the grieving process and normalization

so i saw my sister last night for the first time in far too long.  there was a lot to talk about what’s happening in the wake of my current life.  i mentioned to her how recently i’ve been rewatching a TV show i really like.  there’s a period of time where the family the show focuses on is living in a house with great grandma who’s hooked up to oxygen and other medical equipment.  she’s damn near a vegetable, decaying slowly and only ever says one thing,  ’kill me.’  i explained that watching this, and having this situation used as the backdrop for a few hours of what i’m watching is comforting to me.  similarly, when i first moved home, driving around in the car screaming along to my new favorite song about cancer helped comfort me knowing my mom’s death from cancer was quickly approaching.  mixed in with all of this has been a surge in my musical tastes littered with brutal and gory lyrical content.

my sister told me this doesn’t surprise her.  it’s a process of normalizing what’s going on around you.  this doesn’t change how strange i find myself, but it does lend some reasoning behind me which i like.

 

addition:
i realize i’ve done this before.  after zech hung himself i took comfort in listening to songs about suicide, particularly a song about a guy hanging himself.  i probably doodled a lot of nooses then too.

(we)

we spent our days skipping class
getting stoned in the meadow
getting stoned on the beach

we spent nights getting drunk
and telling beautiful women
how stupid their boyfriends were
for choosing world of warcraft over them
especially on a friday night

we spent birthdays taking shots
and waking up lost
bloody & bruised
with no wallet or keys
(but at least we saved that girl)

we spent years getting to know each other
only to spread so far

we spent afternoons exchanging needles
and handing out condoms
collecting food and supplies,
clean socks for the poor
we were saving the world
and fucking loving it

we took (decade) long journeys
exploring the woods
and inbetween
exploring our souls
trying to find what would make us whole

we ate dollar slice pizza religiously
and talked about dirty sex
and the meaning of everything
it was the best part of the week

“i’m only waiting to slip through the pavement”

it’s the first major rain
it’s beautiful
i just wish it was raining harder
i wish it was pouring
i wish the winds were raging harder
i wish that the clouds were nearly blacking out the sky
the lack of hope outside is strangely comforting right now
i wish the outside weather reflected even less hope
i hear the weather is more akin to what i’d like where i belong…

since i was a kid i’ve always dreamed of enjoying this weather with a partner by my side, cuddled up on the couch on a saturday morning, maybe the fire place is going and we just stare out into the vast chaos…i wonder if that day will ever come

the slow decay

…the slow decay of approaching death is a disgusting process.  my mom’s been dying for almost half of my life, none of that was like what it is like now though.  she underwent radiation treatment until it was no longer a viable option, the human body can only take so much.  she’s been cut open time and time again, had things removed, and her insides stapled back together.  her life has led to so many needle sticks they eventually just installed a port to make it easier.  she’s been poisoned with chemo for the last decade.  all of this brought life to her, kept her alive, somehow…she saw me graduate high school which none of the professionals expected to happen…she even saw me graduate college.  but this also brought never ending pain and it brought about the loss of control over her body more often than not.

i came home a few months ago.  before i came home i knew my mom was sick, really sick.  i knew her time was coming soon.  i saw her in december and then i saw her again in may and things were not good.  i’d been home for less than 12 hours before we ended up in the emergency room.  a few days later the process repeated, but it took an ambulance and 5 paramedics to get us there this time.  my mom didn’t come home for days after that.  at least we found some answers though.  the tumor in her lung was finally growing, something that was already suspected, something we were watching for.  beyond that, her heart had started to fail again.  this was endgame.  my mom was put on oxygen permanently after this point.  when she did get home she was terribly weak.  she couldn’t move about the house without assistance and she was sleeping for all but a few hours of the day.  after a few more days things perked up somewhat, more energy, awake for a few more hours, able to get from point A to point B without any assistance for the most part.  anyone who thought this was anything more than a temporary up though would’ve been an utter fool.  someone who doesn’t really know me tried to tell me that miracles do happen, sometimes things do get better.  that upset me a lot, because this is endgame.  there is no coming back from this point.  anyone who tries to tell me otherwise is obviously so far removed from the situation that they really know nothing about it.  and while it’s possible they’re just trying to be nice, to me it feels like they have no respect for the situation.

and now it’s all going down again.  my mom basically can’t eat.  her literal daily caloric intake right now is about 30, and this is provided she doesn’t throw that back up, which is happening more often that not now.  in fact, she’s hardly awake at this point unless it’s to take medication, or because she’s throwing up.  i woke up this morning at 7 am to my mom throwing up.  there’s not much you can do other than stand there and watch.  you can’t make it stop.  and i’ve never been very physically affectionate with either of my parents, despite how overly affectionate i am with my friends.  i can’t stand there and rub my mom’s back.  i don’t even know if that would do anything, especially when she’s retching so violently.  and knowing my mother, she would feel bad that i was there doing that for her, feel guilty she was putting me through it.  i hate when my mom apologies for things like that.  i can’t stand there and tell her it will be alright, that would just be foolish.  so i stood there and watched my mom over the course of 15 minutes throw up about 3 tablespoons of blood and stomach bile.  the slow decay of approaching death is a disgusting, nasty, hideous process.

the time honored tradition of debate

my family’s never been particularly good at debating, everything just leads to a fight and this sense that we are all attacking each other rather than trying to express our view of something. now why this sense of feeling that we are attacking one another. most likely because we are. our words are chosen carefully, whether consciously or not, and they are chosen to attack, to invoke power, and to try and make our opinion superior. we don’t debate to reach a better understanding of anything, we argue so that we can be right. we aren’t concerned with the facts because whatever does not fit into our view we just discard or make some excuse for why it doesn’t matter.

