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Powerless in New Jersey

Sunday, March 14, 2010

I am supposed to be in New Jersey.

Yesterday was the closing night of bro-in-law’s final high school musical. Three years ago he had never acted, and last night we were supposed to see him sing an act full of solo songs and take a bow for the final time on his high school stage. And not just him. We’ve watched his castmates transform from shy Sophomores to powerful performers, most of whom we’ll probably never see again.

However, there was the problem of the rain.

In Philly it was just oppressively dreary, but as our car crept northward through NJ it became obvious that the effects of the storm were a little more tangible in our adjoining state.

First, a flooded road. Then, a route with power lines hanging over the road at a precarious 45-degree angle over the asphalt. Next, a traffic accident. Subsequently, downed trees.

When we finally arrived in E’s hometown we discovered the entire township or borough or whatever it is was without power! Even the high school, as her brother informed us sullenly via text.

There would be no closing night.

We drove carefully into E’s family’s cul de sac, black as pitch. After commiserating about the show we ate dinner by candlelight. When we were done, I excused myself to the adjoining room to bang on an out-of-tune piano I’ve been promising to have tuned for years.

As I bashed through cover songs, carefully avoiding the most dissonant keys, I contemplated.

We had ascribed so much value and meaning to the closing night. We came for the opening weekend too, but the last show was supposed to be extra special.

Now, it didn’t exist. No final hurrah for the cast to sing even better or for us to clap even louder.

We didn’t get a closing night, but I’m still just as proud of our brother. And, in retrospect, I clapped just as hard as I could clap when we saw him last weekend.

The significant thing was really how many times I’ve seen him bow over the past three years – and how proud and loud I have been the entire time.

The significance isn’t in the next moment – it’s in the last ones. It’s in the moments of progress, not just the destination.

We loaded up the car to head home rather than brave the blackout for the night. Two minutes from E’s house we noticed a Target sign, lit up in red.

The power was back.

Bathed in the neon glow of stores powering up from their slumber, I wondered about my moments. Am I living my life now, or waiting for the next chance to live it? Am I waiting for the next show to play better? Waiting for the right moment to kiss E like I mean it?

Our route home was flooded, and E wanted to turn back. I rested my head on her shoulder as we paused in the jughandle, awaiting our turn.

“Do you want to go home to Philly?” I asked her?

She nodded yes.

“Then we’ll find a way to get there.”

Also filed in elise, stories | | Comments (1)

Adventures in Adulthood

Sunday, December 13, 2009

The past ten days have been an adventure – from the unreality of the Imogen Heap and Lady Gaga concerts to the front seat of our car parked in Chinatown a few hours ago.

It felt right to end it sitting on a bedroom floor with E, her sister with her delightful boyfriend, and appearances of an adrenaline-filled little brother and an exhausted dad, both visiting from the cast party downstairs.

I can find a myriad of reasons to be unhappy. I’ll grant that I used to be better at it, but growing up and getting things that you’ve always wanted for yourself takes the edge off. Still, even all married and with a fulfilling job and being a part time rock star I can make myself miserable. Just ask the me of two Monday’s ago.

I say that by way of contrast: when I’m happy, I know it. I clap my hands. I laugh. I love my hair. I say delirious things that get tweeted if Britt or Amanda are anywhere near me. I break out into Rent in the middle of E’s dad’s foyer, high school girls tittering as they walk past.

Those kids sealed the deal for me. I turned around to talk to E and between us was one of the leadz from the play – imperial and larger than life last night, but tiny, young, and fragile between us. I finally got to tell her how awesome she was. She grinned, thanked me, and then yelled, “Steeeeeeeve, where do I get water in your house?”

She was oblivious, moving through space effortlessly just like she did on stage last night. I never knew how to do that as a teenager. If I was happy, it was fleeting, and if I moved through space effortlessly it was because I forgot myself.

I could not have possibly pictured this life as a teenager, sitting on the floor with a partner and siblings I love, laughing louder than the combined forty teenagers downstairs.

Next time I’m feeling grumpy, awful, unhappy, hateful … just remind me about these ten days.

Also filed in elise, high school, identity, memories, thoughts | | Comments (0)

You are sitting next to my wife.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

I’ve now been married for a little over a quarter of a year.

It’s been really swell, aside from the part where I was really pissed off in France for a day or two. And the quality of gouda there more than made up for it.

We’re still the newest newlyweds in most of our social circles, so we’re still getting those ever-so-nebulous questions: “How’s married life treating you? / Is married life any different?”

At first I thought there was inherent comedy in the idea that something so simple as a wedding would have fundamentally altered the nature of our unbroken seven-year relationship.

On second thought, I realized that some things are different. People treat us as more of a team than they used to. I feel more responsible to be a (dys?)functional part of her family. We own a car!

Really, the biggest difference is the way we look at each other when we’re at home watching a movie. I can’t describe it. There’s just something knowing in the glance, like, “I married you just so we could sit around and do this for the rest of our lives.”

That’s a little too intangible of a nuance for elevator chat, so I usually tell people the biggest difference is that now when people sit down next to Elise on the train I say, “Excuse me, but you are sitting next to my wife.”

They ususally move.

Also filed in Year 9, elise | | Comments (0)

tune up #1

Thursday, November 27, 2008

OMG, I just realized that I have less than a month to practice RENT before our yearly Christmas Eve singthrough if I expect to perform any better than in prior years (although any practice I do will be mostly for naught, as I think Steve has unquestionably laid claim on the “best male vocals” title in our gathering).

At least I could bring big blown-up lyrics appropriate for blind old yuppies such as myself so that I don’t have to squint at the CD book again.

Also filed in singing, thoughts | | Comments (2)

A Year In The Life

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Elise and I spent today in New Jersey for the same weekend and reason that caused me to quit NaBloPoMo last year – my brother-to-be’s fall play.

He’s come a long way in a year. Last year was his first time acting on stage; this year he had the final bow in a challenging, thought-provoking play, The Rimers of Eldritch.

