Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Year 01

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The most shocking thing to me was that Rabi actually knew my songs from Trios, but i evened up the score because i knew the context of her poems from following her log. After a few requests, the set wound up as: Punk, Because, Unstrung, Colorblind, Under My Skin, Lost, All That’s True, Give, Never Say Goodbye. Trio has an interesting effect on how i make up a setlist when i’m playing for someone who actually listens to it … something i’ve never really had to deal with before. But, anyway, it was good excercise for me, and i think she really liked Never Say Goodbye cause she sorta just stared at my guitar while i played it. I could always ask her, but, erm, yeah. Maybe she’ll blog about it ;)

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3644067/

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Trying to recognize someone you’ve never met before is just a little tricky, but my guitar and mod-squad jacket were definitely a giveaway. She was a bit more obscure, but somewhere between the bright blue eyes and the bright purple kiddie band-aid on her finger i had it figured out.


I have to say that Rabi was a lot more effervescent than i pictured her (although, how many vegan astrophysicist rugby players do i really know to judge by?), and i can’t even begin to imagine what about me was suprising to her. Swarthmore would definitely turn me into the kind of metaphorical blogger that she’s become known as, because nothing i saw there translated literally the way things do in Philadelphia. We wound up getting right under the sun as if it was just a spotlight and trading poetry for songs (literally: she took home a demo and i took home my favourite of her poems), and finding things we had in common (bitten up fingers, music fetishes, and obviously obscure writing) and some differences (my fingers are just bit by my guitar and i can’t wear band-aids, my music fetish is slighty less rare and much less under control, and how taking the middle step out of word association makes it much more mysterious) . It felt just like talking to anyone, and i’m not sure if that’s because we know too much about each other’s thoughts and things or if it’s because we’re just two too friendly people. Except, this is all about my life and Wockjabby is all about her thoughts on life, so i think we almost swapped my thoughts for her life. Or something.


Three and a half hours later felt like a much longer time, though not long enough. I had more fun playing “Under My Skin” for her than i have for anyone since i recorded it. She read a poem she’d never read out loud before. Maybe i’ll see her again in the fall.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3643985/

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Okay, so, don’t hold me to this at a later date, but i’m really happy that my crush on Teri wound up nowhere. Any tiny kiss or single date that theoretically could have taken place in the last half year pales in comparison to the continued elation we have when we see each other or the way i like to just sit and listen to her talk about anything. I love to listen to people talk about their lives and their future, but most of the time i just feel like i prattle on endlessly about myself for lack of anything else to talk about. But, today i just got lost in a conversation about drum corps and houses in Northeast Philly and bullets and everything and by the time we got back to me all i had to talk about was how my life was just a flatline with no indication of movement in any direction up until just a handul of years ago and that i’m not really used to it yet.


I kept staring out of the window at green leaves waving like hundreds of tiny flags on the wind. I guess all you need is something to carry you along.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3615129/

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I’m a forgetful boy; sometimes even the most daily and normal things i do get forgotten once or twice a week. Last week i inadvertently left my wash in the laundry room for five days, and the week before i forgot to balance my checkbook, and this week i forgot twice to take my allergy medication. I wasn’t totally crippled because i have a certain amount of medication floating around in my system already, but missing a day tends to impact the next day negatively so having forgotten to take a pill yesterday today i wasn’t in good shape. I felt unfocused, and my face felt numb, and i was physically on the verge of tears the whole morning so much that people kept asking me if anything “was wrong”. And i swear tear ducts must be connected to your brain somehow to make you sad, cause i was in this awful mood to go along with my teary face. For an hour or two i was sure that i was on the verge of some total emotional breakdown, though honestly now i can’t imagine what those problems i conjured up might have been. But, it finally went away at some point when i stopped paying attention to it, and now i’m back to my normal miserable self. What joy.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3496748/

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I was just idly chatting with Selina after our fraternity meeting, and she told me that she’s “seeing someone.”

::deep breath::

I thought i was going to be crushed or hurt or something when this finally happened (and i think i knew she’d move on to someone else before i would), but i’m not. It just feels like the whole situation with the two of us resolved somehow – whereas before there was something slightly dischordant stretched out between us. Resolve might be the best feeling i’ve ever known; do any of your favourite songs end without one? For those of you who aren’t musically inclined, that usually means the song ends on a chord other than the one you were ‘expecting’, or when it ends you feel the notes moving towards something but they never get there – instead they just hang in the air and trail out. I wonder of things like that have an effect on whether or not people like a song… because i honestly can only think of one song that i love which doesn’t resolve. It’s almost like how we expect a happy end to movies, even though we know real stories don’t always turn out that way. Our ears expect something even though the only thing that would lead us to expect it is the gravity of the notes themselves. Or, the actors to the plot. Or, the people to each other. But, sometimes in life resolve involves drifting away as much as it does coming together.

Or maybe a little of both.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3474273/