Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

day in the life

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The alarm rang at 6:20 to give me a warning shot — two more hours of sleep, it was to announce, and i would hit the hour button twice and then fall asleep curled up at the foot of the bed. However, when i reached the foot of the bed i couldn’t even begin to recall what the order the buttons were in, and every time i though i had the “set alarm” button under my thumb i instead had the “sleep” button, which, as near as i can tell, just blares talk radio higher than the current volume setting for 60 seconds. I’m not sure what that has to do with sleep, but eventually i just yanked the plug out of the well and decided to go it alone. Sleep, that is.

Of course, i am far from alone, because October is our house’s official Pest Month. Subsequently, i was thoroughly (and with much alarm)awoken by the current pest troika. First, i was nudged towards consciousness by squirrels performing rodent ballet on my roof, which i guess is not nearly as bad as when the one fell through Lindsay’s ceiling, but that’s not my story to tell. Next, the tiny mouse that has taken up residence in the eaves of the roof ran out of it’s bolt hole that is, apparently, about three inches from the foot of the bed. Suffice to say, discovering that a rodent has set up a proverbial welcome mat within spitting distance sent me into quite a frenzy, and back up to the head of the bed. And, finally, the coup de grace came from the single indestructible fly that has taken control of my room since i arrived at home last week with two cans of RAID Home and Garden spray and emptied them into the air of my room (mmm, carcinogens). He circled my head three times (just long enough for me to be mildly aware of the buzzing, and then proceeded to dive bomb my ear repeatedly until i ran, screaming, from my bedroom to the bathroom.

To wash my ear, of course. And, so, here i am.

You have to understand, it isn’t that my room is dirty, or filled with pest-sized treats, it’s just that we live in West Philly, and when it starts to get cold outside all these little buggers want in, and as a renter there’s only so much i can do about the integrity of our battlements, so to speak. And, yes, we’ve tried traps and sprays and sticky pieces of paper — the whole nine yards, but for every one we kill there’s another one that wants in.

Anyway, at least i’m up.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/10/106640112916401501/

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A few nights ago i had a peculiar dream, of Ross and i in Texas, me improbably crashing on Alison’s floor, though she seemed somewhat perplexed that she was suddenly responsible to house anyone who has linked to her for over a year, and Ross and i missing our plane back to Philadelphia, and me losing him in the endless depths of an airport bar.

Lately i feel fertile; full of potential. Two songs have come now, in the last week, appearing at odd hours like a radio stations that suddenly tune themselves in as you are driving across state lines, one at work just after lunch, the other at 4am on Saturday night. They sound as though they came from different channels — in fact, the one sounds like it came from two or three different channels all by itself. You’ll hear soon enough; Season Four of CK’s one-of-a-kind feature Trio debuts next week.

I have five days of corporate life ahead of me before this internship, my last, is over. I have become so used to its daily routine, so much more daily and routine than any other that came before, that it seems impossible that i won’t have to keep tying my tie by eight a.m. so that i can make it onto my bus, or swing my chair around with a nudge of my knee when i arrive at my desk in the morning.

Yesterday i welcomed Kate and Lindsay back to the contiguous United States with glee, saying that it had seemed like they had been gone on their paradise vacation forever, and as i said it i knew that it was true. The sensation was just like being young … how everything seemed at once brand new and as if it could last forever. Wonderful bubbling laughter, awful nauseous sickness, and ever just simple sleep.

I think i am broken, my growth impossibly stunted, because i seem to have never outgrown that feeling, and so i remained convinced that i would live forever in that dream airport, in this state of fertility, or at this desk for the rest of my life and i think that maybe some little piece of me will be left behind at each of those places, imagined, perceived, or actual, until i arrive at where i’m really meant to be.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/09/106365163105071240/

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I’ve given up on trying to explain why i’m late to work. It’s not as if i’m not one to make excuses, because i am, It’s just that sometimes i know even before i speak that i’d be better off keeping my mouth shut.

Today i was ten minutes late. When asked, i gave the easy answer: i missed my bus. However, i know exactly why i was really late: because of my hamster.

Last night i was kept tossing and turning by something scratching my leg. Was it my blanket? Did i leave guitar strings on the bed? After almost an hour of intermittent sleep i finally sat up and flung the covers from my bed only to find Peaches contentedly nibbling on a sunflower seed.

