at this point, i shrug.

and for the three of you who read this (and the cat):

HEAR THIS (you beatniks)!

i am rafe davis, proletariat, one of the toughs, a kosmos. i am nineteen and bohemian, coffee and women, junkyards and guitars, marijuana, art and leather jackets. streetlights guide me and sometimes when i'm down by the river the road and the lights seem to go on forever; my car has inertia and sometimes i don't think i can ever slow down from sixty-five - this stone could roll forever.

guess who's gonna go see the pixies sunday.





!

i'm 19. i'm going to graduate with my degree in english next year. and while admittedly i'm still a young 'un, i have to look forward. i do not want to raise my kids in a country this backwards. we are bent on consumption, obsessed with profit, and run by a bunch of facsistic theocratic authoritarianists. we have to work 50 hours a week just to make ends meet. my generation is not going to have any sort of social services by the time we hit retirement (which is now 75, if you didn't know). if i get sick, i'm knackered. no health insurance. the schools are an utter, utter failure. the economy is going downhill. we are in the largest depression since the 30s. we've lost more jobs in the last five years than in the great depression. this country has no future but death, destruction, and decay. we are fighting a war the world is opposed to, and there's a good chance that i and most of my peers will be drafted. there is no political freedom. this is not a democracy (it never was, anyway) and it doesn't look like it will ever be. we now have to speak our minds in "free speech zones."



it's a big shit, and i want out.


wow, that was negative.

i moved into the house in avondale with jared. productivity has shot through the roof. this is awesome.

amy and i are official now. i still miss nancy.

the new song (Twenty) is finished. got trashed and recorded the vocals last night in the kitchen. jared and i did harmonies for the backing vocals. good times. the chorus goes like this:

we could get in my car
drive away real far
we could even go to mexico
you've been burning in my heart like a fire on the freeway
we gotta get away gotta get away gotta go (Go go go, go go go)

it's total RAWK. i shall upload it soon.



last night after going to bed at 3:50 i woke to the sound of jody giving jared head. they were both kind of wasted.

the contents of our fridge: eggs, celery, ketchup, Jungle Juice, and a whole lot of beer.

this is the life.

This is what the world looks like when I'm stoned. Soft focus, hazy light, a little blurry, and a whole lot warmer.



JD:





Meg & Adam



Meg



Amy standing in a doorway in Over the Rhine around 1 am.



Amy being sophisticated





Modrad, my namesake



Santi, Julie's little brother



Neal's roomie



House in Lexington



Motel in Lexington



Modrad again!

jared drinking.







amy coquetting.

so work and school have me ready to quit them again. work's not so bad, it's mainly school.



megan asked me if i liked amy. i said yes.

i don't want to have some stupid drama with nancy, because i love nancy a lot. thing is, we're going to be apart for more time than we're together, and we're eighteen and i don't know what else, i mean, i don't want to screw things up with nancy just because i couldn't keep my pants zipped. nor do i want to mislead amy. nor do i want a one night stand, we all know how the last one turned out. eh.



flaming lips.



everything's exploding.

I've been hanging out with the captain's quarters kids a lot. the Captain's quarters being Megan, Jody, and Amy. and jared. but i hang out a lot with jared anyway. i feel like such a bohemian. we go from apartment to bar to studio and we talk about stuff. jared's starting his own art movement called "Neo-Romanticism." i told him he's full of shit. he and megan are the the artists. i'm the writer. amy's the architect. we need a photographer, and then we'll have our own little art circle. there's even steve the communist.



So i miss you, a lot. i took a nap today and slept with Good Guy. something i haven't done since i was four. i thought you'd find that funny.



i got a handout today from Jews for Jesus. it's about what's hip, and having a personal relationship with the ol JC is what's hip. even for jews.



school's crazy. so much reading.



tomorrow is mami's birthday, so we're going down to ol' Lexington. no one's there, anymore. all my friends have scattered to the wind. kind of sad.



it's kind of weird how suddenly i'm surrounded by attractive women who seem to be interested in me. maybe it's cause for the last nine months i haven't really gone anywhere without nancy. actually, that's probably why. i kind of am enjoying it.

when the end comes, i want a skull. i want the orange of fire and i want the sound of water to be me. and then i will flow.

july has come and gone.



so has angst.



i guess i could be cliche and say that i've learned a lot.

i told nancy the other day that we're adults. it's starting to feel true.



i played my first show in forever three nights ago. it was fantanstic. this incredably dirty basement, packed with about forty people. i was standing in front of a washing machine, just me and my guitar. there was one light bulb. i was sick, i was smoking, i had just taken a slug of ouzo (greek firewater, dig?), i was singing, and guess what? they fuckin' loved it. for five songs they were all mine and it was wonderful, even better than i remembered it. we forty odd people in this dingy basement were together, united in music and word. the basement of jared's apartment building. i was dressed all in white. people came up to me and shook my hand. that's never happened before. i want to do it again, and soon.



t.a.

twelve bars of bobby d.

