| | Time: | 09:08 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/juicy/cutealiens/refreshed_a.gif) peaceful |
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| And I've never gotten used to
it
I've just learned to turn it off.
Either I'm too sensitive
Or else I'm getting soft
~~~~~~~
Ah well, a Matlock movie makes things feel good, real good. Makes a man want to ramble.
I do love Andy Griffith. He's become a sort of personal hero. I love his album too. He just got it, gets it and knows things. Wise things, small things, big things. He has the mountains in him sure enough and to understand that never losing the mountains even when you look out second avenue is essential -- well, that's something worth following.
I have a relationship with this city that I used to wonder about and now I just live.
Same as thinking about how you look instead of just buttoning the shirt. Looking at the cigarette in the mirror rather than tasting the smoke.
He laid the pieces out on the board one by one because he read about it in a book.
He played the problem out because that's how he heard it. Now he found a love in the moves. All the machinations turn his brain sweetly.
If he saw a watch in the store it immediately stacked up against the past before it found its way towards his wrist or his watch chain.
That's the danger of living in the future. Sure enough he knows now that the tree branches of the coming whats and whos are more seductive than the past.
He believed it, wrongly, to be the reverse until recently. But now the man knows that his nights laying awake thinking of permutations, the results of every mutation of presentation were just chasing ghosts of people who hadn't been born, let alone passed away.
Oh sure, there are times now to think about the 'could bes', the possibilities, the tantalizing things to strive for. But keep em be rabbits on the dog track, he knows. Don't let them be webs, but let em be nitelights.
There's a certain comfort in being trapped and a certain terror in finding inspiration.
But like most things, the more you stumble onto something good or bad, the less it mystifies you and the more inclined you are to know the good and the bad and the inevitably gray for what they are.
The parts of the day and the night and all the seconds and minutes and degrees and refractions you've got in your pocket.
You've named them all now and made them loas of your own genuine calling.
It's an interesting change of pace to sit by a window neither bound by it nor leaping into the night
.
Coda. I need to get to see my Grandmother soon. I do believe that if this surgery takes place soon I will spend the rehabilitation on the farm. I can take those long walks in Poplar Cove just as easy as I can on second avenue. I like the town here, but I've had enough of the lower east side and the fast life and bad air. I think it does me poorly over the long time. I've known that for a while but I always come back.
I wonder if I'll be in Asheville, New Orleans or New York City in 5 years time.
I reckon that the only thing I can honestly tell myself is that I look forward to the journey there and the momentary location of repose.
It ought to have a porch swing though.
I'm fond of swings.
And breakfast nooks.
And gardens.
I just like things that bring me quiet.
Who knows.
That's a ramble
But that's how I tend to take it from time to time. | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment   |
| | Current Music: | Dylan | | Subject: | nothing much | | Time: | 10:52 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/juicy/cutealiens/thoughtful_a.gif) pensive |
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| No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I'd rob them
And though I know you're dissatisfied
With your position and your place
Don't you understand
It's not my problem
I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
To see you
I've written a lot, here and elsewhere over the last two years and it has helped me understand myself (unless I'm talking about Manny as I know where I stand there). I don't think I've ever been as honest with myself as I have been since I started out, and that alone was reason to start.
Anyway, yeah. I like music to an extent you might not have guessed. I always have had a very nice voice. I was in choir, caroled at nursing homes, glee club, did Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, won battle of the bands in high school and played with some cats at Georgetown.
So it doesn't surprise me that most of the people I meet, and who stick with me get associated with a song in my head, as do most memories of time and place. This especially holds true with the women whom I hook up with. To anyone who listens to Dylan I submit you want to stay away from anyone who triggers thoughts of "Positively Fourth Street" (see lyrics above). Of course, they are the ones who invariably pop up again, putting forth the opening bars of a new melody. But usually, what you see is what you will always get and I gave up changing folks a long time ago.
I'm loyal and fickle. It's a strange combo. There is a period of time in which I can just toss people under the bus faster than the Red Sox FO will trash a departing player. I won't do it in a malicious Lucchino-esque manner of course. I wasn't always like that. I used to gossip about my own feelings for people and now, now I just shut up. I'll opine on other people's thoughts on their situations but never volunteer my thoughts on anything important, and certainly not start up with anything negative.
But still, I can just fade out of the lives of people before they get to know me well. I just don't reckon I owe that much to everyone. I've got a lot, but not that much. By the same token I used to have a complete double standard and be saddened when people did the same to me, but again I've grown a lot in the past few years. People come and go, and that's cool.
I go where I am wanted, and where I really want to be. I was told that a long time ago by none other than my ma, but as I have learned and learned and learned, there is a long way between intellectually understanding your worth and really feeling it.
It's good to feel it.
And once I get beyond that fickle point where I can take or leave someone, I'm there come high tide or low tide, as another Bob would say. It's simple after that point. "I know what I know," so if I say that I know something, whomever I say it to can rely upon it. That's a good thing because saying something and only thinking you can back it up sucks. Knowing you can cash the check is what I believe it means to grow into your pocketwatch and suit and be a man instead of a baby daddy.
