waiting

my love is a miscarriage
if you felt my pain you'd know
nothings ever right, ever fine
aborted before the first show
never knowing how it might be
only knowing in my mind
unveiling of a daughters art
to a young man gone blind
because everyone has someone
and im everyones best friend
passion brings my loved ones down
and nothing ever begins
but if i were to gamble everything
on the hand ive been dealt
would love reach through the fog
or leave me alone to melt
i have never been one to create
my destructive nature pulls me in
so dont expect me to try
i only want it to begin

last night... feels like a dream. not just for the dream, it feels milky and dark. swirls inside me, isnt clear. i remember being angry at myself, angry that my plans wont ever work out, angry that we are apart. i remember that rachel talked me down and made it better. and i remember going to bed with a physical and psychological sickness that made me want to die.

dreams are terrible things. when you dont know where you are. lifelong friends' bathrooms become killing grounds, people are suspicious. i remember my father put my mother and i in a car and started to drive us down the street. he was angry and cold. he was going to kill us. i figured out as he was shoving me in that it was because i was a clone of a real person. i remember an all-encompasing, ultimate sadness. not fear, but a weeping, wailing sadness. a pain that is brought to the middle of your head from crying. crying not because i was going to die or that they didnt love me but because i wasnt a real person, just a copy of a person. i had died so they didnt need me anymore. and when my father turned the car around at the end of the street and came home, i realized it was all just a joke. i thought i should be angry about it but i wasnt. instead, filled with a genuine happiness that i was, in fact, real.

i woke up this morning with a terrible pain in my head and neck. no comfortable place to be. no right combination of positions... i wandered down here and ate some breakfast in a fog, got dressed in old clothes and mowed the grass. looking back, as it is all done now, it feels like i never did it. simply a fog... floated over the lawn in no time at all, maybe three songs played, thats all. did that, pushmowed all everything and was done, sweaty and tired. but i never did it because it felt like a dream. still, it is done.

and i sat outside with a pepsi and read to myself and it was just a monologue in my head. i dont remember the pages turning.

nipping at my heels

jesus, as soon as i stood up from my chair it started. actually, about ten seconds later. sharp pain, quarter sized, in the back-right of my po' head. like a little pygmi with a spear, dancing to the beats of my heart. bitchin and moanin from those inconsequential ones never helps. so i took a double dosage of excedrine tension headache... acetominophin and caffeine never hurt anyone did they? well, if i die, yall will know.

i felt like i needed to write tonight but nothing is weighing heavily on my mind. so yall will get some thoughts from the night past. i spent all of last evening out with my dad at the wake county motor speedway. you know, friday night racing. we missed the turn at first because the sign was overshadowed by what appeared to be an abandoned and rusty repair shop/used car lot. it probably wasnt abandoned, just a lot of shit lying around, you know. through that, though, the dirt road opens up into, well, old grandstands on the left and a lot of cars kind of lined up in a big field on the right. so i found a row and parked the volvo. this is all just context information though, the cars are the stars, however hokey and cliche that sounds.

after paying the seemingly expensive twenty four dollars for our two heads, we went on out and stood between the grandstands for a minute. the legends cars were doing qualifying laps... you dont know unless youve been the violence these little cars embody. maybe they arent that dangerous but picture '20's gangster mice with uncorked headers heading around corners at ungodly seeming speeds and you have an idea. they ran the (what im guessing is a) half-mile track in the mid 14's but it felt so much faster because they are so fucking small. if i ever go country speedway racing, i will be driving a legends car. or maybe a stock four. i havent decided.

we made our way down to the left somewhat violating the "please stay ten feet away from the fence" sign - the grandstands start about fifteen feet from the fence which is on the wall, on the track... yeah, its that close - and up into the grandstands to the right a couple rows up. we ended up with a good view of turns three and four (although you could see the whole track) and were sitting right at the exit of four, where it becomes the front stretch.

if you have ever been to a coliseum monster truck show then you might have an idea of how loud these things are. these are race cars, not street legal. im betting my life they dont run cats or any of that restrictive shit. the headers on most of the stock fours, mod fours, and super stocks (v-8's) exited out of the rear right rocker panel, a foot or so in front of the right rear wheel. instead of paint, theres a metal square welded in with the exhaust cutouts in the middle for the pipe to exit. all around, the metal is stained with sut in a nasty, burnt sort of way. but the sounds, oh the sounds were incredible. each engine sounded different. well, there wasnt so much a different between the stock and mod fours but lord, they were wonderful. the fours were the more violent of the engines, it seemed they were being asked to do a lot more than the bigger eights. the fours ran, say, 2350 cc (155 ci) whereas the eights were limited to 358 ci. (5860 cc) - the same as the nascar homologation requirements. this is as far as i know anyway. the fours were beasts, though. especially with the opened exhausts, its just a racket. such a violent noise, not just the blap and retort of the engine but a touch of metal clanging. i pictured the valvetrain making so much noise in its jarring motion that it came out the exhaust. scary.

