I keep paper journals and have for the last several years. I don't often pull them up to reference them, but sometimes I do.

I have a certain one that says "red" on the cover, that a high school english teacher gave to me when I graduated. I wrote in in towards the end of my freshman year of college, when everything was so hopeful and beautiful and new.

I read this passage I wrote when I moved into my first apartment, about how I had found time and adventure and how everything seemed so real and I had thrown out the TV, never got a phone, or the internet, or anything and how I just found so much to do. The whole journal (in between boyfriend rants, of course) is just so fantastically hopeful that I started crying.

Its so melodramatic but here, maybe one of the milwaukee people will recognize these places: It rains outside now, spring showers, but I steal flowers off the library trees and the gardens along prospect find themselves missing a tulip or two. I want to talk about the merengue houses and the strawberry mint walls inside. I want to describe Villa terrace and its impressive rooms of faux marble and rooms that are sealed off to the public. I want to describe milwaukee when it is sunny and humid, how the resteraunt on my block spill out into the street, and the wind steals the cloth napkins till it looks like E. Ivanhoe had a quilting bee....I want to tell you about the fence you can climb to get into the tangled rundown backyard of another pabst childs mansion. The marble benches and stairways over grown but sill there. In the summer the old flower beds push out recreating the lake line and the boarders of the cracked stone walks where croquette was played and tea was had...."

and of course it goes on and on and on and on but It just made me cry.

I wish I still felt like that.

Driving through St. Louis on the way back from the family reunion today, I heard Aaron Neville singing "Louisiana 1927." Hardest I've cried since Ali lit the Olympic torch.

You wanna know what makes me cry and I'm incredibly ashamed of? That fucking show where they rebuild someone's house!!

I cannot stand watching it as I feel so incredibly manipulated (emotionally, no less!!) by their sappy music, edits, etc.

My lady is an architect and marvels at the speed at which they can put the houses together. I, however, marvel at the fact that my emotions can be pulled with the tiniest tug of the tele-leash. Like a goddamn baby, I am!!

Extreme makeover: Home Edition. Dude, i cry at that show EVERY TIME.

It is amazing how they do it... make you cry, I mean. It never fails.

I have only seen it when I go home to visit, as apparently my sister and mother love to cry at the TV.

My aunt died unexpectedly this morning. That made me cry.

I will now have to attend my 12th funeral in 5 years.

Fuck.

Bradley R. Weissenberger wrote:Tim, did you know that this "Crying" Rosey Grier, he was the "bodyguard" for Roberts Kennedy when to assassinate him? This is true.

Mr. Grier (cousin of Pam! How marvelous!) was also the bodyguard/doorman for the Jackson 5's TV special, which I did not see and cannot recall the name of but which I have heard the live album from. Bill Cosby also does a running bit as reporter Lance Newsworthy. If you think those J5 songs smoke anyway, you oughta hear 'em live.

And while we're on the subject of very large ex-football players weeping readily, here's one of the lyrics from my as-yet-unreleased record:


I cry easy when I'm sittin' in the cinema
I cry hard when things don't last
And I cry softly driving through the darkness all alone
When some old song on the radio come a-creepin' from my past

Now I only saw my father cry once in my whole life
It wasn't at a funeral or when he lost his wife
It was on that day a pick-up came and killed poor Peppy dead
And I carried her home and fell asleep all bloody in my bed

And I cry easy when I'm sittin' in the cinema
I cry hard when things don't last
And I cry softly driving through the darkness all alone
When some old song on the radio come a-creepin' from my past

There's a poet says his favorite place on earth is Italy
'Cause it's the only country where men weep openly
Well, I ain't never been there, but I'll go before I die
And I'll walk through that piazza watchin' people watch me cry

'Cause I cry easy when I'm sittin' in the cinema
I cry hard when things don't last
And I cry softly driving through the darkness all alone
When some old song on the radio come a-creepin' from my past

Yeah, those old songs on the radio come a-creepin' from my past

less than a week ago.. hadn't seen my girlfriend in like, 3 weeks, hadn't talked to her in two, she wasn't accepting my calls or calling me back.


it kindof drove me mad.

she left for france this morning. she is going to school there for the year. i go back up to santa cruz on saturday (been home in LA all summer), but i missed out on the last three weeks of summer with her. it's wasn't as serious as some relationships, but it was serious for us, and it fucking hurt.

cried myself to sleep two or three nights in a row over that shit before i started sending her ridiculous text messages that finally provoked her to speak to me.


ah fucking juvenile "love" (lust).

i need to get back to that "college" bullshit.

Tonight! The first time in years. Years and years and years. I forgot about those hot cheeks! The weird taste in your mouth. The niceness of 'letting go'. Weird when your brain is all clued up but somewhere in your ribcage is full of weeps.

My Mama has cancer, but it's cool. Without deluding myself, everything points to her being okay, I'm pretty sure she'll be in rude health come the new year after a routine op but we blubbed and blubbed.

It's shaken the old puffins up a bit, she's already full of fighting talk and plans for when she's better.

It is in fact crap that sometimes it takes something like this to tell each other how much you love each other.

Give your mom a big, loving bearhug from all at the EA forum. I'm sure you've told her all about us.

Good luck to you both.