mezzo-mezzo-man

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

College is a bitch, but I can't say that I'm any less of one. I tried to draft a post in the week leading up to my departure from home about missing the familiar splotches of green mixed in with gray geometry of cost effective city planning. How I would long for the same parallax as streets and alleys rolled by, and the ever present hum of the interstate two hundred yards from my house in the small hours of the morning.

What I've found myself missing the most is Ruby. We had been together for just under two years, and just under two weeks out from the severance of our official romantic relationship I realize that the geographical cocoon that spawned me will remain ever-present and my relationship to her will not.

I spent a regretful amount of time in our intersected lives feeling lukewarm to the idea of loving her back. I hate how long it took me to really mean it. I hate how narcissistic I was. I hate how long I felt so little for her. I of course, had issues—still do—and though I don't want them to be an excuse, I saw aging out of childhood in capitalist America as like being on vacation with a gun to your head, and it made me crazy. I am an odd flavor of legitimately caring (albeit in reserve) and skilled enough at manipulation to convince people that I care more than I do, and though I think that anyone in my situation would be just as megalomaniacal with their small bit of influence, she deserved so so much better. And if there is one thing in life I'm sorry for, it's not being better to someone who clearly loved me so much.

Ruby is everything you would want someone who loves you to be. She is funny, and though she lives a lot of her life in flux between her humor being muted and summoning the social wherewithal to vocalize it, she has always been absurdly funny; even on the nearly silent days. She is brave—and not in that she does any more dangerous things than idiots such as myself, but in that she lives her life farther outside of her comfort zone for longer periods of time in the name of fun and growth and beauty than any other person I've ever met. She lives in a better more well-kept house than me, and she knows how to be happy. She distinguishes and decides, and admittedly needs encouragement to act but she is wonderfully skilled at recognizing her feelings towards everything. She is a feminist; she exhibits feminine fashion and indulges in the culture and vernacular while exuding strength and fortitude. She is not toxic, she uses her support system and doesn't put up with my bullshit when I throw it her way. Ruby is gorgeous. Some people say she is not conventionally gorgeous. I don't. She has a beauty separate from her virtue, she is Venus.

I will admit that I had a mixed experience before her. I have had toxic exes and I have been the toxic ex. I did not want to repeat shitty patterns of unhealthy young love. Save for the major deception of the true depth of my feelings—which I thought would develop more quickly—I think that my experience and resulting paranoia regarding codependency led me to handle the administration of our relationship on the day to day fairly well. I encouraged her not to isolate herself from her friends—as tends to happen when you are newly enamored with someone—and made time for our own support networks and hobbies and established friendly relationships with each others' parents, and addressed issues and generally did everything I could to make our relationship a healthy one.

There is however a but.

I, in my jaded 'realist' wisdom, made the observation that relationships kind of just... don't last. Fucking brilliant epiphany I know, but I'll elaborate. Half of marriages end in divorce, and most long distance relationships result in emotional dissatisfaction or someone cheating (or both), and the not insignificant sample size of young relationships I have witnessed have mostly eroded—save for a few statistical anomalies—most commonly because one of the parties involved wanted to experience relationships with other people. I had seen teens get bored of the routine of their partners, or housewives wishing they had lived their twenties before marrying some dude named Cody and resorting to lifelong monogamy. I felt that I, alongside most others, would eventually get bored enough in one relationship to either cheat or mentally check-out.

I looked at the prospect of my graduating a year ahead of Ruby as an opportunity for us to get some space. Not because we needed it, but because the space would be there regardless and relationships ware thin. I didn't want that for us. Shitty making an executive decision like that I know, but neither of us were looking forward to long distance. Neither of us quite enjoy our predicament now.

It was a sad sequence of events, but she rode into the sunset with tears in her eye from my abrupt anchorage in this college town, and her obligation to go back home. I wouldn't say that it was the wrong choice, but I regret not loving her longer. We still talk on the phone about maybe getting back together if our lives synch up again, but those are far off days and that's no good to us now. I wake up in a sober daze, traipse into my theory classes and wave to nameless new characters. I'm sure she sits in front of her vanity mirror and does her makeup after dressing in clothes laid out the night before. We live our lives separately now. There is no resolution.

9/21/23

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

It's Christmas Eve, and I'm much more drunk than an eighteen year old should be. The tab for this post has been open for a few days, going almost wholly ignored. Maybe if anyone has taken the time to read my past posts they expect me to be profound or organized or put meaning into this shitty little blog but that's not what this is going to be.

