Ah the Holidays. I am quite Scrooge-like around them I must admit. I’m an odd man to begin with. I have minimal family, almost  zero interaction with the random klan there is, I’ve never been married hence divorced, no inside kids, no outside kids, no down the block kids selling christmas trees in a lot drinking out of a flask to keep warm. My regrets about the lack of spawn I have infused into this world and my lack of a wife are as big as my regrets about Rosie O’Donnels film career and how it never fully  blossomed like a  budding douche. 

But I am spiritual and fateful and odd. There’s an odd pulse of decency in me. I might not live in a house that is filled with fulfilled children and a happy wife that people pass and see the lights and warmth of the residence and say “awww what a happy family”. I would be the guy that  rents the top  floor of the next house, the one with the  garden gnomes and hobos leaning against lamp post yard accents. All the plants in the yard stolen from my job and if you look closely the mulch that surrounds them is really panties from one night stands and chinese takeout menus and pizza boxes or as us professional gardeners  call it “the lasagna method” of layers of mulch.  I might bring property values down but not peoples  holiday  vibe. 

I think people look at me and see a rosey cheeked,  friendly enough irish american fella without a care in the world. I bounce up and down the street going to or returning from work, the bar, the bodega like a tattooed Tigger from Whinny the Poo. I exude a level of staunch heterosexual jolliness that gets most  politicians into scandals. But there is a  deep, dark pit in me that could hold enough asphalt to pave the entire city. I’m a  frustrated artist. A writer that can’t apply myself. I am incapable of love. Damaged. I get off on being alone. A true “holy terror” of a man that subscribes to a polite society and does well in one but who is, ultimately, a lonely prick of a man,  a Scrooge if you will. I would mutter “beh,  whores  arse!” not “bah, humbug!”. 

So heres what the Dickensian ghosts would look like to me. 

The Ghost of Christmas Past :  My  drunk  father picking up an aluminum  garbage can lid on christmas eve and attempting to throw it atop our house as we slept to make us think Santa landed on the roof…..but missing the  roof, hitting my brothers top floor window and sending shards of glass into the room and disabling the lights he  strung from the top of the house. 

The Ghost of Christmas Present:  This lovely Dominican lady I work with, Marisol, who has 5 kids and makes me rice pudding and empanadas for me and actually likes  coming to work because we are friends. Just put some gay holly on her head or something and she would be the one i would  want to walk around with showing my Scrooge ass the positive, current side to things. In one hand would be a heineken, and in the other the Ciroc coconut vodka she can’t afford but I buy her because i like my latina women drinking, it makes me very very attractive. Now thats  my kind of christmas present. 

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to come:  Steve Buscemi in a black north face jacket with a  hood on it walking my ass to a  cemetery on the brooklyn/queens border and telling me to  get my shit together in a long, curse laden speech. Whenever I would chime in with some comment he would smack me upside the head with one of those  plastic grim reaper cycles you see around Halloween and say something like “Listen  Douche, THATS your  grave there and your  six feet under us, what the fuck  ya think I walked in here with you for? The ambience??? Thwak thwack thwack. 

Around the holidays I always think about how I was raised and what if I was brought up somewhere else. I don’t dislike where I am from, geographically or maternally at least,  but I always felt like some remnant or kept mistake that could have been moved anywhere. Much like a  transplantable plant. Don’t get me wrong I grew fine and strong in Queens, NY much like an invasive weed but I often pine, pun intended, about my roots (pun slut) and think about how in my family tree (just leave the money on the dresser) I was a bastard of a squirrel who dealt with the unstable Oak I was raised in but longed to reside in a Linden. A tree with twisted bark and a  strong canopy cover. A strong bastard of a tree that was self sufficient, had a  good drip line, canopy cover and not only welcomed local habitat sex but promoted it by god. 

