(See what I am saying?)

Looking both ways (Cold As Ice)

I was surrounded in the monochrome of ochre orange and helvetica of the New York Subway system. i was surrounded by hard workers and lost lovers and iPod users and the thoughts of saving money for comfortable lives and happy wives. it was all around me. even here i feel like i am not part of what i am surrounded in when in fact i am surrounded in what i am.

My brain hurt from thinking about the consequences of things that will never happen. my teeth smiled at the thought of what might. and every-time i pulled out my money it felt like i was coughing up blood beside the interstate in the blinking hazard lights of an old pickup truck. We ascended into times square singing along to the words to the forienger's greatest hits album. There were plenty of blinking lights, but there were no pickup trucks.

The world was multi-tasking right in front of me. The marquees scrolled over my head reminding me of the markets are falling debt is rising. i walked past people showing me it is hard to be poor and also be beautiful. i held her hand and realized it is easy to be happy and impossible to see everything all at once.

For a moment while looking both ways on the Broadway boulevard I understood there are somethings that i will never be able to do at the same time. I will never be able to be young and comfortable. i will never be able be true and wealthy. i will never be able be ambitious and be a good friend, and as we walked across broadway through the hazard lights of my life, i saw myself as part of the surroundings. i saw her fingers and her gloves on my arm. i saw myself laughing and i saw her singing. i saw myself as happy and looking for everything at once. i was young and uncomfortable. i was true to myself and perfectly successful at being unsuccessful. and as the bright lights burned around me, i missed my friends.

As we walked east past Howard Johnson's the wind blew down 46th street and i was also made very aware that, like being young, i cannot be in new york in january and be completely comfortable. i thought ahead as the wind blew backwards down the street. We ducked into a resturaunt entrance with a baby grand and black sport coats and gray hair. She laughed at the menu prices and the wardrobes, and ran back out into the cold.

i stood there for a moment in the dim light and soft jazz and looked at what i didn't have. i considered the tradeoff, then smiled and ran back out into the cold to see what i did.

How to leave your hometown

The taxi pulled away from the sidewalk at LaGuardia. i was in the back seat. The passenger pickup curb looked like frozen daiquiri spilled on the floor at the bar on singles night. I looked out the window at the world and it just stood there quietly with the people waiting to be picked up to be taken somewhere more comfortable.

"Where are you going?" asked the cab driver.

In the cab trunk with a fluorescent tag marked "HEAVY" was what i have to work with. From that moment on the slushy gray curbside into Manhattan and on until old age is what i am working on. When i was little i remember jumping off end of the teal blue diving board at the Troy City pool, sucking in every last ounce of air as i fell like a space shuttle re-entry into aqua clean chlorine and concrete below. But now instead of a teal blue diving board, it was a brown vinyl back seat of a NYC taxi cab. And while i still felt weightless and was gasping for breath, i had no idea what i was falling into. but i suspect it won't be as sterile or even as soft as the flat bellysmack landing in the Troy City pool.

As the brown vinyl seat and I left the curb, i watched the people standing alone in the world outside and wondered where everyone was going. i wondered why i always leave things that are comfortable. i wondered why i always kept jumping off the diving board.

"Times Square. 42nd and 8th." I told him.

"after that, who knows."

He smiled and started the meter.

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*Original Music and Lyrics by my new pal Greg Dutton.

Sometimes good people present themselves and their abilities at strange, albiet appropriate times. (like in red-toed wool socks at 3:30 am on the corner of the bed in the dude's apt. he is staying at in the East Village) Listen.(mp3@64kbs: 1.5mb)

Paper Work

In Tunkhannock Pennsylvania a machine runs every minute of every hour of every day. It is cranking and spinning and turning and shaking while i eat and drink and dream, while people fall out of luck and into love. While people wait for things to happen and try to catch up after they do.

It looks like a building by itself. and the building that was built around it looks like a ocean freighter that over shot the docks along the st. Lawrence and ran aground into a hillside in the appalachia mountains. there are pages and pages of maps and instructions hanging on racks like last wills and testaments and forgotten folklore for future generations of employees, should a fan ever break, or a screen tear, or a bearing burn out. And people work their whole lives in the machine, mortgaging houses, buying wedding rings and college tuition and dinners on white table cloths and oil changes and tire rotations and birthday cakes.

It runs like the ocean tide. perpetual and precise. Global economies, the gods of supply and demand and distribution and renewable resources have built this machine. Indoor plumbing has kept it running. The culmination and application of modern science pulses through its circuitry and vibrates through the stainless steel. Margins of error are calculated in micrometers, tenths of degrees Celsius, and voltage is watched like a human heartbeat, all on color computer screens that run calculations like alchemy and black magic and without respect to day or night, weekend or holiday.

"All this to wipe your ass." he said with a smile.

His voice sounded dull and distant through the earplugs. The phosphorus lights hung far above me and blanketed everything in a purple film that made his smiling lips look blue and the 14' rolls of white paper that spun off the end of the machine look pale and dead.

