Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Sorry, i’ve been having a life.

My view has varied throughout my life, as i never can see the same thing out of my bedroom windows from place to place. As a child it was just the desolation of SouthWest Philadelphia with a hint of the city skyline buried off in the distance, and then it was a calm schoolyard with its swings and endless ranks of row-homes beyond. It was a shock to go from such typical views to Freshmen year, where i could see a postcard version of our entire city skyline from the window above my bed.


Kenny and i had an ongoing joke that year about how i would invite girls up to the room and ask them if they wanted to “see the view.” Of course, they’d have to climb right onto my bed to see what i meant, which played right into my plan of seduction via the illumination of the city lights.

No one ever took me up on the offer of the view, but it might have been because i never really offered it seriously; always packaging it with the joke that it was, in fact, my surefire means of seduction — which tends to diffuse the seductive power of the plan.


Right now it is raining. My neighbor has his blinds closed, so all there is to see is the oblong diamond overlay of his mottled brown siding, and the strange rust-orange of the next house with cabinets backed up against its windows so that all i can see is what’s on top of them. Stricly speaking, it’s the most restricted view i’ve ever had … even last year’s view of rowhomes sometimes came through with something a little more noteworthy. So, my window isn’t much to be proud of . . . except, between here and those houses on the other side, there is a tiny backyard world that is separate from the people in the houses that surround it. Staring out into it is like watching the interior of a snow-globe, only it is the outside and we are the in, and we are staring out at it through the protection of my tiny back window.

Right now it is raining, and the patter-splash-patter of it on the world below my window is easy to pick out from the street sounds and the sighing of my heater. On Monday all that was out there was sun, and in the afternoon it had reached its zenith and was headed home to sleep as its light was projected down through that tiny window.

My bed was magnified; all warmth and comfort. And, i’m thinking… it might not be the most impressive view that i’ve ever had, but it could be my favourite.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/75009809/

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Driving can seem exotic to me sometimes, especially out on highways that i don’t frequent. Cars aren’t something that are especially typical of my Philadelphia routine, other than various friends and acquaintances saving my ass from the winter chill by driving me back from the theatre at night. I got us to my house okay, but after that i was blind as to where we were or how we got there … just desperately trying to align myself via the river and signs pointing North to New York.

My romantic life being what it is, my mother has never had a girlfriend of mine to meet, and so we stopped by my house on Reed street on our way to New Jersey to see if she was around. She was, albeit barely in her underwear when i first opened the door unannounced, but mom was not about the give up the chance to meet an in-the-flesh significant other of mine who drives her own car and is bringing me home with her for the day.

I played chameleon as best i could in blue jeans and grey shirt against the hood of her car as my mom engaged us in idle chatter, trying to understand how she must come off the first time you meet her without my nervously cracking jokes to get in the way. My mother and i live on our torment of each other, mocking back and forth as we breathlessly converse, and to other people we seem too entangled in this strange familial subculture to be penetrated or understood. Idle chatter it was, about the rain that seemed to be on the way and where we were going. We finally ran out of steam (left without too many of our typical sarcastic remarks; on our best behaviour), and my mother gave me a kiss and a hug and, before i could turn around to walk back to the passenger side of the car, my mother gave her a kiss and a hug too. Hope to see you again, or something. That’s what she said.

Back in the car i was just madly grinning and fiddling with my seatbelt until my mother was safely across the street and back into our row home before i turned around and said “Well, that wasn’t so bad afterall.”

And, all of that was before New Jersey.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/75004495/

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Earlier…

Septa sometimes paints you a pretty picture, if you get far enough away from the constant hum and hustle of motors in the city. It’s their tracks that caught my attention . . . tendrils arcing out from tangled skeins of track that echo ever inward to create the swirling mess of 30th street station.

The pictures, though, it’s about the pictures.

I am in North Philadelphia, the cool not-quite-evergreen metal of a bench leaving alternating slats of cool and warm skin on the backs of my legs. I imagine that i must look silly – – all curled and cross-legged in my business attire, like a child at a party who’s tired out from playing with the adults.

Which . . . maybe i am.

Just now an older black gentleman walked down into the station, and the heels of his polished shoes rang out against the stairs like hollow wooden bells. He is in a suit so royal blue that i’m fairly convinced that it’s purple. He his with him an oddly shaped silver suitcase and a wide-brimmed hat . . . just now he was sitting on the former and adjusting the latter. For a moment he stood, lifted the case up to a ledge on the wall, carefully opened the clasps, and inside i could see the tell tale velvet that enwombs a shiny instrument . . .a saxophone, or clarinet. But, that peek was all i got, as he snapped it closed and set it back down after only the most cursory inspection.

I wanted to ask him to play . . . i would’ve given him all of my money. Here’s my train.

Funny… i meant to talk about the wooden station with it’s ancient awning, but now i’m headed back. But… i think i still managed to say what i was feeling.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/75000951/

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I cannot decide if i have nothing to say, something i don’t want to say, or something to say with no way to say it.

Kissing her is like falling forward without putting out my hands to catch myself, either because i do not intend to ever touch the ground or because i do not mind it at all.

That’s all, i guess. Good morning.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/10147140/

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A few days after Christmas Amy and i went to IKEA to buy various pieces of furniture, and while we were there i bought a set of four 12oz rose-colored glasses. For the entire next week, they were all i drank from.

One just broke. I have two, now. This post is about permanence, and the lack thereof.

In 1998, four years ago this week, my grandfather died. At that point in my life i had lived in the same house for over a dozen years, written a dozen songs, and had never kissed a girl. It was a day like any other; i had probably just gotten home from a late rehearsal, walking down 64th street breathless and running lines in my head. Turning the key in our flimsy front door. I remember my mother was on the couch, and when she spoke it was just like a scene from a movie. I numbly walked upstairs to my mint-green room, put on track 9, and laid on my bed.

I cried there for an hour, alone. That day i wrote the first song that i would actually go on to play for someone other than myself. Since then i have moved four times. However, it was a while before i kissed anyone.

I am an easy person to convince of things, despite high surface levels of skepticism. If you’ve been dating for a year or two and tell me you’ll be together forever, i believe you. I start angling for a spot in your wedding party. I take it on faith that if you’re used to each other and happy that nothing will ever go sour; i’ve never done it myself, so it must be possible.

I wound up getting the question about Fallacy of Ignorance right on my Philosophy final, but i might have not gotten the point.

When a couple breaks up after two years together, it’s hard for me to understand how the world will work afterwards. For me, and for them, and at large … how can i believe in anything if nothing lasts forever like it says it’s going to?

Just before spring of 1998 i wrote “I never kissed somebody so that they would break my heart” in a journal i shared with my best friend Andrea. She replied that she never much cared for Lisa Loeb. The other day i found myself singing the same line as i walked down Walnut street. It still sounds the same, but it means something different now.

My mother is taking a loan to pay off her credit cards; she wants to buy a house. I might fail a class for the first time ever, and it’s my own dumb fault. Auditions are Tuesday. I’m listening to Firecracker.

I can’t tell if things change or not. Thoughts?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9831165/