Jon Boulier's Tumbly.

Mama,

I’m lonely mama.  Out of all them arms in the world, there ain’t a single one around me.  I been feelin’ it somethin’ fierce.  In my head, worse than the worst headache.  Been feelin’ it up around my eyes, tricklin’ down my face.  It’s everywhere, mama.  It’s been stickin’ with me and I can’t figure how to fix it.

I been goin’ around to the bar with my friends, hopin’ to run in to some beautiful girl who can treat me right.  But I ain’t gonna find nothin’ like this, mama.  I ain’t gonna meet anyone worth meeting.  Not this way.  Friends say it’s only a matter of time, but I don’t know.  I sure been meetin’ a lot of nice ladies lately, but ain’t none of them really mean anything to me.  The more I think about it, the less I feel like doin’ anything at all.  I woke up late again this mornin’.  I got myself out of bed and put some coffee on.  I opened up a new container of coffee  grounds, got my water all ready and sat there waitin’ for it to brew.  But mama, you know what I did?  I went right on back to sleep.  That coffee’s just sittin’ out on my kitchen counter, colder than the devil’s business.

Just ain’t right, mama, feelin’ like this.  I’m damn tired of it.  Damn tired of most things.  I’m damn tired of knowin’ that the only kinda woman I can fall in love with is the kind that don’t love me back.  It’s been that way since as long as I can remember.  You remember Alexandra, mama?  The one I used to talk about when I got home from school as a kid?  I showed you her picture once.  I kept that picture in my wallet sleeve until a few years ago, when I graduated college.  When I first saw her, I couldn’t help but love her.  You had to love a girl like her.  I cut out that picture from my yearbook with the blade from one of dad’s straight razors and kept it in my wallet.  And as days went by, and I never talked to her, it just made it worse.  She wouldn’t have wanted me anyway.  I kept that picture though.  I showed it to you.

What I wanna know though, really, what I really wanna know, is when you should just call it quits on women.  I wanna know when I should just up and stop.  It gets so hard to remember what love is that I been pushin’ women away.  I don’t feel it in me to go on tryin’ anymore.  I can’t give no woman what she wants.  I never could, I don’t think.  But that doesn’t stop me from bein’ so goddamn lonely.  I need one more than anything, but I don’t know where I’m gonna find one that makes me stop feelin’ so goddamn lonely.

Last night I gone out for a drink by myself.  Didn’t feel much like talkin’ to anyone, so I just took the phone off the hook, snuck out the door and started walkin’ down the street.  It was a decent night.  The bats were out, shootin’ from tree to tree.  Got to the bar, sat down, and started in on the drinks.  About three in, this little lady in a red dress cozies up on the stool next to me, saying something about the leaves, or autumn, or something like that.  Indian summers or some god awful thing.

We made a lot of small talk.  She started drinking too, touching my wrist when she laughed.  I was feelin’ so down I just came out with it, told her I was so lonely.  She put her hand on my shoulder and looked at me from both sides of her sharp little nose, and told me it was okay.  She was lonely too.  She said I’d be okay, and she looked like she was really in for it with me.  She was fallin’ in love.  I just knew she had it bad.

The drinks kept comin’, mama.  We kept on talkin’.  I kept lookin’ down at the bar.  Her name was Maxine and I told her my name, and we talked about old love.  About friends, work.  Family.  It got pretty late and it came time for last call.  I don’t know why, mama.  Anybody else woulda taken her by the hand and brought her home.  They’d take her to bed, kiss her like she wanted to be kissed, tell her how pretty she was.  But I just knocked back another beer, shook her hand, and left.

Is it gonna be like this always, mama?  Where all I want is to be loved, and when someone might manage to, it don’t make no difference to me if I up and walk away?  I’m just so lonely.  I don’t know about anything anymore.  I finally got around to this coffee, and it’ll probably keep me up for the rest of the night but it’s late, mama.  I need to try to sack out so I ain’t tired for work in the morning.  There, I can at least pretend somebody needs me.

