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July 27, 2007

missed

I'll have more to say later, but for now, just know that a pretty cool person that I only knew very briefly has left us. Please take a moment and send her some love - she deserved it.

Denice Trent

Posted by Rob at 10:29 AM | Comments (1)

July 23, 2007

mixtape

i'm going through the old and unpublished, maybe because, i guess, they're like me - old and unpublished...

i'm sitting and listening to the playlist i burned to a cd for you. i remember when i was younger, making a tape for someone was an effort in real-time. you heard the music you chose as you sat on the floor in front of your stereo, watching the tape deck, watching the orange marker spin around the spindle, trying to figure out if the peter gabriel song would fit onto this side of the cassette. you'd sit and listen and imagine her listening to it just as you were.

now, you still make the choices, but you point, click, drag, hit a virtual button, and go take a shower while the computer performs this now small, now potentially cheapened, labor of love.

but if you make the right choices, about the songs, and about the girl, then the girl and her heart are in the songs you chose as much as you are, as much as your heart is.

so i sit and listen, and hear the words and voices:

i'll stand in front of you, take the force of the blow...

questions of science, science and progress, do not speak as loud as my heart...

when they first arrived inthe eighties, we believed that compact discs would last forever. we know better now, but still, in our lifetimes, they hold up better than the cassettes ever did, the sound quality now held back only by the quality of the original recording. some memories, some feelings, are like that, but more seem to be like tape, degaussing slowly over time, losing the sound and information inexorably to the ether, the process only accelerated by repeated listenings.

too many heartaches in this lifetime ain't good for me...

my faith in love is like that. i've feared that my love is itself like that, when it's spent so much time on the shelf, waiting to be shared. but i find, very rarely, that it's still there, the sound still clear and warm.

and true love waits, in haunted attics.

occasionally, someone happens by, like a song you have to be quiet and listen to, and i pull love down, dust it off, and listen to it. i hear it resonate in the songs i hear, and i add them to this playlist.

i look into your eyes, and i am at the center of the sun, and i cannot be hurt by anything this wicked world has done...

i order the songs carefully, but ultimately, everything i have to say, everything i feel, is somewhere in every song here.

and all i have to do today is make you happy. the only thing you have to say, is "it's all lovely, baby..."

ultimately, it comes down to whether we hear the same music, if you hear your love and mine in the same songs.

i wish you could see it, too, i wish you could see it, too, baby how i see you.

and i know that i'm not so good from a distance but i tell you, i'm the one.

Posted by Rob at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)

catching up

tired of censoring things. i have been writing, but i've pulled them back down as soon as things calmed down.

i don't know which me is real right now. more and more, the majority of my time is spent as a tightly wound spring. events, many the consequences of my own choices, some out of my control, keep winding, tighter and tighter. throughout the days and nights, i'm fighting it, trying to keep my grip on it all, when i just want to scream, cry, pound away at the walls, pound away at myself. those that think i'm weak to feel this way are idiots - they don't know what it takes to keep it all down.

i feel all these things. i feel the increasing hopelessness. it's all very real. sometimes i write about it, and post it. people around me see the signs, and it affects my relationships with them. many care, some only care about how it affects them.

the cycle rolls on, and i get tired. the spring relaxes, more from fatigue and resignation than anything actually changing. i'm sapped of strength, and then it's just dark and empty.

eventually, i'll get enough energy and will back to try to rouse myself. it takes longer and is more difficult every time.

when i do, i feel bad about how i feel, and i feel guilty and conspicuous for talking about it. i want to have hope, because if i have none, then there's really not much point, is there?

neither side is more real than the other - the anger and despair are powerful, and even later don't seem entirely irrational as they once might have. and the calmer, fitter, happier, more productive side is all that's worth carrying on. so which is real? can they coexist in me? it sure doesn't feel like it.

either way, no more censoring. i spend enough time surrounded by silence, and i spend enough time listening quietly to everything raging in my heart and head. people are going to think what they want to about me. they might as well know it all.

july 14

it's weird having the run of this place, here at 7:30am on a Saturday morning. the law firm is generally quiet and dead even in the middle of the workday, and there are still people that i've never seen come out of their offices. the hallways are even generally empty and silent.

