Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

walking

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This weekend beat the crap out of me, and it didn’t help any that i got in tonight at 8. A lot of stuff transpired in my head but nothing made it onto here. I was walking home from the guitar store on Friday night and i passed the shell of a dragonfly dead on the ground; it was a battered exoskelton with the middles of its wings gone so it was just like a stencil of itself. I had something really profound to say about that on friday, but now i just wish i had a camera with me.

This weekend was exactly that… perceptions frozen in perfect little moments that don’t really click in recollection. Yesterday i swam for three hours straight, and i haven’t swam for more than a minute or two in over two years. It wasn’t easy, and today i’m in all sorts of aches and pains because of it, but i feel slightly more in shape now. I am out of shape. This weekend is the first time i’ve been in revealing circumstances (swim trunks) and people haven’t remarked on my thinness; in fact, they said i looked as though i had gained some weight. People think i’m joking when i say i feel heavy, but i’m not joking. I feel like some kind of parody of a supermodel always saying she needs to lose a few more pounds, but i honestly can’t stand myself at this weight. I know, i have issues.

People think i’m kidding about issues. I remember as far back as age 7 or 8 not wanting to take my shirt off at the beach because i didn’t like how i looked in just swim trunks. In middle school i got changed in the corner of the locker room because i was afraid that i was chunky enough that i looked like i had breasts (definitely not a valid concern). In high school i wore hospital scrubs in gym so that no one would see the round hairy legs that betray the rest of my build as being something other than slim or wirey. There’s a backstage picture of me from senior year where i don’t have my shirt on, and it looks like you can fit two hands around my waist or roll a marble down the center of my chest and it would stop in the puddle of my belly-button in the middle of my unreally flat stomach. I love that picture. I know that i was unhealthy and too-thin and that it made people uncomfortable, but i felt comfortable and didn’t mind showing my body off. Now i hide it… people at parties remark that i am spectacularly unglamorous latlely and laugh it off when i seriously reply that i feel too fat. And now everyone else is comfortable with my body except for me, and i don’t know which i prefer.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4459359/

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South Philadelphia is a place everyone should have to experience on a post-rain sunday at thirty seconds to noon. Coming up the orange steps from the subway all i could hear was a cacophony of bing-bongs as all of the churches on all of the corners rang out their different tell-tale noon-rings at once, and i twisted them round and round in my head pulling forward sets to duet in perfect harmony and listening in one ear to others sounding like dueling blacksmiths.


After the perpetual rain all day yesterday the humidity is gone and Philadelphia just feels clean. I’m sure we’ll manage to muss that up tomorrow, but right now i want to go lie in my tiny rowhome backyard and smell that unmistakably city-smell of rain evaporating out of concrete sidewalks and watch the odd little weed with tiny blue flowers try to prove itself a rosebush through the cracks in the cement. Creeping up past the tiny china-cracks into the very bottom of a blue sky.

There are worse Sundays spent worse ways than this.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/06/4109963/

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The weather seems to have given up its bipolar behaviour and settled on a lovely middle ground, if only for a day or two. I happen to like spring, so i’m happy. Spring is strange for me, because i’m not especially a native to the season. I’m in my glory in the cool days of autumn and the chill of winter, but spring is just the yellow light before the green and heat of summer and it always makes me a little uneasy. It’s a season that moves… wind, rain, growth, warmth. Fall is so different, the way it settles down and leaves you with a polite dusting of snow and a christmas tree.


It’s hard to get a good read on spring (or any other season) while you’re in high school because it’s all skipping school to sit in your bedroom with the windows wide open or idly walking home even though you have much too much homework to do. School adds purpose to spring, because you’re trapped inside and you want to get out. Momentum. Somehow (i know how: through whining and bitching and using all of my connections to my best advantage) i wound up in class fall/winter and working in the spring/summer. So, i’ve got a building for me to escape, but it’s not really the same as school because i like it here and they pay me to do things i really don’t mind doing at all. So, i’ve lost all of my momentum; i am not out the door like a shot at 5pm to jump into a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt and do whatever people do in spring. I wouldn’t even know what they do anyhow.


So, yeah, spring finally feels like it’s here. Maybe i’ll go take a walk…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3379431/

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How often do you see people walking around playing guitar? I mean… not while you’re walking around and they’re sitting down, but when they have a guitar strapped on and they’re walking down the sidewalk across the street from you while singing. I usually sing on my way back home from the office, and i draw odd looks most of the time (i don’t really endeavor to sing under my breath…), so today i was coming back from a rehearsal with Gina (for our show in the Quad on the 3rd) and i decided to play a few songs. I had gotten through “Punk” and into the outro of “Under My Skin” when i was flagged down and invited into my favourite pizza place by the chef, who asked me to play a few songs. I obliged by ripping into a bouncy version of “Under My Skin” in an attempt to hold the attention of the various patrons (which really was just two sisters with one’s child, the cook and his mother, and two young boys splitting a pizza) and at the end they clapped. I’ve been clapped at dutifully, or patronizingly, but instead they kept clapping after i smiled and thanked them and reset my capo for the next song and started.


Thirty minutes and four songs later i left the pizza place having promised to return with my new CD next week and having been invited to play at a restaurant downtown on Monday. I got several odd looks as i entered the more residential neighborhood while playing “Crashing,” but just as many people smiled and nodded as i passed them with a strum. I think i’ve found a new way to spend Saturday afternoons…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3307282/

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Moments like that one are the reasons i talk to god whenever i’m walking alone at night and the sky is clear. I’m not entirely sure who’s really listening at any given moment, but as i said at the end of my littany tonight: “Thanks for clear skies and scaring away the muggers. Though, i might be doing that last bit all on my own.”

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/03/2768599/