A cornicopia of transitions

To quote George Harrison:

It's been a long, long, long time...

I have much to say. Many developements. Stories. Changes.

Avoiding the pretence of falsifying each back-logged entry with a date, I will just create one long rapid-fire post with separate titles. The order will simply be which comes to mind first.

So Long Rust Belt, hello silver belt buckle

For those of you who don't know yet, this September my wife and I are moving to Austin, Texas(a small city quickly becoming a big city). After many long conversations, pro and cons lists and research, we decided that the change of scenery will do both of us a world of good. She will be taking a job with her current employer albeit with much better hours, and the mutlitude of music, film, art and culture will provide many more opportunities to which my skills should flourish. While it's very difficult to leave Cleveland and everything familiar(I feel like I'm leaving a family member to drown in a dirty pool), I think some time away will help me to appreciate the area more.

So with a positive attitude, an open mind, yankee sensibilities precariously perched on our shoulders and plenty of sunscreen, we will head to where the deep South meets the Southwest. To the land of border/culture wars, left vs right, old West vs new West. Where cowboy meets hippie meets yuppie meets artist...sounds like a great time!


















The end of an era

I taught my last class at Lakeland College this past week. While it was only an adjunt position(part-time, no benefits, no real status), I taught there for 9 academic years. It was a significant time for me personally, since during this period I got married, bought a house, learned a ton more about my discipline, found out I was a good teacher, became a better musician and generally felt that the years spent grinding away in college and graduate school was time well spent. I met a lot of interesting people and learned as much from my students as I shared with them. The money wasn't too good but it was something I could count on never-the-less.

That being said, I think I've started to mail it in a bit lately. For those of you who teach or have taught, you know how much energy and focus is required to do a good job. It is a very unselfish activity and even part-time can be tiring. Doing the same thing over and over is also pretty dreary. I consistently revised and improved the class but the budget never allowed for significant equipment upgrades(I taught a music technology class so this was sort of crucial). Anyway, that combined with an internal urge to do something else contributed to what I think was a less than cohesive course. Definitely time to get away from it for a bit.

As if to re-affirm this hunch, yesterday as I was leaving the college for what was probably the last time, the clocktower struck the top of the hour and sent me off with 7 chimes.

Lucky? I sure hope so.


The black cat

Saturday started off very badly. I was awoken to my upset wife alerting me to the fact that there was a dead cat in the street right in front of our driveway. Making things even worse, the cat was wearing a collar with his name "Damian" on it along with a phone number...someone's pet.

Someone must have hit the cat earlier that morning as rigor mortis had set in. We couldn't leave the cat in the street and we didn't want to just throw it in the garbage(getting hit by a 2-ton moving vehicle is an unfair and undignified death enough for an animal). So we put it in a box in the garage and called the phone number on the tag.

No answer.

At this point, my wife had to go to work so we just decided that I would wait a bit and call again later. At about 10am I redialed. Again, no answer. At this point I was starting to get concerned about the state of this cats body in a box, in my garage, under a warming sun. Things might start to get, shall we say, edgy.

In a moment of genius, I called information and gave them the phone number in exchange for the name and address of the owner. Thank God their number was listed. As it turns out, the cat lived two houses away from us.

Now this house is significant because in the 8 years I have lived in this neighborhood, this address has always been a "problem" residence. The guy who owns it is an elderly slumlord who seems to rent to just about anyone. The place looks like hell. When I walked up the steps to knock on the door, I couldn't believe the state of disrepair this place is in: crumbling steps, ropes holding up the shrubs in the front yard, gaping holes in all of the screens, broken windows, garbage all over the porch - just a real unhappy looking place.

After ringing the doorbell, a girl of about 12 answered and I asked if her mother was home, which she was not. How about her father? To which she replied "Chris is here but he's sleeping. Must be a boyfriend. Anyway, at this point I thought it would be weird to just say "thank you, I'll come back later" (considering I had a decomposing cat in my garage), so I took a deep breath and asked her if she had a black cat named Damian? Her face immediately looked worried as she answered in the affirmative.

Damn. I've got to tell this little girl that her cat is dead. Damn. Sh*t. F*ck.

When I told her that my wife found the cat in the street and that we had him in a box, she got very upset and asked me to bring him home. When I brought the box to her and she looked inside my heart broke. She started sobbing, calling his name and petting him. She asked me if I thought he might still be alive. Just freakin' terrible stuff.

She ran inside and told "Chris" what was happening. I could tell by her answers that he didn't seem to know what she was talking about. "Damian...my cat!" I heard her say. I waited outside in case there was anything I could do. After about 5 minutes she came back out alone. She said that "this house usually wakes up around noon...you know, Friday nights", which struck me as cynically amusing, especially from an 11-12 year-old. I thought to myself "this kid's seen some sh*t and had to grow up quick. The slug called Chris never bothered to get his ass out of bed to help the girl with anything, come out to talk to me, thank me, tell me to f*ck off...nothing. So I sat there for a few minutes while she talked about her cat. I babbled some anecdotal b.s. about how losing pets is so difficult, gave her a hug and went home feeling horrible. I Gave my animals some love and went for coffee hoping the day would get better.