HD

My dad told me once that the human eye is the most powerful camera out there. It frames perfectly, has the highest of HD, produces vibrant colors, requires no flash, charging, or battery, and has infinite memory space. If you pay attention, that is. I really wish I could record what I see without a camera. I wish I could play it back without recounting it inside this box through words. Everything I see through my eyes is beautiful and perfect and I want a Polaroid of every memory.

A lot of people give up when they first realize that what they produce is shit but I realize with each day that you have to fight through that gap to become great at whatever it is you want. Yesterday I made myself a lovely meal of under-cooked pasta and burned sauce. It was awful and I ate it. I chewed very slowly. Today, though, I made myself a sandwich of fried egg, maple sausage, and Monterrey jack cheese and it wasn't that bad. I think, for right now, my greatest aspiration is to do this with every experience. To start out totally... lousy at something and then to get better. Even just slightly better. Even from bread to toast. I don't know it's just astounding to me to have that much growth in such a small amount of time and with such an insignificant minute detail in my life.

It's the small stuff that gives you practice for the bigger things at any rate. So. That's my wonder for the evening.

Just Bringing This Back.

Remember when joy tasted so much sweeter when you were little. Surge after surge of pure happiness floats into your soul, then explodes like the knowledge of illegal fireworks on the fourth of July. And you know you can't tell anyone that this makes your life a snugger place to be, a place that fits you easier, but in some ways it's better. It's like your own secret haven, where every decision works out, and the summer days last as long as you are able to remember them.

Remember when you would get nervous about the stupid stuff, like the dark closet in your room, or running out of highway when you got sleepy on long car rides, or trees potentially falling into the house? Or your father being swallowed up by the monstrous waves at the beach so that you are no longer able to see his bright yellow swim trunks? Growing up begins to define itself, Captain Hook is replaced by the rapist alerts on CNN, and the irrational fears fade away into the mist, are replaced by more practical ones. And those are so much scarier, because they might actually happen.

Remember when you were small, and got angry... like... REALLY pissed. Just at everyone. For the stupidest shit. The dog knocked over your blocks, or Mom friggen threw away that your box of valentines from your whole 1st grade class? And your house no longer felt like a home and you just wanted to run away to Alaska because it was the farthest place you could think of... and then two seconds later you just completely forgot about why you were mad... because Mr. Rogers was on. He was great.

Have you ever looked back on your memories from when you were really little, too little to know what everything meant on a large scale? Too little to recognize the toll these experiences would have on you once you grew up? Have you ever looked back and thought..."That's why I did that" or "That's why that happened"? I do that all the time. It makes me feel like I'm time traveling. Don't judge me.

Sometimes I wish the world never knew sunlight, and Earth was always shrouded in nighttime mystery. And then one day, out of the blue, so to speak, the sun would rise. And I just want to see every one's reaction. We would all feel like children, afraid of the big sphere of fire up above us. I think if that happened the word beautiful would have a whole new meaning.

Sometimes I hear people say that they have a fear of not being remembered. I think I'm the opposite. I don't want to be remembered. I want to die without leaving my dirty fingerprints on Earth. I want to be the quiet strumming of the acoustic guitar in the back ground, that fades away before the climax of the song. I want to be the left hand of the piano. I want to have an effect on people, but have it be invisible, so that they don't remember why they're like that. I want to be the change you only see if you're looking for it.

Please look for it.

Nauset and a Small Update

There's something calming to me about obnoxiously turbulent wave patterns. I don't like the quiet lap of the water at low tide. High tide makes me feel like there's a section of my life's chaos that is right where it should be. A categorized rampage. Nauset is that rampage. My family and I visited this shore during Hurricane Bill of 09. We braved the 12 foot surf standing in a circle holding hands.

Yesterday the waves were much smaller but the thought still counted.

Okay I said I'd post more new place pictures like... too long ago and even these are outdated because we have furniture now. Except my mahogany desk from Bob's. Stupid Bob's. They literally damaged it three times. Guess I won't be doing any Summer work until Friday! Thanks Bob. More pictures featuring the actual finished project later I guess?

living room

fireplace. and router. i love the router.

back porch. the yard is miniature so I don't like it very much:(



kitchen to the left, basement to the right

The Forever-Man

The following is a short narrative concerning my childhood as a thief.