Love,

You,

You’d have to be crazy to spend any more than a week here.  Really.  I’ve been here for what seems like an eternity, and every day since I arrived, I get up around six o’clock in the morning.  It’s not that I want to, it’s just that I haven’t any window blinds.  Just as the sun begins to nose the hills, my room is filled with bright orange light.  There’s no use trying to sleep when it happens.  Anywhere you turn your head, it doesn’t matter.  It is impossibly bright.  And it’s not like I can just go around the corner to a department store and pick up a set of curtains.

It’s not all hell.  Since I get up at six, I get a lot done during the day.  Which isn’t saying much to a person that thrives within and in coordination with all the amenities of an urban environment.  You spend the greater portion of your youth wishing you could get away from the big, busy world:  the full time jobs, the commute, the unspeakable pains of constant motion that start creeping into your spirit.  Then, you wake up in a ramshackle home you bought in the derelict outskirts of some South American village, from a Minister with not more than five teeth in his mouth, trying to figure out the best way to gut and skin a red stag, or how you’re going to start a fire without any equipment, or how you’re going to clean your clothes.  At least back home I could take something out of the refrigerator, put it on the oven, and be done with it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about you.  I know we haven’t talked in over a year and a half, but I still manage to think of you every day.  It’s usually the end result of something trivial, in a situation that, under any other circumstance, shouldn’t carry any significant meaning for me.  Otherwise, I tend to keep busy.  I have to, or I’ll end up without food or having to sleep with a family of rodents that set up shop in my bed.

The other day, I was washing my hands in a running stream, trying to get hardened mud out from beneath my fingernails.  It’s a common task that I  end up completing a few times daily.  I try to give proper burial (and a proper apology) to all of the animals I consume.  My hands get very dirty.  There was something in the way the sun caught up in the ripples of the water.  A series of plates of sunlight shone into my eyes, making me draw back and shield myself.  I don’t, in a manner of speaking, see the connection, but after that I couldn’t think of anything but you.  I just sat on my feet near the water, looking off at the horizon with my wet palms turned up at my sides.

I say it’s been a year and a half, but to be frank, I’m not sure how true that is.  I’ve lost track of time.  When I came here, I made a purposeful attempt at dislodging my attachments to the real world.  I don’t have a watch or a calendar.  I haven’t walked the few miles through fields and trees and dried riverbeds to reach the post office, where I could ask what day it was, or inadvertently know by checking my box for mail and looking at the postal markings.  It may have been two years by now.  If I’ve managed to detach myself enough, maybe it’s been twenty years and you’re married, with a litter of children, living happily with a man that I must admit, I envy greatly,  yet have profound disinterest in ever knowing the name of, let alone meeting.  He will be the one who has you, while I, alone at what I consider the edge of the world,  have merely everything else.

I have not missed my family.  I’m confident that they have forgotten about me.  If they haven’t, I pray it serves only enough to fill them with the type of sharp regret reserved for mothers whose sons have gone off to war, or adulterers facing the edges of pointed stones.  You once asked how I could go on without having spoken to a family I live so closely to, and I did not have an answer at the time.  I only said that I did indeed try.  I tried very hard to make contact to my family, to little end, other than the satisfaction of my own attempts.  Nonetheless.  Having gone without the caress of their indifference, I must say that I am a greater man for it.

There are times when I am walking alone, imagining you are alongside me.  I like to think of you as you were then and not as you may be now.  Generally, you are to my right.  You have a tan-colored bag slung around your body, the strap at rest on your right shoulder while the belly of it, with all your things, bumps around on your left hip.  When you turn to speak, or put one hand on my shoulder while the other seals the origin of your laughter, I see the silver airplane pendant pinned to the right side of your chest.  You have beautiful, short brown hair and thin eyebrows, high cheekbones and soft skin.  I look down and see your feet, angled inward, hidden in a pair of brown moccasin shoes.

