Category Archives: thoughts

beats and feats

it\'s more embarrassing than you might think..tagged.. like one of those sad looking bears on discovery, i’ve been tagged. (as a note, i found a picture after i thought of the bear thing.. i have to meet this cartoonist of the same mindset..)

so, for those of you too lazy to track down the current trail or who aren’t already familiar with it, let me just tell you that being tagged is a bit like playing truth or dare.. except no one ends up making out in the closet. essentially, i share seven things about me that are relatively unknown.. and then i tell seven more people to do the same.

but, for those inquisitive minds: angie tagged me, she was tagged by ouiser, she was tagged by feathernester, and she was tagged by snarkygirl.. who i don’t know at all but i do know she sleeps with her feet out of the covers.. which freaks me out. really.

i’ll break out of character for a bit and fore go my typical disclaimers.. and we’re off to the wonderfully drab world of paulo.

i don't know her.. but that's where i sat
i don't know her.. but that's where i sat

1. on wednesday mornings for the fall of 2001, from 2-5am in the morning, i, along with punk-wanna-be kc, had a hap-hazard radio show on wmsr. msr as in miami student radio (so.. rainbows weren’t plastered all over the site when we were there.. just a historical note). it was a strange time in my life: i was being sweetly convinced by my girlfriend at the time that i had a great voice and i was trying to give up my habit of always getting cookies-n-cream from handles. somehow this opening seemed to satisfy both. kc was there and, having been from my high school, we naturally banded together since, despite kc’s attempts to be cool and calm, we were both a bit nervous about the whole thing.. college, radio, people, the girl playing with my hair with her bare foot, all that. we were so frazzled, actually, that when they asked what time slots people wanted, we jumped at the chance to grab the first open spot we knew we could get, 2-5am wednesdays. the student leader looked at us, “really?!” the look on his face reminded us how crazy we were but, despite our back-pedalling (“well, i mean, as a second option.. if it’s the only thing open.. you know.. heh”), he was more than happy to ink us in. and thus began the short illustrious career in radio, pjv as a dj, c? we had a huge audience of about twenty.. total people who’d tune in out of pity or drunken confusion.

we were cool. we rocked it with the door open
we were cool. we rocked it with the door open

if they listened in around 4am, kc just loved to run to the rack, grab the “loverboy” vinyl, and, throwing all the slides to the top, blast out “everybody’s working for the weekend“, and we’d jump around the studio. by the end of the fall, i stopped going.. but kept sleeping through my wednesday morning chemistry classes. and, like so many stars of our time, my fame and radio career slowly faded away. (one last note: since wmub actually was the only university radio station permitted to broadcast, we were not technically on the radio.. we were webcast. i know..)

 

2. i don’t shower much.. not because i don’t like to or because there’s some principle about it.. it’s just that i’m usually too tired and lazy to do much about it. sorry excuses, i know.. but when i do jump in there, i take really long showers. personally, there’s little better in this world that being in warm water with nothing to distract you. i like to cup my hands around my ears so the water builds up and, if only for a little, i get to feel like i’m under a huge waterfall. but then i get out and i feel like i’m a freaking onion – my skin peels away for what seems like days. and that’s more embarrassing than any other possible side effects.

please forget about this immediately
please forget about this immediately

3. i hate my teeth. i really do. and i’m extremely paranoid about them. i’m plagued by the fear that i’m going to have more cavities or that i’ll need dentures prematurely or that people are quietly disgusted by my mouth. i’ve worked myself into a pit of depression, true depression, just by standing in front of the mirror, looking into my mouth, into every corner, nook, cranny, and crevice until i’m absolutely certain my jaw will be removed in short order, tossed into the heap as a complete, hopeless waste, and will be replaced by a series of deer hooves. i had braces for three years and a retainer that said “laid back” for another several years (yeah.. it really says that. i still have it if you don’t believe me)