I swear I just heard a train whistle on the upper east side. I wonder what that slow train is carrying.
and if you don't choke up during Seabiscuit, I doubt your heart.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I also want to pose a question to you about friendship -- What do you do if you generally don't like to run after people, but, you meet a person whose company you very much enjoy -- but -- wow this is a hell of a run-on sentence, but it's a bad day and I have to go to the surgeon's at 12 so forgive me -- anyway, so let me try again.
You meet someone. You become acquaintances. You become friends. You understand they have some issues. Whether it is these issues or something else, you definitely get the feeling that you are being taken for granted by them. You used to run after people, but you rarely do anymore. You wonder what you should be doing. I reckon I know the answer. You just got to not put much into to someone who doesn't put you up anywhere high in their rankings -- whether they mean for it to come off that way or not. I mean, bullshit walks and money talks, right? If you give a shit then act like you give a shit.
Anyway, it's a shame when you think someone is very interesting and they do this, and it hasn't happenned in a while. But the old truth remains that you absolutely cannot make someone like you. You just can't. So running after them would just accomplish nothing. Because even if you were recognized, you'd be recognized as a puppy dog. As much as it sucks, you just have to stand your ground -- especially at the beginning, so you don't get trapped into a bad role. Anyway, I haven't misjudged a scene in a long time -- and I guess it's just something everyone does.
Anyway, that's a little ramble for today and it's good to be square with myself once again at its end. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Once my life was a feast where all heart opened and LJ entries flowed.
OK, I'm no Rimbaud, I've known that ever since I had man-love for Rimbaud via Eddie and the Cruisers. Kind of a lame movie to play a major role in my intellectual formative base, eh?
Words and music, Wordman, words and music.
Anyway, I'm a shameful updater here. I think either because it's likely because I'm lazy, but I don't know, it also is such a big old place and this name has been my screen name back since I was a little AOL bambino, that I gues sI'll say something too open and piss someone off. I reckon that I really no longer care about pissing anyone off. I used to be a bit more paranoid. So with the intent of re-introducing my self to old friends (if anyone ever checks my updates beside my best buddy in the world and she knows all this crap) I will destroy 10 minutes of your time with a list of useless facts about myself.
1. I got kicked out of college twice, both times by the lovely Georgetown University. I took two years off and bartended at a dive before I decided I really wanted and needed an education. I went back to Fordham and rocked out summa cum loudly.
2, I had an insidious staph unfection in my leg two years ago. I had a fever of nearly 104 and had a flesh-easting bacteria, For 48 hours they were really bracing me to have my leg amputated at the knee. My mom is a doctor and she recently told me that she was afraid for my life.
3. I was hospitalized after a suicide attempt when I was 13 (I know, must have been really fucked up to want to make that leap in Gooden's Cy Young season).
4. Since that hospitalization I've moved heaven and earth in therapy, drug trials and anything else to learn about my own mind and try to reach a truce with it. Sometimes though, I get incredibly pacnicky and scared though and have terrible fears of non-existance and death, sometimes to the point I have to physically shake them out of my head.
5. During the last 5 years of back troubles my weight went up from my normal 210 to an unreal 350, I started a diet on November 1, 2004 and am now at 240.
6. As a result of spending a long time in a state of almost physical exile from my real body I have no idea what I look like now. I know I used to be handsome and think I am going to be again, but I have no idea right now where I fall.
7. I love women, and am so happy to be back on the market again. I will date anyone twice and I will not consider anyone out of my league. If you are the best, I'll go for you, because I have to. I'm never settling.
8. I love children. I love to babysit, change the clothes, feed em, do everything. In ten years or so I'll be the best father on the planet.
9. I love to cook, garden, whittle, whistle, skip stones -- do all sorts of really simple country things.
10. I used to avoid confrontation at all costs because of a fear of being left. Now I understand you are just going to get left at times, and that understanding has allowed me to take chances. That's the single biggest understanding I have come to in my life.
11. I am a Roman Catholic by birth, go to church but am still trying to find my religious "home", Spiritual uncertainty is the next big issue I am tackling.
12. I am a hip man first and foremost. I just like hips. After that it's all from woman to woman though I do notice I seem to only date brunettes and I love dark eyes.
13. I don't carry torches anymore and am getting to be really fast and loose with who I will make out with. Got to say that I just like making out. It's just a fun thing to do and, not everything is that important I've come to understand.
14. Before my back surgery I was convinced I would not wake up from my anesthesia. Having a possible other surgery coming up ahead upsets me, but doesn't freak me like last time. I'll do what i need to do to get my life back.
15. I play the horses a lot. I also make a good deal of money on wagering.
16. I quit drinking for six years once because it just seemed like a good six years to not drink. I also drink a lot less and am probably a lot less of a degenerate than you guys would think me to be, especially you newcomers to my cybermusings.
