(See what I am saying?)

somewhere else

my cuff links were gone. i gave them to my mom at the reception. so with my arm out the window the french cuffs on my shirt were waving in the summer fog like a soldier leaving the train station. but the only thing to wave goodbye to were the waxy rhododendron blossoms that hung low over the road and the low roar of the new river as we followed the path it is carving out of the belly of west virginia. my sister was shotgun and my tie was loose around my neck. we straddled the double yellow line as we weaved down rt. 16. annie was tired from helping me photograph the wedding, so the converstaion was between the river and each of our ears. and then once again, depsite my best efforts, one of my many short comings became evident.

it always happens this way. and i will sadly blessed and and wonderfully damned should i always be this way. it was like this in denver. it was like this in college. it was always like this even growing up at home.

no matter where i am; be it at home on the farm with all the freedom and space it allows, or the corner office on the 6th floor in downtown denver, or then, driving through my warm and drifting summer, or anywhere beautiful i have ever been --

i am always thinking of somewhere else.

as it were saturday night under the rhododendron blossoms , i was packing my mental baggage for upstate new york. and the next moring at the Fayettville pancake barn with my family and the singletons, i wanted to hear about dad and jim's fishing adventures of the coast of carolina from their vacation last week. and we left with plans to meet for dinner in columbus tonight. and even now, as i sit with the slow summer air of athens just out the window and the sticky asphault sagging into the curb, i am busy searching for flights to long island, and comparing train rides into the city.

sitting at 1800 Grant Street with 3 computer screens on and the phone ringing from anywhere between India and Cheyenne, i would look out the window at the hyptotizing clear blue western sky, i would think about how peaceful it would be back in athens during the summer.

and running through the front field under the apple trees in miami county i would think about living out west someday.

sitting here in the daydream better known as athens in the summer time, i am looking for my rain jacket for the jeep ride through the allegheny mountains tommorow night. and as we ride with the top down through the night up 1-90 along lake erie and into the foothills of new england, i will, like so many other beautiful and free nights of my life, be waving goodbye like a soldier leaving the station, and be thinking of somewhere else.

being normal

the only thing between me and the galvanized barricade that kept us off the stage was a very tan girl with a white halter top with the words "A+F" stitched in to the back. the sun slowly burned down behind the back wall of the ampitheater like a stubborn candle wick, overlapping evening into night. the budweiser in my veins told me if i reached out, i could touch him. the 230 lb. flat top with the turquiose securty shirt was there to remind me i couldn't.

perez was pretty much speechless the whole show. tyler just smiled a lot. stephey was dancing and getting all worked up. stokes gave me the occasional look of satisfaction from a few rows back.

i have been thinking about this latley.. as the crowd leaked out after the show, i stood there by south as he pissed behind the trash can beside the stage. i was thinking about it as i watched the delta of recycled beer form between his feet and run down the concrete grade through the trampled brown plastic beer bottles.

i suppose i started actually started thinking about it earlier when i ran into and old girlfriend from the dorm room days of college. she was talking about my haircut when she said "you always did try hard to be different. i guess now you are used to it." i think she was sort of saying it as a complement sort of. maybe.

my reply to her is: "even if i was different, who out there is normal?" and does a how a person or their hair look really distinguish a person as different, or does it just mean i am person with a different looking haircut (from what she has seen)?"

latley i have been having a hard time beleiving that what i see means anything. or at least that it has any accurate meaning to the object i am looking at. a problem for someone in my line or work, perhaps.

but when it comes to people, it is so easy to think a change in meaning can be done by changing look. i think that is why i am so envious of those who can be on stage and say directly what they the feel and what they mean. (no to mention having people actually listen to it) that is true communcation without relying on the almost always misinterpreted visual representation. i remember first feeling it last week when we were at david hostetler's studio watching his jazz band rehearse. i leaned over between the wine glasses and told sam i wish i had talent. he said i do havetalent, but i don't. not that kind. i wish i could communicate. i wish i could unravel my personal thoughts and feelings. and to do it publicly on stage(and have it sound as good as the music i was hearing), i imagine it would be a statisfying thing. and if i could, if everybody could, i don't think any song would be the same (in other words they would all be different). at least i hope they would be.