"i saw you making love with him, you forgot to close the garage door..."

he's so silly.

so california was a blast. i saw the badlands of utah. the flatlands of kansas and colorado. denver was really nice, i liked it a lot. i stayed in a seedy little hotel in the mexican part of town. there was an empty bottle of lube in the bureau. the rockies just kind of loom out at you, with no foothills or warning, right behind Denver. the towns there look super european, with roundabouts and fir trees and germanic style houses. the parks are clean and neat, everything is modern. the I-70 curves insanely, the semi's go about 35 mph, everyone else 65 mph. there are runaway truck ramps on the down side of hills that are either super steep uphill grades or big pits of gravel. colorado after the rockies is wrinkled hills and then it gets very arid and then it becomes desert (and then you're in Utah). Utah is like where Bud lives in Kill Bill. except with mesas. and massive massive valley's. and dry lake beds. Nevada was more of the same. i drove through Utah and Nevada averaging 85 mph. the roads are flat and long and straight, you pass another car every thirty minutes. spent the night in Ely, Nevada in this 8-room hotel owned by a old german woman. the rooms didn't have telephones, and while in good shape, were straight out of the 60s.
sacramento was carlos, flora, and naira. they took me on a tour, showed me the sites, and we went out to eat indonesian. i got food poisoning and was out for a day. i recovered sufficiently to drive to san diego, by way of San Francisco and Highway 1. i stopped for breakfast in san francisco and inadvertantly parked in a truck loading zone. the car was towed, $220 to get it out. that was tense. Highway one was beautiful, but slow. i did pull over a lot to check out the views. i really like the pacific. i saw a lighthouse and a seal, two things i'd never seen before.
i drove through LA at night, around 9 PM. somewhat stressful, but not that bad. kind of trippy, actually, because i was listening to Radiohead and watching this river of lights flow (yellow one way, red the other) through fourteen lanes. I spent the night and next few days with Megs (who was so awesome as to let me crash at her place). she took me to the beach, introduced me to her friends, took me record shopping in San Diego, and, best of all, took me to Pedro's taco stand. holy god. i haven't had tacos that good since Jesse's Pronto Quick back in texas.
from San Diego i drove to vegas where i walked the strip. i crossed the hoover dam, threw a quarter in and made a wish, and ended up in arizona. i had a really good breakfast that next day, and wrote several postcards. went on to albuquerque. it was by far the most unfriendly town i went to. from there to Tulsa. i really hated Oklahoma. it was like all the inbred hillbillies from missouri went and founded their own state. oh yeah, i couldn't rent a room in a "respectable" hotel as i was 18, and you have to be 21 to rent from them. so i stayed in a really seedy dive with blood spray on the ceiling and a door that had been battered down. there was free porn on the TV, and no gideon's bible. i was really missing nancy by this point, so i drove from tulsa to cincinnati in a day, getting home a day early. she flipped out because i suprised her.

so now i'm back to more mundane things. like going to eira's pot luck tonight. score

dick dale.

coolest goddamn thing i have ever seen.

guns
coffee
women
work
blood
beer
rock n roll music
junkyards
rivers
docks
well-written words

------

school. first day back was today. not terrible, not terrible.
nothing hard at all, except for maybe bio. but that's dr. conover, so i have all the help i need. i'm gonna get that motherfucking degree if it kills me.

oh yeah.

party at my place tomorrow, my parents are out of town.

show up after three. extra points if you bring a musical instrument or weed.

(That's hannah pretending to play the drums....)


Miko had her own kind of fun... peeling paint!

