I was 17, a junior in high school, when I started to write. I remember it well. At Christmas break that year I had reached the chard end of my rope. I hated school, hated the boredom of life, and hated my home life. I was full of hate. I begin to write out this hate, this anger. And it helped. It purged me. The more I wrote the more the need to write grew in me.

In January I showed some of my writing (mostly poetry) to one of my teachers. She liked it and offered to spend study hall with me to give me space to write and some guidance. We would go over poems and writers. She would ask me what I thought the poems were about and explained how she read it and what she concluded from it. It was the process in where I began to understand nuances of writing and punctuation. One day she asked me to bring in a poem by a writer I liked. I told her I had no idea. I had no books of poetry, no names of poets to look up. We agreed on the next best thing: song lyrics. I went home and had to choose lyrics of a song to show her the next day.

For me at the time the band was easy – counting crows. The song was tougher, but I decided on ‘round here’. We were sitting in a long fold out table when I passed her the page of lyrics. I watched her face as she read them. Her expectations were probably low, but her face lit up. It was a weird sort of revelation. As she was reading and understanding the lyrics it felt like she was understanding a part of me. She went from impressed to moved. It was in that moment I knew why I wanted to be a writer. I knew the affect I wanted to have on people through it. That relating/understanding connection.

Since that point I have gone through the spectrum of responses to my writing. From the apathic, to those thinking I suck, to the embrace and understanding of what I have crafted. And that is the aim. To have an emotional reach to a person. Writing is my expression. I write to connect to people.

Okay. New commitment. I will blog once week beginning now.

I have been listening to and watching a lot of Nirvana’s music lately. It comes in strong waves for me. I won’t listen to them for months and then I HAVE to listening to them ALL THE TIME.  There is a romanticism and an idealism to Kurt Cobain that I have always admired. It is painful to think about sometimes: he was a tortured artist that could never quite untangle himself from that.

This seems like a problem you can live with through your twenties, but once you hit thirty you should have grown out of it. Maybe that is the fear of turning thirty; that upon reaching that age you are supposed to have it all figured out, that you aren’t allowed any more mistakes.  At not-quite-29 I have only just begun to think about this. I hope, and am planning on, being at an elevated place in the year plus I have until 30. I don’t think I am afraid or shamed about reaching the age. It is good to reach milestones only when you allow yourself to reflect back and plan ahead. What is the cliché, ‘the end is a beginning’?  There are a few things I want to adjust rather than change, and I know if I start now by next summer I will have everything corrected.

The other part of 30 (the one that I think about maybe the most) is the idea of family, kids, ect. I am by no means looking to settle down, but it is the age of that. Friends are engaged or in serious relationships. The bars hold 22 or 23 years olds who are a little creeped out when you tell them your age. This happened to me a year or so ago. I was at this bar dancing with this girl. We had a few drinks and were getting along well. After the second drink she asked me how old I was. I told her 27…she was 22. Now I will never believe in the gapping distance of five years. My grandfather and grandmother were 17 years apart and it has always been my thought that is how my life will turn out. But this girl freaked out a little. Did she think I was younger? Was she really appalled by the differences in age? That seemed to be the catalyst for her leaving, and with her not returning it was all I was left with to make a conclusion. Safe to say I haven’t talked to many girls in bars since. (which is probably not a bad thing).

I have been listening/watching Nirvana’s Live and Loud while writing this. It is a concert that was on MTV in 1993 or something, when In Utero was released. Always searching, never really finding, connecting but never able to stay connected, afraid of failure, shamed by success. A neurotic’s, artist’s, landscape. I can relate.

“I’m so tired i can’t sleep” pennyroyal tea – nirvana

            My mood is evolving from distant and angry to awake and upbeat. I have searched long and attempted many different theories on how to break through depression. It is a chronic, heredity disease in my family. I haven’t, as of yet, allow it prolonged control in me. The chill of the wind is reverting the progress, though. I have been waiting over ten minutes, and when you have keys to enter a building your patience is limited. I reach in my pocket for my cell to check the time when I see him.

            There is no quickness to his walk. This is in part due to his disregard, his laziness, and to his 350 pound frame. If you ever wondered why a cow might die if you pushed them over he is the human example of it.

