Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Philly

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On on empty stomach and an hour out of the hospital i somehow decided that i needed to take a walk — if for any reason then to remind myself that there is such a thing of fresh air and that most streets are longer than the distance from my hospital bed to the elevator bank. So i walked.


Comparatively, my stay in the hospital will shrink and shrink away until it is finally nothing from a distance, and i swung out each leg in a wide arc in front of the other to add to that distance as i marched down Walnut street. The distance between here and class, that i am dreading the walk of right at this instant, evaporated away and i kept walking. Charging. In my head i was at a solid jog, feeling the in out in of my breath and watching as i passed everyone around me. Honestly, i couldn’t tell you if i was jogging or not.

I got past Drexel and suddenly i found myself at the highway; it borders the Schuylkill on the west side and metro Philadelphia rises in glittering tiers on the other side. Feet planted firm on the bridge, my city looked like an artist’s rendering of itself: flat and unchanging … detailed but with no depth. I don’t know how long i stood there staring at it staring back at me before i walked towards it. I expected to come up against a translucent sort of wall where i could run my hand against the shimmering image of the city and try to press through, but before i realized it i was past it and inside the image i had observed.

Somehow it was different. I still had that flavor of hospital in me, the tiny lines of adhesive from all of the tape that held in my IVs, the ID tag on my wrist. I hadn’t thought to take it off, honestly.


Every word i said came out the way it wasn’t meant, and i’m wondering if i was really ready to leave.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7634418/

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AKA Music also has something blaring very loudly when i am shopping there. The first time i ever walked in they had Keep It Like a Secret playing much louder than i had ever heard it, and i took it as a good omen and proceeded to spend $100 dollars there. Subsequent trips have produced equally loud music and large expenditures.

The music is always especially loud in the back by the used section because one of the waist-high speakers is located right next to used soundtracks. That’s about where Rabi had gotten in her browsing, while i had drifted over to where ‘Y’ and ‘I’ face each other — alternately looking for Hum and Neil Young’s Decades. I was saying something, and then she was saying something, and then the music turned off and i found that we were standing in the middle of a record store screaming something at each other from across and aisle in a (suddenly not-so-) futile attempt to be heard over non-existent blaring music.

“Rabi, we’re shouting!”


It only felt a little like Clue, but everyone was watching us and we were yelling something stupid about records and it was hilarious. I left with an Ivy record, a Tori single that i quite enjoy, classic NIN from $4, and a Bright Eyes EP at a Rabi approved price. Rabi left with stuff i didn’t even vaguely recognize the name of. Otherwise, there was a lot of walking, kvetching about lemonade, talking about crushes and of ears, and giggling. Oh, and the couple on the bench next to ours at Rittenhouse did a lot of making out. All in all, it was a wonderful evening.

The trees were lit up with colored balls that we spotted from blocks away, and as we spoke my gaze kept wandering away from our wooden bench and out into the forest of glowing spheres. I can’t believe i’ve only met her four times. I can’t believe it’s been an entire year.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/7380399/

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I am back in Philadelphia, complete with my newly mellowed red hair and my newly mellowed personality that i have yet to assign a color to and this newly hollow ache for the tiny slice of else i had this weekend. Normalcy and a different city and walking around and being happy — things that i can’t really necessarily apply to Drexel and Philadelphia, but i try. Today i walked into the Admissions Office and everyone fawned over my hair for a solid hour before i got to do any work. Last night i got 100% on my first test of the quarter. Baby steps on a long walk.


There is a door in the frame of my room and it feels so very different to shut it and be insulated from the rest of the apartment except for the hi frequency bleed-through from Lindsay’s room downstairs. I am cocooned in my warm-lit green and white and brick, slowly working through my stack of Boston music and making a point of looking forward to tomorrow and the next day. Because, even though i might not see a point in either of them, somewhere past there there is a day that i want to be on and i’ve got to live the inbetween to get there. That’s how getting places works; you have to endure the inbetweens.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/10/6423711/

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While i rampantly kvetch, whine, and moan about some aspects of the blogging community and its audience, i often forget that i am a member of many subsets of said community. One of those is being Drexel Blogger, and seeing as we are a sparsely populated group i am often the easiest to find. I began to rebut the Noisy Boy of last post about journaling as a communicative act in the middle of the hallway outside our classroom and when i brought up my involvement with the community he said “yeah, i know.” As it turned out, though he didn’t necessarily bring the topic up to bother me he was fully aware that i might have something to say about it seeing as it directly applied to me.

Rabi and I were talking about popularity and how it lends itself to affecting our real life, and she mentioned that she clears her history on public computers at school so no one stumbles onto Wockerjabby, yet she still finds it in the history of a lot of computers. I’ve never done any such thing — i figured that hardly anyone just randomly stalks the history of their public laptop and if they do i could easily win myself a new reader. Lately i’ve checked out a wide array of our Creese Center laptops, and almost all of them quick-completed my address before i could finish typing it. I didn’t think anything of it at the time…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/10/6404477/

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Everything is slightly under control. Or, i keep telling myself that. Whether it’s true or not is not going to matter until Tuesday because i am escaping Philadelphia for the weekend. It’s quite insane, actually, but it’s just about the only insane thing i’ve tried to do since i got out of my own house, so i’m enjoying it. Meanwhile, my mother wants to know when i’m leaving. When i’m getting back. What my flight numbers are. The number the place where i’m staying. What train am i taking to the airport. My answer to her went something like: Hello, get the fuck out of my life.

Typically i can tell her to back off and she does – this is a typical dance for us. But, lately i’ve really let my guard slip and suddenly my mother is in my face every time we see each other. All i let slip is that i’m going though a slightly depressive few weeks (which i’ve been having on and off for years and have never been so stupid to say anything about it to her), and then she sees the tiniest pipe in the world sitting on our table and suddenly every question is to the Nth degree. And, so, here i am whining to you about it instead of doing my Creative Writing Homework.

I just… hate her in a lot of ways. Aside from how awfully retarded my social growth was, i am a perfectly capable 20 year old … i hold down a huge academic scholarship, i’ve had a regular job ever since i started school two years ago, and this is my second year living on my own in an apartment without really asking her for any help with money. And, what really gets me, is that she has no concept of any of this… if i tell her that i can’t see her on a Wednesday because i have so much work due for Thursday she just stares at me with these blank eyes asking “Well, this will only take an hour or two.” If i complain that books are too damned expensive this term she tries to slip me twenties all day, but is then amazed when i was under the impression that she was going to buy me a package of toilet paper at Walmart.

Same old shit. Going to college in Philadelphia was at once the best idea and the biggest mistake i ever made. I wish so hard that i had chosen Boston instead, and then i’d be far away from her grasp and she couldn’t help but believe i was capable because she wouldn’t be able to lay a hand on me. But, here she is always able to track me down and find the chinks in my armor, no matter how small.


Sure, that’s what mom’s are for. Excuse me for not appreciating it just this once.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/10/6288825/