Quite frankly, enough is enough. I've been sick now for almost two weeks. Just when I figured it was subsiding, things take an interesting and annoying turn around Friday.

On top of the waxing of my flu, I'm now dealing with conjunctivitis. The way I figure it I had developed a sinus infection or some such that decided to wend its way into the lining of my eye.

So a precious weekend is wasted lying on the couch watching TV, taking antibiotics and only occasionally rising up to feed myself or visit the little boy's room.

I was even supposed to go to church today (since usually the only times I can be spotted in a church would be Christmas and Easter) and instead I'm here, typing. I feel kinda guilty.

Mind you, I'm really enjoying our new DirecTV (BBC America, mostly).

So here we are in the midst of the first good thunderstorm of the season, which is one of the things I love about Phoenix. Not that much rain, but lots of lightning and thunder.

I was out walking the dogs when it started to pour, and this song came unbidden to my mind. It's one of my favorite Deacon Blue Songs, from their When the World Knows Your Name album, and it lacks a little something reading the words without hearing the music, but what can you do?

'When the World Knows Your Name' (copied and pasted from some Web site because I'm fundamentally very lazy)

so maybe you're standing
in some foreign town
you've walked for miles
till the heat slows you down
and your jeans and your curls
are bleached and split
and your money and your anger
are all used up
maybe i'm sorry
about the light in this place
makes my heart seem cold
as the words on these pages
maybe i'm reminded
by a shop window display or a decoration
like some church candle that might just burn

'cause we're dancing under chandeliers and i'm telling you
caught in the headlights and i'm yelling it at you
why is it girl when the world is lit by lightning
that i keep telling you that i love you

so you're ten miles out
of this city at night
when do coloured lights
become paint and glass and dust
and how i wonder
what light to trust
the light of the distance
or the candle that might just burn

'cause we're dancing under chandeliers and i'm telling you
caught in the headlights and i'm yelling it at you
why is it girl when the world is lit by lightning
that i keep telling you that i love you

seraphim and cherubim
skies full of gold dust
moonshine and starlight
pockets full of rainbows
windows and mirrored balls
porcelain and silverlake
dance hall neons flash and swing
blow out your candles
it will call you angel
angel
angel
when the world knows your name

dancing under chandeliers and i'm telling you
caught in the headlights and i'm yelling it at you
why is it girl when the world is lit by lightning
that i keep telling you that i love you

i love you
i love you

'cause we're dancing under chandeliers and i'm telling you
caught in the headlights and i'm yelling it at you
why is it girl when the world is lit by lightning
that i keep telling you that i love you

Just a nice moment this evening driving east at sunset. It seems that clouds on the horizon always amplify the even usually beautiful sunsets.

The city was getting dark, but on the buildings and the mountains shone a beautful multicolored light, ranging between purple and peach and pastel orange and yellow. It was one of those moments that make the world seem more real than usual.

Then the sun dipped below the horizon, leaving the memory of brightness.

Got my tax return back from the state today, which was a shocker in itself because I told them to direct deposit it.

Turns out, I got a check because they changed my return. I got about $110 more than expected.

Yay!

Starts to make up for the $200 less I got for my previous year's return from California (which I filed at the same time as this year's, so it's not too surprising).

Still, yay!

Yes, it's true. I'm a wimp. 30 years old and I still get lightheaded when they draw blood from me.

I had to do it. I've been avoiding it for months and it was finally time. Not for any disease thing or anything like that. For my job. And for school.

See, working for a health care company (even in a non-patient care capacity), I have to have proof of two measles-mumps-rubella vaccinations, or get a blood test that proves immunity. I've been trying to track down my records for months so I could avoid getting the blood test. It became apparent that I wouldn't find the stuff and still I dragged my feet.

Then I tried to register for graduate school. Apparently, there's a tremendous risk of me getting or spreading the measles through the Internet, since all I'm taking at this point is Web-based classes. I tried cleverly to get them to send my shot records from my undergraduate school to the University of Arizona.

Unfortunately, between then and now, the state universities have changed their policy. They, too, require proof of two immunizations. Until they have this proof of immunity, I can't register.

Desperate, I went and did it.

Hearing the blood slosh in the little tube did not help my squeamishness. Blood-draw all over, well-intentioned nurse asks if I'm sure I'm all right. I say "Oh, yeah, thanks," as the world turns white and my head gets lighter and lighter. I managed feebly to make it outside and sit down without passing out, but only barely.

I'm 30. What happens when I get older and my health starts to fail and I need blood tests more frequently than once every 7 or 8 years? I shudder to think.

We swung the hammer, to ring the bell.

The ball climbed up and then it fell.