17. I used to think I was being good and kind by being a pushover. Really turns out I was just being a pussy.
18. For a long time I would sabotage my own efforts in school, jobs and certainly with the women I really wanted. I would put out some effort that was not my best, and know it while doing it so that if things didn't work out I could say "she didn't see the real me, if she only knew who I really was she would have loved me." I found a great comfort in excuses and conversely had a very hard time until just recently being able to say "this is what I want, I'm putting out my best take it or leave it." I am amazed in the past that I have not pursued the person and opportunities that I wanted, but the idea of hearing someone I really loved or look up to say "Thanks for showing me your best, Justin but I'm passing" scared me into not engaging some people I should have. Don't care anymore. You cannot get your gloved raised without sticking out your chin.
19. I'm not as insecure as I sound sometimes and I'm not as arrogant as I sound sometimes. I do have a stupid blind faith in myself, especially when I look at myself as a man, but I think I've earned it with the incredible pain and work I've put in over the last 20 years.
20. People who do not understand, or who understand academically but cannot practically buy into, the importance of sports to the fabric of the United States will have a harder time really getting to know me than others will. I'll end by saying that I'm a part of that very simple male America that loves sports, women and pretty much sports and women. I don't say "I'm simple" to get raised eyebrows. I understand that response. I'm not saying that I am not intelligent nor am I saying that I do not think long and deeply about many things. I guess what I am saying is that I've cleared out a lot of those psychic boobytraps we set up so that I can now persue meaningful happiness withought being suspicious of my own motives or machinations.
Anyway, wow. That was long, and actually quite useful for me to do. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| again, I've been way slack in updating, but I need to start writing again
Grandmother Sallie is in the hospital and I need to get to NC if it gets serious.
I myself got bad news at the doctor's the other day . . . the back isn't healing, isn't filling in with bone the way they wanted it to. They may have to re-do the fusion.
When it rains it does pour. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Once more. No meandering.
I miss you Gran.
Thanksgiving without you has been agonizing.
I love you, and hope God's looking after you well.
-- Justin | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | How to build an atomic bomb -U2 | | Time: | 08:23 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/juicy/cutealiens/angry_a.gif) cranky |
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| Well, my friend Hernonnoire was right -- the first holiday after losing someone you love is terrible.
Thanksgiving is usually the best day of the dead time between October and February. Between the gluttony, the naps, the family , the inevitable marathons of Real World/Road Rules Challenge, it usually is phenomenal.
All I could think about today though was how much I missed my grandmother. I love her so much.
I hate that death ends all life.
It's incredibly fucked up on the design front.
For some reason this makes me think that reincarnation is likely -- that's the small, yet antsy (which means I'm explaining it incorrectly -- just say I know something and I CANNOT verbalize it, and I hate that as a professional writer it frustrates me beyond anything else) gut feeling that all this riffing on death has left me with.
Well, it isn't the only feeling or the accurate level tagging of it, as the splinter of aggravation in everything I've written on this subject for the last 2 weeks is letting me know.
Fuck it -- PLACE HOLDER ENTRY -- revisit this Justin when you can stop feeling like someone kicked you in the nuts. Just put all that shit to one side, Justin, you've got all the post-surgery time to think.
It's good to get shit off your chest, but if you don't know what you are thinking -- genuinely don't know yet as opposed to cowardly hiding it from yourself or your girlfriend, chances are that repeatedly trying to write about it will find you feeling like a toddler 6 hours too later for nap time.
FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK -- who booked this DEATH CRAP????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Oh yeah, surgery Dec. 15 -- 8 - 10 weeks no work or travel -- means I will take my sports writing job in NOLA for May 1.
Sounds good. I need to get the fuck out of NY and get the fuck out of law. Sure it's baseball law and our cases get on sportscenter and we win and whoo, I get to do lots of sports research -- but the business of basebal sucks. IT's as dirty and shitty as every labor dispute and partnership squable that happens in secular bailiwicks.
Doing sports law for me was about as smart as being the plumber on call for St. Patrick's cathedral would be for someone who is all sexed up over the mysteries of the Church of Rome.
I just want to cry
I'm a big goddamn lonely baby who misses his grandmother.
Yeah, lame-ass grown man.
Clients be happy to know I'm in charge of defending hundred-million dollar lawsuits.
I love the life I'm building but I hate so fucking much of where I've been.
Fuck it. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| We buried my grandmother this morning in her family crypt. She passed early Friday morning after what seemed like the longest of illnesses.
I'm glad it stopped raining overnight.
I loved her a lot.
I have her memories now, which I couldn't really see clearly while she was sick.
Every time I thought of her walking with me through Paris when I was six trying to find all the balloons from The Red Balloon, I found myself faced with the different woman who ws trapped in the bed before me.
It almost seemed obscene to think of happy times when she was active, to talk to her about them, like I was mocking her with things she'd never do again.
It was hard to reconcile her condition with the woman who captained her own boat, the Argo, in Bermuda for those many sweet summers, who waded into a lake in Southampton to free the rowboat my sister and I had managed to maroon among the life-threatening lillypads.
