Mom calls. upset. Finally opens her heart up to men for the first time in years... and has started dating. She is happier than she has been in many years. shines. Glows. Smiles even more than normal, which says a lot for her. she is a very happy and bubbly person already. How is it to talk to your mom about her dating men... having your mom call you crying because she is breaking up with a boyfriend... not as bad as one would think... its easy for me. easier than I thought. She's cycling through boyfriends now. dating. Fun stuff. she still has a tendency to date down rather than up. ‘mom, please. just keep going through them. please don't bring the bloodline down any further. For gods sake...’ I joke. ‘don't be ridiculous Fishy. You're bigger than that honey.’ ‘Mom why am I the only who seems to be bothered if you and Beaver forget who we are and where we came from and keep bringing people into our families who are beneath us...’ I bite my tongue. I regret what I say immediately. I am a monster. Listen to me. isn't it love that's all that matters? Am I wrong to want to keep the blood.... ‘people are not beneath people because of money Fishy. you know better.’ ‘well I'm not talking about money here mom. You know that...’

‘Mom study history. Whole kingdoms have been brought down because of someone marrying the wrong person. that's all I'm saying. just please bear that in mind. We were raised a certain way. we came from a certain breed. Why am I the only one that remembers that?’ ‘honey you think too much about that. beaver is happy. don't pester the boy for that. don't ever talk this way to your brother.’ ‘mom he eats white bread and yellow mustard for gods sake....’ I'm an idiot I think... ‘honey your bother would eat like that no matter who he married... things like that are not important to Beaver. He doesn’t have the same tastes as you. there is nothing wrong with that. Look at his soul dear. He is more than all of that. He is a real gentleman. You need to see that...’

I do see it. I am just reacting to an unconscious resistance to being common. Probably because our family never lived up to our own upbringing... when our family came to America they came with a lot less than what they left behind. But they did this in order to find freedom and even more prosperity, as so many millions of people did and still do. This was how it was when you left your homeland and came to America I am told. But still they did well. Until the stock market crash of ‘29. My grandfather’s father lost everything and shot himself at the age of 35 leaving his wife and seven children behind. A weak man, and a coward. But still, my grandfather, the youngest, managed to climb back up and became very successful. Ironically he worked for the United States government for forty years as an attorney and judge. If he could only see me now. he would be chasing me around the house trying to hit me... But the family never regained the prestige or the resources that they had back home. that's the point.

I will never forget my grandfather and grandmother sitting us down one summer day when we were children and showing us our great great great -- I don't know how many generations back -- paternal grandfather’s name in the encyclopedia Britannica. This did not mean much to me at that age because I assumed that everyone had family in those big black books.... but later it became something very important to me. He was a famous mathematician who discovered many very algebraic formulas and theorems that are used and taken for granted today. then my grandmother showed us the name of her great uncle also in the Britannica who was a famous composer and musician who is not much remembered today except in scholarly circles. Again, I did not quite get the importance of this until much later. We were too young... but I gathered that it meant something...

Had to move out of the house of Opus because his roommate has five family members coming in from Spain tomorrow. so I went and booked the cheapest hotel I could find. $33 a night. lets put it that way. this place is a dump. Normally I would never, but I figure the more uncomfortable I am the better. That way I will compel myself to make the move even faster.

I spend all day and night at the office or the studio now anyway so what does it matter. But I'll tell you, it isn't as easy as you think it is to live this way. three months ago I was driving my convertible down the causeway to a 3000 sq ft house every night with my own private music room. Now I'm living out of a suitcase in a tiny little dive motel. I filled the hotel form out today when I checked in and in that part there where you put your address, I had to pause for a second... what address? Wow. I have no actual address right now besides my office. so I put that on there. Why did I do this again? oh yeah. To move to New York. O.k. fine. I can deal with it. but sometimes I just can’t believe that I'm really doing it. uprooting my whole life like this and moving someplace else all on my own. just me; and two huge warehouses full of stuff. haha.

What I am amazed by is how when people find out how much stuff you have, so many people have this attitude like ‘don't you/can’t you get rid of a lot of that stuff?’ I'm like ‘why would you wanna do that?’ I mean you don't spend your whole life collecting all this great stuff just to throw it away. at least I don't. I guess a lot of people end up having a lot of stuff that they don't really like or need. I can see that. but I have these two warehouses and I don't even have any furniture. A few good pieces. Nothing I'd throw away or sell. That's for sure. Its mainly just collections of stuff. clothes cds books art. Things like that. I think the idea of owning your own library is very foreign to a lot of people in my generation. They just don't get it --- that a man has a library full of valuable collections that he spends his entire life collecting and he passes it down to his children. I think maybe I come from a different age or something.

