Jason Seagull

This actually took a lot longer than you think, lol.

Auld Lang Syne

It’s been almost a week since my last post and I can honestly say I missed sitting in bed with my laptop furiously cataloging my life J.  I historically am terrible at finding a hobby and sticking with it, but I swore to myself that this would be different.  In its own small way, this blog is helping me relieve some stress and for that I am grateful.

Well, the New Year is fast approaching and as I look back at the year gone by I am left feeling many things, among them a hope that the year ahead will bring some good things into my life.  Now that’s not to say that 2011 wasn’t without its high points; there were certainly some. 

I spent most of the winter and early spring dealing with tax season and an almost two hour daily commute to Baltimore, MD for work.  But I enjoyed the people I worked with and my employer treated me well.  The summer was spent with weekend trips to the in-laws and days spent lounging around the pool.  I’m not much of the tanning type, but I generally enjoyed the lazy days and acting like a kid again. 

The highlight of the summer was definitely the week I spent down in Wildwood, NJ.  The beach house we rented was just two short blocks to the beach…and Mack’s Pizza!  Best.  Pizza.  Ever.  While we were down there, I bought a boogie board and spent most of the afternoons hanging ten and being absolutely adorkable (Yeah, I made it up.  Deal.)  With the end of the summer came another employment switch and the end of the commute from hell.

The fall saw me turn another year older and with it brought a flood of suppressed emotions that I am still trying to reconcile.  The holiday season has come and gone fairly quietly, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Nikki finally got her knee surgery and the slow road to recovery has begun; not sure where it will lead, only time will tell.  I have begun to rekindle some old friendships that I hope will blossom in to lasting relationships.

Mostly my hope is that 2012 will bring some clarity and resolution to my life; that the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t so far off.  I hope that I will feel like my old self again soon and that the memories I make are good ones.

Insomnia

Since I can't sleep, I thought this poem would be appropriate.  Yet another one from my vintage collection.  Enjoy!

Lines Composed Between the Hours of Midnight and 3 a.m.

Half roused and drowsy am I

Lead by the hollow clapping of leaves

Down through the dim lit corridors of my mind

An endless procession of concrete that bends

And weaves among the dusk-deserted stores.

Windows glisten with the sterile shine

Like that of so many oft-used bar tops

As the moon climbs into the open-handed trees

Spilling, as sand through a loosely clenched fist,

Moonbeams through the dark branches.

Outside, the doleful footsteps can be heard

Scratching over the sidewalk like mouse feet

Scurrying across broken down cardboard boxes.

They are the malleable slick-skinned consistencies

With which the sticky sleep itself

Finds difficult to adhere to.

To these hapless fellows

The warm midnight caresses like rain water,

Beads on the backs of flightless birds.

And sleep comes on only necessarily

Like saran wrap over a partially eaten dish.

SANTA! OH MY GOD!

Today I was made to watch The Polar Express for the first time and while I initially wasn’t thrilled, I have to say that I didn’t completely hate it.  I must admit that I am fairly picky when it comes to Christmas movies.  Anyway, the movie got me thinking about my favorite things around Christmas time and since my posts up to this point have been kind of downers, I figured I’d spend one talking about things that make me happy.

As far as Christmas movies go, my top 5 of all time are as follows: 1) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, 2) Elf, 3) Home Alone, 4) How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and 5) It’s a Wonderful Life.  Rudolph is tops because it has the best songs, in my humble opinion, and Elf was an instant classic (and has Will Ferrell who his HILARIOUS!).

Another thing I love to do during this time of year is go out looking at Christmas lights.  I’ve done this almost every year for as long as I can remember and it’s one of those simple things that bring so much joy to your heart.  I can remember numerous occasions when I was little when my family went out and I fell asleep in the car.  My dad would reach into the back seat and carry me inside and the last thing I’d remember is a thousand tiny lights sparkling in a multi-colored haze.

One of the best things about Christmas is the gift giving.  I love to give gifts and have quite a knack for picking out the perfect gift for someone.  My dad has a similar knack, although his is for being able to give you something that will have you rolling on the floor.  When my sisters and I were younger he’d love to find the most random things to put in our stockings, just to see the look on our faces when we reached inside.  The last Christmas with my mom was the best.  I got a bag of marshmallows, pens, toe nail clippers, and one brown M&M.

