Northampton Independent Film Festival 2008

So I'm back.
Back on-line, tapping away exploits & phobias
& back in Western MA for the weekend.

Good ole NoHo...
remember the early 90's & the Angela Scalisi weekends?
I'd work @ the convenient store/deli in upstate NY,
saving up my moolah
sloshing through junior year @ IC.
And then when the requisite monies were accumulated,
I'd take the 8 hr + busride down to the valleys & pinecones
of Holyoke, Northampton, Amherst...
my weekend hopes building like well-laid tindersticks
w/ each rehearsed mile.
Practicing the perfect words & moves in my head,
crammed at an odd angle in a compact seat
(a lucky trip if no one beside me);
the smells of amonia & recycled air & Pepsi,
glass bottles rolling across the aisle.

I had such a thing for Angela Scalisi...
and even though it was never consumated
(because I was an idiot)
(because I was a coward)
(because I was young & naive)
(because I didn't man up)
(because because because)
I consider her my first great love.
Looking back now,
it was a puppy crush
but man!
The hours & angst I invested!
And to travel all that way down here...
only to be repeatedly stifled...

"She only hooks up w/ someone when you're here, Ted"
someone once told me.
And she would.
Older, loser ex-punkers or
brash, bronzed bucks.
I can analyze it now & see it for what it was...
after summer & months of courtship,
of hanging out every day...
sharing so much...
except that one thing (even embarassed by the one stray kiss)
She was prompting me to step up to the plate,
but me?
I was the good guy.
I was the milksop.
Sitting in the kitchen while she got felt up on the parlor couch.
What kind of man allows that?
I was lax.
I should have thrown punches!

Yet we'd always end up in her bed,
so close...
and I couldn't do it.
I couldn't make that pass,
brushed that hair, or cheek.
That overwhelming fear of rejection.
How ugly I always felt.

Oh yes. Such swell memories here. A batch of poorly executed
Saturday nights & early Sunday departures.

And walking around this early, overcast AM in downtown NoHo,
where nothing's changed...
the same CD shops, the same sidestreet bookstores &
homeless under the bridge...w/ their backpacks the size of well-fed infants...
The band fliers on every free newspaper bin,
like Allston in the hills.
I have come so far yet done nothing w/ this life of mine.
I am more alone than ever.
And that is my penance, my decision...
allowing the baldness & belly & burns
to place me in this plenum of my own insecurities.

There is nothing here but nostalgia...
yet this time, I have accomplishment!
The "SACRILEGE" music video is playing across the street @ 3:45PM
in the same Academy of Music that I sat many years ago.
Listening to Andrew Mudge & The 5? 6? Burn Sisters...
talk about their movies--their careers.

I don't delude myself in thinking that they'll be any intensive Q&A
after the Shorts Package (of which the Walter Sickert video is included)...
no one will be envying me.
But I really wanted this one.
"AERO" may come later...& I can prolong that adulation...
but this weekend I have returned older, never wiser...
but intact & productive.

This isn't for Angela. This isn't for my so-called life.
This is for progress.

OK, finish the peppermint tea.
Put more money in the meter.
And get your VIP tix, you!