Andy

I felt my mind split open!

It's been a very long time, hasn't it?

I apologize.

Journal-writing scares me. Everything I write always looks
so angry and negative to me, and I find it really
overwhelming. But looking back on my old entries, the
positive aspects do creep up.

The last several months (that would be most of January, and
all of February, March and half of April; a very long time,
indeed) have been pretty eventful. In fact, I don't think
it would be unfair to say that they were among the most
eventful in the last year. Start from the beginning:

Did you read that last entry? The one about the girl at
Health and Harvest? The one I wanted to take to lunch? Kim,
actually, by name. Anyway, that whole affair began about
that time, and ended for all intents and purposes a few
weeks ago. The whole thing was positively wretched. I won't
go into much detail, save to say my behavior was not ideal,
and neither was hers. We did go on a few dates in February,
and I personally had an amazingly good time. Did she?
Impossible for me to say. Regardless, there was an enormous
amount of bullshit involved. What kind of bullshit? The
usual stuff: I was impatient to get things rolling, which
culminated in my getting a bit drunk and chatty on one
evening in particular. I didn't do anything TOO stupid or
dangerous, other than act generally sloshed and pathetic.
Things had been ambiguous between us up to that point -- I
had maintained consistently that I was very interested in
dating her, and she had said on different occassions that
she was interested, but wasn't interested in dating, too
busy to date, wanted to keep the door open, was leaving
during the summer anyway, didn't want to lead me on...a
whole litany of things. After that evening, though, things
just nose-dived, and any genuine, meaningful communication
between us just ended. She didn't call, she was very
evasive when I would see her around, you know how it is;
she was never the most open person to begin with. So now, I
don't call her, and she doesn't call me, and when and if we
see each other around it's friendly and detached and
totally devoid of any substance. It pisses me off, she's a
wonderful person despite everything. I can't help but blame
myself for the fuckup, but I'm not very happy with her
handling of things, either; her steadfast refusal to be
honest and communicative with me, and aloofness in
particular, is very irksome. At a show at the Rud later on
in March, she was with some guy -- what was that about? I
would have to answer that with a statement that sums up the
whole experience: I don't have any idea what it was all
about.

So that was that.

It was totally infuriating, really. I'm very tired of the
way I am, my mannerisms, my handling of the events in my
life, all of it. Or I was, anyway, after the whole thing
ended. It fluctuates so much. Today, I'm in pretty happy
mood. So let me tell you more!

The Blowup in Japanese broke up in February after weeks of
non-practice and non-communication. Bradley made it
official when he told me he'd joined another band, and I
reported this to Nate, telling him I owuld be leaving as
well. All in all, not a huge surprise. I was very upset
about it at first, because it does rob me of a very
important part of my life. And although it was totally
expected, given the tension between the members, it was not
as easy as it seems like it would have been. It really
estranged me from Bradley, and also to Dave, to a lesser
extent, for awhile afterwards. However, Dan Marshall from
the Verlaines pulled as back together for one last show.
And it was like a fairytale. Even Bradley, who declined to
participate on guitar at first, showed up and we pulled him
up on stage to play maracas -- it felt like a wound
spontaneously healing up having him up there with us.
Guitars and drums got smashed, and everyone had a great
time. It was such a fitting end to the whole thing that
it's just impossible to think back to the breakup with any
antipathy or ill will. It was, for the most part, a
fantastic run and I'm glad it ended the way it did. For
once, something in my life ended perfectly at exactly the
right time. It makes me smile.

The biggest thing to happen to me, though, would be not the
Kim thing or the Blowup implosion, but the Warhol Museum
thing. I was down about Kim in March, angry about the
amiguity. By extension, I was bummed about Louisville. So
while having a drink with Katie at Dirty Darryl's one
evening, I spontaneously conceived a plan: I would move to
Pittsburgh this summer! And I could work at the Warhol
Museum! And Sara and Ed could help find me a place to live!
And I could meet lots of great new people! Extracting this
plan from my ass, I proceeded to act upon it, mailed a
bunch of resumes and two months, three faxes, dozens and
emails and one phone interview later, I am leaving for
Pittsburgh in two weeks with an internship with the
education department at the Warhol Museum, a part-time job
at the gift shop there, and a sublet apartment of a friend
of Sara's who will be gone over the summer!

All in all, an utterly fabulous turn of events. I am so
proud to have pulled it seemingly out of thin air.

So that's got you up to speed. There were other things, but
more on them later. I've gone on for quite long enough.