it's the real thing

God, i love Coca-Cola. i know that most of you abandoned it in your early teens for more adult fare, but for me it is my drug of choice.

Love how it burns going down, especially when you have a sore throat...feels like it's destroying all of those throat germs causing the sore. Love how it bites each and every taste bud upon the first sip, love it's sweet warmth as it courses through my veins.

When i was 15 and convinced i was going to be a writer... a writer that made money, that is- i imagined myself in my office, working on my fourth great American novel, with my own Coke fountain right by my side. Hunter S. Thompson could have his whiskey, Bukowski could have, well, everything else, but all i wanted was Coke. While in my 20's and my 30's, and out at a bar, a well meaning friend would at times suggest i order it with some rum or whiskey. i looked at them as if they were speaking in tongues: why would i want to ruin a perfectly good drink?

These days i have it a few times a week, as opposed to the two liters a day i used to drink in my wild 20's, and still marvel at how i never tire of it.

pop goes the world

For some time, The Land & The Sea listen to pop music; therefore, i listen to pop music as well. And i wonder if anyone else notices that the majority of themes in pop songs is about partying: dancing through the night, drinking to excess, sexual experience upon sexual experience. Even Katy Perry, whose "Firework" is amazing, has a song out now that makes me cringe, as it reveals women to be concerned only with maxing out their credit cards and hooking up with their girlfriends all in the name of a good party.

While i don't expect much from pop music, i do expect variation. i have a fond appreciation for pop songs that were hits in spite of their dark meanings:

1. "One" U2- infidelity
2. "Every Breath You Take"- stalking
3. "Dear God"- XTC- atheism
4. "Brick"- Ben Folds Five- abortion


and so on. So it is possible to sing about something other than partying.


Don't get me wrong, i love a good party song. While my day to day taste tends to prefer sadder themed songs, there's nothing like a good dance song that makes you want to jerk up and down spastically across a room. "I'm Gonna Get You" and "Groove is in the Heart" are my kryptonite- have to dance when i hear them.

Still, i am disconcerted by a 10 and 7 year old singing "sticks & stones may break my bones but whips & chains excite me."

second skin

A couple of weeks ago, my daughters & i came across a cicada molting on the fence in my backyard...it had made the rest of its way out of the molt before i realized, "hey, i should film this."





There are trees in my neighborhood that have started shedding their bark, making way for new:

















i need to shed some old skin, some protective covering.

i find it odd how people automatically assume depression is about sadness, or has overtones of sadness, or is rooted in sadness.

For me, it's about disconnection, alienation, all of those words we used in our angst ridden, teenage poetry. When it hits, i feel like an observer to a world that i am not part of.

There is a line from a Cure song, fairly obscure B-side, that says:

The further i get from the things that i care about
the less i care how much further away i get.

That said it pretty well, until i discovered American Music Club a few years later. Their song "Sick of Food" said it better:

i'm sick of food, so why am i so hungry?
i was sick of you, but i don't mind seeing your little face around.
i was sick of love, so i just stopped feeling,
but i couldn't find anything to take its place.

Huzzah to those of you who can find a sliver of light in the darkness.

So concludes a post from my 17 year old self.