odds are you won't live to see tomorrow
odds are you won't live to see tomorrow

4. i like to pretend sometimes that i’m secret agent or that i’m on a mission from tom clancy. it’s pretty predictable when it’ll happen: it’s almost always late, always in an empty or partially empty building, and always involves me stealing something, typically something (seemingly) worthless. a few examples.. freshman year, bounding around kenyon college in ohio with my girlfriend (a pastor’s daughter no less), we gently tested the doors and, when they gave way, the game was on. i’d move up to a corner, give a quick glance around the turn, and, if was clear (of course it was), i’d dive across the way into the lecture hall. that adventure i left with a professor’s mug and my girlfriend, m, scored a wall clock. actually, we almost got caught. on leaving one building a janitor saw us and struck off towards us. m, with a clock the width of her waist under her jacket, froze. i went to him (mainly to avoid him hearing the inordinately loud the ticking coming from her stomach) and explain i was a prospective student and my friend (a nod to, and a painfully nervous wave from, m) was just showing me around campus. paulo stikes again! and then there were the times jena and i would snoop around the ysu extension building when she should have been working. she was 23, i was 16. we’d walk on the huge tables in the abandoned meetings rooms, then run up to the roof and watch as everyone left. through the semester, we got to be pretty close. typically i’d skip class and hang out with her, she’d answer the phone and, in an annoyed and pretentious tone, transfer or simply hang up on the caller. she had tattoos, warned some kids about special k, and drew sketches of me. she had me over her place once with a bunch of friends.. i think they were confused why she had the young narc, the square over for the evening, wasn’t my mother looking for me (actually, she probably was). i left early (because my mom was looking for me) and we said we’d keep in touch. last i heard she was at osu struggling to get used to columbus and the scene. i keep trying to track her down but.. well, people like her just seem to disappear. which might be for the best anyway..

only now and again..
only now and again..

5. i’m not a smoker.. but i definitely can enjoy a cigarette now and again. now, before you shake your heads, let me emphasize a couple things. one) by now and again i mean that the last smoke i had was this weekend past and the last one before that was more than a year ago. two) i only smoke when i’m very stressed.. or very tired. three) nicotine is an anti-depressant.. so just chalk it up to self-medication. that might also be the explanation for the coffee consumption. and if you’re curious, camel’s, turkish gold are my smoke of choice. they’re actually pretty disgusting.. but they’re what my high school friends insisted on having every time and that just makes the smoke a little more worth it.

6. my senior year of high school, i worked at a waste water treatment plant. believe me, nothing glamarous about this one, carlee can attest to the smell. but, over the course of a summer, you get used to it. i would spend most of the day hanging out, hiding on the third floor, or talking on the phone. now, that sounds like i was a slacker but, while i was definitely slacking, it was an order. the first few days i was there, the full-timers would call me off from the mower or from painting and tell me to chill out, relax, come watch the game. or they’d show me the spots in the maintenance building where the boss would see you. i spent most of the summer sanding and painting pipes in a long, underground tunnel. wasn’t all bad..

read it. really
-the river why by david james duncan. read it. really

i’d listen to music and get lost in the mundane routine of the back-and-forth. it’s a little strange to say (and just plain funny now) but it was then, during that summer underground, that i was the most religiously aware, interested, and faithful. there were many times down there, alone, listening to music, that i felt a connection to something, a movement towards something unseen. and it’s especially funny now since, in looking back on it, that tunnel had horrible ventilation. most days i’d come up with white nostrils.. not subtly white.. like “mom, where’s your nail polish” white. so maybe that had a bit to do with it. that’s not to say i suddenly lost my religion on emerging each evening from the tunnel. in fact, there was a point during my second semester of college, eight months or so later, when i felt a.. a push, a move.. not quite that.. almost an obligation to become a missionary. granted, that lasted all of the walk home. still, it was an important time in it’s own respects, and still is for many of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with religion but with how i react to certain feelings (or perhaps a certain feeling.. it’s interesting to consider that a lot of the past five to seven years have been a shift towards obligations). i haven’t completely abandoned my faith.. it’s just become something more vague, more (i loath the word..) holistic, more abstract.. my friend va calls it a spirituality and i’ve since seen that essence referenced elsewhere, particularly in the river why (here david james duncan specifically calls it “unspiritual spirituality”) . maybe it’s just a fancy, if shorter, way of saying, “taking care of myself physically, mentally, emotionally, and take care of those around me as myself”. if it is, amen.

7. when i was in middle school, i sold pumpkins. lots of pumpkins. literally a ton of pumpkins. my step dad got me into it, wanted to make a young, enterprising fellow out of this fro-headed, awkward, sweater wearing kid. so we loaded up a friend’s old blue truck, balanced the orange orbs delicately, and annoyed anyone unfortunately enough to end up behind us while we drove back to suburbia. we had a corner lot and in the mornings i’d set up with benches, wreathes, calculators, and scales.. and we called it “paul’s perfet pumpkin patch”. and that’s not a typo – my mom, who put together the sign in goodwill, had a bit of an issue with spelling. and so it remained.. perfetly. (i’ll add pictures when i find and scan ’em) to this day, i have to wonder if it didn’t get me more sales, if people didn’t drive by, see me in all my incredible awkwardness, and, taking pity on me, pulled into the drive to pick up their jack-o-lantern to be. truth is, i was running a racket. full on.. it wasn’t price gouging but damn if it weren’t close. it was always funny when, after plopping it on the scale, punching the calculator, and telling them the total, their faces would suddenly change, having realized in the moment that they’ve just been had. paulo strikes again! ..ok.. it wasn’t that intense but they were pretty expensive pumpkins and profits did go down as i got older and “cute” was replaced with “pitiful” and was eventually completely substituted with “sad”. but it was fun.. and tiring.. and kept my parents out of my untamed hair for many a fall afternoon.