And it wouldn’t be Christmas time without cookies!  I’m not really much of a baker, and neither was my mom.  She only made two kinds of cookies during the holidays, but they are two of my favorite cookies of all time: raisin spice drops and dream bars.  Now some will contend that a bar cookie isn’t really a cookie, but to them I say, it’s in the cookie section of the cookbook I got the recipe from :-P. 

Anyway, so there you have it.  That’s what Christmas time means to me, that and enjoying time with the family.  I hope wherever you are you have a safe and happy holiday!

Poem: Between the Sheets

Today was a fairly uneventful day, in what is shaping up to be a fairly uneventful week.  I have full days of training most of this week, so no actual work to be done, just 8 hours filled with the most boring stuff you’ve ever heard.  I spent a good portion of today’s training doodling in the learning manual and thinking about my relationships. 

When I was in college I made the best friends I’d ever had and when I graduated I swore to myself that I wouldn’t let those friendships fade away. I e-mailed, texted, called and visited my friends as often as possible.  But try as I might, each one of my friendships has slowly eroded to nothing more than the yearly Christmas card filled with well wishes.

I know that making new friends is a part of growing older; I just wish I didn’t feel like all of my old friends were moving on and forgetting about me.  One of the worst examples of this happened a few weeks ago when I found out through Facebook that my best friend from college, the best man at my wedding, was engaged.  While the news itself was wonderful, I couldn’t help but feel forgotten having to find out through Facebook, 4 weeks after the actual engagement took place.

In other news, I’ve started writing again, or at least started trying to write again.  In college I use to write a lot of poetry and actually wrote some half decent stuff if I do say so myself.  I spent a couple hours tonight seeing what I could come up with and have concluded that writing poetry is not like riding a bike.  Now don’t get me wrong, when I wrote in college a decent poem still took a couple days/weeks to write, but I at least had ideas flowing on a fairly consistent basis.  Tonight I got about two lines on paper that I didn’t completely hate, but they will most likely get scrapped tomorrow once I’ve slept on it.  I guess that’s what happens when you work a soul sucking job like I do, takes a little while to revive your creativity.

Anyway, here is some vintage me J

Between the Sheets

Oh stormy weather,

How listlessly I lie in bed

And watch you shake the stenciled trees,

Rake the muddled leaves from out the gutter,

Stir the ivy-covered walls

That seem to mutter something

Of old memories.

Come gentle specter

Running through my room again.

Let us make our way through the graying crowds

To a place where we might wrestle

And kicking up the feathery down,

Lay hidden till the morning hours

Beneath embroidered clouds.

Come with me now

Out into the tumultuous stormy weather.

Let us be like children ‘neath the rippling waves,

The fresh linen sheets that come cool and smooth

Atop the roofs of the matchbox houses

And once again be lost

In the dampening folds of the rain.

Home Sweet Home

I think the stress of everything going on in my life is finally getting to me.  Pack my bags, I’m headed to the funny farm.  Over the past couple days I’ve done some strange, unexplainable things.  On Friday I had to drive over to the apartment to get some clothes to bring back to Nikki’s parents house (where we’re living until Nikki is mobile again).  I was following Nikki’s father in my car and for some strange reason I kept getting the feeling that I was lost, even though I knew exactly where I was.  Then I almost took the wrong exit in an attempt to drive down to our OLD apartment in York.  If I hadn’t been following Nikki’s dad, I think I literally would have gotten about half way there before I realized, “Hey, I don’t live there anymore.” 

If that little (almost) trip down memory lane (or I-83 as it were) wasn’t enough, the next day after getting out of the shower I did something even stranger.  When I went to put on my deodorant I grabbed my chap stick instead and actually applied some (to my armpit) before realizing what I was doing.  Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll be using that chap stick again.

One of the reasons I think I may be losing it is this whole living at Nikki’s parent’s thing.  While normally we get along great, today I found out some interesting information from Nikki’s friend Beth.  Apparently, Nikki and her mother have been getting into it the past couple of days over me.  Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say that she is less than thrilled to have me as a house guest.  It just kind of sucks because I’ve actually been trying to be very respectful and helpful, but I don’t seem to be able to do anything right.

