ghosthound

So, I accomplished fuck-all on my vacation.

I mean, I did STUFF. I went to two jam sessions, one of which had over eight musicians in it and still managed to sound good, I watched movies and all of Black Books (hilarious) and a season of the X-files (which I never got to properly see), I read, I went to a party and spent time with friends and I drank what seems to me to be all the booze.

I just didn't get anything really accomplished. Maybe that's for the best. For the first two days of my vacation I was just plain exhausted. Slept too much, ate too much, vegged out. I still managed to practice and to write some poetry and basic prose exercises but the prospect of doing anything else was laughable at best.

Drunk me is like me but farther away. I have to reach just a bit to get to the me inside. The world seems to be muted and pushed back. I am warmly happy with odd pangs of melancholy contemplation. Those pangs hurt me like shards of glass shoved right in my heart for how sudden they are.

I'm at a Halloween party. I'm laughing and having an utterly grand time. Someone made some buffalo chicken dip that would be barely a cause for a raised eyebrow if I was sober but, drunk, it is the most delightful food ever. I'm in the midst of laughing when I turn and see a couple sitting on the couch. Molly and Jordan, I think their names are, are sitting right next to each other and it's obvious that they've never been farther apart.

He looks away from her, far drunker than she is, and her face is screwed up in a look of frustration and emotional hurt. Maybe he drank more than he said he would. Maybe he lied to her. Maybe she is just too damn much for him and he spoke his mind, told the jagged truth. Seeing this makes me sad. It makes me want to go over there and--- what? Do something? I don't rightly know. Drinking is strange, don't you find?

One thing about it that profoundly annoys me is people who think that because they can drink more than other people, they're better, somehow. I mean, this is coming from someone who is freely admitting he's a lightweight but boasting that you can poison yourself longer than me before you call it quits and get sick for hours just doesn't impress me. I'm happy being a cheap date, thanks.

OH! My father gave me a new guitar. He'd owned it for a while and never played it. It's a Gibson Les Paul Jr. He just waltzed up to me, plopped a guitar case down and said I could get more use out of it than he does, obviously. It looks like this:




It's not my usual style. It's very vintage and the single p-90 pickup in the bridge is a blues/country machine. Not to say I dislike either of those styles. I'm one of those musicians who actually means it when he says he listens to some of everything. From Metal to Country to Folk music to classical to Blues, I love it all. I'm going to make good use of this new addition to my guitar family. I've already managed to tune out some meanness on it that I kind of like. It's great for playing slide, at which I'm still a novice.

In other news, my to-read stack of now 23 books is in a constant battle with all the books I want to buy but don't have. If I buy them, do I read them now and ignore the stack or do I put them in the back of the rotation and do as I promised I would? Tough fucking choices, man. Let me tell you.

In the event that anybody cares, my other guitars look like this:









Neat, huh? Forgive the pictures harvested directly from Google images. I'm too lazy to actually take them out and line them up right now. I will if anybody out there actually wants me to, though.