girls in the next booth beating out the pop tune playing in the restaurant?
The lights dangle down on long leads from the ceiling, overhead fixtures casting their shadows on the white walls like disembodied scrotum. Red booths, blue collar. I shrugged and dove back to the trough. Does it matter that those shrimp scuttled their way off the mortal coil to dive from freezer to wok and star in a salty, saucy steamtable revue? I shake it off and head back to the table. Empty lemonade and a strange crisp new napkin, scrawled on it a girl's name and number, and "nice tatts." The girls in the next booth conspicuous now more for absence than musical taste, replaced by a family of four. Feeling like a sore thumb again.

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.