i was thinking this as we walked out of the gates an onto the street. he was standing there in his surfer shorts and flip flops. so i said hi and shook his hand. he said he was sort of excited because the bus driver has been teaching him how to drive the tour bus and he was going to drive some of the trip to minneapolis tonight. soon the rest of the band came out to the gate.

as i stood there in the small crowd, i heard a girl say into her cell phone " i just met him! and i can't believe he is so down to earth, he seems like just a normal guy..."

sidewalk away

i was walking up the street with annie and her man, walt. below us was the sidewalk, broke and uneven like a cubist canvas, with dandelions seeping up through the seams. in front of us was two pair of shorts with tan legs and hips hanging out of them. i opted to look at the shorts. i think walt was too. at least i would be. if i was him. and i wasn't dating my sister. as we walked by the two, one leaned into a car and pulled out a cage with a hampter, or a gerbil in it.

while that was odd, it seemed odder still to me that i had no idea if it was indeed, a hampster, or a gerbil. so as we past the two girls and their shorts, i asked to walt, "Is that a hampster, or a gerbil?"

walt immedeatly repeated the question slightly louder, although i am quite sure the girls with their shorts heard it the first time.

"Is that a hampster, or a gerbil?"

the girl holding the cage looked at us both as if we more lame than a 3 legged horse.

"It's a guinea pig." she said flatly, as we watched her shorts walk away.

put that on a t-shirt

it is not a habit of mine to repurpose words from my friends intended for me only to read. but during times of transition like this; spring into summer, and the ending of a school year - and the scattering of friends at it's adjournment, leads me to introspection. and despite the summer evening blowing in the window behind this desk, my life/ actually the relationships in it, feel more like autumn.

so when i got an email from a leaf that has blown far from my tree (or rather, the tree has moved away from the leaf) about matters concerning kitchen utensil i broke 2 years ago and spilled garbage from 2001, i am reminded that, despite the solidarity that sometimes comes with mobility, good friends are far better souviners than t-shirts:

Subject: drunken hell 
View Printable Version
From: "David Fowler"
Date: Fri, June 20, 2003 2:20 am 
To: "Todd Roeth"  
Priority: Normal 

Ok so I'm shitfaced right now..... I figured out of anyone that I knew that you
would understand (I've read your blog). My b-day was the other night so my buddy
pat took me out for beers.... anyway. hammered as I am typing is pret ty hard.

yours drunken,
Dave

so to fowler, the troubadour of denver, that is way funnier than any t-shirt. happy birthday, and prada says hi.

by starlight

My head was resting suprisingly comfortably on the grooves in the metal. Staring squarely up into the sky, with my periphreal cropped on all sides, space seemed strangly compressed. The underbelly of interstate bridges, storefront awnings and telephone lines scrolled above me like a cheap animation. the backdrop of stars in the murky lime green city sky never moved. i was fixed on a particular star, part of some bigger constellation, as it seemed to keep perfect pace with the hap-hazard shifting and turning as we carrened through the sleepy city streets. the star sat motionless as the treetops and streetlights of the city slid quietly between us.

As i focused on the star, i suddenly heard the song playing in my head.

The song i heard playing in her car the day she left. the one with the line in it that struck me like the punch line of a joke on the tip of my tounge that i couldn't remember.

so i started singing it.

