I got more in common with who I was than who I am becoming

Chocolate chip pancakes with my sister, Kiki. Today is her birthday, and so why not schedule a hangout? It’s not often we get to do these kinds of things, mired down as she is in her job, and me, with my own goings on, or whatever.

As a child, my sister once bought me “cool clothing” with money she earned at her job as a checkout person at the local grocery mart. Later, she would drive me to high school, even though I was her annoying brother, four years younger, who would eyeball her friends with all of the fascination of someone witnessing the presence of some exotic jungle bird for the first time. She is, when it comes down to it, probably in a position to alienate me for all time, and with a lifetime of validation. That would make sense to me. But there she is, and here I am, eating chocolate chip pancakes in my apartment, after so much time passed by.

After breakfast, she relates to me about her job. I always find it weird that I don’t know what my friends and family actually do at work all day. I’m sure these people have explained these things to me, at one time or another, but I just don’t know how their job titles quantify. But then, maybe it comes down to the fact that most jobs, in my mind, broil down to answering phones and carrying out completely mundane tasks, for eight hours a day. And so it’s rather self-explanatory.

My sister works for a not-for-profit agency which is in the business of facilitating the wellbeing of people with mentally deficiencies. She explains how there is always some crisis going on with one of the facilities she oversees. “It’s always particularly unnerving when you have to explain to a family member how one of our clients has alleged that the hired staff has been smoking crack and touching himself in front of their son all day. That’s probably the most difficult part about my job.” Yeah, I say, “I could imagine that would be kind of awkward.” And if all that isn’t bad enough, recent legislation has been put in place which could hold people at the administrative levels of this rather unfortunate employment sector accountable for things which go on, miles away. “Hmm,” I say, at a total loss. I want to ask if she smokes a lot of pot, but think of something else to say at the last moment. “Have you ever checked out yoga?” I ask. “No,” she says, she hasn’t.

There is a conversational impasse at which point we look outside and realize it’s snowing again. “Hey,” I say, “See that pool house over there in the park? –On the other side of that is a gigantic hill, and if it snows enough, maybe I could go sleigh-riding tomorrow.” We have a good laugh at this, at how ludicrous and lightweight my life must seem (which is, when you objectively examine the facts, probably not unlike the lives of the people in one of the houses she oversees—the notable difference being not my lack of access to prescription meds, but markedly lower levels of group cohesion and poor choice of hair style).

I walk my sister out to her car and say goodbye, pointing out directions to avoid a sketchy neighborhood. And then she pulls off, away. On the way back in, I notice the snow is still coming down pretty good. Tomorrow seems hopeful to me.

Please let me be lonely tonight
My ye olde housemate/caretaker is cooking something including onions right now, causing my eyes to water and tears to stream down my face. I don’t really cry, I don’t think, having done away with tube socks and emotions ages ago, and so am confounded by the watery solution coming from my eyes today. Oh, man, I think, what is going on here? And then I realize: it’s the onions.

It is occurring to me today, for the one millionth time, that the city I live in blows, and it will continue to blow, forever (the greatest, most all-time crushing Albany moment I’ve experienced thus far, outside of some ludicrous/ embarrassing moments which hold little to no merit on account of the fact that I was too drunk to actually remember them, was looking at the LOB on Madison recently and being sent into a full-throttle depression over its scale size and color. The sky was some wasted ink cartridge color gray that day, stretching out interminably to nowhere, and the building and sidewalk parodied that color below, their mimicry taken directly in through my eyeballs and related to my synapses, sending me down. The architecture itself depresses you, and I knew the people inside of those buildings were doing something unnervingly depressing, making it a full on shit storm of depressingness. But then, maybe it’s just me, like usual). I was attempting to explain this same feeling to someone the other day, but I don’t really think they knew what I was talking about, impervious to the dour worldview of architecture and downward spirals.

Two enthusiasts of the rap music genre have recently moved into the apartment next door to mine. I encountered one of these individuals recently, on coming home one day. “Oh, you moved in next door?” I ventured brightly to one of them. “My name is Ryan,” I said, shaking the new neighb’s hand. “How’s it going,” said neighbor said. “My name’s True Master.” I took this in, thinking it over, before True Master disappeared behind the door of his rental compartment. It was a striking name, you had to admit, out-classing my own rather pedestrian name by twenty furlongs, which then (obviously) elicited some rapid fire succession of “street names” to replace my own. I was stuck between two, when the phone rang, snapping me from my reverie.

It was hard not to get caught up in the proactive nature of the new neighbors, planning events and shows, right here in the courtyard of our building. “All that’s really respectable,” I told El Smell on night, “but in the end I can’t help but think there will be some inherent futility involved with all of that. I mean, even if something really cool is created there will be no one to fully appreciate it, so it seems like a total waste of time. I mean, we’re living in Albany, after all!” I said, as some rhetorical punctuation point. As I said this, I thought simultaneously of a car signaling into a drive on a desolate country road, signaling repetitively into the night to no one in particular. But, when it came down to it, in the end, whatever ended up taking place, I knew I would be there. Which pretty much seemed inevitable- I lived there.

Everything blows, but what can you do? It seemed logical to try and have as much fun as possible, even if you were surrounded by lame ass motherfuckers at all times. Springtime couldn’t be too far off, I didn’t officially have a job to go to, and El Smell was making that onion dish right now. It wasn’t much, but it was something to hold onto. To keep yourself from spiraling—to keep yourself from tears.