Dear My Darling Public
Today was an elaborate success. I woke up with more intention than usual, but a bit early to ready myself for being a little under an hour early to pick up my friend Yukiko from her dorm at EUP. It was an interesting drive, but none the less fruitful due to the fall like breeze in the bright August sun. It was the kind of weather that allowed for a lover of tweed jackets like myself to wear it all day without breaking a sweat. I got to EUP just twenty minutes shy of my meeting time, but that gave me time to use a bathroom, something I had been waiting to do for some time before leaving. When the five minute mark approached, as I always do, I waited in our meeting spot in anticipation, and checking the time on my phone faster than the minutes could go by, and, looking around, I could see that the trees and other plant life were in full bloom for the fall semester. I sent a text message to Yukiko's cellular phone to alert her to my presence and she responded "ok", and before I knew it, she was directly behind me. She told me about her savage addiction to watching anime as we approached my car in the parking lot just across the street explaining to me that it was the only thing she had been doing for the better part of the previous forty-eight hours. I guess I just don't understand the appeal or the fanaticism surrounding Japanese anime, or cartoons for that matter, but, at the same time, I suppose she might have felt the same way about my obnoxiously otaku-like taste in world cultures, hookah, and the liberal media.
The drive to downtown Erie facilitated some interesting conversation between Yuki and myself, particularly regarding the state of affairs between her and the housing and residence life office at EUP that had forced her to live in the highlands dorms for the coming academic year. This is, by sheer dumb luck, the same challenge that I have been faced with for the greater part of the summer, however, I had gotten out of it by calling the housing office on a daily bases to inquire about rooms that may have opened in the traditional dorms, and, sure enough, one had just in time. I told her she may be late and she may not and making it known to them that you need to be switched back to traditional dorms. By the time this conversion had transitioned into a talk about what traveling we had done. I had explained that I had traveled locally while I was living in Chicago, and around Erie as a way to do research for my writing, and she explained to me that she had done the majority of her traveling through the English as a second language class she was in. I told her of a common destination of mine, New Buffalo, MI, that I had visited at least once a year for the Ship and Shore festival when I lived in Chicago. Because it was just around the tip of lake Michigan, it was an easy-access place to enjoy a weekend.
When we got to about fifteenth and state, I proceeded under the artistically painted viaduct that was right next to BT and turned right into the small, but accessible parking lot that I use every time I go downtown. When we got out of the car, I immediately felt a breeze blow my hair all the way back and turned my head to the side and shielded myself with my hands to avoid it from blowing it into my face because I absolutely hate that feeling. So it was that we made our way down State street taking photographs of various locations. Usually places that looked very urban-like (red brick buildings, ally ways, busy streets, etc) and the subject of what to do next was brought up and I froze and turned directly to my right, and there was the Erie Art Museum. I went up the stairs in the assumption that the gargantuan doors at the top of the white, marble stair case was the main entrance; I was wrong. The main entrance was actually just around the block in the other direction, so there we went. Upon entering, we were greeted be a very articulate male host that had a keen artistic authority to his explanations of the various exhibits. The first one had a display of fine three dimensional art, which Yuki and I took multiple photographs of on our cell phones. The next was a series of photographs themselves by this famous artist whose name I cannot remember. The day went by in the art museum quite well, and You will be able to read more about it in the review I will post about it in the near future.
The next place we decided we would go to visit was a restaurant by the name Scully's Pizzeria. It was a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint attached to a bar, and, or at least from what I could tell, the one employee working as the bar tender was also the one serving Yuki and I, the only patrons of this restaurant at the moment, pizza and sprite. I would say that the pizza was alright, but I would be lying. This pizza was greasy beyond belief, the pepperoni was too small, and the pizza was small itself. The cheese was nice and thick though, so I guess that was good. Yuki began, after having finished her first slice, to explain to me that I would have payed thirty dollars for the same pizza in her native Japan. Now, I'm a lover of long distance, but this still made me instantly stop drinking and almost spit out what was in my mouth. To think somebody had spent thirty dollars for a less than satisfying pizza. By the time we were done we headed back toward my car and, when we finally got there, she took my CD case and started browsing through the large selection of CDs contained within and pulled out, without having known the group, my Pearl Jam Ten CD and asked if she could put it in and I said "Of course".