So once again I am going to share my “Personal Dripline Theory” for social interaction that I subscribe to. The drip line of a  tree refers to its canopy cover and how it sustains itself where it stands. A tree, unlike a human,  can’t go get its own water and food so it has to be self sufficient. A good  drip line helps the tree retain and shed the water that falls on it and catch the light while it keeps its  roots cool and fed so as to keep it an absolute machine of a living thing. Thats what I like to be. A natural machine. Adding to the landscape while being left the fuck alone. 

To maintain my “personal drip line theory” I have to keep people at a  distance while realizing social interaction is needed. I don’t hate people, I just  truly  get off on being alone. I am also ultimately unreliable to only myself and the realization of this makes for a better ecology. As strong as I am, I am unstable and unfair to any unknown nutrient that comes my way. Some people look for love and think it exists but I approach it like Integrated Pest Management and go out of my way to not let it effect me. All it would ever do is supply a nutrient or mineral that will either ruin you, temporarily boost your system, not supply enough of itself to you, and ultimately even if reliable and available lose its potency or just flat out leave as a resource. A tree, even when dead, continues working though. Thats the zen of wood. A fallen tree in a  forest provides for habitat and breaks down to be taken up by others. Thats what I want my art to be since my heart is dead, but working, while here.  I’m also a writer and irish and a  drinker and taurus and emotionally numb from my upbringing  and compartmentalize my assets not so much for self preservation but for the betterment of the forest.  Some people see the forest from the trees. I see the  saws and try not to become furniture. 

“She Aint Daffy, She’s my Mother”

By EjcO

Ah the holidays. I have always been odd with them. I think the only clear memory I have of truly enjoying them was when I would go to midnight mass with my mom, pretty much the only time either of us went to mass all year, walking home with her and then sitting in her living room and being amazed how much peaceful it was, how she decorated the tree so nice, the reflection of it in the large mirror behind her couch. How much she enjoyed seeing me open a few presents she got me even though I told her not to get me anything for weeks. This odd peace that always overcame me. In the last few years I truly never knew what to get my her , so i got her gift cards for two stores she always liked shopping at, Daffys and Century 21. Now that she is gone I sit here mulling the words over in my mind …Daffys…Century 21…it makes me smile. She was an emotional mess most of her life my mom, a little “daffy”, but in a mad nice good way, the world would be a far better place if more like she were in it. She was also oddly independent and modern and open minded, a “century 21″ type of lady. 

I dislike the popularity of gift  cards but i understand their convenience and effectiveness. I was always the kind of black sheep of my family and it took me years to figure out that I was a literal bastard. I always knew I was and when I found out I was more relieved than devastated. I’m not crying in my egg nog over my legitimacy and never did. My daffy, 21st century mom had me and she was always a  gift to me and always will be. 

Half the reason my mom liked shopping was to just get the hell out of the house. That was always the case with her but I saw it clearer as I got older so the holidays were always some manic fruition of her instinct to just make the best of things and be positive. Thats what I liked about the whole midnight mass/ living room thing. The family dynamic with mine, even when balanced well, was always awkward and littered with some irish catholic/ crippling silence/ unaffectionate/ love endured vibe. I was never an angel but I think my realization of how damaged we were as a family came through in ways that was a constant pulse of criticism. It wasn’t though. I was stand offish because I didn’t like any of them accept my mother. I truly didn’t and applied that in silence that came through as rebellious or maybe pompous. When I truly don’t like someone I will go out of my way to get their name wrong just to reinforce what little impact they have on my life, thats because I’m a natural prick and admit it, and I always wish I could do that to my “dad” and “sister” and kinda did in a removed way. My brother was  different, him I loved. 

