path of least resistance?

"The path of least resistance describes the physical or metaphorical pathway that provides the least resistance to forward motion by a given object or entity, among a set of alternative paths. the concept is often used to describe why an object or entity takes a given path." -wikipedia (cause i'm lazy like that)

"The Path of Resistance is a band born of tragedy. In the spring of 1996, the members of Earth Crisis had a terrible van accident which left drummer Dennis Merrick unable to play for months. Hungering to continue their message while their bandmate was healing, The Path concept was conceived. While Earth Crisis had many diverse issues on it's plate (sic-ed) and an expanded sound, the members had always wanted to get back to the basics, both fundamentally and musically." -myspace

i have a unique perspective on straight edge, (sxe for those not in the know), as a female and as someone who started out involved in the scene on one level and then transcended to a whole other level of involvement. 

when i started going to shows i was very not straight edge. i mixed my love for loud, aggressive music with my habit of going to parties in h.s. football fields, at SU and random houses. 

my non-school friends were all sxe, hardcore kids, most vegan, but definitely veggie. cookie cutter mentality. tattoos. piercings. champion hoodies. baggy pants. adidas. XL band t's even if you weighed 98 lbs. being "different" but looking the same.

i became straight edge. (maybe not? "if you're not now,  you never were!" right?) after one night of hard drinking. new year's eve. bottle of rum mixed with cola. then just straight after the cola ran out. there was really nothing behind it. i was with maybe 5 drinkers at a sxe house. my guy friends who didn't drink were laughing at me. 

17 years old. senior year of high school. already accepted to colleges. wait listed for my program at cornell. mulling over if i should stay in the safe, warm cocoon of upstate ny or if i should spread my wings and fly down to dc, like i'd always felt a pull to do. change is scary, but i'd already had so much in my short life. i wanted to get the hell of out dodge!

everyone thought i'd do great things. it was hard not to believe them. 

woke up the day after that rum-infused party in 1996 feeling wretched. new years day. that always meant a huge show in syracuse. loud music, thumping bass and drums. lost horizon. my hungover self went and couldn't bare it. i vowed to not drink for the year. my resolution.

accomplished that year plus some. had my first drink after that upon moving back to syracuse, ironically enough, in 2001. syracuse drove me to drink. especially after living in a real city. cinco de mayo. armory square. i got left by my "friends" and had to beg my friend who bounces for a ride home. plus i lost a brand new pair of shoes! 

you have a path set up for you. a pathway among a set of alternatives. 

why did i take the path i did? still baffles me. 

i had no one in dc. (my stepdad's daughter was there. we never hung out once or talked after my college interview. she's also 15 years my elder.) everyone was in syracuse. it would've been so easy for me to stay, take the free tuition at SU, live at home, walk to school, or get a cheapo apt with friends. 

but i always knew i wanted more. 

i emailed some dc people i found somehow online. (messageboards? searching for people who booked shows in dc? no clue.) i still have 2 printed out emails. one from nicole, still part of my inner-sanctum. one from forbes, a friend who i've lost touch with except through myspace-land.

these random emails to strangers became how i found my niche in dc. PC dischord kids when i was used to tattooed tough guys. 

this was supposed to be about syracuse hc. but i don't know if i have it in me today. or any day. i don't want to make close friends mad. they weren't close friends then, but are now. 

digging up the past you are bound to unearth some bad with the good. 

syracuse was pretty violent for awhile. it has a certain reputation. CNN, MTV, after-school specials. the media painting a certain portrait. and i was SO young and very uninvolved, besides attending the shows, that my take on it differs greatly from the members of Earth Crisis or Path...

those people who are my friends. who i've been to weddings with and for. who have my back despite the fact that i like ink and dagger. and grade. and lifetime. despite the fact i drink and eat cheese. and i love them so much more because of those things. (just not when someone starts humming or tapping "firestorm" around me, i kinda hate them for years of that brand of torture... and the nicknames, oh the endless array of nicknames you guys have come up with for me!) 