When we got back to Edinboro she met up with her friends and I made my way back home when I thought to myself. "I could really go for some hookah right now." I made my way to the Casablanca Hookah Lounge on fifth and Peach in the same place I had been just hours before and and sat down at one of the couches. The lounge actually had menus for the shisha that was available for consumption. I picked out, in my eternal love of all things citrus tasting, the Orange flavored hookah, but I had not anticipated how strong it would be. Later on that night I had a conversation with a friend from school that had walked into the lounge after my third coal and left the bar for home.
Yours Truly
Thomas F.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Wednesday, August 14th
Dear My Darling Public
Today started like any other day off in the summer. I got up to the sound of the ear-piercing cry of the obnoxiously energetic baby my sister babysits. What happened to me next comes as a frustration to me because I don't babysit. If fact I took a seven to six construction and landscaping job because babysitting is such a muscle-twisting pain in my ass. My lovely sister decided that she needed to accompany my mother and other sister to take my other sister to the doctor for her physical, leaving me alone with this nine month old potato sac of love and energy. At first he was, admittedly, a bit adorable because of his incessant need to climb on top of everything in his path be it the couch, the other couch, the end table, or even me, and leave a trail of slimy saliva in his wake. And, for the most part, you would imagine that this sort of behavior would be limited to those obstacles that seemed climbable, but, alas, you would be wrong. This little guy, apparently feeling like he was going to be spider-man for the next hour and a half, began an ill conceived attempt at scaling the wall next to the couch. Now, I know that it's just bad guardianship to encourage a sprouting, sponge-minded infant to accomplish something that is physically impossible, but something about getting on the floor and holding him to keep him from falling as he attempted the impossible made me feel like I was helping mold his mind in a way that might some day facilitate a sense of self-perceived greatness in him rather than a sense of low self-esteem.
Anyway, after his trial and error attempts at gaining superhuman climbing powers, I decided that I, the grumpiest babysitter in all of nannydom, would also act upon my occasional desire to perform the seemingly impossible and put this energizer bunny of a kid to sleep. I picked him up and drew his head just on my shoulder as I seated him securely in my arms, and began walking around, slightly bouncing my step, and singing Mary Lambert's part in Same Love by Maclemore and Ryan Lewis very softly into his ear. This, as I should have known, didn't work at all, and by the time I got up the stairs and in to my parents' sitting room, he had already soiled himself. Now it was time to change his diaper, a task I had performed with both of my sisters when they were babies, but they were, for the most part, calm babies. This little bundle of energy decided that, while I was unchanging him on my parents' bed, he was going to have the worst case of restless leg syndrome in the history of mankind. It took about thirty minutes just to take the one peace baby suit, undershirt, and dirty diaper off. At this point you would think that most living things would just be happy to no longer be clothed, but no, not wonder-baby. No, this little guy took this opportunity to get up and jump off of the edge of my parents' bed, which is quite a drop. I caught the little bugger before he even got into the air, and when I put him back on the bed so I could put the next diaper on him don't you know he takes a leak right there all over my parents' sheets. It took a bit longer to get the new diaper on him, but when I finally got it on I set him on the ground for a few seconds as I removed the sheets from the bed and threw them into the laundry room.
By this time the rest of my family had come through the door and were all running over to make stupid faces and annoying sounds at this poor thing. I immediately went down to the basement to practice my bagpipes and, after having played all my basic pieces, I made my way to my room to listen to Maclemore and Ryan Lewis (I might love them a lot.) and read a few more pages from The Country of the Pointed Firs. Now, I find this book to be metaphorically symbolic through the lens of my upbringing. Earlier in my crazy life, I was almost always surrounded by people four or five decades older than me. It was listening to their stories and political views that almost completely molded me into what I am today. The best thing was that almost every story they told you had something more to it. It had a sort of nostalgically expressed truth that couldn't be expressed by any other kind of person. Likewise, in Sarah Orne Jewett's American epic of one woman's return to her beloved Dunnet Landing, Maine, The elderly of the landing, be it Captain Littlepage or Mrs. Todd, hold a conventional wisdom that is completely untapped by the younger generation. They see themselves as the last of the mariners or sea faring folks, a tradition that they claim to have been lost with the new generation.