but now, there's no noise at all, and the lights are out. no receptionist, and the flat panel t.v. in the lobby is black. and i'm here.

i was supposed to run 14 miles this morning. i got up later than i should have, burned my last two pieces of bread in the jacked-up toaster, and got ready for the run. my mind doesn't care anymore, my body's not in shape for it, and my heart wasn't in it at all, but in my attempt to continue coaching, i knew i needed to be there.

late last week, i swallowed my pride to some extent and sent an email to the two owners of Rogue. they had made noises before about talking at some point, and i tried to be diplomatic and ask if we could make good on that offer. they lacked the decency to respond, which doesn't surprise me. when she called me into the office back in April, she didn't even want to tell me why i was being asked to resign - i pretty much had to hound her for a couple of minutes to tell me. she finally did tell me, that it was all about a mistake i made in my personal life, before they asked me to coach for them, that despite the guilt i'll always feel was absolutely none of anyone else's damned business. at the time i still apologized, explained the situation, but they didn't care. she even stooped at one point in an email to some ridiculous, holier-than-thou personal remarks that were, fortunately, made almost funny by her usual mangling of the English language.

i was supposed to start coaching with a group called Move Through Cancer in late April - i still had that, and i clung to it. then i got the email that the MTC board had voted to "move in a different direction". when i asked for the real story, i was told that MTC uses facilities loaned by Rogue, and that Rogue had asked them not to let me coach on the premises.

this morning, i drove to the meeting place for our run. my friend called, and she was late, and would try to meet us on the trail. i got my gel, locked up the car, and walked down the street through all the runners, alone and in groups.

i saw a group being coached by one of the best running coaches around Austin, a good man and an asset that Rogue had also stupidly let go. he had a number of runners still faithful to him. he has the benefit of being a great runner himself, and an experienced and well-known coach, in addition to just being a great guy. he has lots of options.

none of my people were there. after several minutes, Chuck showed up. he went to stretch while we waited to see if anyone else would show. no one did. Amy called, was running late, and would meet us on the trail along the way.

i saw Rogue runners come in. i saw the last coach i trained with at Rogue. she smiled and waved, which did not in any way make up for her absolute failure to return the email i sent to her in April. i saw people with the group training for the Vegas marathon in December, a group i had been one of the original supporters of. i was told in April that i could still train with Rogue. but, when you're treated like a criminal, and people won't look you in the eye, and people stop talking to you because they "don't want to be involved," and the asshole coach that you and others assume played a role in my firing says he cares about you but, hiply quoting a line from "Goodfellas", "has to turn his back on [me] now," hanging around is a pretty shitty option.

i should note that when i confronted him a month or so ago, admittedly drunk and a bit hysterical, and asked him if it was him that got me fired, he would never answer the question. coward.

and now, much as it hurts, much as there's still that big empty space that i had carved out of myself to make coaching and that institution such a driving force in my life, i can say it with complete conviction - Fuck Rogue. Fuck the cowards and the backstabbers who didn't have the decency to face me, to own up to their parts in things, to ask me for my side, to treat me with the same compassion, care and respect i had always shown them. Fuck them.

still, this morning, no one else showed. i felt bad for Chuck, but i felt no desire to run, and not even the motivation to force myself to just do it, like i so often do, and like all runners have to learn to do. i let him go, and i went back to my car, and now here i am, up on 15, looking north up Brazos, up San Jacinto, cars and buses just now making an appearance.

i didn't want to just go home, where i would either try to stay asleep for as long as possible, or start drinking. if alcohol didn't make me feel so sick, especially after that night a month ago, i might just be drunk all the time. so, i came in to make up some hours. i had taken off Monday afternoon for an interview with a state agency for a permanent job. it would be the step backward after the bold, but mostly reckless move over a year ago of quitting my job, and trying to quit the law.

i had interviewed for another job weeks ago. i had applied online, because i met the stated requirements, and the money was amazing, at least for me. it was in a realm i never really thought i'd occupy in an occupation i don't want to be in. i was surprised to get a phone interview, then an actual interview with four senior staff at this small health insurance company.