Out in the audience Elise and had come a long way too. Last year when we were here it was most people’s first time seeing her engagement ring, and they were bristling with wedding questions that we hardly had answers to, let alone opinions. Today, our planning nearing completion, we traveled to New Hope to continue shopping for my wedding band.

I’m nervous about the band. I haven’t worn jewelry for a long time, not since I was younger when I bore a perfunctory cross from my grandparents. One day it fell off somewhere between home and school, never to be seen again. My mother bought me another for graduation, and I recoiled from the box. I didn’t want another cross; I had never worn it as a cross. I wore it as my grandparents.

Since then I haven’t worn anything.

I’m nervous about the band, and excited too, because I’ll be wearing Elise. We didn’t settle on a final ring today (in fact, I backslid on my prior decision), but while we were shopping I prevailed upon Elise to buy me a plain practice ring – just a small, comfortable, stainless steel band. I’ve had it on since one, on the ring finger on my right since Elise insisted I couldn’t wear my practice band on my actual finger.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m typically very conscious of my hands, of what I’m doing with them and if they are safe. Already I’m constantly fiddling – turning it, changing it from one finger to another, sliding it back and forth across my knuckle. My fingers don’t close the same way, and I rest my adjacent knuckles against it when I hold my guitar pick (it actually improves my form).

Two months from Monday I’ll put on the real thing.

Also filed in Engagement, day in the life, memories, theatre | | Comments (1)

Alla This

Saturday, July 26, 2008

On Thursday morning I was very much in my head while sitting on the trolley, listening to Ani DiFranco’s madly terrific new song “Alla This.” The song is partially about the intersection of the personal and the political, with Ani at one point delivering the following:

i won’t rent you my time
i won’t sell you my brain
i won’t pray to a male god
cuz that would be insane
and i can’t support the troops,
cuz every last one of them’s being duped,
and i will not rest a wink
until the women have regrouped

I already love the song as much as anything she’s done this decade, but at her concert earlier this month that verse sent a thrill through my body – in eight lines it succinctly hits commercialism, religion, war, and feminism. Amazing.

The verse ended as I stepped off the trolley, and my mind began to wander. I thought about Ani’s constant challenging of the patriarchal status quo, and how any form of discrimination ultimately connects back to that hegemony.

In the distance between the trolley doors and the stairs to sunlight somehow that rolled into my wondering about the Iraqi citizens, and if life has actually improved for those that exist outside of the patriarchy both of that nation and of the force the world is imposing on it.

I wondered, what about the gays and lesbians in Iraq? I knew nothing about this group, though I was sure they existed. What was their life like before the invasion, and what was it like now? While I am advocating for the rights of my lesbian friends to marry are their Iraqi counterparts struggling for the simplest of rights – for the ability to exist as themselves without fear?

Sometimes my brain and the internet do a peculiar zeitgeist tango, where the same day I wonder about a topic it shows up in my daily reading, and sure enough when I got to my desk CNN was running a story entitled “Gays in Iraq terrorized by threats, rape, murder.”

As it turns out, as the Iraqi government came unmoored the situation of their GBLT citizens deteriorated. Any hint of their sexuality risks not only their own lives, but the lives of their entire families.

What a terrifying closet to be trapped within.

.

Just a day later I was at the Philadelphia Theatre Company to see Elise’s brother in his weekly theatre lab.

One of his classmates – barely a teenager – wrote a brilliant play about how bullying can go too far, as the actions of a few are enabled by the inaction of their peers at large. Here the result was the death of a young girl at the hands of her tormentors – their faces unimportant, as all of her classmates were complicit in her fate.

In the play’s last scene Elise’s brother acted as a federal agent, gingerly interrogating one of the girl’s classmates, getting nowhere. Finally, grimly, he asks her:

“Is it true that the girl who was murdered had a crush on you?”

And then, brilliantly, sparking immediate tears in my eyes as much for his delivery as for the line itself:

“Have you ever heard of a boy named Matthew Shepard?”

So powerful, and from the pen of a girl half of my age. Vital proof that we still have some terrifying closets of our own, whether their doors are open or closed.

As the lights came up, Ani’s voice rung out again in my mind as the voice of murdered girl, of those Iraqi men, of Matthew, and of Larry.

i will not stand immersed,
in this ultra violent curse
i won’t let you make a tool of me
i will keep my mind and body free
bye bye minutiae
of the day to day drama,
i’m expanding exponentially,
i am consciousness without identity

Also filed in Year 8, ani difranco, essays, feminism, gblt, journalism, politics, theatre | | Comments (2)

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

A few nights ago we were walking home after a sushi dinner, talking about all the shopping Elise and her brother did earlier in the day.

During the conversation he mentioned finding a particularly awesome pair of jeans in his exact size, and I caught myself subconsciously filing his size away for later use in case I ever see a similar pair in my travels.

And then I thought, OH MY GOD I HAVE BECOME MY MOTHER.

Also filed in Year 8, elise, mom, self-aware, walking | | Comments (1)

Choosing Your Family, and Cheers

Monday, June 9, 2008

(This is the toast I gave yesterday at my mother’s wedding, prefaced by my extemporaneous introduction of “I’m Peter, and I’ll be your toaster.”)

Every family begins as a unit. The family you find yourself born into; the family you are given.

From there, how you define your family is up to life, to circumstance, to chance, and to you.

Whoever else we may have begun with, there was no questions that E—– and I were a unit – a matched pair, mother and son, adventurer and sidekick, driver and navigator, friend and peer.

We existed as that unit for years, occasionally inviting others (who are here today) into our fold. L—, the first person to ever lay eyes on my face. A—–, hers the first babies I ever held. M— and me, holed up in a blizzard, lip-synching to MTV.

Through all of that E—– raised me to be an overachiever, and in my immediate family there were precious few. So, it was at first with trepidation and then with increasingly welcome relief that I re-met J— in our merry carpool to community college, me getting a jumpstart on the next step in my education and J— rekindling a seemingly insatiable desire for knowledge.

