red sox nation state of mind

(this is not an advertisement, I swear)

Living coffee shop to coffee shop my first few days in town. Espresso Royale in the bright, blacktop-hot August morning, claiming my wheat bagel and reading my book about the Brooklyn Dodgers. I come back to Barnes and Noble later, claim a wooden-backed chair and sit and write for an hour. I camp out in Dunkin Donuts in Kenmore Square, sweet thick iced coffee surging through my blood till my hands shake and I can’t get the words down on paper fast enough, and freshman kids sit down next to me talking about the crazy night they had last night at this MIT frat party. One kid’s phone rings and he tells his friend dude, you gotta get up here, Boston is crazy, college is the best. They all know each other already, they all have pictures to show each other on their phones, they are in their first 48 hours of College and this Dunkies is the place to be away from home. Wally the Green Monster greets us at the door – not bad advertising, as he actually talked me into getting a Coolatta two days before, which turned my mouth bright blue for an hour afterwards.

I camp out in the dining hall on Bay State, empty salad plate in front of me for an hour as I sit and read and talk to my friends miles and miles away. Next day I hit Starbucks for the air-conditioning and a caramel frappucino, an excuse to sit and write some more about the Arizona desert. It’s too hot to be outside, too dark in this narrow room to stay inside, so I bounce back and forth trying to think of things I can achieve before Thursday morning. Minor grocery shopping. Textbooks. Organization. Preparation for a segment of my life to start up again. I bounce coffee shop to coffee shop, air-conditioning to shade, grocery store to CVS, bed to hallway to dining hall, buzzing nervous at the end of summer under a bright blue sky.

and we'll all float on okay.

found this yesterday. somebody actually knocked the cover off the ball up at the Pleasant Unity field. (quite reminiscent of The Sandlot, right? it was awesome.)

I have to do all this stuff before I leave. but it's actually not that much, right? totally doable. at least the things I technically need to do are manageable. stuff I said I'd have written by the end of the summer, that's a little more up in the air, but that's to be expected.

I know the shit out of the mountain roads of Western Pennsylvania after this summer, by the way. and OH-7 and WV-2. any road that runs along a major river, you can pretty well bet that I've driven along it in the last few months.

this is the place where all the junkies go (time gets fast but everything gets slow)

August is the weirdest month to me. weirder than ever this year, and I think that's only going to intensify every year now. till I'm living in San Jose or Cambridge or Vancouver or Austin or something.

you see I don’t usually drink like this

it was something in the way

the sounds of the West Coast came through to me

I don’t usually want to act like this

sit in the backyard all night

trees and heat spinning all around me

fine upstanding kid but I could use something

I could use a shot of whatever you can find

I’d like to sit in the grass with my friends

seven hundred miles to the west

watch the sun slow us down

and take this opportunity to rest

August days, the air itself is dangerous

makes you crazy, makes you look behind you twice

halfway between leaving here and coming home

crickets in the trees, noise in the dying light

ashtray floors, dirty clothes and filthy jokes

it turns out I was right about being able to live on the road, I think. it doesn't bother me not knowing where I'm going to sleep from one night to the next. it doesn't bother me living on coffee and whatever other food I can stumble across, keeping an eye on every exit sign for a place to stop and rest. I like trip!world. I want to live there. that's enough stability for me. the freedom to go where I want and when is enough stability for me. I can write for travel magazines and sites for money. I can play guitar on the streets. I require very little money to exist, in general. I just need someone to talk to, somewhere to go, and a way to get there. I truly think I could live that way indefinitely.

my Ted Leo love is coming back to the surface with a vengeance, and the Dropkick Murphys keep coming up on shuffle and Pedroia's about to get off the DL, finally. this all probably means it's time for me to go back to Boston. I'm in a weird place where I'm wanting to go back, and missing it there, but also preemptively missing it here, and simultaneously WANTING TO DO EVERYTHING and just wanting to sleep and read and watch baseball. hooooo hum.

reading with the tv on

done working my shitty retail job for the summer. hurrah! I have financed my voyage to Minnesota and some decent clothes for school, and I can buy Sox and Bruins tickets (for when the Pens are in town, and also whenever my friends and I decide to go because we're grown-ass women and we caaaaaan) this year without feeling way guilty. call it a success. ignore the fact that my neck keeps doing this popping thing, hurts like the dickens, etc. I'm putting myself on the 15-day disabled list from life, or at least from lifting watermelons. also my shoulder hurts. if it fucks with my slider or my curveball I will not be amused.

