Random BTW

The drive from where I live to his mom's apartment is about an hour. So i have decided that IF i go i'll be writing part of the time...

i wonder what i'll write about, whatever it is i'll have to do so with good old fashioned pen and paper, and then retype it. Sounds a bit fun.

Another thing... before relocating to LA (I was 4 at the time), we used to live in the town where my aunt lives now; in fact, our apartment was just above hers.

So going there always brings back memories, good memories of the fun summers i used to have with my cousins - i'd be shipped off from the states, arrive with my suitcase, and stay with them for at least a month.

Those were good times because, well, we were just kids, we didn;t know better, and our whole purpose in life was to just live the moment, to just have fun, the kind of fun that doesn't cost a penny - playing hide and seek or tossing the ball.

The town is a beach town, just outside the 3rd largest city in this country, and so often times we'd head for the beach and just waste hours on hours playing in the sand.

But waste isn't the word for this, certainly this time of my childhood, summer days brimming with pure energy, were anything but wasteful, they were what they should have been... the basis of a happy, healthy child who has yet to comprehend, experience, understand the harshness that is life.

Another [the next] Friday – Forecast: partly cloudy with a chance of Goody, Lecturina and Aunt Anger bringing either sun or rain

Sitting at the new café, the one that just opened, the one I visited the other day. Now considering what my plans are for this Friday.

My cousin, lets call him Goody cause he’s a good-kid (though not a kid anymore, he’s 30), called me the other day and invited me to ride with him and his fiancé up north to his mom’s place for dinner. His mom, my aunt (dad’s older sister), is much like my dad in the sense that they come from good, old-fashioned we work hard class; this we work hard class has anger management issues, probably from a childhood void of parental emotion – they’re from a farm, my dad shoveled shit for much of his youth. 

On top of that they’re 1^st generation post-Holocaust, and from what I understand (in general) the kids of Holocaust survivors experienced a silence.  Said survivors were so traumatized that they would not speak of the horrors they experienced, internalized the pain and built great big walls of denial. They’re kids suffered a silence so loud it passed through their blood, and affects the grandkids generations on.

Aunt Anger is strict, stubborn, frugal yet I know she very much loves her family… though its hard for her to express this love; her expression of love comes in the form of regulation – she regulates the lives of Goody and his older sister… lets call her Lecturina (word root = lecture and Ive slapped on the ‘ina cause she’s a girl – woman – 34 years old). I’ve christened her Lecturina because she always wants to lecture everyone.  This is a really annoying habit, and I think it comes from a complete and utter disappointment in her life. 

Anyhow, so Goody invited me to go for dinner at his moms.

Truth be known, I suspect that my dad spoke to him before he left the country, maybe asked him to check in on me or keep me occupied with family. I suspect this because since the invite, Goody has been overtly aggressive at inviting me out; at first it was for dinner with his fiancé two nights ago. I turned this down, thank you very much. And now it’s tonight’s dinner invite.

Will I go? I still don’t know… but I'll have to decide ASAP – Goody will be calling shortly.

Depth of Debt

I moved to this country a little over 4 years ago, and I started working full-time non-stop within a week of my arrival.

Like a machine, ive been working working working, for a while it seemed like the drive to succeed was breathing life into me, and as I succeeded I felt more alive.

It surprised me how easily I succeeded. It still suprises me how it feels like in terms of work im succeeding. I worked so hard to establish a name for myself, and now that name seems to open doors. Yet I just don’t want to step through, more and more im turning down work.

That’s not like me; well, it used to need be the case, I used to wake and look forward to going to the office. Now I don’t anymore. I just don’t care. And the sad thing is, sometimes it feels like me “just not caring” is what most people deliver at work… and that seems to be OK. How is that OK? Or maybe it is, OK for things to be just… no one cares. It’s OK to not care?

Though my salary places me in the top 10% of scale-wage (I think), it still doesn’t seem to help me get out of debt… a debt incurred in my 1^st year here. Well, actually, to be honest I guess im working through it, today’s salary wiped out bank debt and put me in the positive for the first time in about 3 years. Yet I just don’t care.

Because there seems to be more debt everywhere I turn… no longer debt to my bank, now there’s debt to a credit card. And electric. And taxes. And rent.

But there is another kind of debt, the kind that’s not physical, it is a debt to the ones who care because you feel like you’re failing them, you’re making them worry and you don’t want them to worry, “please don’t worry everything is OK.”

Please don’t worry. Everything is OK. 

Do you want to hear the truth? Because if I speak you might have to listen, and if you listen it might be too hard to bear. So please, don’t worry yourself, everything is OK.

I don’t really have transportation debt because I walk everywhere. I walk a lot. Ive become “a walker” over the past 2 years… it feels like im always walking yet getting nowhere.

When I walk I see the others, the one that search my eyes – they look – and maybe they’re scared – because in me they see themselves; the truth reflected, a truthful reflection. 

How can things be this way? Why are so many of us so scared?

BTW, Ive been randomly reading blogs

so many of them have these huge pictures, people look so happy, i wonder if they are that happy?!

but then ever once in a while you come across some totally, brutally honest person who writes about their day-to-day life, and they write it so honestly, earnestly, that its really touching.

As i read those blogs i think, God i hoe these people so much happiness, that they are settled within, that they be fine.

I really should visit Arkansas

I don't know, i feel like i should, if only so that i don't feel like "i should visit" her anymore.

Just Jacob, right?

Right!

Have you ever noticed... when you walk some people look into your eyes... only certain people, and they look deep, you pass them on the street, random strangers, and they're searching, you see yourself reflected their right at the moment.

I wonder how many people out there feel swallowed, feel like they're getting lost.

What did I do today? Well, I stopped at this new neighborhood coffee place which opened 2 days ago... when i walked in the owner (or maybe he was the investor) said something along the lines of, "Ahh, you're one of our first, this is good luck!"

If only he knew, right?

Anyhow, I sat down and had that coffee; meanwhile I'm speaking to the bank, reading a book, figuring out how to handle my next project at work...

Then I went to the bank, followed by a work meeting, then to my doctor.

I'm having a hard time sleeping but thats not new.
My doctor cares. i think he's worried. because he doesn't know what to do with me.
But at least he cares.

Tomorrow is Friday.