When I was a kid my Dad had an odd habit that I later found out was truly twisted mental abuse the more I thought about it and is a good example of how his mind worked in a salty, strange way. He had this strange way of saying “ahhhh Timothy” to me or around me when he saw me. Kinda like some odd acknowledgment of me like “ah, the boy”  or “ah, waddup negro”…that sort of thing. He always hated my name, Edward or any variant of it, my sister has a a very irish name and my brother was named after him and it was obvious my mother named me and picked  a name that just wasn’t common on his side of the family, which  greatly dominated. Kevins, Tommy’s, Michael’s  etc. were as common as white underwear with them and the name Edward or Eddie was like a pair of panties misplaced in the black socks and tight whitey’s  drawer. I liked it though, not Edward so much as Eddie because the latter had a wise assy  tone to it like “Fast Eddie the pool shark” , it had an american new yorky slickness to it unlike the rest of them. I grew up with alot of italians too so Eddie fit better in with the Vinnies and Louies and Frankys. Also my mom told me that sh picked the name because her maiden name was Egan and she just  wanted some boys name with an E in it and she wasn’t feeling Elmore or Emmit. She chose well that  daffy, 21st century chick. 

I found out years later that my dad said if he ever had another boy he would like to call him Timothy, after a  brother of his who died young in Ireland and never got to come here. So him walking around muttering that name , way before I even knew I wasn’t his, always stays with me as some abrasive, quiet erosion of a thing that will always make me squint at him like sand or dust in my eye that keeps me blinking and keeps my guard up. If tears fall over that its from pure discomfort, not because my feeling s are hurt. Cleansing, reaction tears to keep your sight clear to the danger around you. Like a boxer in a glass corner mindful of the push more than the punch. 

So back to  the  whole  gift  card thing now that I have driven this  sleigh around the airport 89  times  and your like:  “land that shit already Eddie I need a  drink and gotta  masturbate before going to the mall to shop to avoid having rage”. I was always a  bit of a mess and wild one from junior year of college until….well now. Back then the Daffy’s card was this simple  black one with the store logo written on it in big whopping yellow letters and the Century card looked more like a credit card but both were just  cool because they were simple. No gay bows and ribbons and dollar amounts on them. Back then gift certificates were the thing really so when gift cards came out I liked the slickness of them and how mom could  just throw that in her wallet and be good to go. I liked the blankness of them. It reflected some blankness I had in me. Some good blankness that you could fill in or fill up or control. Not a statement coming later. Not some unsure swipe. 

I would just always pick out some holiday card I knew she would like because I am a  visual person and draw cartoons and have gay Hallmark moments  like that and she would always prop the card up all year on the tv when all the rest were taken down. I used to like seeing it there on the random occasion i would pop over to see her and sit in the gallery space of a living room she decorated like an oasis. This woman knew her way around a department store I tell ya. She was from the Nick Nack tribe and knew how to greet ya with a nice Hey How are ya, hey how are ya. 

I used to throw as much money into the  gift cards as I could and back then I was able to keep her “dipped” as the young mothers used to say back in the day. She never knew how much was on there, or maybe she would ask some nice sales lady, I don’t know. I kinda picture her like that actually. Shopping. Puttering around buying nice things for her, for others, prepping for christmas. Once in a blue moon she would call me and tell me she got me some great thing. Like a  robe or some odd thing I would never buy but truly needed. She’d always show it to you while she was drinking a cup of tea and smoking a cigarette and say ” feel that material Eddie,  thats   good thing” in that odd soft irish brogue of hers. Ahhh the mateeeeeerial, sweet  jaysus thats a  good thing. Italian pajamas or irish linen or thirsty towels or a  terry robe that was perfectly manly but bought by your mother. Those were the nicest things to me. I always picture her at the register having a nice smile and chat with an attractive, pleasant, well dressed black or spanish woman at the register bagging it up for her and just liking her as  shopper. A good balance for a nice lady. Good to go. Then she’d get a  tea or coffee at a diner and a danish or some mess and people watch in manhattan before she headed home with her “haul” as she called it. Happy and free. 

As blank as I ever feel, then or now, my mother was never rejected at a  register. 

