A Higher Ed, The Lost e-mails of a Generation (First 2 Chapters)

A Higher Ed

The Lost e-mails of a Generation

Edited by Josephine Oracle, Ph.D

Michael Darigan

www.michaeldarigan.com

Get High

You must always be high. Everything depends on it: it is the only question. So as not to feel the horrible burden of Time wrecking your back and bending you to the ground, you must get high without respite. But on what? On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, whatever you like. But get high.

And if sometimes you wake up, on palace steps, on the green grass of a ditch, in your room’s gloomy solitude, your intoxication already waning or gone, ask the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, the clocks, ask everything that flees, everything that moans, everything that moves, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask what time it is. And the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, clocks will answer, “It is time to get high! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get high: get high constantly! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.”

-C. Baudelaire, The Parisian Prowler, 1869

Contents

Introduction

Character Sketches

September: Back in Boston

October: Autumn Winds Be Blowin

November: First Chill(in) The Air

December: Holiday Cheer and Beer

January: New Year’s Revelations

February: Horn-dog Days

March: Decisions, Decisions

Conclusion

Post Script

i always need to have a way out.

i can't be trapped. i can't be trapped by anything.

a woman. money. guilt. Responsibility. i got to be free. to leave.

to start again. to forget and learn new things anytime i want.

some say i'm unpredictable. some say i have A.D.D.

my friend Ivan says that its a great way to be.

he says it's "admirable."

he says it's "a rare thing in this world to find someone

who won't allow things or people to restrain them."

maybe he's right..

maybe I’m a living example of spontaneity and

all the good and not so good that comes with living that way.

i am a clever guy. if anything, clever like a fox around a chicken coop.

that's what i am…

i'm not disciplined like my father.

i'm not driven like my sister. i'm not a genius like my older

brother. but i always "make out somehow."

that's what my mother says.

both my parents don’t worry too much about me cause they

know i'm clever, or "adaptable" as my father puts it;

which means that like him,

i’m a great bullshitter; not a bad thing to have going for me in a world that is full of them. –From the Journals of Ed Slattery

Introduction

It all started on a Friday afternoon in Boston two years ago. I was in my second year at a college there, teaching English Literature and other more mundane classes. I’m quite sure you know the institution, but my publisher has decided that it is best not to give its name due to potential legal complications. That October afternoon I sat in my tiny office attempting to grade essays but was having a very difficult time focusing on my task. (Believe me, a 101 English Composition class is as boring to us professors as it is to you students). I was sipping coffee, wishing I had a fifth of whiskey or rum in my desk drawer, like you see the bad-ass professors do in the movies and on TV. I was killing time (not trying to “injure eternity” as Mr. Thoreau so aptly put it) when I began to fiddle around on my ancient computer. It was a “hand-me-down,” coming to me from its former life in the student computer lab, and was destined to live its last years (days or weeks?) as my own PC. Great. I felt so honored. This is what seven years at Cambridge and a doctorate in English will get you nowadays. Higher Education is not what it is purported to be, and as this book lets you know in full color and 3 D.

The thing was old and decrepit. Its screen was blurry and it smelled old. It wheezed and moaned and I believe there were even barnacles collecting on the tower J. I was so bored that I was actually interested in seeing how absolutely crap it really was. After a few minutes, I discovered a folder buried on the hard drive that had been evidently unnoticed by the tech-guys who deal with such issues. The folder was titled: A Higher Ed. Grateful for the distraction, I clicked it open and was thrust quite suddenly into the wild and wondrous world of a young man named Ed Slattery.

The folder contained hundreds of documents that were Ed’s journals from his senior year as a student at my own college and e-mails between him and his friend Josh, a senior at another University. Reading through them at random I was immersed into the life of a young dreamer who wrote his thoughts and feelings in narrative stories unlike any I had ever read before. His writing style was clear, lyrical and unhesitant: evidence of an experienced writer even though I knew he was just in his early twenties. It took little time for me to realize that I had stumbled upon a unique piece of archival literature. It read like a literary documentary, or primary source material as we academics call it.

On impulse, I printed out all the documents. It came to around 500 single spaced pages in total. By the time I was done it was dark outside and I was alone in the department. I stuffed the pages in my satchel and left into a cool New England autumn evening, riding the T to my flat in the neighborhood of Allston-Brighton.

Over the weekend I told no one of my discovery. I neglected my coursework, my dog Rufus and a bloke that I had been seeing. I texted him saying I had to go to a conference out of state. All the while I was conferring with the magical world of a man named Ed Slattery as he roamed the Boston streets and struggled with classes, women, work, and the day to day life of a college senior. In the process of chronicling his love affairs, his days and nights, his hopes, doubts and dreams, Ed’s writing embodied what most young people deal with, and most of all, emphasized the utter importance of recognizing and defying the so-called norms of Society. The e-mails between him and Josh were extremely hilarious and also achingly honest and sometimes sad. Two friends who met randomly while overseas developed a strong friendship that existed on the cyber super highway and gave outlet to their deep passions and creativity. I wasreminded me of being young, fearless and open to all sorts of possibilities.

I had a wonderful Saturday night relaxing on my couch with my pug Rufus, with a nice bottle of Cote du Rhone and some early Tom Waits (I even smoked a bit of hash I had stashed) accompanied by the beautiful, ourtrageous and wild words of Ed and Josh. The next morning I woke and had a Eureka moment: I would make a book out of the material As I lay in bed with rufus lying on my stomach I saw it all.

I’ve always admired writers like Kerouac, Henry Miller, Edward Abbey and many others who, through their writing, inspired people to be true to themselves, challenge authority, and not bend over for the status quo to simply ram them up the arse; I felt this book could do the same.

By Sunday night I had a rough outline sketched on my fully functional and modern MacBookPro. I went to sleep feeling extremely excited

When I returned to the college on Monday morning I checked the alumni lists and only found that Ed had graduated and there was no other information. I surfed the web, and found nothing. The same for Josh Mertz.

Over the next few months I told no one about my discovery. Only Rufus was privy to my maniacal and slightly devious plans. It all came together rather quickly. I copy edited the pieces, and stitched them together along their natural timeline, interspersing Ed’s dated Journals with his e-mail correspondence with Josh. I also added footnotes that referenced music, books and other interesting aspects of this world and culture and I translated the fairly frequent uses of Spanish.

In January the Manuscript was ready. I didn’t have to even about the title: A Higher Ed, The Lost e-mails of a Generation.

After a few months of pitching the MS to agents I found one who saw the potential in the book, and it only took two more months to find a suitable publisher.

A Higher Ed exudes the energy, love and courage of a person who took the road less traveled, not because it was less traveled, but because that is the road we all must take if we are going to be true to ourselves. I hope this book entertains you and excites in you what it did in me. I’ve just opened a bottle of cerveza and I raise it up to Ed Slattery wherever he may be; I raise it up to what Ed stood for. As he wrote in one of his journals, quoting Emerson, one of his heroes: “Trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string.” Ed, wherever you are, I know that is exactly how you are living. Carpe Diem and Salud!

Josephine Oracle, Ph.D

Mallorca, Spain

Character Sketches

I was able to put together these sketches from reading all of the journals and emails and felt that a little background on Ed, Josh and Ed’s good friend Ivan, who appears often in the journals, might offer a deeper inside into who these men were, and more importantly, to show who they are becoming...

-Josephine Oracle, editor

Ed Slattery

Ed Slattery was born into an Irish-American middle class family living in the inner city of Providence RI. He was a mediocre athlete and student in highschool and seemed to spend most of his time playing pool with buddies, doing sports and screwing his steady girlfriend in parking lots and basements. He attended Salve Regina College, A Catholic College in Newport RI. He dropped out after his second year and worked a bank selling mortgages to people with shitty credit and then he took of on his first trip to England and Ireland. This is when Ed started writing. This trip had a profound effect on Ed’s view of the world, himself and his possiblities, as traveling will do to anyone with an open mind and heart.

Coming back he enrolled in college and played on the basketball team, got straight A’s to prove he could do it finally got over his breakup with his girl of many years. He was restless though and wanted to travel again and live that romance he knew was possible. He applied and was accepted at Oxford University England. The next fall Ed showed up and met Josh, the roommate randomly arragned by the study abroad program they both used to get to Oxon. That year was full of illumination, education and inebriation, seeing Ed travel to Ireland, Amsterdam and Spain, blowing his mind, searching his soul and writing it all down. Coming back to the U.S.A. was a great struggle for him and that’s where we meet Ed, beginning his senior with a sense of foreboding and a determination to live his life the way he truly wishes, and to take no shit from anybody.

Josh Meritz

Josh Meritz was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA in a Jewish American family. A solid highschool student, Josh was a formidable wrestler and a musician from an early age, playing trumpet, sax and then moving to bass. Josh attended Washington University and was a history major who excelled in academics while drinking as much bourbon as he could. He was in a few bands that played clubs and parties. A huge fan of William Burroughs and the bass stylings of Victor Wooten and Les Claypool, Josh had a girlfriend for 3 years who he left when he went to study at Oxford. Josh was a frat boy but not the dick type and had plans of teaching in South America when finishing his senior year. Returning to the states Josh has a senior thesis to wrestle with and he is faced with a life he can’t relate to anymore, friends who he no longer understands and a few different women he once loved and wondered if he could ever again.
Ivan Rojas

Ivan is an Argentine-American who has been Ed’s friend since they were both in their early teens. A gardener and lover of women, Ivan visits with Ed frequently in Boston and in Providence.