i will say this. the boxing gloves above are because i just started boxing. to not want to punch a random person on the street in the face. an outlet. i was never as amped up as i am at this point in my life currently. things that were beyond my control, i've just started taking action on. 

being anti-violence in a very aggressive scene is a strange phenomenon. i watched people get in fights routinely, wondering why. 

the only answer i really came up with was power. people who were powerless over something, anything, in their lives. alcoholic parent, strict parents, religious parents, bully as an older brother. or just to fit in with society's standards of what it is to "be a man". 

i used to wish i was a guy. roll out of bed and not have to do your hair, put on makeup, affect a certain charm, not deal with mood swings, pregnancy scares, getting old and losing your looks...

now i'm so so so glad i'm not a guy! living up to your father's expectations. having to come across as "tough". machismo bullshit. i'd rather deal with melting makeup, stockings that rip, uncomfortable shoes and bad hair days any day!

most of my thug friends have calmed way down. for some it took fatherhood, for others it took jail or the threat of it, still others just got older, grew up. there are a few i worry about to this day. some things/people never change...

-mjm 

for dennis. congrats on becoming a dad! you'll be an amazing father. 

post script...you know that scene in "pulp fiction" where uma almost OD's and then gets the shot of adrenaline to the heart? well that's me. right now. going at a million miles an hour. not sleeping, forcing myself to eat. nervous energy. trying to do everything at once that i've neglected lately. 

i've made enough mistakes for this lifetime.

happy thoughts...happy thoughts...

sitting in economics with kyle at 8 or 9 am. worst professor ever. kyle is super ADD. at one point in the lecture it's blah blah blah "let's start today!" kyle starts singing it and i crack up. it becomes a running joke for a bit. then i dropped the class. kyle switched majors. 

the semester before we take a trip to this distro place and kyle buys at G.B. long sleeve shirt. after stealing my friend kate's sxe coca-cola t. he has assorted weird shirts from his 5 minutes of being sxe in prep school in boston. years later he gets a barfight shirt from me, not knowing who or what it is. starts wearing it to black cat and almost gets in a fight one night. i think. 

i met kyle when i was looking for another person, a kyle from syracuse who knew my friend courtney. he was a raver. he also decided to go by his full name, khalil, once we got to GW. 

kate, (my orientation roommate who became my friend based on a bouncing souls t she had on), and i wandered the halls of the freshman dorm on day 2 or 3 of college. everyone's names were on those lame cut-outs that they always put on dorm rooms first semester. 

we make a game out of finding kyle, floor by floor, room by room. we get to maybe the 6th floor and someone's dry erase board has a message signed "kyle" about a shift show that we missed. the writer left his room number. we hightail it over there. 

the kyle i was looking for i'd met before at a rave in syracuse. (laugh it up!) he's indian and gay. we get to said room and the kyle within is a tall, lanky preppy guy. so not my image of a hardcore kid, based on my limited experience. 

he invites us in, despite not being the "right kyle". he's organizing 7"s on his bed. not sure which ones, but very boston-centric. i'm sure piebald, since he was classmates with one of those dudes, converge, chisel, his favorite. kate and i were psyched to find another like-minded soul. no idea how long we hung out or when we met up with him next, but that first meeting is etched in my memory. 

why isn't it so simple these days? 

for k.d.m. rabbit rabbit. 5 days late. 

-mjm

kyle's version/reply:

"ha ha ha...i wish i knew where those coke-a-cola SXE and barfight shirts went. and i was SXE all through high school. i started drinking summer after senior year. i'm a "tall, lanky preppy guy. so not my image of a hardcore kid, based on my limited experience"? i believe the correct expression is/was "emo". no relation to today's emo."-via email 10:12 am, 8.13.08

touche, my friend, touche! 

on phone lines and letterhead.

a voicemail from sunday night. paraphrased...

