Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

college

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It is awkward walking down the hall of a dormitory now, in socked feet — it offers flashes back to freshmen year. I have always walked heavily… the kind of walk where your heel makes a bass impact with the floor that you can feel subtly through the walls. It’s imitative, i think, of my mother, and the way her footfalls would telegraph her movement throughout our old house. I would know when to flinch or feign sleep from the way her heels fell on our creaking wooden stairs, and from how the opaque glass pane in my window softly shook in its frame.

Socks on the carpeted-over tile of the dorm is different… there is no reverberation, no rattles, no hints of anyone else’s movement. It is strangely silent.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/10273120/

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There is acting, and then there is playing a role. Acting is straightforward … based on material given to you ahead of time, and meant to be consistent and the same every time. Role playing is something entirely different … slipping into the mind of the character you portray to make decisions and reach conclusions for them. It’s the difference between a movie-star shooting a single film and a soap opera star who has played the same character for decades; with the latter, we expect them to occasionally stray from their normal portrayals, if only because we’ve had a chance to ascertain what normal really constitutes. One is not harder than the other. In fact, to consistently act and to act consistently are two different concepts entirely.

Okay, so, what i’m trying to say is that i didn’t get cast in Fiddler, but in my ever-loving geekdom i started a role-playing campaign of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons tonight with other assorted Drexel Players. We sat around in an attic bedroom for more than three hours, talking to each other as who we were portraying rather than as ourselves imitating a character. Eyes were shifty, and stories were inconsistent. We began to establish the baseline of how we would act from there on out. Stories were told around campfires, relative lack of wisdom was played with Keanu-like naivete, and secrets were kept.

We’re going to meet again next Thursday. Most of the other people have rehearsal most of the nights between now and then, but i don’t. And, really, it’s not a problem.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/10031639/

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

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We were going to be late for class. I woke up at six thirty, did all of my laundry, read my email, drafted a post, washed the dishes, folded the blankets in the parlor … and i was still going to be late for class, along with a freshly out of bed Lindsay. She brushed her teeth as she made corrections on my bow-tying abilities. I dashed back upstairs to frantically look for my favourite belt while Lindsay was frantically trying to pull her hair back tight enough to her head that she could muster a tiny “nubbin” of a ponytail. It was at this point that Erika emerged from her room practically still in a state of sleep, glibly relating her dream of being Heart from Captain Planet to us as if she was unaware of our need to be a mile and a half away in the next thirty minutes. Lindsay switched from a clip to a rubber-band and off-handedly asked which of our friends played the part of the blonde russian girl in the Captain Power team as i frantically arranged and rearranged flowers.

Erika couldn’t remember, so she started talking about the wonders of Olympic Downhill Skiing, which she had been watching just before three.

I turned to Lindsay. “We’re going to be late, aren’t we?” She replied through teeth clenched around a hair-tie. “Don’t worry; we’re taking the bus.”

Back up the stairs i went, this time to collect bus money (since my wallet was empty save for a single quarter) from my change jar. Erika’s voice wafted up behind me as she idly teased her pet frog. She, apparently, has the day off from work. Next came Lindsay’s voice, not nearly as calm: “Bus at quarter of, are you coming?”

“Yes!” was both my reply and an exclamation at having found the twenty-some coins i would need to get onto the bus. Leather jacket got thrown on, scarf was wrapped around neck, but Blistex was stupidly left behind on my desk. Downstairs again Lindsay was clawing through her desktop clutter to find her cell-phone and i was screaming down the hall about whether or not i should defrost my chicken in the refrigerator. Poultry was subsequently relocated, flowers were primped a final time, and then Lindsay practically threw me down our entry stairs. Out the door we went in a chattering stumbling tangle of her long denim jacket and my felt-like gloves as i fumbled for keys. Door locked tightly, we were down the steps of our porch and heading north to the Chestnut bus stop.

Lindsay stopped dead twenty-five feet under Walnut. “Wait.”


“What?”


She was clawing through her backpack now; “I need to make copies of my paper.”


“Yes?”


“But i only have bus fare.”


“Hmmm.”


“I need a quarter. I’m going to fail if i don’t have another quarter. Oh my god, Peter, we have to go back.”

Out came my wallet, out came the last quarter i had to my name, and all was well. Well until we arrived at Chestnut street to find the bus a half a block ahead of us; about as far as a bus can get in the time it takes for one roommate to paw through her bookbag while the other similarly examines his wallet.

“I am not running after it.”

I offered no argument at all.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9721902/