A curious collection of memories and opinions from the life and times of your average, everyday, little known 31 year old INFP male. Let the fun begin.
26 July 2006
I'm Their Leader, Which Way Did They Go?
I was telling this friend of mine last night (whom I rarely ever talk to) that I think I’ve undergone some kind of transition lately. Sometime over this last year or some such. I think it was gradual enough for me not to really notice, except to say ‘what the hell is wrong with me’ from time to time.
I was also saying that I think most, if not all, of my past friendships didn’t survive this transition. Given the events over the last few weeks, I am finding this more and more true. I am beginning to wonder if generalized inconsideration is somehow built into my personality; if it is, I wonder if I am somehow oversensitive to situations that I may deem inconsiderate or desensitized to my own actions. I suppose that sounds confusing.
"Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones." While it is a simplistic view of the above, it doesn’t really explain the feeling in it’s entirety. Here is what I do know… my list of allies grows thin – to quote some elf guy from one of those ring movies. I had someone apologize today for something they did to me over the course of a month and a half. While the details now are unimportant, the fact remains they apologized. I am not sure why this happened, and the whole thing came across as more of a ‘conscience clearing’ on their part than it did a sincere apology. I am not even sure if they understand fully what they did.
But anyway.
I think I harbor this belief that all people are inherently good and true, and when I find out they aren’t, it completely wipes me out; which is really funny because I am not good and true. At least I don’t think so. Trying to figure one’s self out is always fun. Maybe, one day, I will get it all right.
Wow, Look at That Sun. Sure is Bright. Yep. Bright.
The last 5 days here have been nothing short of chaotic. Around 7:30p on Wednesday night, a very large and very unexpected storm rolled in from the north and unleashed its near-apocalyptic wrath down upon St. Louis and the surrounding counties.
It was an odd storm to begin with; a northerly approach is almost unheard of around here. From what I’ve heard, the storm was passing north of the city when it made a sharp right turn and slammed into the northern counties, packing winds in excess of 75mph. The storm hit so hard that even the city’s electrical system gave a collective ‘what the hell?’ before dying in spectacular fashion. Power at my place died a total of 3 times before remaining off and leaving me scrambling for candles.
Those of you who know me know that I love thunderstorms. Needless to say, I was in hog heaven. Even with the rain pelting everything and the high winds blowing me around, my dumb ass was outside watching nature at its finest. The wind was more than unrelenting, tossing around loose tree limbs and bending even the most well grounded trees as if they were saplings. The sky couldn’t decide what color it wanted to be, as it shifted from dark green to orange, and then finally to a deep gray. I couldn’t get over the colors, the altitude of the storm, and the multiple layers of clouds moving in various speeds and directions. It was all very, very impressive.
There were reports of tornados, and the sirens did eventually start wailing, but all of that nastiness avoided my area; what we got was an obscene amount of rain. You know it’s raining hard when you can’t see the houses across the street because of the cats, dogs, pigs, sheep, chickens, and various other small farm animals falling from the sky.
Eventually it all blew over, but not before visiting downtown St. Louis and disrupting the Cards ballgame. It even managed to blow out the press box windows on the brand new stadium. In all, it affected every section of the city and left over 500,000 homes without power. That’s homes, not people, and makes for about 1/3rd the population of St. Louis and surrounding sub divisions. The streets around home were alive with emergency vehicles that didn’t even bother going back to the station after a call.
Pretty big deal all in itself, but that isn’t where the entirety of the problem was. Thursday was forecast to be 100+ degrees including the high levels of humidity. Anyone who knows how humidity affects heat knows that this isn’t a good situation, and when Mr. Mayor cried emergency, the National Guard showed up to evacuate people to ‘cooling centers’ throughout the city. This, of course, landed us national new coverage of sorts, because bad news is always good for ratings. Something of note that I found interesting: In all of the coverage of this widespread blackout and bad weather, you didn’t hear one report of crime, on a large scale or otherwise. I am sure there was plenty of crime, but we didn’t hear about it.