Tonight I made dinner for everyone and did the dishes afterward.  Yet the whole time her mother keeps looking over at me and I just keep thinking, “Am I doing this right?  Am I making too much of a mess?  Am I cleaning these pots the way she likes them?”  It’s exhausting trying to please this woman.  I can’t seem to win and so far, this weekend has got me wishing and praying (ironic considering earlier post) Nikki’s knee gets better soon so we can go back to our own apartment.

Poem: A Familiar Candle

A little background, I wrote this awhile ago.  It is a very poor attempt at a villanelle (form of poetry).  The poem is about my mother, who's been on my mind a lot recently.  She was a heavy smoker and one of the fondest memories I have of her is of me as a child sneaking down in the middle of the night for a glass of water and seeing only the glowing ember of her lit cigarette in the darkness.  I know that might sound weird, but I guess it was just comforting to know that she was there. 

A Familiar Candle

How I did see the sun glow still and set

The fragmented color in your eyes, a slow-spent fuse,

Burning brighter than the tip of your lit cigarette.

The sound of a smile and the names you let

Creep out and fill the drywall jar, the vagrant shoes;

How I did see the sun glow still and set

Free the words tied to your mouth, a debt

As match to subtle flame or face to bruise

Burning brighter than the tip of your lit cigarette.

Breathlessly unlock the latent math, beget

The broken pencils in my head, the myriad golden hues.

How I did see the sun glow still and set

My mind to swimming in the sink, a net

Of spoons beneath my feet, the gentle temperament you’d use

Burning brighter than the tip of your lit cigarette.

Now in the dawn’s new sun the words condense and sweat

Extinguishing the ashes in your baby blues.

How I did see the sun glow still and set,

Burning brighter than the tip of your lit cigarette.

Losing Faith

So this is my first post and I’m not really sure how this goes, or what I expect to get out of posting my thoughts on the internet for all to read.  I guess what I’m hoping is that just by getting my thoughts out and having someone, anyone read them I’ll feel a little bit better about everything I keep bottled up in my brain.  Before I get started, I’d like to give a quick shout out to Mickey V for convincing me to do this and also to let her know that should this somehow come back to bite me in the butt I’m totally blaming her.

Anyway, on to the topic of the day, which has actually been on my mind for a long time: religion.  For the longest time I just told myself that I believed there was a god, but presumed to know nothing about him or her and, therefore, adhered to no religion in particular.  Recently, however, I have come to the difficult realization that I am in fact an atheist.  And as difficult as that was to come to grips with, the more difficult part was telling my wife.

 I knew she wouldn’t like it, but I hoped that in one of the most difficult moments of my life she would comfort me and show me some understanding, even if she had a very different point of view.  The reaction I got was the complete opposite of what I hoped for, but that’s a matter for another time.  During our conversation, she asked me what had triggered this change in me and initially, I said I guess I’d always felt this way, but didn’t want to admit it to myself.  Having had more time to think about it, I don’t think that’s true.

I can pretty definitively say now that the moment I lost my faith is when my mom passed away sophomore year of college.  Now it’s been about 5 years since then, but not a day goes by that I don’t think about it.  I think it’s her life and the way that she died that’s got me denouncing my once shaky faith.  A little background on her will put her life in perspective.  My mom suffered from Lupus since her early 20s and as a result she spent most of her days and nights on the couch in our living room; the medicine she took caused her to gain a considerable amount of weight and so she couldn’t really make it up the stairs that well.  She didn’t work and spent a good deal of her day watching TV and sleeping.  Needless to say, when I think of her as a child, dreaming of what her life would be like, I become almost inconsolable, knowing how none of her dreams would come true. 

Now when she died, I was off at college, my older sister had moved out, and my dad and younger sister had run to the store.  So the image I get of her final moments are of her sitting alone in our house, on the couch where she had been imprisoned for much of her life, grabbing her chest, looking around, calling out franticly, hopelessly for help and finding no one.  She didn’t get to say goodbye to anyone or tell us how much she loved us.  She didn’t even have anyone there to hold her hand and tell her everything would be ok.  I think of how scared I would be if it were me, how totally alone I would feel. 

I remember writing something to this affect when it happened, hoping that the pain, sorrow, and fear would dull over time; that I’d one day be able to think about her without getting so utterly depressed.  But I can tell you that when these thoughts come to me today, the pain is as fresh as the day I got that fateful phone call.  And that’s why I’ve decided that the faith I once had is gone, because I just can’t believe that God would let someone suffer so much for nothing.