I still think it amazing that I left you that night.  The impatience of friends and my consideration for their feelings is a colossal regret that pains me to this day.  I still think of when you had interrupted me, outright ordering, “just kiss me.”  Or of the minutes before, the scenic and seemingly aimless navigation through the street blocks that would lead us to our destination.  I suppose I am a naive man to not realize the purpose behind distracted behaviors.  I only saw loss of direction; the view to a kiss was incomprehensible.  It hurts me now to remember it.

All is well, despite the cancer of nostalgia.  Without it, living here could be perfect.  But with it, the sting of its presence hiding in distant smoke and shining objects that remind me of your pendants, it is difficult to consider staying here forever.  The distractions of cities may be the only hope a man like me can have for an elementary survival.  A life with no regret and infinite movement.  You would know what I mean by that.  You had a way with knowing exactly what I meant even when I said nothing.

I thought I might send this letter in hopes that you don’t even receive it.  With exception to my wildest fantasies, which, right now, are the only ones I can manage to have, I do not think that anyone, especially you, who only spent one night with someone, would ever want to hear how, despite the years and bodies in between, regrettably in love that someone still manages to be.

- Me

Teddy,

It’s mom. I’ve been waiting to hear back from you. When I first got your phone call, I was surprised. You? You joining the army? I didn’t think you had it in you. I’m still in shock and hoping it’s just a prank you’re playing.

Whatever made you do such a thing? Is this about school? It’s always school. Or getting a job. You don’t have to go to the college we picked out for you, if that’s what it takes. We only want you to go there because trying to make movies doesn’t seem like something that will really work out for you in the long run. You’re not going to make much money, sweetie, and we want the best for you. To be honest, joining up with the other crazies and shedding blood, not to mention that beautiful hair of yours, for reasons the newspaper can’t even seem to get right - that just doesn’t seem like the fanciest idea to us either.

Your Father went over next door and started talking to that Mr. Hannigan. Mr. Hannigan says that he has a job for you the next time you come down to Florida. He has a couple gardens that need maintaining. And a shed that just about fell down. If you can find the time, we’d like you to help out with that. If you think you can, and you do a good job, Mr. Hannigan can get you a real job working at his factory. I hear he pays good money! You’ll be making more than you’re making now, at that record store.

Don’t you want to make a lot of money, sweetie? Just think: one day, you’ll have a family and a big house on top of the hill in the middle of town. If you work long and hard enough, you will save enough money to get all the things you want. You can buy a big television set, one of those thin ones that you can set up right on the wall without any television stand. You know, the kind that look like they could be a painting or something? When your neighbors come over, they’ll look at it and say: now that’s art. Ha! Think about that one.

There are plenty of other things you can do besides the army, sweetie.   I can’t bear the thought of you going over there and risking your life for G— knows what. Your father spent enough time in Vietnam to know that fighting for your country gets you about as far as a shovel can dig.

I won’t say I’m afraid for you. I would never say that - you’re my little man. But you have heard about those spiders though, haven’t you? Those camel spiders? They’re supposed to be as big as your head, with teeth as big as your fathers. (Lord, help them, ha ha!) I know you’re afraid of spiders, hon. Imagine waking up in a tent with one of those! I couldn’t begin.  

Sweetie, just do me a favor and give us a call when you get the chance, could you? I know you’re thinking about us, but it’s nice to hear from your son once in awhile.  We just hope to heaven that you haven’t gone and signed any papers yet.

Lord take us both if you did.

Love you,
Mom and Dad.

My Interpretation of MySpace’s Dana Carvey touch-up job, vs. my more professionally retouched photo of Dana Carvey.

This is the myspace version.

This is my version.

Any thoughts on which one looks more ridiculous?  I’m going to say:  not mine.

Myriad
Self-Titled EP

Not to be confused the multitude of other guitar smashing, liquor-swilling independents, Long Island frust-rock pioneers Myriad are best remembered by the placement of their band members at the end of their performances – in varying locations, prone, and likely bleeding.

Myriad’s untitled seminal release proves that trying to entice listeners into buying their album is not as important as grabbing their shirt collars and giving them the message directly.

With that in mind, two things can be said when comparing Myriad’s live performance with their recording:

Don’t ask how their day went, and Watch your head.