September Back in Boston

Sept 7^th 2:35pm

I Just got out of the registrar’s office trying to clear up some bullshit about transferring credits and had to come down to the computer lab to write. There is a slight complication with transferring some of my classes from Oxford last year into credits count here in the U.S.A. They don’t seem to understand how a Taoism tutorial definitely qualifies as a Literature class. Josh and I “studied” the fucking Tao Te Ching; It is an actual book in an actual genre and that is called Eastern Philosophy. Of course all we really did during that ‘toot’ was learn from our eminent instructor (Master Guo Liang,) that no idea is a good idea and trying is the worst thing you could ever do in life. Awesome. An occasionally useful study aid when learning (I mean not learning) eastern philosophy is a properly rolled exquisitely cone-shaped spliff. The education from that course has changed my perception quite permanently and quite for the better. Logical thought is extremely overrated.

Whatever…they’ll figure it out, I ain’t gonna sweat it. I got other things on my mind. Like the now, like being here again, back in Boston, and the start of my final”senior” year of college. I have a sneaky feeling I’m gonna be in this drab ass computer lab a lot, already feeling the straight jacket effect of the routine, the mundane, the classes and the rest will require a substantial amount of release and re-charge. Gotta love the ease of a computer on which to write, and of course e-mail to keep in touch with distant kindred spirits like my brother Josh out in ol’ St. Louis.

I took the train up last nigh from Providence, and brought only two bags and my bongos. Gonna get the rest of my shit from my folk’s garage this weekend with my man Ivan and his trusty Ford 150. Got off at Back Bay like it was a dream. Once again a man on the street in Beantown, just like I was in Oxford last year, and here the year before that. A wanderer in a city he must call home. Like a caged dog who can’t stop walking.

Met my two girl roomies a few hours ago. Ed, me boy, you’ve come along way from your first year in Boston in a solitary Newbury St. studio with only your faithful left hand for company and love. Just a broken heart and feeble attempts at meeting chicks. I had spoken to each of new roomies for a sec last week but now that I met them it is finally real. They both seem chill so I think it’s gonna be cool. Kz is a film student from upstate New York whose got a wild streak to her I can tell. She also has an old acoustic guitar she already said I could use! I’ve been wanting to learn guitar for so long but my lazy ass never got around to it. Now it seems Lady Serendipity has given me my chance. Charlene is a soft betty-boop-like communications major from the windy city.

The apartment itself is very cool, though. It’s in an old building right on the Fenway, not near the ballpark but close by. The Fens, I’ve learned, are a huge swath of swamps and muck and cat o nine tails that was here long before the Pilgrims (and will be here long after we’ve blown up the world). I hear it’s also a huge hangout where the gay dudes meet at night but you probably won’t read that in any guidebook. Gotta love this city. The flat has 3 bedrooms, a huge living room with a fireplace that actually works. It has got long windy hallways and plenty of privacy for study, mediation and (hopefully) knocking boots. There is a wall safe in my room and I am determined to crack the combination before the year is out. There could be a million bucks or a human head in there.

Started classes this am and lord oh lord this is gonna be rough. I’ve got a 101-math course with a teacher from Bosnia who barely speaks English. My art appreciation class prof is an older ex-hippie. The first words out of her mouth were “this class will not be a blow off course…” Has she got it coming. (But I think she actually read my mind using the huge crystal hanging from her neck and nestled in the wide demesne of her ample bosom). I love art, but the silhouette of a tree branch against a clapboard house in Provincetown on an early October evening is more my idea of art than de Kooning (although Pollock, Van Gogh and Magritte are my some of fav’s)- Wabi Sabi, the Japanese art of the impernent. It’s like the Zen of Art. I’ve got an old piece of metal I found in Michigan years ago that was crushed and twisted into an infinity sign by some tractor; natural, unintentional art.

I have a Voice and Articulation class which in itself is reprehensible, idiotic and an insult to my singular accent and unique diction. I’m already determined to break my prof down with my Providence-Irish-Spanish accent and keep our linguistic flavor at least a little heterogeneous. So I don’t for-see much of an intellectual challenge from these classes. I’ll have to get that form my own reading, my existential studies of this thing called Life, and writing to Josh and hanging with Ivan and others who give me plenty of inspiration and camaraderie.

Fuck it. This is what I get for putting off my Gen-ed’s. Some of the kids in these classes are freshman, most like five years younger than me. I guess I must become their guru. But there were a few lookers too- especially one in my art class. Kyla. She is a very exotic Italiana with hurricane hair, a great smile and a slamming body. She sat down next to me by chance so I’ve already decided it is destiny and I’ve envisioned the kama sutra poses we one day shall share. She’s actually from Somerville and reminds me of where I grew up in Providence; she’s got that little attitude and sense of humor like the peeps I knew from way back. Her ass can only be described as exquisite.

So I gotta get out of here and go by some books for class. I don’t even know who my adviser is for my “senior writing project.” He or she better be cool and know that there is ink in my veins and I’m not gonna just write shit with some vain hope at publishing. I do it to appreciate life, and to live fully and learn from observing and doing. “Writing values Life.” Well put, Bernard Malamud.

I gotta make the best of this time, though. Oxford is over and it is America again. My country. I love it. Sometimes I can’t stand it. I cannot abide (“the dude will Not abide”) the greed and the materialism. Finally shook some of that off, left it lying in an olive grove in Spain last year, along with guilt and ideas of image based on looks, money, the car you drive or who your fucking parents are. Must make a pilgrimage to Concord someday and commune with Thoreau’s ghost by the misty shores of his Walden. But for now I gotta get out of here, eyes kinda burning from staring at this screen. Josh texted me last night and seems to be in the exact same fucking boat. He’s back at school, the BMOC, yet nothing’s the same, but somehow it is. No one knows. The Tao knows. No nothing, be nothing. I think I’ll enjoy my nothingness with a pint of Guinness. It is, as they say, good for you. Gonna find a pub to make my local and be a sanctuary for this, La Ultima Ano before I can set sail for foreign lands and see what lies in store for a New England lad called Ed Slattery…

From: josh

Subject: down to business

To: Ed

a man asked another “what is your state?” offended and confused, the man responded, “now I have forgotten.” let the friz-be but then you gotta be careful it doesn’t fly into the river or get lost in some dark corner of your room for ten years...i’ve been living a partial lie for a long time, and just today I had to face it, and did so rather happily... a great person I know is named violet...she wears black every day and has very long blond hair... she rarely says a word, but I was lucky enough to sit next to her in spanish class for a semester... she’s a fuckin genius and an eccentric....valedictorian of her high school, she’s blunt and bold and once she trusts you, she’ll speak her mind... she’s

100% on our level, but with her own very unique twist....she does shit her way and she does not care if anyone accepts it or not... she’d go her whole life friendless if that’s the way it had to be, but it never is because there are always a few people looking for just the type of person she is...

so I was talking to her tonight...friday night... i’m home slaving with my thesis and she stopped by to bring me brownies...(the good kind J) and we were talking about the future and all this shit... a mundane topic made interesting with her...and she basically told me I was selling out... I was explaining about law school or establishing residency for grad something or other...and she asked me if I wanted to go and I honestly said no... there are realities of life, I don’t doubt that...but it’s my suspicion that people chain themselves to

things they hate in the name of reality, but in actuality, they sold out... so I start thinking about myself at 40 years old...and I realized I have this idea of me with money in some nice place with kids and all the rest...that’s a goal I didn’t choose...it was put into my head and I have succumbed to it...i’ve accepted it as my standard of measurement...but you don’t have to measure like that...the thing is, if you establish your own system,, you can be happy, but no one else will understand it...that’s a hard reality...you’ll work at a different pace, with different struggles that may be harder just because they are unique...and you could have always taken the easy route with the typical and thus acceptable bullshit...thus...that word alone is ridiculous and indicative of exactly what i’m talking about...over-educated, pointless bullshit that sounded idiotic until we let it into our lives.

so yeah, when we are done the whole wide world waits for us...but are we ready to accept what it truly has to offer...? Alternative is hip now, but this is the archaic meaning of the word.... alternative. Think of how Jimmy Hendrix sounded on the radio in 1975...what? genius can’t be immediately appreciated, and neither can a risk, unless we fall on our face.

But we are not gonna relent until we have it our way...it’s just this time...no second chances...demand what’s coming to you...i’ll take a river and a mountain and guaranteed sun with fresh air and lots of space and stars and other galaxies staring me in the face. I got to jet to band practice. Got a brand new bass I will be bitch slapping with some very cool cats who know their shit. I’ll send you some trax whence we lay em down.

So seize the day and make sure it don’t seize you back.

Peace

Josh

From: Ed

Subject: violets in bloom...

To: josh

to begin, i must state that although i can appreciate all these words and it is the only way i can communicate (of course it is the easiest and this whole email thing is such a slothful lazy fuckin way to do it; sittin on my ass and pontificatin, lamentin, expousin, preachin, questionin things when all the world is a clam ,and the pearls are waitin...) These words are just pitiful reflections sometimes, of what fevers within, but it’s the best we got so here we go...

now to things:

i am surprised at first to hear you still have(or had)those

40+ notions of nuclear family america and its boring dream,

but good to know you at least are aware of those manacles

of society and parents and guilt and fear of being yourself,

that plague us from day 1...

i loved the way you described violet, her individuality and unconcern for others and what they think; made me think of what i’m trying to do each day...

she sounds interesting and great and worth time....plus she’s a baker J

you say we must establish our own system, i like the sound of that, and i know we will, once we extricate ourselves form this drudgery and even our own, quicksand mentalities of misery and bitchin and stagnation...

but brother, the more i read about guys like Kerouac and Gary Snyder and basically anyone who is doing their own thing, i see that my obstacle has been Institutionalized Fear; fear to be an Individual, that has been spread over me like my childhood blanket since I was born.