In some ways I do feel like good traditions have been completely lost with the new generation, but I also know of a greater number of absolutely disgusting traditions that are, by the grace of God, disappearing with the next generation. The biggest of these disappearing traditions, if I do say so myself, is intolerance. I feel that I've dedicated most of my life to this horrible sin because it is something that I've faced in my life. To make a long story short, for anybody out there that has ever been disenfranchised and alienated by the majority of their age demographic for having a foot fetish (or any fetish for that matter), I feel your pain deep in my heart. I actually watched one documentary that described the act of having a foot fetish as an outward expression of selfishness and low self-esteem. Hearing things like that from television-psychologists on top of my peers regarding my foot fetish as creepy and unnatural drove me up a wall. I never let it give me a complex though. I instead used it as a point of reference to remind myself that intolerance is absolutely intolerable.
As I did my daily lap around the block on my thirteen year old skateboard with the Northwestern Pennsylvania sun setting behind my back and the wind blowing through my hair , I pondered this in my head. Now, the rout I usually take puts me into the line of sight of a few people that I see but never speak to, almost as if they only exist as part of the landscape of the subdivision. Although, I can't help but think that they think of me in the same way, but that's just another classic example of my tendency to over analyze everything. Just remember. People can't for the life of them guess what you think, so you have to destroy your standards of engagement.
Yours Truly
Thomas F.
Today started like any other day off in the summer. I got up to the sound of the ear-piercing cry of the obnoxiously energetic baby my sister babysits. What happened to me next comes as a frustration to me because I don't babysit. If fact I took a seven to six construction and landscaping job because babysitting is such a muscle-twisting pain in my ass. My lovely sister decided that she needed to accompany my mother and other sister to take my other sister to the doctor for her physical, leaving me alone with this nine month old potato sac of love and energy. At first he was, admittedly, a bit adorable because of his incessant need to climb on top of everything in his path be it the couch, the other couch, the end table, or even me, and leave a trail of slimy saliva in his wake. And, for the most part, you would imagine that this sort of behavior would be limited to those obstacles that seemed climbable, but, alas, you would be wrong. This little guy, apparently feeling like he was going to be spider-man for the next hour and a half, began an ill conceived attempt at scaling the wall next to the couch. Now, I know that it's just bad guardianship to encourage a sprouting, sponge-minded infant to accomplish something that is physically impossible, but something about getting on the floor and holding him to keep him from falling as he attempted the impossible made me feel like I was helping mold his mind in a way that might some day facilitate a sense of self-perceived greatness in him rather than a sense of low self-esteem.
Anyway, after his trial and error attempts at gaining superhuman climbing powers, I decided that I, the grumpiest babysitter in all of nannydom, would also act upon my occasional desire to perform the seemingly impossible and put this energizer bunny of a kid to sleep. I picked him up and drew his head just on my shoulder as I seated him securely in my arms, and began walking around, slightly bouncing my step, and singing Mary Lambert's part in Same Love by Maclemore and Ryan Lewis very softly into his ear. This, as I should have known, didn't work at all, and by the time I got up the stairs and in to my parents' sitting room, he had already soiled himself. Now it was time to change his diaper, a task I had performed with both of my sisters when they were babies, but they were, for the most part, calm babies. This little bundle of energy decided that, while I was unchanging him on my parents' bed, he was going to have the worst case of restless leg syndrome in the history of mankind. It took about thirty minutes just to take the one peace baby suit, undershirt, and dirty diaper off. At this point you would think that most living things would just be happy to no longer be clothed, but no, not wonder-baby. No, this little guy took this opportunity to get up and jump off of the edge of my parents' bed, which is quite a drop. I caught the little bugger before he even got into the air, and when I put him back on the bed so I could put the next diaper on him don't you know he takes a leak right there all over my parents' sheets. It took a bit longer to get the new diaper on him, but when I finally got it on I set him on the ground for a few seconds as I removed the sheets from the bed and threw them into the laundry room.