I hardly ever thought of her career as she lay sick for a decade, -- the first woman to serve as chief resident at Bellevue Hospital. She worked on the project that won the 1956 Nobel Prize -- helping to develop the cardiac catheter -- a device that recently helped save my father's life, and which helps millions of open-heart surgery patients around the world survive their troubles.
I'd forget how much you did for medecine, and particularly women in medicine because I couldn't see further than the care I needed to give you in those last years.
Now, the small consolation of being able to remember all that is what I took home from Calvary.
I guess it's not much, and at the same time, it's quite a lot, and will no doubt mean more to me as the days and years go by as I process more and more, and let more of the first you back into my mind.
I don't know what else to say though other than you rocked and I'll miss you. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Lies of omission are more hurtful than lies of comission. That's a rule of thumb I subscribe too.
Because lies of omission end up stretching out over time and you end up sinking more and more effort into people based entirely on a misbegotten feeling, not knowing the score.
Beware of the unspoken "But" the unarticulated "So Long As" -- was just writing this to a friend and it just hit me hard.
Man, do people just whistle and forget to include that little caveat when making grand gestures of love and support.
To experience the hidden "But" or the unarticulated "So Long As", try tacking on the missing clause that people have failed to inform you of to some of these oldies but goodies:
1. This friendship can't ever be broken (so long as . . .)
2. I'll never sell you out (but . . .)
3. I only want to see you happy (so long as . . .)
4. Are you kidding, I would never do that to you (unless if by "that" you mean . . .)
5. Sell your X-Box on Ebay while you're on vacation? Pshaw (so long as . . .)
7. Shave your eyebrows when you pass out? (but . . . )
~~~and the big ones~~~~~~~
8. I'll love you forever (. . . so long as)
9. Trust me (but . . .)
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now, remember, the unspoken "But" and the unarticulated "So Long As" aren't always witheld with malice. Sometimes they are, when your seduced by the serial adulterer, for example, or lend money to someone who is a compulsive gambler.
But most of the hidden conditions are imposed unbeknownst to the promisor at the time he or she make the grand gesture.
As I will always believe, it's carelessness, moreso than malice, that ends up hurting people.
So don't promise what you don't know yourself well enough to deliver.
And know the person who promises you the world well enough before you take their words to your heart.
~~~~~~~~~
Also, beware of players who attain sudden health and skill during a walk year.
Or else you end up married to the equivalent of Adonal Foyle.
If that last axiom isn't lost on most, I don't know what will be.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Right now, I can't read too good,
Don't send me no more letters, no.
Not unless you mail them from, Desolation Row"
~~~~~~~~Dylan, the Man~~~~~~~~~~
One day till the neurosurgeon. Jesus, no more needles . . . | | comments: Leave a comment |
| "I followed you beneath the stars
hounded by your memory
and all your raging glory"
It'll come as no shock that I think our worst moments frequently double as gateways to our best. I'm dry man, dry. Broken down and empty like a creek bed.
Rain on the way.
I figure that nothing very bad has failed to segue into something better somewhere down the line.
That's not the same as accepting certain things. It's not the same as granting free reign to circumstance and petulance in the self and others.
But what it is . . . huh huh huh huh huh huh
What it is, maybe is an appreciation of flow and context?
There can't be so much invested in any one moment any more because really what are they if not conduits?
I've written on this and talked to others about it. We lose our chances at happiness and I think maybe our minds, or our best minds when we look to the results and forget about the process.
"So I'll take my own advice and leave her behind and go sailing the wide world over."
I'm apart from things a bit, because I made them as a different thinker, not a different man, but one who saw thinks "from a different plateau".
"So if your travelling in the north country fair, where the winds hit heavy on the borderline, remember me to one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine."
The north country. The light is different now, so much weaker. I can even see it in photos. Even when trees are green, I can tell when the summer's dead.
And it's dead.
Cold winds blowing already and there are some howling cats in alleys knowing the worst is yet to come. But man, if it's just a step to somewhere else, a drip on the stone, a cow chewing grass, the wind maybe ain't so cold.
Trick of the light engineered on oneself. Don't know.
Goddamn it I don't know. I really don't know and if that isn't good enough for you, too fucking bad, because the things I don't know far outnumber those I do -- and I guarantee you those I do know you never wanted to hear.
Whatever. Put it on that other side of the ledger.
"Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul"
Howl baby, howl.
"Rave on Mr. Yeats, Rave on theough the writing of A Vision, rave on rave on rave on rave on rave on rave on rave on raveeeee on John Donne."
They sat there late that night and fashioned a bong out of a Rheingold can. An old Irish bar trapped inside a new bar, that got older as the night went on. Nothing beats a good bartender. Nothing beats 5am conference and walking into the graveyard rather than sprinting by the Tombstones singing at the top of your lungs. Is there any question that what we pay to get a look is worth it? How funny to run external and internal at once. You've solved the riddle of the Sphinx while you are talking about the rise of rents in Astoria.
