dwell

actually a few steps closer to being an internet 'tard.

step 1: upload boring commuting video to youtube
step 2: tell my friends about it on some "social media platform"
step 3: ??

yes, i have a very long commute to work.  VERY LONG.  i'd like to post some nice videos of the golden gate bridge, marin headlands, nice roads around SF and maybe even my commute home!  i know, exciting stuff! thrilling even.


 

it was a first for me, helping her pack.  not the packing itself, and not with her; we had moved together over 15 times, but this would be the first time that i helped her move and i wasn't moving along with her.  i don't remember a lot of places that we had been to, i don't know, maybe i just started remembering the bad times we had.

it's funny, the older i get, the more vivid some memories become, but the less positive i am that these are real.  it's some twisted heisenberg uncertainty principle: the very act of remembrance might be causing it to be synthesized out of all the shit tv i've been building up in my system.  for instance:  laying on that carpet in eugene, oregon, after her and my dad fought again, and this, for the final time.  we've moved out of the house and into some apartment.  her crying on the floor.  me laying next to her.  just seeing her prone, straight out, like a heaving corpse.  we had my little captains bed -- the one with the raised mattress and the drawers underneath it on one side and the other side just a sprawling cavern (it was obviously designed to be pushed up against a wall) and i would store my toys down there and pretend it was a cave where i would play with my stuffed animals, safe away from my histrionic mom.  except we don't have any tools to screw the bolts down, so we're just laying on the floor as if we gave up on the whole thing and the mattress is an unacceptable compromise.  i'm laying next to her and she's weaving some story about how my real mom, mei lin, was her friend in college and had me and couldn't keep me and so my "mom" took care of me ever since.  and i'm feeling bad for her because, man, i'd hate to get stuck with me!  but then i'd laugh because i didn't believe her,  she'd insist it was real, but that she'd never leave me like my dad left me.  and i'd still laugh because wait, it wasn't really real, she was my mom, not this "mei lin", right?  and this would go on for child-hours until one of us got tired of the game.

those years, we would drive up and down highway 1 or 101 between oregon, san francisco, and southern california as she tried to decide which location felt right.  i tired of making new friends and vowed never to make new friends again since i'd just be saying good bye to them in a year or less.  my resolve wouldn't last long because i wanted to be accepted no matter who, or what, or where.

and now this 1 bedroom apartment that we had moved to back in '89, this one she'd been leaving in all by herself since '92 when i was kicked out and i started my own moving adventures, now i'm helping her pack her computer and monitor.  for some reason she doesn't feel comfortable unhooking it and wants to watch me do it, even though everything else is packed and being hauled away by the shiesty movers who are charging her double what they quoted her over the internet (but that's a whole 'nother rant).  and we're talking, communing, like old friends; like people who took care of each other for 15+ years when it seemed like no one else really wanted to be a part of their lives; like lover who turned into haters who turned into just that person you "once knew" but all your friends talk shit about whenever you awkwardly bump into each other at the same party.  we're having a good time; i find out she likes bollywood movies even more than i do and before i unhook everything, we get on youtube and we're sharing clips of movies or songs that we've enjoyed and horribly mangling some hindi names and finding out later that we're just piecing together parts of real names and laughing enjoying the time and i'm looking up at the wall clock but it's no longer there, nothing is, it's heading out on it's way 'cross the country.

and i tell her i have to get to work early the next day; disassemble the cable mess i started back when i was a 15 year old, and pack it up.  she praises me for my space use and improvising of the leftover packing materials.  i tell her i've had a lot of practice.

 if i knew how to write short stories, i'd write a short story about a competitive eater and how he tackles some insane, impossible task like eating the worlds biggest meatball (225+ lbs) before it rots and then how it irrevocably changes his life for the worse.  and then on his deathbed, he'll say in a regretful voice tinged with profound pathos: "i shouldn't have eaten The Meatball".