alright.. that was a stretch. and it’s late (surprise surprise). so here’s the next round of suckers:

va
carlee
lisa
jb and jenn

..umm.. ok, i’m going to have to work on the other three. but for now, you’ll live.

who needs sleep

it’s 4am and i can’t sleep. or i can’t sleep now, is what i should say. coming home from work i went straight for my bed, laid down, and returned to consciousness again around 1am.

my apartment is a complete mess. and i’m alright with that for now: my life is currently a bit of a mess so why shouldn’t the place where i live be something of a reflection of the inner clutter that i have. there’s a bible verse i can’t seem to find about dressing in your best even when you’re in the pits.. and that makes sense and is all well and good. but sometimes you just need to let go and be how you feel. it takes so much damned energy to be happy or to trudge through the hard times that there’s just not anything left to wash the car, sort laundry, put the books away. and there’s something about the verse that just smacks of dishonesty, suggest, if only mildly, that sadness is a shameful exercise. if someone’s sad, shaming them isn’t going to help matters.

it’s interesting, too, to consider the lies our lives can create. for instance, several months ago i was in cincinnati with yasi, walking around the gas light district, commenting on just how beautiful and warm and happy the homes there seem. they just give off the sense of calm and contentedness. nothing is as it seems, though: for all i knew, there was a nuclear-sized family argument going on just then behind closed doors while i strolled outside admiring how happy they must be. i’d learn about the dangers of making that assumption just a few months later..

aside from being out of town for weeks, i’ve bounced around when it comes to what i’m going to do with life. there was a job in new york city with unicef that, for a few days, i was convinced i was going to take. much to mine and others’ surprise, i turned it down. then the position a few days ago in asheville, nc, that i would’ve at least had a pretty good shot at but didn’t apply for. they were the right decisions and i have no issues withe my choices.. it’s just interesting to contemplate the “i wonder”s now and again.

six months ago none of this was on my horizon, not even remotely. and now it’s in the here and now, part of my life. it’s just astounding to me how quickly everything can change. and it’s made me appreciate more than i ever have my friends that are part of that ever changing life. to say that i’m blessed is an embarrassing understatement, like saying the universe is “awfully big”. if i am anything, it’s because of the friends i have been given.

my latest obsession
my latest obsession

i considered staying up all night to read the brothers k like i did some months ago to finish the river why (both, interestingly enough, by david james duncan). but the river why was on a friday and back then i was waking up drenched in sweat anyway (i think i was a little sick) so staying up wasn’t a big deal. but now, tomorrow (technically today), i have to work and play soccer. instead, i read to the end of a chapter and tried to sleep. for whatever reason, these lines resound:

for a moment i say nothing, fearing i’ll sob, or choke on blood, if i speak. but then words well right up with the blood, i’m helpless to stop them: “i know you hate the mill,” i tell him, and tears come the instant i speak. “i know you love baseball, and aren’t doing what you want. but at least vera fights. she says her dopey prayers no matter what!” i lean against the door, gasping for air and strength to finish. “all i want is for you to fight, papa. to fight to stay alive inside! no matter what.

well, my eyes are finally heavy again. i’m going to call it a morning. if there are still dirty spoons in the sink, if i have to step around the laundry, if i’m buttering toast over a hesse novel, you’re going to have to bear with me. i’m not ashamed of my life, not in the least, and i won’t be ashamed of the mess.

i believe this is called a rut..

(last edited about two months ago – left to be one of my incomplete thoughts) i know full well there’s only one thing that can pull you out of a rut: yourself. but that’s why i’m pretty sure i’m screwed for a bit here.

listening to some third eye blind but nothing from the studios right now. this is a bit from “persephone” (think perse-F-owny)..

persephone can you help me?

i pushed away a summer breeze
i want the promise of a real spring
free and born again
help me

old emotions are coming back to me

i sit by myself
memories, all i want
in the last light of the sun

can’t help but think about the bit of a rut that i’m in right now. it’s nothing too serious by any means.. but it’s definitely a rut. the worst part isn’t really even how i feel but how i end up losing the patience and being.. well.. just generally cranky i guess. i’m a lot quicker to lose my patience with people or just be relatively rude.. and that’s not fair at all. not to mention that i’ve been a lot more critical and much less forgiving.