currently rediscovering the Ramones. fuck yeah, I'm fifteen. need to get to a record store sometime soon because there's a lot of stuff I want to get. finally listened to the Husker Du album I got last summer and didn't like it all that much. they're not as good as the Replacements, you see. vocals low in the mix is a good way to lose me.

my brother and I are going adventuring soon, not sure where because we were thinking about Cincinnati (which is a hard word to spell) but a) I am a little sick of driving in Ohio and b) while I now have some money, it's probs not enough to waste on a place like Cincy. I think. EVEN THOUGH I COULD SEE THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS IN TWO WEEKS, OH GOD, maybe I'm reconsidering. I would willingly drive ten hours round trip, through Ohio, to see Tim Lincecum pitch in person. this is a problem. aw, fuck.

my next potential job, should I actually get it, might require me to walk through South Boston way later at night than an unarmed kid should ever walk through South Boston. stay tuned.

my family's out doing shit and my friends all have some kind of commitment tonight, although fuck knows what Eric's doing because apparently he doesn't text back anymore. whatevah. I have many, many things I need to read and write, and a Giants-Cubs game I could watch at 10.

oh yeah, and last weekend Ohio was actually gorgeous.

sometimes I think I could live on a farm. one with a minimum of animals, though.

constructive summer (we're gonna build something this summer)

how to get through a sudden and terrifying thunderstorm in the heart of Ohio: crank up the Beastie Boys, be careful with the gas, and if you're in the passenger seat, just keep knitting.

how to survive Chicago in rush hour: let Alan Rickman take the wheel, yell "MARCO" out the window till your best friend responds with "SCUTARO," let your inner Southern belle give advice on life as you crawl thirty miles in three hours. when all seems to be lost and the sky opens up with another monsoon, break out the Rick Springfield.

how to find a hotel in South Bend, Indiana on an hour's notice: call the Quality Inn, it's cheap and there's free breakfast. turn on your high beams if your headlights burn out; Indiana makes that kinda shit happen, but you still end up loving it more than Ohio.

how to get in a Minnesota state of mind: look at the sky. look out as far as you can because it's the flattest land you may ever see, turn on the Replacements and marvel.

how to enjoy Ohio: Rancid, Offspring, Green Day, blue skies. not necessarily in that order. try not to get off the interstate more than once. also, be careful which exits you take or you will find yourself in Alabama very, very quickly.

how to sleep an average of five hours a night and drive six to seven hours a day: take full advantage of the following: coffee. Rich Harden (ooer - leave it). pop-punk. the lack of state cops in Ohio.

how to ensure that you will be up way too fucking late for anybody's good in Chicago: start showing your best friend pictures of ridiculously attractive baseball players and, any time the conversation lapses, yell "HEGGEDY". this is a better idea than you might think, as it sometimes leads to the writing of brilliant Creed parodies. at four in the morning.

how to get to Wrigley Field: Red Line train to Addison, north of town. put on your Cubbies hat when you get off the train and pretend like you fit in. subtly take pictures of the Ernie Banks banner and marvel at the fact that you're in the Friendly Confines for real.

how to get moving on a gray, soaking wet morning in northern Indiana: "This Year," the Mountain Goats. do it.

how not to tackle Ohio efficiently: stop in Columbus looking for an open public restroom on a Sunday afternoon. assume that Columbus will be a normal city, or at the very least, no more asinine than Pittsburgh about things being open. I tell you this for free: do not count on Columbus for anything, ever. even a McDonald's.

how to come back home: cross the Allegheny and get a little teary, railroad tracks winding back into the woods like they wanted to construct the most Pennsylvania-like scene possible, just for you.

waiting for a door back into the life he wants, the confession of the bench

okay, one more post.

as they say - or at least as I often seem to say - Boston is the reason. in junior high I was playing sports but had essentially wandered away from watching them; I had bands, it was all good. then hockey came back into my life in a huge way, and I could write a novel about that, and probably will at some point. but that's not what this post is about.

