Wake Me Up

My senior year of high school began with a break-up, the first big one [see What's an emotion that you never feel?], and one song playing on the radio at the time was Green Day’s Wake Me Up When September Ends. As I sang along, I imagined that I was placing a request to be in a coma for the month and to wake up on September 30 over the worst of the pain. Yeah, singing Green Day was definitely self-indulgent. I was feeling nostalgic. Billie Joe sings, “Seven years have gone so fast,” and I made this into a reference to my middle and high school years. Now, seven years have passed since that September break-up, and I closed this September with a bike ride to the lake. I saw families hanging out on a beach that had formed in our recent drought and I joined them, happy to be part of the crowd, kind of liking the country music blaring from the pick-up truck backing up to the dock. A lot of times, I want to remember everything, but this afternoon, it occurred to me that remembering everything at some future date might actually not make me as happy as expected. What makes me happy is sitting out in the sun right now, even if I don’t end up remembering it. This is a wake-up call for my nostalgic self. 

Cheap Walmart Valentine's Day memorabilia.

"Ring out the bells again
Like we did when spring began."

Good Gamers

Today is a big day for World of Warcraft players,

for the people who save people in a fake world

but also talk to people in the real world. 

Social interaction goes on

on those headsets. There's a guy, 

the leader of Blondie's guild, who spent real

money to give Blondie the expansion

as a thank you for his work in the guild. 

That guy says Blondie does more 

for the guild than anyone. 

Blondie took the gift, the purchased

code that gave him access to the new

faux-Asian themed world of Pandaria, though

it meant that last night he missed waiting 

in line outside the store

in the fall cold for the package. 

I think a lot of people have images

of WOW players with washed out complexions

and potato chip crumbs in their keyboards, 

and I'm sure there is a lot of that, 

but there is also a lot of the other stuff, 

the joy, generosity, and camaraderie that 

come with any pursuit. 

Blondie home from a new job. Nov. 30,  2011. 

"Right on the limit's where we know we both belong tonight." 

Zombie Reprieve

We hurt a lot of things to sustain the way of life we enjoy right now. 

Technically, we could give up this way of life, the 2012 way of life with cars and everything like that. If there were a mandate passed that ordered us to cease from every variety of hurting other beings and the earth, we could just stop hurting. I’m not suggesting that we take this incredibly drastic step. I’m just saying it could be done, even if it cost us a lot of happiness (I don’t know if it would–it just might). But if, in one moment, we decided that our only focus was not to damage the earth, we could stop moving right then and there and only move forward if we knew we weren’t damaging the earth. 

But it’s just not happening right now. We choose this irresistible way of life, and maybe we’re so guilty about it that we want zombies to come and take our way of life away from us and bring us back to the wild where we’re not manufacturing or participating in the manufacture of things that hurt the earth. 

This dress from the eighties hurts the earth.