Anyway, just because its funny, when the movers arrived today at my storage units to give their estimate they looked at these two warehouses filled with boxes and no furniture except my bed and they are like what's in all these boxes? And I'm like, ‘books and vinyl and cds, media mostly. And lots of clothes’ and they gave me this look like I was crazy. like they were looking at a crazy man. It was very funny. Then they start talking they have to charge me more because they are used to moving furniture not boxes full of books.

When you think about it, now, looking forward, I guess we don't really need to carry around all these books and cds anymore. We can fit it all in our laptops now. I know that. but there is something very special still about collecting media in its hard copy version. I'll tell you this though, if we ever have children we can bet they aren't going to be collecting media of any kind in its hardcopy form. They're just going to be downloading everything into their ‘personal-who-knows-what's.’ but for me, I like sitting amongst a bunch of books and reading a little bit of each one on a Sunday afternoon while listening to a bunch of cds. I dig it. we stare at the computer monitor enough already.

I'm rambling because I'm homeless and careless and girlfriendless at the moment and just don't feel like going upstairs to this shitty little motel room I rented. Haha. but this is a huge change. One of those things I will always look back at. The time between worlds. not bad really. I have been surprised how easily I have adapted each day to the uncertainty of it all. I always took so much pride and gave such importance to my house and how beautiful it was and my car and my studio and my cats and the home I had there. and now when you have none of that, when you are between that, just living out of a suitcase like this with no place to call your own, you really need to look inside to find your happiness and to find your home. I have been really amazed and proud of myself at how well I have been doing it. I've found me through it. I'm me. and here I am. No matter where I live or where I'm staying for the night. its cool.

I was on the Internet tonight for hours doing more research on my ancestry. Working on my father’s father’s father’s father’s side; still trying to trace it back farther. To where they first arrived in America. Cannot get out of the US. every time I go back ten years to another census, something has changed with this guy, his age or his children. I don't know if they were just really dumb or just lied or the census researcher was making mistakes or what. But I am dumbfounded how the little things change. Maybe they just always told different info everytime for the fun of it. maybe they weren't sure so always made stuff up.

Anyway, I cannot believe that on my father’s side I come from such lowly roots. It is quite humbling. Having only been raised by my mother’s side of the family and hence only hearing about our aristocratic heritage etc... and then to be sitting in here in front of the computer screen and seeing generation after generation listing ‘farmer’ as their occupation on my fathers side, its quite humbling. In 1870 he is a farmer with a wife who cannot read or write and has six kids, soon to have a total of 8. his wife Sarah anne had their first when she was 14. He lists his real estate valued at $400 and his personal estate at $350. Not bad actually when you think of it. for the times I guess. states like Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Virginia pop up... the kind of states I never think about. these are states that other people come from... not me I always figured. You just never consider that part of you and then one day you start seeing it there in your family tree... those kind of states, those kind of occupations. Wow. I spent hours tonight hunched over the screen looking for clues... I search and I search and I search and I cannot find him any further back. it is so frustrating. To not know where you fully come from.

My father knows next to nothing about his background. I am now well beyond his knowledge base of his ancestry. I don't know if I will ever know where they really came from. this much I do know: I am 50% Italian, 25% polish, and 25% ???American??? farmer. Wow. No wonder I'm so confused. The Italian part I've traced back for centuries and feel satisfied that I've gone back far enough for the meantime. I mean I visited all the little towns where they were born and raised for generations. That was great. Don't know anything about the polish side yet. that's really crazy. polish. Wow. But this last quarter... I just have to get all the way back. I have to know who I am. Or better, who we were. How did I get to be me? how did I come into being? What is in my blood? There has to be a way to find out.

My father always says ‘England or maybe Wales or Ireland or Scotland.’ Well hey man those are all different countries. It would be nice to know. [actually come to think of it, looking as far back as its going to be when they arrived on the shores of America those were all under British rule, so maybe they weren’t all different countries at the time...] I certainly look more Great Britain than anything else, so maybe that's why I'm so into discovering this last little bit. Either way, I just want to know.

Last screening: the forgotten. Good movie. And still studying Churchill every night before bed.