Nothing against E—–, who to this day has committed to memory the names of all of my favorite Thundercats, G. I. Joes, and rock bands, but that summer J— was something almost entirely new in my life: an adult peer who would follow my wandering conversations on any topic and through any debate, and who – if I may be disarmingly frank for just a moment – did not (and does not) hesitate to call me on my teenaged bullshit.

As I broke away from our unit to go to Drexel I began to find my own family, and I wondered what E—–would do with herself in my absence. But, I had no need to worry: she took a class in world religions, became a fitness instructor and a realtor, and finally purchased her own home.

I know many of these actions were inspired, supported, and appreciated by J—, because how can you help but be inspired by him? He has one of the most inquisitive minds I know, and he was one of the few people I knew with a GPA higher than my own.

L— said a very true thing to us on the way to us on the way to the ceremony this afternoon, only slightly undercut by the fact that she was wearing a glue-on-moustache at the time in her capacity as our chauffeur.

She said: She and E—– and A—- were sisters who found each other. Sisters by choice.

That concept is meaningful to me – family by choice – especially now, as Elise and I are creating a family unit of our own. Because, aside from common eyes and noses, what reason do we have to be connected to the family we are given? We have to find them, to choose each other, because the true members of your family are your sisters and brothers… your friends and lovers… by choice.

So, here’s to E—– and J—, B— and E—, M—-, D—-, L— and J–, Elise and I, and all of the other families we have chosen to be a part of, today celebrating with one voice the creation of a beautiful new unit: J— and E—–.

Cheers.

Also filed in Engagement, elise, memories, mom, only childness, over-achievement | | Comments (2)

All In the Family.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Just to show that nothing is safe from competition in Elise’s family, her sister Jenny left an encouraging comment about how she respects my bloggingness – leaving unspoken the inference that the respect is intact despite my hopeless fat, lazy, dumb, ugliness – and parenthetically mentioned that she is on a Dragon Boat team (huh and the what now?), so I should not count her out of the fitness competition just yet.

And, by the by, she is also a blogger, only her blog is broadcast from Taiwan and features regular lessons in Mandarin.

And, oh, in case I forgot, she used to be a competitive ballroom dancer, and she’s choreographing our first dance when she gets back from Taiwan, so I better watch my mouth or I’m going to have to learn to do walkovers and cartwheels.

Do you see what I’m up against here? Elise already volunteered herself to do upper body workouts with me when I move up to a higher set of weights. Next thing you know I’ll have have their brother emailing me songs he’s written and telling me he’s starting his own music festival.

Although, there’s something to be said for marrying a hyper-intelligent, pro-active bombshell with two similarly equipped siblings, in so much as any time I choose to slack off in some aspect of my life I just picture the appropriate one of them sitting on my shoulder, doing that same thing about five times better than I do it.

Whenever it doesn’t send me into wracking sobs or a panic attack it’s very effective. Like, just a few minutes ago I didn’t do enough bicep curls and the trio of them mocked me in imaginary three-part harmony to the point that now I can’t even lift up a glass of orange juice.

Ahh, family.

Also filed in Year 8, betterment, elise, over-achievement | | Comments (3)

I am Peter’s beleaguered abdomen.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

I have a whole litany of things to say about Lyndzapalooza, Arcati Crisis, and Amy’s new section of the newspaper, but today I’d like to keep the attention on my abdominal section.

Separate from my (now infamous) teenage anorexia, I was also a sit-up addict. I don’t know why – I wasn’t especially interested in any other sort of fitness. In fact, I wasn’t even seeking a six-, four-, or two-pack. I just wanted tone.

I think part of the reasoning was, “food goes to the stomach, so abuse the stomach.” Also, I think one time I saw an anorexic girl on Oprah talk about doing 300 sit-ups a day and thought, Hey, that sounds way better than bulimia as a convenient companion to my anorexia.

Seriously. Fun times.

In any event, I left both the anorexia and the sit-ups by the wayside in college when I discovered things like all-you-can-eat cafeteria mac’n'cheese.

Fast forward a decade past my multi-hundred sit-up prime and my entire abdomen is a joke. And, not a laughing-with-it joke, either.

No, they are definitely to be laughed at.

When fiancee introduced a simple, nightly crunch regimen to get into absolutely drool-worthy shape for her trip to Australia I simply watched – sometimes while eating ice cream – because my abs, they are no longer. Even a standard set of crunches gets me huffing and puffing, and that doesn’t even get into the pure horror of any sort of side crunch that attacks the love-handle area.

A bit insulting, perhaps, that my future wife is in tip-topper shape than me with barely any effort, but it’s not really injuring my pride. After all, it’s not as though I’m spilling out of my clothes here – I’m just weak in the mid-section. I still eat better than ninety percent of the population of America. I still walk three miles or more a day from spring to fall. I just don’t cause her whiplash when I walk by with my shirt off.

However, what did add insult to injury was Elise’s younger brother.

He’s already a better singer and actor than I was at his age, which I can at least rationalize as due to his vastly superior genetics (I mean, we are talking about Elise’s brother, here). Yet, on top of that last year he out-of-the-blue started working out daily.

I was skeptical. I made all sorts of resolutions in high school, but the only two I actually stuck with were playing guitar and try to subsist solely on water and Altoids.

For a while all he had to show for it was endurance for the boredom of jogging and an altogether terrifying skill at Dance Dance Revolution. Now he has actual muscles! Abs, pecs – you name it. And, not just while impressively flexing – he has muscles even while at rest!

When I played DDR in front of him over Christmas I felt like a cow skipping rope. Oh, and did I mention that their father runs marathons, and that when he deigned to run my company’s ten mile race last year he posted the best time of everyone I know? And her sister, the non-fitness-nut, is currently serving out the remainder of her Fulbright Scholarship teaching English. In Taiwan.

I’ll be a legally bound part of this family in a scant nine months, and the peer pressure is starting to mount. To date I’ve skated by on the account of being an academic-wunderkind and a singer-songwriter. Then I had a few months of grace on the “wow, that’s a nice hunk of diamonds you bought for my sister/daughter.”

