seedofourbreath-blog

[seedofourbreath-blog]

A lesson in determination

(orig. 2017) Story time. I lived in this crappy duplex right on the street most cities have that splits the nice side of town from the bad side of town. When I moved in there last year, this (I assumed) homeless woman knocked on the door late at night every few days asking for bread or cash or whatever. Usually gave her something to eat but I refused when she wanted money.

One day she comes by with what looks like the first lawnmower ever made, offers to cut my grass. Actually, yes, i'll pay you to do that. That's pay for a job, not a sob story handout, so yes. I don't understand how that shitty little mower even worked, but this woman cut the shit out of my yard. It's a tiny yard, so when she asked for 30 bucks I had to think about it; a bit high, but it was my fault for not agreeing to particulars before she did it, and I was trying to reward her for working and not begging. So we worked out a schedule where she would come by every other week. She even cut the neighbor's yard, doubling her money.

Then she stopped coming for a few weeks. Turns out her ancient mower was stolen (where was she keeping it? was it even hers?). But instead of going back to begging, she pulled weeds and trimmed hedges for various people around the neighborhood, saved up and got a better mower. Eventually she had a moped with a ridiculous attachment to drag the mower around town, but the moped AND her mower were stolen, again. She went back at it, and soon she started showing up in a rusty old car with an even newer mower in the trunk. She even had a second mower and an "employee" who would cut grass in other neighborhoods. After 6 or 8 months of this, I was proud of her for sticking to her plan and seeing it blossom.

One night, around 4:30 am, I was still up studying for exams and I hear a familiar knock. Please don't tell me a third mower was stolen. I open up...she's on foot, looking disheveled, half a bottle of vodka in her hand. I'm all ready to hear any story she has cooked up, except for the one she actually has. "I saw your lights on, I know you studying, figured you might could use a break. It's my 50th birthday today and I don't have anybody to celebrate with, nobody. You wanna sit on the porch and get drunk with me?"

So we sat on my porch and got drunk, watched the sunrise and the early risers driving to work, traded stories, laughed about how bitchy my neighbor was, talked about life. Without talking about her problems, she asked about mine, and I felt silly telling her my worries - I'm young, healthy, have a place and a car and a job and people know when my birthday is. I'm a mid-30's white male, and this homeless 50-year-old black lady made me realize how dumb I sound complaining just by asking how I was doing. She hugged me as she left and thanked me for just spending a little time with her.

If you're reading this on your smartphone, or sitting at home wondering what you WANT to eat, or dreading going to work tomorrow in the air conditioning, or rolling your eyes that someone just texted you who you aren't crazy about, take a second and appreciate that all of that is luxury. It's not your life, it's extra. Just by virtue of those things you are among the richest 10% of people on Earth (look it up).

Happy Monday, everybody. Wherever you are, thanks Angie.

[seedofourbreath-blog]

In which lunch becomes battle

(orig. June 20, 2016) YOU GUYS. I saw the most gangster shit today. I'm driving through a lazy suburban middle-class neighborhood and my eye catches this stupid-looking squirrel fuckin around in someone's backyard, next to a chain link fence, like maybe 20 feet from my car. No big deal but any animal gives me pause. Looking back toward the road, out of nowhere I see this HUGE brown hawk (we'll call him Charlie) dive-bombing from 2 houses away, straight towards Captain Fuzzynuts. He saw this fuzzy gray moron of a meal way before I did and he’s streaking toward his lunch like a pro. I hit the brakes because I need to see this go down, I fucking love hawks. Charlie is doing like 50mph towards Fuzzynuts and I'm frozen with childlike anticipation. THEN, ohhhh shit a second bigass hawk (this one is Todd) comes bombing through the adjacent trees like a Nazi warplane and I'm like fuck yea it's going DOWN. Todd t-bone slams head first into Charlie's chest, skiDOOSH. Charlie takes the hit and is now barrel-rolling out of control toward the fence. Todd corners like a metronome trying to grab Fuzzynuts and get away with the meal. Fuzzy freezes, it's all over, this acorn wasn't worth it, I should have dodged more cars but now it's too late. Todd is bearing down, claws out. Fuzzy has no escape route. They both forgot about Charlie, who is fucking pissed. This bad motherfucker somersaults mid-air, snaps open his full wingspan, catches the fence in his claws, redirects all that force and LAUNCHES off the chain links straight towards Todd like an Olympic swimmer reversing off the wall underwater. Todd is half a beak from dinner and Charlie, making it there in a split feather of an instant, fucking punts him in the face. They start tearing at each other like madmen, Todd clearly realizing he is out of his weight class and despecrately trying to fend off Charlie’s fury. Fuzzy sees his moment and takes off into the woods. Todd, fully cognizant about his fuck up, starts leaving too. Charlie is like fuck that, you messed up my food, this is my neighborhood, chases him down and whacks him in the face one good last time. Todd gets away but he ain't flying so steady, he got his ass beat. Fuzzy is gone. Charlie goes right back to his perch without even a moment of lamentation, waiting for the next food to come walking along, not even bothered by all this. He preens a bit and scans the area for his next target. I'm cheering in my car like my team won the NBA Finals. I notice some girls in another car have stopped to watch too, so I pull up beside them and roll down the window. Did you guys see that shit, says me. Oh totally, birds are really pretty, says she. Totally oblivious to the drama that went down. Pfftt, bye, have a good day, simple ass bitch. I check the rearview, Fuzzy is sneaking back out into the yard trying to get that same nut, I shake my head. I wanna feel bad for you Captain Fuzzynuts, but somewhere up there Charlie is hawkin like a motherfucker today, and you're probably gonna die. Good hunting, Charlie.

