30 seconds (part 2)

    here is the second thirty second video from my brains.



30 seconds

     This is an idea I had the other day, while in the shower, because that's where I do all my thinking. I wanted to put together some clips with some music and show some of the people I have known, all within the span of 30 seconds.


     here is the first one.



i just wanted to talk about something else.

     in my travels as a driving instructor to teenagers I came across many things I just had to accept and deal with.

     one day I went to pick up a kid who I had a history with ever since he took my classroom instruction. the kid was a real ass, but I could handle him because I was also a real ass. the dude brought a CD on our first lesson of nothing but the Knight Rider theme song so it would loop for the entire 2 hour session. another time, back in the classroom, he explained to us all how he managed to shit his pants while standing in the bathroom.

     I showed up to his house for our second lesson and there were people standing outside. I walked up to them and asked if Nat was there because he had a lesson scheduled. with those somber faces they went inside and out came Nat. Now Nat was usually a pretty hyper kid, but today something was different. As we got into the car and sat out there for a while he explained to me that the day before, his mom had found a note written by his brother on the outside of the garage door (the one that leads from the house into the garage). She was too scared to go inside the garage so she called to Nat and made him go inside.

     When he went into the garage he told me that he found his brother hanging from a piece of gym equipment. he was dead, and had been for some time. he began to cry.
(one of the unknown parts of that job was that I became a psychologist of sorts to those kids, I listened to their problems and stories for 2 hours at a time, away from their parents and friends those kids told me everything.)

     I immediately told him that we didn't have to do this lesson right now if he didn't want to. He almost interrupted me and told me that he wanted to do the lesson, that he didn't want to think about it. he said that he didn't want to do anything different than normal or just sit around at home being sad. he wanted to go about life and not be treated like a cancer patient.

     So we ran from that house and drove around town listening to music (which we weren't supposed to do) and talked about everything else, or nothing.

     As we drove we came to drive through long beach. I always liked driving in long beach, partly for me and partly to show the kids how to drive in the city. We drove passed a certain area and that made Nat tell me a story. He said that his brother had been doing drugs for a while before, but that he had met a girl and cleaned himself up and even moved out. he said that his brother used to live around there in long beach... then there was a long pause. He was driving over the big hill right next to the cemetery and I still remember it like it just happened. He looked far into the distance at something that didn't exist anymore and let out a whimper draped over some words that were chained to some tears...

     "my brother...," he said, and nothing more.

     I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do.


     I don't remember how the rest of the lesson went.


Ever since my cousin died I haven't been able to deal with death. It's like something broke inside of me. I just shut off.

     When that kid told me that he had to walk into the garage and not only find his brother dangling there from his neck, but that he also had to get him down and go back outside and tell his mother what he had found I had no idea what to say or do. And you know what... sometimes that's just the thing that is needed. sometimes just being there and listening is the key.

     My cousin was the first Marine from Orange County to die in the war, so it became a big deal to everyone on the base that I was stationed at. People lined up outside my door to try and talk to me, however, my superiors made sure that no one bothered me unless I wanted to see them. they sat by my side and tried to make me feel better, but nothing worked. and nothing was going to work. I have nothing but thanks and gratitude for anyone who tried to offer solutions to me that night, but I didn't need it. 

     All I wanted was to be normal again. I wanted to go out and hang out with my friends, and not have everyone look at me like they were sorry for something that they had no control over. because the truth was, and still stands today, whenever I do want to talk about it, everyone just gets uncomfortable anyway and I feel like more shit than I did in the first place.

(I just want to throw this out there, if anyone ever wants to talk to me about anything at all, I will listen, if that's all you need, or I can try and make you feel better, if that's what you need, or we can talk about spaceships)


     My memories are the blank pages, and you, you're the lines that make them worth saving.
Get Better... 

         

   

    

.same Love (all the time we'd have)

     there's something about having less than a hundred dollars in all of your bank accounts combined that makes a person think.

me, when I think... sometimes I get sad, and sometimes I think about happy things.
sometimes I rhyme slow and sometimes I rhyme quick. and I can't change.
my sadness keeps me warm, but it also pushes people away from me.


     lately I've been sad.

but here we go.



