FairportStreamOfConsiousness

Fairport Stream Of Consiousness

This is an almost mostly true story, that would have conserned the HarmlessFreeRadicals

One Friday Morning I woke up in Fairport, Washington

I am a ping pong ball
On a mousetrap
Waiting to fly
An excited electron
Ready to let loose my light
A potential human being
On a crouded Thursday night
With no one to ask
Why

There is a play called "Gringo, Gringo, Gringo"
That was inspired by the works of one Spalding Gray
Among many other
Influences.
Glen Herggenheim wrote, produced and performed it
I watched it
And that's how I learned that one of our mutual role models may have committed suicide
By walking off a Ferry Boat somewhere and not resurfacing, yet.
I'm not clear on this matter, and have not yet managed to substantiate this
But I'm faced with a question.

What do you do when you learn
While watching a very profound, poignant, and absolutely hilarious one man play
That something you've always planned on doing
- No, planned is the wrong word - Dreamed, schemed, breathed, lived, yearned to do right and well
Something that you've been making to be part of your soul
Has been acheived perfectly by someone else?
Someone you may have inadvertantly antagonized eight months ago?

I have this bad habit of speaking in hyperbole.

I've always wanted to do something like this,
And I don't know why I've waited so long,
But due to the circumstances of that night,
The mousetrap is going to snap.

But I'm going to write this play my way,
And I'm going to perform it my way,
And it is.. hopefully my way
To keep things short and without too much explaination.

I tend to lose my way a lot,
But bear with me here.

One Friday Morning I woke up in Fairport, Washington
But I didn't know it yet.
I was lying on my sofa, which is my bed, sheets knotted around me,
I sleep like that,
Pillow smelling like
Something bad.
I should replace my pillow, but I'm a bachelor
Who doesn't have time to invight anybody over to spend the night
Let alone do my own laundery on a regular basis.

I can see your nose twitching.
Get over it.
There are a lot of us.

My friend George,
For instance,
Who often feels the same way I do about the same things
But a great deal more strongly,
Including tonight's play,
But let me get back to my story.

...

Isn't it fun to watch someone dance around a subject?

No?

...

OK

...

One Friday Morning, it was eight and the sun wasn't shining in my north facing basement window
It wasn't even reflecting in through the window off the wall just outside
I was so far removed from the sun
Because the appartment I'd had before had East facing windows
On the second story
Of a downtown building
Right in line with the sunrise, which was nice
And the streetlights, which shone all night and illuminated the back of my skull
As I lay on my sofa which is the most comfortable bed I've ever owned
And kept me awake just long enough to be nearly asleep when the Id Monster..
I mean the street cleaner
Roared by like a DC10 rolling right over me.
I chalk the noise up to harmonics.

My new appartment is very small, and buried so deep that I have to crawl out of it like a sand crab
Another thing about my new appartment is that the second week I spent there, I overheard in the middle of the night
A real life drug dealer and his real life client
Performing their best impression of a Quentin Terentino flick
Right outside my window
Complete with confused feelings of intimacy and badly veiled threats
And yes, under normal circumstances, I find myself in Bellingham, Washington
A rapidly growing college town full of coffee shops and garage bands
Situated somewhere between Vancouver B.C. and Seattle
Which gives people the mistaken impression that this place is destined for great things
And
I have to admit
I have often been under the mistaken impression that one of these great things is me
But that was back when I was a teenager
Mostly

Alright, so we've established that I'm just like everyone else,
We've acheived some sympathy or something
Let's really get started here

I don't know about you, but I find mornings to be like the beginning of this play,
Slow
Ponderous
Self referential
Self depricating
And not at all ready for the light of day

And this Friday was no different
I was so far removed from the sun
That it seemed as if my eyes had atrophied
And I thought about movement
And I thought about thinking about movement
Which brought me to the subject of work
'Nuff said.

My point is that in the mornings, I have no potential energy
And that when I move, it is literally an act of God
I mean, something has to breath life into my limbs,
And the way I eat, it certainly isn't me
Which is really interesting, but I want to leave the whole God subject alone tonight
Because if I go there, you won't come back
Anyway, by the time I'm ready to actually go to work
I'm usually halfway through campus thinking about my maple bar

Since moving, I've taken up eating maple bars again
I used to eat them when I was five
I've eaten a whole lot of other crap since then
Some of it even organic
Some even with vitemins
I'm not really too conscious about food, other than I try to eat what I'm hungry for
And while my body certain doesn't seem to crave maple bars these days
It whines about them, in fact
Something inside me seems to be making up for years of maple bar deficit

And I still haven't kicked my mocha habit, yet

Now, campus is a cool place, worth talking about
I grew up in Bellingham, and Western Washington University is
Well, to put it shortly,
Mine

Forget all the cliches about back of hands or yards or what have you
There are places on campus, as well as in Bellingham, that I've never seen before
Just as there are places on my body that I've never seen before
And I'm not claiming, by any means, to be unique in this
But I do have a rare perspective of the campus