Thursday night was the hardest, with 100 degree weather and 80% humidity that persisted well into the midnight hour. I found out that this made sleep all but impossible as I ferried a small army of pillows around from place to place, looking for a cool spot somewhere in the house. At 3am, I finally decided the car would be the best place to salvage the night, so I started her up, got comfortable, set the climate control on 80, put on some music, and crashed out. Only burned ¼ tank of gas, I don’t think that was too bad at all.
Friday, a more traditional storm blew in from the west at around 11:00am. This storm was along the same caliber of Wednesday’s storm, with winds reaching 65 mph, horizontal rain bands, and a couple of tornados on the outlying edge. In some ways, this storm was exceptionally violent, and even prompted emergency measures to be taken at work. I watched the storm roll in, and I have never, in my life, seen a sky that dark. It may as well have been the dead of night. The street lights would have been on if they’d had power to run. Needless to say, this storm undid a lot of Thursdays’ efforts by the power company to restore power to the city.
I’ve got power back now, but there are still somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 without power last I heard. In all, I was without power for 3 days. Given the severity of the two storms, the fact the power company has reduced the outage by almost half says a lot about the power company in my estimation. They aren’t a government or city service, so they do a thankless job getting customers back online, and personally I think they deserve a cookie.
On a side note, a tree has so many branches. That being said, how is it possible for TONS of branches to be all over the yards of so many houses, and the trees still have branches? The mind boggles.
Today was one of those days at work where it couldn’t be over fast enough; busy from the get-go and full of disillusioned folks who drum about in their day-to-day routine just like me. Everyone had a problem, everyone wanted a solution from me, and everyone wanted that solution on Friday of last week. So, when 5.00p rolled around, the phone turned off, I logged out of everything, and sat there for a few minutes reveling in the day’s massacre of my spirit.
The car ride home was phenomenal. The air was cool and the sky was a beautiful shade of gray, and I took it upon myself to pop the roof and crack the windows, despite the misty rain coming down. The music was perfect. It blended eloquently with the passing trees, the feel of the road, and the thoughts in my mind.
Sometimes it’s like that, you see. Everything comes together like a well-rehearsed symphony. In this case, the air, the road, the music, and the mood all fit together in a way that I can’t really describe. The music itself was repetitive, but the repetition was of something that was so sweet to hear, that for it to end would have been a crime in and of itself.
I should be sleeping, but I can’t bring myself to.
Thoughts and memories of times long gone flood my mind. Recollections of events over the last two months irk me to no end. I should let it go… I need to let it go, but some power keeps me fixated on the details.
Always details.
Always something said, something felt. Always some lie I can’t get over.
And then it happens, the freefall. I have a track I’ve acquired recently under the same name, and it is hauntingly fitting. All that is left now is the freefall. There’s a certain peace with it, and maybe, metaphorically, this is how I release it all. Fall until there is no more room to fall.
In the end, perhaps the details won’t matter. Things will be what they are, people will be who, and what, they are. They won’t see life as I do, and nor will they care. They will fall too, in their own way.
So what happens next? I don’t know. I’ll tell you after I pop the ‘chute.
It's been another one of those exquisitely craptastic days. I mean, I have had some really crappy days before, but this one was truly the pinnacle of crapdom.
Ever had one of those moments in life where everything you thought was real and true, if even to a certain extent, all turned out to be completely the opposite? Apparently, I live in my own little delusional hope-filled happy-go-lucky world, and I just dream things up to care for and have hope about. It seems I have been doing this for some time. It also seems that I just may have actually wised up to it. Yay me.
I hate being blindsided. I hate sudden reversals of opinion, action, or feeling only to find out they weren’t sudden at all; just sudden to me, because you know, I’m delusional. I guess it could also be that someone wasn’t straight with me when they could have been, but… I don’t know. I would really hate to blame them, they couldn’t possibly ever do anything wrong in my book. Right?
So, I will dismiss the conversations and actions as rhetoric and empty gestures. I will take my one lesson from this all and move on. Actually, more like an affirmation, of why I do not open myself up to other people.
Karma paid me a little visit today, and she did a couple of you proud. Consider any lingering sense of injustice served.