I miss her. There's no more raw a statement than that. Sure we dated in middle school and periodically kissed, but the depth of anything physical was nothing compared to the monolith of our friendship. She was my deepest companion with whom I had no parallel rapport. Being a teen, a whirlwind of platonic and romantic feelings cycloned within, making comprehensive statements about our feelings for one another uniquely difficult, but what mattered was the bond.

The bond wherein we knew each others' families intimately. Where I would pick up breakfast for us and she'd show me films I would have otherwise never heard of. Hayden was vulnerable and strong, soft and fierce. She gave me the first dress I had ever tried on, and I left lipstick silhouettes on her porcelain white cheeks.

Once a year we would dress nice and share Crème brûlée on my birthday. Through multiple girlfriends and ephemeral loves our relationship survived. We'd watch the sun rise behind the skin of one another, and focus on the texture of our soul's companion.

I speak in the past tense of course, not because she's dead but because our relationship is. It seemed for a week or two like I was the only one trying. I got back with a mutually despised ex, but surely nothing one of us did could ever undo what two had built. I stopped texting to see what would happen, and slowly... nothing. Six months later I asked what the deal was, and you said I was an asshole. Reasonable. I was. Junior year gave me a drug problem. And a sociopathic tendencies problem. That being said, if anyone could have brought me away from it, it was you.

I know it sounds from this post like the significance of this friendship is one sided, but I remember her words. I remember her telling me every secret she's ever had, and how I meant more than material possession or the fear of death ever could. Our word was law, and if I was told to cut the shit, my antics would have been erased from history. But no word ever came, just silence. And that's what sucked the most. The static on my end. When I asked what the deal was you said you were sorry, but I don't forgive you. I won't forgive you.

You could have been vile and I still would have loved you. If we're taking into account the mutually hated ex, it's basically a guarantee. But nothing for eight months. Hate indicates care, indifference is the opposite of everything we've ever had.

I overdosed without you there.

I told somebody I loved them and never meant it.

You seemed from afar like nothing changed. I of course, figured my own shit out. Everything's... fine. I have scholarships, and got accepted to university, and have new friends, and new vices but my world will never be the same without you. We're too close to graduating now to mend things, at least I think so. I'm too invested in too many different people now to care so deeply, so naively about the likes of you once more. I feel like we both could have been so very different given the past year together. But you're non confrontational, and I'm vindictive and petty. I really thought how much I cared about you could make me care about everyone and everything again after Julie's death. I thought wrong.

I accept my current state of vanity, and false care I promise to have for those who so genuinely care about me. I accept my pedestal as this small pond's big fish, and being an effigy to Dionysus. I do not accept your apology. But most of all I don't accept ever forgetting you. No matter how hard I try Hayden. My heart misses yours greatly. The pastoral landscapes of my youth will never not contain a small piece of you.

-12/24/2022

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

From my Journal: 

I found an old Mountain Dew can in the false ceiling at [my high school], it expired in 1997. Before I was born. Before this book was made. It was in the band locker room—the guard room to be specific. some band kid must have climbed on the same lockers that I had, decades before myself, and thrown it up, not expecting anything. I saw, and took it though, I looked around at the best of friends the story of my life could ever hope to produce and I felt the connection. That band kid (definitely an adult now) and I are the same, connected in legacy, separated by what will erase us both: time. I had always rejected overzealous proponents of perpetual breeding and the extension of bloodlines. And yet, that was one of the first times I've ever understood legacy. I want to meet them, whoever they are, however they turned out. I want to throw a can of my own, and I want to meet who finds it—I want to meet the future, and the past, but all I really have is what surrounds me in the present and an old can of Mountain Dew. I want so desperately to be known, and I want to be missed. I want to know who I'm missing so much right now. I want Shyann to be able to throw one of her own someday. And I am well aware that one day the school will be destroyed, or someone will throw the cans in the ceiling away, or if nothing else—Sol will consume all. But for now, just for a time, I have the breath to scream life into an abyss marked by the passing of many beautiful names, and many beautiful hearts lost to history. I won't have the future in any satisfying way, and I've lost the past, but right now, I have you. <3 2022

—A love letter to can (wo)man exp. 1997

06/05/2022

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

Here's a surf rock-western intro for a punk song my band hasn't yet recorded. I wrote, recorded, and designed the "cover" myself. I hope you all enjoy :)

p.s. I have no idea why I called it surfer intro. Mainly because it was inspired by the SURFTONES' Cecilia Ann ? It has much spring reverb on it though. 

