Education | johnozed

Another cold day. Sunny and cold. Out and about, in and out and now I am in. But enough about that. I got two comments for yesterday’s entry. Of course it was Annemarie and Harpy, but they count. They were confounded by the fact that I am taking a break from writing this here blog at the end of the month. I haven’t decided exactly what it is I will do. Like I wrote last night, it could be for a day, a week or a couple of months. I could have also mentioned that it could be an intermittent thing.

Meaning that I might post something every other day, if at all. I might just post photos. So you see the whole thing hasn’t been figured out and anything is possible. I’m not even sure if I will meet the 500 word quota. I have shown that I could throw down 500 words with no problem on a daily basis. There are other things going on and I just need a break. A change will do me good and perhaps when I return it won’t be so much navel gazing. Like I said, anything is possible.

When I play guitar after not playing for a while, when I get back to it after shaking off the rust, occasionally there is a new, slightly different technique. Hopefully that will be that way for writing. The gears are grinding down and some lubrication is in order. I was surprised by the fact there was not a peep regarding no more cigarettes, no more diet soda and no more Ocean Spray/Apple & Eve juices. I am grateful for the concern about the state of flux this here blog may or may not be in.

And fear not, there are over 2,000 entries posted. If you’d like you can go through the trough and drop me a line, saying this was a good one, this one sucked, this one needs some work. Much like Jimmy Seltzer (aka Peter Pepsi, aka RC Koala, aka Peter Kehoe, aka Nick Colas) would do when I was still working at the cigar shack. I do miss those brief intermittent chats with the aforementioned character and I certainly hope he is well. Texts were sent but went unanswered so it is entirely likely that I have fallen off their radar. I am out of sight so it stands to reason that I am out of mind.

There was an article on the New York Times website yesterday about how hard it is to get the most entry level job if you do not have a 4 year college degree. I related to that and posted a comment, a comment which had 175 recommendations when I last checked before the pay wall came up restricting my access. You have 10 free articles to read a month but whether a month starts at the beginning of the month or merely 30 days after reading the first article, remains to be seen.

I do not regret ending my education after high school. After all- I hated school from day one, from kindergarten to the last day of high school. How I got through those years, I’ll never know.

I did ask my friends on a Facebook page if anyone was going to see Port St. Willow on Friday night at the Mercury Lounge. One guy replied and said he was not going but wouldn’t mind reading a review of it. That is cool, an assignment of sorts, something I have been hoping for since 2005. Of course it comes near the end but it’s better than not coming at all.

Can’t seem to post pictures tonight. A foreboding perhaps?

Fuck forebodings!
01 The Boxer

A day off and it’s been somewhat busy. After shaking off the strange dream of me trying to kill Rosemary’s Baby I got out of bed and started my day. I woke up with I Can See For Miles by the Who in my head.

A shower, a shave, some breakfast and coffee and soon I was off to the bibliothèque to find out what the hell is going on with my library card. I dropped off some CD’s last week and they were still on my card and in danger of being late. Bob Dylan’s Witmark Demos (Volume 9 of the Bootleg Series), The Scissor Sisters Night Work, the Jimi Hendrix Experience- Are You Experienced and the motion picture soundtrack of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The quite helpful librarian took a look and saw they were back in stock and dutifully removed them from my online library card. I love my bibliothèque.

From there it was off to the supermarket to buy groceries. Then it was home for a spell, did some cooking for tonight as well as for the week and also made some tuna salad for lunch for when I go back to work tomorrow and the days following.

Right now it looks like a major storm is approaching from the west. Yesterday, one of the bright spots in the day of staring into the abyss was seeing a hawk flying above the border of Hoboken and Weehawken, above the area called the Shades, in the shadow of Troy Tower. It took a few seconds to recognize it as a hawk and not merely a sea gull and yes it was majestic to watch. It was the high point of my day. I neglected to write about it and wish I had a taken a photograph of it.

And now it is raining.

I was also thinking about my education today and why I didn’t continue onto college. Would things have turned out differently? Probably. I had 13 years from kindergarten to senior year of high school which was mainly spent trying not to fail and get a passing grade.

I remember in junior year of high school, Sister Reginald telling the class that we were there because we had to be, but when we continued onto college there would be no one forcing us to go to class. Me being the type of person to not do something that he doesn’t want to do, had an epiphany and realized that it would be a waste of money since I loathed education and more than likely would be skipping classes.

For some reason I also remember a classmate, Don Francis being made to stand out in the hallway for something that he had done and slowly unzipping his zipper with a smile on his face while staring at me in class as he looked through the door. Don Francis left my school that year and I never saw him again though perhaps if he told me to go to college with him I might have, even though I believe he was straight.

So from Mrs. Burson to Mrs. Talamini to Sister Carla to Sister Reginald I did not enjoy school, going through it with much difficulty and when I graduated high school it made more sense to go from part time to full time working for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich where I worked in the college department and read a lot of the books on my own time that my classmates were paying hundreds of dollars to own.

Who knows, perhaps they bought the books I had already read. In any event, I don’t have any regrets about not continuing my education and with the employment situation today and knowing a few college and university graduates who are currently out of work it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference anyway.

And still I delete hundred, perhaps thousands of spam subscribers to this here blog. It’s an ongoing process and if I don’t stay on top of it, it turns into several pages of names and email addresses to be deleted. I don’t know what will happen if I do not delete, but I am more comfortable with the three subscribers that I have.

So thank you Rand, HarbCard and Denali Kid for subscribing. And I guess some recognition should also go to lazy teat Greg who reads this blog every day. Well scratch Denali Kid off the list. Just sent an email and it came back as undeliverable.