Cous I'm Breathing

"I just want someone to say to me, (oh oh oh oh)
I'll always be there when you wake
You know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today
So stay with me and I'll have it made" 

–"No Rain", Blind Melon 

“your love makes a fool of you,
you can’t seem to understand,
 a heart doesn’t play by rules
and love has it’s own demands” 

TV On The Radio, Will Do 

"I wanna hurry home to you
put on a slow, dumb show for you
and crack you up
so you can put a blue ribbon on my brain
god I'm very, very frightening
I'll overdo it" 

The National, "Slow Show" 

“Sometimes just talking ain’t enough…we can’t just stand here with our thumbs up our ass and get screwed over.” -Speaker at the Rally for Public Education 

The thumbs came out of the collective ass only ten minutes after the speaker finished. A fellow named Cameron spoke from a written statement on a piece of lined paper. As the paper shook from his nervous hands, the atmosphere in front of the Humanities building at CSUF became electric. He said he was disheartened, was tired of these events not bearing any fruit. Then, with a smile on his face and a tone of severity, he told the crowd that today was going to be different. 

“Let’s march to Gordon’s office peacefully!” “Who is with me!?” 

About 50 students and faculty members were with him. The march began. First to Langsdorf Hall, then up several flights of stairs. Following closely behind, tingling from the electricity, I couldn’t help change my opinion on the day’s event immediately. 

What was previously a case study in apathy, a small turnout at another campus rally, became something more. It became a body of people committed to making something legitimate happen, to changing the public college machine. A machine that treats students as numbers and teachers as easily replaceable. They were marching to throw a wrench into one of the cogs of the machine - CSUF President Milton Gordon.

But he wasn’t at his office. The march became a sit-in, and for a half an hour they sat. Faculty members taught students about the history of the budget crisis in the CSU system. The power, the electricity, kept increasing, kept building and building. Then Gordon arrived. It was about to happen. No one knew what exactly, but something was going to happen.

He invited everyone to his conference room on the 9th floor to have a talk. But it wasn’t so much a talk as it was an exercise in beating around the bush. 

Gordon refused to sign a declaration to defend public education. It was understandable. Being greeted by 50 people sitting in the hall of your office, you have to hear what they want to say to prevent an even bigger scene. But Gordon in no way had to even acknowledge what they wanted.

Instead, he sat at the head of the conference table, sucking on Halls cough drops, looking disheveled and irritated at the sheer desperation and desperation of those who gathered.

They simply said they wanted Gordon as an ally. Wanted him to be more publicly supportive of the students and faculty on campus. Wanted him to be more of a presence on campus.  

“NO!” Over and over and over again. After pleas from single mothers, from distraught teachers, from irate students. “NO!”

He wouldn’t sign. He didn’t have the time to look it over and give a response that day. Something about filming a message to the students and flying to Chicago the next morning.  

“That letter is more important than anything you have to do!” one student said. 

The people gathered were not having it. They wouldn’t let him leave until they got something, anything at all, to show them that this day was different. That something came from it. 

Finally, after tears and anger and raised voices. Finally, after Gordon beating around the bush and refusing to even set a date to meet with the student and faculty leaders. Finally, he blurted out Monday at 1. 

Applause. Relief. All was not in vain. 

He quickly exited the room to go film some message that the students gathered would more then likely never watch. 

“Take Care,” Gordon said. 

1 o’clock Monday morning may as well be high noon. There is already talk of the measures that will be taken if Gordon doesn’t sign. Your’s truly will be in attendance, covering the spectacle in all its glory. Prepare yourselves. Round 2 is coming. Adios. 

“Stay hydrated from a double shot,
get my nourishment from a punch in the gut,
never really felt i had the best o’ luck,
i got a big big mouth it just a won’t shut up.”

-Middle Brother, “Middle Brother” 

I was standing in the same spot as them just last week. Out of my mind, but in a good way if that is at all possible. Swaying to the music of Micah Brown and Seedless while an angel stood next to me - drink in her hand, occasionally swaying. Micah didn’t play the cover last week though. The cover of Bob Marley’s “Is This Love?” that always seems to remind me of love. That gives me hope, makes me believe one day I will find the one true love Bob sang about. 

I say Bob as though I knew him personally. Maybe I did. Maybe his lyrical vulnerability and altered state let me into his life in a personal way. 