“Sorry, I had to get my coffee and bagel.” Dunkin Donuts bag firmly in hand I don’t say anything as I unlock the door. Arguing to reach an agreement or a conclusion is always worthwhile, but neither will ever come talking with him. This is a knowledge that took long to accept, but now that I am there it is unwavering.

            The day starts out empty. No customers. The store is kind of trashed from the night before. Our District Manager has been giving us a headache lately, so there is a list of her ‘To Do’s’. There is anger in me as I look it over. The inherent respect I granted her has been chastised away by her utter incompetence. Most of the list consists of things that are either already done or non-existent. Such as, ‘Make sure the cleat wall is per plan’ Done. ‘Check to see if there is a sign for the skateboards’. There isn’t. These are things she should know – or at least find out before telling us to do them. The thought here has always been that she simply needs to fill up a list so those above her see she is evaluating her stores. However, if those higher ups were doing their jobs they should see through her bullshit. They never do.

            I hate this company. It is forming into an encompassing, resounding type that spins me to the point of vertigo. The store manager is off today. I am relieved. Her moods have been a pendulum lately. Maybe there is truth to never leaving behind the mentality of high school. But some sort of professionalism should be a requisite for management. At first I was amused at her drunken, obsessive tales. However, a girl who is a tease is only more annoying when she is relaying the details of her teases.

            There are storm clouds on the horizon. A new supervisor has started to train and news that internal theft is about has started circulating. The decline in sales is also a concern. This store would be in the top ten of the company to close first if things continue this way.  I don’t know. I may get out before any axes come down. I may not be able to. I will try and lay back and absorb the environment. Even in drama there is humor. Just like there is tragedy in love. I will find the lines in between and seek the meaning there.

I needed something to mellow me out today. Work and home were causing aggravation. And despite popular belief something or someone can CAUSE aggravation. They can change your mood; the part of the equation that you control is whether or not to leave these situations. So I left. I went home and put on some Counting Crows music. Calmed myself right down.

This year has flown by. It was kind of a weird year. I spent a month and a half unemployed, spent three months as a manager at one store and being in an assistant in an another, which had me working some crazy 60 and 70 hour weeks. It all lead me back to where I started, pretty much. I seem to branch out for a minute which enables me to inch out in the grand picture. I got myself into some debt too, which is weird. I have never done that. But school, car problems, and such hurt me. I tried to re-connect with some old friends but that hardly got off jump street before crashing into the ether of the priors failures of them.

My novel continues to be a long process that I have not been dedicated to enough. I plan on becoming so though. I have a routine mapped out for next year. Things in it: writing, gym, learning Italian, reading Bio’s of all the presidents, prepping a short film. I am looking forward to it all. 2009 sounds way too old. I am stuck in 1999. But there we are. Onward and upward.

                                                                                                                                                             On a historic day when America moved leaps forward and elected an African American president, there still lingered one huge divide in civil equality: gay marriage. Voters in California, Arizona, and Florida selected to ban gay marriage. California is particularly interesting. $74 million dollars was spent, on both sides, to promote their view (with a big portion of this coming for the Mormons of Utah). This is the most ever spent on a social issue. Come election day, when Obama carried the state, California voted 52% in favor of a ban on gay marriage; changing a ruling by the California supreme court earlier in the year. Obama won with 93% of African Americans voting for him. And on the eve of a great victory for racial equality 70% of African Americans voted to ban gay marriage.

There are stories of the next day. Marriages stopped midway while officials made calls and tried to figure out what they should do. Maybe what is worst then not having a right is having a right revoked at the moment you need it. California has 18,000 married gay couples whose status is in a state of limbo. Currently, there are no plans to make their licenses invalid, but the option of doing that has been coyly keep.

Arizona is interesting in its own right. A state that in 2006 voted, not for gay marriage, but against a BAN on gay marriage, reversed it decision this time. The amendment was defeated by Arizona’s legislators, which forced it back on the ballot this year.

It is hard to know how to react to this. I am neither black nor gay, yet have the guilt and blame from both, and have empathy for both. In 2004 Massachusetts’ court made same-sex marriage legal, and Connecticut will make gay marriages legal next week due to an October ruling. It is forbid in every other state save New York, who will recognize a gay marriage performed elsewhere and Rhode Island which is sticking to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” philosophy.  

We have come so far, but still have many millions before we sleep.