I have always been drawn to logos , product fonts, universal images and such. Pedestrian street signs, subway evacuation instructions, basic illustrations in church missalettes etc. I think alot of this has to do with the fact that I didn’t get my first proper eye exam, followed by glasses, until I was in the sixth grade. Maybe I look at things harshly now because I literally looked at things too hard then in the all important formative years. Much like a budding douche I basically grew up to be a prick.

The Bic Boy always fascinated me as far as logos go as to pure simplicity. Its a ball point headed schoolboy with his pen behind him. Prepared. Mustered almost. At the ready. But he also has an attitude to him in his stance. Held back, chilled, alert and prepared. A posture of singularity that I always loved.

I grew up in a family that was so emotionally disastrous Its amazing I am around at all, never mind around to share, or even try to in my little blog pieces that are almost masturbatory the more I think about them. Kind of like drawing cartoons that only turn me on or I get to see at all. Doodling in class because you have no interest in the subject. That pretty much sums up my social life and tendency toward one.

I truly dislike people. I’m not anti-social at all though. I’m actually a  very nice man. The negativity that I have about things I tend to only show in my little blog rants or odd cartoons. I just keep to myself. Much like the Bic  Boy. I like people. People like me. I just have alot going on in my head and mind my ink. As a logo goes, The Bic Boy is perfection, like a pedestrian road crossing. I might have alot on my mind, or nothing but I am prepared and happy to be alone. The pedestrian road sign serves its purpose in the same way but sells nothing. Its there because people are common and idiots. The Bic Boy is there because he sells pens but doesn’t really  give  a shit what you do with them. He has his. And he is keeping it away from you at the same time. Why? because he  can and people suck. People steal pens. He has his and gets  paid either way.

There’s an old jewish saying that I always liked that goes something like “nothing will disappoint you more in life than people, but never stop being a human being”. I think that captures me pretty well. A car might break down but it won’t steal from you or fuck your wife. That sort of thing.

Another favorite saying I found one in the basement of a theological seminary, in a book called “the salt cellars” is “the arrow that flies forever is the one that has hit its mark”  unknown, native american. This old book had some drum of salt on the cover and some subtitle that read something like “proverbs and sayings that are simple, short and sensible”.

I think every relationship I ever had with a woman has been ruined by my mistrust of her and quietly judging her by who she choose to give herself to prior to me. If thats  not  toxic or salty I don’t know what is. I have a self loathing that makes me impossible to have love in my life.  If not a loathing then an insecurity that keeps me singular more than single. Single to me is an assumption. Singularity was a  dream that it took me years to attain.

I always felt like I was some glorified orphan or genuine bastard. A remnant among woven rugs. My investigation into why I felt that way proved true and that set me free more than contained or ruined me. There’s a relief that comes to your soul when you felt some bad line in it that you could never trace.  When clarification comes to the ball point head that is yourself, well then its smooth sailing from then on.

So thats why I like the Bic Boy. Self contained. Easily identified and recognized. Thats all you want in a logo. People know what the fuck it is and either want it or not. As a  writer and a bastard I get paid either way. I don’t give you shit what you write or draw with. I know who the fuck I am, and so do you. I mind my head and what’s inside me. No use crying over spilled ink.

EjcO

11/28/11

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I am just meant to be alone. Its hard to be alone in life for some. Some might be frightened by it. Most I guess. I wouldn’t know. I have earned my solitude though and the few attempts I have made lately to try and connect with someone and share my ideas of life have resulted in my realization that I a have some sort of condition. I truly hope its undiagnosable because that would mean other people have it..THATS how much I like my solitude. 

