I’ll find us a way to make light

Seeing Pearl Jam kill it at Outside Lands made my life me miss Seattle. And yeah, maybe seeing live a band that was in my home since I was a little girl made my life just a tad. It was awesome, one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen. I digress.

I also saw the Silversun Pickups, whose albums were on repeat the summer of 07. Made me want to go see the guys I toured with and one who didn’t. Oliver in San Diego, Bear in New Mexico, Brad in El Paso, Owen in Petaluma. I thought about them all while the Silversun Pickups were playing.

I think I may also want to return to Nashville to see some music, and to the NYC area and New England to see some old friends. My cousins in Chicago, my cousin in Wisconsin, and after december, I wont have school again untill late september. Fuck hotels and regular eating habits, I’m thinking about it.

Free Write Can Has Cheeseburger?

Today I was to free write for 10 minutes about this image:

I didn’t mean for it to go this far, I swear. It started as a simple way to get protein. Then burgers started becoming a daily habit for me and next thing I knew, a patty between two slices of bun just wasn’t enough to cure the fix anymore. I started taking creative liberties with what it came with. It wasn’t until my last year at a prestigious art college that the subject of my addiction was brought to my (and everyone elses) attention. For my last art show, I created an art piece that I saw as a dedication to my first love, my friends and family saw it as the last straw. Three days after graduation my parents sent me to the middle of nowhere, a place where people with my kind of “problem” go…

C’mon baby, we ain’t gonna live forever, I’m not the same kid from your fucked up memory.

When thinking about what I was going to post here I wasn’t really sure where to start, and then decided to start at the beginning, so hold tight, I’m about to get long-winded, and I’m tired, it may not make a lot of sence right now.

In 2003, my Girl Scout troop went to Windsor, England for an international scouting event (boy scouts and girl scouts from all over the world), each one of us needed that trip in each her own way. So much so, that in 2009, at the age of 23 and returning as a leader, I was worried how I’d need it now. I didn’t need it in the same way, no one was dieing of cancer, there was no budding alcohol problem, and I’m not the angsty, mad at the world girl I was. It turns out I just needed to get away for awhile. Go on vacation and see my good friends from England, be with some good friends from America, go to WINGS, sight see around Oxford, Windsor and London for a week and have this really amazing experience. I made a few good friends from all over the world and met a lot of good people and got to know the girls in my troop better. I wanted to stay, it was all so good. Even when it was bad, it was so good.

I had a few days before school started, where I was able to patch things up with Justin and see some of my friends and enjoy the last days of my summer. And on that Monday, when the first day of school sent my head spinning I got promoted on the school newspaper to Arts and Entertainment Editor. I’m so stoked, but I’m so stressed. And then there is the next physics class I have to take, and the next stats class, and creative writing (more of that is crawling out from under the bed later), and editorial management. I’m exhausted just by school alone.

And then there is my social life.

The Matches, a band I listened to religiously as a teenager played their last show Sunday and it feels weird. It is seriously the end of an era and I feel so so so so strange about it. There was a picnic in Berkeley last Friday for all the people who went from confused teens to confused 20-somethings together at Matches shows, for the last time as it relates to The Matches directly, and it is strange. On Saturday I saw some old co-workers at a place we all used to hang out at when we worked together. I missed them, they’re all good people and we don’t see each other enough. I missed them.

and then there was Thursday. I’ve been going to these once a month ape shit crazy poetry readings in Oakland with some people I know through readings and other related events, and got pressured into doing a poem again this month. At the after party I saw a couple old faces. Two guys I knew in High School. When it came to High School social steryotypes, we were at opposite ends of the spectrum, the three of us. and once, our jr. year in high school, one of us got in trouble for doing too much of something we were all guilty of doing. He got suspended, did community service, and had to go to meetings for a long while. We didnt see eachother much after that, and the three of us really couldn’t look eachother in the face. Untill last Thanksgiving break anyway. When we all found eachother in the same room at a party. Casual ‘Hey how are you?”s sort of turned into a relieveing of 5 years of grievences, and was settled about an hour and a half later in the middle of a soccer field two blocks away. We kind of came around, hung out a couple of times and then went back to our respective cities at the end of the Thanksgiving break. We saw eachother again at Christmas break a couple of times, we were finally starting to come around and then didn’t really see eachother. We would get texts every now and then with the typical “Hey whats goin on?” stuff but never really hung out, untill thursday, when I heard a familiar voice say my name. and there they were, smiling right in front of me, staring right back at me in the face. And I was more then happy to finally see them again.

Left it all behind, and never said goodbye

I should know by now that not all growing pains are physical.

On the way home I thought about how many times I had seen them live. How many times, over nine years I saw them play alone. Not including the times we saw them outside of that scene, just as people. A vacant couch, a roof for the evening, the good times we had. and really, we spent the last two years waiting for this to be over officially. Two years untill we could look this in the face and accept it, and say to ourselves and  that we’ve had enough. We all had just become so different that we didn’t have anything in common anymore, we didn’t see eye to eye on well…anything. And there we were, drunk in the front of some empty warehouse, staring the reality right in the face. It was a fun night, a great party, and when it was done, well, I used to miss that place, and that night I was sort of happy to see it go.

I’m bummed today.