I’m going to have to step up my over-achievement, lest I become permanently tagged as the fat, lazy, dumb member of their family. (And, theirs is a beauty contest that I am never destined to win (unless I plan several thousands of dollars of plastic surgery (and this is not a post about my need to compete with my own mother))).

My grad school indecision is about to continue into it’s fourth year, so I don’t see a Fullbright in my immediate future, and – let’s face it – I’m not planning on running anywhere anytime soon. (Being the longest-running blog in Philadelphia has so far won me no respect.)

My most realistic aim in this impending crash-course in sibling (and parental) rivalry is somewhere between the fitness levels of my fiancee and her brother – more than a nightly crunch routine, but less than a military-like regimen that causes high school girls to forget how to breathe.

Really, I’d be happy with enough to get Elise to gawk at me when I walk around the house naked, which rises in frequency as the weather improves.

Also filed in elise, fitness, health, high school, over-achievement | | Comments (2)

Guitarness

Saturday, November 17, 2007

I’m often at a loss for what to do with myself when we visit Elise’s families in New Jersey. At home, or at any friend’s house, my default position is guitar playing – it gives me something to do with my hands in idle moments so that I don’t feel like I have to carry on a non-stop conversation at all times.

I don’t usually bring my guitar with me to NJ, which means the families haven’t witnessed this particular phenomenon too often, but Elise was planning to leave me marooned while she went on a wedding dress tour, and I needed a way to pass the time. I added a wonderful new “print-version” feature to my lyrics database, so for the trip I printed out sheaf of my fifty most incomplete songs to workshop while Elise was out on her wedding whirlwind.

Isn’t that a little crazy – fifty songs that are unfinished and still relatively new?

I really vacillate about this sort of thing. At this point Gina and I have a solid sixteen song set, and I have ten or twenty of my strongest songs that go in and out of solo rotation. It’s a comfortable point to be at, but then I look at my freaking database and I see all of these unfinished songs – some of which I really adore and like to play, such as they are in their unfinished state. And, since my current setlist is heavily influenced by my 2003-04 stuff, there are incomplete songs hanging around that are about to be four years old.

Four years old! Which is a problem when I have a whole new fleet of unfinished songs to be working through – I only have so much headspace to to to push these things forward. So, I sat down with my sheaf today and had a touch of a workshop. I re-notated a few things in a more complete fashion, and I think finished one from 2001 – “4th of July” – once and for all.

All that rehearsal meant I was plenty limber for my post-dinner conversational gambit. Except, these are people who aren’t used to my schtick – that I like sit and underscore a conversation without needing anyone to pay attention to me, and that if there’s a lull I might sing for a bit before tucking my voice back under the din.

It made for a few awkward moments … I don’t know that Elise’s father has ever heard me play my own songs before? Certainly not songs about his daughter, anyhow. But, they won’t be getting rid of me anytime soon so they might as well get used to the incessant underscoring of my life. Along the way I turned in possibly my best vocal of all time on the bridge of “Love Me Not,” and also a very respectable version of the recently on-hiatus “Little Love.”

All of which is why I need to go home tomorrow and record a Trio. And then I need to record another another one. And then another. And so on.

Right. But, first I need to drink this glass of wine. And maybe another one.

G’nite.

Also filed in NaBloPoMo, day in the life, elise, guitar, songwriting | | Comments (0)

all the world’s a stage

Friday, November 16, 2007

Tonight we took in a bit of high school theatre, watching Elise’s (and, hey, soon my!) younger brother in his first ever play.

I’m self-aware enough of a blogger not to regale you with a blow by blow of his performance, but it did recall a certain memory of the last time I witnessed any pre-collegiate theatre.

It was in the same auditorium, seen with the same company, possible seated in the same row as tonight, again watching another of my soon-to-be-siblings on stage – this time Elise’s sister.

The main difference was that we were on the other end of our relationship; we had been dating three weeks at the time, and the show was a prelude to my first time meeting Elise’s family.

After the show I milled to and fro, self-conscious and worried about first impressions, while Elise ducked backstage to say hello to former costars. She was still connected to her school – certainly more than she was connected to me.

Tonight she picked those old cast members’ younger sibling out of the playbill, more mine than anyone else’s.

I like this life.

(Also, let it be said that Elise’s brother rocks incredibly; he’s like a better, more talented version of teenaged me. He’s made me – who from an early age had vowed to strangle any potential siblings in the cradle – really re-think my position this whole only-child thing.)

Also filed in NaBloPoMo, day in the life, elise, only childness, stories, theatre | | Comments (6)

Taking Back Giving Thanks

Thursday, November 23, 2006

I don’t enjoy celebrating most holidays. They aren’t really holidays anymore – just treacly Hallmark imitations of the celebrations they once were.

Part of my resistance is societal – a rebellion against Hallmark and Christmas radio stations – but part of it is familial. As children we are subjected to the whims of our family’s traditions with little room for our own opinions. When i hit college i decided i’d start having things my way – i rebuilt my holiday schedule from scratch.

I usually deign to observe a standard July 4th, since it holds historical significance, and Cinco de Mayo, since it kicks off my Corona-drinking season, but everything else is fair game; one particularly defiant year I celebrated Passover instead of Easter.

However, I haven’t fucked with any holiday as much as today’s – Thanksgiving – because i didn’t really feel as though i had been giving very much thanks. It had turned into Turkeyhaving and Footballwatching or, worse, LaststopbeforeChristmasing.

Rather than touch any of that, i co-opted it for my own, never doing the same thing twice. Once i carried a balloon in the parade. Another year i dined with Gina and her family and friends. Two years ago i spent Thanksgiving alone, drinking martinis and watching old movies. Each iteration was superior to the alternative of a dead bird and getting stuffed just to get stuffed.

Over the last nearly-five years i have been gradually assimilated into Elise’s family, which dichotomizes every holiday between a split set of parents (a phenomenon with which i am all-too familiar). I am now an expected guest at their holiday celebrations and, as a result, here i am in NJ celebrating a second Thanksgiving in a row for the first time since the nineties.

