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.

1-18-11 On a train to NYC

Taking a commuter train to the city from Newark. It's full of people in heavy winter clothes; there's still snow on the ground, and it's grey and rainy. The weather suits the moods and mannerisms of the people here, or maybe it's the other way around. The east coast is, not surprisingly, a far out trip from its western counterpart. Far from laid back and vibrant climes, things here lean towards black and shades of grey. Somber, stoic, and serious are the denizens of these parts, beaten down by the lifestyle, or perhaps made hard and stern by the trappings of everyday life here. The whole scene makes me feel like such an intellectual pussy in the midst of all this tough history, rough present, and somewhat bleak future outlook. The people are weathered and hard, like the ironworks that surround and give them the means to sleep, live, and get around.
Met up with my cousin the other night to see her brother, mom, and dad. Cool seeing them, I always dig on the opportunity to get in touch with family, and some of my own roots. My uncle Paul is so replete with knowledge about the family and our history, has to be more so than any living member of my mom's clan. When I goaded him to write a book about all of it. He retorted that it would be published whenever my own culinary epic hit the presses. Heh, the sound of the gauntlet hitting the dinner table is at once resounding and inspiring. He proceeded to dispense the latest family lecture, which centered around the Wermuths of a few generations past. According to my scholarly uncle they lived in the very neighborhood of Newark in which we found ourselves dining. Once an immigrant Jewish area, it has since seen a majority black population, and now boasts a recent influx of Portuguese and Spanish folks. Funny how life has a way of turning you back to your roots.

1-7-11 Uniondale, NY

This morning's introduction to the world dances to the propane flame flicking one of those fake ceramic logs in the hotel lobby. Basking in its scant glow, the obligatory bowl of styrofoam fruit lounges in eternal ripeness. Not terrible semblances of their requisite natural forms, save for the occasional perforation of the skin, revealing its true form. Some christmas decorations adorn the top of the heap, rapidly turning past their date, unlike the fruit which supports them. Funny that the forms of fruit, seasonal as their own natures may be, never seem to go out of style; food is in. The shiny red orbital balls and pine twigs, no more authentic than their fruity friends, bring back a whiff and fleeting taste of the year-end holiday misery that has just passed. I want to toss them in the propane fire, and efface their mockery of the genuine and truly joyous, but fear of retaliation from the hotel staff for destruction of their meager holiday decor, and fellow patrons in the adjacent breakfast room over the smell of burning plastic. Ironic considering the uncanny similarity of the hotel breakfast and plastic itself. The holidays have always held a special sort of misery for me, the repulsive decor strewn about in garish fashion, the trite combinations of tactless fragrances (nutmeg, cinnamon, and the like,) the long awkward social gatherings replete with uncomfortable pauses and breaks (some wonder orchestra composers can stand the season,) and the days spent in nothingness. What a way to waste a week or so. The pervasive sentiment of the whole affair seems to be guilt; have I forgotten to buy a gift for anyone? Have I spent too much? Have I spent too little? Should I call? Should I send a card? How am I going to afford this? How long will it take to pay off this holiday season, and will my credit lines recover in time to strain and tax themselves for another round next year? Communicational guilt, financial guilt, imagined guilt. Seems like a miserable affair any way you stack it. And the climate control, good Crom, is completely out of control. For as much as celebrators of the annual drudgery claim to rejoice the winter season, it's some wonder they can tell it's even going on past the incredible heat pumped into domiciles, businesses, and public places. Well, at least the fruit won't rot, and will look snappy adorned with eggs, obscurely dacted clovers, pumpkins, or whatever other seasonal items they'll bear until they meet their piney friends once again.