fivecats journal

Dan's Backyard: Japanese Arch
June 2005 Chapel Thrill, NC
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Day Two in Asheville. We're conspicuously avoiding the big weekend street festival in downtown Asheville this weekend (especially Christine Kane isn't playing) and have spent our night and day here thus far spending time with Seren and her friends, especially Tess Tickle's Brother and Midori's Mom. I think I mentioned a while back (can't find the entry) that meeting them for the first time was like hanging out with old, good friends that we'd known for a long time. It's still the same way.

Last night was Auction Night at a local auction house not too far from where Tess' Brother and Midori's Mom live. I actually saw a few items that I was interested in bidding on but they quickly went up beyond what I was willing to pay. Such is life.

The rest of the night was going to a Good Little Hippy restaurant for some real food to take back with us to Tess' Brother/Midori's Mom's place to have something on our stomachs to sop up some of the alcohol we were about to drink.

This afternoon was the Gem Show. Lots of interesting photographic opportunities -- that is until a very nice guy selling out his stock of tools told me that the promoters would confiscate my camera if they found me taking pictures. A bit extreme, I thought, but I put the camera away and figured I'd do the Better Safe Than Sorry thing. I got the few things I knew I needed pretty quickly; Bonn needs to return tomorrow to get what she decides overnight that she needs.

Tonight is Drag Queen Night at one of the local gay/drag clubs in town. Seren and her friends are pretty well known to a lot of the people there, so it should be a pretty cool time. (Seren says she usually has drag queens offering to buy her clothes) I'm taking my camera, although most aren't too sure about it. This will definitely be a situation where I ask permission before taking any photographs.

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Dan's Backyard: Benches by the Rock Wave
June 2005 Chapel Thrill, NC
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A quick catch-up on something I've wanted to point out to people for a while.

I've known basefinder since we were about 10 or so (I think that's right), back when we were both in a children's book discussion group at our local library. Being a military brat, he moved away after just a few years, but we kept in touch through snail mail and while we lost touch for a while, we've managed to keep in touch fairly regularly over the years. LJ has helped a lot, and when he learned that I'd lost my job back last May he started calling once a week to check up on me and just listen while I struggled to put on The Brave Face and not fall to pieces.

That is a good friend.

A few weeks ago he wrote some very insightful, thought-provoking entries over at his blog. One was titles "Why blog?" (You can read my -- surprise! -- lengthy response to that simple question there as well). Another was on why he has the people he does on his LJ Friends list. Another was titled "But Scott, you're not religious. Why do you pray?"

If you're in a self-reflective mood at all, I urge you to wander over to Scott's journal and read his entries. Then comment.

As for the image above, this is the area where the Rock Wave photograph was taken. To the right of the statue, sitting on the top of the wall, there's a clump of leaves. Behind that is where the wave now hides. It was taken only about 5 or 6 weeks from the first picture, but the trees have already grown that much and have obscured it from view.

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Dan's Backyard: Sun Mosaic #2
June 2005 Chapel Thrill, NC
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Left work around one o'clock to go set up for the weekend's show. Along the way I got a paniced call from The Boy wanting money -- something we'd just given him the day before. Turned out he was afraid he'd go through that money before the end of the month so he wanted more money from us today.

I hung up on him and turned the phone off.

Set up was longer than normal for some reason. Probably due to the heat, me not eating anything all day long and getting dehydrated. It was hard to concentrate and work out all of the puzzle pieces in my head.

Back home it was jewelry cleaning and packing. Bonn is still at it; I've dropped from exhaustion.

Luckily, I'm very good at being able to sleep just about anywhere. Like at shows, for instance.

The picture above is the same sun mosaic from a previous entry a week ago or so, only from a different angle. drood really liked it so I purposely tried to get at least one more shot of it.

Of course, right now the image isn't showing up and I'm just too tired to fight with it any further.

Have a safe weekend everyone.

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Dan's Backyard: Water Pitcher
May 2005 Chapel Thrill, NC
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It's just after 7am and the phone rings. Time was when fear would rise up in me, convinced that the call was from someone in Maryland saying something had happened to one of my parents or my brother. Now, though, I know who it is. The Why is still a question, but it's rarely good.

"Hello."

"Hi. I've got it all figured out," says The Boy's confident voice over the phone.

"Fine," I say. It's too early in the morning for all of the previous day's anger to be remembered, so I'm just playing along. "What do you have figured out?"

"School," he says. "How does this sound: film studies!"

"Film studies?" I ask.

See, I majored in film studies at the U of MD back when they actually had a film department. My senior year, when I could actually take any and all of the film studies classes I wanted to, ALL of the film studies professors went off on sabatical and I was left with TV classes. This not only twarted my goal of becomming a Snobby Film Critic, but taught me not to trust institutions of higher education.

