Well, first, I see myself in a corner office...

Last night, as my mom sat hopeful but lugubrious on a redeye scheduled to land in Virginia at 9 am, I found myself considering the miscellany of choices & non-choices, of paths & detours & full stops, which one takes to reach a certain point in their life, & about how varied & disjointed most of these steps are. Raise your hand those of you who knew they would be where they are now five years ago. No? No, & this is universally known, this duality of life: plan all you want but be expectant of those utterly uncalled for twists & turns which waylay all your hard work & put you on another path altogether. How odd then that the universality of this doesn't make it that much easier to accept; that these surpries in life still well, surprise us.
       My mom is temporarily relocating to Virginia to distance herself from a homelife unhappy, a life which has established in her a singular & simple modus operandi to cope with her unhappines: drink. Drink, & drink a lot. One of the last things she said to me before she got on her plane was, "Every morning, every morning, the first thought on my mind, it's there before I even wake up, is pour yourself a drink." So after living like this for six months she's off to live with her sister, taking the steps she has decided are necessary to rid herself of this disease. Those with tuberculosis head to dryer climates, bedwetters sleep on plastic sheets & my mom goes east. I'm proud of her, most middle-aged drunks take at least a year, if not longer, to realize that they have a problem, then it takes another few months to come up with a plan, & a few more to act on it. She acted quick but she's also got a fairly stubborn & call-it-as-we-see-it, no bullshit family.
       Where was I going w/this? Five years? Where I'll be in five years?!? Christ, for those & others like myself, dashing, artistic & judgemental hooligans in their quarter-life crisis, it's more like "where'm I gonna be in a year?" Five years ago I was living in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, in my parent's basement. I was doing odd painting jobs for the town scrooge who owns every other building you drive past on the main drag & spending 8+ hours in a local grease-spoon, waxing philosophic & reading Kerouac. Of the people I spent all my waking hours with in 2000, only one still speaks with me, & even with him it's pretty rare. The only parallels between the me of 2000 & the me now is my shoe size & my stupid haircut. Even considering the short time span of a year, it's tough to explain &/or justify how I've reached where I am today. 7th street studio apartment, Wild Oats, b**r & vino, no money, credit card: "just in case", [crappy flings, crappy sex, look for fulfillment in my kitchen], early stages of band, plans for France, ticket bought w/credit card, save money, move in w/bandmate & old friend Brian, Jared Smith [coworker, desire to drum, summer friend Aliza Fones], 47 Monroe St., no more money but more b**r, shortbread, cook, drink 22's by the river w/impressionable girls, cook cabbage soup, band: four piece, frisbee @ alton baker, too too much vino, Bobby Seale, Alpha-Bits, Thanksgiving, Laid-off, refund ticket, Dermot Healy, New Year's, Jeremy TerrellerreT, Hot Scot from OK, "the rules of engagement"... ok, I'm done. Could make a fun chart outta all that though...
       Well, wherever I might have been leading into with that first paragraph has been lost. Something about the craziness of life. Whatever. I'm just happy to still have a fucking mohawk.

"if the me of then could see me now,
I'm sure he wouldn't listen up anyhow,
He'd say 'I knew you when you used to matter',
But I've known him since he wasn't so easily flattered."