And then there is everyone else in the town. Some going to work in overalls and some coming home in suits or garters. Some feeling like tomorrow is a day of worship and some thinking of the day very differently. Do any of us live in the same world?
I think we may just wander into each other's from time to time, and if we are lucky, we learn the language, at least enough to order off the menu. But I guess everyone riffs on dislocation, and is everyone actually united in that lack of meaningful company?
Like Gilbert and Sullivan said
"If everybody's somebody, than no one's anybody"
"If a body catch a body coming through the Rye"
I like my mind for all the trouble it causes me. I'm glad I like my own company, I think that's a good thing to have in your back pocket.
It's better than a harmonica. I can always learn "Tangled up in Blue"
I don't know that I could learn to dig my dark corners just as easily.
See ya, cyber space, strange anonymous place filled with firefly connections. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Allman Brothers: Eat a Peach | | Time: | 08:03 pm | | Current Mood: | Double Crossed Now . . . |
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| Kings County Family Court is a zoo. That's kind of a figure of speach, kind of not a figure of speach.
Literally speaking, it smells like urine. The bathrooms must be cleaned biennially and the holding pens where the litigants pace are cages, seriously.
Anyone see the movie Awakenings? Remember when Deniro could only write a bit, and he wrote "Rilke's Panther"?
Well, I understood a bit of that today.
I was so pissed off at the petitioner in my pro bono case, a man who ahs been incarcerated twice for a total of 104 counts of domestic violence who is now peititoning the court for visitation with a daughter who is scared shitless of him.
The move is so clearly a ruse to circumvent the OP and re-insinuate his way into my client's (the mother) life, once released next spring, and commence a third spree of cowardice and terrorism that the very idea that my client bears the burden of proving substantial evidence that her daughter would suffer damage from visitation is deeply both painful and angering.
I know in theory it sounds good -- parental rights of visitation should not be abrogated lightly, but when you see someone who hasn't ever given a shit about his child all of a sudden profess a desire to become involved when it is patently obvious that his sole motivation in doing so is to gain access to a woman he has driven to the edge of a ghostworld through physical and emotional terrorism is just impossible to stomach.
Well, there I was, for a 9:30 call waiting to hear a law guardian's recommendation and argue why these visits should NOT under any circumstances be allowed. There I was at 9:30 trying to calm my client as she prepared to face a man who had changed her life into something beyond my recognition.
And there I was amongst hundreds of women going through similar experiences, maybe 5 of whom were represented by counsel, because God knows the court doesn't provide it, and no one TELLS you how to secure pro bono representation.
So there I still was at 3:30 after 4 or 5 full-blown fights had broken out, after tens of kids had seen their parents yelling at each other and other people pair off, and nearly come to blows. So their I was still waiting to be called.
And after 7 hours, my case was called, and I went in, and my client shook as her ex-husband was led in by 4 guards. And the referree swore the litigants in. And the law guardian gave as strong a recommendation against visitation as she could, and my opposing counsel made a lot of arguments that I found disingenuous at best and cynical and manipulative at worst.
And my turn came, and I was honest, and with this disgusting convict next to me I told the referee how his words and actions belie any statement of good intention. I did good today, and though we are still going to trial he is forbidden from any contact with the child until that date.
He is also going to get smoked at trial.
The sad thing is that there is no way that people know how to get certified copies of indictments and grand jury minutes and plea allocutions without counsel. Fuck I didn't even know to do that as a securities and sports lawyer until I researched it.
So I left having done one thing good, and realizing that the odds of victims helped to victims totally fucked was about 5 - 400 today.
Good times.
Good Times in Brooklyn. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | guitar lesson | | Time: | 06:26 pm | | Current Mood: | cranky |
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| Satchel Paige by way of Delroy Lindo (great casting) is alleged to have once said something to Jackie Robinson along the lines of
"Son, if you have any demons inside you you'd best piss them out or they'll eat you up alive."
Sounds like Satch.
Reads like Satch.
I done leaked yesterday evening, and the pissing was fine.
Big things are going down. Sometimes, when you do not know who you are, it is in your absolute best interest to talk to the person who knows you best. For they are likely to shock you back to some semblance of the middle of the Highway (61 -- BN, 61).
So I talked to the much esteemed, highly combustable, and definitely irreplaceable B-MoBetta, a tremendous sports writer for the Wash Times, and he and I palavered.
Six basic things came out of the talk and they all were so genuinely me and him, that man, it made smile.
1. The relocation of the Expos is obscenely stupid, especially building the new stadium in the hood near the New Vegas lounged where we used to renact the "in the nuts? in the family jewels?" scene from Weird Science when we would commission the homeless to guide us into D.C.'s underbelly on the nights we realized that young catolic girls tend to suck. D.C. a fucking soulless city with no middle class that can't support the Bullets is gonna support the third incarnation of a team lead by Jose Vidro?
My dick wants to laugh (right Doug?)