-08/12/2021

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

Photos from the Deadwood Post

-08/12/2021

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

Today was my last day of work—for the summer that is. As I did last year, I spent the majority of my summer out of state and living with my family in South Dakota. My cousin from Oregon was here for about a month and seeing as how I now have a lovely 2002 Dodge Durango, we spent all the time we could together. She went back about two weeks ago and I will miss her dearly. 

She spent the muggy days with me, lounging lazily in the afternoon sun and engaging in substances meant for those more experienced. We used to listen to Pink Floyd's Money (I traded my Desolation Boulevard for Dark Side of the Moon with a friend) and lay on our backs side by side. We'd bicker and laugh and play fight; now I listen to Wish You Were Here and allow Shine On You Crazy Diamond to see me off into the oblivion of slumber. 

Since; I've visited Deadwood to meet up with a friend passing through. My uncle allowed me to use his extremely expensive camera. I was able to capture this photo a little ways away from downtown. Shooting analog has its perks when given an extremely powerful camera. 

I know I'll come to miss these days. Driving away from my aunt and uncles' house with the back full of belongings and listening to Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness made me miss what I had only just left. 

p.s. I'll be making another post of just the photos I took that day. 

-08/12/2021

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

So an Indian with a dirty face walks up to a bar and orders a cola. He looks around the room at the sea of white combovers in tacky dining areas and takes a moment to reflect upon what these men are. They are the meat thrown at grinders and pulled back out, the salvageable compost from the darkest reaches of the world, from Korean mountains, or jungles, or deserts of flowing oil. Remnants of the clashing of American industry, the same industry that allowed for the Indian to get a cola, or write this out. The industry that would have had him killed a century and a half ago. 

It’s burger night at the VFW, a small weekly event for those that inhabit this gambling den of a town. And the air sways with the ambience of little conversations, but important ones. Talk between those that don’t get enough. And there’s always a happy desperation in the voices of these folk, like an itch finally being scratched after a week of remembering your kids never call anymore. I sit across from the toughest former air force senior master sergeant I know of. A hard woman that hands out my paycheck on Mondays. I’m thankful for my aunt, and for the opportunity to walk among the would-be dead waiting for the inevitable prophecy to be fulfilled. They are the most interesting of stories disguised by the smell of moth balls and Midwestern cliches. 

My great uncle buzzard is there (real name Larry) in his  glasses shaded orange on top. I remember him talking about throwing buckets of water across the inside of medi-vac helicopters to wash away the blood. But now he chews down on chicken strips with half opened chops and asks me how work at the shop is, and how he remembers going to dinners with soot and grease on his face too when he was young. 

Plates clink, 

People drink,

And chairs scrape themselves into place under dark brown tables. We walk out the same way we came in past neon bar signs and more white combovers in nylon polos milling about. 

It was nice.

-06/04/2021

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

My English teacher has taken a liking to me and gotten a handle on my literature tastes. One of our assignments was to read a classic novel and write a report, and since he knows my love for the film Apocalypse Now, he recommended to me a book called Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. He lent to me his personal copy. There were sticky notes and writings in pencil littered throughout the novel filled with interesting little anecdotes or reactions in some cases. This quote was marked "The human condition” a phrase he references often; I think out of a haystack of things to be labeled as such this is one of the most fitting to be considered a needle. I have come to love this book and want to get a copy for myself one of these days when I'm not broke as fuck.

There's another scene in the book where there are heads on a pike looking at Kurtz's (the main villain who is deranged and murderous) shack on a river in the Congo. I've thought this scene to be very aesthetically evil and I want to do an art piece inspired by it sometime.

The photo is another from my first B&W roll, and I've come to really enjoy its aesthetic. I hope you all do as well.

-04/03/2021

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

Here’s a haiku that I wrote the other day. I’m not sure what to make of it but I hope that someone enjoys :)

-03/22/2021 (they're not all good lol)

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

I was staying with my grandfather on his farm and working in town as a summer job when I took this photo. After my grandmother died, my uncle and aunt tended to the garden. They would often have me water the plants that they kept in the green house (the red shed in the background) before they could plant them. I’d look at this spectacle when washing the dishes after dinner and I always loved how the light passed through the blue bottles and how you could see the plants in the garden sway when there was a breeze. Now that I’m back in my hometown I miss the farm, the garden especially.

-02/20/2021

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

Towards the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, I took a lot of walks through the cemetery near my house and saw this view. I snagged a photo and thought that it was worth sharing. 

-01/24/2021

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

Here’s a photo I did a little while ago, it was my first time shooting black and white film. I hope you enjoy! 

-01/24/2021

[mezzo-mezzo-man]

-First cemetery film photo from 01/24/2021