"I am in love with my mobility, but sometimes this life can be a drag..."

we picked up pace on a straight away and the hum of the road got louder. we were passing under streetlights and the fuzzy purple and orange glow from them kept a good rhythm, so i tapped my feet to it. i began to think about my mobility. not just in my current situation, but in my life as it was that night at 2:30 a.m. in columbus ohio. i thought about where i was, where i was going, and where it was i was coming from; and not just in the physical sense. a year ago i was driving a u-haul through lincoln nebraska on my way to school. i have already moved in and moved out again. now i live out of a yellow duffel bag i borrowed from woody. and where i will live next, and more importantly, how i will live next, is as unknown as the name of the constellation i was staring at. and for as many miles as my body has gone in the last few years, my mind has gone farther still. and no matter what i think or feel; the end result has always been the same: pack it up and move on.

finally i sat up, turned around and stuck my head in through the sliding window in the back windshield. there was the girl we talked into driving us home, listening to bob seeger on her tape deck, and woody sitting shotgun, holding a round laundry basket full of her clothes on his lap. woody was talking about something. i admired the spectlacle for a moment, then spoke.

"did you know," i said them, "when lying on your back in the bed of a moving pickup truck at night, it seems as if the stars and you are lying still, and everything else moves past you., no matter how fast or what direction you move."

"yeah. but really, it's the other way around." she replied. "only the stars seem to stay in the same place because even though we are moving, in the grand scheme of things, we really aren't going very far."

i laid back down and stared up into the stars and smiled.

moving day

I don't know what officially defines summer. maybe it's the light, or the weight of the water that sits inside of the air, the chlorophyl that saturates the flora, or the cockeyed slant of the sun as it casts shadows across this particluar latitude. Maybe it is a combination of all that and more. but whatever defines the summer, we rode right through it. and i distinctly remember feeling it right then and there as we coasted down mound street for the last time.

We saved the bicylces for last. everything else had finnaly been moved into storage. bonwag thought it would be a fitting testament to our time there if we parted ways with our house we lived in for the last year by pedaling away on the matching 1972 olive green schwinn cruisers.

"They have 3 speeds." i said to bonwag. "But if you shift gears, be patient, it might take a minute or so to notice." as we pedaled up to the apex of the street, before coasting the rest of the mile or so decsent across town to the storage garage.

I had one of my grandpa's old Guayabera's on. it was unbuttoned and as we picked up speed the summer blew right threw me and spread the shirt out like the faded tan sails of pirate ship. It was one of those times in life when i see myself in third person, and the vingetted view of my life was supersaturated. not only with color, but with feeling. as bonwag and i cruised through athens weaving around the potholes in the brick streets, we passed dumpsters and dithces full of stray coat hangers, 3-ring binders, beer labled vinyl bar banners, and busted veneered coffee tables. pickup trucks and mini vans were crammed full of stained carpets and second hand couches. the alleys were piled high with plastic laundry baskets full of empty cd cases, bottles of ketchup, jars of pickles, abandoned window fans and all the residue of college living.

Lately, i have been hearing the same thing from many people of varying relationships in my life. I havn't been asking anyone the same questions, but somehow, as of late, i have been hearing the same message. and as we coasted down mill street past the u-hauls and the front yard graduation picnics, those words played through my head like a soundtrack.

you are always so guarded.
you are such a commitment-phobe.
you are emotionally retarded.
you are just a boy playing the game.
you are always on the run.
you are too cool to care.
you are stupid.
you are always so indirect.
you are horrible at communicating your feelings.

and they always ask me why. i guess that is sort of like asking fish why it is always wet; i have no other life to compare myself to.

as we rode bicycles through the summer, i wondered what this all means. i wondered if i spend more time moving towards - or away from other people. i wondered what all of this commentary of late means. is everyone else seeing me better than i am? am i changing? or am i not, but supposed to be?

as we parked the bikes and i pulled the aluminum door down on the storage garage, and locked the last of my cardboard boxed belongings safely out of sight behind the closed door. i felt awkwardly at peace.

"it has been a good year and a strange year" bonwag said as we walked away.

indeed it has been. and now i am moving on. and as i shift gears, i guess i will have to patient, it might take a minute or so to notice.

drinking and driving

I thought the sun would do me good. So i took my tray and sat out in the atrium. The worst food is the best food for a hangover. and the only thing i could think of was the staple of america, McDonald's.