i guess it’s alright, though. this always happens and it always passes. maybe it’s just started a little earlier than usual this year.

the river why – david james duncan

the river whyi guess it shouldn’t be any huge surprise that, after finishing the moon is down, i’ve run off and bought more books. this despite the fact that i brought two other books i need to finish, the quiet american and principles in the sciences (an old, march 1944 university of chicago reader i picked up in the annual used book sale near uc.. good luck finding a link for that one). but they were from the local independent bookstore, bookshop santa cruz.. so i’m supporting a cause, right?

so i picked up two books, one being the river why by david james duncan. a good friend in college read this book and recommended it.. and if i remember correctly, he recommended it over a river runs through it by norman maclean. not unlike a river runs through it, the river why starts out by throwing the reader a bunch of good if slightly disjointed stories that are, in one way or another, about fly fishing. they’re all very good and applicable and loosely chronologic.. they just come off as somewhat random, which i like. i’ll give you full run-down when i’m through.. that is, if i stick to this one and don’t pull my normal about-face and jump on to the vet’s daughter. i’ll keep you updated..

bookshop santa cruz

my dash 7..

today i found out that, as of january 1, i’ll no longer be a fmsm employee.

fear not: i didn’t lose my job.. fmsm was just bought out– or wait, merged– err.. i don’t know. anyway, we’ll be stantec employees (or more on cnn)as of the new year. new year, new names.

my dash 7from wilco’s dash 7 –

Because I’ve found the way those engines sound,
Will make you kiss the ground
I found the way those engines sound,
Will make you kiss the ground,
When you touch down

it’s funny.. i’ve known something was up for some time now. the closed doors around the office are always a dead giveaway. this time, though, it went on for longer than usual and no one was letting up. usually you can get a hint here or there from someone.. but this time lips were sealed and direct questions were directly avoided. as speculation increased, so did stress levels. i figured, though, that having the news would ease concerns and lower the blood pressure. sadly, not so..

now that this bird has landed and i’m kissing the ground, i’m finding that i’m just as anxious as before.. maybe even more so. about what.. i’m not exactly sure. i doubt there will really be any major changes, at least initially. i guess i’m mostly just stressed now because i see the people around me are worked up about their futures and the uncertainty of tomorrow. personally, i’m in a decent position: no debts or dependents, no home to payoff or family to support.. but my co-workers have a lot more riding on this, family, kids, homes, careers, retirement.. dogs 😉 .. and there’s no doubt that the uncertainty is disorienting at best.

it was a strange scene: the entire office gathered in a room that’s still under construction and the office manager made the main announcements while the president followed up with his thoughts and feelings and a few of the details and reasons why. i didn’t really watch them, though, and instead watched the faces around the room. i don’t think people really grasped what was going on for the first thirty minutes, their faces locked into as straight a face as they could manage. it wasn’t until later that the anxiety would well up and, if it weren’t for their determination to remain as solid state as possible, would wash their illusions of the future out of their eyes.

hysteriawhat if anxiety acts as its own self-sustaining emotion? i see the anxious faces and hear the anxious speculation around me and it, in turn, makes me anxious. and i can hear it in their voices when they talk together.. one person starts speculating and the edge in their voice gets sharper.. and the people listening get edgier themselves.. and like a flood behind their eyes, you can watch their anxiety rise and they’ll pass it on to the next group they talk to. soon enough the epidemic grips the entire office.

i’m not here to say let’s turn that frown upside-down and everything will be just honky-dory.. i just have to wonder aloud if we can’t calm ourselves down in a group scenario like this. you can almost watch the hysteria spread from one group to the next, faster than news of cookies in the break room.

another part of this that nags at me a bit is that i feel so very small in this process. i have nothing to say about what happens, have little control over my eventual situation, and, now being one of over seven thousand stantec employees, well, i feel that my voice could be lost in a hall of echoes. the obvious analogy that gets drawn is one of pawns in a big chess game, small, largely expendable, and easily forgotten.

now, none of that is to say that i believe in that.. i think there’s a difference between feeling one way and honestly believing in that feeling. i do think this change will open up a lot of opportunities and that good things will come of this all. and more than all that, i know that these are only circumstances.. and one can never be a victim of circumstance without also being a willing participant: i’ll always have choice and so long as i have choice, i have the choice of being alright with this, with seeing the positives.. or, if i see too many things that i’m decidedly unhappy with, then i’ll always have the choice of walking out that open door.. i have that infinite freedom (“man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” and “freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” –jean-paul sartre).. then again, if they play the game right and for long enough, even pawns can become royalty.

..i know this is hardly a linear post. and it’s mostly a smattering of incomplete thought.. but that’s all i can offer for now.

time may tell all.