When I was a kid I felt  out of place within my own family. I later found out I was a bastard so that added up and evened out the sense of imbalance I always carried within me like an awkward pulse. I needed eyeglasses quite badly but didn’t even get a proper eye test to prove I had 20/200  vision until I was in the 6th grade. This didn’t stop me from playing sports and riding bikes and functioning, I wasn’t some kid in a basement they slid frozen pizzas under the door  to in the Ozarks or some shit. I was quite active. Blind as a bat and pale as a ghost but it served me well. Good eyesight and staying home was very much not a good idea for me then. I think half the reason I survived my childhood is because I was born and raised in Queens, NY and when the true dysfunction of my family proved itself I was easily shipped off to Ireland for the summer or stayed with a nearby uncle when my father was removed from my house, or my mom attempted suicide. If I was from somewhere more rural I think I think i’d have to join the military (if they would take me with bad eyesight and full front dentures ) or I would have gone to jail for something which would lead to a  lifetime of repeat offenses more than likely, or I would have died from drug overdose, or been murdered. I wouldn’t have made it 30. I know that. 

So I Queens  a  debt of gratitude for  that and maybe thats why I like my job taking care of a  few slices of it. The job allows me to pretty much be alone, or if I do work with someone they are usually  uneducated, welfare to work types that ultimately make no impact on my life other than reminding me that things could always be worse. Like George Carlin said…the poor are there to scare the shit out of the middle class. I think I would rather be around the broken tools of society though because I pretty much hate people, especially the ones that are like me ( white, working class, commuting, work-a-day Eddie six-packs or Johnny Paychecks and what not). The women that married these  types are a different story altogether. They frighten me in their every waking moment of sweat panted supermarket shopping and minivan retrieval of their kids. 

I like ethnic people and the immigrant vibe of Queens I guess because I feel like one even though born here to immigrants. The diversity in the hoods. The train commutes. The observation of people in general. The awareness of how big and diverse the world is and how much I love returning to my studio apartment to write and draw and masturbate about it once I escape it daily unscathed. 

I always feared having a child because I over think everything and always imagined having one that  was handicapped. The one time I got a  woman pregnant was in my early twenties and as much as i stressed it I was preparing to do the right thing  and she lost it. The one time I came close to marriage was with this same young lady who loved me and wanted to but I turned my back on her and abandoned what was probably the one true love I ever had. Her mother jumped in front of a subway train when she was 7 as she left her in a department store with her grandmother playing in racks of clothes and staring at jewelry in cases. One day she sat on my lap and handed me a box. In it were three rings. Two were mangled and twisted and the most horrible things I ever saw in my life. On was a silver graduation ring from a secretarial school her mom graduated in the early 70′s. She was a  single mom  and was trying to get her life together. The other was some silver ring i couldn’t even figure out what originally was. The third was a white gold band with moons and stars on it. “she wasn’t wearing that one” she said. So I picked it up and put it on my pinky and it  fit perfectly. She said I could have it. I put it back in the box. I think that was the only moment in my life I ever fully connected with someone. But even in that moment I knew I had alot of things to get done with my life and I was so filled with some fateful, nervous, damaged, selfish, unfair, meant, independent and bastard driven sense of myself I ultimately ruined that  relationship and friendship by my desire to be alone. 

Funny thing about it is, when I write this, I smile in contentment. Like some  tainted angel that gets off on his ability to fly. Not necessarily bad or good. A holy terror of a thing. A limbo. A comfortable purgatory. 

EjcO

11/13/11

Over the years and toxic landscape that is my “love life” I have dated a few single mothers. I think my inclination to them is based on my own upbringing. As a kid I always sensed my mom had emotional problems and suffered from depression more than anyone, herself included knew, and it was hidden from me. My sister was 8 years older, my brother was 4 years older and I always looked, compared to them, and felt like some remnant. 

So years later after a  truly miserable childhood where I dealt with my abusive dad and lost but there mother I realized that I was literally a bastard. A kid knows something is wrong and it took me years to pinpoint it. My uncle told me one day while we fixed a screen door at his house where I was staying because my mom threw my dad out of the house after he punched all my front teeth out after i dropped a  brass garden hose nozzle on the liner of the pool we were installing. He picked up the nozzle, wrapped around his fist and said “You’d wreck the nation” and then he punched my lights out. 