I think the story of my life could be made up by stringing Spirit of the West songs together. I'm not sure what that says about me or about them.

Just as I think things are getting better with someone I consider one of my closest friends, they go south again.

Why do I go to such effort if it's unrequited? Is it ever going to be returned to me in anything approaching equal measure? Will my friendship ever be apperciated for its intrisic value?

I think those are more profound questions than I'll be able to answer this late in the evening after such a long work day.

Greetings everyone!

I've decided to start posting this to my own Web space, so future entries will appear at This site.

New comment feature added, too! Neat!
*kisses*

I had a major Office Space moment today while standing in front of the printer at work. It's an old HP Laserjet, and I do mean old. It's a Laserjet 4, and it's been around so long the putty-colored plastic shell has turned yellow.

It ran out of paper whilst I was waiting for the 30-page document it was printing at its painfully slow pace. Looking down, I saw the display blinking 'PC Load Letter'.

If you haven't seen the movie, you probably don't know why that would be funny. I laughed.

We really need a new printer.

Read my friend and ex Joseph's web journal this morning got me thinking a bit. But my thoughts were a little too extensive for a commentary, so I decided to move to it a separate entry.

I think we've all had the experience of being 'on the outside looking in' with regard to new love. And it's especially bittersweet when at least one of the people in question is a good friend, and we have no one comparable in our own lives. I've written an almost uncountable number of songs when in that mood and in that state.

So I started thinking about my own relationships, and lacks thereof. It hurts to be lonely, but it hurts even more to be in the wrong kind of relationship. That budding of first love is fantastic while it lasts, and when it lasts forever, it's a truly rare and notable thing. I certainly thought, as Joseph's and my relationship built to its peak that we would be there forever. My hope was so strong that it forced me to hold on long after it was clear it wasn't going to work that way.

There's something to be said for that tenacity. Absent the arguments, recriminations and hurtfullness, the moments when we reconciled or got back together were amazing. But in the end they weren't honest moments. That's not to say that WE weren't honest, but that we sacrificed a little of our honesty about a real future for the truth of the moment and the near future.

An interesting thing I've noticed in all of my relationships since the first one (with a girl ... really!) is that I've used the previous ones as a reference point. This in itself isn't so interesting. But I've found that I've doubted the truth, or even the identity, of my feelings simply because it didn't feel the same as it did last time.

I face that even now in my newest relationship. He's a wonderful person, warm and friendly, open and intelligent, adoring and adorable. At the same time as I say that I love him, I hear the word ring a little false and a little inadequate to the concept.

It doesn't feel like it did last time. It's safe to say, too, that I still love Joseph, and while I know that that love has an entirely different character that doesn't preclude my feelings for Mason, it still feels to me like it shouldn't be there. But neither can I, willingly or unwillingly, get rid of it. That would be dishonest in the extreme.

Nonetheless, I find myself wondering how long it will really last, if only because I'm still struggling with the veracity of my own emotions. I know, and I'm very lucky, that he adores me. And it brings both of us a sense of peace and permanence to make plans intended to take us not months but years into the future, perhaps even decades.

But still I feel like I'm being pulled a little faster than I'm comfortable with. But I'm better at putting on the brakes and saying no when necessary. I gained that from my time with Joseph. Whatever my hesitations, my man makes me very happy to be alive, and he inspires me to be my best.

Drawing to a close, it hurts at least a little bit to see Joseph feeling the tiniest bit lonely. And I know I'll experience a bittersweetness like his facing Brian and Paul, when and if he finds someone who makes him so happy and complete. It's a tiny lament for what could've happened with us, but in all likelihood never would have, even with different circumstances.

Whatever befalls my friends, ex's, family, etc., I've resolved to make sure they know they're neither alone nor forgotten, as long as I have breath in my lungs and a memory in my head.

On Livejournal, I'm only opening this to my friends, but over here I have so few readers I don't feel quite so nervous about opening myself up ;^).

I'm SUCH a crank. Here I am on St. Patrick's Day, the day everyone is Irish, the day everyone loves to get drunk, listen to Irish music and get drunk (yes, I know I was being redundant there).

You'd think I was in hog heaven. But I'm not.

I watch people dancing their stupid little faux-jigs at green-bedecked faux-Irish faux-celebrations and all I can think is that Dan Ackroyd line from Spies Like Us. "We mock what we don't understand."

And the bands. Jeebus Chrysler, people, the Clancy Brothers went out with the '60s. Irish ballads sung by four people (all in unison; no harmonies) have always been my most reviled style of Irish music. And yet it's all these Irish-for-a-day people respond to.

And don't even get me started on green beer.

I even refuse to wear green on St. Patrick's Day.