At first i was reticent – this was exactly what i had been trying to escape! Yet, the view, the culture, the traditions, the food, and the thanks are all different here than what i gew up with. Admittedly, I don’t like them all – i was especially upset to realize that not every family in America accompanies every holiday turkey or ham with lasagna or baked ziti – but in total they have definitely refreshed my thanks… thanks for who i am, and where i am, and that i am free to choose both and everything in between.

I think holidays should be what you need them to be, especially a holiday about thanks. And sometimes the best way to realize why (if at all) you are thankful is change your perspective.

Also filed in NaBloPoMo, adulthood, elise, gina | | Comments (1)

Looking Up to Something

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Having never had siblings I always feel a little awkward with Elise’s brother. On one hand I completely identify with him, because he’s dragged around to adult-stuff all the time and all he really wants to be doing is reading or playing a video game. On the other, what could some twenty-something year-old have said or done for me to cheer me up on all of those occasions of my youth?

Elise and I brainstorm sometimes about finding him some cool teenagery hobby; she had batted around drumming and web design for a while, but neither really went anywhere. So, imagine our surprise last night when Elise’s mother remarked as we approached her truck, “You’ll have to squeeze into the front; the bass is in the back.” Apparently Elise’s little brother (who, incidentally, is now about as tall as we are) got an electric bass over the summer.

When we returned to our house the four us us sat around chatting and catching up and, much as I’ll play guitar through any conversation just for the sake of playing guitar, out came the bass. However, it was out of tune from bouncing around in the back seat. Tuning isn’t a problem in our house, considering Elise and I are both in-tune-freaks and own four tuners between the two of us.

While her brother proceeded to tune up and noodle I fetched a guitar with broken strings and fixed it up. Once I was restrung I began to quietly follow along with his noodling. I thought I recognized the song, but I wasn’t sure. Not wanting to embarrass him, I waited until Elise and her mother headed upstairs to examine something in the bathroom.

“Is that ‘Seven Nation Army’?”

“Yeah, but internet tabs are always wrong,” he grumped.

“Yeah, they suck. It’s better to trust a site that specializes in one artist, especially for bass, because random people never really know what positions or techniques a certain player tends to use. Do you know what Occam’s Razor is?

He gave a half-wince of understanding.

“It’s the idea that the simplest explanation is almost always the best one. So, the simplest way for that bass player to play the song is probably the right way to play it.”

(Elise, passing through (or was it later?) commented: “Yeah, like Dave Matthews will always play something in in the most obscure possible way, but Ani will will do it the easiest.” I smirked, and inexplicably failed to also include Joni Mitchell in our comparison.)

“Well, let me hear it.”

He did, and it became apparent that there was a slightly easier and more-correct way to play it. And, since Jack White isn’t necessary a king of bass-playing technique, I didn’t really have qualms about changing up the positions to make it a little simpler.

“Hey, hold on, I have that record.”

Over to the CD collection I bounced, and back I came with Elephant. We listened to the song and i immediately realized that his riff was transposed by a fourth (effectively, a string) – easily fixed. And, then, ten minutes after playing a bad internet transcription in the wrong key he was playing along to the song! I pointed out the quick walkup at the end of the verses and then improvised some chords to accompany him (since the whole song is almost all bassline and guitar solo).

Elise and her mother came down at about this point, both looking somewhat bemused at the White Stripes jam that has sprung up in our living room. Later he told me the other song he was learning was “Money.” I told him I had that too, and that I was impressed, because it’s notoriously in a weird time signature. I put it on, but just listened; my brain doesn’t have the higher level functions required to count upbeat guitar stabs in 7/8. He was pretty good at it.

(Aside: Elise, her brother, and their sister all have ridiculous natural musical aptitude, which always makes me wish I had grown up in more musical family. More musical, I mean, than lip-synching Madonna into hairbrushes and sporadically breaking out into “Let The Good Times Roll” in the kitchen, both of which traits came from my father’s side.)

I’m really happy to have found a connection with Elise’s brother, and even happier to have gotten to be the cool older kid instead of the unspeakably geeky one, if only for once. Before he left I tabbed out the version we worked out and slipped it into his bag along with a copy of Elephant and White Blood Cells.

I bet I would have been a cool older brother.

Also filed in Year 5, elise, guitar, memories, only childness, stories | | Comments (0)

let the spirit out

Friday, December 24, 2004

They are all smoking in the kitchen.

Everything here smells like smoke; i smell like smoke after just a few hours of it. Aunt Rosie is in a house dress and high heels. She doesn’t wear underwear. Rosie is almost eighty, but i still picture her waking up in the morning and climbing out of her Barbie box. She girlishly flattens her dress, green with blue cornflowers, against her thighs with the flats of her palms as a breeze comes through the open door.

Aunt Mildred is in a dusky lime-colored sweatsuit. She forgot to pack her hearing aid, and leans in almost imperceptibly every time i speak.

I wonder to myself where they all learned to react to death. Rosie wants to rub her feet to keep them warm. My mother wanders in, shell-shocked and with so many more wrinkles than i remember from a month ago. She opens the window and smiles wanly at me.

“We does this at the hospital,” she says.” “To let the spirit out.”

Also filed in Year 5, memories | | Comments (0)

The Bitch is Back

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Jett Superior, one of my all-time favorite peddlers of snark, is back online with an astounding new layout. While she was on her extended hiatus, she asked her readers to put an old set of her lyrics to music, promising to post them upon her return. She hasn’t yet, but here’s my version.

Here at CK we don’t go on hiatus, we graduate, take long naps, try to buy cell phones that take pretty little pictures that we can display while not on an aforementioned non-existent hiatus, and play City of Heroes until 4am (thus necessitating longer naps). We pretty much being me, along with my omnipresent sidekick slash new roommate slash built-in fanclub Elise.

She finally met my dad the other week, he who owns a gun shop and a flock of plastic lawn flamingos, and makes “boop boop” noises when he pulls a U-ee in the middle of Market street. She has not met my cousin Cary, age seven, but the lass is nonetheless intrigued by the concept that my partner/roomie/stalker has “Chinese Eyes.” My aunt claims that this, though perhaps verging on offensive, is a reflection of unspeakable jealous curiosity, as said eyes are a particularly fashionable favorite of my cousin’s. In the car on the way back from the el Cary politely enquired if “Have you kissssssed her?,” to which i responded “Oh, a few times.”

