It's a Hell of a Good Day to Die

Well... Not "the" last night but the last night I could conceivably have out on the town here in Sactown. (Sacramento, Stephanie)

On 10/31 I officially move out of the house. It is kind of scary but it is a new beginning. Just picking up from a town that I have lived a significant portion of my life in. The last 9.5 years anyway. No more doing what I did... running down the street to a Midtown bar, close enough to walk if your tipsy, close enough to drive if you want to chance it and never more than 6 bucks in a cab away.

I out grew the life I had when I first got married down here. I had my infamous rock band thing. I was in a band for the first 2 years I lived down here. We were called Perception. I was the lead guitar and vocalist of the group. I had a killer drummer and a bass player who only wanted to riff off of one chord. We were a jam band. We sounded like a cross between The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Primus and the Red Hot Chili Peppers... At least that was what each member contributed. I rocked a few bars the two years we were together. We could really jam. The vocals were a challenge over the bass player. I felt like I screamed most of the time anyway. We did some cool covers of Come Together and Hey Joe plus some cool original tunes. Sometimes we sounded tight and others we sounded God Awful.

I came back tonight with Elijah. I had gone to set up the electricity and gas at the new place and try to pick whether I want to stick with DirecTV or switch the Comcast. I want to pick what the right thing is for the price. I really like direct TV. I came back thought with a text page. A page from a buddy who lives near where I am moving saying, "Dude... Sake Bomb's at the Stone Grill". I was like an hour late to the text page but I was like, "Ya... still there???" He was and I ran over and had a beer and some Crown on the rocks. It was just fun.. acting like a 30 something, yelling in a bar for an hour or so. Kind of gets it out of your system.

I am moving back "home". It is not..."home". I don't have a "home". My parents live a couple of miles away. I found a cool house with decent rent and really cool appliances, granite counter tops, gas fire place... the works... on about an acre of land. It is a bit big but it felt like a "home" when I walked it. When I stared off the deck to the ravine separating the houses across the way, I remembered when I was 15 climbing over that hill where the house is perched now, when there was nothing, I mean... Nothing there at all. In that ravine there was the remains of a cow. All was left were bones. Just a skeleton of a cow that hide died down in the ravine. I remember the image of how white the bones where. How the cow was picked clean of it's flesh and skin. No organs... nothing. Probably not dead too long either because there were hardly any flies... I remember rolling up on my bike about 15 feet away. No smell... just almost a cartoonish white of the bones like the cow was brushed clean with Rembrandts or something. And that is what I am calling home this time. A place where I was "picked clean" once before...

I never really have been lost as a person. When I moved to that area, 21 years ago, I moved thinking there was a new world. I had come from an area that was over populated. San Francisco-suburb. Full of diversity and people. People everywhere. Houses built 10 feet apart. You could put your ear against my bedroom wall and hear my Nicaraguan neighbors fighting out loud at night. It used to scare me when I was 5 or 6 when I new what was going on. But I moved out of there when I was 14. I never got to come of age in my birth home. Just lived until the most awkward time of my life... 14. Right in the middle of 8th grade.

I went from a city of 100,000 to a city of barely 200. No cement for my Santa Cruz Skateboard, stage V independent trucks or Slimeball wheels. No hills. No curbs... dirt, rocks and more dirt and rocks. Hot, Hot, Hot summers and moderately chilly mornings. Rattlesnakes... I went from being a punk hanging out at the 7/11 who ollied his skateboard over bikes for quarters to shooting a bow and arrow and wrapping my life around my music because I was so fucking bored in Calaveras County.

I went to school where I was hated within 45 minutes of being in the new school. I stumbled over someone's foot walking across the gym in 2nd period PE because I had tweaked and had my knee drained a week earlier from a skateboarding accident. Having enemies off the bat, and then when they heard I was from San Francisco... wow... that did me in at 14. It seemed every week I was in a fight. Everyday I was punching and fighting back. This happened all the way through until late in my junior year when they just gave up picking on me... and just ignored me. I had my plan though. I had developed a talent. I plotted my way through school, checking off required classes with A's and B's so I could get into that 4 year school on my smarts and talent alone. So when I did walk out of high school, I could do so with my nose in the air and my fist raised high, and a big "fuck you" smirk on my face when I signed my name to a $10K annual music scholarship to UOP.

I was humbled a bit. Someone stopped me long enough to tell me to see the forest for the trees. To go at this world kindly and forget what the past told me to think. For some reason... it may have taken me 14-15 years to get it right. Perhaps it is right now... Who knows? But then I think of Dave Matthews when he sang...

Eat drink and be merry... for tomorrow we're dying

So... what's next? No idea. I moved to where I felt I would be most comfortable and not where I felt I would like it the most. I will be 45 minutes from Elijah and know that everyday I put my head on the pillow, unless of course... he is with me. He is always with me. I cherish the times I am with him each time we are together. I like showing him the areas I would throw rocks around my parents house or where I would explore or where I would climb next. I think about him every moment these days, even while I work. I don't do my job for myself. I do it for him and him first. People can say what they want about Elijah and my relationship with him. But really, they just don't know like I do. They don't see me with him. They don't see him running with me. They don't see me wrestling with him. Or consoling him when he is hurt... getting him a cookie when he is being good and watching Elmo curled up next to the TV with him. Somedays, people might think he is what broke me and his mother up. I like to think now that he is what makes me who I am everyday. Who I aspire to be and who I want to be there for his every need.

It's a new chapter... A new story and a new adventure and a chance to dream again...

One is for envy and one just for spite
The cuts in my heart, they show me your eyes
Don't make it better by twisting knife,
Turns all by itself, on to someone else

Your self-liberation, we'll leave this behind,
Beyond slings and arrows that rain on our minds
You'll make it better shaking it off
It never mattered anyway...

If we don't make it alive, it's a hell of a good day to die
All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long
And it's ashes to ashes again, should we even try to pretend?
All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long

The banner you're waving is burning and red
It's blocking the sun light that shines overhead
You against the world, diamonds and pearls,
Voices inside you churn, watch the city burn

Your own liberation will leave them behind
All the slings and arrows that rain on your mind,
Don't make it better break it 'cause
It never mattered anyway...

If we don't make it alive, it's a hell of a good day to die
All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long
And it's ashes to ashes again, should we even try to pretend?
All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long

I won't calm down...

The banner you're waving is burning and red,
You against the world, diamonds and pearls...
It never mattered, mattered,
Mattered anyway!

If we don't make it alive, well it's a hell of a good day to die
All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long
And it's ashes to ashes again, should we even try to pretend?
All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long,

All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long!