the environment was almost calculated to assure a lack of stimulation. quiet, austere, and cheap. i ignored it - i need a permanent job, and the money... i couldn't help but think of what i could do with the money. i knew i'd dislike the work, and the environment, and working for a health insurance company was a potential sell-out of my beliefs. but what have my beliefs gotten me? what of what i want have i had the strength and skill to get? what of what i love have i been able to hold on to, whether it was eventually lost by my own failures or someone else's?

so, i though, take the money. just take the fucking money and buy a car and an iPhone and a condo, anything bright and shiny to distract me.

as of this past Wednesday, i still hadn't heard from them. i had sent thank you cards to all four interviewers, and sent emails to two of them, which they had not responded to. i called one of the interviewers, the Vice President of Human Resources. he said that they hadn't had a chance to talk about it or make any decisions, because the CEO has been out of town. nope, no decisions. i said i was glad to still be in the running, and i looked forward to hearing from them.

i got home wednesday night, and the rejection letter was in my mailbox.

cowardice, carelessness, deceit. you don't get what you give, so maybe you start giving less, and what you get back probably doesn't change all that much.

take the fucking money. i'm here to make up time, because i'm paid hourly, and i need the money just to try to get my finances back to normal so that... so what? so fucking what?

i need to run so that... what? so fucking what?

i need to give a shit so that... what? so fucking what? i tried before to do things right, and what did that get me, when i made one mistake?

just take the fucking money, because someone else will. just take what you want, because everyone else does.

Posted by Rob at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2007

workus interruptus

So, I had zipped through documents today at a pretty good clip, enabling me to wander the web in short bursts, and to take a little time to budget out the next couple of months, to figure out how and when to pay for things and all. I felt another onslaught of hopelessness creeping up on me, and I had been disappointed about something else, so I was trying to plan, to try to sketch out something to look forward to, even if it was just financial.

I had just figured out a plan, and closed the spreadsheet...

And then was told I only have two weeks left at this project.

As much as I make fun of and gripe about the legal industry and large law firms, I have to hand it to Baker Botts - they're pretty classy to give notice. The far longer-named Akin, Gump, Strauss Hauer and Feld also gave me a couple of weeks' notice, and of course my friend Kellie did last year, but this industry is generally a no-notice sort of thing.

I'm still adrift out here. Every time I try to anchor myself, or at least get my bearings again, the sea changes on me. I am looking for a permanent job, but nothing's panned out. My nascent running group, currently named Team In Exile, has hit-and-miss participation. Some people just want to do their own thing.

I miss the community I had with the group at Rogue. I'm still upset, still angry, because they were wrong to do what they did, plain and simple. They were wrong to block me from coaching a group of cancer patients, a new job I had taken with their blessing, that was to start in late April. They didn't even have the decency to respond to my recent email to them, that just sought to set up a meeting with them.

People wanted to continue running with me, and that begat Team In Exile. But because of how it started, it's too loose in structure, and it's free, and so, as a way to continue to coach, it's frequently disappointing. On the other hand, there's some good people who have become good friends that stick with it. I'm now at a crossroads with it, trying to decide whether to try to grow it, or just accept it as running with a small group of friends.

On the plus side, I am slowly getting back in shape, and I'm going to work to not let that get derailed, and lose my progress in one of the few areas I really can control. I'm working to reestablish the true and good friendships in my life, after the startling, but not entirely surprising mass of revelations about people in the past several months. I'm reabsorbing myself in music, and trying to write more.

Back and forth, up and down. The cycles are getting frequent, and annoying, and disappointing. The troughs have been pretty deep, and the crests of the waves have not been incredibly high, and are short-lived. If I can just stay somewhere in between, just for a while, just long enough to give it all one last good try...

Posted by Rob at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2007

You, Madam, Are a Self-Important, Selfish Idiot

So, I'm browsing around CNN, and find an interview with Trilby Lundberg, who publishes a national survey of gas prices.