Otherwise, life is similar to how life was last time i mentioned life, except for the piece of parchment with the shiny Magna Cum Laude sticker sitting on my mantel and what seems like eleventy-thousand people trying to make me feel anxious about whether or not i really have a job (don’t worry, it’s not working). I think Elise is appalled at how much time i spend a) listening to music, b) doing nothing but looking productive, & c) being so frighteningly productive that i cannot stop talking or moving, sometimes all at once. Still, things are fine, especially now that i unpacked my Ani DiFranco mugs.

Transmissions from the planet Peter.

Also filed in Year 4, college, demos, elise, games, linkylove | | Comments (0)

Bunny-Hunting

Sunday, April 11, 2004

Easter does not rank amongst my preferred holidays, maybe because the Easter Bunny is not as powerful a social phenomenon as the Jackolantern or the Thanksgiving Turkey. Face it: it’s a day about the son of god coming back from the dead that is merrily glossed over with pagan egg hunts so that it’s not the religious equivalent of Thriller.

I typically spend Easter hiding from my family. This makes it, in effect, no different than any other day of the year. Past tactics have included unplugging my phone, celebrating passover instead, or having my boss invite me to her house for dinner. This year i decided that the best place to hide would be in plain view, so i invited myself, Elise, and four friends to dine at chez-krisis. The plan was that my mother would be overwhelmed by trying to chat like the merrily socially well-adjusted woman she is that i would escape largely unquestioned and unscathed. My mother, after freaking out for three weeks because she’s never had that many people in her house for an occasion not related to a funeral, seemed to take the planning of the event in stride and with only mild outbreaks of frantic chain-smoking while attempting to invoke the maternal instinct for hosting that she’s let lay dormant for all these years.

It went off nearly without a hitch. I was chastised repeatedly for serving cocktails to my guests before dinner, and told i need to seek alchohol counseling when a single drunken exploit was highlighted in conversation, but was otherwise left unquestioned about my finances, job hunt, and ever-mysterious FUTURE. It was small, as dinners go and, as is typical of such events in my family, consisted of a majority of Italian food and no turkeys, greens, hams, or yams. What wasn’t typical was that i got to enjoy the company of both my friends and my family, which made it much more festive for me.

We ended the night with copious Italian pastries and a marathon of Trading Spaces. Pretty much an ideal day.

Also filed in Year 4, elise, mom, ross | | Comments (0)

Tuesday, October 7, 2003

I’ve been holding on to this awful fear in the pit of my stomach for over a year now — that anytime the phone rings it’s going to be bad news about my grandmother. Maybe it’s why i hate the phone so much, how i always avoiding answering its ring and why i made sure to leave my cell phone safely ensconced within my old office building for the last two weeks … why i wasn’t surprised to finally pick it up only to hear a sequence a messages from my mother, each serving as a cold comfort as none quite claimed the worst.

I was caught, though, last night, live and on the line to my mother as she once again laid on this guilt, as if i know how to set aside my entire life and somehow make this all easier for her, or how to make my grandmom happier and not in so much pain, or how to do anything. The truth is that i don’t know, i can’t do anything, and every time my mother reminds me of how truly bad things are i see my grandmother and i convince myself that everything is okay.

I have finally been convinced now, though, that it is not okay. Sitting in the middle of the floor idly strumming my guitar and it all at once hit me that even though i made Elise promise to drive me over there tomorrow when her class is over that i missed out. I missed out on bringing Elise to meet her like i said i would, and on having her come to my college graduation, or even have her see me become successful or hold my children in some distant future. I realized all of that, and that maybe i have resisted dealing with it emotionally for all this time because i was hoping that somehow if i pushed it to the back of my mind and just kept working i would somehow make everything that she’s always dreamed for me come true.

What followed was a mess of tears and words and suddenly, two hours later, i’ve lost a box of tissues but gained a song so stupidly simple that i can’t help but keep crying as i have it on repeat because it encapsulates so very perfectly just how crushed this is leaving my life, and how much i just want to be able to have my college diploma and my successful life ready to bring with me tomorrow when i sit next to her bed, because i can’t think of anything else to give her (because she doesn’t really like songs all that much).

But, on the bright side, i’m a third of the way done my next Trio.

Also filed in Year 4, elise, mom, my music, self-aware | | Comments (0)

Wednesday, September 4, 2002

My grandmother is sick.

Even after having almost two months to think about this, i still don’t know what i think. Ten years ago all four of my grandparents were alive and as animated as ever, and five years ago two of them were in managed care facilities because they were not well enough to live at home with family members. Now i have a paternal Grandfather whose eyesight and conversation skills are slowly failing, and who i’ve seen the least out of all of my grandparents over the course of my life. And my maternal grandmother, the one i visit in Florida in December so that she can fly up to Philadelphia for Christmas, the family member who i’ve spent the most time with over the course of my life other than my own mother.

My grandmother is sick, and she may be dying.


Almost a decade ago she had colon cancer, and i didn’t know what to think at the time and by the time i decided she was in remission. When she lived in Philadelphia she used to walk a mile with a rolling shopping cart just to get twenty dollars of food at the grocery store; she has never driven, and she eschews the aid of services who cater to transporting Senior Citizens. She never completed grade school, and subsequently can read at a very low level and has trouble balancing her checkbook – at the same time, she is one of the more perceptive people i know, even if she presents her perceptions in the most basic way possible.

I am her only grandchild, and she misses me. I miss her, and wish she was still in Philadelphia so i could stop by her house to pester her every week or two, but she’s not. What she is is just a phone call away, but everyone knows how much i hate the phone. Of course, hating the phone doesn’t really matter when it comes down to talking to someone you love who might not be around for a long time.