Armed with a small flashlight (my phone replaced this soon after), my limited and fleeting knowledge of where the creaky floorboards are, and a midnight appetite I glacially gravitated from my bedroom towards the stairs. Actually, it was never that I was really hungry; just a combination of boredom and the necessity to confirm lie to myself about the dominant ownership I had over my own house. Are these internal contradictions what drive children to so easily throw logic to the wind? Whatever.

I used to kid myself that these astounding Spiderman skills were the driving factor that allowed me to go uncaught by my parents but it was probably just that they didn’t feel like getting out of bed to reprimand me. Anyway I had bigger fish to fry, such as figuring out a way to eat wheat thins in bed while avoiding sleeping in a blanket of crumbs afterword.

It's kind of like how you see a plane fly over head, and you imagine all the people inside can see you, there on the ground walking your dog late at night. And you imagine all those people wonder about your story the way you wonder about theirs. But then the plane flies out of sight and you think about something else for a little while.

It was 200 years ago. No one here now was there then and a lot of people forget that time existed at all. But you can see the remnants of their convictions and intentions and normalities if you're really into that sort of thing. History can be tricky because there's no Forever-Man who we can go to and ask "1947...? Did that really happen or is Grandpa fucking with us?". And he'll look down angrily and reply "Of course it happened I was there." We're forced to keep shotty records of our day to day and bury shoeboxes in the earth. Even I know you can't house an entire memory in a shoebox.

Look what I found!

A dusty old barn in the middle of Millis holds promise. Breaking and entering conviction promise yes, but that's beside the point. Anyway we were getting ice cream like 2 minutes from there anyway, so don't tell me the feeling of ownership I had is void of law.

It was dark inside, and the only source of light we had to work with was the occasional stick of yellow sun on the floor from a crack in the wood ceiling and the old flashlight we got from one of the cashiers at the ice cream place, which was pretty much of batteries anyway. There was a greenhouse attached to the barn on the left side and it was teeming with life, so it was really hot inside.

Contents not pictorially recorded:

(1) box of old moth eaten 90s clothes, among them a once stylish jean jacket
(2) porn tapes featuring Pamela Anderson and an (I'm quite sure fictional) softball team
(6) empty coke bottles and one snapple bottle inside a stained cooler (snapple? how old could these have been? whatever)
(1) unopened jug of Canadian Whiskey that could have only gotten better with age
(2) pigeons flapping around the rafters the entire time we were leafing through this stuff
(1) mason jar stuffed with doorkeys. We couldn't find anything they opened but some of them were made of brass and really old.
(1) set of trivia cards that must have gone to some board game
(also)a bunch of farm supplies, including chicken cages, old boards, hundreds of bails of hay, the pulley chain off of a crane, and a few flower pots

Some of the stuff we kept because the place was bound to burn down sometime soon and there was no one within shouting distance to claim it. lol.

Plus I wanted pics.

there were crates of these really old alcohol bottles. I loved this one because it says "Boston" on it. Many of them had no inscriptions and some were colored like sea glass. Upon research I deduced that it was a Root beer Liquor Bottle with the raised inscription "E. Hartshorn & Sons, Est. 1850, Boston". This company was popular in the mid 1800s but ran out of business in 1935 (probably in the Great Depression). Really dirty but I plan to run it through with vinegar and baking soda or something.







This lock (really heavy, by the way) was interesting. None of the keys fit, we tried them all. I love how it says Yale on it. Maybe the owner of the barn was pretty smart? But then why... nevermind.




My fave: two lighters found in a dusty box FULL of junk. Old screws and nails and plastic jewelry and other stuff. I hope they aren't still functioning. They're both really rusty and made of brass I think. Look at the designs on them! Pure vintage.


It says "McDonald Funeral Home, Weymouth"








Super old razor. Pre-80s if Google serves me. The "1, 3, 5, 7" on the dial is for how sharpe you want the blade to be.








Political campaign pins for John A. Volpe, running for reelected MA state governor in 1964 and US Ambassador to Italy in 1973, and Goldwater/Miller from Arizona running for president also in 1964.




More photos once I clean all this stuff? Maybe.