i know that this is true for quite a large number of the population of america and i fear it’s probably true with the greater population of the world.

i think one of the most important things i have learned in the last year of my life is that you can’t just argue with someone. when you argue, no one listens – you just say your point as loudly as you possibly can and then you shut yourself off from hearing the opposing side. opposing side – that’s a problem right there. it’s not the opposing side, it’s a different view of things. so arguing doesn’t really work. and i know for me personally, if you try and attack me, or tell me that i am wrong, that i need to do something differently, or that i should not have acted in the way that i did, then being the stubborn asshole i am i will run as hard and fast as possible through whatever brick walls i have to to stay true to my point and prove you wrong, regardless of which one of us is right or wrong, or whether there is even a right or wrong…

…i’ve come across a method that works much better than all of this though. maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s allowed me to engage in much better discussions with those around me, to hear what they have to say, and to evolve my own personal ideas and ideals…

don’t tell someone what to think, just leave them with something to think about. offer a differing point of view without telling someone that it’s right or wrong, rather, just suggest it and plant that seed in their brain.

i have a personal example of this. i was talking with a friend of mine one day, discussing a particular act of graffiti that i had engaged in. now, rather than telling me that i was wrong in committing this act and saying that i was an asshole because someone had to clean that i up, they suggested that i take into consideration what surfaces i create art upon and remember who has to clean it up.

don’t push, guide
there’s no point in debate when you aren’t open to evolving your ideas
there’s no point in debate when i can’t even read your side of things cause you are more concerned with calling me an asshole than anything else
no one wins when either of us stop listening

…so it begins…i hope

rough demo of Egyptian Mother recorded

personal notes:
silence between chords
and muted chords
definitely good

so is taking riff II an octave higher for the outro

try palm muting/right hand muting the intro

ambient noise intro is cool//crossfade into riff with right hand hammering/sliding of chords

single note riff – keep the bend instead of the phase

vermillion

i’m not really all that comfortable with myself…in a way i feel like part of me is responsible for keeping tabs on the real me and keeping me in check, so i don’t get into trouble and so that my interactions with this world go smoothly…i’m a very weird creature and i realize this more and more everyday.  i worry myself.  i know what i’m capable of, or at least capable of thinking is acceptable, and often i don’t really know if that’s okay.  the problem for me though, is this is me – it’s what i am whether i like it or not.  so how do you deal with that.  how do you come to terms with being at odds with your nature?…or am i even at odds with my nature…possibly i’m just scared that my nature will get my castrated by society…life is a constant struggle, a fact i am not happy with, but a fact nonetheless…sometimes i feel i’m doomed to lead a life of interpreting myself correctly to fit into the world around me…in a way we all are though…language is not natural, it’s something we created to try and explain what we feel which is much more difficult than it sounds.  i’ve been able to speak for over two decades and most of the time i still feel that i can’t truly get my point across…

…there’s chains around me but i can’t see them…and even if i could get them off – the real problem lies in the fact that i don’t know what i would do next…once you fault with no restraints holding on…well, do you fall to the ground safely…?

the future is unwritten

…my friends and i got kicked off a beach last night…this was not entirely unexpected, but i was thinking that maybe, since this beach was somewhat less public than most, the cops wouldn’t be rolling around to make sure everyone knew that it was 10:00 and the beaches were closing…

…but then again, i should have known better because when cops have the choice between solving real crimes 0r harassing people in such a way that they are really just getting off asserting their power over those they feel are worth less than themselves…well, it doesn’t take someone with too much intelligence which one they are going to choose…

…beyond that though – how can a beach close…it’s not as if the ocean is rolling out and stopping, the fun is over. and it’s not as if we were bothering anyone. a couple kids sitting down watching the waves and enjoying hanging out on one edge of the world, who’s level of noise is drown out five feet away because our mother nature is roaring in front of us…but apparently in america we committing some sort of crime…

we’re trapped in boxes…nowhere is free…all space is restricted…they shuffle you off to school everyday and steal your right to an education by making sure teachers have no time to do anything other than teach you how to take some test that you need to be prepared for because if you don’t do well the schools won’t get funding…then they shuffle you off to college and charge you so much that in ensures once you get out, you’ll be so bogged down in loans you need to pay back that you will have to be shuffled off to a box all day to work, so you can go home to your other box and want to do nothing more than turn on your tv, another box, and veg out…they make you their slave…

…or you don’t make it college…because, well, for most everyone they’ve made it impossibly expensive…so you get shuffled off to lots of different boxes and jobs, working so hard to live because they make it so hard, and so financially crippling…and from there they’re watching you…just waiting till you do something they can cuff you for and take away to another little box where they’ll try to keep you forever…or maybe they just stiff you with such crazy fines that you are even more indebted to them and now you’re slaving away for them even more…

…i want to be free…
[personal note :: go listen to immortal technique]

think about it

“I write messages on money.
It’s my own form of social protest.
A letter printed on paper that no one will destroy
passed indiscriminately across race, class and gender lines
and written in the blood that keeps the beast alive.
A quiet little hijacking
on the way to the check-out counter
And a federal crime.
I hope that someone will find my message one day when they really need it.
Like I do.”

~Josh Koppel

gone fishin’

slight variations.
thoughts/opinions welcome.
haters not.
click to enlarge.