By this time the rest of my family had come through the door and were all running over to make stupid faces and annoying sounds at this poor thing. I immediately went down to the basement to practice my bagpipes and, after having played all my basic pieces, I made my way to my room to listen to Maclemore and Ryan Lewis (I might love them a lot.) and read a few more pages from The Country of the Pointed Firs. Now, I find this book to be metaphorically symbolic through the lens of my upbringing. Earlier in my crazy life, I was almost always surrounded by people four or five decades older than me. It was listening to their stories and political views that almost completely molded me into what I am today. The best thing was that almost every story they told you had something more to it. It had a sort of nostalgically expressed truth that couldn't be expressed by any other kind of person. Likewise, in Sarah Orne Jewett's American epic of one woman's return to her beloved Dunnet Landing, Maine, The elderly of the landing, be it Captain Littlepage or Mrs. Todd, hold a conventional wisdom that is completely untapped by the younger generation. They see themselves as the last of the mariners or sea faring folks, a tradition that they claim to have been lost with the new generation.
In some ways I do feel like good traditions have been completely lost with the new generation, but I also know of a greater number of absolutely disgusting traditions that are, by the grace of God, disappearing with the next generation. The biggest of these disappearing traditions, if I do say so myself, is intolerance. I feel that I've dedicated most of my life to this horrible sin because it is something that I've faced in my life. To make a long story short, for anybody out there that has ever been disenfranchised and alienated by the majority of their age demographic for having a foot fetish (or any fetish for that matter), I feel your pain deep in my heart. I actually watched one documentary that described the act of having a foot fetish as an outward expression of selfishness and low self-esteem. Hearing things like that from television-psychologists on top of my peers regarding my foot fetish as creepy and unnatural drove me up a wall. I never let it give me a complex though. I instead used it as a point of reference to remind myself that intolerance is absolutely intolerable.
As I did my daily lap around the block on my thirteen year old skateboard with the Northwestern Pennsylvania sun setting behind my back and the wind blowing through my hair , I pondered this in my head. Now, the rout I usually take puts me into the line of sight of a few people that I see but never speak to, almost as if they only exist as part of the landscape of the subdivision. Although, I can't help but think that they think of me in the same way, but that's just another classic example of my tendency to over analyze everything. Just remember. People can't for the life of them guess what you think, so you have to destroy your standards of engagement.
Yours Truly
Thomas F.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Tuesday, August 13th
Dear My Darling Public
I have decided, in a last ditch effort to control my inner monologue, to broadcast my thoughts and actions of consequence on this remote, but public forum. For anybody that has ever wanted to follow the life of somebody that they haven't, or might never come into contact with, I provide a transparent and almost unfiltered account of my day to day life in as much detail as I possibly can. So, without any further introduction, I suppose I should start with today.
I woke up to find that I had received a text message from one of my dear friend informing me that he had the documentation necessary for me to continue my teaching of religion. I was blessed with the task of teaching the transitional and socially taxing grade six to live more fulfilling lives in their faith. I told my friend, only having been five doors down from my house at his, that I would swing by to pick up the paperwork, a task that I, in my vast universe of distractions, had postponed until about 3:30 pm.
My mind remained, however, in a place it has been for quite some time. I have tried, with what psychological might I could possibly muster, to find a suitable mate in this place of hopelessness in regards my refusal to lower my standards of intellect. It's mind-numbing in the worst way when I take a woman to diner and she has a million touchy subjects, says that my self-identification as a socialist is received with negative connotations, and/or just doesn't know what I'm talking about. All of these conversational quagmires could only mean that you're clueless because the things I talk about don't take that much mental taxation to wrap your head around.
The internet, on the other hand, has done more to lower my confidence than anything due to the simple fact that only a handful of people have responded to my messages. Ok Cupid, in hindsight, was probably not my brightest choice of all the social forums in which one can communicate with those of the opposite sex, but It was a conscious choice made out of pure desperation in the middle of November of last year. I suppose the most interesting thing regarding this particular dating website is that it rates its members' tendency to respond to messages from "very selective" to "responds often". It also often happens that the people who claim to be down to earth and accepting are often the people rated very selective. It must be really frustrating to have to respond to a message on a dating site, lord knows I respond every time one enters my mail box.
On a more positive note, to get off the subject of my nonexistent love life, the long week of personal reflection and acquaintance with my college friends known as band camp is only a week away, and I can't wait any longer. The anticipation is burning a hole in my esophagus, and biting my nails into oblivion, but I have exactly three more days. I feel like I need to hit the hookah bar as soon as I can before I get back, but then I keep on reminding myself that there is a hookah bar in Edinboro in which to fill my lungs with shisha vapor.
Yours Truly
Thomas F.
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