Jefke.com

so for the last 4 years i’ve been posting a little thanksgiving post on or near 9/11. this year is especially weird in that this monday will be the 5th year since 9/11, and oddly enough, the 10th anniversary-to the fucking day, of my leaving the states, and the wide eyed innocent little jeff, to go to belgium and become the embittered jefke you know and love.

ok that’s crap– i’ve been like this since i was 4 or so.

but nevertheless, it was on 9/11/96 that i got on a plane at logan airport with my friend kurt and flew to belgium. i remember clearly, ordering my second johnny walker, (free booze on international flights!) and the belgian stewardess gave me a little sly smile and said “arue you soure that you’re twentig one?”, yes i was mildly offended.

now i just feel old.

richy the quebe is either in europe or about to embark on a bidness trip with will land him in the holy land on the same day he arrived 10 years ago.

he will meet up with the man who calls himself rud and they will consume lots of duvel and remember the old days and talk about how we all have wives (well, one each so not ‘wives’–well at least i do–i think richard does. rud’s in belgium who knows what goes on over there) and kids, and houses and jobs.

—wives

–and kids

-and houses

and jobs

it’s been a long 10 years.

naturally i can’t have any real idea, but i seems that i’ve changed more in the last 10 years than the previous 10 years.

then again maybe less. between 13 and 23 there were some pretty big changes, i guess. though, i swear, it seems that between 23 and 33 the changes seem bigger.

better i suppose- but it would be interesting to an analysis…having a kid vs getting a my drivers license, etc. you know, event to event. buying house. vs turning 21…

ok, now i’m depressing myself.

13 to 23, expansion, exploration, something else that start’s with ‘e’.

23 to 33—contraction–literally, contracts--mortgages, car loans, marriages, credit cards….

stay with me now–i’m going somewhere

but with the waning of youth and the acceptance of responsibility comes the well, joys (i know, i’m as awkward saying it as you are reading it here) of responsibility. throwing down roots, making commitments, buying, keeping and amassing stuff.

as one becomes more aware of this-one becomes more attached, and more attached means more fear of loss–the soft warm underbelly of that fear (ok i could have just said ’silver lining’ but where’s the fun in that)- is thankfulness

wow this is like a sermon–just need to bring it home with a reference to jeebus

no but seriously–i’m an adult now-i’ve got adult worries, and i get the benefits of adulthood. a family, a home, debt (j/k–well i have it, but it’s not a benefit)–so in the midst of my ‘man i’m so old it’s been a lifetime since i went to over to the continent to spend 10’s of thousands of dollars on reading dead white doods and getting loaded–

---

then i think of 9/11, the attacks, the panic, the fuckeduppedness of the whole day, the not knowing if natty was ok, the not knowing of the cats at the apartment were ok, the not knowing if i was going to be ok- and then hearing, seeing, feeling the loss of all those people–the pictures by the subway, the candles, the funerals, the pit at ground zero.i am thankful, i’m thankful for what i have, and more importantly for what i haven’t lost or did not loose on that day. NYC is a fucked up place, a huge city, but really odd in that the degrees of separation are really small, maybe b/c geographically it’s somewhat small, not like LA, or mexico city, i dunno. but i’m thankful that we didn’t’ know a single person that died that day–we knew lots of people that knew lots of people that did–but we were lucky, we didn’t know anyone directly. i’m thankful for that.and god knows i’m thankful for that time in belgium too.

happy thanksgiving everyone.