• It's cheesy.
• It's a symbol of Irish nationalism, and while I support efforts to unify Ireland, I really don't want to take sides, even if it's only symbolically and even if 98.5% of the people who wear green have no clue. I don't want to make a political statement on St. Patrick's Day. Enough people have died.

That said, our newest Irish pub in Phoenix, Rose McCaffrey's, is really nice. If you're ever in Phoenix, I strongly recommend a visit. 8th St. and Camelback, people.

I had a whole lot of fun.

I've been talking to people and discovering that one of my language pet peeves (and I have lots; I'll be writing about them at some point in the future) is one a surprising number of others share.

"Can I help who's next?"

My answer is usually (to myself, anyway), "Only if you pick someone at random from the middle of the line and help them first." But I don't figure they'd get what I was trying to say.

Another one that I seemed to be alone in despising was 'six-month anniversary.' Dammit, an anniversary is, intrinsically, a year. You wouldn't say 'fifty-year century' would you? It's semianniversary, dammit.

*sob*

Anyway.

So here's some music that's new to me that I've been listening to lately ... some of it may not be very objectively new, but I've just discovered or rediscovered it ...

Mouth Music - Seafaring Man
Poi Dog Pondering - Soul Sonic Orchestra
Nautilus Pompilius - Nevidimka (The Invisible)
Maura O'Connell - Walls & Windows
Midge Ure - Move Me
Alanis Morrissette - Under Rug Swept
Alison Krauss & Union Station - New Favorite (aptly named ... it's brilliant!)

Other stuff I've had for awhile but I've been listening to and rediscovering:
Kraftwerk - The Mix
Poi Dog Pondering - Liquid White Light (one of the greatest live albums ever)
David Gray - Flesh (fierce AND acoustic)
Spandau Ballet
Dream Theater (saw them last week here in Phoenix ... great show, even if my friend Mike was disappointed that they didn't play the second disc of their new double album)
Marillion (OK, not really ... not for a couple of months. But I feel hide-bound to mention them on any list like this as a matter of course.)

So anyway I've noticed that I reflect a lot on what I'm doing back in Phoenix. In case you don't know, I grew up here, did the Coast Guard thing for five years and came back to Phoenix. I moved to the Bay Area in 2000 and moved back here this past fall. But while I was in the Bay Area I made a lot of friends and had a lot of good experiences. I wouldn't mind ending up back there someday.

I look at the Phoenix area, and indeed Arizona, and I wonder where the place of my childhood went. Deep desert where I used to run when I was on the high school cross country team is now an endless sea of ugly and almost undifferentiated suburban houses. Sedona, once my favorite Arizona place is now a mass of New Agey tourists and ill-fitting suburbs spilling out of Oak Creek Canyon onto the floor of the Verde Valley like an overflowing toilet.

The Superstition Mountains, once isolated from suburbia, now touch the edge of it.

Arizona politics are a joke. Joe Arpaio is a joke (but not a very funny one) (notice the prominence of his photo on the MCSO Web site and indeed the general function of the MCSO as his own personal omnipresent reelection campaign). ASU is, largely, a joke.

So why? Because it's home, I suppose. I love a lot of the people. I love the attitude, or rather the lack of attitude, especially in contrast to Northern California. I like that there's a rich history here but bothered that most people ignore it. I like the sunrises, the sunsets. I am moved more than I would almost ever admit by the sight (yellow, blue, brown, peach, purple, green, gold, red, then gray and finally black as the wind whips up and the rains pour down) of a monsoon-season thunderstorm rolling into town ... a regular display of the power of nature. It's humbling and empowering to know that you're so tiny and powerless next to that, but also to know that you're a part of it.

I like that I have family here that will cushion any fall, tell me when I'm totally wrong, support me when I'm right and eventually set me back on my feet again.

I love San Francisco and the Bay Area. I'll probably end up there again one day, but I feel like you have to earn your welcome there. Phoenix makes me feel like I'm always welcome.

So here I go. It's funny; I've never really been a journaling sort of person. At several points in my life, I've TRIED to start a journal for myself and it failed. Maybe the limelight (or the dim nightlight, more likely) of public attention will get me writing. At any rate, it was my sister's idea. That is, she's been doing it for a long time and it seemed like a good idea.

So I haven't much to say this first time around. I'm male. I'm 30. I'm a folk musician, writer, small business owner, Russian literature aficionado, and all around low-key weirdo (in that I really am pretty offbeat, but not zany). I'm gay. I'm a college graduate (journalism/public relations, if you must know). And I always have opinions on things, but I'm not closed-minded.

I like to stay informed, so feel free to inform me or argue with me. If you're wrong, I'll tell you. But you just may make a friend, anyway :^).