I took this past semester off. It’s been a good thing.

Straightened myself out. Now I’m ready to go back. Soon. Like next year. Yeah. Sounds good.

I’m going biking next week. Across the great *cough* state of Pennsylvania. I’m getting dropped off and picked up along the way, but mostly I’ll be biking. I’ll update my blog (SeanStarrve.wordpress.com) to keep you posted. I’ll have pictures of diner’s I ate at, parking lots I passed out in and all the gnarly people I meet along the way. Gripping stuff.

This is probably the most rambling post I’ve ever done, ever — but like a beat kid I can’t stay put for too long right?

This is my bike. Just wait till I post the pic of what it looks like now.

“thisa a really something, ain’t it kids?”

“Yesssss dad”

And the poor children pout along behind their dishelved father with unamused stares looking for the next sugar fix or reason to complain. Anything to glaze their eyes.

But outside, in the side avenue, the alley way, still looms the warehouse door to Lotus Food’s. And when it’s raining, it is still there. And when it is dark it is still there.

Now the building itself  is about 10 stories high, a converted warehouse turned rice peddler. Once in the bustling, humbling food exchange portion of town; turned flaccid but regaining vigor as a retail ATTRACTION  featuring thousand year old eggs, and dead fish GALORE.

The history is all around. In the nearby rivers, the defunct Pennsylvania Railroad yard turned storage, the print on red bricks delcaring the Improvement Of The Poor. The history looms down from it’s high perch on the rooftops as a dark cloud, a death crow, a war general. Plotting out thunder strike and hail blow upon the small heads of passerby’s, smiling nonchalantly at chaos and descruction, red days and black ones. Content in the tide and wave it can create just by those damn children REMEBERING.

All the while, the steel door stands.

And it crashes, shakes, rattles, but no one is near. No one on the other side, and no one on the outside. It’s a hungry monster, waiting for it’s delivery. The host of a sloshing giant mole. Rattling angrily at the hustle of the busy street; Blindly gnashing at it’s teeth to the small conversations heard through the echo of steel. It can not stand the calm it sleeps in, eats in, stands in. Hating the quiet side avenue, away from quenching hunger, gnawing bones. Uncomforted at knowing, feeling, the life moving and flowing outside of it’s own barrier. Looking for the crack of daylight when delievery man, the sacrifice, comes to feed him his belongings.

Son of a bitch. Nothing left but the toss and turn on the down pillow, and try to cover from the broken light eating through the shades.

But can you put off morning one more minute? Or are we doomed to wake up?

We’ve barely arrived in the city when the first of many cigarettes are lit, and it feels good to stretch my legs even if I was able to turn the back of that wagon into a comfortable couch. The bad street direction, the rough subway ride: this is us. These are my friends, and this is our summer. My throat stings of dehydration, but that doesn’t stop any of us from going crazy during the show. When the guitar plays and Aaron Weiss’ beautifully flawed voice sings over the microphone, our bodies cannot help flying about as we scream into each other’s faces the lyrics we’ve memorized from playing these CDs so many many times.

After the show we pour onto the cool streets, say goodbye to others we bumped into in the venue, and walk the blocks to a nearby house to make new friends and to fill our stomachs. We’re all hungry as hell, and we are partially satisfied by someone generous enough to share leftover Chinese food.

Of course it would not truly be summer without what happens next. We walk back to the apartment that will be our bed this night around 4:30am, and upon arrival realize we are again hungry. There is little food available, and we make due. For me, that means using my fingers to eat a bowl of ramen noodles with a fried hotdog on top. It is perhaps the worst thing I’ve eaten in months, but nothing else could taste so good in this moment. A friend’s willingness to cook and experiment so late at night, combined with my hunger and willingness to eat anything late at night, are all it takes to make this shit taste like a meal of the gods. As we finish eating, two of us run back outside to lay in the grass and smoke. We reminisce over the incredible dance party we had back at the house, and we hope to get at least a little bit of sleep tonight.

This is summer. Waking up on the floor, I notice I am the second one up, and I start making plans for food, food that I would not get for another four hours.

I am again in the back of the stationwagon, riding home and thinking about summer. It’s a time for nights like these, when nothing matters and it seems like we’re just moving for the sake of motion.  Summer is the time of cook-outs and bon-fires, and I’m planning to have as many of these as possible this year. We are going to work all day so we can afford to hang out all night, and this is just the beginning.

This is summer, and it’s all we’ve got.

Maybe when we all get somewhat more motivated to do something and stop talking about how we might do something we will do something.

’til then we’ll think about it.

And the ever sounding crashing down of the economy permeates through the market’s fruit bins and meat stands to the country club with well groomed grass and eighteen hole golf. Us, friends, together in a new pioneer of poverty (barely, but broke nonetheless). Who lack funds to continue the dreams we have, but are sufficient enough for the broke weed summer; no ceasing of movement and moment. Are to withstand the wake of current affairs in our own oblivion.

Embark with us, dear pioneer, another front and future of the grand country we live in. The backdrop, the canvas, is that of failed and outsourced factories and industries. The methods of career and work are now riddles, and inefficient in their own structure. We are to build something different, something old, and something simple in procedure. Something, but as for now (the ever important now), friends, gather together with our little monies, and celebrate the crashing down with dancing, singing, laughter, and art.

Morale!

Chris went ahead of us, with a plastic cup of straight vodka in his hand, drinking while running and eventually becoming one in a crowd of thousands. We lagged behind, us the few who were busy tying our shoes, while others pissed in their toilets to prepare for the war and celebration.

Time elapsed, we were in the center of the riots. All phone calls to Chris were incomprehensible. The noise around us was bludgeoning. Eventually, the lot of us that stuck together, made way to a curb. To all of our surprises Chris came stumbling in little coherence down the sidewalk towards us, and then embraced us with hugs.

On the corner of Atwood & Forbes there was another furniture fire. In the fire stood a man, keeping warm, also of no coherence. He was in a winter jacket, days from bathing, with long stringy hair, balding, and unshaven. Chris, drunk, approached the man and kissed on the forehead. We pulled Chris away, tugged him down Atwood to watch the flames engulf furniture on a wrecked car while keeping him from anymore of his drunk shenanigans.

A day prior to all of this the Man in the Fire was in a psychward. He was rummaging through trash, and speaking of airplanes and wires that were in his head to the general public. A lady in Wendy’s told the manager, where the Man in the Fire was standing outside of, about the Man in the Fire’s babel of airplanes and wires. The manager called the psychiatric institute, or maybe he called the police, either way he ended up in a hospital bed and pumped full of thorazine for the night. Like many nights.

They released him the morning of Pittsburgh’s victory. He wandered the alleys surrounding the UPMC. Found trash, ate it. He then found carboard and fell asleep. When he woke he was frigid, and surrounded by shouting and yelling. Feeling incoherent he wandered down the sidewalks, avoiding the police and their horses. This seemed out of place for the Man in the Fire, but stability was not one of his virtues. There was a fire on the street where he staggered to. He walked into the fire and stood, shuffling from the chill and thorazine.

He said that
I should change my head.

My father is a wise man.

(a note: I try to be my friends, but they are better at it.  either dismiss my pretentiousness or celebrate its side effects)

Do we have more freedom as children or as adults?

Go.