this is a love letter.

there are these tiny moments that exist on their own when i feel like i'm part of something much bigger than myself and much more important that i can comprehend. the only thing i'll miss when i move out of this town are the bands sleeping on my floor, the sense of what's right that the ten people left here will die for, these little inspiring moments that make me feel like someone else.

every disaster possible kept the modernmachines from new brunswick, but they showed up anyway and played to the only ten people who waited hours to see them. fid helped us sneak the underage guitarist into the bar, because their van broke down and they couldn't find a ride, they stayed three days with us in this house, had jam sessions on the porch with two guitars, a snare and an accordian. dan and i held hands the entire time, snuck into a hotel pool to swim in our underwear, ate real pizza in the park, still soaking wet from getting chased out of the hotel, and came home to hold hands and listen to every ergs song three times in a row. the bent outta shape boys came to pick them up this morning and even that was surreal.

the most heartbreaking thing is that if it even happened again, it would never ever be the same.

i meet two people from england. kieran at the knitting factory, gill at mccormicks. kieran wants to talk to lansie about french parliamentary politics.i want to talk to gill about livejournal, i want to talk to gill about chocolate cakes, i want to talk to gill about the next two weeks in the discourse of my messy messy life.

gill tells me (and she says it straight up) 150$ is hardly the cost of my sanity. once gill tells it to me, straight up as she is prone to do since she came from fucking 'cross the pond to say this to me, i feel it's more true than not.

regardless, morgan refused her drinks tonight and i was forced to compensate those given to us by a vietnam veteran named bob at clydz who had more than enough to tell me about his tour, about bangkok, about teaching english (essentially about delia), about the pomegranate vodka that didnt reek of thanksgiving (like that bottle in pennstation you downed did), about his dead wife, his dead children, his dead hopes and his dead dreams. i compensated her cider jack at mccormicks to revive life and to compensate for bob's loss of life, his loss of vitality, his loss of hopes, and his loss of dreams. i am not nearly ready to drink to his lost children. i drank to tuesday, i drank to jessica, i drank to gill. i drank to morgan, and my friends, and to the old and to the new,and to moving on and moving out, and to bob;'s concubines in chaing-mai and to people i might have known exactly one time that i never will again.

you can't fix everyone, you can't fix anyone. somtimes i feel like it's worthless to bother trying, but i haven't spent a weekend in my bed in months & months. (just two, but this has been a long fall.)

paul, colin and i have been actively looking for apartments that will accomodate us outside of this city. my biggest regret is not moving out of this town (in june as i had planned, as my airfare had planned, as my credit card reeled in debt) because i thought i was happy here: it was fleeting (i live in new brunswick and have for twenty-one years), the concept was fleeting, boys are fleeting, concepts are fleeting, focus is fleeting.

i cannot believe you pretend to sleeep this off.

a year ago, exactly to the hour, i/we slept on your parents' couch in monmouth county. we watched mysocalledlife at fiveam and were happy and i thought, at that moment, that my memories would never best that one; that this was as good as i could expect, could imagine. for us, things got worse,and for me things got better and then worse, and for you, worse then better. memory is fragile and i wonder if i would've thought of it at all if i didn't remember sticks and stones at the last possible minute and johnny x singing atlantic city exclusive to us that one night, a year ago exactly.

john darnielle introduced a song last night, halloween night (i was an alligator, lansie was little red riding hood for the purpose of a candy-basket) by saying that it was about his friends who had died & it was their fault. it was awkward and it was terrible and the song was beautiful and honest and hit home in all the wrong places.

my symmetry (and my discretion) is off tonight, thanks to compensation at clydz, at mccormicks.

-lauren

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these idle hands, they do the devils' work. these idle hands, they do a whole lot worse.