So much sad shit, but the weather has refused to let me stay in a melancholy state. It’s weird. My friends back home suffered a big loss with the death of our friend, Harlin. The cause of death makes things so much worse. Dammit. And then Coda…I can’t imagine the trauma that one of my best friends went through when she saw her beloved puppy…her first child…get demolished by a car. Totally helpless. It’s all just fucking sad….and today would be my Grandmother’s birthday if she were still alive. To top it off, we still had to deal with other small stresses from daily wear and tear while we were really hoping for a nice Memorial Day weekend getaway. All the while, everyone is mourning around me…it’s no wonder my brain was not functioning yesterday. With the heat sucking the energy out of me, I just felt kind of…absent. Numb. Switched off.

I drove to Kalamazoo today and nothing felt right. My nostalgia and connection to the place had suddenly plummeted to a small speck in the gravel beneath my feet. I held so much love and respect for a city where I grew into myself. There, I learned what every 19-23 year old learns about her or himself…how to figure out life on your own. To figure out who you are and who you want to be; to figure out love, what it meant and how to manage the gain and loss of it. Kalamazoo used to be where I had once built a life…now it’s just a place that I have been. And holy shit, it’s true. When they shut down the State Hospital there, they just let everyone go. And if those patients are not still living, their offspring are carrying on their legacy: polluting the city’s street’s, running rampant, spewing nonsensical religious banter while wearing flower bikini tops and pissing in the gutters. This town looks exactly the same but appears so unfamiliar to me.

I guess this means I have finally closed a chapter.

I held on for a long time. Truth is, I hate to let go of my past. So many wonderful memories and lessons learned, I’m afraid to let go of those who were once a part of my life. Just like the line by La Dispute in Andria, “…if i do not miss a part of you, a part of me is dead,” I hold on to places and people like I hold onto my own flesh and blood. Although, I now realize that at some point, you don’t get to make the decision to move on or not, life decides for you.

And so it did.

This weekend will be the start of an uphill climb and I can feel it. So many summer shows for Fine Fine Titans are right around the bend, I need more than ever to make my dreams come alive. Death reminds us that we only have so many days ahead of us…so we either go big or go home.

I’m not going home. Not just yet.

I’ve got more where that came from!

Mr. Clarke Babcock, everybody.

Missing Kalamazoo today.

See you later, Kalamazoo.

Spend a day or two in Kalamazoo and do nothing but drink coffee, do some writing and spend time with my friends, uninterrupted.

I also need to spend a few days in Waterford and do the exact same thing. Visit Detroit and find my way back to my roots.

Social media isn’t keeping me connected, anymore…if it ever really did.

throwback tuesday. fall 2006.

I really, truly miss Rocketstar Cafe.

Tonight smelled like 2005.

The river gleamed as the cool breeze graced my hoodie and made me feel as if I was breathing with the lungs of a 19 year old. I could feel autumn on the horizon; the crisp air brought a newness that was oddly enough, a distinct source of nostalgia that only my senses could recognize. 

I drove around grand rapids, thinking of kalamazoo. My speakers poured out only music that would emphasize my recollection. Who I was then is the same person I am now, and I feel it in my bones. I can not recall a period in my life that was more liberating other than my years in that town, but I remember how trapped I felt. It was as if my heart could burst out of my chest cavity and jump on the next flight to anywhere those wings would take me. Usually that meant home…until I got there. When I went “home” to Waterford, I was quickly reminded that home was obsolete in that moment. I had no fucking clue.

I still feel that 19, 20, 21, 22 year old me that needed nothing more than to breathe. I now have the lung capacity I was missing then, and a piece of mind I couldn’t have dreamt of even if I didn’t drink myself to sleep every weekend. A vast chunk of my heart will never leave that girl who found herself in kalamazoo, only to to lose herself in kalamazoo, and to find herself again in the skin she never left.

As fall rolls in, I am reminded of everything I have and everything I’ve had. It’s such a beautiful, bittersweet retrospection.

The Wrap. Kalamazoo, 2006. I miss the music scene of that time.