Sitting in a room waiting for someone to come in knowing this person is about to get fired and they don�t has got to be the worst feeling in the world. Today I had to be �Union Steward� at work and witness a guy terminated. He�s from Jamaica, doesn�t speak very good English, or just talks with a strange accent. Anyway, he once was caught sleeping behind some boxes in the warehouse, so I guess he wasn�t the model employee. Anyway, I brought along one of the other stewards who had never sat in on one of these meetings and I think it depressed him. It is pretty fucked up I guess. The last one was worse though, watching someone who had been in the company for 20 years lose their job�Anyway, that�s another story for another day.

So the other day I was listening to this CD by this hardcore band I used to listen to and I remembered the year like it was yesterday. Anyway, a few things made me feel pretty good, and some made me depressed. The first and foremost was this girl we hung around with, Kathy. Oh, the year was 1984 by the way. So we hung with this girl, she was pretty nice, lived with just her mother, who was pretty over protective of her, even though she was 4 years older than I. She had pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth until last year when, in my local paper I read: �Local woman murdered in Mississippi. It turned out that she had left this area a while back, became some sort of junkie, and then a prostitute. She was killed by a serial killer in the area there. So a few weeks ago I read that they had caught the guy and that he now faced the death penalty. I�m still a little in the middle on that argument I thin. When it�s someone you know, it�s a lot different. I guess it depends on the crime. So another thing I was remembering was 1984 and music I was listening to. All punk and hardcore pretty much. Going to see bands like Seven Seconds, Scream, SSD, DYS, Adolescents, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, JFA, Youth Of Today, DOA, GBH, Subhumans, all those bands. It was so much fun. I feel young when I listen to that stuff now. Well, I feel old cause it was so fucking long ago now. But either way, I always feel good. There are many a night when I will play that stuff to fall asleep to. It�s funny how easy I can fall asleep to heavy metal, or Black Flag, or any of that shit. It lulls me. That is once in a while. Lately, I�ve been an old man with Louis �Satchmo� Armstrong and that type of thing. Keep my head in one place�

Today was another day of mixed emotions and whatever. Busy as hell at work, I was getting a million e-mails from eighty different friends, and eighty-five different people at work, meetings. I never really got in the groove as I was chopped up all day. I hate being chopped up like that. One guy goes this way, one goes the other. I don�t really know what else to do or say at this point, but be normal. Not forget everything, be normal again rather. You can�t really expect everyone to bend over backwards for your fucked up emotional issues. Although, you can hope that they still care. Which is all that really matters at this point. Phone calls and smiles are still easy as pie. It�s the silence, it�s the looks here and there. It�s the knowing. It�s what�s on the table. It�s what�s for dinner! The other white meat. So I never really got a chance to stop and smell the air today. I never got a chance to sit down and think for a minute. I always have that at least once a day, today was a hammer though. I can�t really explain how I feel right now, at least here. I�d like to write it down, but I think it�s more private than anything. I don�t need to put every feeling in the open. I feel removed though. I feel far away, like I�ve driven very, very far away. Someone mentioned Labor Day coming up tonight and I said, �this was the worst summer I�ve ever had in my life�. Not just because of some situations with Heather, or any of that. Just that it was�short. It feels over now. I was begging for the winter or fall to come a month ago I think. Now I feel like I didn�t do anything. My best thing that happened this summer was obviously the road trip in my new car. That was, as depressing as it got, the most I felt alive, happy, all of that. Phish is not touring next summer. I think I�m still going to take a trip out west, or mid-west, or whatever. I�d like to see Nashville again. Maybe I�ll even stop and meet her this time. That�s if she�s not busy. I can still vividly remember the best part of the trip was on the drive from Knoxville to Nashville, about 40 minutes into it, there�s this big valley to your left that was�calming. Whatever it was I felt on vacation. I really wish I was where I was exactly 2 months ago this day. Driving around Nashville by myself just �checking shit out�. I don�t think there�s a person I know that could have made that trip any better than it was. Well, a couple, but I have fun being by myself. I can sing more. I can think more. I don�t have to feel guilty about controlling the music in the car�wait a minute, I don�t feel guilty about doing that ever. The end of the summer though. After that trip it was all sort of different. It started okay, and then just got progressively worse for me. I get wrapped up in my own drama, and over do it. I got wrapped up in being stubborn. I got myself into some sort of funk. I feel good right now, just a little out of it at this point. I need to stop smoking marijuana again. It�s a waste of time and money. It�s fun with the music and late night, etc. But for the most part, it�s not doing anything good for me. The average man doesn�t do it for me. The average woman doesn�t do it for me. I don�t know what I think I really want, but I know when and where to be now. Away. It kills me to be this. But it�s the best thing in the world for me. I�m going to try and explain it as best as possible. I want to explain why it has to be just a one on one thing right now. It just has to be like that. I want to explain to the rest of the world why I act like I do. I don�t want to hide behind silly poetry and songs, and stories, and warped realities, and lost minds, and lost ideas. There�s good intention in everything I do I think. Good intentions for me anyway. What I want. Selfish. That�s what it is right now maybe? No, it�s not that. It has to be explained, I can explain everything. Give me a couple of hours here and I�ll tell the world why it�s like this, and why I do what I do. It doesn�t matter though. That�s the whole point. It doesn�t matter what I feel like, It doesn�t matter if I act like this because I have these �reasons I need to explain�. It doesn�t matter because the world is still going to be spinning when I�m gone. It doesn�t matter because when Joe Schmo reads this, or anything I write here, he�s still going to go do what he does. I appreciate that I have met some really cool people from here. I appreciate any time someone hears me, or wants to be my friend. I love the new people. In person though, I�m not like this. This is late night me for the most part. This is the way I feel every night. But please, it doesn�t matter what I feel. It�s words on a screen, from me that I feel for an hour a night, or a week or so�I�m pretty sure the world will still be spinning tomorrow morning, I just don�t know if I really care if it is.

another song for right now, and this past summer...

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere - Neil Young

I think I'd like to go

back home

And take it easy

There's a woman that

I'd like to get to know

Living there

Everybody seems to wonder

What it's like down here

I gotta get away

from this day-to-day

running around,

Everybody knows

this is nowhere.

Everybody, everybody knows

Everybody knows.

Every time I think about

back home

It's cool and breezy

I wish that I could be there

right now

Just passing time.

Everybody seems to wonder

What it's like down here

I gotta get away

from this day-to-day

running around,

Everybody knows

this is nowhere.

Everybody, everybody knows

Everybody knows.

before & after