Something to write home about

Someone asked me this morning in my carpool how my weekend was, and I replied, "eh, nothing to write home about", and I almost instantly got sentimental about the idea. 

When I was away at college it was the first time I had really been away from home.  And I wasn’t really away; I came home almost every weekend and was only about 75 miles away.  But for a small-town Rhode Island boy it was a big deal for me to be out on my own, in a strange city so close to Boston and what I imagined the world to be.  I never wrote home.  Not once.  Over the last year or so I have become more nostalgic for the past and more appreciative of simple things.  I email my college roommate almost every week and sometimes multiple times during the week, and I try to do the same with my friends that are still home and that I see more regularly than he.  But as much as I love email because it is so fast and direct, it’s not romantic or even exiting.  I don’t get excited when I get an email, I do when I get a letter in the mail.  So what if it takes a week and the information is old when it gets to you, it captures the sentiment of that point in time.  So, for every dozen emails or so to my old college roommate, who is subsequently the only actual friend I made while at college, I try to hand-write a letter. 

I always liked the idea of written correspondence.  Jack Kerouac used to write long letters to Allen Ginsberg and vise versa and include bits of poetry and prose they were working on at the time.  They would correspond a great deal and criticize each other’s work, which eventually turned up in some of the best books of their time.  I always thought this was great, I hate talking on the phone and if I don’t regularly get to see someone I would like to write them a letter, it feels so, dare I say “old school”.  I don’t have many friends who live far from where I do but I think from now on I am going to invest in some nice stationary and a good roller pen and start writing my friends (I don’t have many of them left so it wont be much work or expense in stamps), even if they live just down the road. 

So if you receive a letter in the mail with my return address on it in the next few weeks, don't be allarmed or frightened, it's just me saying hello and jotting down something to write home about.

Angles and Demons

I haven't heard from my better angels in a while, they've been ducking my demons for months now.

Times they are a changin…

While at work on Tuesday I came to the realization that things are changing, both in the micro and macrocosm of things. This may have come in the wake of watching American Beauty the night before. Although it may have not had anything to do with it. It may sound stupid but sometimes I wake up in the morning forgetting that I have to put on a suit and pick up the bus to Boston for work. Sometimes I think I’m late for class and my professor is a real jerk to people who are late, or I need to get to one of the many odd-jobs I’ve had over the last five years, and sometimes I think I need to run down the street to catch the school bus. I have strange realizations like this all the time, at work, while sleeping and sometimes it feels real. I forget at times what is real and what is a dream, separating what is fact and what is fiction is getting harder as I get older.

I have always thought that I would have given my left arm to be a part of the twenty years between 1950 and 1970, and essentially be my parents age or slightly older, but alas I must be contented to be part of the twenty years between 1983 and 2003. I envy other generations for their contribution to society and wonder what will the contribution of the Y Generation be, if there will be any at all. The Y Generation in case you are not part of it is the group of people currently between the ages of 18 and 24. Playfully called "millenniums"; a term which I resent. So far all we have been successful at is being the most financially motivating age group currently alive. We spend more on just about everything. Makes me proud.

I used to go to car shows with my father and grandfather on what seemed like a weekly basis throughout the summer of my youth. We still go to car shows here and there when the summer comes around and now I go to some shows with my friend, which is nice. It puts me in a euphoric state like I’m walking around the parking lot of my high school 50 years before. It always makes me feel better about things. My father and I ride motorcycles, so now our weekends are spent pillaging small villages and kicking old ladies. This has taken the place of the leisurely Sunday walk through green fields of American and sometimes European automobiles. I don’t mind, I get to spend time with my father but the feeling is somewhat different, it’s more a sense of individuality and I have plenty of that in my life already. I’m alone a lot and do a good number of things that people do together, alone. I don’t mind, it saves me from having to talk to people I’d rather not.

I saw someone the other day that I knew when I was about 16 years old and she said; “oh my, you have changed so much” after about five minutes of well-prepared rhetorical dialogue. I hate to think that since the time I was in high school I would have not developed into a better, smarter, or even taller person. Although I still hang on dearly to the ideals and motivations I developed when I was young, the ones passed down from family and close friends. In a way I haven’t really changed, I still like to listen to the Beatles and the Rat Pack, I still have the same haircut and a shirt I bought when I was 14, same friends for the most part too. I haven’t put on much weight or changed my manner of dress (too much) and I still really like drinking tea and eating BBQ potato chips. I also still live with my parents, but the difference now is that I don’t mind as much as I did when I was younger.

So, do we change, do we evolve as people, or do things around us shift slightly which forces us to adjust our course and change direction for a spell? I don't know, I just hope I don't get shot in the back of the head by my homophobic next-door-neighbor.