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is it possible to miss
someone you haven’t spoken with
in what seems like years?
 
 
 
 
 
 
i miss you.

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the hardest
birthday for me was my 30th.
I didn’t want anybody to know.
I’d been sitting at the same bar
night and day
and I thought, how long am I going
to be
able to keep up this
bluff?
when am I going to give it up and
start acting like everybody else?
I ordered another drink and
thought about it
and then the answer came to
me:
when you’re dead, baby, when
you’re dead like the rest of
them.
-Charles Bukowski

I have come to the conclusion that there are not enough hours in the day. Lately I’ve been working on a project for work – my first (self-assigned) programming project, and it is coming along swimmingly. I’m also trying to get a winter garden going. Here in Birmingham we are blessed with a long growing season – and I want to try my hand at growing all the cold weather veggies I enjoy – turnip greens and swiss chard and broccoli rabe, for starters. I have about 50 little paper cups filled with seeds and dirt and water; hopefully they’ll take off and I will be on my way.

I’m also reading the World Without Us by Alan Weismann – and I’m enjoying the doomsday. Urban decay has always fascinated me – I think there is a certain beauty in nature always winning and civilization always crumbling, and so it’s fun to read a book where that is the whole point.

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The weather has been absolutely gorgeous this week. Fall is almost here – on my morning bike rides it has been almost cool enough for a jacket (but not quite!). This makes me want to go camping…except this weekend Emily has to work and next weekend is sidewalk film festival. I guess this Saturday I’ll go daytrip hiking, and we’ll head to Sipsey in October.

I’ve started tracking my running progress on dontbreakthechain.com – a webapp based on the supposed advice of Jerry Seinfeld. It’s simple and (so far) effective.

I also put skinny tires on my bike, and wow I’m fast now!

Angela Davis, oh how I love thee.

First, I am grateful to Jeff, King of the Bean, for first telling me about Angela Davis coming to town, and then for following up with me about it. Her talk was one of the best things I’ve seen in Birmingham. I agreed with almost everything she had to say.

First, she talked about how diversity does not necessarily always equal good. We have one of the most diverse administrations – and also one of the worst. Too often people attribute diversity alone as a virtue, but that is not the case. There were lots of comparisons between her own childhood and that of a certain female Secretary of State, who both grew up in Birmingham during the civil rights movement. She attributed the differences between herself and Condeleeza as differences in how success is measured; Condeleeza is interested in the success of herself, while Davis is interested in the success of her community. I found that statement to be offsetting in its egotism, but as Davis is a lifelong Socialist, I suppose she probably really does mean it.

Second, she spoke about how racism is still prevalent worldwide. Her biggest example of this is the number of blacks in prison. In the state of Alabama (a state of approx. 4.5 million people: 72% white, 27% black) – there are 30,000 people in Alabama prisons. 60% are black males and 35% are white males.

She also spoke in favor of prison abolition. I found this fascinating, and while it appeals to my anarchistic tendencies, there is one particular recent news story that makes me grateful for an institutionalized prison.

I do believe that racism is still blatant and prevalent here; racial tension always seems to simmer right underneath the surface of everyday life. There are numerous protests against an Asian convenience store owner, who supposedly beat up a woman for stealing a bag of ice. (The Birmingham City Council has suspended his business license – without any sort of a trial…it was later reinstated after appeal). The KKK just held a march in athens, alabama. There are places in downtown and southside where I have witnessed the old “Private Club” trick – where blacks are refused service because “this is a private club” – when in fact it is not. The Jena Six is another recent example of the type of racism and violence that was thought to be long dead.

It makes me angry – because in many ways I am sympathetic with anyone who is oppressed – and yet defensive because I cannot change the color of my skin or the privilege that is bestowed upon me because of it. If there was a natural disaster in Ensley, would I go there to try to help people? I would like to think so, but I’m not sure.

pele loves pavarotti, and so do i. tonight consist of sitting on the couch with emily and a bottle of wine, watching pavarotti in central park. i’ve drunk all but a sip of the wine. i haven’t cried yet.

last night we saw angela davis. it was, hands down, the best thing i have ever seen in birmingham. another entry tomorrow, perhaps, when i can type a little more fluidly. as we were walking out of the auditorium, someone presented her with one of the fbi’s ‘most wanted’ posters, from when she was hunted and definitively not free.

i love everybody.

on the way to fundy national park

This turning-30 thing is sort of funny. It dawned on me this morning that in all of my ‘what would I do if I won the lottery” schemes, none of them included forming a commune in an abandoned building downtown, squatting and fixing it up with some of my friends, building a garden on the roof and trying to be self sustaining. Funny, because this is the sort of thing I daydream about when I dream about not having to work – but boy if I win the lottery it’s going to be a different story!

I know that there is this expectation of turning 30 being some sort of life altering experience, but the reality is that I don’t really feel much different. This year I have several goals for myself – I want to run a 10k, pay off my outstanding debt, start saving for a down payment on a house, maybe wear nicer clothes. But truth be told I’m pretty happy with where I’m at and what I’m doing – the only thing I’d change is my location.

Tonight I stayed late at work and rode home in the dark. There’s a certain feeling of !danger! when riding on the road on a bike on roads so dark I can’t tell where the pavement ends and the darkness begins. Combine that with air that smells of fall and burning thighs and catching up with cars and it’s almost intoxicating.

I got home and turned on the tv, intending to watch a movie that’s been sitting on the armoire for a few weeks. Instead, I watched a PBS documentary on Ella Fitzgerald. While we were on vacation there were a few times when it was just unbelievably beautiful – and we listened to lots of Ella Fitzgerald and Joshua Bell. Tonight I missed being beautiful and free, cruising along the Cabot Trail without a care in the world.

Prince Edward Island

I would like to just take this moment to say how much I love internet radio. I rock out every day to kcrw.com, woxy.org, and wers.org (which I stumbled upon while driving in Boston). I’m actually a member of kcrw (but not of my local public radio station, because they only play classical music and opera, and they have the same exact programming on the weekends).

Anyway.

I had a really awesome time at ArtWalk last weekend. Emily and I met up with Trey, Amanda, Hannah, and Chase. I mentioned more than once that I wished that downtown Birmingham would look occupied more often, with people mingling on the sidewalks and drifting in and out of shops, which were miraculously still open after 5pm. Downtown always looks deserted on the weekends, which is awesome for bike riding but not so much for anything else.

I ran into a some friends from work, as well as some other folks I haven’t seen in years…the bar hags are still bar hags, the stereotypical crazy lesbians in uniform are still just that. I’d like to think I’ve changed a lot, but maybe I haven’t.

I’m going to try to exhibit some photos next year.

sunrise (Nova Scotia)

I didn’t win the lottery, but it gave me a great opportunity to dream for a little bit. First dream: pay off my debt. Second dream: buy a house. Third dream: take lot of vacations. Others follow – quitting my job, a personal trainer, a nice bike, maybe emily and i would buy a new-to-us car. And Emily would finish her nursing school degree, and we would move out of the ass of the bible belt, and we would live happily ever after.

But, like I said, I didn’t win. But most of the things that I would do, I can do. I just can’t do them instantly.