About a boy

Dear Catharsis,

Sometimes people just say things so much better than I can.

"Clive carried on moaning in the car. Why did Marcus want to get involved with someone like that? Why hadn't he tried to stop her? Why had he been so rude to Lindsay? What had she ever done to him? Marcus didn't answer. He just let his father go on and on until eventually he seemed to run out of moans like you run out of petrol: they started to slow up and get quieter, and then they just disappeared altogether. The thing was, he couldn't be that kind of dad anymore. He'd missed his moment. It was like if God suddenly decided to be God again a zillion years after creating the world: he couldn't suddenly come down from heaven and say, oh, you shouldn't have put the Empire State building there, and you shouldn't have organized it so that African people get less money, and you shouldn't have let them build nuclear weapons. Because you could say to Him, well, its a bit late now isn't it? Where were you when we were thinking of these things?

It wasn't as though he thought his dad should have been around, but he couldn't have it both ways. If he wanted to be up in Cambridge, with Lindsay, smoking pot and falling off window ledges, fine, but he couldn't then start picking up on the little things--and Ellie was a little thing now really, even though when they'd seemed like the biggest thing ever. He'd have to find another job for himself. Will could do the little things, and his mum, but his dad was out of it."

Thank you Nick Hornby.

Doing laundry after college

Dear Catharsis,

Doing laundry after college is easily the single most significant detail of life that is taken for granted while in college. Right up to the day of graduation, I always had relatively easy access to doing laundry, be it in my parents house, my aunt's house or a short walk downstairs and across the courtyard to the laundry room. Everyone bitched and moaned about how expensive it was to do laundry, but looking back I guess we were paying for the convenience.

After college, doing laundry is the pinnacle of being alone. There is nothing more depressing, more lonesome that getting up packing up your clothes trudging down the street--which in my case is about a fifteen minute walk--and do laundry next to people whose silence speaks volumes about how they don't want to be where they are, do not want to speak to you unless its to find out if the machine next to you is vacant, and you pretty much feel the same way.

Doing laundry is nothing like going shopping, which I have been told, is the best place to meet someone. The shopping cart can be very telling about a person's lifestyle and personality. A laundry basket can be just as revealing but you don't really want to know what it has to show you.

Tomorrow is my first official day in Philadelphia completely on my own, as the one contact (read: friend--I am not that cold hearted) will be returning to college where he can do laundry from the confines of the secluded Guilford campus. He has shown me a great deal of Philly and I am excited to branch out and meet new people. But at the same time, I am growing weary of it. It seems ever since high school I have had to make a new batch of friends every other year or so and to be quite honest I am tired of doing it. I miss my friends from San Francisco, I miss my friends from Greensboro, I miss my girlfriend, who is working in South Korea and seems to have had no trouble making friends with people who she can go out and have a drink with or go on adventures with. I am not bitter about that at all, I am very happy for her, but at the same time I have only met people in passing and the people I could hang out with work for me and I am forced to respect the distance of work and out of work relationships. At least I have the Exchequer but even she in all of her manic, kitten-intense energy can drive me crazy. But I am still happy to have her.

Oh well, let's see what tomorrow brings, and let's see how much I enjoy the one thing I have asked for my entire life...To be completely alone.

Nobody is well adjusted after college

This one is going to be short and to the point. I am fucked up. I have been for a while. This is my semi-public attempt at coming clean about a few things. I won't tell anybody about this blog but if they find it...well, given what I have to say. It will not be pretty. Refreshing isn't the right word but it's the first that comes to mind, if I can pay homage to Chuck Palahniuk.

At any rate this is going to be a tell-all, dirty laundry airing, catharsis of a blog. In fact, I am going to write each post to Catharsis, and Catharsis, whomever it may be will learn all about the true story of my life, the good, the bad, the ugly, but mostly the bad, in the hopes that maybe things might get better and maybe I can get adjusted after college. Maybe I can get adjusted in a way that I have never been able to achieve my entire life. So here it goes....

Dear Catharsis......