Having said that; -believe me, i of all people see the irony in the situation i am explaining:

I sat there at the table by myself. someone somewhere recently told me that they feel less lonley eating in a resturaunt alone than eating home alone. either way, i was alone. but prada kept watch on me from out of the back window of my jeep in the parking lot.

and being alone in the resturaunt, i was reading the newspaper. It was on the front page of the business section. just a little side bar near the bottom of the page. the front spread was devoted to the Ford Motor Co. turning 100 years old this summer. and at the bottom of that page was this factoid:

"More than half the people in a Yahoo! survey said they would not buy a car without cup holders. Another third said mirrored visors were mandatory."

I looked up into the light shining in through the atruim, put my down my Quarter Pounder [which is probabally 90% of the same chemical compositon as a Burger King Whopper] and sighed a regretful sigh of relief:

"maybe there is still a future for design." i said out loud.

The mere fact that the Columbus Dispatch was printing news from Yahoo! was perfect.

The more homogenized products become, the more design will set them apart. Take a walk down the cereal aisle at a grocery market, a quick browse of any newspaper, a good look at the beer on tap at any bar, or in this case, a stroll through any new car lot. What sets them apart? :not the ingredients label, the words printed in the colums, nor the alcohol content, or even the engine under the hood. What sets otherwise identical products apart are the packaging and presentation.

I remember in the height of woody's learning curve at abercrombie, he looked at the tag on the back of my what-have-you brand name shirt.

"huh." he said. "vendor number 0967812. that is the same manufacter from singapore we use at work. "

leave it to woody to keep my perspective and skeptical outlook on consumerism healthy.

As i threw away the pile of trash on my tray that roughly equaled the amount of food it was wrapped around, i thought about how much of what i eat, drink, wear, and buy is distinguished most by what is wrapped around it. take away the wrappers in the world, and what is left? a lot of hamburgers that taste a lot alike, severed by workers wearing the same t-shirts who drive to work in the same car, who take their brakes to smoke the same cigarettes and read the same news.

I have been warned before of my cynism. So i just smiled at the lady taking out the bags of trash to the dumpster. (isn't it ironic that the only thing that makes McDonald's reconizable is the only thing you throw away there?) and walked back out into the parking lot, hopped in my $18,000 cup holder with my coke [or was it pepsi?] and drove off.

double trouble

Nights like last night remind me that i should chew my food better. that way when it erupts up through my esophagus and is forced out of my nostrils it won't hurt so bad.

and the backyard and parking lot of St Paul's Catholic Church wouldn't have as many flies there today.

many people in this town shuffle. the athens pilgrimage of drinking at every bar this fine town has to offer. but when perez challenged me to the never before "double shuffle." i knew he meant business.

i was still wearing my JOHNNY CASH IS A HERO shirt this morning. it smelled like a cross between jagermeister, cold sweat, and stomach acid.

"and just what do you have to show for yourself?" jody asked as i lamented about my feats outside of the coffee shop.

predictably, i couldn't quite remember. my only evidence was clutched in my clammy, stamp-covered hands. i had kept log of every toast to every shot at every bar we did. the shots were of the red-headed-sluts / kamakazi genre, but after a dozen or so, i felt like someone was pumping helium into my head. after 20, it felt like i had helium im my legs. after 30, it thought i was helium.

so my only response to her question was to unfold the list and proudly show her our testament to the drunkest night on record, and the first ever documented Athens Double Shuffle:

print exchange

i just finished signing 26 photographs for 26 classmates for the end of the year vis-com graduate school print exchange. My professors say it will be a good way to keep a memory of the year, and no doubt get a nice portfolio of images. as i signed my prints , i thought about if a photograph makes a memory, or if the memory is in the photograph.

