never intend to finish.

After a few years in school, I got a "good paying job in the city" as I always liked to say. I've stopped fighting back the image of loping down from a tree and leaving my parents essentially behind. They just weren't fit for this world, and thus settled into a chilled transition. Each day the same, only slightly less important than the last.

The new financial windfall and the tweak in the "obvious conveniences" of living with the folks provided a clean getaway from the suburbs that had tortured me lo those many years. You see I had gotten into an increasingly frustrating series of disappointments, set into motion primarily by the legal system but also by a tremendous dissatisfaction I felt with the vitality of my community and environment. I had good friends, yes, and a few of them were more than willing to drag me into their filthy drug habit. I, however, had wanted to move out since I first learned to walk. It's a curious situation to be berated for the majority of your adolescence and formative years for the cushy life you've been provided by an individual who refuses to let you hack at palms with your own machete. Sorry, pops, as tough as you wanted me to be any hint of cowardice likely comes from smelling yours.

So I knew these guys in the city, a bit rough around the edges and heavy on the beer. And not only was that my style, but they all had that gleam in their eye. Or at least the small group this was eventually whittled down to. They coaleseced in a way that shifts the word "individual" from noun to adjective. I can hardly describe them as a group without leaving out vast quality and characteristics. For that I can only think to describe how I felt about them as time went on.

I had always made some subtle attempts, in my fairly frequent run-ins with the guerillas, to make some sort of impression on them. Out of sheer respect and admiration. They had all the rambunctiousness, the carefully timed fuck-it-all attitude, and the subversively cool attitude I had always been attracted to in people. And yet there was something a bit more, there was, if not a defined purpose, a certain swagger in the confidence that when that purpose was illuminated these fuckers were going to murder it. I always wanted to get invited to their events and even once or twice redrove to Detroit to drink beers and actually slept in what would eventually become my room. Something special happened there, and it revitalized my faith.

A while later, when I went looking for that room to rent, openings occurred in their massive party house. I had replace a soon to be ousted forger and busker with tense relationships. I didn't know what to expect from this, moving out of the 'rents into a dilapidated mansion with more people than I had stored in my cellphone. My excitement is nonpareil even to this day. They had accepted me, it seems. And I knew from casual conversation that they did not accept just anyone.

The love of my life re-entered my life at this time as well, and the entire world was gauzy to me. Everyone in stillframe, every conversation the slowly faded intro to some poetic masterpiece. I felt more at home than anywhere I have ever felt in my life.

continued . . . .
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