[seedofourbreath-blog]

I can’t be the only one.

it's high time we discuss something important that affects all of us.

so i go to make a sandwich. i start thinking its funny how sandwich-making changes over time. as a kid, they just magically appear. you say "hungry" and someone taller than you goes, boom, here's a sammich. then i distinctly remember being a teen/early 20's person and taking pride in making the whole sammich (its easier to type, im sticking with it now) without leaving the fridge or using any plates or silverware. open fridge, make sammich, close fridge, gone in 60 seconds. sammich ninja.

now as an adult, there's a science to this shit. gather your tools and ingredients. line them up in order of which layer goes on first. make 2 groupings: a group for things that shall meet the Trash Can Of Death, such as the haircut you gave the tomato, and a group for things that shall go back in the fridge (which needs to be done immediately after sammich completion because 5 extra seconds out in the wild could alter your perception of how safe that mayo is to eat). use your skills to expertly leave a perfect cloak of condiments on the bread with no trace of a knife path and no sketchy spots left brown. select, cut, and place main sammich ingredients in such a way that every bite includes every ingredient in the correct ratio. the final step, in between closing the sammich and putting all the shit back where you found it, is the test bite. you cant just make a sammich and clean up and leave, you have to take ONE bite so your mouth can confirm what your brain knows, i mean trust but verify. also, at this point, if you don't already have a drink waiting that pairs nicely with the sammich you made, i don't know how you got this far in life.

then later, at a friend's house, you see someone else make a sammich, and i don't care WHO they are, they do it SO WRONG. like every part is an itch you cant scratch. what are they doing!! thats the wrong knife!! that doesnt go there! you missed a spot! seriously, thats gonna taste like shit!! dont believe me? go watch anything, ever, where someone made a sammich on tv, it will bother you more than you thought. remember in Kill Bill vol 2, David Carradine made a sandwich for that little girl while he was talking to Uma Thurman? i missed that conversation the first 2 times i saw the movie because i was mesmerized. he uses one giant fucking knife for the whole thing. cuts thing up, spreads the mayo, cuts the sammich, and then just wipes it on a cloth, doesnt wash it. i couldnt decide if he was a genius or a madman. did Quentin just say "hey make a sammich while you say all your lines" and David just makes sammiches all crazy, or did he tell him to make it a crazy way because thats what the character would do?

anyway, back to wildfires and wow-THAT-guy-is-really-our-president or whatever.

[seedofourbreath-blog]

Bob the Spirit Animal

(written Jan 1 2016) holy shit, ok, so last night was great but that's not the amazing thing i gotta tell you guys about. stick with me here, trust me. this is a really good one.