2. SEC football is great, and Jamal Lewis as a freshman at UT (that's Tennessee you Texas cocksuckers, the REAL UT) is the best RB I've ever seen. You do realize that he is doing what he does in the NFL on two fully rebuilt knees? A shadow of his former self, he ran for 2 LARGE last year.
3. (or 2a) Adrian Peterson and Erik Ainge are the best players in the country and they are freshmen. CJ Leak, by trashing Fulmer and sending his bitch brother to the Gators did the Vols a HUMONGOUS favor, and little Leak will not beat the Vols during his 4 long sad years in the swamp. Book it.
4. I need to have kids, but not for a while. But I do need to have them, but not to fuck around and get saddled with a quarterhorse when you really want Go For Wand. So, he advised me to re-open the search for a GM, devise a short list and interview candidates for ten years. I am taking his plan under advisement.
5. Most People bore us immensely at our cores because we are brilliant, misanthropic, rotten bastards, and it is good we are going on a bender soon to reconnect with that deeply held and well-deserved arrogance.
6. I'm leaving law, and he's scoring me a job at a paper to remain nameless on a AAA baseball/college pigskin beat. Details will be made public as it gets put into place, and I will be leaving New York after the firm pays bonuses, cause folks, I was fucking born to write about baseball.
B adds 7 -- Golfers are all assholes EXCEPT Tiger who oddly, is the only unselfish prick out there. It's the cashmere club D-Love et al. who really suck.
I add 8 -- Bringing Minaya home and giving him full control is a HUGELY positive move for the Mets, especially since he will help Latin American scouting and never trade the one player he personally scouted and deliverered --- my avatar, The Passion of The Reyes.
~~~Oh where have you been my blue-eyed son? Where have you been my darling young one?~~~~~
edited to and ANY confusion over the Doug, comment -- I clarify further what I wrote in Tinkerbell's journal:
"My dick wants to laugh" is an extreme remark of disdain made by Fred Sultan (as played by Sam Jackson) in the Great White Hype, a movie that only Doug seems to hold in as high esteem as I seem to, so I was quoting the Sultan, and then asking for an affirmance from Doug since he was the only one who would know what the fuck I was saying, as has been borne out by all y'all's comments. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Longing and the grass is greener . . .
Oh how very wrong I've had it.
Young and old bi-polar disordered confused imbalanced gemini.
So many confusing and convoluted names, diagnoses and insurance codes and Rxs later -- maybe all I needed to hear was this. . .
"Son, you are a dipstick."
Well, there is that.
Maybe it isn't quite that simple.
BUT, I will try and remember that I have done a good deal of outsmarting myself, so let's try and keep this sage song front and center . . .
"Santa-Fe,
Dear, dear, dear, dear Santa-Fe.
Since I'm never gonna cease to roam,
I'm never, ever far from home"
What the hell does that have to do with the price of cheese in Kenya, Justin, you ask me (well, you might) --
Well, this is what this has to do with all that and more, says Justin (that's me -- Trash isn't really my name, jackass)
See, when I've been in New York, my eyes look south towards Franklin . . . and -- you all know where this is going -- when I am in Franklin, my eyes look all the way north until they hit Battery Park.
When the dew tickles my toes, my feet grumble about how much nicer the sticky asphalt would taste right about now. When a siren wails in the night, my ears scream for crickets. I've always felt restless, as if I were always cut off from my home because I have so many of them.
Leave it to me to miss the point.
I have many homes.
I should rest in each of them.
If I were thirsty and if I were given four cups from which to drink, and if each of those cups were filled with the finest of Gatorade, would I lament that I could not slake said thirst with each yummiliscious Jordan-sanctioned beverage first?
Heck no!
I've exiled myself from parts of my life for too long.
And that, my fine frelking friends, is done with.
~~~~~~~
By the way, cynicism, when it comes to true love, is lunacy.
I am just getting that right on the Jose Mesa (that's spanish for Joe TABLE -- get it -- oh I am on a roll tonight, but that is what happens when your camping gets flooded into the carport)
Seriously, though. If there is one place, one place for unguarded lay it on the line, go to the wall, bring-it-on-home-to-me, I am a fugitive from a chain gang, strap it on, optimism it's love (one place that is other than Shea Stadium -- with Reyes and David Wright the Mets are going to rule the NL East forever, suckers!)
Seriously though, I've been thinking about this for a good long while.
I've seen the best minds of my generation (cue Ginsberg snapping) laying in the gutters of Manhattan with their programs in shambles, just in ruination after the end of the affair.
Of course, it's bad. It scalds, it is a physical pain that is like a protracted spoon slap to the nads -- but, look, this is the one place in life you can't, well, strike that, where *I* can't afford to let the past claim the present or the future.
Looking at it, why let the misdeeds of bad people have any more time or emotion than they already took under the false flag of mislabled 'love'? It would be a disservice to myself.
