cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Heartbreak is forever So this last fucking week. Last week I was sleeping late and I woke up and grabbed my phone and checked my email kinda half asleep and I had this email from an editor at the NYT that was asking if I was available to cover the Amtrak crash outside of Ch@rlottesville. I had no fucking clue what he was talking about, so naturally I said 'yes, I'm on it right now.' Turns out that a train carrying the entire Republican caucus from the House and Senate ran into a garbage truck 20 minutes from where I am sitting right now. My friend's nephew was on the truck and was critically injured. So I'm running around covering this thing for the New York Times and I realized pretty quickly that this was track used by the Buckingh@m Branch RR. The BB RR leases the track from CSX. Over a year ago, I started my own investigation into this particular railroad because they have (or lease) a bridge in town that is totally fucking falling apart. Like, the retaining wall is literally rotting and you could stick a screwdriver all the way through the wood and hit soil. So I FOIAed the most recent inspection report from DOT. And started a whole investigation. And it wasn't until this past December that I got a letter back from DOT confirming that no federal inspection report has EVER been filed for that RR bridge, which is completely illegal. My immediate move when I finally got this letter was to try to get an assignment. I went to the news editor at the local paper and showed her the letter and told her that if this one bridge wasn't inspected, probably the whole fucking track for 150 miles was probably never inspected because CSX thinks that the BB Branch is doing it and vice versa. And she nodded and smiled and photocopied my letter but never gave me a green light. I tried to blow the whistle. I really tried. I put this shit out on Twitter and on FB and on the radio. But then weeks later, this fucking crash happened. And as I investigated it for the NYT I discovered that the signal at that crossing had been broken for months. The gates would go down for no fucking reason for hours on end with no train coming. They trained everyone there to ignore the signal, and then a chartered train for Congress came along that nobody was expecting (this track was for freight only, going about 12 MPH) at 70 mph and wiped out a garbage truck that they had taught to dodge around the gates. I knew something like this was going to happen. And I tried. I tried to hard. And now a man is dead because I didn't try hard enough. I've been all fucked up for days over this. A few days ago I turned in my application to Harvard for a year-long fellowship. And I applied for a few other things. Then this morning I woke up to an email from an assistant to the President of the Univers1ty of V1rgina. She was head-hunting me to be the #2 editor at UVA's alumni magazine. Yes, I think I would love that job. A pretty good salary in my hometown writing for a magazine doing something kinda similar to what I was doing for Sm1thonian for two years. We have a phone call in the morning a few hours earlier than I would prefer to wake up for. My really good friend Jeff said it tonight at a concert we were both at. He said, "if you take this, they have you. You can't do any of the other awesome shit that you do." And that's true. Jeff was the lead singer of a sorta big deal goth band, 'The L@st Dance.' He is one of the few friends I have who understands what it's like to be kind of a big deal and then back off and stop doing it. I have around $200 in the bank and then nothing I can bank on coming in for the immediate future. I'm owed $500 for research on a court case related to stuff I'm an expert on. And $300 for film related work. Then there's $800 that I should get late next month for articles that I need to actually buckle down on. A local paper owes me $200. But I got nothing for sure when this $200 runs out very soon. Man, I'm fucking sick of this. A salary sounds pretty fucking good to me. And I think I'd get between $52k-$60k for this magazine gig. And it would be pretty cool to move up into an editorial position. I would be writing a feature in every issue and handling a few columns while editing work on smaller stories by a stable of freelancers. I'd like to prove that I can be an editor. I think they came to me because I have a track record of doing big things for national and international publications. And I made this movie. I'm a rock star who is already right here in Ch@rlottesville. Tonight this chick came up and grabbed me and wanted to talk to me for a long time and then had me type my name into her phone so she could friend me on FB. Loryn. Another rock star. Plays electric violin for a few respected bands. Super hot. I've seen her on OK Cupid. Same name as Lauren, who has been a ghost for the last week since she had to go to LA for four days. Not gonna lie, I've been mentally undressing Loryn for the last year. She models. If one of these people who owes me money will pay me in the next few days, I'm gonna ask her out. I'm tired of treading water. Barely making it from one month to the next. I feel like I should take the first life ring thrown to me. If they offer me this job, that will happen in the next month. Meanwhile, this fellowship at Harvard won't tell me whether I am in the running until April. Then it would start in September. If I knew for sure Harvard was a yes then I would be perfectly willing to limp along til September. But I'm gonna have to make that bet within a month. And then there's the fact that a textbook company is interested in booking me and my film for a 50 stop tour at universities all over north America with a $1k speakers fee and a percentage of the back end on the film for every stop. But that shit is taking fucking forever to work out. If I take this UVA magazine gig, the tour is off. So I don't know what the fuck to do with my life. And I have a really fucking weird life. I wake up to the New York Times asking me to cover a train crash and then I get there and realize that it was my fault. And this is almost normal. Every month, something new like this. And with every chapter of weird shit, I have to push through it while being wholly heartbroken. It never gets any better. I stood there and looked at the trash truck in two pieces and the garbage strewn everywhere and a rooster was crowing and I knew that I could have stopped this and a man was dead and he didn't have to be dead and I missed her so much it felt like I was bleeding. It never gets any better. I wanted to go go home to her and put my head on her lap and cry. But there's no such place as home. And I hardly exist any more. I'm a fragment of a ghost, finding and writing what a handful of people need to be done. I'm a utility. Who I am and what I need doesn't matter. I am a dead thing. Heartbreak is forever. 1:19 a.m. - 2018-02-06 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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