My parents met there, in the printing studio
I went to preschool there
I went to swimming lessons there
I've walked through the place on my way downtown
I've played there
I've studied there
I've even sucked my thumb there
In short
Western Washington University is my wooby

And my wooby has been under a lot of construction lately
New buildings have been springing up on the South end
And new walkways
And at ten AM, students fill these walkways in the way that only students do
Comparison is pointless
Everyone knows what a procession of students looks like
Trudging under preposterous backpacks and student moods
Studiously not looking each other in the eyes
Wearing hoodies, holding thermus mugs, and talking on their cell phones
In groups
Like almost congealing blood cells... But they don't clot except around the ATMs

The ATMs are a relatively new arrangement, though they've been there since ATMs were invented
And they serve to feed the growing campus monopoly
Marriott
Of course, there is vender's row, where students and faculty alike used to congeal
But due to the blood thinning properties of the even more recently introduced Starbucks
They just flow on by
And that's where I get my daily mocha, but we'll get back to that
My point of the moment is that university campuses used to be considered the center of social consciousness
It is one of the great traditions of the world, the great assumption maybe
That students are the natural enemy of the establishment
It's like a way of paying respect to the powers of higher thinking
By reacting to them with fear
In China, Russia, Mexico, the United States of America, and just about every country on the planet
There is a history of military action on school campuses
Student uprisings
Political movements
The works
And while the left over trappings of the sixties, seventies, and even the eighties are still visible
A building here that is built like a maze, with an over abundance of strategic fire doors
A memorial there
Bricks with starry eyed sayings carved into them for posterity
And the fashion trends of the past making flu-like resurgenses
Students and faculty all around me, every day
Are meeting the status quo
Are doing what their families have always done
Are catering to their habits rather than their... what? Common sense?

Back in the nineties, oh so long ago, activism was hip
I knew people who would sit in front of the recruiting station on Veteran's day
To protest war, when we haven't had war in ages
I knew people who blocked the streets because their favorite trail was being paved
There was this hole in the ground, downtown, and just after the turn of the millennium
People were protesting that

When our current president took to office and started doing what he's been doing
Activists seemed to feel whole again, at least from my perspective
I could finally relate to most of them
But people's reactions to them were based on what had been going on in the nineties
No one took them seriously

Then 9/11 happened, and things got strange and tense

Huge tragedies have this tendancy to put everything in perspective
Asside from dredging up truisms from everyone, including your pet fish
They cause everyone around them to sit down and do some serious self examination
And really, you know what I'm trying to say because you experienced it, too.
And I can get away with these truisms and generalities, because you probably know just what I'm talking about.
And doubtlessly, you know, or should assume, that brushing over this to get to another point which will lead to a "but"
Which is that I still see some activism here and there on campus
Usually in the form of a bakesale put on by Men Against Violence to Women
Or a day long workshop on the practical how-to knowledge, strategy, tactics
and theory of community organizing.
It is, of course, an election year, and a lot of people are trying to get Bush out of the Office.

But
Even contemporary activism, stripped down to it's purest form in this day of "general prosperity"
Seems corporate
Polished
Fake

It leads me to want to say that there are only two things in Bellingham that are genuine

...

But that would be dumb

But there is a kind of battle going on here, and the latest blow against humanity
Laid down while everyone was being distracted by Tim Eyman's latest antics
Tim Eyman is this guy that I hate...
Anyway, the latest blow against humanity is the new logo for Bellingham
Designed by a firm in Portland, Oregon.
It is a piece of shit
A blob that violates every good sense even a bad graphic designer might have,
I know, because I am one,
It is an anti design
And for some reason, the guy who is foysting it on us is proud of it
It represents the dicotomy in this community between the larger economic woes and the human need
To feel needed
And to eat

And while we argue about whether or not a tax cut will give us more money to spend on cars
Or whether or not it's important to spend that money on locally built cars sold by locally owned businesses
Or whether or not a splotch on a piece of paper is going to bring more money into town
So that we can buy more cars
Some of us have just watched a play in which we learned that the man before us rode his bicycle over a streat of blood in Mexico
Thinking at first it was red paint
Some of us just got some perspective
Perspective that I know many of us will not know what to do about

Fortunately, I wasn't thinking about any of that this Friday Morning, while walking through campus

What I was thinking about was how I could earn my new office, and justify asking for a desperately needed raise
I was wondering if I would lose my virginity before I die
I was trying not to think about death
And I was planning on getting back to writing for Harmless Free Radicals
And this is what I think about every day that I don't have school
When I have school, I tend think about how I'd rather be sleeping

I was also thinking that it was odd that someone was wearing an F.C.C. hoody
Fairport Community College
A piece of merchandice I'd always planned on making, but never got around to

Red Square, the center of a controversy over sidewalk chalk, and a red hoody
With a picture of the Fighting Fjords on it.

And something began to tell me that I wasn't going to be going to work today.