                                                                                                                                                            Love is absence in me most of the time. I live with the belief that connections to people exist; they are not created. This leads to a string of short lived conversations concluding in the acceptance of being non-adhesive. I feel I am jaded beyond reproach. Lost into a distance so great that to look back into it would vanish the specks of hope remaining in me. I wasn’t always like this. I wasn’t. I use to see the good.  

Moments fold onto each other and shape time. Retracing the constellations of my past I can clearly see where I became distorted. There is anger in me now for allowing it to be so apparent, yet being so blind to it. Singularly the events push ones growth. Together they drag it and you are helpless. I fell for someone. I gave her my trust. Given the complexity of the circumstances this was foolish, but not unreciprocated. The error in judgment came from not understanding the repercussions of the fallout. This led to the subsequent failure of the next relationship, which led to a period of abandoning of principals. I have lived mostly hibernated since. Treading water like a hedgehog, praying for a shadow to justify everything I am feeling.

I have found comfort in all this. My mind has settled and almost balanced. It had been headache ridden and plagued with vertigo for far too long. But the last year has brought cracks into my shelter; friends and lovers becoming engaged and married. The fragility and falsity of it is palpably. I am happy for them yet remain wistful. I have begun to second guess my apprehension. I am fading to numb and need to fix something if I do not want to fall prey to it. I don’t. I want feel the intensity of love in the press of sunlight. I want to collapse silently into trust unquestioned. These ideas have become illusions to me. But maybe I am beginning to believe again.

It is clear there is something fundamentally flawed with the structure of our economy. The greed of Wall Street and the ineptitude our finical institutions have brought us to the brink of collapse. This seems basically to be the fault of defaulted mortgages (and the amazing amount of times those mortgages were sold). Because of this we the taxpayers have to give up $700 billion dollars (borrowed for China and they our tax money will be fed back to pay them off. It is two horrible situations rolled into one). The reason that was given to get the nation’s backing was that without the bailout our economy would indeed collapse and all our savings, 401k’s, and social security would disappear. Most of us saw through this and called, emailed, faxed our thoughts/concerns to the senate and congress only to be ignored. But it doesn’t seem to stop there. There has been talk about a bailout for people who cannot afford their mortgages or a ‘renegotiation of terms’. I have nothing against people owning homes (the “American Dream”), but I do have a problem when my tax money is going to bailout those too stupid to understand what they are getting themselves into, or who refuse to live with in their means. This is not my fault or problem and should not be a determent toward me.

I will admit I am angry and bitter at this. A few years ago I was out of work for less then a month and was denied unemployment. The sum I was entitled to was around $500, and did not get for what basically comes down to a technicality. I was angry for a while. This did not sink me, but it annoyed me. This was something I had been paying into. This was supposed to be a safety net when we fall on hard times. Since then I have known and interacted with people who use and abuse this system and others. Welfare mom’s with better cell phones then me, guys making more on unemployment then I am busting my ass at work.

These experiences have formed my opinion that these programs need to be examined and structured better. It has also led me to the belief that our economy’s structure should not allow the banks to stretch themselves so far with bad loans that they cannot keep themselves afloat. I understand the need to bailout the banks and, to a degree, the bad mortgages. But this should not negatively affect me. A home owner with a crappy cell phone, who has gone long stretches without cable, who have not been on a vacation in eight years, who have never been late on a mortgage payment and who have had money to help his family when needed. Someone who have tried his best to relay on himself. The onetime I asked for help I was denied. That is fine. But why is it fair when there are others who are allowed to abuse the system? Why is it fair when others who over extend themselves to the point of losing their homes are bailed out by my tax money?

I want universal health care. I want college scholarships for our youths. I am more then willing to pay my taxes. I understand why they are necessary. I just wish there would be leadership that would step up and create a structure that benefits me, not mock me for trusting them.   

In what was a clear attempt to copy my big Sis, in junior high and high school I created journals for myself. They were the most basic accounts of the events of a sheltered little boy. But the amazing thing that came from them was not attained from the initial writing, but from the subsequent reading. It was there I began to become aware of the stupidity, foolishness, insecurities, and genius that I had in me. Those journal entries soon became analysis of my day, my reactions to me and the people around me. The problem I would have is consistence. There would be gaps of months that made me think life was either too boring or too encompassing to be written down. I have often though the purpose of a blog was this age’s form of a journal. Isn’t that how this started? In 1996 it certainly was. Then came news web sites, advertising and “professional” bloggers. Instead of the freeflow of thoughts and ideas it became a forum of essays. Spellchecked and run through an editor.