(my dad) "i talked to your sister. she told me you were moving. to brooklyn. i hope a tree grows there for you. good luck. see you in a couple weeks when i'm down there. i love you. call me back tonight or i'll call you tomorrow."

i just searched for the cover of "a tree grows in brooklyn" but got "the giving tree" as well. a favorite book of mine growing up. my next thing will be searching strand for books i loved during childhood. "where the red fern grows", "a wrinkle in time", "the wish giver", "a separate peace", "the monster at the end of this book". somehow the latter negates the whole list. oh well.

currently living like a college kid, bed surrounded by books, magazines, photo albums. tearing it all down to build it back up stronger. looking for answers in polaroids, old journals, emails printed from a defunct address. finding myself in relics from the past. not that she was ever lost...but it's nice to know i've always had these kinds of thoughts. a continuity of my former selves. progression, not regression. 

5 hours late for this post. i blame the gym, my new friend who's wise beyond her years, bad decision making skills, too much wild ginger. not in that order. 

my ipod seemed haunted on the L train today. i looked up at an ad that read "the whole truth", just as the voice in my earbuds sang "the whole truth...and nothing but the truth". freaked me out. 

later, once again on shuffle, it happened. same song. different train. i look down and the person seated next to where i'm standing is reading the post. same line. "the whole truth". i look down during it at the paper and the headline is "con ed must tell us the whole truth". 

stone cold sober. high on gym endorphins. running on pure adrenaline. can't see any logic in this. and i routinely skip this whole record. 

ipods as intelligent design? i keep using shuffle mode. and i have a few thousand songs. one day, two different times, same song, same signs. too much.

i'm great at compartmentalizing. my friends who are in bands i like are just my friends. the band thing never comes up. i don't let it. there's a disconnect. i can watch and be the same as the 18 year old next to me with no clue. which is odd, since i came up at a time when you could buy a shirt from the singer of the band after their set. 

to know the voice singing to me, to be on the train to meet up with the most important person in his life when this happens. i am all at once so curious for his take on it, (which i know well from many late night conversations about life and love. and it's tattooed on him.), but i know so well that he hates talking about the band unless it's with the band. do i dare? 

on the L to a house of answers. a place of believers. seeking. i hesitate to bring up the train incident. but they know the tip of the iceberg of what i've been dealing with lately. i figure i have nothing to lose except getting laughed at or eyes rolled at me. 

but there was no laughing or rolling. just validation. "it is possible. we've had it happen. who do you think is trying to tell you something? what do you make of the message?" 

great! just what i need right now. a few more things to ponder...

the truth. it sets you free. it is stranger than fiction. 

it is subjective. my truth is not your truth. 

-mjm

"honesty is not synonymous with truth." 

post-script...

"and i came away with a different point of view,

and i think about him, now and then,

every time i try and every time i win"

for that guy who's name is 3 letters away from mine. 

my all-time favorite rebel. 

  

 

 

girlfriend in a coma.

douglas coupland is my favorite author. 

i used to hate morrissey. 

a house on westcott street in the summer of '97. smiths vhs of videos playing in someone's bedroom. i tried to leave the room. was literally pinned down and made to watch. 

i was still at that stage where everything was taken at face value as far as music went. hardcore and punk didn't, to me, have a correlation to this whiny british dude. 

even though i was a fan of the other melancholy brit, the one with the crazy hair. but he hooked me through the pop efforts. "hot hot hot" and "why can't i be you" are still two faves.

wasn't until i lived in maryland, college park to be exact, and heard quicksand's cover of "how soon is now" that i gave them a whirl. bought "greatest hits disc 1". (i am a greatest hits junkie. poverty in college will do that to a person...) 

then i found a vinyl copy of "the queen is dead" in a thrift store down the street from my house. along with a vintage polaroid camera. i lived in a not so great area. to me this was some kind of wonderful find. the camera i still have, the vinyl got thrown out accidentally along with all my other records.

the more i lived, the more i read, the more that moz made sense to me. echoed my own sentiments. "cemetary gates" has a few lines that are eeriely similar to a poem i wrote in high school that got published somewhere. but his are universal themes. life, loss, love, longing... 