Kind of like the way you feel when you identify with something for so long you forget who you are without it, and when it’s gone all of a sudden, there you are with that feeling something is missing. For some reason I feel alittle empty, or maybe alittle exposed, I don’t know if I’ve forgotten the difference or it’s something else entirely. And this must sound so much like we forced it, like we just one day woke up and decided it was over, but it isnt like that. It was at the point where we were just tip toeing around what was there, the stain on the carpet, trying so hard to keep this facade that wasn’t there anymore. We were all done pretending, behaving how everyone else assumed we should act. We pretended like nothing was different and that everything was as it had always been. Like it was what people expected. It wasn’t. It was mostly hollow. And also, I was never really that girl, the ones that they always hung around with. I was always just doing my own thing, and for awhile, that was enough.

Maybe I’ll see them again, and in passing we’ll smile, maybe even wave in acknowledgement that we were like family once, and that will be it.

Maybe we just need time to figure ourselves out. Be on our own for awhile before we can ever be friends, or anything again.

Maybe I just don’t want to know.

To kiss similies so deeply the metaphors get jealous.

• Its been a rough week. Not one big bad thing happened, just a bunch of little aggrovating things, for the past four days. (Its thursday night, I’m not sure WordPress is going to translate that when I post this.)
• I miss him a lot right now, and there have been all these things that happened tonight that made me think of him.
• I need a hug.
• I’m about to go do what I’ve needed to do for the past few days. I’m going to get some sleep, and feel better tomorrow.

The Taste of Ink is Getting Old

Some things are ment only for the people who were there, just for us. That’s fine, I’m really alright with that.

One of the cooks and I closed the restaurant alone last night, and I was putting the chairs up by the window and this girl walked by who looked so much like Vic that I stopped in my tracks for a second. Victoria and I worked at the movie theater in Petaluma togther, and only really sterted to get to know eachother towards the end there, a few months before I moved. She was neat. And I got to thinkin about all of them. Most of the people who I worked with at the theater, we all moved on and are doing our own thing. And there are always two things that we’ll always have in commin, the theater and Owen. When I’m in New York and Steph is workin with kids and Claire is off doing her thing andLiz in Arizona and all of us are in all these different places, there will always be that time in our lives that we had togther to look at in retrospect.  But I guess thats how it works with everyone you meet. There will always be that one party, show, phase of your life, that you all had togther.

I dunno. I’m taking really intense summer classes and working and I haven’t gotten to sleep much lately. I’m not sure how well I’m comming across anymore.

You’re moments ago, but seconds away.

Tennessee was lovely. Well, more amazing then I was anticipating. There was a lot of history there, we (the fam) went to some house that was some well off familys house that was used as a hospital for the confederates during the civil war (Battle of Franklin, to be exact). [That sentence was worded weird, sorry] The blood stains were still on the floor. It made it all very real. There was also a large cemetery there where the bodies of the soldiers were buried. It was really cool, in a weird way. Made it even more real. More real than any of my textbooks in High School or College made it.

There was a lot of merriment and drinking and getting to know my fathers side of the family. They’re wonderful and funny. The wedding was, haha well, the wedding was beautiful, and boring. But it was good to see everyone so happy, and the after party was fun. I really enjoyed the whole experience.

Oh, and there was a retired Elvis impersonator. His name is Tony. And he is awesome.

And well, I will forever love Washington DC. I wouldn’t know how to start. The history! The Monuments! The Majesty! hahaha

If I am the sum of all my friends, then all my friends are the sum of me

“Cailie Skelton thinks its wasteful to pour out booze for dead friends. This next drink is for my fallen homies.” ~Me on facebook.

I’m watching the sun rise from a roof in the avenues on the other side of sleep. I’m pretty sure I can see the ocean from here (almost, it’s still alittle dark) and i can hear the early morning moan of the N on the street. The end of the line. The west end of the United States. It’s 5:45 in the morning.

By all accounts it was an epic evening of drunken folly. and when things got alittle dicey, other friends offered gifts of other options. I wish I had the words.

[EDIT: I kept loseing intrest in finishing whats in my composition book or getting distracted. It's okay. It can live just there for awhile. The rest of this was written 6/15/2009]

I sort of wanted to pull a no call/no show on my recreational life the night of Owens birthday, but that wouldnt have benefitted anyone. I’m glad I went out, Im glad I was given another oppertunity to enjoy the company of friends, new and less new and be always reminded how amazing they all are.

I think about you all the time.

What a fucking crazy two years, just….ugh. I dunno. I just, its a thing I have no realy control over, and yet it hurts and I cant change it and he still isnt here. The BFG isnt here. I’m going to be thinking about him a lot on this trip.

Im leaving for Tennessee in a few days because my cousin is getting married. A wedding. Six memorial/funeral services in the past four years and not one wedding in the past 23 years.  Shitty.

Other then that, things have been really good lately. (Well, Ive realized my luck about having shitty jobs, ya know? But thats just how Cailie Luck works sometimes.) I finished finals and since have just been having a lot of fun with my friends. We’ve been going places in the city that Ive never been to before or doing things we dont get to do often. I’ve also met a lot of new really cool people on these escapades. It’s been fun.

Im taking Physics this semester, and honestly, Im not that intimidated. Im going into it optimistically. I’ll do my best and be fine. I also decided that Im really going to work on my writing project and illistrating it. I’ve been arting, reading and writing a lot lately, and it feels great to be doing all of that. Espically when I dont have to feel guilty about it because of school work looming over my head.

I’ve been bike riding a lot and working out and that feels great. and I’ve been sleeping! Huzzah!

Im putting this here for a few days because it is an easier link to give to the people I want to see it.
Hope everyone out there is doing well!