He walks out the door and starts off to work, upset. He is, and I am, and it's everything. All the little frustrations that build up, lately, mostly scheduling and time, but not without the influence of money and sex. Some little complication earlier had let us to be cast aside from each other, laying on the bed, stewing in the terrible irreconcilability of our problems, until my mind had sped in frustrated circles too long, and I got up and walked from the room, saying "I can't do this anymore" and not looking back.

I think, maybe, the trick of marriage lies not in the solving of the problems, but the willingness to overcome by sheer gumption, and attitude, and changed pespective. And a myriad of other things that I do not have.

It doesn't help much when we formulate a feeble plan, largely because we know that the formulation of it was just a distraction in the first place. Something so that we feel more resolved. There is a break in the tension, and then something sets it all off again, and by the time he has to go, we've both grown up to the extent that we must face once more that ever-present principle of "you can't always get what you want." But not much further than that.


In terms of what I want out of myself, what I'd like to get along the way, I think, from my mother, dependability and, from my father, his sense of responsibility-- or one that's vaguely like it, but not as unfaultering. The older I get, the more I realize that it was his feelings of duty and obligation to his family that probably did the most damage to his life, taking him away from the dream of music as a full-time career. Then again, maybe it did him good. Who knows where he'd be as a musician right now? And perhaps I have inherited some what he has in that department. I am, after all, working my way towards securing a career that I can count on, while writing waits patiently on the back burner. My father has acted as an excellent role model when it comes to embracing one's passions without being starved by them-- all these years, he would work his obligatory forty hours, and come home to his guitar with whatever energy he had left. Now, though, he is paying for failing to really impart those kinds of lessons on both of his daughters, and because of this he has continued to support both of us, to some degree, into our adulthood. This is unfortunate, because what he wants, now, is to spend the rest of his years doing what he loves, however many he has left. As far as I'm concerned, it's his time.

That's why I built him the site, and that is why I'm working towards what I am. If I take my turn to be a starving artist right now, he'll never get his. I hope my sister eventually catches on to this same theme; the rumor is that she is, now that she as well has enrolled at Andover. All I can say is that she better be, because I won't have the patience for another mistake. My parents still grudgingly have the market on that.


On with it.

Driving home from school this afternoon, I stop at my parent's house because my dad needs some help maintaining the website I built him for his birthday, IDoTunes.com. Driving up to my house, I see him in full-on early fall ritual, playing music on our front porch like it's his own personal Carnegie Hall. South Street's own Stephen H. He does it all throughout the summer but moreso, I think, when his oppurtunities are about to run out. Occasionally, a few passerby's will gather on the front lawn to watch him, or the creepy kid from up the street will come to play harmonica in accompaniment.

As I walk from the car to the house I'm overcome by the exhaustion of working late nights and schooling early mornings, so instead of walking up the steps I crawl, and stop halfway, settling their in the sun laying across three steps. My father is singing Lionel Richie's Hello, except I don't know the name of it, and it is warm outside and the leaves are just starting to tint, and I'm not sure whether the performer has even noticed his audience, but I lay there and listen, and in the moment I am writing this in my head, which is a feeling of tremendous relief.

I've had writer's block for the past month and a half, and it has been an empty feeling.

I might be able to write more than this now, but I don't want to chance that I will get frustrated and abandon the whole thing, aside from which there are things to do. Somewhere amongst the clutter, there is a card I received in the mail. On the front, it is decorated with a collage of all things perfectly autumn, with the exception of my father on the porch. Inside, there is a statement from my credit card company saying that they want me to enjoy my fall without the stress of adding further damage to my credit report. As far as I'm concerned, I haven't done as badly at they're making it out, a few late payments, maybe one or two missed. Still, they've kicked my interest rates into the freaking-impossible-to-ever-pay back numbers, so it's time I overcame my pride and called, to see what they can work out for me. Because this is adulthood, this is responsibility; this is what people in the fall of their lives do.

Just figures that when I finally sit down to get it out of they, I can't find the damn thing. I guess, like today, there's some summer in me yet.

On with it.