after i moved back to syracuse in 2000, i wandered the public library. wishing for the 80's library of my youth, with its gargoyles, rickety ladders and old book smells. the newer library was all slick and modern, not really the type of place to play amongst the pages of history. 

a brightly colored book beckoned me to a low shelf. that's how i stumbled across douglas coupland "girlfriend in a coma". i got the reference, but i didn't really get the reference. his writing hooked me and i devoured everything of his within a couple weeks and waited impatiently for his next book to be released. 

crazy morrissey fan i am not. but crazy doug fan? possibly. i'm not the type to go to functions alone. side effect of being an only child. his book signing, his movie release, both of these i rolled solo. and happily. no one would get the giddiness i felt. no one that i knew anyway. 

douglas and steven. two gay men, my mom's age, who speak to my experience more than any female author i've read. 

wikipedia, on this new information superhighway thingy, isn't too accurate on some things. but i checked out my astrological sign, after never believing in that stuff. 

a coworker did my "star chart" a couple months back and announced i was in "saturn's return". all i knew was that was the title of a no doubt album where she sang a bunch about not being married. and could care less about not being married. i shrugged his saturn's return proclamation off as hippie talk, but then the gears were put in motion. before i knew it i semi-paid attention to my horoscope. and it was usually right. i'll have to check with tina turner to see if she agrees. 

wikipedia says as a sagittarius i'm supposed to be a masculine persona. which explains this punk rock nonsense, i guess...

"if you must write prose and poems, the words you use should be your own." 

everybody rips off someone else, even if it's on a subconscious level. 

-mjm

letters from the dead, a stream of consciousness.

kismet-(kiz-met) n, often cap Turk. -FATE

confession time. i got "kismet" from an episode of "beverly hills 90210". haha. no idea why it stuck in my head out of the millions of pieces of pop culture that bombard our brains every day. didn't even realize where it came from until years later, watching a rerun. laughed aloud. 

i wrote kismet zine the fall of my freshman year at college. worked at the radio station, which had a whopping broadcast range of just our campus. went to shows like that was my major, instead of environmental science, my actual major. conducted interviews at shows. (which to this day amazes me, since i was pretty much scared of my own shadow back then.) wanted someone to actually read the interviews. so kismet was born!

probably only printed less than a hundred copies of the first issue. interviews with shift, orange 9mm and face to face. assorted ramblings of a barely 18 year old who fancied herself to be "deep". reading it makes me uncomfortable. having other people read it makes me squirm. 

i did another issue the summer following my freshman year.  chaos ruled my world, as it tends to do every 5 or so years, and interviews were with sick of it all, one king down and another victim. my "playlist" consisted of promise ring, the cure, ink and dagger, bridgewater, torn apart, the get up kids and braid. i guess i tried to cover all the bases. lots of personal shit i wouldn't put out there today. (or maybe i would, since i'm typing this now?) hadn't read any plath or sexton yet, but spilled my guts regardless. 

what's in a name? i always struggled with fate vs. free will. always have been a really independent, strong-willed, outspoken girl. from a long line of the same. 

for the many lessons i wish i could undo that my mother taught me, the one amazing thing she drilled into me was to speak the fuck up. if something is wrong, say it. if you're not getting your way, correct the problem. no one is going to know what you are thinking unless you open your mouth. 

mom was a kid herself at 19 when she had me, so we basically grew up together. in the 80's when she would've rather been out at a club dancing to talking heads, the police, blondie, the cars, instead she had an elementary schooler to deal with on her own. (hell, in 2008 I would rather be at a club dancing to those records!) 

young mom equalled grandparents who helped out all the time. i was lucky. 

protestant maternal grandparents. catholic paternal grandma, peggy, after jack died when i was 4. instead of being from a "broken home", i was the pride and joy of 5 individuals, who let me know it each and every time i saw them. 

it's not until lately that i'm able to see my past for what it was, not from some place of bitterness about what i didn't have. material things only do so much. i had the LA gear sneakers and the white guess jeans and the esprit hoodies and the bass slip on shoes in middle school, the years when fitting in is paramount. (1990-1991 and 1991-1992 for anyone trying to place the fashions.) 

the girls who had everything back then are inherently unhappy right now. even though i have deviated from my chosen path many times, i have dodged the unhappy marriages, unwanted children and the kinds of mistakes one can't bounce back from. 