the bigger eights felt like they were under a bit less stress, and had an easier time with it. of course, no one can really claim an uncorked v-8 is quiet, but less agressive than the smaller ones. of course, theres nothing like an idling eight in a stock car. jesus, you can feel the power. and when the driver jabbed the throttle in the grid before a race, it moves with a quickness that doesnt betray its displacement at all. just growls. animals.

the racing was intense and wonderful. most memorable were the last two, the fifty lap super stock race and the twenty five lap stock four. in the beginning of the super stock, a guy got spun out coming out of turn two, hit the wall, and in the process of coming down the track, rolled onto his roof. thankfully, he rolled right back down on his tires and thanks in large part to the safety equipment on the cars, was unhurt. but it was fucking awesome to see. people got spun all night, it was just what happened. whenever it did, a caution was called and yellow christmas lights hung over the track in about eight places lit up while jerry the flag man waved the yellow. the track's so small it scared me that some cars might not slow down in time to miss hitting the wrecked ones... and they did (slow down that is). since is it such a small track, there was some good racing going on, as you couldnt just pass some guy in one lap. for ten or fifteen laps you could watch a guy get closer and closer to the fender of the guy in front of him, taking the low side of the track while the other guy went high, inches apart. usually the guy who went low had the handling package while the other one had the horsepower. the apex on the high part of the turn opens quicker and more gently so while the lower guy, who can afford to stay at the bottom, gains ground by covering less distance, the guy on top can hit the throttle and accelerate out and down the front sooner. so it would usually even out, with the guy in second inching closer every time. they touched, they had to, a couple times and nothing happened. then, for about four laps, the two rode around the track side-by-side... brilliant. finally, the high guy took his turn too high and the low man was able to fully pull around him. dammit boy.

the stock four race was more exciting. dad and i were pulling for a white pinto with "sarah" written on the back. we figured it was the guy's daughter or wife but we referred to that car as 'her' anyway. she was damn good, too. the purple apple insurance car out of cary started first and led most of the race. sarah started near the back but just fucking drove around most of the cars in front of her to get up to round third place. about halfway through the race (and its only 25 laps) sarah got spun trying to pass the leader. you could see in coming. she was close enough in on his fender that they touched coming out of turn two... sometimes the leader spins, this time it was the chaser. so they called a caution and all, not too much damage done really. sarah started out at the back of the pack and they did the typical running restart (there are many complexities to a restart, which i wont get into right now... but most of them deal with getting off cleanly and slickly from the car behind you - and there are strategies to that - and pleasing jerry the flag man...). sarah, it seemed, had the most horsepower of the bunch, so as soon as they restarted (going into turn three), sarah would leap to the outside of the track and drive around a car or two before the straight. that was how good she was. within a couple laps, she had gained a good seven spots and was sitting around seventh or eigth place. whenever a caution was called, she would jump the man in front of her. with about five to go, and under caution, sarah was in fourth and i told my dad that with a couple more of them, she would have the lead. well, on that restart, she leapt around the third place car around turn three and almost got completely around him going around turn four but they got together and it sent sarah spinning. its a slow motion train wreck, when something like that happens coming off a caution because all the cars are bunched together anyway. sarah went straight into the wall right in front of us, not thirty feet away, and, as soon as she did, someone from near the back of the pack who couldnt get out of the way cause sarah was in his line managed to smack her in the side and rip off her entire front left fender and front fascia. damn. this was fucking cool, and right in front of us. the crowd cheered... everyone was all right. sarah went off, of course, and didnt finish. the apple car, which had run well but had spun a little earlier, fought its way back up to second or third. a blue 22 won the race with NIT2WINIT on its rear bumper.

well damn, we left after that but it was amazing really. a night out in the boonies with my redneck brothers and sisters of wake county. i am not done either. this is something to repeat. all you up north may not understand quite the allure of local redneck racing but let me tell you. its a lot more than turning left.

well, i was going to post a picture of the big super stock boys in turns three and four below but blogger's being a little bitch about it. there are plenty of bad pictures posted on the webshots page and i have been writing for eighty minutes. thank you and goodnight.