Lord hear me, i will not tolerate it anymore-

i see that the only true way is to trust my instincts, and no one else; no com- promises, no rationalization, no easy way out through blaming people or blaming circumstance...Everybody teaches accountability, but how many teach that the true accountability is to listen to the beat of your own drummer and be fucking honest with ourselves?!?!

so yeah, the ‘wide wide world’ awaits and fuck yeah am i ready to see what it will throw at me, and josh, if i decide I don’t like living in the raw, natural world, free to grow my own food and live that kind of life then i’ll sit down and bust my ass and get that phat car and big house, a trophy wife with big fake tits and a dog that shits on my office rug.

But until that day, I’ve got follow my instinct. And it is driving me into the world, savage and cold and hard and free and alive, and i ain’t no fourteen year old watchin movies and fantasizing:

i see my hands, my body, my eyes

i know my mind and soul and fever

i’ve been to those places and seen those things and ways of living and i WANT IT- My travels in Ireland, my trip to Colombia, my various wanderings in Spain and Holland have all showed me how diverse life is, and how many diverse ways there are to live this weird life!

i only want to feel a freedom from guilt and obligations that I did not choose to inherit. i want life on my terms and nada mas? me entiendes? What’s wrong with that?

I’m with you…I’ll take that fresh air and water and trees and warm sky over any harsh restriction...and let it be truth what i say, cause i got no more time for illusions...

-searchin for that momentary sparkle in my soul,

My buddy Ivan, you remember him, just texted me and told me how he’s going to go for it; he’s starting his gardening business in RI. His family and other peeps tried to discourage him. But that’s what I’m talking about, believing in yourself amidst everyone’s doubts and fears no matter what. -in the mood for a falafel and a brew, gotta split. May your bass slaps resonate so I can here them in the concrete jungle…

Later,

your brother,

Ed

Sept 14^th 4:30pm

It’s a fine and lovely day today. Summer hanging on giving us some final feelings of levity and Irie Livity. Birds are singing, the sun is shining, weather is sweet, and mini skirts are in abundance up and down Newbury Street. I walked all the way here it is so nice. Some other good news besides the freakin weather: I just got a jzob! Not the best and not the ideal, but what ever, it is a job and at least it is something. IT’s at a joint called The Pitchfork Bookstore Café. Not waiting tables for a change, now I’m check out guy. It’ll do. Pay is low but the work is steady and not too far from my flat. The manager seems to be a bozo but the other folks I’ve met so far are chill. I start next week and wonder if it might be prophetic or ominous or nothing whatsoever that me working at a bookstore might inspire me to one day make a book out of all this writing I’ve been doing for 5 years now, since I was a wide eyed naïve freshman at Salve Regina College.

Went out with Kyla last night. Hmmmm….very nice. We went to the Other Side café and drank a bottle of Australian merlot sitting on the couches they have in their upstairs loft area. There was definitely the vibe, a kinetic energy very difficult to describe; a pure attraction. We were like magnets held close together, so close, but not touching; all you got to do is flip them over and boom! they become one. I’d like to have the opportunity to one day flip lovely Kyla over, oh my dear sweet lord. There was absolutely no bullshit either, which is rare and very great. She’s from a working class family like me, she speaks her mind and has those loving eyes, compassionate and sincere. She’s a marketing major but actually loves art. She’s a bit younger than me but why would that matter? Love, and attraction, do not discriminate. Like Ivan’s dalliance with that 42 year old a few years back. He used to call her “his old 42.” He even got her a football jersey with that number on it. She didn’t care, she was cool, and loved his gardener’s arms and his romantic Argentine groove. She even gave a name for his lovemaking skills; she called it his “Ivanlingus style.” Hilarious. We’ll see were it goes with Kyla; she lives in the dorms downtown and I have to resolved to take this one slow. No rush no hurry, just like the seasons changing so I will let our dynamic blossom and grow. Although it was either her perfume or her natural musky Tuscan scent that had me hard and ready for anything. We parted company with nary a kiss but there was that healthy tension, that threshold of going further, and I’ll savor it like a fine wine until the day is right.

Loads of bullshit in my V and A class today. Coulda been cause I got stoned before class. It lowers my tolerance for bullshit and I already can’t deal with that class straight. The guy who teaches the class is kinda pedantic. It is a required class, and I get why. You’ve got to be able to speak properly and I’m no nerd but when someone says “can I ax you something,” or “You speak real good” I definitely cringe. I am a Grammarian after all. But this guy thinks he’s god’s gift to good diction. He makes us record ourselves reading a line from some book and then he plays it back to the class. One poor kid from New Haven just sounded like a straight-up jerk: “I nevah knew that da ocean could pravide all the watah for everybody.” I’m gonna fuck with him nicey-nice when tis my turn to read. I’ll never lose my exotic accent that’s a blend of Providence, Ireland and bastardized Spanish. We’ll see by the end of the semester who is the better man. He does not know the mysterious magical powers of Ed Slattery.

Kz, Charlene and I decided to throw a party next week. Fuck it. Let’s start off the semester on the right foot (“the good foot” Mr. James Brown…) I’m gonna try to get Josh to fly out from st louis but it probably won’t happen. Ivan will be there of course, he’s already drooling at the prospect of some milky-skinned honey-dripping doe-eyed co-eds. But Josh has got his own girl drama and school bullshit to deal with. Plus he’s broke like me. But he did say the other night that he might make it up for Xmas break which would be sweet.

We haven’t hung out since last June in Oxford, some luxuriantly lazy days in Christ Church meadow with the Frisbee, the hack, a bottle and various scantily clad nymphs frolicking in the heather. It’s funny that during those few weeks Josh and I both shared that rare sense of transience, knowing this would never last, right while we were in it; We had the sense that there will never, ever, be a time like this in our lives again; so we did it damn near every day during the last term.

One clear and oh so lovely memory I have is making love by the Cherwell River at dusk with a girl named Emily from Wadham College. We quaffed a bottle of Claret and read Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley to each other. These are the times when stories are made. Guess that’s why I’m writing em down. I spent 45 stoned minutes last night slowly working the combination lock on the wall safe in my room. It was kind of like a meditation, maybe a bit of a madness? Five times I was sure I got it; I’m writing the different combinations on the wall to try and keep track. Nothing a can o’ paint won’t cure come next spring; if I even make it that long. I also learned the minor pentatonic scale on Kz’s guitar. I got new strings too. I had to have the guy at the music shop string it for me and felt kind of like a pussy. But now it sounds awesome. Gotta get going to meet Kz at The Crossroads Bar. We both got work to do for class, so we decided a pitcher might help inspire our scholarship. The bar is low key, grimy, with cheap beer and lots of nooks and crannies to hide in; they pour a fine pint of Guinness there as well. I Think I found this year’s local. Last year in Oxford it was The Marlborough House; Josh and I lived at that place. The dude bartender loved us too cause we tipped when we could and always brought girls in. Two tears in a bucket, fuck it. I’m outta here…

From: josh

Subject: sometimes i wonder…

To: Ed

Sometimes i don’t know holmes, am i really alive? can I fuckin call this living? All this bitching and moaning. But how can i not when more and more shit keeps piling up and further disappointing me. i’ve been reading your letters and they keep me going, but i haven’t been able to bring myself to respond. today’s the best day i’ve had in a while, and that’s just cause i’ve slept through most of it. i don’t answer the phone because i don’t care what any of these people have to say. i hate going out because i’m losing respect for my own friends...my boys...i can’t even love them. My senior thesis takes time away from bass and my band and i had this crazy time just yesterday. it all seemed so bad, and so pointless, and if i needed to finish i figured i’d do it anywhere but here. and out of this came one huge realization that doesn’t mean shit to anyone but me: and it came out of Oxford reasoning.I said to myself, “i deserve more than this...EMPOWER YOURSELF!...” take that shit...for you. as much as it hurts. I’ve realized that I’m the only person who really cares about me. Sure my parents love me and all that, but they’re not here in this room at two am when i stare into a vast point-less vacuum that gets me no closer to anywhere i may ever want to be.

my friend who died last year wrote this fucked up note to us, and it ended with the most painful truth: the only person you have to justify yourself to is you.

everybody’s wrong, Ed. everyone. so i’m beach-bound next year. spain, costa rica, i don’t give a fuck, but i guarantee you i’ll be on the fucking beach, miles away from this Mississippi river.

Ed, you know I’m planning on teaching abroad next year, right? well all of a sudden, i’m like: no way am i living in some crazy hut with no indoor plumbing. why do i want to go abroad? to learn a language, have a good time and learn a culture. yo, peoples be needin help, but i’m not taking that responsibility. i’ll help and i’m still going to teach needy people, but on my terms. and that’s fucked.. i’ll turn my back on someone for my own comfort, and it brings tears to my eyes to type these words, but homie, i can’t put off being me one more day. no more compromising. i’m gonna help, but all on my terms. school sucks and this is bullshit and i don’t even like these people here...my heart is so empty and pointless in this state. but i’m gonna finish, so i hold my own balls in my own right hand when i sleep and walk and eat. nobody’s gonna own josh meritz again. this sucks, but don’t be deceived...this ain’t life. . people would love for you to believe it is, so you don’t get out. and someone said to me: all you non-conformers survive on conformist institutions; what if everyone was like you…there’d be no supermarkets, no government, no gas stations, etc. well i say you’re goddamn right!!! i depend on the Idiot Factor to set me free. that’s why i’m not just saying this to everybody. we keep this part of life a secret, because i need you closed-minded motherfuckers to set people like me and Ed free. i’ll steal from your supermarket, but i’ll never dress like you, you wife beatin crack smokin unhappy because you ain’t got shit trashcan scumbag...bee-aach!

and that’s a record from the life cat hizself. Later, Josh

From: Ed

Subject: I’mfree ballin...

