“Farewell, fair cruelty. “
William Shakespeare
There’s very little to say, I haven’t felt very inspired to write anything of substance.
In fact I am beginning to feel as though this blog has served it’s purpose. And perhaps should be discontinued. It’s nothing more than an inventory of my misery as of late and I feel myself going silent more and more.
So in that spirit. I will say goodbye.
Be well.
“In my dreams there’s a horse, he stands eighteen hands high
He’s as white as the snow and there’s fire in his eyes
And he’ll bear only me though others have tried
And together we’ll travel up across the divide.”
- Steve Earle -
Lately I’ve been thinking. About memories and what a child holds on to. My daughter is three years old. And I wonder what she’ll remember about this time. What will get through. I have these blurry eyed memories of moments of my childhood at her age. My mother very pregnant with my younger brother. Sitting on the floor of our dining room eating cereal as my parents get up in the morning. My father bringing me home surprise gifts after work. Eating oatmeal and watching cartoons on our first color television. But nothing cohesive. It’s more like samples and sounds.
I wonder what my girl will remember of me? Will she remember that tonight she laid her head in my lap and I stroked her hair till she fell asleep with a sigh? Or maybe it’ll just be a smell, an aroma or sound. The smell of my soap or the sound of the insects outside the open window. Will she suddenly be struck with a mysterious sense of peace and calm 20 years from now and she’ll not know exactly why. Maybe she’ll be sitting with a boy and just assume it’s love, affection and the man of her dreams. I won’t figure into it at all.
There’s so many questions I have. About life right now. And really no one to ask. No one to work it out with. And that’s maybe just how it is. I was never built to be a coffee shop buddy circle type. Where all of my life and conundrums fit into a couple of cups of overpriced shitty coffee. I don’t even think there is a therapist qualified to walk through the minefield in my head. There’s a spiraling sinking ringed journey through damnation in me that would make Dante Alighieri scratch his bearded Italian chin and throw his hands in the air and proclaim me lost.
So I seem to build this momentum, this escape velocity. Casting myself into the void. I’ve got nothing but perspective from this vantage point. Maybe I’ve got judgment too. And I simple find most people frightening in their capacity to harm one another. Their need to grind off the skin and flesh of each other and proclaim the writhing bones for their own. It seems many of you are just…Well..Fucked…You have no real concept. Of living and existing. You treat hurt, disappointment and injury as an invitation to strike out. To cut into others. It seems the philosophy that prevails is “You must bleed like I bleed.” And I don’t want to bleed. Not for you. Not for your broken heart, not for your disjointed thoughts and rancid libido. I don’t care to even be compassionate anymore. And it makes me a fucking hypocrite because I seem to seek compassion most in my exchanges with the animals in the jungle. But I maybe have the advantage of being aware of what a foul beast I truly am and making not the slightest effort to clothe myself in the finery you sell.
What’s left? The sense that everyday brings me closer to some goodbye. Some great leap. Into what? Into what…I’d be fucked if I knew.But the change, the tectonic movement is here. It’s in the moon and in the hollow sidewalk sound. In the vague shadows of windows that I pass, that suggest life inside, but you can never be sure. Mansion or mausoleum.
But I want to know that no matter what. My memory stays. That I am part of something…Something greater than this. I can’t just dismiss the burden and years have added up to nothing. Maybe that’s why men built pyramids and great stone heads. To be a memory that stays.
Be well.
“When I was younger I could hold my own
My right hand was thunder and my left was stone
Now I ain’t as handsome as I was back then
So I’m takin’ my chances in the shadowland”
- Steve Earle -
There’s a part of me that cringes man. Cringes when I set to write. Because man I am not so keen on the mopey and sentimental crap that seems to float to the top most lately. I mean I know where it comes from and what draws it out. It’s this thing, a sort of talent I have for seeing goodbye before it’s time to go. I can smell a heartbreak coming and see a long-lost friend before we even say hello. And for me goodbye ain’t ever too far away. It’s not like some weepy whiny teenage girl thing, you know the game “Why don’t anybody ever stay?” you know the adolescent broken heart syndrome.
Nah man, for me it goes a lot harder and colder. And in that sadder and lonelier. It’s been a long, long time since I went out to the world on my own. And right now this is the longest I’ve spent in one place. Through bad choices and self-destruction I have burned most bridges and kept on moving. And now I haven’t got anywhere left to run and I can’t get very far. My heart is here with my little girl. It’s hard to run from that anchor. But believe me brother I want to. I want to go till there is nowhere left and the road has turned to dust.
Most days I get by. I set these goals and points of reference. I say to myself “Okay boy, you can’t go nowhere or make that jump till the second Sunday of next month because you can’t make a bad anniversary when it suppose to be a happy time for…” I make these deals with myself. Stay long enough to see this or do that. Or to hit that calendar point. When I go I want to be sure it’s understood I made my choice. I made my run and it was without any implication on anyone’s part. It was all me and at my time.