I've known since I was oh, 20 or so that what I was meant to do, what I was meant to do best, was to be a supremely rocking husband and father. Yeah, I am getting real good at writing. In a year, I'll have a book done and hopefully published and cool, fine, good. And yes, if I wanted to run with it, I could be a badass litigator. Hell, I am already in one of the best litigation departments in the world. But well, when I look at myself, I know that it's my heart and not my mind that drives the machine. My mind's best function, and best work is done when it's working as the hammer to the John Henry of my heart.
Anyway, long entry, no one will get to the end, poorly written, don't care, not charging for it, just getting things out on the page that have been raging in my head since I slowed things down a week ago.
Life is good, and love is the best part of life,
besides The Passion of the Reyes.
Just Kidding,
sort of . . .
who knows,
lets say love is like the Jose Reyes of emotions, seemingly fragile, but unquestionably magical,
the emotion that makes Alfonso Soriano look talentless.
OK then,
carry on.
heh.
~~~~~~~~
Edited to say:
Those who let a someone else's carelessness or cruelty cash in the future for them are like folks who never went back to the ballpark after their beloved Brooklyn Dodgers moved to LA.
You all missed the Amazing Mets.
Looks like you hurt yourself more than anyone else ever could have or did if y'all ask me. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Lakers - Sixers, 1980 Finals game 5 | | Subject: | ready to roll | | Time: | 10:08 pm | | Current Mood: | cool |
|
| I guess I'll be leaving tomorrow
If I have to beg, steal or borrow.
It'd be great to cross paths in a day and a half
Look at each other and laugh.
But I don't think it's liable to happen
Like the sound of one hand clappin'.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Got to get that last page off of my journal.
So "Hello Baby I'm gone Goodbye" is what I said to work today. I was out of there from 11am on. I finally had to go and break out at 4pm, go shop and then come home to get ready for a nice dinner out -- well, unless things get out of hand as they have a way of doing. I played up the general lack of knowledge about Western North Carolina, so I told the folks at work that I'll be without a phone or any way of regular contact for the next ten days. Of course that is crap. The only times I'll be incommunicado is when I am camping by the river, most nights, but other than that I'm pretty easy to find by conventional methods. Just check my grandmother's back porch, the Little Tennesse River or look for the guy cursing in the sand trap at the course that abutts town.
I mean, it's the sticks but it isn't Deliverence. That's two towns over in Andrews, where they caught Eric Rudolph dumpster diving at the Piggly Wiggly.
So, let's see if I come back from this.
Mebbe I'll have a talk with Uncle Frank about learning the business better, or to the town lawyer about jobliness down there. Now that I am five years to the good in practice, I can waive in to the Carolina bar without studying for and taking another test.
My dream has always been to live in the French Quarter, but man, learning the Napoleonic Code is gonna take a little time and planning before I'd sit for the Louisiana Bar.
Anyway, maybe I'll just slide there one state at a time. Of course it's all dependent on the school thing too. If I get into the Folklore of New Orleans program at Tulane, that might just obviate the need to practice, which I really wouldn't mind.
I just want to write, and sing a lot. I love to sing. I miss being in a band. We were a pretty good band. We even did Help-Slipknot-Franklin's and Estimated-Eyes and we didn't suck all that badly at it. I mean, we weren't going to cut a record, but it felt good and even at 18, chicks dig the music folk.
Something is wrong with my writing lately. I've got no feel for language. Nouns are especially elusive. I imagine it's just an extension pushing down so many scenes, people and vids into the deep background over the last two weeks. Maybe I'll find me technology in Franklin, cause I was hoping to get three or four stories done. That would leave 6 to go.
Anyway, got to get out of town before anyone sees me, lest I end up married or in jail.
What's that saying?
Six of one . . . .
I kid.
You all are just strange, you New York women. Maybe some time away will help me sift the pan a little better when I come back here looking for gold in the fall.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dudes, Boston Sports Guy has control of NBA TV ALL WEEKEND LONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
TIVO Alert . . . having Bernard King and the rest of the Pantheon will make coming home ok. Good Times. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | Masked and Anonymous | | Subject: | caged man, caged | | Time: | 07:31 pm | | Current Mood: | testy |
|
| Oh I wish I was in the land of cotton
Old times there are not forgotten
Look away, look away, look away Dixieland
Oh I wish I was in Dixie, away, away
In Dixieland I take my stand to live and die in Dixie
In Dixieland, that's where I was born
Early Lord one frosty morning
Look away, look away, look away Dixieland
Oh I wish I was in Dixie, away, away
In Dixieland I take my stand to live and die in Dixie
Away
Away
Away down south in Dixie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Soon, so very soon.
Now all that's left is days spent pretending to work and nights spent pretending I care.
Cause I'm not, and I don't. I'm done
'See my voice is still warm
It's just it ain't got no form
See it's just like a dead man's last pistol shot baby."
I'm trying to get out of town without speaking to or seeing anyone central to my life right now. They wouldn't be getting a good JPK right now. I'd be more inclined than not to speak impusivlely and say something I really mean now, but likely won't with 10 days in the mountains under my belt to reflect and think ahead and most importantly simply not think, rather just put my feet on the banks of the Little Tennessee and feel the air clean me.