The machine makes toilet paper. That is all it does and it does if well. Every minute of every hour of every day. While girls put on their perfume and boys buckle their belts, and while people philosophize art and life and debate the presidential primaries, the machine runs on a hillside in Tunkhannock. And for that we should all be thankful.

mashed potatoes

i said where ever, so she sat me in the front window beside the cash register. The elderly man in the maroon cashmere sweater and 4 pound frames around his eyeglasses was eating fish and chips.

it was 12 degrees in greenwich village and as the people came in one by one, they unwrapped themselves from their striped scarfs at the green cash register and i kept wondering if when the scarfs and coats came off, if any of them were going to be anyone famous. or famous to me.

i looked through the menu and wondered who would even know if milton glaser, massimo vignelli, mike doughty, or ryan adams, michael beirut, or josh davis walked in through the door. i thought about how many people in here were famous that i don't know. then i thought about if mike doughty would walk in, who would notice but me? and what would i really have to say to him? suddenly among the fish an chips and the ringing of the cash register i made a clear distinction between the work i admire and the people who are responsible for making it. there are are few people who are famous to me. but there is people's work that i find a deep connection and inspiration in. it is work and music and art and words that make me nervous and make me fumble my speech in a dry mouth around. and i have no desire to be recognized when i walk into a diner and take off my scarf by the cash register. but to make the scarf striped and to make the cash register green is what i want to do.

i ordered a sandwich with french fries and considered what disease i had that makes my mind think the polar opposite of it's surroundings. new york shivered in the sun outside the diner window and my mind thought about prefabricated suburban homes and with the 2 car garages filled with things and attics and basements stuffed with all the material that keep bank accounts and free living space with just enough room to breath. which, ironically enough, is exactly what the midtown apartment i just looked at feels like.

i waited on my sandwich and french fries and thought about where i was and the unexpected situation i was in. This was not planned. This was not intended. This was not what i chose. I thought about everything that has ever happened to me and none of it has ever been like i have planned. none of it has ever been intended. none of it has ever been chosen.

the waiter brought my lunch. he sat the oval porcelain plate down on the table. a sandwich and mashed potatoes sat in front of me.

I smiled at the plate. the old man in the maroon cashmere sweater and 4 pound frames around his eyeglasses was singing to himself. i picked up my fork and understood that some things are bigger and last longer than the people who make them. i thought about everywhere in the world but where i was. i reveled in the unpredictability of life and the washington park diner wait staff. i enjoyed my lunch in the front of the diner by the green cash register, and swallowed my expectations and my mashed potatoes as new york shivered in the sun outside the window.

#15: detail (feathered)

For those of you in the interested party (perez), and i do mean party (perez), please view to download your free screensaver. (limited edition reprints of this 12" LP cover can be ordered by emailing troeth@greenappleslingshot.com. Allow until next years 'kenny rodgers christmas special party' for delivery).

#23.

"Thanks." I said as real as i could to mean it and as casual as i could to sound sincere.

Stephey walked out into the late night in the rain as the door shut behind him.

His words flew like a bird into my belfry and ran into my brain and left it ringing like a bell in the night. i felt like i was a tuning fork humming, vibrating like funnybone, like when people say things to you that make you believe that maybe you are not crazy, like a mouthfull of chewing tobacco, like maybe you are right to feel like you do, like maybe you are not invisible to everyone in the world, like maybe, just maybe i stand a chance.

i couldn't sit down. so i stood up. and i thought about what i heard myself saying back to him.

"I just don't want to be someone who thinks everything and does nothing." i told him.

"I just don't want stand here my whole life. " i told him.

"i need to make something happen." i told him.

So i thought about what i have done in the last year. but i could only remember about a month back. so i started there and worked my way back in the same order that i write down phone numbers:

1. moved out of college, again, 2. looked east into the pacific ocean 3. fell asleep with my face pressed against the window 4. watched the sun rise in central park, as well as the toledo train station 5. watched the sun set in japan 6. watched the sun not set at all out a window of a 777. 7.drank a budweiser at who knows what time of the morning somewhere east of rochester. 8. watched ryan adams fall of the stage in Ann Arbor 9. fell asleep on my sister in the back of a car 10. carved my tire tread pattern in the interstate to Pittsburgh and back 11. had an ear wax candle party 12. made money 13. spent even more. 14. changed my mind about 99% of what i previoulsy thought i was 99% sure of. 15. feathered my hair. 16. hummed backup for a german door to door christmas carroling act. 17. listened to the kenny rogers greatest hits record all night. 18. ate beef hormone. 19. learned what johnny cash meant when he sang "Flesh and Blood". 20. developed a deep fear of kinkos. 21. ran through times square at 2:00 am. 22. wished for something more.

"i need to make something happen." i told him again as his tail lights smeared through the puddles in the gravel lane.

and as he drove away in the late night, my bell rang loud, and i realized that things have happened. i realized things are happening, and i realized that maybe, just maybe i stand a chance.