I get this, and am fully behind the progression. I just hope there are still people out there using blogs to understand what they are thinking. As a way to questioning what they have heard and told to believe. People who are using it to write accounts of there days that they can look back on and grow from reading.

I have been derelict in holding myself accountable. Life is meant to be lived which means you are suppose to grow. I stall, stagnant. Be it because of suck jobs that I sell my soul to, or wasteful unhealthy doses of depression. The ability to shake free from these is an accomplishment I have only met intermittingly. I understand that is the goal. The starting point from where everything else can be attained. I am a few weeks away from, again, trying to find balance. I am not at a juncture where the correct road is in front of me. So I am left with deciding which will one will not lead me further away.

In this economy no job is safe. Hell no savings are safe. It is a flexural world. May we all become contortionists.

I want a dreary morning to look for old records in Cambridge, which turns in to a sun burning day I can walk along the Charles River with friends. I want to take the midnight train home, alone, and stay up all night listening to my newly bought records and writing. I want to know if I call she’ll answer. There are lights strung out over the leafless branches outside my window. I wonder why. Am I paying for this illumination? I know it is Friday only because it was mentioned to me my life is something like a run on sentence. No really beginning and no real end. That is the definition of a circle, isn’t it? Living a circle cannot be healthy. I think I hate retail. It is an inconsistent headache. Headaches should at least be nice enough to keep a schedule. Obama and Clinton are raising something like $100 million a month for ads and such. Can’t we do the same thing to rebuild New Orleans? Or to start energy saying projects? Instead of mandating a tax why can’t they ASK for a DONATION (hell make it tax deductible) for a specific purpose. America donates more money then any other country. Why can’t we use that power for ourselves? Or does receiving money comes with an unacceptable accountability tag? Far be it from us to know where our money is going and what it if affecting. Okay. Sleep time. Sleep perchance to dream..

You need not mention the waste of the last two weeks. Detox is never real productive. Except for the whole cleansing thing. I feel like someone who was forced to drink all that gagging liquid before a rectal examine. I had hopes and dreams and plans and ideas. I pissed it away with distilled water and a requirement of twelve hours of sleep (and the occasional nap). My wounds feel moist. The venom has been sucked out of me. I saw the hypocrisy from the outside the other day and thanked my alarm clock, which will never again be set at 4am, for that glorious perspective. The future is vague, but with promise. Which doesn’t mean anything really, cause I no longer believe in promise. Too many things with promise have resulted in failure/disappointment/Colorado/x-best friends/anger/bloodshed/dilated pupils (including myself) to ever buy stock in promise. But it is new. And new is better then old. And if this new becomes old then a new new will have to be found. Not the best option perhaps, but a warranty is never offered. Dog eat dog. The best man is never the groom. But always the one who gets screwed. I am getting educated though it all though. got plans to keep it going through the summer too. Kinda proud of that. Monday chapter 11 or something of year three begins. And it was a beautiful day…that turned into a hurricane….so full of love…but now it’s just pain…all my hope has become shame…anyways…I miss some already. Never got to say goodbye to a few. I wanted to head up to boston but never did. Today was good. The scattered started coming home and filling in spaces. My thought is july. Yeah, july. I had said march, but now I say july. I got through chapter three finally. Took near 6 months? DAMN. It’s good though. FASTER PUSSYCAT! A fun site will be coming soon. For the meantime check out redbubble.com/people/andrewwooster for those inclined new poetry will be posted there. I am digging Picasso recently. He reminds me of melting wax statues. Did you hear the song, ‘I shall be free’ by bob dylan? I want to ask him when and maybe even spit in his face and call him an asshole for lying to those who want to believe. Cult-like. Music is a cult. Alcohol is a cult. Love is a cult. and I am oh so susceptible.  I often think the one thing that balances me was taken to work on a farm away from civilization. how do you find stability in insanity? I suppose the nobel prize awaits the answer. born into Einstein’s puzzle and I am no genius. the dew of the night makes drops on the branches and like Chinese water torture they fall. making tomorrow’s puddle to show us our reflection. but will we be too afraid to look?