18 year old me would never imagine that i would be living in ny, working in my industry, still friends with the ragtag bunch of people i collected over the years. living in an amazing apartment...an apartment i'm currently packing...

i keep every letter that everyone ever wrote me. going and opening them up to read the contents only happens every so often. last night, before going to my friend from work's birthday soiree, i was organizing my "merch box" of souvenirs from my life. nothing from this box ever gets thrown away. 

was piling letters on top of each other by date. there are a bunch with my grandma peggy's handwriting. a swirly scrawl that coupled her rural irish background with an accident in her basement that made her beautiful penmanship not so great. 

these letters were written in august, september and october of 1996. she would die in early february of 1997. after reading the contents with my now adult brain, i know that she knew her time was limited. 

my sister, well half sister, but she has my whole heart, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer when she was 5 years old and i was in my first week of high school. my dad never picked me up from school, so when he did that day i knew something was up. he told me she was sick while driving from corcoran to the hospital. 

the previous week, when he was helping her into her gigantic flower girl dress for my uncle sean's traditional irish-catholic wedding, he noticed something protruding from her abdomen. she was then and has always been a teeny, tiny little thing, owing to my dad's 5'8" stature combined with my stepmom's 5'4" frame. (dad calls me his "amazon". my mom's 5'11 1/2". and always in heels.) 

to see this little kid, this kindergardener, in a hospital bed getting her first round of chemo and to have been explicitly been instructed NOT to cry in front of her was a lot for me to take as a 13 year old in her first week in high school. understatement of the year.

everyone has their own coping methods. my stepmom turned to religion, then alcohol. my dad was his stubborn irish self, refusing to cry, refusing to give up hope, being strong for the family, as his father jack had taught him by example. 

gram always had religion, masses in latin and an gaelic school upbringing. having one son die a week after he was born and at least two miscarriages after that. gerard, my uncle who didn't live, passed away on the same date that jackleen, my sister, was born. (valentine's day.) this fact solidified peggy's belief that my sister would make it, beat cancer, live a full, happy, productive life. 

she was right. 

peggy lost her battle to cancer on a cold february day at my aunt cathy's house. she refused treatment, saying she had lived a full life, watched her children and grandchildren grow and was secure in her knowledge that she'd be in heaven, finally reunited with jack after almost 15 years.  

a drunken conversation at a pub in syracuse, limerick, revealed that my two girl cousins, who are between me and my sister in age, believe my grandma prayed for my sister's illness. that she be taken instead. this is a bit much for my ex-science major, logical mind to comprehend. 

i should also mention at this point that peggy was a nurse, lived in london during the war, working in hospitals while air raid sirens blasted.  she knew fear, death, disease intimately. 

reading peggy's words committed to yellowed paper, twelve years after her death, i am sure of one truth:

she knew. 

all the things she said to me were classic things people say when they know they may never have the chance again. i am special. i am loved. she will miss me. i will do great things in life. that she hoped my guardian angel was looking after me...

as jaded as i have become, i have never lost my self-esteem, like so many women i know. even at my low point right now, with family drama looming dark on the horizon and major changes afoot, i love myself. even more than i did 6 months ago or 6 years ago. but those words from beyond the grave were exactly what i needed, exactly when i needed them. 

i keep peggy's picture where i see it every day. but words to me mean so much than pictures ever will. pure, true words from the heart. she was the best person i've ever met. 

if there is a heaven, i hope she's watching me. and not thinking that i've fucked all this up beyond repair. her values live on in me and i hope that when death comes knocking at my door, i can exit with as much grace and peace of mind as she did. 

the kennedy curse ain't got nothing on my family's...

for margaret butler. a true matriarch. (i think i'm keeping this horrible tattoo, since it might be the only part of me you'd recognize at this point. you smiled and didn't yell when i got it.) i love you. more now than ever. 

post script..."to me this is a lifestyle, not some silly trend. and years from now when they're all gone, i hope that we're still friends." thanks tommy. slainte. 