grinding my teeth {over the radio}

i hate the radio

i hate the 'personalities' that think they own the world

i hate the same twenty songs they play four hundred times a day

i hate the neverending commercials

i hate kids like my sister who define themselves by saying "i am rock," who know every word to those forty songs and sing them in a flimsy, flat, limp, dead falsetto voice conspicuously devoid of any life or emotion, and yet don't know the band, the album, or anything about what makes that the same song as another

i hate it that they, every now and then, play good music, music that invariably gets picked up by the populus, whose lyrics get learned by people that haven't a clue why it is worth it anyway

hate

hate

do you ever want to escape from your head? blow out of your skull...?

i can feel my brain behind my eyes, feel it

there is NOT ENOUGH FUCKING ROOM

fuck you big river

yesterday i got so old it made me want to cry

what have i done with my life? i dont mean for this to be some fucked up emotional whiny post. i have been thinking lately about my past and present and future and all i regret and what all will come to be. i cant complain, im not that horrible of a person. i have a great life. luck had it i was born not into ethiopian, iraqi, or honduran families. i have the amazing fortune of being a middle class white guy with food on the table, my own car, a spot at a wonderful university, and free will.

that should be enough.

what i am concerned with is what im doing with what ive been blessed with. i have no idea what im capable of. there arent any obstacles but fear. the plan as of yesterday was do finish undergrad school at wake forest and go into their med school. come out and be an anesthesiologist or something. make two-hundred thousand a year and relax. the problem is that nobody will know my name. i want to be into something too big to see. to big to be. when they scatter my ashes i want to be remembered for more than a life of leisure. more than for a cushy job and a great car collection. i want to fucking do something.

i thought earlier of maybe joining the peace corps after undergrad school. but that was just a thought and i dont know if i can actually grow dreadlocks and do it. i thought today how amazing it would be to move into a small apartment in NYC and try and go to NYU's med school. living in the city... wow. a friend of mine seems to think i would get 'raped or something'. apparently they dont take kindly to old southern boys down there. we will see.

i regret sometimes that our world is changing so quickly to a more digital based society. i use the word 'romantic' to describe what i think of as a wonderful classic life. one that is human based. tube-driven guitar amps are romantic. not that modeling shit. gasoline powered big-block muscle cars are romantic. not that hydrogen/electric shit. there is still something to be said for craftsmanship. none of this robot driven shit. i saw 'i, robot' tonight and i have to say that it scares the hell out of me. thats not the world i want to live in. i want to live in the world we have now, hell, our world circa1969. delete the wars and shit. you know, the tech advances without the loss of romanticism. and i dont mean that... fuck it.

i regret that i wasnt around for the more romantic historical things... that happened. now, taking nothing away from the shit at hand, the war in iraq isnt a romantic war. not to me. i wish i were one of 'the greatest generation'. i want to volunteer for service and be sent into europe for world war one or two. i want to be in some of the most intense shit known to mankind. i want to be scared as hell. people will remember me because i saved a couple of my buddies and got shot in the shoulder. came out of the war as one of those guys who werent afraid to give more than they were. one of those that were involved in something bigger than them. i want to have a purple heart, a scar, and full use of all my limbs and brain. i want people to be proud of who i was and am. be proficient with a gun. a police officer... it doesnt fit in with my plan. do everything. just do something. make music. i want to start a band and play piano and acoustic and electric guitar and bass. and banjo.

what is fucking holding me back? i am learning the piano and can play the guitar pretty well. i figure the bass wouldnt be that tough. i can still live in the city and go to europe. i will study abroad there in a couple semesters. i can join greenpeace and protest shit. but does that really help anybody like the peace corps or some other adventure would? that husband guy from will and grace? doctors across borders or something. maybe i will be the medically trained regular guy who steps into the train in an emergency and saves a woman or man or two.

really i want to fall in love. i expect that to happen along the way. i want to share and apartment with my best friend in NYC. whats the worst to be afraid of? doesnt heaven await us all? like i could know that for sure. i wish i did. maybe i will join the clergy someday. whats a more noble profession than the service of god? im sure all those guys are sure what they believe in. it would feel like cheating and leading others astray if you werent sure. i hope they are right.

someday when i have a little money or time i am going to buy a piece of shit car and drop a big block (not blown or injected or any of that shit) in along with traction bars, a beefed tranny, and street slicks. i will hang out with all the hotrodmag guys on drag week and just run with them and play my guitar for them. 'she aint revved till the rods are thrown' and all that shit. my favorite line from a song ever.

ok, back to reality. what about now. i have a summer left to make money working for my grandparents, maybe buy a guitar, download bootleg concerts ive been to and burn cds of them. somewhere along there finish a book i have to read and seventy magazines. i can learn to play the guitar better. learn to sing better while doing it. learn to play the piano better. prepare for college... college. do well. study abroad. a couple times. play lots of intramural sports. be in a musical group or two. get involved and start all of the doing of things. yes. and after that it all goes to hell. maybe i should just run for president and hope some supreme court justices decide to resign during my tenure so i can appoint new ones. change the world.... somehow.