     The other day as I got out of my car I noticed a small sliver of silver slowly slinking its way into the sedate sky. At that moment, as I stared toward the sky, I thought... this moon rises and sets every day without much fanfare. some people go long stretches of time without noticing it at all-- unless it's full.

     People are the same.
Everyday people come and go from our immediate skies without much fanfare. For me the lack of enthusiasm is because I am inherently afraid of holding on to people for fear of losing them. Or even the notion that people will always return to you in the same form that they left.

     When I was in Utah I was riding in a car with everyone on the way to or from somewhere when I got into a discussion about people and drugs and addictions with Celeste. I told her that I don't have the strength to sit and watch someone I care about waste away while they showed no semblance of caring about anyone else's feelings or thoughts. I told her that I don't have that in me.

     The funny thing about the whole conversation was that I was talking directly about her and Ashley and Ashley's determination to always try and get her to get better. the calls, the texts, the trips to other states when we have no money, they lies, the hang-ups, the drugs, the drugs. the having to see someone you love waste away in front of you while everything you try is met with a resistance that calms the heart into beating no more out of pure devastation. 

     I watched as she tried to make excuses and ended up trying to justify herself to me, even though we were both "hypothetically" speaking about other people, and it made me sad and I don't even have ties to her.

*    **    *

     

     I became a Marine because my cousin wanted me to become one. If anyone really wants to know. I had thought about joining the Army, but that fell through. When my cousin suggested The Marine Corps I really didn't want to join, I just didn't know what to do in life. But he was so sure that he had might the right decision that I didn't want to disappoint him. 

     I had never played team sports, I had never been away from home, I was 110lbs of pure douche, but I went anyway. I didn't belong there. I just did it so we could be closer.

     My cousin is the reason I got into video taping everything, and taking pictures, and writing even. I was always envious of his ability to tell a story--to anyone. So a lot of the things I do now are  a direct product of his influence on my life.

     My cousin had this old Sony video camera that he brought over one day a million years ago. With that camera we video taped our youth. In fact I still have that camera in my closet. It is broken now and has been for years, and it would have cost more than the cost of a new one to fix, but I kept it anyways. It sits in my closet along with all the other threads of this slowly unraveling blanket of memories I have tried to shield from the rest of the world for years now. 

     He got his wish and joined The Marines and ended up dying in a far off country while I was thousands of miles from him. He died saving his friends just like he saved me so many times in our youth. 

     When he came home in that metal box I knew I had lost him, but I refused to believe it. He was my blood.

*    **    *

 

 

     The moon will rise tomorrow and set again. Maybe you'll notice it, maybe you wont.

One thing that's for certain is that you don't have to have died to have been lost. You can still be alive and make people twist from the inside with pain so much that they mull over the decision in their minds to keep trying to save you... like they're deciding when to pull your plug at the hospital.

 

 

     There are some moments in this life I have lived that are more memorable than others, but each of these moments is gilded in the same Love I have carried along with me in my pocket as I traveled to each new place. I couldn't change it if I tried.

 

 

 

I don't want to see you go away.

I didn't want to see you go away.

 

I believe I can save you.

I believed I could save you.

 

I will fight until the day I die to keep you alive.

I will fight until the day I die to keep you alive.

 

 

 

There is a scene in the show 'Dead Like Me' where the dead girl gets a chance to speak with her father as someone else in the diner that they used to go to every Sunday. She asks him a question about why they stopped going there. He explains that it was her that didn't want to go anymore, so he went by himself. then he looks at her and says, "I didn't know that was all the time we'd have".

 

     This has been a recurring regret in my life. If I had known 21 years was all we'd get then I would have done something different, or maybe I'd have screwed it up anyways. It feels like one day we're all having Christmas in some terrible place trying to forget life for one night and smiling in each others company and the next day all of that is gone forever. Sometimes it's because you're alive, sometimes it's because you have died, and sometimes there is no difference.

 

     The only thing that never changes is the Love.