I like photography. to me it is the closest physical manifestation of memory.

but unlike photography, most memories are made by more than one person.

the hallways of my memory have nice artwork hanging in them . Beautiful silver printed and sepia toned memoires of cold volkswagen seats and county road ditches filled with queen ann's lace, and mountain top mornings with mosquito bitten wakeup calls, and two a.m. tuna salad sanwiches in SoHo over shots of whiskey, and the midnight croquet matches on manicured motel lawns at the bottom of a tequilla bottle in tuscon. there are slightly out of focus shots of silhouettes wading in my backyard pond toasting cans of beer to true friends and the beauty of fireflies, and upstate skinnydips in new york fingerlakes, and low light frames of six-stringed seranades around sandstoned campfires. all of which hold the decisive and fleeting momements of my life. they are all hanging framed and signed editions: 1/1 from the artists.

far more often, it is not the scenes within the frames i think about, but the signatures at the bottom of those who helped me make them.

12 items or less

I had just dropped sam off at his house. We had just gotten out of the darkroom and i was hungry. As i drove away from his house the bricks in the street started to shine with the rain that was quietly dripping through the canopy of elm trees along sam's street. Cat Powers cooed on the stereo speakers and prada hung her head out the back window like a sleeping horse in it's stall.

I always enojoy my talks with sam, and tonight was no exception. he got me thinking about a conversation i had earlier today:

I was walking along college green with mugur and lindsay, two classmates who were voicing their concern about the conflicting agendas that arise during the last two weeks of undergraduate life.

"I have to write a paper on existentialism." mugur declared with chagrin.

"what is existentialism?" i asked.

they both sort of sighed and tried to tell me what it was, which led me to believe they had no idea what it was; so i assumed they understood exactly what it meant.

I was thinking about that, and things sam had told me tonight as i the automatic double glass doors of kroger bowed open to greet me to the flourecent and linoloum within. supermarkets at midnight on modays are placid places to ponder. I was standing in the frozen food aisle trying to pronounce the ingredients on a swanson t.v. dinner as the man with the 28" circular floor buffer somberly walked up and down the ailse past me as if i were invisible.

Through the dairy aisle my flip flops echoed on the lemon yellow linoloum.

"what the hell is existentialism?" i kept thinking. and does it really matter if i don't know what it means?

I am coming to the concluison that the act of getting educated is rather anti-climactic. The process is much like driving down the road in the fog. and as my lights get brighter, i am not able to see where i am driving any better, but instead, i only see more fog.

"So so what if i don't understand existentialism" i resloved as i passed the cut-out head shot of rosie o'donnell on the tabloid at the checkout counter.

"How's it going?" i asked the man working the checkout counter as i held my jalapeno nacho cheese dip.

"Well. I am here." he declared.

"would you like paper or plastic?"

mobile home

I was reminded today of the semi-permanance of the material that makes up my memories.

:and if life is quantified by memory and memories are the only thing we truley own in this world, then i am living my life in a mental mobile home.

The reminder was sitting in my inbox this evening. Truth be told, the email sounded like it could have been signed by any number of people in my life. My email address must have percolated to her through the wreckage of history and things left unsaid, and now the words she wrote to me remind me once again that memories are one of the only things you can't buy, and the only thing you can't sell.

She told me that she realizes how different our lives are. for a few minitues i tried to remember the moment in the history of the world when they were the same.

everybody has a ceiling. a limit in their lives made by abilty, ambition, and mostly of comfort. everyone also has a basemement. and the square footage in moblie homes aren't the most spacious. and so it seems that as my ceiling creeps outward, if not upward, my basement where i keep cardboard boxed memories, has seemed to have gotten consolidated, and like most shoeboxes full of long lost snapshots and study hall love letters, they collect dust.

i smile and write this without apology, but with and admitted understanding of the consequences to my life as it continues to move.

onward and outward i say. and theoretically upward - athough i would consider myself lucky for a 45 degree angle of rise, even though mobile homes are most comfortable on level ground.