9am after new year's, i wake up in my car and it's dead. my phone is dead. i'm hungover and parked in the driveway of a 3 million dollar house on Sullivan Island. nobody in sight. looking around the neighborhood, i realize this is the first Honda these people have ever seen, i gotta get the fuck out of here fast. i prop up the hood and get out my jumper cables, getting my sad face and pity story ready for the first car that comes along.

house across the street, i see a 36-40 year old white guy, at his own little beach mansion, dressed like Andy Griffith on his day off, putting bags in the back of ONE OF THREE brand new $120k white Mercedes. there's a blonde trophy wife and 2 young kids. the third $120k Mercedes is an EXTRA ONE. i hope i'm painting a clear picture of how old this guy's money is, because it's about to get weird.

i yell can he give me a jump and he instantly agrees. odd, but sure whatever. so he pulls Unit One next to my car, i grab his hood to lift it, except he has no idea how to pop his hood. HE'S NEVER DONE IT BEFORE. i have to tell him there's a switch or lever. we get that open and "the problem" emerges; he doesn't know where the battery is. i don't see one anywhere. i'm searching, he's looking for the owner's manual, a lightbulb pops and i remember that some Mercedes have the battery in the trunk.

im getting ready to say this when he hooks the fucking cables up to A: a random bolt inside the engine and B: the SIDE OF THE FUSE BOX. what? i mean, what? he tells me to see if my car will start now. i dont wanna make him mad because i need his help to get the fuck out of Better Homes And Gardens Island, so i calmly tell him that's a fuse box, this is just a bolt, the battery is in the trunk. he thinks that's crazy. SO HE DRIVES UNIT ONE BACK HOME AND GETS IN UNIT TWO AND DRIVES IT BACK TO ME. he says maybe we can find the battery in this one. oh my god. this is a real person.

i finally get him to open the trunk and voila, there it is. he gets super quiet. he is so confused. we hook it up, my car starts, i toss the cables and shut his hood (didnt trust him to do it) and i shake his hand, saying thanks for his patience and kindness. as im shutting my hood i turn to wave goodbye, and he is on his cellphone saying "...in the TRUNK, can you believe it?" as im driving away i realize this guy has never jumped a car, from either side of the equation. he's never opened the hood of a car because he's never had to. im probably the poorest guy he's ever shook hands with.

i called my buddy Jenn to tell her all this and she says "you found the ultimate white guy". i totally did. 9 hours into the new year and i met the Spirit Animal of White People.

it's gonna be a good year, you guys.

[seedofourbreath-blog]

I don’t want to die.

This year was a piece of shit, and i should have seen it coming. first day, i got lost and my car broke down. next day, i totaled that car in a my-fault accident (i mean totaled, destroyed). the last thing i remember thinking when i saw that there was no way to avoid a really bad collision, was just...well, shit. that was it, just well, shit. a slightly annoyed sigh that this was a stupid way to finish. as i was standing around waiting for the cops to come tell me how much trouble i was in, i wasn’t grateful i hadn’t been hurt too bad or overcome with a need to call people i loved. i just stood there, lamenting the inconvenience of having to shop for a new car. 

i spent pretty much the whole rest of the year getting my heart/dreams smashed into black goo by the only girl i ever loved (over and over), quitting shitty jobs, losing and gaining weight, finalizing a divorce from a previous year, getting kicked from apartment to apartment, blowing my tiny life savings, and contemplating suicide. I also started my college degree, figured out i liked to write, and i dunno, read a few good books or something. there’s not a lot for the “good stuff” portion, so i know im reaching. i did get to see Black Panther, Vision, and Winter Soldier in the same movie before i died, however, so that’s nice for 10-year-old me who waited this long. I don’t know what to tell you about where this blog (god i hate that word) is going. i don’t have any big plan to do something meaningful, i just have to do something to keep moving. i live way too deep in my own brain, picking apart emotional pain like a math problem and generally being difficult and weird in real life. but somewhere down there in the gray spaces we all keep hidden, i like to think even happy people are faking a little bit. everybody feels the same shit, but it’s not always articulated to satisfaction. there’s something...off, and i think we all feel it, and nobody fucking talks about it. maybe expelling some of the pain math with writing will reach someone else’s gray space, and help one of the seven billion of us take another step forward.

i don’t want to die. i mean, i’m not particularly jazzed about being alive, but there’s shit i haven’t tried yet, places i haven’t seen, people i haven’t met. and once you go, that’s it, no more things. i want to say it can’t hurt to try, but that’s pretty much all we do - if you’re alive, you’re trying, and it always hurts somehow. but maybe there’s a really good day out there waiting for me to sweat and bleed my way to it, so im sticking around and giving it a shot. study, work, write, exercise, sleep, breathe. 

maybe one day i’ll finally buy a ring for the correct girl, or i’ll find the correct balance of thoughts and have some peace and quiet, or i’ll live in the correct place, or ill string together the correct combination of 26 letters that makes other people feel something good. i’ll take any one of those but let’s be honest, i’m hoping it’s the girl thing.

get busy living or get busy dying.