Author: substitute

nope

move to alabama, bought us some more scotch instead

   
    THAT is no country for old men. The young
    In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
    - Those dying generations - at their song,
    The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
    Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
    Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
    Caught in that sensual music all neglect
    Monuments of unageing intellect.

    An aged man is but a paltry thing,
    A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
    Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
    For every tatter in its mortal dress,
    Nor is there singing school but studying
    Monuments of its own magnificence;
    And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
    To the holy city of Byzantium.

    O sages standing in God’s holy fire
    As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
    Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
    And be the singing-masters of my soul.
    Consume my heart away; sick with desire
    And fastened to a dying animal
    It knows not what it is; and gather me
    Into the artifice of eternity.

    Once out of nature I shall never take
    My bodily form from any natural thing,
    But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
    Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
    To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
    Or set upon a golden bough to sing
    To lords and ladies of Byzantium
    Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

— W.B. Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium

the special offer, guaranteed personality

I went to Trader Joe’s on a Sunday afternoon, which I must remember never to do. At least I didn’t punch a hole in anything tonight when I got home.

A particular person shops at TJ’s: mid to late 20s, probably not wealthy but on the road to success, sophisticated about food, bargain hunting. There are a lot of young couples in there on a Sunday afternoon picking out the sweet corn and gouda and frozen tamales for the week ahead. I feel at home there at first, seeing all of these people like me who share my taste and my background. Guys in band t-shirts, girls wearing checkered Vans.

Of course, I’m not at all like them. I’m fifteen years older, forty pounds heavier, alone and adrift. I never left my teens, but my body did. And all these young couples have what I never have, and what I never will. I fell off the middle-class college-kid track into something dark and grimy and never got out. I wasn’t pretty, or socially adept, or wealthy, or even successful. And then I was under water for ten years. And now I’m just kind of screwed.

And there’s never been an “us” that went shopping on Sunday and had little domestic arguments about whether to get the two-buck chuck or the cheap Belgian beer, and then trundled home in the little sedan to cook dinner and watch a movie. There never was an “us” at all.

At this point, there won’t be, either. The couples don’t notice the middle-aged man alone who is looking around at a world he never visited.

As so often happens when I’m reminded of my station in life, I got a bit ill. It was temporarily hard to move around, and my legs were heavy and trembling. I took my purchases home, cooked and ate dinner, drank some ice-water, stared into the back yard.

I really don’t know what the hell happened, or how I got here. My whole life now feels like that time after a car accident, where you’re thinking: Hey. That really was me who hit that. That really is my car that’s crushed. That really is my bruise and my blood. What the fuck.

I can no longer shop happily.

You can’t come in here. This is a Rock ‘n’ Roll Museum!

Everyone else has one. There’s one for Metallica. One for Tori Amos. One for Weezer. One for the Pixies. Even INCUBUS got one.

I have my plan for fame, wealth, and giving back to the community all in one. I’m going to do it. It’s going to be at every record store, on every website, pirated on every P2P network.

My grand plan:

THE STRING QUARTET TRIBUTE TO LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.

I can’t figure out why this hasn’t been done yet.