To: josh

the lyrics you kick seem to emerge straight from strange hidden tome of uncommon sense; and it is a book of HIGHer learning located in the mysticism of your own mysterious soul.

let’s all have a drink to man primitive: cheers to his hairy ass and forthright intentions!

and to you, amigo, with thesis on the brain and seeing with me how overblown all this hype is, but you’re right and that end is creepin close to a beginning whether we want it or not.

and josh, if i’ve never been serious before i feel the dead weight certainty that when it is time to enter the “real world” my balls will be brass and chrome and steel, and from the comic book language of made-up words, adamantium (the strongest metal known, and of course Wolverine’s Skeleton...)

Cause i am ready man to jump off that cliff into the foggy unknown of my own future and escape these leech like feelings of pressure and guilt!

Again i must repeat and emphasize the fact that i am that big blue fish

out of water, held back by memory and pre-conceived notions.- but we are re-creating ourselves, molting like a snake shedding its skin; it is hard and confusing but it is our only course; we’ve opened the pandora’s box of limitless possibilities and it is wild and scary and wondrously unpredictable…but it is our path.

thank you for the words and just being there, that means more to me than anything else...

(i won’t be phone callin much now that i am the ASScetic, but you’ll get guaranteed loads of email)

Get back to you mas tarde..

paz hermano

Ed

Sept 19^th 9:50am

“Well I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt. The beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad, so I had one more for dessert…” Mr. Kris Kristofferson, you done lived the dream. I aint’ no rock star or a country star or anything but I too lived a dream last night that didn’t end (or begin) until 3 hours ago when I woke up on my kitchen floor. It was that kind of party. Nothing like waking up staring at the light on the ceiling with the fridge door wide open and my foot squarely in the salad crisper. What the fuck? I had a wagon train rolling in between my ears. I took two motrin and smoked a little hash and am just now starting to feel a bit better. Fuckin Ivan. When I left he was crashed out on the couch with two girls I’ve never met. I did notice that he had make up all over his face and I think his fingernails were painted. Oh yes it twas that kind o party.

I had to get down here though cause I’m meeting Kyla for coffee. I’ve got a few minutes, though. She texted me saying she was still getting ready. This is good. I need a little waking up (and sobering up) before I see her luscious self. She didn’t make it to the party and was upset about it and so was I kinda, but it was fun anyway with lots of beer and lots of new faces. Kz was out of her freakin mind. She was dancing before people got there and her dancing in the living room was one of the last things I remember. Charlene split with some actor dude. A lot of kids from Berkeley showed up, and one dude had his guitar. He actually played Kristofferson’s “Sunday morning coming down” which is now completely prophetic. Oh shit, she’s ready. Gotta go...

3:35pm

I had to come back here. We just had a pretty fuckin intense and emotional experience. We got coffee. We both happen to like double soy lattes with one sugar in the raw for whatever that’s worth. It’s pretty nice out today, a little pre-fall chill creeping in, but the sun was out so we took a walk around the Commons and then down to the half shell at the Charles River. We sat there just watching people jog by, or walking their dogs. Then she started to tell me about her younger brother who died when he was six fucking years old. This Wednesday is the anniversary of his death. The poor kid drowned in her family’s pool; She was really feeling it. So after a while I told her about Chad, and how I was 15 (and so was he) when he died of Leukemia. It was kinda intense. She was opening up, I could tell. It’s not easy for people to deal with grief, even many years after the fact. I still fucking tear-up almost every time I think of Chad. Her brother died 3 years ago and she is still having a very rough time. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. The fucking kid unlocked the gate to the pool one night, (she said they always kept it locked) but he found the key, and the poor guy wanted to take a swim. Only a few minutes passed and her mom went looking for him and finds him face down in the pool.

Kyla was trying to hold it together, but when the floodgates open, I guess, when you feel open enough to let your feelings out, there is no way to stop them; and you shouldn’t. That’s what I told her. “let it out…he can feel you…and you can maybe feel him” I knew what I was talking about. I know what I’m talking about. I think of Chad almost every day and that was almost eight years ago. I still remember the last time I saw him, one day before he died. He was at his parent’s house, in his old room, in a fucking hospital bed with tubes sticking in and out of him; he was skinny and doped up but he was still with it enough to see people for the last time. It nearly killed me. He wasn’t even crying, I couldn’t help it and felt like a fool but I started to ball. He was saying its ok, everything is going to be ok but I wouldn’t accept that. How is it ok for a fifteen-year-old kid to be ripped from his life so goddamn young? When it was time to leave I hugged him, and could feel his bones and smell that sick hospital like dying smell; I couldn’t believe this was the same kid who was once a star baseball player, a kid who got a 1600 on his SAT’s in fucking eighth grade; this kid who had two brothers and two great parents and me, his best friend; just like that this Cancer snuffed him out.

I told Kyla all this and I was tearing up. It is still so raw in me. I told her how when I was leaving him, and walking down the stairs I heard him call out, this kid that was so weak and feeble, he actually yelled, “Ed, if you ever need me, if you ever need help, just reach out to me and I’ll help you if I can…” I think it helped her know she’s not alone in grief. It brought us closer We now have a bond, a shared traumatic experience that happens all over and every day and will happen to everyone. It was intense, I held her for like 15 minutes as she cried. We kind of lightened up after that and then boom: with dried tears on our faces we kissed, and kissed hard. It was wild, rough and real. It was like all the talk of death made us realize that we are alive: Now! Here! Live while you can. We both felt it. I swear if it was dark and we were alone we would have done it right there.

We walked back and got some soup from the caf (it sucked) and she had to go up to her dorm to do homework. Great. I just got a text from the Bookstore saying they need me to work from 5 to close. I’m absolutely beat and tired and euphoric at the same time but fuck I need the money. Follow the Tao, absorb it all, don’t fight it, be tired if you’re tired; you are strong and will make it through…

From: josh

Subject: cha-cha’s

To: Ed

a long time ago, in a place that doesn’t even seem to have existed, i was a man who couldn’t listen or feel...during that time, i went out with a beautiful puerto rican girl, who you know all about, named Maria.

Well Maria lived with five other puerto ricans, and i knew that four of those girls including her belonged to a group called the “cha-cha’s.” “weee are a group of girls who have grown up together since first grade,” Monica (maria’s roommate) had told me.

Monica had invited me over for dinner the last night. i had been working/slaving at my thesis (after having food poisoned myself yesterday morning from some bad eggs!), and when i walked into monica’s apartment, there are seven girl’s sitting around a table...Maria wasn’t there, she was gone for a few days. But one girl, karin, who is not a “cha cha,” has really got it goin’ on...now, you have to understand...i know monica, more or less, through maria and our tribulations so of course all of monica’s friends are off limits to me...it just wouldn’t be right. so i start fucking around with this girl Karin, you know, doing things you can do since you’re not actually going to hook up with them...saying shit and what not...well, this girl starts to get into it, and by the end, we’re really fucked up...she starts to get pissed...talking about a good fuck and people who can’t deliver...i mean, she’d just stop a conversation and start telling me this shit, and her friends were like, “what?”

but ed, she was so sexy...it was the first time i had met a girl and had there be nothing between us but the urge to fuck...i mean, i’ve met girls and wished i could sleep with them, but in the back of my mind i always hoped there would be something great behind it....Love, you know. But with this girl it was pure sex, from her solid thighs to her delicious scent...and she powerful, bold and no nonsense, obviously...

But my hands were tied...to hook up with her would have meant going into Maria’s bed!!! That’s where Karin was sleeping.

so now i’m home, after having given the slip to another one of these girls....ed, imagine, a group of puerto ricans stranded in the middle of america with not that many people who actually care to really talk to them...you know, beyond the typical foreigner bullshit...oh my, Ed, you’d run this place...and love it. i do!

Otherwise everything is going as weird and freaky as usual. i told my crazy cool (but crazy nonetheless) bass teacher that when i was in his apartment i got the urge to break everything...i wonder how he took it....his first response was “of course!!!” mad shit, holmes, haas, amigo, when you’re fucked up shit isn’t surprising...

and so it goes. Oh, have i told you about this 16 year old? shit is getting confusing. well, that’s enough for now...i been seeing some crazy shit. the only thing to do is stay extra large!!

Josh

From: Ed

Subject: “Emancipate yourselves from Mental Slavery….”

To: josh

Been diggin on some Robert Nesta Marley lately feeding my soul – The album Uprising is killin it; bass, drums, angelic vocals and hard hittin lyrics speaking nothing but the truth…

Well…companero, the words and fascination; dam man, if I don’t check my e-mail for a few days… I gotta get back to your pace. Where the fuck do I begin? At the end of a beginning which never started? What are you don juan or somethin? Got diggity damn, my man is constantly involved in some romantic intrigue.