Last year, people thought crime was getting out of hand when a man was raped at gunpoint on Probasco. Since then, the campus police have had their powers increased, the jurisdiction of campus police was expanded to include all areas one mile from campus, and crime still remains a problem.
At 1:30 in the morning of Saturday, September third, several friends and I left an apartment on Riddle road and found the intersection of Martin Luther King and Clifton occupied by nine squad cars of both Cincinnati and Campus Police, a police S.U.V., a fire truck, an ambulance, and a garbage truck. The focus of this spectacle was on a small white two-door sedan and its occupants. The driver was speaking to an officer, while several other policemen surrounded the car.
Curious about all the commotion, my friends and I paused on a small hill in Burnet woods alongside Clifton Ave. Several moments passed by, and the driver was led to the rear of the S.U.V. A few minutes more and the stretcher was rolled out of the back of the ambulance and placed near the white sedan. A police cruiser blocked the view of the stretcher. Two paramedics removed a large object from the car and placed it on the stretcher, covering it with a white sheet and returned the stretcher to the back of the ambulance. The ambulance remained parked, while the officers and paramedics talked to each other for some minutes. Then suddenly, as if a signal had been given, all returned to their vehicles and dispersed. My friends and I returned home, puzzled.
The next morning, we scanned the local newspapers and the U.C. department of Public Safety’s website and crime list server but there was no mention of the previous nights incident. All that had happened last night, according to the newspapers, was that a man in walnut hills was shot in his car, some two miles away.
A few more days passed, and I had an opportunity to speak to a couple of University Police Officers. I asked them if they knew what happened that night. Neither of the two knew anything about it. When I asked if a disturbance that size was noteworthy, the officer replied with “You’d be surprised how often these sorts of things happen.” He told me that the University department of Public Safety keeps records of its activity and suggested I contact the department.
However, the department of Records did not reply to any queries and the events of the early morning of September third remain a mystery. It is a strange world when an incident so obviously noteworthy can simply go un-noted. If an event involving at least ten police officers is not uncommon, imagine what sort of disturbance would be considered extraordinary!
If you would like to contact the U.C. Department of Public Safety, it can be reached at 556-3911 or by e-mail at ucpd@uc.edu.

so yeah.



i am a man, now. a small man, but a man none the less, and i wouldn't be half the man i am if it wasn't for my dad.



dad turns fifty-one friday, he's gonna come to the show. i want him to get on stage with us and sing "wild thing" or something...i gotta think of something to get him.

something i only really realized this past year. he's such a young buck, but with such a wide range of experience. the greatest person i know. if i was the kind of person who had heros, he'd be my biggest one. he's been a great role model and father. he's one of the few people i can think of who i would cry for if he died. he's lead this epic life, from growing up in kentucky in the sixties to being a philosopher/teacher/bracero in texas. the whole time, he's been struggling for everything he believes in. life just keeps grinding against him, but he shoulders against it and stands his ground. he's a strong man in many ways: emotionally, physically, intellectually, and spiritually. no one i know has stood by their beliefs as much as he has. no one i know is as honest as he is. no one i know is as good natured as he is. and i don't admire anyone nearly as much as i do him.



happy birthday, dad.

more than two weeks since my last post. things are moving slowly. if you couldn't already tell.



nearly died today. semi in my blind spot, switching lanes. i hate my car, sometimes. moving over, patrick (in the back seat) "Whoa! " looking over, and seeing the headlights + wheels six inches away. swerved, nearly lost control. 75 mph. smooth and calm, after the fact. it fucked with olivia, though.

thoughts that went through my mind. in exact order:



Fuck.



Hold on to the car.



looking for a job. i need money. and something to do, you're right.



the band, things are different. chris is singing for us now, i want to see how that goes. we also have up to four gigs a month at this pizza joint/venue called Big Papa's (where size does matter). this could be good. i don't hate it anymore, we aren't fighting all the time.



and my dad definently knows i'm a stoner.

i need to stop doing this whole staying-up-till-two thing. it's not doing me any good.



not much has been happening. car is still dead, etc. i'm reading Tropic of Cancer. on nancy's request. it's not too bad, i'm enjoying it.



found some old writing i'd done, it was stacked and stapled neatly on top of my speaker, along with the un-sorted rekkids. it's mostly mediocre with the odd moment of breath-taking genius. but mostly mediocre.



finally getting into surf guitar. learned a couple of songs, "wipeout" (of course!) and "miserlou." dick dale rocks so much...



guilt disappears in a haze of pot smoke.



love & flow.

spent yesterday with nancy. good times. i rode my bike to her place, and we watched movies and cooked. went to sitwells, and then home. she met my family i think she and olivia are in love with each other. it´s great.



i gotta get ready for the outdoors. the reason i rode my bike was cause the old ford bit the bullet and went down last night. dad and i are gonna try to go fix it. joy.



julie´s show is tonight, i´m gonna try to go. if i have money. oh boy. i´m also looking for a job. before we go fix the car, i´m gonna go over to mr. isfert´s, and see if he can reccomend anyone to me to apprentice to as a carpenter.