“Is this love, is this love, is this love, that I’m feelin’?” 

I stood in a corner, watching Micah effortlessly strumming his guitar, trying not to watch them sway. Trying not to remember that only a week ago, that was me. 

It’s funny what a week can do. How you can go from being Han Solo, never even thinking about the odds, to some down-trodden sap who lost his home on a fools bet. Things don’t work out like they do in your dreams. In those dreams I gave her a halo, made her an angel, but once reality set in the halo didn’t shine. 

My only companions were a bottle of Primo and a pack of American Spirits. It’s alright though. I have grown to accept the heartbreak. Grown to accept, even invite, the feeling of being lost when I should have it all together. 

“You just need to detach yourself from all emotion,” Jonathan Gibby told me.

I nodded, while I thought that it would be about as easy for me to eliminate emotion in my life as it would be for me to grab his camera and start taking amazing photos.

Yes, it was a regular guys night out at the Tiki Bar in Costa Mesa. If it weren’t for my overactive brain, I would say it was just the distraction I needed from all the confusion running rampant in my life like some sort of cracked-out mind troll on a mission of destruction.

Micah seemed to be aware of this, seemed to know his lyrics could turn the tide. “Down Like Hail”, “Frustratin’ Woman” and finally we went fishing. I even got a shout out from the prophet of cool himself. Sadly, I was outside at the time, but I still sang the chorus loudly.

“I’m goin’ fishin’, I won’t be missin’, none of your bitchin’.”
 

As my lungs grew sore from singing the lyrics, I thought those words should be my creed.

No, she wasn’t constantly bitching. No, there is no way I could ever not miss those feelings.  

But my brain, my thoughts, those can be quite the bitch. This night would be different. As I drained the bottle of Primo I told my brain I was going fishing - to get away from the constant nagging, from the thoughts of things I can’t change or even begin to explain, let alone understand. 

After what seemed to be an Incubus cover band payed a quick set, Seedless took the stage. 

“I think these guys might smoke a little weed,” Gibby said as the band began their first song of the night. 

Juan Rios, a magician on the keyboard, seemed to set the tone for the entire set. Pecking away at the keys, using an organ-esque effect, weed sucker in his mouth - the sound was taking me to a better place. I didn’t even mind being that guy, the guy who dances alone without anything resembling rhythm, while Gibby rushed through the crowd snapping photo’s.

Things began to take a turn about two songs into the set.

“Where did you go-oh-oh?”

The booming vocals of “Two Weeks” hit me in the chest. I stopped swaying with the music, stopped scanning the crowd, just listened. Luckily while I was waiting for her ghost to appear Micah grabbed me to join him and several others outside of the bar.

“We have only had a couple conversations,” guitarist Blake Kennedy said while the sound of the bass boomed from inside. “But they were always hilarious.” 

Knowing that me being anywhere near hilarious usually involves an altered state, I pressed him to elaborate on these conversations my memory had misplaced.

Apparently two of them took place on the 4th of July - where yours truly proceeded to scream ” ‘merica!” repeatedly on the deck of a yacht in Dana Point harbor for the entirety of the firework display and the next year spending hours on the roof of Micah’s residence trying to convince Kennedy to name his band Mexican Shepard.

My argument centered around how much I would brag about listening to a band called Mexican Shepard. Who wouldn’t brag about that though?

I stumbled in from the parking lot to listen to some more tunes. Well that was the intent anyways. Walking into the bar I saw Gibby slouching on a chair. It was time to end the night. 

On the drive home, while I was being pestered by Gibby about my lack of skills in the driving department and waxing philosophical about life and Arcade Fire it all dawned on me. Kerouac was right, oh shit how cliche am I about to be right now? Real cliche.

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” 

She was a falling star and I chased after her with everything I had. I was hung-up, confused and did not have a clue. Which left me grasping for air and clinging on the simplest thoughts. Then I dropped.  

But there will be more nights, there will be more falling stars. And yes, there will be more confusion. That’s life.

I will never be able to detach myself from emotion. It just isn’t me. But as I drove with the night sky above me and endless miles of highway in front of me… I smiled.  

Photos Courtesy of Jonathan Gibby

Cows Through a Window

Getting the Story…Hotel Eye Surgery. For the full story see: Eye Surgery Performed in Hotel Lobby