-mjm

three to get ready.

at 2 am i wake up on a daybed at my best friend's apartment. i'm under the covers, full of Taco Chulo, searching in the darkness by light of my ipod for my bag, pen and paper to scratch thoughts in handwriting I don't recognize as my own.

said best friend is on a detox. as am i, i suppose...from drama, a life i no longer knew to be my own, sloth, greed, envy. 

my cell has bit the dust. maybe a blessing in disguise? keeping me incommunicado. out of harm's way. within the 4 walls containing my best friend/sister soul/sparring partner. if i can figure her out it's one step further inside my own labyrinth. (or was it two steps back?)

my favorite moment today---anthropologie---wandering zombified on a 2:30 lunch. near the windows. i don't know if it's the bright red hair-or something else-especially lately, the little kids, the babies, all look into my eyes. seek me out. it happened again and again last saturday on my H.C. day wandering around central park alone for 7 hours...

anyway...a field trip, all matching neon green t's with white writing. one little boy taps on the glass at the side of the store, where there's no one standing but me, and waves frantically, a huge grin on his 7 or 8 year old face. i smile so wide, snapped out of my trance, wave excitedly back. all the little kids with him start to grin and wave at me too. i walk away on air. no one has seen this but me, the kids, their teachers. 

it's still the little shit that gets me. so glad i didn't move to this city, as planned, at 21 to let it suck my soul. 

postscript..."a professional cynic...but my heart's not in it..." a person came into my life on sunny october day in 1996. it would never be the same again. hour long cab ride, stolen golf cart, music, music, music, salt bagels, pure fun, tears, a funeral, a wedding, a birth, adulthood, eternal friendship (even when i doubted it was there), one of my guardians through it all. 

at a certain point, hopefully, everything clicks. comes into focus. the who, what, when, where and why. if you call it god or spirituality, a life force or just order forming out of chaos. people who've been there for half your life but may not always be right there next to you. shit goes down. they assume their roles. it's blowing my already zooming mind. 

dedicated to two of my guardians and protectors. i count you as family. 

for r.r.w.

for m.r.d.

-mjm

round two:

the first show i attended that i remember the bands that played, because i obtained and still have the flier, was for a band called copper at a vfw in solvay, ny. they played with iceburn. 

i didn't like copper that day. now i love them. i often yearn for a time machine to take me back to shows when i was too naive to pay attention or too concerned with people to focus on the music. or just to be a fly on the wall. so many people were there that i now count among my friends. my future ex-boyfriend sold me his zine. my friend's brother booked the show...i think? copper was from buffalo so i'm assuming my buddy mark was there too. 

anyway, my memory is fuzzy. this was pre-sxe me. i do remember obsessing over what shirt to wear. not that i was a girly girl. at all. it was some pseudo-riot grrrl! shirt. (before i realized i didn't hate guys, i just owned a couple L7 tapes. big difference.) it's ironic that a girl going into a male-dominated subculture would be alternately hyper-obsessed with appearance and completely indifferent to appearance. in some pictures i look like i didn't own a mirror, in others not so bad. 

i wish i had a picture from that day. but pictures, for me, color whatever day in a certain light. if it is a day i remember vividly i can see past the smiles or poses and remember what was actually going on, happy or sad, good or bad. if i can't remember the day it is just a comedy of hairstyle and clothing errors! usually.

copper was a chick band. melodic hardcore with girl vocals. as was ashes. upstate ny fave and dc fave. i'm glad i never really saw either of them. my love is based on what's committed to disc. 

the copper/texas is the reason love connection always intrigued me. "your place is still at the heart of my everything" versus "your place is at the heart of my everything". big words. do the feelings ever live up to the words? or more importantly, do the feelings ever sustain that intensity? 

-mjm