Last month i called and had a hilarious conversation with her, like the ones i used to have with her years ago when she would interrupt my video games and put away my GI Joes before their battles were over. She asked to talk to Elise for a minute, and Elise smiled the entire time. It was a window for each of us, on either side of the phone, to look through to a different sort of time.


I haven’t called since, and today i received a rather accusatory email from my cousin Ashley, who has largely been spending her free time hanging out with my grandmother (her great aunt). She told me, in no uncertain terms, that if i can’t make the time or find the motivation to call my grandmother then i really shouldn’t bother caring at all. My grandmother is depressed, not eating, and not her usual chatty self. But she wants to hear from me.

I want to call, and i do call, leaving chirpy messages on her machine when she’s not at home in the evenings. But, i still don’t know what to think, and i guess half of my reluctance to call her once every week or two is connected to. Of course, the other half of it is that i don’t even talk to my own mother once every two weeks, but that’s something else entirely.


For how much i claim to like the internet, i seem to enjoy it when my life is unplugged from just about everyone else’s. I’ll call again tomorrow night.

Also filed in elise | | Comments (0)

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

It was just now that i remembered the sensation. Boxed up in the light blue front seat of the nineteen eighty-something Ford Taurus as it pulled up along side the battered parking meter closest to the corner. I hadn’t put my shoes on, and so i was out of the car on the balls of my feet and the tips of my toes nimbly sidestepping broken pavement and glass as my grandfather glowered at me from behind the windshield. I would just be a minute, though. I just needed to run inside to grab my G.I. Joes so that when we went back to his house i would have something to do other than talk to him, or my grandmother, or anyone. And, i would be fast, cringing at the coating of city grime that was slowly adhering to my heels as i neared my front steps.

My grandfather was never much of a driver that i remember – between his failing vision and his advancing bipolar disorder he wasn’t quite cut out for traffic. But, that day i somehow convinced him to start up the car and drive to my house. Children have short sight like that: one day my grandfather was lucid, happy, and amenable enough to drive me somewhere and i just wanted some toys to play with. Every time my mother mentions that he was overseas in the war or reminds me of how he lost half of his finger while doing janitorial work so that she could go to Catholic school my memory of him flickers off of the cartoonish and frightening man he was half the time, and off of the feeble thing he was in the nursing home. The image i see, ever so shortly, is the one that is framed on top of my grandmother’s television in Florida. Their wedding picture. Sometimes looking at it makes me very afraid, because they could look so absolutely happy together over fifty years ago without suspecting that any of this would happen … a war, a daughter, a sickness, and a grandson who just wanted his action figures so that he wouldn’t have to hear about any of it.

It took me a minute of thinking, but the last time i saw my father was while i was in the hospital last year. I’m not even sure he knows that i had surgery last month. The last time i saw my mother was a few weeks ago, i suppose. And i haven’t seen this little white box for eight days now.

Is time harder to measure than your heart?

Also filed in Year 2, memories | | Comments (0)

Wednesday, May 8, 2002

Sometimes it seems as though everyone i know reads Henry’s Diary on a semi-regular basis, and today Aim beat me to the punch and had to break the news to me. Far be it from me to insert myself into other people’s personal lives that i know nothing about via the internet, but i would trade in a whole heap of my personal good karma if it could help the situation between Mike & Tracey. I was just a little younger than Henry when my parents separated, and my only memory of my father living with me is him standing on our steps screaming something. I think it might have been the day he left. I’ve already made my feelings pretty clear on how amazing i think Mike is for creating the Diary, and i just don’t want to believe that the idyllic little Californian world i had conjured in my head for Henry is now going to be irrevocably changed with only a website to act in the place of memories that will slowly trickle away from Henry as the years go on.


Right. So much for not inserting myself.

Also filed in aim, weblinks | | Comments (0)

Friday, April 12, 2002

I often forget he exists in the same relative universe to mine, but occasionally i am reminded. We haven’t talked for a few months now, since work and Eagles playoff games got in the way of us seeing Lord of the Rings. Eventually he gave up on calling and i gave up on waiting. Nothing new to us, really.

On a quick break from audio samples going live i stole over to the phone to confirm the reservations for dinner tonight, and when i gave my name the voice on the other line exclaimed “The Pete [redacted]” to which i kindly replied that, no, i was the Peter [redacted] and that Pete happened to be my father. The voice gave a good natured chuckle and confirmed my reservations, asking afterwards if i’d be coming with The Pete.

“No, just the one of me.”

He assured me they’d be on high alert nonetheless.


I am reminded of my father in the strangest ways.

Also filed in elise, rk.com | | Comments (0)

Wednesday, January 2, 2002

The trend in weblogs for ringing in the New Year seems to be a dead split between resolutions that might not be upheld and a litany of excellent things about 2001 that never came to light through the actual process of blogging. So, in the spirit of my general disagreeance and spitefulness this past weekend, here are the reasons why my year sucked (in roughly chronological order):

  • My grandmother dies; i proceed to get so sick that i miss the funeral (never to be forgiven by family). (!)

  • I have to drop a class for the first time. (!)

  • The weekend of my dress rehearsals for Good Woman of Setzuan i am diagnosed with Pneumonia and Bronchitis. I have to argue not to be admitted to the hospital so i can start going to rehearsals again. Upon my return I forget an entire verse of my big song on opening night (at this point being generally attributed to my medication, which i will neither confirm nor deny). (!)

  • My first girlfriend wound up being somewhat of a psycho/bitch; horrible breakup ensues. (!)

  • I managed not to fail anything despite all of the above circumstances, but garner my first C (in Recording Class) (!)

  • I have no spring vacation; i immediately started work at Admissions after classes ended. (!)

  • I am totally miserable in my apartment; i don’t speak much to my roommate. (!)

  • I miserably quit blogging for an entire week when my archives disappear. (!)

  • I do not leave the city once during the entire summer. (!)

  • I spend the majority of the summer wondering where i’ll be living in September. (!)

  • I sign up to attend the Philadelphia Folk Fest and then have to back out because of work and moving into my new apartment. (!)

  • I step in to give the counselor-of-the-day presentation one Tuesday in September, because the counselor in question was to horror-stricken to speak. (!)