Clearly, this woman and her company are knowledgeable about the petroleum market, and the factors influencing it. But in the litany of reasons for higher gas prices, all of which are somewhat valid, blame/reasoning is placed on everything from the aftereffects of Katrina on refining capability, to the trespassing and ravaging of power stations by renegade raccoons and possums (I sh*t you not). The list also cites the apparently silly promotion of non-petroleum fuels and apparently pointless environmental regulations. Nowhere does she have any criticism at all of petroleum industry, which has posted record profits as a result of higher prices, while still receiving handouts from our government.

This Renaissance woman's expertise is far-reaching, though. She's also a climatologist, philosopher, ethicist, and cultural anthropologist. She has the following to offer on climate change, personal responsibility, and other cultures:

I'm hoping that consumers will see through the rhetoric about consuming less, demanding less, as faulty. It is not a given that consuming less will be good for our economy or for our personal freedom. It is not even established for our environment that we [should] deprive ourselves of gasoline for our personal mobility as well our commerce. And to suppose that it is good to do that, and pretend that we have consensus and put our heads together to deprive ourselves of this great product that makes the country go around, commercially and individually, I think is flawed. I'm hoping consumers and voters will see through that and be able to ignore some of the most extreme suggestions.

I think that there has been friendly as well as unfriendly brainwashing taking place. And when I say friendly and unfriendly, I'm talking about decades of extremist views that have now achieved mainstream acceptance. And the No. 1 item among those affecting current oil politics in Washington is the boogeyman, also known as global warming.

I don't accept it as established fact, nor do I accept that it would be caused by petroleum consumption, nor do I accept that the human species should not affect its environment. So even if it were someday to be shown to have some small effect on the environment, I see no crime. In fact, taking into account the many, many millions of people around the world that envy our way of life, it would seem more humanitarian to wish them the kind of plentiful petroleum products and vehicles ... that we enjoy ... to lift themselves out of [a] backward, poor way of life.

Why would CNN bother interviewing this woman? Despite the claim of being an independent survey group, take a look at the Lundberg Survey's website. While they provide information to the media, including CNN, their customer base is almost completely the oil and gas industry, and Lundberg's rhetoric on her site (see: "Trilby's Take") is definitely what the congregation wants to hear:

It is demand, not price, that many politicians, self-proclaimed consumer advocates, and sympathizing journalists want to see come crashing down. This is the clear agenda of many public voices who wish to pipe the popular flute. When more consumers challenge the direct and sometimes hidden presumption that their thirst for gasoline and personal travel should be curbed, a groundswell of demand for a realistic policy to promote petroleum product supply can then rise.

I'm not suggesting that all of her arguments are logically insupportable. For example, there are indeed serious issues with the negative impact of ethanol production.

And, there are gaps in our philosopy about oil consumption, even if the bottom line is the same. Burning through our supply of oil is also not the same as driving a species to extinction. A lack of oil is not intrinsically lamentable. The true concerns are pollution and politics, and neither of those are natural and necesary consequences of petroleum consumption. We can continue to find ways to burn petroleum more cleanly (up to a point). And when it comes to politics, burning less oil isn't the solution. Demanding change in our foreign and domestic policies are real solutions that directly attack the actual problem.

Oh, I guess there is the issue of what happens when oil reserves dry up. I assume, from her comments, that the solution to that is so simple it's not even worth mentioning - drill for new reserves in the Alaska wilderness, and when we run completely out and devolve into utter chaos because we didn't want to accept the responsibility and cost of preparing alternatives, well, hopefully we won't be around and it'll be someone else's problem. In fact, the illegals and other "backward" people will probably have taken us over at that point, so who really cares?

I don't suppose I'm even that annoyed at "Trilby". After all, she's had to live with that name. I'm not even surprised by her point of view - I can get that at the dinner table at my parent's house. But I am annoyed and disappointed at CNN for even bothering to publish an interview that is really just giving this oil industry shill of a windbag a forum for her opinions, the motivation and self-interest for which are transparently callous, and ego and ethni-centric.

Sorry. It just really annoyed me. I expect this kind of crap from Fox. Maybe CNN should stick to reporting on Paris Hilton.

Posted by Rob at 12:37 PM | Comments (5)

July 04, 2007

dang ol' king of the hill, man.

ahh, holiday. slept 'til noon. i'm gonna try to get out on my bike, even in the rain, but first i have to try to peel myself away from the Monk and King of the Hill marathons.

but it does remind me... remember how people freaked out a few years ago when those two propane trucks were stolen in San Antonio?