16 year old sticks out in my mind; love is love even for one night; just don’t end up in some st louis jail bent over a steel table in the back room of a kitchen with some hairy scar-faced motherfucka named Benedict rammin you up the ol pigeon hole.

Craziness is ubiquitous; true

But perception is autocratic.

-The color of the glass controls the view

Now I been chillin, still, real, and hearty and alive. Unaffected by things, absolutely no judgment on me or people or necessities or anything. I threw angst out the third floor window and I still see it there rotting, nibbled on by bold boston rats. Last night I was

(((Tie in here? Link this girl with somebody in journals???)))

chilling with a 19 year old at her crib when she started askin me serious questions like “why are you here, what do you see in me, do you like me? Etc…” all I heard was bla blah and blzah…I answered: “stop askin dumb questions.”

Realized that was quite rude; I didn’t mean to insult her. but shit, they are dumb questions to me. ”“listen, honey,” I said, “I’m here, god damn it, it’s 5 in the am, and I got work in three hours; ain’t’ that give you an inkling that I dig you?”

Even though it was more of the one-eyed monster hunger. and how beautiful that is; the idealistic visionary in me still believes that sex is beautiful, and even for one night.

and while I’m going off about this I’m just plain tired of girls who are not 100% lean and fit. (these woman do not have belly’s, but have little humps of hip and ass and one girl’s tetas were so big and misleading when I undid the bra they dropped with gravity and I had to dodge em for fear of a concussion-repercussion.) But we hooked up and it was tasty and she loved it and treated her with my usual tenderness and love; I’ll see her again now that she knows the score.

Crazy times, out there in St Louis, seems like you’re livin like josh, full of your unique energy.

Acknowledgement of the craziness of life that you are, and are a part of, is the only way. Takin the shit straight on and go for yours. I Don’t know, lately I’m thinking about things far less, got no time now, believe that? Trying to save money from my meager salary at the bookstore; gonna stop smokin as much (has been a pack a day for a while)

Kinda want a woman now, somebody to share time with; I’ve met this cool girl from Art Class and we’ve been spending some Q.T., but I know I can’t control how or who or when that will happen. Just keeping eyes open and my shit hard (which is easy).

Had a liberating thought today: I realized that I don’t know if I’ll ever marry, don’t know if I care; nothing is set in stone and our whole idea is to be fluid and open and not constrained by conventions, right? The simplicity of the Tao…

gotta keep the interest tank full with people and art and beauty and life and action and daring and excitement; cause if you let it, the world will let you down, consistently.

At your weakest point you find your greatest strength

You are only misinterpreted when you try to interpret your- self

Fuck Buddha and Krishna and Christ and Mohammed and the holy green ideal of material shit that everybody is on their knees for every fucking day.

I am an authority on life because I am alive.

I could sit for days and soak up all the memories and live it again

Gotta pass math or else I really fuck up

Need nothing, live, eat, wonder, indulge, fuck, work, think selectively, not controlling but acknowledging energy as the source of EVERYTHING is the way to be.

Take time out to rest………………………then get up and do shit cause action is indispensable to living.

Wonder sometimes if I’m really full of shit.

I might be able to get a free ticket from my sister’s frequent flyer miles to go out to st louis some lzong weekend in Oct or Nov. If not, or if so, you gotta make it up here for Xmas Break: you, me, an OZ. of the kind and a bottle of rum will be all we need….!

Vamos a ver

Ed

Sept 25th 10:00am

First thing I did when I woke up was to pluck some strings. It soothes me even though my fingers and hands barely work. This will take time, but what is time? “to see the world in a a grain of sand, heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour” isn’t that how you put it Mr. Billy Blake? I dig it. Last night I clocked another half an hour at the safe. 25 or so combinations. The list is getting long and I’m quite sure I’m slightly mad. “some people never know what it truly means to be crazy, what boring lives they must lead…” Charles Bukowski via the movie Bar Fly. (these quote are up in the mental attic and I gotta let em out somewhere; there’s no room for this shit in V and A or math class that’s for sure.)

But I just got out of a meeting with my senior writing project adviser. He’s a cool dude, plays guitar and is a writer; I think its poetry mostly. He’s pretty much giving me free rein to decide the topic for my project. Which was smart of him because that’s the way it has to be. I decided I’m gonna base it on my Spain Trip from last year. 75 pages is required. I think it will be cool cause that was one helluva trip.

I’ve Been looking at notebooks from that month long sojourn the last few days, absorbing and re-living the wild wondrous experience of wandering free, with no agenda, no schedule, just the compass of my impulse guiding the way. So opposite of now, constrained by schedules and limits and duties and responsibilities; classes and a job (gotta get another one; still no word on the Pizza joint). Don’t know how cut out I am for walking in line. I like being unformed, unplanned, unpredictable and surrounded by the glorious eternal moment. Think I’m better suited for a lifestyle like the temporary one I experienced on my Spain Trip. The ‘trip’ started before the plane took off from London and landed in Madrid. It was my first time taking acid, and Josh’s too. He had literally just got back from Dublin and we ceremoniously ate the two tabs we had stashed in our freezer for just the right time. We started in our Oxford flat, then migrated around town, to bars and friends houses, blowing out the contours of consciousness, reality becoming an animated abstract impressionist painting we were both an active part of. It lasted all night, and didn’t really end ‘til I was on the plane, and woke up from a nap, and thanked Jah that it was over. I took a long hot shower and stood nude in front of the mirror, millions of drops of water dripping from my limbs as I stared into my eyes and felt absolute LOVE. What happened? Aldous Huxley’s ‘doors of perception’ were not only cleansed, but blown clear off their hinges. LSD at the right time with the right people in the right place(s) can be such a positive thing- an engender a spiritual evolution if you’re ready for it (Although now I lean towards shrooming in the woods as my psychedelic-sojourn of choice, but the right acid can send me ahead into where I’m already going to).

I stepped out of the Madrid airport into the balmy, tropical sensual air and got on the bus. I found a hostel by wandering, no guidebooks on this trip, just a small backpack, an awesome way to go, light and airy, just some drawers,, socks shirts, toothbrush and notebook, of course. (I intentionally brought so few clothes whenever I went to the laundry I stripped down to boxers and sat there watching the machine spin)

I crashed for like 15 hours, got up, left and sat in an old ‘magnificent’ cathedral at midday in the middle of the week. A few senoras kneeling before la madre or el cristo rey. The empty opulence of the Catholic Church was repulsive to me. Yeah, I admired the craftsmanship of the marble pillars, the intricately hand carved cherry wood pulpit, the frescoes of the saints and cherubs dancing high above the reach of man; just where the church wants them: out of reach, an aspiration, part of the perpetual spiritual blackmail the institution of Christ lays on its followers. Christ didn’t want a gold church, or Priest’s with big bellies. Then I had a satori: ‘you are only here cause that’s what you think you should do; see the sights.’ Fuck the sights, I’m outta here. As I left I saw one of those priests, fat, chubby, cheeks flushed from wine, and the fucker leered at me, nodding his head. I was so incensed and raw from the trip I nearly belted the fucker. I gave him the look of death and shook my head and emerged into a beatific sun acting not at all Christ-ian. Then, the sun was my only god, the giver of life. I cruised to the train station; got a beer, sat and looked at the train schedules, time and destinations, flip and flutter, as trains pulled in and took off. Where to go, I was drunk with freedom, high with possibility: Toledo? Sevilla? Granada? I saw a train leaving in a half hour to Salamanca in the north. Why not? I purchased a ticket and was soon leaning back in my seat peering out the window at the overturned blue bowl of the sky, listening to Floyd’s Dark side of the moon taking the slow train as it swayed side to side, creaking and groaning. Clarity and peace. Who was I where was I? what did it matter? Later I chilled in the lunch car (which was an empty car with a guy selling pig sandwiches and beer out of a cooler) A kid played with guitar while some fly girl played the freaking pan flute…

Ivan said he’s trying to get some micro-dots acid called Einsteins. Why not? Its been a year and tripping with that crazy South American horndog should be wild. Oh the clock ticks and I gotta go meet my kz in the bookstore to help her pick out some books. She is crazy, full of hate, creative and very interesting. Gotta remember to make things interesting and not just dwell in the ideals. Matter of fact I’m meeting my buddy Kevin to make a deal of a different sort; he told me he’d be kind to me. And Kind it better be….

OCTOBER Autumn Winds Be Blowin

Oct 2^nd 1:45pm

Kyla called me and wants me to come over tonight. She says she has something special planned. That makes me a little nervous. I like her a lot and we get along mighty fine but I always get a ltitle uneasy when a girl gets into me. Why is that? It’s what I think I always want; Love. Then when it starts to grow I move away from it. I hate to admit but I think I’m still a little screwed up from Miranda even though that was, fuck, over four years ago when that little Be-otch broke me tender heart. I had plenty of fun and intense experiences with women in Oxford, some way-crazy and wonderfully spontaneous, but I knew nothing there would ever stick, cause I knew I was coming back home, and the girls were either dispersing to other places or staying there. So it was easy. Now, with Kyla…fuck it, what will be will be.

Another fuckin jzob come and gone in the life of Ed Slattery. I’ll add it to the list. But like the line in Gilian Welch’s song Everything is Free: “I never minded working hard, just who I’m working for.” Pretty much sums up my attitude. I love to work hard. The weird thing is I kind of liked this jzob which is entirely out of character for me. But now its Syonara and a big middle finger to the pinche Pitchfork Bookstore Café.(I gotta let this out).