oh yeah, turns out the citation, it´s a 5-6 point offense, and that a court appearence is mandatory. this sucks. oh well.



sing me a song, sing me to sleep...

craziness, these last 24 hours. sad is sierra, i don't think this was totally what either of us expected. but i think it's the right thing. think long term, think long term. sad is bekki. i went down to lexington today (on two hours of sleep) to see her and say goodbye. she goes back to school sunday. and i don't think i was doing her (or myself) right by stringing things on like that. it was kinda dick, really. i felt terrible. she and mom (not my mom but Mrs. Dundon, the only other person than my mom i call mom) cut my hawk off. for old times sake. the first night i met bekki, she cut my hair. happy is nancy. things look good. very good. i quit smoking. i finished things off with a cigar this morning on the way to lexington.



i was zoned out thinking about stuff (last night; listening to lou reed's berlin with nancy and sierra, depressed, the parking lot and the heady orange glow, what i was gonna say to bekki) on tates creek in lexington when i realized a cop was behind me (he'd been there for two miles). it freaked me out, and i panicked and pulled into the median. at 75 mph. he yelled at me at first, cause i was a stupid kid, but he was really nice after we calmed down. i got a citation for refusing to yield to an emergency vehicle. he and i tried to push the car out, but failed. i had to get towed out of there, this young guy pulled me out for free. which is cool cause i had not nearly enough money for a tow. i got very muddy.



this morning when i work up at 8 (three hours after dropping nancy off), it was -2 degrees. insane, insane. things need to calm down.

it snowed a whole bunch. as in, a whole, whole bunch. we're talking feet here, in some places. my car got stuck. in someone's yard. i though there was a driveway. so sue me. so that's why i'm spending the night at taylor's. though i hung out at nancy's for a good while. i hope i didn't get on her mom's nerves too much. we made cookies. peanut butter chocolate chip cookies that ruled. oh yeah.



i've gotta work out this whole road thing.



Q:



1) am i going?

2) who with?

3) how long?

4) where the fuck am i going to get the money?



A:



1) Dunno. see four.

2) i really dunno about this one. one with the road, maybe. maybe. i hope not.

3) see four. but i'm guessing about four years.

4) job. drugs are out of the question. morals got in the way. plus, it'd be hard to explain to the parentals how i suddenly have a couple of grand.



as jimi said: "i know what i want but i just don't know how to go about getting it..."



love.

uuh... well...stuff's been going on. y'know how it is. nothing's changing, for the most part.

tonight i hung out with nancy and hit up the chronic. good times. nancy's so sweet. and she looked damned sexy tonight.



since the buzz closed, there's a clique formed at Highlands coffeeshop of buzz expatriates. i went there with sierra a couple of nights ago. she spent the whole time on my lap.



confusion.

in true Hi-Fi tradition (wink wink nod nod coughthisisforyoumegscough), the top five things that my parents don't know but that i should tell them:



5) i smoke cigarettes. although, i'm thinking about smoking cigars. cringe all you want. i enjoy them.



4) the full story of girls in my life. they're totally in the dark about this one. dad perchance would understand. mom, never.



3) mmm. i smoke marijuana. my mom knows that i have in the past, but my dad doesn't . i'm pretty sure he doesn't, anyway. *



2) how exactly much living with them goes against every principle i hold dear. i love them to death, i don't wanna mooch off them at all. yeh yeh, i'm only 18 and they're my parents. but i'm 18. if i'm to be an adult, i should be able to fend for myself. i really resent not having a job. stewie offered me a spot moving into the new house. at a suprisingly affordable rate.



1) my utter aimlessness in life. i mean, the way i try my damndest at whatever i'm doing, but i don't particularly mind one way or another (though i do care). that's something either of them would have a hernia trying to wrap their heads around.



* i'm gonna ask my dad to smoke pot with me sometime. at least after i'm off of probation, and hopefully after i've moved out or whatnot. i'm not sure how he'd react, or how valid this would be.

now playing: Radiohead - the National Anthem



got up at three, someone called. went job hunting. on sunday. bright, i know. however, there's a chance that i may be a pizza delivery tech for papa john's...(snowcrash!) i smoked the last of the 'dro with kim. went to miriam's with patrick.



i reflected some on the past week. you're just another beautiful thing that was destroyed by the way things work.



that which does not crack is ground into dust / the person you fell in love with might not be around anymore / and it's just something you have to come to grips with.



sayonara.