My Mom had one of several nervous breakdowns over this incident  and an agreement was made for me to live with my uncle. So one fine day he told me that his brother, my dads brother too was in fact my father. My actual dad was a  bar owner and gambler and such an alcoholic mess of a man he was the only one of 13 children that got a legal divorce in the late 1950′s, thats how impossible his poor wife found him. He died while driving a  rented car on one of his many jaunts back over to ireland and drove the car off an unlit road into a  ditch that was in fact the very land that he was born on. The outer remnants of a once thriving farm. 

I repaired my mother later in life and am beyond glad I did before she passed of emphysema failure from decades of smoking. She is my heart and the most decent pulse in me. I promised her that I would at least try and repair things with my Dad , bro and sis two days before she passed  and have made peace with my Dad. I haven’t spoken to my brother or sister in a  decade and I am leaving it that way. At my moms wake and funeral I attended two nights of a wake, sat in a pew at the mass and even drove in a limo with them and didn’t even make eye contact with them. 

So I have been given morbid thought to the whole “what if my “dad” passes” thing. A dead man can’t  call you to tell you is dead and he is the only one of them all I have any semblance of contact with. I made peace with him and keep my eye on him in his empty, cold house near my apartment. I call him pretty much every night to see if  he is still there and vice versa. Other than that its about as pedestrian as street sign. 

So I decided recently how I will handle his passing. I think I handled my moms passing differently because I was in fact hers. So i bought a  brand spanking new black suit for her and attended properly. I showed face to the only person that ever showed me a  true one, even when she was in pain inside and lost. I am glad I did too because , if anything, it was prove at the falsehood and stagnation and erosion of my family. All that love endured,  irish silence, falsehood and pain. It was a  release to know she was at peace and the wake and funeral to me was an absolute parade. I knew she was in heaven the second my dad called me to tell me she passed. A discarded harp that plays beautifully now that it is higher and on a calm cloud. 

So when my father passes I will just hope the one aunt i have that is decent to me calls me to tell me the news. “oh sweet jaysus Edward Im sooo sorry to tell ya that  your father has passed, you’ll need to know the arrrrraaaaaangments” or some shit like that. Some lilty, lyrical irish brouged decent communication out of necessity. I will got the  wake and say a prayer at the casket while its opened and I can have proof of who’s ass is in it. Then I will attend the funeral and stroll in once they are all seated and sit in the  very last pew of the church and let them all walk past me as the casket is rolled out. Then I will just  go home and visit the grave when a headstone is there a  few weeks later. He will be next to my mom, I always go to hers, so its decent and unavoidable really. 

Just like my odd inclination with single mothers. Decent and unavoidable and always ending badly. The nation is wrecked, but i didn’t fucking do shit but try and help. Word to my mother.

EjcO

11/11/11

Not a  good way to be

A connection always form that frays me

Like a towel of absorbancy

The spilled milk of daddys little man or princess

I’m some post-pacifier pasteurizer

Kids staring at me like they gave birth to me or some mess

Spooning feels good but ultimately…its not my drawer..or is but is stuck or unsure

EjcO

11/11

So thats how good I am at forgiveness and repair and not letting my anger get to me. Hoo  fucking Ray for me. Whats the point of this blog rant?  Trust.

When the slightest rumor/seed/hint of mistrust is within me than you are placed on what I call a “pedestrian status”. You become that general outline of a male or human figure that is used to identify the mens and ladies room. It would be stupid of me to not acknowledge you there, I mean these signs  are there for reasons, but it sure doesn’t mean that general outline of a  figure means more me than the nail behind it holding it the fuck up.

Im very going at being passive and peaceful about this whole thing but I am a  true holy terror of effective payback when I don’t want to be passive anymore and I have proven this to amazing effect in my 41 years of living and managed to not get anywhere near in trouble for it legally or morally.

So basically at this stage of my life when I have problems with concepts of trust I think of my two mantras in life I am master painter who will definitely not hurt my own hand or my canvas but will  most  definitely identify the pathogen of  mistrust and preserve the art for current existence and future conservation.