A chase ensued, with me toppling chairs and guitars in my fury, and she hiding underneath any conveniently low piece of furniture. I finally nabbed her and tossed her back into her cage. Afterwards i settled down to try to salvage a good night’s sleep … which only lasted forty minutes before i again found myself playing the part of a rodent track-and-field stadium.

I promptly picked her up by the nape of her neck, tossed her into her cage through her still-open door, shut it, wired it closed with twist-ties (which she immediately began to chew through), and then constructed a clumsy (but effective) barricade against the front of her cage using a bandana, half-assembled habitrail tubes, and an empty box of tissues.

It was only then, totally awake and wired from my duty as impromptu hamster warden and too hot and bothered to get comfortable on my mattress, that i dragged my pillow and sheet to the floor in front of my air conditioner.

My rest was marred by my constant state of alertness whenever i heard a potential nibble or imagined something brushing up against my leg. This, in addition to the fact that i was now across the room from my alarm clock and under a mess of machine-white noise, led to my eventual awakening, naked and unshaven, at 7:59 this morning — a mere thirty-one minutes away from the time that i am supposed to arrive at my desk. And, despite the fact that i was dressed and out of the house in a record nine minutes, i still missed the bus that would have delivered me to work on time, leaving me stranded on the corner of 44th and Chestnut for another ten minutes — enough time to catch another bus, and not coincidentally the amount of time i was late.

Like i said, it was my hamster.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106010434685880372/

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What is it with me today? I am awake, but soft and blurry around the edges, of my vision and of my voice. People keep asking me if I’m sick or what I have been yelling about, and I tell them that it was just a fun weekend spent alternatingly drunk and in the back of a Camaro, but I don’t think that’s really where my voice went.

They haven’t ever heard my voice, my real voice, how I would speak if I dropped the pretense and the humor and spoke from the gut instead of just from the inside of my mouth. I slip it in sometimes, in a conversation about our mailing boards or a redesign, dropping down to my real register halfway through the sentence to see if it makes them flinch.

It doesn’t.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/07/105768807790145752/

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I am not a car guy, but this weekend i found myself catching my breath when I was first introduced to Ross’s gold 1967 Camaro in full daylight, its top just finishing its retreat to the back hood. We rode in the Camaro almost exclusively the entire time we were in New Hampshire. My favorite part was the looks… at gas stations and stop lights, wide eyed, covetous, keenly appraising the four of us in the car (five, after we were joined by Martha).

I had never been to New Hampshire before. The names and numbers of the highways that got us there were meaningless to me, made all the more alien by the day-early fireworks that exploded in the night all around us. The state itself was equally as foreign; different slang, different prices, a different way of driving. Vehicles on the Maine beach’s parking lot all open and empty, the Philadelphian in me feeling almost compelled to vandalize them for being so trusting.

It felt more real than Philadelphia, though, as if the commonality of an experience makes it less like reality. Like I was a trendy kid eschewing the new pop album to embrace indy critical darling, only with New Hampshire instead of something off of Barksuk records and irreverent, heathenish, treasonous wit rather than any kind of nationalistic spirit. I still wondering the same wonder: is it good because I like it, or because no one else I know does?

Friday morning I woke up at eight twenty seven, so that by the time I rubbed my eyes, stretched, and walked to the kitchen it was eight thirty. Time for work; not even alien surroundings can convince my brain that it is not time to communicate efficiently at half past eight. Saturday saw me rise at the same time, again unprovoked and exactly.

I resolved that over ninety percent of my liquid intake would be alcohol. I was that guy, the guy from the big city turning a peaceful sub-urban vacation into a bender. I was that guy, drink in hand at all times, but even while i went through the motions i knew that it wasn’t me; it felt exactly the same as playing a snooty New York writer trapped on a Pacific Island for my acting class: i knew the paces to go through, but I never felt connected to the character.

On Sunday morning, hung over and ready to head home at eight thirty on the nose, I finally felt like I understood the both of us; we were using a change in location to attempt to focus our image, but without any normal references to work from we were skewed, suddenly out of control and unlike the selves that we had grown accustomed to.

If New England can at once transform and fascinate me to such a degree, how would I react to Alabama or California, England or Denmark, India or Australia? How frightening to think that all of my weakness and confidence might stem from a place outside instead of a place inside, and that a simple change of scenery could alter or even invert it.

Not the sort of independence I had intending to be commemorating, but fitting nonetheless.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2003/07/105760143610820933/