"The things you never did,
Cause you might die trying;
You'd be as good as dead.
You never did."

just another sleepless night

i posted some spectacular photos from the garner fireworks show on sunday. theres a link on the right to 'photos page'. make great background shots.

i dont usually solicit hits like that but i really like the photos. thats not what i am going to write about though. notice that this is being posted at 12:06PM. yes i saw you just check. thats because i just rolled out of bed. its entirely possible that im not in the correct frame of mind to be writing stuff down but that doesnt bother me. i havent had a good night's sleep in as long as i can remember. bad dreams mostly and i have a terrible habit of remembering them. so i thought i would tell yall bout a couple.

two nights ago (we went out on the lake yesterday, the night before that), i dreamed about being out on the water. this wasnt exactly during the night. my mother woke me up beforehand and i just fell back to sleep. im bad about that too. it was one of those times, however, when i might have drifted in and out of consciousness. i remember rolling over or rearranging the blankets in the light of day before slowing down again and restarting the dream. this was one i think i had particular control over, i think i was either on a sea-doo like ours or a tube and was lazily paddling around to all the other people on the docks, watching what was going on out on the water, i think i was out at the sound though, not at our freshwater lake. i meandered under a dock and around to families laughing and felt like a little kid. sortof let some of that concern, some of that self-awareness fall away like a seven year old would. i just remember not being entirely asleep.

last night i dreamed it was my first day in college. i was in some building with a group of other kids and we were supposed to do some pre-assignment. far as i can tell it was just a... damn. i still dont know. i was confused though and spoke to the professor lady and i ended up researching or writing a paper on some part of the human body. i went through books looking for information on 'skin', that much i know for sure. nasty eh? i couldnt find any information though, one of the books i looked in had 'skin' listed with some other words but it didnt have anything to do with itself so i told her it was cross referencing... yeah. anyway, i was panicked because i didnt have anything to do when i walked down the hall and saw that some of the other prodigies had painted murals or wove something, or were laying down wet paint and all of this other stuff and were having no problems and were enjoying it and it made me feel ridiculously retarded. i think i wanted to cry. the next thing i remember i was out in the middle of a field with a basketball and my parents. this was at the intersection of ten-ten and lake wheeler. we were going to my new job, the work-study one. my dad asked me if i ever did that pre-assignment and i told him i didnt. he didnt act too concerned but seemed to think that if i didnt do it then i would lose my good job and end up juggling basketballs with this terrible chinese man (like he did, i think). we walked down an old road - i was having difficulties dribbling this old, dirty basketball - and came to an old farm. we went inside the barn and met an old farmhand man. my dad was explaining my situation. i felt like a little kid.

sometime this morning, in the light of day, i was in night. i dont know the situation or the premise but it was dark and i was on a small mountain with small trees. i was with a girl. dont know who she was or what she looked like. something was going to happen, or we were bored, so we put down large green tiles between the trees. maybe the soil wouldnt wash away. it was hard, though, on this mountain, because my left ankle hurt badly. this isnt just the dream, it physically hurt. i remember. my father came and was dismayed that we had done all that. i followed him off the mountain and out in front of my grandmothers house because he was leaving for work. he tried to tell me goodbye but i couldnt pay attention to him. i tried to but just couldnt. i sensed that he was feeling neglected but wasnt going to do anything about it and i hated it. i felt like such a bastard and hoped to god that he wouldnt die before he got home again because i didnt give him a good goodbye. i was sitting on a wooden bench in front of my grandmothers house.

i hate this post already

out of my hands for now

i am sorry. both for myself and my absence. as for the extended period of time since my last post, well the computer died again. in an odd twist of fate, the software that crashed it was a backup program my mother bought to protect our files in case the computer crashed. go figure. and as for me, as always, i dont know what to say. its a small tragedy everytime i sit down here these days because all day long theres a streaming monologue in my head, always composing, configuring, and rewording. telling my story over and over again just so i can relay it back. and it always gets lost in translation. i was sitting on the lawnmower planning to write a poem. i would tell you what author i was going to imitate and the subject matter but i figure i still might do it someday so i will save it.

im still looking forward to the days at old wake forest when i will have the option of lying down under a tree on davis field and typing away on my laptop. thats the only reason i want it, to be able to write more on my own timeframe instead of late at night, after everyone else has gone to bed. maybe then yall will have something worthwhile to read. meh, till then its just more bitching about relationships, which seems to be always at the forefront of my mind and imagination. too bad its never good news.