Off Track Middle of the night Blog

4:15am, been trying to sleep since one. I've gotten about forty minutes of sleep I'd say. In two hours I have to get up, I'm going to Stonehendge for a day trip. I was really tired before but sleep didn't take me tonight...I couldn't think of what to do, laying in bed, mind racing, I thought maybe hey, I'll take comfort in my blog.
So I guess this post won't be about what I wanted to write it about...my trip to The Globe Theatre, my life in London, actualizing daily all the things I've ever dreamed about doing...no, I guess I'll reserve this one for some middle of the night post-teenage reflection, London takes the night off. Tonight I'm just gonna write.
Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with my trip, don't even read this, I'm just writing this for no reason.

For some reason tonight I'm thinking about landmarks. Doesn't have to be a cathedral, or something 400 years old. Tonight I'm thinking about 51 Delafield, New Brunswick NJ. United States. Keith's old house.
I remember when I used to live for the night. Shuffling through work weeks at the Game Room, weekday nights spent on Mill'z couch in Calvin Court smoking hookah and watching Scrubs, fear of turning Brookdale into a four year school, hours and hours with Gerry at coffee shops talking about which direction life was heading in...I used to live for Saturday night, the great escape.
I spent so many nights on the floor of Keith's house. I remember one particular night. I was 18. We bought a 30 case of Miller High Life, and I drank pretty much the whole thing. It was one of those drunken nights, ash tray overflowing, cans in the backyard, one of those beautiful paintings of frustrated post high school/rejection of getting older nights. A perfect freeze-frame in time for any aging man to look back on and say, "Oh I remember me when...."
Beers till we can't stand, pizza from R.U Grill. The Great "Fuck You" to getting older, the only chance we had to pretend we were the people we read about in all our favorite books. I remember sitting on Keith's floor of his room while he was in the bathroom. I remember feeling drunk, and strange, and I looked at his wall and written on the wall was "life is beautiful because it is empty", and I remember repeating it out loud, and I remember thinking about how life IS beautiful because it is empty, in drunken, youthful poetry. Emptiness is beautiful, because you can fill it with anything, I always loved that idea of, no glass half full or half empty, not an optimist nor a pessimist, just free to fill it with whatever you want. Total Free Will, bound and tied to the pragmatic glass.
These were those beautiful nights when a guy could really think.
That is a sort of freeze frame I like to remember. 18 year old me, reading old lines on a wall in New Brunswick, finding the meaning of life somewhere inside a house that doesn't really have to even exist in the real world. The gravity world. The world we're all heading towards. Moments of realization. Moments of God.

I remember our, "last night". Landmarks. LBI, 2:00AM, Justin, Brendan, Bryan, and myself, the night before everyone was to leave for college, the night before I would wake up the next morning, not packing clothes and bags and doritos and ramen, but still in my room with all of my friends gone. We stood on the beach and stared at the water in silence, and Justin made a fumbling motion with his hair, and I remember wondering, I mean really wondering ..."what's gonna happen tomorrow".
Freeze Frame.
I was scared.
Two years go by, Noistradamus records, the Java Joint Years, playing weekly sets for tips to crowds of 8. I met Dan, I took pictures. We lived in Nick's Basement again, we lived famously in our heads. I'll always remember recording "movie syndrome" , sliding across Nick's snowy deck, pale blue cigarette smoke invading the very fresh air we'd gone outside to get, thinking, man I'm apart of something. Feeling really warm. Feeling really happy that I didn't go away to school, feeling really important with my three best friends.
Freeze Frame.
Moving day, my leg charred from standing in a fire. I'm about to live with Justin, the same guy who a few years ago on that beach I thought I'd never see again. Franklin Street, the birthplace of the absurd, of the lonely, walls where you could ask any question and find a response somewhere in your dreams in the middle of the night. Books. Books. Books. Rice for Breakfast. Justin would disappear for days at a time, I'll always remember Franklin St in January...heat turns off at 12am, walking around with a blanket, sitting without internet or television feeling bad for anyone who is lonely because in 235, you are always alone. Jim, Ebenezer, the saddest men I had ever met, living next door, hearing them through the walls. Breaking up with my girlfriend, visits from friends. Going home and eating Krispy Pizza. Making dinners with Justin....and the greatest thing of all is....all and all, the most meaningful few months of my life. My trip to London was born in a dream I had while sleeping in Franklin St. My whole life changed once I started living it. Landmarks.

Go home, summer time. Great job, Great friends, fleeing the country, can't complain.

Living in London, living in a city, meeting new people, feeling at home. Never been happier.

4:56am.