This Is Your Signal

Thursday night is really the first time in a week I ever get a break. From Sunday night to this point it's pretty much straight assignments, most of the time.

At least we had Wednesday off. On Valentine's Day, of all days. Account of snow. There wasn't even that much; people were talking about it all Tuesday night, but I didn't believe that they would close the university on account of two or three inches of snow. But they did. I suppose people in Baltimore just aren't too good at dealing with that sort of thing. Either that, or it was because the snow iced over overnight; everyone was afraid to walk around outside Tuesday night and Wednesday. That's what you get for relative warmth and humidity, I suppose. Broken necks. I've been rather surprised at how many people will go out in this kind of weather without boots. Do they not have boots? Having grown up in Minnesota, I'd never live anywhere with any chance of snow without owning a pair of hiking boots, cheap or otherwise, and wearing them liberally. Actually, I just like hiking boots. I suppose you can justify most anything with the phrase, "having grown up in Minnesota..."

It was just as well we had Wednesday off. I woke up that morning knackered. The new schedule is getting me down, and I haven't really adapted to it yet (what schedule?). After reading the news on the school website, I climbed back into bed, woke up again a couple of hours later, finished my physics homework with a little help from Corinne the TA who emailed me Mathematica tips--speaking of whom, it seems as though every other guy in the class--excepting Andrew of course, then again who knows what the hell goes through his mind--has a crush on her, judging by the way so many of them constant try to chat her up, but who can blame them? That vivacity and husky heartland drawl will knock anyone right out of his shoes.

In any case, I believe I got a little sidetracked there...after physics I went for a walk in the woods, rather cold, Baltimore wind's vicious, amused myself for a bit by trying to not break through the ice when I walked on the snow. Then I came back and lay around dazed; caffeine addiction is getting me down.

The last thing I did Wednesday night was go with the band to Paper Moon--and split with Lisa. It had been a long time coming. At least we didn't do it like Morrissey did Andy Rourke. Or like J did Lou Barlow the first time around, although it almost did end up that way. We sat down for some dinner, and bullshitted for over an hour--vague complaints about band dynamics and dissatisfaction. Skirting the point endlessly and covering the detour with lots of really long words, as we tend to do. As the waitress brought us our check, it seemed Lisa was on the fast track to believing that either we were going to break up for good, or we were going to stick together and she was going to do the next two gigs with us. Miguel and Steffi seemed willing to let her think this. It was looking to become a Dinosaur Jr "breakup." However, I've never been in the business of handing out illusions, nor the one of watching them be handed out, so I took a deep breath and said...

"We don't know if we're going to go on. But if we do...you...can't be a part of it."

I had to say it twice. After I did, Lisa stood up and walked out the door. Without a word. Miguel and Steffi gaped at me from across the table.

"That was...interesting," Miguel said. They told me they were shocked I had the balls to say something like that. Someone had to. I was hoping I wouldn't have to, but in the end, I realized I did. Bitterness now or bitterness later. Best to get it over with.

If it weren't for my insistence, we might've never gone to talk with her at all--Miguel and Steffi seemed content with waiting until the day of the show to let her realize that we hadn't called her to come for rehearsal. Which seems completely diabolic. I was going to go to her house myself, and in retrospect probably should've, since now it just seems like we ganged up on her. Which I suppose we have always done, whether in songwriting or decision-making: the three of us were always the "inner circle" of the band--bullshit concept as it may be--and Lisa, like Diamond before her, had always been rather excluded. It was partially her fault, but a lot of it was ours. We just didn't leave her space to become a fully functional band member; as a result, we became dysfunctional as a whole. Excuses aside though, I was convinced I'd gained serious bad karma from doing that, and on the long walk home I kept thinking I'd get hit by a car skidding on the ice in retribution.

But I won't make the same mistake twice (well, thrice, anyway). The first day Monica walked in she busted open a pedal case that contained a Digitech Whammy, EHX Big Muff, and Boss DD-5. It wasn't all over right away, but it didn't take long. Maybe we'll get to do the atmospherics we wanted now that we don't have to accomodate someone singing all the time. Who knows; it's so hard to make music that I, myself, would want to listen to. Again, the choice between pursuing what you crave, and not hurting the ones you care about; sometimes it's like my mind and body aren't mine to control, their destructive tendencies already predetermined by their desires and hopes.

Does this mean I lack a conscience?

I have no clue how we're going to get anyone to show up at this gig next Wednesday. Fuck it all.

Last night (Thursday night) I dreamt I died. Now, there are those who would say it's impossible to dream of yourself dying--and 30 hours ago, I was one of them--but in this dream, I died.

It went like this: I was flying in a small business jet with various other people over a city at night time. The plane went out of control; we corkscrewed headlong into a dive, and I could see the landscape below spinning wildly through the windows. Then we crashed; in the dream, I saw nothing but blackness for a minutes, and distinctly understood that I had died. Then I "woke up" in a dimly-lit room reminiscent of a hospital ward, with its multiple beds; several other people woke up beside me. Perhaps they had been on the plane as well. I remember being angry that I would no longer be able to affect the lives of those people whom I cared about and who were still living--I was also sad, because I knew I would miss them, forever. I didn't seem to consider the fact that they will, one day, also die; all I felt was that I'd been plucked from the world I was in and dropped, like a small lizard, into a glass tank I could never climb out of.

Then God entered the room. He appeared to us as a grinning thirty-something yuppie-looking man. I can't remember what it was he said, but soon everyone else was laughing along with his jokes. For whatever reason, though, something was still bothering me; I made my way out of the room to wander the afterlife, which turned out to be a mostly-deserted city at night (perhaps the same one the plane had crashed in?). I'm assuming it was purgatory; it didn't seem to make a very good hell, and if it were heaven, well, that would be plain bogus.

I'm surprised I remember all that, actually, especially since I woke up in the middle of the night, in the dark, shortly after having that dream, and went back to sleep until the morning.

I wonder what it all means. Probably that I think about death too much. Probably true.

Went out tonight, but had only one drink. Two months of near-total sobriety and going. The question is, how long can I keep this up without taking a break from myself?