Wow, just get me through to Saturday morning please, without me getting too damn smart or bold for my own good.
Getting too clever by half. When hasn't that fucked me up?
"And when I arrive at the pearly gates
Don't give me gold.
Instead,
I want a red clay harp, some red clay wings, and a red clay halo for my head." | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| For fuck's sake. Can't things just be cool for 10 fucking minutes?
God fucking dammit.
Looks like my grandmother is on deck now with pneumonia. Big trouble in that she is permanently bedridden.
Who designed life so that it ends?
Whose bright fucking idea was that?
Seriously, how do people make it through the day without being sucker punched by onrushing paralyzing fears of nonexistence? I sit in a 45th floor office pretending to make sweet law by the fire when half the time I am either try to comprhehend what it would be like to not be, or to shake out the violent almost physical -- hell indeed physical terror that just glimpsing the possibilities that either nonexistence or its converse offer.
This is heavier shit than the mound conference in Bull Durham.
In a way though, this is too fucked up NOT to have been done by design. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Ah leetle live journal, how I have neglected you during the arbitration. Well now, I reckon I need to write a little here and there, and now I think I'll have the chance. Going to Carolina soon, folks, might stay for a good long while. I could use a little time outside of Manhattan and a little time amongst the Smokey Mountains. You get older and you remember why you wanted to run away and join the circus maximus in the first place. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| We're havin' a party
Dancin' to the music
Played by the DJ
On the radio
The Coke's out in the icebox
Popcorn's on the table
Me and my baby
We're out here on the floor
So Mr., Mr. DJ
Keep those records playin'
'Cause I'm a-havin' such a good time
Dancin' with my baby
Everybody's swingin'
Sally's doin' the twist now
If you take requests I've
Got a few for you
Play that song called "Soul Twist"
Play that song called "I Know"
Don't forget "The Mashed Potatoes"
No other songs will do
So Mr., Mr. DJ
Keep those records playin'
'Cause I'm a-havin' such a good time
Dancin' with my baby
We're havin' a party
Everybody's swingin'
Dancin' to the music
On the radio
Was life so much more complicted for Sam Cooke than for Mariilyn Manson? How much of all this crap is just a self-indulgent drama festival?
There's a certain satisfaction from keeping it simple and strapping it on. Now, granted I hardly ever do it, but pushing myself to my limits, physically, I get a taste of something where I get so worn that I get too tired to bullshit and maybe I get a little closer to an ice box full of cokes.
So listen, Mr. DJ, keep them records playing. . .
This is Trash | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Well, I ride on a mailtrain, baby,
Can't buy a thrill.
Well, I've been up all night, baby,
Leanin' on the window sill.
Well, if I die
On top of the hill
And if I don't make it,
You know my baby will.
Don't the moon look good, mama,
Shinin' through the trees?
Don't the brakeman look good, mama,
Flagging down the "Double E"?
Don't the sun look good
Goin' down over the sea?
Don't my gal look fine
When she's comin' after me?
Now the wintertime is coming,
The windows are filled with frost.
I went to tell everybody,
But I could not get across.
Well, I wanna be your lover, baby,
I don't wanna be your boss.
Don't say I never warned you
When your train gets lost.
~~~daily dylan~~~
"I got nothing to say to you Cantrell"
"Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke"
The above two quotes -- not the song, jackass, are from the movie Long Gone, the latter, being 'Cantrell's Rule'. The picture is of the man himself, Cecil 'Stud' Cantrell, possibly the best character in a sports movie in my opinion. Love that guy. I'm gonna keep him around these parts so I can remind myself that there are cool things in the world that don't revolve around an office building in Times Square -- though it will seem the contrary for a while.
Man, o man, worked till 12:30 last night and still we are 3 weeks (3 weeks or 4 - can't think) away from zero hour. Got to go back in again now and imagine it will be more or less 15-18 hours a day seven days a week until June 18. My birthday being the 19th, I am going to have a blast at that party, that's for sure. Anyway, this is what I signed up for in litigation, and this is why they pay me the big bucks. So I'll go on, at least until this case is over. Then we'll see. Either I'll strap it on and do it again, or I'll ride the rails and live under a bridge in a warmer climate. Either way, I'll still listen to Sam Cooke, smoke a lot of dope, care a lot less about some things and a lot more about others and generally be a spaz. It is what it is, and I remain Trash.
Fuck em if they can't take a joke.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MIDWEEK UPDATE
THE PASSION OF THE REYES IS COMING SOON . . .
p.s.
Sam Cooke can do a lot for you | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| 
Hey man! You're Bob in Flux After a Motorcyle
Accident! You used to know what you wanted,
but then some horrible tragedy forced you to
hide your head for several years, and when you
re-emerged no one knew what the hell you were
up to. You're confusing, but still talented,
and we like that. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| |
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