What going means…Well that’s my choice too. And I ain’t speaking it to no one. It’s just my thing. My last choice that you or anyone like you can take or compromise. Sometimes I just want to go see the mountains once again. There’s magic there. The Gods sleep at their feet. Other times I want to hit an ocean and let it all pass me by, forget it all. Sort of like Otis Redding sang. And sometimes. Maybe more often than not I just want to close my eyes and make the world go far, far away. It’s all a matter of degrees. Usually on how ostracized and lonely I feel. And on how badly I want to feel someone close to me.
Because for it all I would trade almost anything just for that one thing. To touch someone, to laugh and to fall crazy mad in love. To make a world that belongs to no one but us. To be the great secret. There is healing in the laughter and soft, gentle touch . But I just can’t seem to break out enough to let someone come close enough. I can’t find the kind and understanding hand. I am wired all wrong and life has left me burned and bent. But I can still love…But truth is that I won’t get a chance to again. And I think maybe I’d have to think long and hard about if that person should be burdened with my scars and broken pieces.
Just ghosts man…All ghosts. They’re here tonight. And I’ve got to stand them down alone. And pretty soon I figure I’ll lose the strength to run them off.
Be well.
“I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky–seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.”
- Joseph Conrad -
Sometimes when I write here I feel like I am tossing clandestine notes out through a hole in some great wall. Hoping they be found by someone who’d care enough to read them. Maybe care enough to feel what I am saying is worthy enough to cross some imaginary divide and climb a great hill to set a signal fire. Set it alight in the dark night and shine through the darkness “I am here! I can hear you!”. And maybe just in that hope I keep writing. Though often I don’t know why.
I have been quiet lately. I have been shaving the pitch and throwing off the bodies to cut down on the drag as it were. I have gone through a strange period of reminders, birthdays, anniversaries and even dreams. I am currently off work due to a temporary shut down. Yesterday I laid down on the couch and fell asleep. I dreamed I was a kid again, back home, my father was alive and my mother was still there. My brother was the dopey kid I both protected and tormented. And it was summer and I think it may have been my birthday. I was happy and I was home. And I didn’t need or want for anything. It was home…And when I woke up I was so sad, so overwhelmed by it all I sat on the floor and couldn’t bear to cry, because if I did I thought I would bray and howl like a child. Lost and scared. I just ached so deeply, like nothing I can describe. I have longed to be back again with someone I loved, to find them again and have them love me again. But it couldn’t compare to the pain of wanting to go back to a time and place. To an innocence and possibility. So I just sat and shuddered and felt even more alien here. More the animal/machine.
I wrote to someone this week that anyone who says you mustn’t live with regret has truly never experienced regret or guilt. And if you can experience it and still dismiss it and leave it behind then you are truly an abomination…And I thought about it and there is a world full of people who can do just that. Who can look at the past shrug, mumble, salute and step over the carcass. The rare ones are them that feel it. Them that suffer the weight of truth, living, dying and the mistakes we make. Who have skin not galvanized. But get cut and bleed. They are truly the few. And while most ignorant things will tell you how they are deep wells of thought and feeling. It’s an illusion. A lie and a fraud. The secret ones who ache don’t speak, because it feels awkward, it feels wrong and it feels misunderstood. And the truth is that when they do speak there is always one vain and stupid beast close by who will chime in, in some nasally and over-whelming voice “Oh I know, I get the same thing”. And the depth of the insult is never known. They ignorant feel enlightened and the pained feel dulled and robbed.
So this leaves me in a place I knew was coming. A paradox. Where I know I want nothing anymore, but I need everything. I would not miss anyone anymore, save one little girl. But I cannot live without the contact, the input and the touch. There is knowledge in me that I am an utter failure as a human being, but I long to be close to another one. I lust and want and still repulse. I am becoming the curmudgeon. The lonely man, the eyes that see but really never speak.
Life isn’t made for me. It’s not something I can negotiate, any more than a blind man can drive a car. It’s a truth, attach all the “what if we…” to it you want. He’s never really driving. It’s just an imitation of an action that in truth he is incapable of. And that is exactly what life is for me. Something I am incapable of doing. Am I in the wrong time? The wrong place? Is there some thing I could do? I don’t know. Honest. It’s far past the point of a Oprah approved vacation and book reading. This machine is rusting and crumbling. A little more each day. And eventually it will stop. It will go still on the tracks. And the night will overtake it and envelope it. The decay will exceed the ability to regenerate. As the ancient old engineer looks at the pieces and parts it will become obvious it’s just shut down, that’s all that’s left. To turn the engine off and let it go cold. The machine has run it’s course. Has served it’s usefulness out and now cannot be asked for more.
Such as it goes I am not sure this scares me or saddens me. I just accept it. Sometimes I wonder if this feeling is what a condemned man feels as he watches the time pass toward his moment of execution. A sort of acceptance, clenched and scared. But carefully balanced on finger-tips because if the tray turns and it spills the connotations are going to be horrible.
