I am more than ready to be done using Greyhound as a means of travel. I am tired of uncomfortable seats, of lines, of rushing at the terminal, of waiting. Of waiting. And of waiting for the bus to show up at either end. ‘Soon,’ he says, ‘soon.’ Any case, tomorrow I hop on yet another and wait to get where I’m headed. Beyoncé will be keeping me company. I’ll be gone for a few days. ![[WS]](/blog/media/end.gif)
The title of this post is not entirely fair. It’s exactly half-fair, in fact. I gave the new effort by Mr. Timberlake a listen this evening. As Colby pointed out, six of the 12 tracks are worth actually listening to. We differ slightly in our opinion of which tracks, but basically he says it comes down to “Did Timbaland produce this track?” and if the answer is yes, then it’s a go. Save two tracks, I agree. I still love that voice, but some of these tracks seem half-assed, and on the whole, FutureSex/LoveSounds seems like an album designed to appeal to several different audiences, a tactic that rarely works well. Furthermore, why no Pharrell Neptunes? Were they just unaffordable this time around, or what?
I use Firefox for all my web browsing, and if you’re on a PC as well I suggest you do the same. If you can’t, or don’t want to, that is, of course, your prerogative. I haven’t taken the time to make sure this page displays correctly in Internet Explorer, but I know that it does not. Eventually, this will be fixed. Until then, my apologies.
I posit that short posts garner more commentary than long posts. Why? On the rare occasion they are read, the reader is so overwhelmed by the vast amount of content to remark upon that they refuse to undertake the task of making what they consider to be a response of adequate length and depth. In my head this is how it works, but I could always be wrong.
So here it is, nearly three weeks in southern Maine. What exactly have I been up to? Cooking, cleaning, dishes, laundry. Computer, TV, beatmania, books. Not smoking, running, eating. Job hunting. Avoiding filing. It’s a lot like being in Troy, except for the whole healthy aspect, and the house isn’t filthy, and I don’t really see people here. In fact, I don’t really leave the house except to run or to buy groceries. The most frustrating aspect of living here is not being able to go places under my own power easily. I was once easily able to walk where I needed to go; if it was too far to walk, there was an adequate, if not thrillingly reliable, bus system. Here, there’s no bus. If I want to walk someplace, I’ll need to allocate many hours and pack a lunch. So I hang out in my bedroom. It’s not terrible, but I really need a job. The purpose of the job is, of course, twofold:
Once I have the stacks, I can get a car. Once I have a car, I can go new places and make friends and maybe get a drink now and again. I’d also really love to be able to visit my many friends all over the land (people in Troy and Providence and Boston this means you). This all is not to say, however, that I’ve been completely alone. My mother, of course, has been here; although I can hardly count her a peer, we make a decent pair of roommates, and company is company. I’ve also had a few visitors, two old friends, one from long ago and one from not so long ago. Amanda came up for a chat last Saturday night and gave me the complete dish about her life and the lives of our high school classmates. I was supposed to join her for drinks this evening in Portsmouth at Poco Diablo but since I’m feeling under the weather I thought it best to stay home. Paul and I went up to Wolfeboro, NH, to try to see a turn-of-the-century dentistry exhibition. The museum was closed, and we were bummed, but it was nice to take the Saab for a ride with the top down nonetheless. We stopped at a sweet shop and I made small talk with the woman at the counter, who had a hard time believing that my license belonged to me (she IDed me because my credit card asks you to do so, though the cookies were good enough to be illegal for minors).
I’ve been listening to a lot of the old standbys, comfort music to help ease the pain of loss. I speak about it now like someone’s died, and that’s not strictly true, but I certainly feel like part of me is gone, left behind in the last known location of my youth. I keep experiencing these momentary flashes of emotion listening to these songs, the good kind where your body rushes and you smile because something’s brought a pleasant memory back to the surface. I miss my friends quite a bit, and not just the ones I recently moved away from. My west coast crew, Boston heads, Rose, all those people I haven’t seen much of in the last few years, I still miss them fiercely. Such, I suppose is the nature of relationships, though. We’re all on our paths, doing our little dances. That said, I have no desire to continue on this rambling and sentimental thought-track. At least you’re caught up, now. I’ll do my best to stay current.