Wednesday, June 2, 2004 Posted: 10:43 AM EDT (0243 GMT)

ARLEN, Texas (Reuters) - FBI agents in Texas apprehended two men Wednesday morning driving two propane tanker trucks that had been stolen from San Antonio over the Memorial Day weekend.

Witnesses reported that the two men were identified as Hank Hill, of Arlen, Texas, and "Rusty Shackleford", though the latter name is assumed to be an alias.

The trucks were spotted and reported by an Arlen resident who identified himself only as "Khan". "I see tanker truck driving down street. I tell my wife, Connie - 'Heeeeyyy, that not look right to me. Then, I see crazy redneck neighbor Hank Hill driving truck. I call White House immediately. They say no big deal, probably nothing. I call FBI director, he say he too busy. I call local news station, and they call police. I not big hero. Just a simple man living among rednecks."

Hill, a noted and respected local seller of propane and propane accessories, has a history of being indirectly connected with suspicious activity in the Arlen area. He was a suspect in the 1998 propane explosion at the local Megalomart that killed one dim-witted teenage employee. He was also the owner of a 29 lb. turkey found by a bomb-sniffing dog on a flight to Montana in 1999. The turkey was safely detonated by a local bomb squad. He was also a suspect in the murder of his employer's mistress. Hill has been unofficially linked to other events, including aiding in the theft, joyride and destruction of an M1 Bradley tank in 2002, purchasing crack cocaine to use as fish bait, and mooning former Texas Governor Ann Richards.

Hill's political extremism may have been learned from his father, Cotton Hill, a shinless war veteran, who is reported to have been involved in a plot to kill Castro, at a Yankees baseball game in 1967, then again in 2001. He was also held responsible for the burning of the Arlen Baptist Church and the theft of Santa Ana's leg from a museum.

"Shackleford" is believed to be one Dale Gribble, a local exterminator and survivalist extremist who briefly held a bell tower at the local community college until tranquilized by local police.

"Man, these dang ol', see, man, you come on all those dang ol' cameras and just 'hey these are terrorists', but man, come on, they're Hank and Dale, man, just dang ol' good people," said one apparently intoxicated neighbor.

"Man, this is proof that dang ol' terrorists... small-town America, just... accenturizes what we've been telling you all, and I'm an example of it, and it has to stop," President Bush commented from his bathtub.

Posted by Rob at 01:04 PM | Comments (1)

July 01, 2007

pardon the false whatever the hell that was

ok. sorry. everything is under control. this is why i don't drink much, or often, during these wacky times.

this morning, i got up, and got on the bike. i visited with a good friend, then continued north on lamar. the traffic was still light, and i was feeling pretty good, like someone had flipped a switch, and i was some small measure of the rider i was twenty years ago. i emphasize "small measure."

anyway, things are ok, and i'm making the effort to make them that way, and/or to feel that way. small lapses are to be expected.

still, i'm leaving the post up. it was the first in a long time, and part of what i have to do is get writing again. so, i'll take it. hopefully, more to come.

Posted by Rob at 11:13 PM | Comments (1)

Zero-Zero-Zero-Destruct-Zero

so now, there's just this. just these things i feel and see, and there's nothing else.

i would hit out, if i only knew who to hit.

i want to be in the ring. for all the beatings i took. i want to unleash this all, for once, on someone, i want to swing and connect and make someone feel some measure of all this that i feel.

i sat tonight, heard the band play, heard the words come to me, like they did so long ago. tonight, the music was strong, urgent blues, and the words were, "love is never wrong". they're worthless now. my voice doesn't matter, and it's gone.

there's just this emptiness, and this meaninglessness, and now, just this wanting it all to be over, someway, any way, somehow. i don't want sadness anymore, now or after it's all over. it was just a loss. you let the clock run out. maybe there's another game, maybe there's not, but this one is over. there's nothing else. i lost. there's was something here, but i was weak, and never showed it to you, and now it's gone.

there's nothing left to save. i just want it to end.

Posted by Rob at 02:19 AM | Comments (0)