rolling rock and rock 'n roll.

today, as i awoke, happens to be christmas. december 25, 2008 will soon come and go. upon first opening my eyes this morning, the frost from the window refracting prisms of light, i had a vision not of elves and a jolly man in red, but of an old friend.
i recall my first thought on this christmas day was of daniel jacobitz, and how someday i hope he is back close at hand. i was dreaming of him shortly before i awoke, some vision of a new age hair metal band complete with pyrotechnics.
this all must have started last night as i was quietly pacing the upper-midwestern plains in an undersized truck and bender played "the mixed tape" by jack's mannequin.
it snapped my consciousness from this time and place, removing back to another world where i was merely a boy. i thought i was a man then.
it was two summers ago and i was sleeping in my empty apartment. sunlight was streaming through the late morning open windows, the air full of pollen and the smell of fresh cut grass. daniel was asleep in my living room, or perhaps he was on the verge of waking, the detail in this circumstance was irrelevant. this is a scenario that played out daily for those three months of sun.
daniel was still a fresh face in pella then, a new man about town although he had been lurking about with steph for quite some time. anyway, each day i would walk into the living room to see him stretched out on a worn mattress, the only furniture in the room spare a pair of lawn chairs.
"the mixed tape" would always be playing in those days. it was the title track of the soundtrack for a summer full of rolling rock and rock 'n roll.
we were all still so much younger then, all though it hangs just a couple years behind me now. carefree to a fault, obsessed with band practice in the early afternoons, walks through the city as it slept, and playing cute for all the girls who were always played too good for us degenerate punk scum.
that was a summer of fist fights based off misguided ideals. nights of tom gill finger picking his acoustic between budweisers on the front porch of that large yellow victorian. there were nights in caldwell park full of frustration on reconciliation between me and that girl who will always have the largest part of my heart. there were weeks littered with chain smoke walks through the quiet blocks around the lincoln apartments with daniel, carefully pacing through all our life situations and all our thoughts on god. each day saw blood, sweat, and tears; not to mention a great deal of my personal income, poured into a group of undead cowboys who were trying to cut a record. we wanted to be famous then, or at the very least be respected, but what we gained from those days only we can really remember. most importantly, it was a summer that lasted for a lifetime, and yet it was not close to long enough.
as the leaves turned so did our hearts and minds and we lost whatever had been there before. it left like many of us did in the middle of the night from girls we would plan on never seeing again, only to run into them the next morning at a convenience store or coffee shop.
anyway, daniel is on my mind on this christmas morning, and i hope that his is filled with happiness and carolina sunshine as he sits on the eastern seaboard.