Last night after closing, I had already cleaned the bathrooms, counted and stacked all the magazines that were to be returned, and entered in the ISBN’s of the new book inventory. My last task was to simply vacuum the wall to wall carpet. I actually enjoy vacuuming. It’s a sort of a meditation, plus I’d been doing it around my house since I was 7. After a few minutes, I realized the ‘hoover’ wasn’t picking up. I checked the bag and it wasn’t full. I turned it over and looked at the brush-wheel and even exerted the effort to check if the belt was on correctly. But for some reason the piece of shit would not pick up. There was no one else left in the store except me and the manager, who was in the back office doing the books. I hadn’t interacted with the guy too much, and simply maintained an affable and agreeable manner whenever I had to talk with him. I just came in, did my job, and went home. Simple. Isn’t that how a job should be? I went back there and the office door was half opened. To be polite, I knocked on it gently. “Sorry to bother you,” I said. He didn’t look up. “The vacuum cleaner isn’t working.” “So?” he said, without looking at me. “Well, I’m just going to put it away and go home then.” “No you’re not.” he said. “Excuse me?” “Part of your closing duties is to vacuum the bookstore.” “I am aware of that...” I said, getting a little peeved, “but the vacuum isn’t picking anything up.” Then the fucker dropped it: “Well, do it anyway,” he said, still not bothering to look at me. Fuck this, I thought. But what do you do in this position? I’ve been there before, having had my share of waiter jobs, valet jobs, landscaping jobs, where the boss invariably and inevitably acts like a dick and insists on something being done just for the sake of doing you job. Americans are on this power trip all the time. I don’t get it. A job is a job that needs to be done. I tried to be cool, I really did. “Pardon me?” I said, to give him a final opportunity to show some commons sense. But no, his inner prick came out (and it was puny) So because he is a late thirties balding pasty faced fuck with a beer belly and bad teeth, he had to ruffle his feathers. “You heard me; do it anyway” he said, fiddling with the papers and some cash on the desk. “Ok.’ I said, “ How about this? I fucking quit you absolute turd of a person.” I didn’t wait to see his expression. I went to the back where my coat and book bag was. I grabbed them and went straight to the back door because the front door was locked and I wanted out of there. I knew it was alarmed but pushed it open anyway. It went off in a loud BAH BAH BAH BAH BAH as I walked out into the crisp October night and down the fire-escape. Fuck that, carbon.

Now I’m on the job hunt again, and already applied at The Arizona Pizza Factory in the Prudential Mall. Guess it will be back to slanging food and drinks again. It’ll be more money anyway, and I can do it drunk, high or in my sleep. It’s the Irish in me. I’ve not only kissed but actually fornicated with the Blarney stone so it’s a cake walk. Gotta get going now and try to finish my math homework. Math at the age of 23. Maybe it is bad karma. Maybe it just is. No beer tonight gonna try and be good… Oh there is that girl again…She’s got big lips, big hips and a gap between her two front teeth…the sure sign of a “sexy mutha-hucka…..” Is she checkin me out or am I tripping? Vamos a ver…

From: josh

Subject: confessions of zeno

To: Ed

“i was really suffering from my resolutions much more than from my cigarettes. i ought to try and cure myself without making any resolutions. according to him my personality in the course of years had become divided in two, one of which gave orders while the other was only a slave which, directly when the supervision was relaxed, disobeyed the master ’s orders out of sheer love of liberty. so what i ought to do was to give it absolute freedom and at the same time look my vice in the face as if it was something new and i were meeting it for the first time. i must not fight it, i must forget it, and treat it with complete indifference, turning my back on it as if it were not worthy to keep me com- pany.”1

i woke up today and laid in bed for hours. thesis. thesis. elephant. tortuga. fuck it, i said. and i moped around campus, found out i fucked up a spanish test, and confirmed my day’s work...i got in the waiting room to see my elephant advisor. problems, i explained to him, evoking as much pity as i could. “i need to stop this,” i explained. “i have these

responsibilities and interests.” he listened for a minute and then politely told me to go fuck myself. he didn’t want to see me until i had a chapter in my hand. he said i was a spaz, a loser, and too talented to sit on my ass. so i left, knowing he was right, seeing i was afraid, and sat down and read this passage in a book. strange coincadenke. he was right, my advisor and zeno. so now i’m grooving and losing and winning without any difference..

josh

1Confessions of Zeno, Italo Svevo, 1923

From: Ed

Subject: thinning soul...

To: josh

brother josh,

last night, again another drunken, moochin, and borrowin

evenin listenin to blugrass band, friends of mine. busch was 1.25 so i had like ten, and then stumbled to Bar101 where i saw an asshole from my freshman year at Salve who once started shit with me. He was such a fucking meathead. The kind of guy who did weekly circle jerks with his other latent homosexual body building fucks. i got pissed but figured what would it accomplish? So I just drank more and saw these girls and straight up kissed this one girl I barely know smack on the lips and asked her “when are we gonna get it on?”

then a bunch of people started rappin on the mic and some of it was cool but, maybe i’m out of the scene, you coudln’t hear one word of what they were sayin, so i was gonna go up and just keep the rhythm goin and mumble and nobody woulda know, but of course i didn’t, me being a self-imposed pariah and too fucking scared, and gettin pissed at that fact and this other girl Yvonne who I knew from two years ago was lookin damn good and sumptuous and I was giving all the charm I had and still she wasn’t reciprocating; but then later I realized maybe she was and i was just to drunk to tell; way to go Ed.

so off now to borrow $$$ from my sis, and think i finally got a fuckin job at a godamn nationwide chain pizza joint and I’m too fuckin tired and drained after pukin bile with my throat all sore from asshole cigarettes. Someday I will write minute by minute the effects of alcohol as it creeps into me; although acquiring the buzz is of course the fun part. Maybe my doctorate thesis will be called “On The Hangover: Can someone pack a bowl please?” Yeah right. If I do post graduate work it will be on a grass farm in Jamaica. You know what I mean, Rasta….

peace to all you long hairs

and our ghosts hauntin new college hill1, or whatever that thing is called....

tu hermano

Ed

1 New College Mound - Where Lewis Carroll immortalized Alice.

Oct 9th John Lennon’s Birthday 5:30pm

Four nights ago was “Kyla’s Surprise,” and man what a surprise it was. I went to her dorm at 7, like she told me to. There was a hand drawn sign that read “Ed, Cum in…” I’m not kidding. whoa. I opened the door to a den of deliciousness. It was dark in there, but she had strung up little red chili pepper lights and a few red candles, violating the dorm rules; fuck them. And there she was, laid out in a white nighty like an Italian feast of flesh. Her lips were red, her nails were red and she had a red bow in her hair that was pulled up exposing her smooth neck. Rose pedals were everywhere, on the bed and on the ground. Damn. I just thought she was gonna have some food for me or something but I did not expect this. She immediately started undressing me. Then when I was buck naked she got me a glass of champagne, it was Asti Spumanti but I didn’t give a fuck; it coulda been mad dog 20/20 for all I cared. I chugged it down and she filled me up again. I chugged that one too. I could see in her eyes that she was a few ahead of me. It was wild. We messed around for a while, she went down and me and that girl is an artist in more ways than one. She had oils and feathers and a whole bunch of kinky shit. She even had a red rubber for me I tell you this girl has got a keen sense of aesthetics; that will help her in Marketing that’s for sure. I left about 3 hours later. She was asleep. When I got home Kz said she could “smell sex all over me.” Which I thought was kind of weird for her to say but very accurate.

I just got off the train after being back home for two days and my folks’ computer sucks so I figured fuck why not come down here to my (semi) private writer’s den and continue my soliloquy. Why do I do this? To release? To relive or “to recreate life out of life,” thank you Mr. Joyce for a great quote but I just don’t get too into your books. Joyce you old blind Guinness swilling master you. Spent most of my time at home wit the family. One night I cruised the streets in my mom’s car looking for something, not looking for anything, thrust into a bizzaro world where past and present collide in an atomic explosion that causes me alternate feelings of depression and elation.

I went back to our old neighborhood and parked for a sec outside our old house, looking at the yard, the big front porch, the same rusted chain link fence, the big Catalpa tree we used to climb; memories flooding me, filling me, of playing hide and go seek, staying out riding bikes until the street lights came on. I made out with a girl for the first time in the wet leaves behind the garage on a soggy August afternoon. Our hoop is still there on the garage. How many hours I spent shooting around, playing hustle and pick up games, or just out there practicing: spring summer fall and winter: we balled like we were postal workers never; nothing stopped us. We even had a special shovel for cracking the ice so we could play in the dead of a Providence winter.

Such an innocence; such a small vision of the world. Now the vision has grown exponentially and possibly even well past the limits of what people call sanity. I felt weird sitting there so I pulled away, soaking up the streets the houses and the memories; a dude in a hoody walks down the sidewalk and glares at me, like “what the fuck you doing here white boy?” I’m suddenly pissed and nearly pull over get out and yell “I’m from these streets you motherfucker.” Then I realize I am from the streets, but not of them, not now, not ever again and I pull off and turn up the radio blasting Peter Tosh’s “I am that I am, I am I am I am.”