there was hockey, and there were the Red Sox. then there was this kid Dustin Pedroia, five-foot-six on a good day and beating the shit out of major league pitching by sheer force of will. I stumbled across him one rainy night in Fenway Park, fell in love very suddenly, and the ten-year-old kid in me woke up and was like "HEY. remember baseball?"

fuck yeah, do I remember baseball. my dad had all these books about the greatest players of the century, top 100, big black and white pictures of Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson, Ernie Banks, up through Cal Ripken and the guys who were big when I was a kid (fuckin' Barry Bonds, I still spit at the mention of his name, almost more because he fucked the Pirates over and broke my dad's heart than because of any of his many steroid abuses). I lived with those books. I did multiple reports on Jackie Robinson, read all the books I could on that dude. I mean, I had it bad.

Pedroia, he brought it all back. kid can't go an inning without getting his uniform dirty, diving, sliding, covering every single inch of the ground he can. kid tells people he's gonna be the best thing their team's ever seen, and then he goes out there and he is. I watched the Red Sox lose to Tampa Bay in the ALDS that year - 2008 - for him.

I watched them lose to Anaheim in the ALDS the next year for him, and because I was living in Boston in a tiny-ass dorm room, sitting on the floor pretending to write a paper but really just holding my breath for Jonathan Papelbon not to blow it. (and man oh man did Papelbon blow it - gets two outs on the Angels and blows a two-run lead as all of New England gapes in horror, REALLY BRO? I went out on the street to run about an hour later and there was still Fenway traffic as far as the eye could see, people sitting there shell-shocked.)

and then I spent the offseason getting way over my head with baseball. the Sox first, because let me explain to you, if there is anything in your soul that loves the game of baseball, it comes out with terrifying force when you live a tenth of a mile from Fenway Park. you become desperately invested in Jon Lester's every move. you instinctively yell "YOOUUUUUUUK" when the situation calls for it. you suddenly need to understand Theo Epstein's approach to building a championship team.

I stole my dad's copy of Moneyball and read it cover to cover as fast as I could. then I read it again. I quoted it at people. I called my mom up to explain how great it was that the Oakland A's had been able to draft Nick Swisher as late in the first round of the 2002 draft as they did. I came to regard RBIs and wins on a pitcher's record as laughably outdated relics of another time. I developed a huge fucking crush on Billy Beane. I still possibly aspire to be the general manager of a hockey team. we'll see about that one. I have a crush on Marco Scutaro's on-base percentage, so you can draw your own conclusions.

I've basically spent this summer so far forming opinions on baseball and baseball players, and it's great. I was coming in with very few specific prejudices (fuck the Yankees, fuck the Rays, Southern California teams are generally bullshit) and almost no players I was really attached to. last time I was big into baseball, the Pirates' 2-5 hitters were Jack Wilson, Aramis Ramirez, Jason Kendall and Brian Giles. I love Freddy Sanchez to the point of tears now, but his time in Pittsburgh was kinda during what my friend Em would call "my black hole years."

so I've kinda just jumped in and started loving everyone this year, everyone who hasn't pissed me off right away by a) wearing a Yankees jersey and not being named Nick Swisher, b) being a bitchass, or c) being fat. (but Evan Meek and Kevin Youkilis are the good kind of fat, see.) I'm fucking fascinated by Tim Lincecum, his weird-ass delivery and how his scrawny little body doesn't blow up with the force of it. I actually gawk in awe at Barry Zito's curveball, when it works. I watch Neil Walker dig in at the plate and I hold my breath and pray, because I believe in him like he's a fucking miracle. I groan and fall off the couch when Garrett Jones chases pitches in the dirt. I want desperately, for reasons that would take a real essay to explain, for Bobby Crosby to succeed, even though he does it about once a month.

I'm back in love with baseball. I decided to do it, back in October as Papelbon was melting down, but I kind of lost control of the magnitude. I didn't mean to adopt West Coast teams. and I didn't mean to end up rooting for the Braves to go to the World Series for the sake of Tim Hudson (and that McCann kid, he's the good kind of fat too). but that's how I know I'm really into it - it's carrying me now, this baseball thing. I feel like it could carry me out to San Francisco and up to Toronto and down to Texas if I'd let it.


but there's nothing - never will be - like Fenway on game day.