  • I enter a rather depressive haze and let details about it slip to my mother, who becomes physically ill at the thought of my mental instability. (!)

  • I am admitted to the hospital for four days only to be told absolutely nothing is wrong with me. (!)

  • I endlessly deliberate over a first date with someone who lives across the country from me and who i like very much — only to be romantically rebuffed. (!)

  • I spend the entire last weekend of the year in the most dire of blah moods. (!)


    • So, that’s my year. At a glance, 2001 looks as though it might have been my worst year ever pound for pound. However, lest we all despair for my miserable year, click the end of each phrase for the happy ending that i might not have hinted at while blogging. And, in case i haven’t mentioned it, Happy New Year.

    Also filed in 9/11, Blogger, SGapt, Year 2, admissions, bloggish, college, erika, lindsay, memories, mom, q.o.d., relief, theatre | | Comments (0)

    Monday, December 24, 2001

    My mother, ever the intrepid homemaker upon the once-a-year occasion that finds me in our house for three consecutive days, rose with dawn this morning to acquire the last few items on our Italian Christmas Grocery List. We do not make ham. We do not eat turkey. For us, Christmas is all about a inordinately large pot of gravy, some sort of homemade pasta, and upwards of a dozen eggs worth of scappels. However, since i left for school, Christmas has also been the chance for the two of us to collectively gorge ourselves on high-cholesterol Italian desserts. This was the reason Elaine was out of the house just after eight this morning.


    While i am a cheesecake addict through and through, my mother tends to veer more towards pastries and chocolates. This year she decided that my jumbo-cheesecake would get the axe in favour of an equally massive tiramisu, and the bakery informed her that she’d have to arrive “pretty early” to secure a nummy liquor-soaked cake for herself. They literally told her that people would be lined up around the block before the subway started running; she took it with a grain of salt and got in the car during the back half of Good Morning America.


    8:25 — “Hey, it’s me… i can’t believe you actually woke up this early. … Whatever. Listen, i’m just swinging by the pastry place and running some quick errands. … Yeah, i’ll be at your apartment by ten.”


    Much to my mother’s chagrin (and my endless amusement), the line at Isgro’s was around the block … not only around the block, but nearly motionless in a dead-pan imitation of its ticket-line cousin i endured while flying last week.


    9:30 — “Peter, hey, it’s me … i’ve been in line for about an hour. … You should see it, it’s a madhouse … I’ll call you before i come to pick you up. … Yeah, i should be there around ten-thirty.”

    And, not only was this line packed to the gills with a cheery assortment of dietary die-hard degos who had the presence of mind to bring along folding chairs and thermoses, but it was being patrolled by a Mr. and Mrs. Claus — her with pastry samples, and him with a tray of Amaretto in tiny disposable shot-glasses. Furthermore, the local news was interviewing people up and down the line, kindly declining several offers of liquid warmth … via Mr. Claus as well as the crowd at large (who apparently came equipped). Did i mention it was about 43 degrees outside?


    10:35 — “Um, Peter, it’s me … Yes, i’m still in line. … No, i can’t even see the doors from here. Santa keeps asking me if i’d like a drink. … Oh, no, I should be in by eleven.”

    Upon her finally arriving (let’s call it @ twelvish) my mother had bought half our housecat’s weight in Italian desserts, and she blithely informed me that she was going to be on the noon and five-o’clock news, the latter of which she was taping at that very moment.


    I skipped over the bit where i hid all of the liquor in my apartment so my grandmother could come up and see it (“Jesus, do you have enough steps in this place? I swear, i’d have a heart attack with all these goddamned steps.”), and also the bit where i got zero sleep to finish my mother’s freaking Christmas present that she had better appreciate.

    Does anybody rememer last Christmas? I seem to remember it being cuter than this…

    Also filed in food, mom, stories, x-mas | | Comments (0)

    Sunday, December 23, 2001

    But, i miss it. I miss going to sleep with the huge book splayed open somewhere in the middle on the pillow next to me. I miss sneaking a peak forward to see how long i had to wait for another Pemulis appearance. Infinite Jest became a placeholder in my life for the dependency that it reviles … on entertainment, on liquor, on drugs, on other people … watching the characters in their endless dance of all of the above and even more left me free to do what i needed to do in my life without feeling the elastic pull of any of my various addictive tendencies in one direction or another.

    As soon as i finished the last seven pages my grandmother was in the room, chirping like a bird. I had somehow managed to stave her off by showing her how close to finished i was, but i found myself without a defense and my first thought was “i need a drink.” I’ve never needed a drink before; in fact, i haven’t been drinking especially often lately. Suddenly, it became the focal point of my day: coming home to my empty apartment and getting blitzed enough so that everything was fuzzy around the edges like a peach and i could simmer quietly down into silence and sleep. Imagining the slippery slope to unconsciousness i might take later was enough to save me from the endless bickering of my septuagenarian family-members, and to get my on the plane.


    When i left the hospital i wanted, more than anything else, to be somewhere other than in my own head. Yes, i wanted to go home. Yes, i was hungry. Most of all, though, i was craving an opportunity to poke at my perceptions and rattle my reasons. I wanted to feel disconnected in a wholly opposite way from how i felt in the hospital. And, i did. It was perhaps the most excruciatingly stupid single night of my life, but i woke up the next morning with that binge-stupidity as a tangible buffer between my sick and confined self and my well self — the two never saw an intersection because i made sure to remove myself from where they might’ve met.

    This has become the function of substance to me, suddenly … separation. I’ve always thought that anything potentially addictive would be dangerous when it stopped just being fun and started being useful and i was entirely right, but i managed to forget about the entire situation while i had that thick book on my pillow filled with its own endless fucked up addicts to draw my escapism from. Now it’s gone, and i am set back to my continuing reality.


    And, importantly: alone — no more characters to keep me up at night. So, maybe it wasn’t a reaction to the novel, but to the mental company it provided.

    I’m not sure. I’m going to sleep on it.

    Also filed in alchohol, books, florida, health | | Comments (1)