Hanging with the fam is weird now. seems so different nowadays. My mind is on other things than football games on TV, what’s happening at the church, and all the other simple conventional stuff that makes up a middle class lif: work, vacations and “did you see that movie?” I’m not trying to judge anybody, and I’m not. I just feel myself evolving from the past, seeing the future as maybe something different and more exciting than what the so called “American Dream” promises. Ever since Oxford, well, really ever since my freshman year at Slave staring at the poster of Ireland on the wall and writing, dreaming. Longing for something I didn’t even know what it was. Now I think I’m getting closer to it. I’ve really been whittling myself down, cutting away all the influence. It is part an act of will and part an organic response to what I once accepted as truth, and now see is just one of many subjective ways to live. Here in America it’s all about the loot, and getting famous.

In the Copper Canyon Mexico the Tarahumara live to survive, they live in peace, and have little or no possessions and can run 20 miles in a clip. Which way to live? Even in America there is still a rural life unencumbered by excessive greed and technology, and still focused on raising vegetables and animals in places that are very little different than they were 5,000 years ago. My cousin Nick lives out in Northwestern Michigan and is trying to start an Organic Produce Farm. I talked to him a few days ago and he’s got an old tractor, and he’s leasing ten acres and is really seriously gonna try to “homestead.” The question is, which life do I want to live? That’s all that matters to me. I’m not trying to say this is better or that is better. But I need to be true to my impulse. But what is it and where is it leading me? Everything was so clear in high school. I was gonna marry my girl, have kids, be a lawyer, buy a house and everything would be great. But “all has changed, changed utterly,”( Mr. Yeats…) and I must embrace it and move with it.

I was forced to go to church too, well, it was a mass in honor of my grandpa so I couldn’t miss it. I still don’t see what going into an old brick and wood building has to do with honoroing his life. I’d rather go into the woods or climb a mountain and really commune with his spirit. But mass nearly killed me. Its all so damn contrived and frankly boring and stultifying. I used to be a big part of the church, I was a youth leader and actually on the Parish Council: youngest member ever at 15 years old. All I felt during the mass was the saturating guilt and fear and threat of hell. Was that Christ’s message? Seeing all the people, really good honest and compassionate people made it even worse. I love them and respect them but since they are part of a materialistic and archaic institution, I can never be with them or be a part of a bogus self-serving distortion of a Christ’s really beautiful message: Love your neighbor, Live in Peace.

I had to get some of this off my chest, up here is where I get my education, my self induced revelations on the never ending road to my Tarsus. It’s getting dark and I think I’m gonna walk back to The Fenway. Get my legs moving and blood flowing. I got a math test tomorrow which seems like the most insignificant thing right now. I’ll get thru it. I’ll do it. Perfect time to go, some dick next to me just let loose a toxic fart. .

From: josh

Subject: 8:32pm

To: Ed

it’s early and i’m drunk and my buddy is asleep in the bath- room with his girlfriend one room away...in his bed...it was that kind of night. me...i’m listening to the dead trying to stay chill.. positive is an attitude and the only the way to be because even some rich mother- fucker with a twenty year old wife can bitch.

everybody loses sometimes...positive is what makes the world go round and i’m trying to be on that tip. but there’s different kinds of positive. i used to deny or ignore to get there...but the now I’m back to the Tao...release and start again, every fucking day if that need be...so there’s something i’ve been want- ing to say to you all day but haven’t know why...so i’m gonna say it and go to sleep and wake up and take a spanish quiz…

JACK OF ALL TRADES

feel it, homie...who are you and who is he...who does everyone expect you to be...i shouldn’t have said anything but now that it’s out remember this...he’s who he wants to be...i’m not sayin any more, because words resemble walking sticks; a cane helps you walk, but not right. my words make you understand what my words say...but that’s not what i’m sayin...that’s what i’m writing with only 26 choices...it’s the jack, ed...i really believe it’s all in the jack.

------Josh

From: Ed

Subject: they try to confuse our minds...

To: josh

JACK OF ALL TRADES…

you definitely got me thinkin...

I got 5 minutes before a math exam (fuck that) and gots

words to say. I went out with this lady the other night, and not

surprisingly, she was a “thinker,” someone kind of like you

and me and the few other brothers and sisters; but you

know what started to get in the way of the funky dialogue;

I kissed her. damn, then everything was thrown

off-balance and now i’m kinda pissed. I also watched a

documentary on Salavador Dali1 and damn that

motherfucka was the opposite of balance. seek and you

never find, never mind, frogs and eggs and melting clocks

and sex and sleep, praying to saints worshipping elephants. people gonna

be chillin at my crib tonite, gonna see what surreal mis-

chief we getup to-

I’ll get back to you

peace

Ed

1 The Definitive Dali, A Life’s Retrospective, 1988

Oct 18^th 7:30pm

Today was a perfect illustration of the Yin and the Yang, the polar opposites of life. Here in this computer lab of fluorescent lights and stale air, after a spontaneous road trip to fresh and alive Walden Pond! Gotta love serendipity and her sexy surprising ways. I’m walking to class this morning and right outside the Parrish Café who do I see but Julie, my” friend” from the year before. We hadn’t talked since I was in Oxford. She is trying to parkher car and failing miserably. She is kinda frazzled and tells me she has an interview up in Portland, NH for an internship with an architectural firm. She said she didn’t want to take her car so she could prepare for it on the train. Plus she didn’t mention it but she is a horrible driver. No stereotypes here, but the girl can’t drive for shit. We took one ill-fated trip up to Revere soon after we first met. I had to take over pretty quick cause she’s a country girl from some backwoods town in Minnesota and is unused to the insanity of city driving. Plus she’s a potter and a poet and wonderfully dazey and dreamy like any artist should be.

Her train was leaving in a half an hour and she really didn’t want to pay 20 bucks to park it for the day so I offered to take it. She said sure, good friends are good friends even though time and distance pass, and she is mellow like that. And in an instant my day is transformed and I’m skipping class, Just math and V and A anyway, not gonna miss out on much of my edu-ma-cation- fuck that shite…

I cruised back to my pad and ran in. I grabbed Kz’s guitar and another coat, some cd’s, a lickle herbs and my ipod. Her car is a beat up subarau outback from the late 80’s, but it works, and runs fairly well. It is filled with all kinds of shit so it felt normal: clothes, books, papers, trash, clay form her pottery class and even a few empty beer bottles. I put in Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night, a great free spirited drunk album that is perfect for a road trip and got on the Mass Pike heading west. I looked in my driver’s side mirror and caught the sweet postcard view of Boston’s skyline frozen for just a few seconds. One day I will see that image for the last time. Today was a classic New England day. It took me about 45 minutes to get to Concord . I got off onto Route 2 with the windows open. The air was full of that distinctive fall smell, the scent of burning leaves in the air and the leaves themselves are just now turning blazing red and burnt gold; a whole slowly spreading wildfire of color moving from tree to tree. Cruising down the country road, seeing all the old crumbling stone walls, relics from the day when all of this area was farmland. Before there was any city, just a scattered village or hamlet here and there. Back in the day when there were no supermarkets, no internet, no cars, no cell phones, no skyscrapers, just wild lands and cultivated lands and hard damn work raising animals, growing crops, building houses and barns; and sweet oil lamp evenings reading or strumming a banjo on the front porch with barefoot kids running around.

When I saw the sign for the De Cordoba Sculpture Park I new I was close to Walden. The last time I was there was with my Miranda, shit, maybe 7 years ago or so. It was summer and we went swimming. There was no one around so we made love in a shallow cove, serenaded by the chicadees and cardinals (of course Walden was just another addition to our extensive list of places we screwed) When you are teenagers and in love and have no place to go you get really creative or not so creative in finding places to get down to it. Fuck her though she ripped my heart apart and now is some yuppie living in Boston actually. I pulled into the parking lot and there was just one car there. I grabbed my backpack and the guitar. The smell hit me immediately: the damp scent of the pond, the rich humus-laden-aroma of mud and soil, mixed with the crisp autumn smell filled me with unrivaled vitality of Mrs. Mother Nature. I walked half way around the pond and found a nice spot that looked had a clear view out on the water. There were a few mergansers and ducks swimming around, but otherwise it was quite still and quiet. At the lip of the pond there was lots of deer tracks in the mud (made me think of that Richard Brautigan poem, deer tracks- ((Put in ?))

I sat down against a large sugar maple, maybe still there from Thoreau’s time, and took some time to adjust to the peace and quiet, unscrew my nerves from the tenseness of the metropolis. A Peter Tosh line came to me “flee from the city, its getting shitty.” I could hear the highway in the distance. I pretended it was just a river somewhere flowing down from Canada or Maine. I remembered Thoreau in Walden bitched about the trains blowing their horns and disturbing his peace. But he made do, and so did I. I rolled up a joint, but didn’t smoke it. After a while of unwinding and meditating, I got up stretched and started to run around the woods like a kid, ducking and weaving through the trees, hopping over stones, letting my mind stop its ceaseless machinations through the simple concentration required to keep running and breathing, jumping over fallen trees, letting my feet and eyes and lungs do what they do in the most primal state.

I stashed my bag and the guitar in a thick-thicket and walked around the pond twice at a good clip working up a lil sweat: walking meditation. I still didn’t see anybody and that was fine with me. When I got back to my tree I had the sudden urge to jerk off, so I did. With the best view ever. The pond still and dark blue, the trees, a blue sky pock marked with fast moving clouds cruising by.