Besides, there was one major problem with that major that I'd overlooked.

"There's no job at the end of that degree," I say flatly. From experience. This is something The Boy knows.

"What about 'Director'?" he asks.

I shake my head, a motion I know he can't see, but I can't help myself. After all, he's 19, not 9.

"You'd have to move to Hollywood and hope to find work in the studios, but you'd be a contractor. You wouldn't have a steady job and you wouldn't have health benefits."

"Oh," he says, after the slightest of pauses. "Then I have no idea."

Despite my statement of "Don't make the same mistake that I made when I got my degree and had no job at the end of it", I decide to, patiently, re-explain another part of our long and apparently wasted conversation on the drive down Saturday night. Go to the college's Career Councillor and ask them for help. They'll give you a long checklist of likes and dislikes to score from and give you an idea of some careers you might be suited for. Do this now, during the summer, while you have time and they have the time to take with you. Explain your needs and see what you come up with.

This, apparently, does not sound as earth-shattering as being a Director, however.

"Have you been up all night?" I ask.

Far too awake sounding he says, "No. I just got up."

We hang up.

Bonn calls to me, just barely awake. "What did he want?" she asks, not even asking who it was.

I tell her. Her first response questions his sanity. Her second response questions if he's been up all night.

*sigh*

Really, I do have a life of my own. I've seen some good movies on DVD lately thanks to NetFlix, read several good books on CD while driving or making bangles and I've posted lots of pictures up to my flickr account. We've done other things apart from dealing with The Boy's incessant neediness. It just doesn't seem that way.

Probably time to change all that.

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Dan's Backyard: Updated Stone Bench
June 2005 Chapel Thrill, NC
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Saturday was a long, busy day.

In the early afternoon we drove back up to Chapel Thrill to discuss some things with Dan. While Dan and his girlfriend and Bonn were discussing some jewelry modifications I made a quick run through the garden and took a series of images of some of the things I'd missed the first time through (like a pond in the middle of the back with a 6 foot stone fountain sticking up out of it), some different angles on things I'd photographed the first time through (including some extra shots of the sun mosaic) and at least one update. That would be the one above.

The Stone Bench (last seen just a few entries back) has -- if memory serves me correctly -- zoysia grass planted on it. It's apparently a comfortable, hearty grass that doesn't need much cutting and is good for sitting and walking on.

The rest of the afternoon and evening were taken up with The Boy.

My own theories on The Boy's Week Home go along these lines: Freed from the oppressive thoughts of daily survival (Where am I going to get a job? Where am I going to get money for rent? For food? For medical supplies?) his mind was free to obsess over something else. He settled on the The Perfect Amanda and how he Couldn't Get Her Out of His Mind. Add on top of that his own sense of failure at having to move back with his parents after a school-year's worth of being on his own and he was headed for a boil over.

(There are, of course, other extenuating circumstances. Those remain part of a story that's really not mine to tell, so I'll just leave it at that)

Luckily we've been through this before so we knew more-or-less how to deal with it when it happened. Once we were back home there was an attempt at talking, but The Boy wasn't happy with anything we had to say so he stormed out of the house and went up to the studio.

About 10 minutes later he came back in and said he wanted to go back to Wilmington. I'm not sure if he was surprised at us agreeing on the spot, but that's what we did. A few hours later he and I were in a car driving down I-40.

I had brought along two short books on CD with the thought that I'd be listening to one of them on the stony-silenced way down and then starting the other one on the way back. Instead, I made an initial attempt at talking to him just after we left and he surprised me by being very willing to talk. We spent almost the entire ride talking.

I attempted to guide him, through questions, to some of the underlying, more root issues behind some of his problems. I think he was able to see some of them. (I hope, at least) I then moved it towards some avenues for solutions. I tried to get him to see the necessity in doing some basic things (writing a list of Things I Want; a list of Things To Do; mapping out this week with Things To Do; where to look for jobs, etc.) and while he said he saw some sense in them, I don't know if he'll actually do them.

When we got down there he said he was hungry and asked me to stop off at a Burger World. Instead, I offered to take him (and what little money he had) to a grocery store. He appreciated the trip there and the ride back to his apartment with groceries for the week.

I have to say, it was one of our best Father-Son outings. Very strange, but very good.

He's called two or three times today, asking in a slightly paniced voice how to deal with some mail that's come in for him. I've explained them all to him, given him some idea of what they mean, what needs to be done and what else he needs to do to get himself situated for the long run. I think it's all slowly starting to make sense to him now.

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