I did some scales on the guitar. The blues scales (major and minor) are so deep, and dark and groovy. With those fat splattered (fifth?) notes that make me feel the Louisiana heat, smell the corn liquor and know that dank delta funk. My fingers are limbering up and starting to get calluses. Only know two chords so far, C and G, but with one more and the truth I will be making music according to somebody (U2, Dylan or Johnny Cash?). I did some writing, and read some of Edward Abby’s Dessert Solitaire, which is a lot like Walden only set in the South West and filled with Beer and women along with pro-environment rants and a hard core yet positive philosophy about life. When I started to forget everything, I remembered the Now. It started to get a little cool and I got hungry so I left. I must have been out there for almost 5 hours or so. I took the long way home going down route two loving the back roads and blue highways.

I stopped and had a fried chicken dinner at a little family restaurant in near the town of Lincoln. I didn’t even get the name of the joint. The chubby lady who served me coulda been anybody’s mom, and that’s how I treated her, with respect and even love. Two Miller High Life’s and the good homemade grub and I was feeling on top of the world. I sparked my spliff and put on some good reggae: Burning Spear’s H.I.M (Hail his Imperial Majesty) – there’s nothing better than cruising back roads high with reggae guiding me?

I met Julie at South Station just as her train got in and she was kind enough to drop me here. There was a little Vibe between us, I could tell. She’s got my number and I know I’ve got hers. She’s cool though, and I look forward to getting reacquainted with her at some point. Now it’s back to the flat and maybe homework. I got an essay for Art Class due tomorrow. My thesis: “Was Degas fixated on teenage Girls? If so, why is that so wrong?” I Haven’t even started it., but I’m pretty mellow now so we’ll see…Gonna try my magic fingers on the wall safe and maybe tonight’s the night…

From: josh

Subject: damn dude…

To: Ed

Yo…Que pasa?…this day has been crazy…I’m trying a new life schedule…waking up at 7 am so I can write my thesis, …been doing some research…I’m applying for an internship with spin magazine…maybe i’ll be in nyc this summer. I damned home I get this thesis done.

Thesis be damned. damn. i’m not going to curse during this message, cleaning up my style like tribe called quest. just got out of yoga and have lots to say but comes to mind standing in front of a computer with seven people like bitching (well, there goes that...no, everybody says bitch on tv now, so it must not be cursing), or just fucking complaining about shit. or maybe they’re all writing good things: ‘you know what sam, i was wrong. i don’t mind that you fucked my boyfriend.’ or cindy: ‘john isn’t so bad. he smacks me, but he always says he’s sorry.’

Ed...you don’t live by this shit. nobody smacking no- body but naked bodies in the bedroom or on the kitchen sink....oh, there is some understanding at last. This morning i had taken a shower, and when i walked out my roomate, crazy paul, said, “you just made me piss in the sink.” i have to admit it, i was pretty mad. wow, i must be changing. but now maybe you see i’m not the only nasty motherfucker who considers ridiculous shit like that. but maybe my four year close friendship with paul is the reason we both thought of that. there’s mildew in our tub and god knows what behind the couch. we nasty.

anyway, i’m not going near my thesis in this letter...yoga is blank. ya know, i’ve been thinking about my ex Maria, again, lately, just thinking maybe i ruined her life. not on purpose and i don’t regret my actions, but she always looks so beautiful and so hurt when I see her, that i’ve been thinking that maybe it would have all been better if we never spent that time. but today in yoga i had to clear my mind, and this crazy picture came to me. it was maria, walking alone on a beautiful beach, thinking about how happy she was, with her husband somewhere close by, doing his own thing. she was like thirty and everything had just worked out. maybe i’ve seen Red(1) too many times, and maybe i am a kislowski junkie, but who’s to say. and that thought, of her getting back into her groove without me and without bitterness (now maybe i’m stretching it), was really great. a weight lifted.

so how’s the hizouse. refer to my jamiroquia letter-note to you and don’t make the same mistake we made in england: duct tape all horrible roomates to the bed for at least five days. they’ll find the tao!! it will be a great help to all involved. how’s kz and all the ladies. i’m asking these questions, which is quite uncharacteristic, and i am genu- inely interested, but feel free to answer none of them. after yoga i feel like i have all the time in the world to just find out everything about anyone. i’m still embarassing my- self on a regular basis and i’ve met some really cool people through it.

-so wash away the days and b-happy. burglarize all nice women of their secrets, because it feels good to let them out. and treat men as men, (or mice, depending how they present themselves.) say hi to my woman on the T. and i see a part of my message down here. that’s funny.

oh, don’t forget to be.

josh

From: Ed

Subject: go yell it off the mountain

To: josh

Well let me not make an attempt to answer:

Kz’s a trip and really crazy and if doesn’t stop smokin herb her head might be permanently damaged...

She cut off her man, and that sucks and he’s hurt and i’d like to chill with him but the forum isn’t there, altho he might get me a job at tower records spit shining cd’s or someshite

(i think he’s workin there too.)

and god bless the insane because after reading your mesage i hop on the T and guess who i see, yup, yo’ woman talkin to herself, with the same coat on and bright lipstick, one shoe in her hand staring out the window...(((PUT this bit (the lady of the T) in after Xmas break when Josh visits)))

i can’t seem to not get drunk every night, red wine, madris, rum and coke, beer, phat jznoints, it’s kinda pissin me off cause i ain’t got the money; but carpe diem, eh?

gotta find me a rich lovely to give me luv & money...

i kissed this girl the other night, and last night bassin to 3-

4 darlings at this small college bar, you know the kind of bar that endlessly plays

“bye bye miss American pie….shut the fuck up, mother bitch!!!!! i kissed two of em

and couldn’t care less and spent valuable minutes counselin

this dude about girls, then preachin my vision (which i’m slowly formulatin and realizin is the EPIPHANY of Ed’s generation) to another interested poet-dude (of course, he was cool and down, but it was his fly roomate Helena that i wanted to....) actually, let me make that 5 babies i dropped the soft eyed tender-lipped-love-me-forever-and-i’ll- bone-you-tonite- look.....there was Sherri, my lovely 18 year old drug-addict-big-tittied-teddy-bear who is crazy but into me still, and some girl named jen and her friend who i don’t know but is fly and i gotta know her or die...Julie showed up and I showed her some pic’s of my trip to Walden…she said she’s got something to show me so oh lord as you can see I’m up in it neck deep.

but i’m getting tired of this constant meetin, greeting, fucking, sucking...(you seen scarface...) I’m not complaining, but the hook-up scene only satisfies me so much.

but Ivan was with me and drunk and ecstatic cause he just got a new client who needs all kinds of stuff done around her house, all year round. She is a certifiable MILF too, The I-man says. ….I’ll meet her of course when I’m on break and at home helping him out.

and joshua, did you get my message?

there is an APB out on yo’ ass and it’s comin from Ed headquarters...

i can’t seem to type right now, all fucked up with wine and cigarette stained-chilled and dull fingers that are useless, except for a fondle of the friendly feminine feline...

oh man, Corrine called and might be comin up today, but she is comin some day and i was stupid holmes, and read her what i wrote about her (vivid memories of times spent in London and the opera and early next mornig breakfast of granola and grapes in her tiny back british yard) and i hope she isn’t foolishly hopeful; but she is a big girl i guess and Ed can’t stop his search for golden wings and long stemmed serenities

peace out

i’m never cuttin my hair again... love you holmes

Ed

Oct 29^th 12:30pm

Something absolutely surreal and amazing just happened. Fuckin Crazeeeeeeee! I tried to call Ivan but that sucka didn’t pick up. I need to find a way to get on the roof of this building and scream my head off. For now this will have to do. Morality is a moving target, I say. Good and Bad, right and wrong, concepts flexible and bendable; although I must state outright that I believe in good, I believe in Karma, and most often do the positive thing, desiring the same to happen to me more often than not. So….Just 20 minutes ago I’m cruising down Newbury St on my way to class and I hear a beeping sound coming from a building. I recognize the sound immediately. I walk over to an ATM, it was ‘stuck’ right in the wall of some building. The screen reads “press cancel to retrieve your card, or enter for another transaction.” I look around, there are the usual people going to and fro, buying expensive clothes, or getting their back waxed for all I know. I expect to see someone running back to get their card; after all I’ve done this numerous times, left my card in the thing and walked away, dreamy and oblivious. It’s a shitty feeling.

I reach out my finger to press cancel, expecting this person to be right there, after all, it only beeps for a few seconds before it swallows the card. (This too I know from experience, the next day you got to go to the bank to retirieve it.) Then something happened. Instead of pressing cancel, my finger made its own decision and pressed enter; immediately the beeping stops, and the screen asks for an amount. This is all happening on automatic pilot now: I type in 400 (somewhere in my subsconscious the fact that 400 is the usual limit kicked in…). The cash starts flipping out and the machine makes that ridiculous sing song tone (like you just won at the slots, which was appropriate in this case,) it hits me then what I have just done. Shit. I don’t even look around, I’m so freaked. I grabbed the thick wad and put it in my jeans pocket and walk away, turn the corner and then into one of the alleys that run behind Newbury, my young-punk instincts kickin in. SO fuck. What? I’ve got it right here. I’m not sure what to think. This is this, right? Is this good Karma coming back to me, or did I just fuck somebody and build some bad Karma for the future? Maybe it was a dick who had it coming to him. Maybe I taught him a lesson? Maybe I’m making this all up but it was an instant and I acted and I can’t feel bad about it or worry. I know they have those cameras. But as usual I was sporting my shades and my wool cap. The weirdest thing is, I immediately realized while haulin ass away from the ATM, that my rent is due in two days. I am flat ass broke; guess what I owe? 400 friggin smackers. Oh Karma, you done did me right. If I could I’d love you all night. Gotta jet to class….