It’s a little disappointing. There are things I wish I could do. But for reasons (often financial or legal) I never will. Or I just cannot find a way to it…
I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Anyway. I’ve got one future, the grumpy old guy in some shitty one room apartment with a cat and a pile of books. Who no one notices except to scoff at.
And for the love of all things holy…Save the “nothing is impossible” speeches. Seriously Tony Robbins…That’s the bait you throw at the ignorant to keep them chomping, chomping, chomping at that carrot…Come on little fighter, work a little harder, produce a little more, consume…You’ll get there. It’s a fable just like Goldilocks. It doesn’t happen. Go take a drive through a ghetto. Go hang out at a bus station. Tell me nothing is impossible for these people….Oh wait! I read an article about this girl in Kansas. She made good…La la la la…One in six billion…The poster child, the string holder for the carrot…
Maybe I’m a little angry. Because I can’t believe the lie.
Maybe I just don’t want to delude myself enough to believe the lie.
Maybe I just want release.
Be well.
“It isn’t enough for your heart to break because everybody’s heart is broken now.”
- Allen Ginsberg -
Sometimes I think I know what I want to write here, I set out to say something specific. This ain’t one of those times.
So here I am sort of dancing around the pieces and thoughts. There’s no music and nobody to see. I feel like Dylan calling for his Tambourine Man. Maybe I have no one to meet, And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming…You know how I mean?
There’s a loneliness that has settled on me. It’s not heavy or difficult. But it is listless and tired. I find myself unable to reach past it and connect very much anymore. I look at the calendar and chose dates for some great escape. Something I may never do. But take comfort in the planning. A big run at the sunset. Maybe I am too cowardly, maybe I’m too selfish. Maybe much to my own chagrin I am hanging on to some vague hope. That there may be a lightning bolt come down on me. A re-awakening of Frankenstein’s monster. Trundling and falling alive. Why is this so hard? Seriously. Without the fancy words and the crazy prose. Why is life never easy, not even for a minute. Sometimes I even find myself looking at the commercials for antidepressants and thinking that maybe that’s my play, maybe that’s what’s wrong. But I have tried that. And it just fucks my libido and empties my emotions in some bland homogenized stew of nothingness.
I’d rather live in misery than live in that medicated shade of gray. You can send that quote to Pfizer. My God what a terrible place to be. Living in that dullness. I believe I was built to question, to struggle and turn over stones and examine the secret words I find there. To turn boldly into the Beast, the thing that most people run their whole lives from. The black places, the deepest nights and darkest urges. That’s the Beast, I reach for it and get dragged into the fight. And I want that. But it seems the one truth I know about myself is that I have to give up to live amongst you. Medicated and placated. A dial to be turned. Man what a miserable thing to be…And the most troublesome part in all that is the people I see swimming in all the bullshit, all the acronyms and diagnosis’ and the symptoms that they manifest simply out of obligation to some label. It’s a crazy world folks, to be crazy is to live.
I think too much and my head races and I can’t find anyone I truly can talk to. So I feel lonely. It’s the trade-off. I get lonely, but man do I ever think up a universe. When I was a kid they were testing me for all kinds of intellect ratings and the emotional pieces that get nailed to it there was a teacher who broke the fourth wall and spoke to me like a human. And what he told me is that “There is a fine line between genius and madness and you must always be careful how far you tip either way.” And he was right. In my whole life there have been very few truths told to me and that was one of them. One of the others came from my old man who used to say “Boy the only way you can do anything is the hard way…And I don’t have a clue why.” He was right too. As a matter of fact I have come close to getting “The Hard Way” tattooed where I can always see it.
And in this all I find I miss the company of the fairer sex…But I got to ask. Are you all completely loopy?
No elaboration there. None needed.
Be well.
“The blues, is a low-down achin’ heart disease
Like consumption, killing me by degrees”
- Robert Johnson -
Johnson sang that in his song Preachin’ Blues (Up Jumped The Devil). And brother I do believe he was singing about me. How a poor black man in the Mississippi delta back in 1936 could have done this? Well I suppose we both done went down to the crossroads and made our deal. And the Devil has his price you got to pay.
You know the blues when you got them. It ain’t just a cloudy day or a bit of disappointment. It’s a low feeling that creeps in on you and makes itself at home, wrapping its cold fingers around your heart. Taking whatever it pleases and laughing at you when you try to fight it off. It wins…It always wins. My blues will win. Maybe sooner rather than later. Who knows. I just know I am hanging in between living and the other thing. That’s the blues man, it don’t shake down and go away. It is a life.
Lately I have been thinking on God, the nature of man and the weapons we build when we sleep just inches away. I want to believe in God, I do man. I have seen miracles and had hope wash in on a black place. But that was long ago. God seems to have moved on. Maybe like Job he laid a 20 to 1 odds on my ass and the other fellow won. And if anyone has his price to exact it’s God…Think of the Sopranos but with stained glass windows and chants.
As for man. Well here’s the dice as they fell. You’re mostly fucked…No it’s okay. You are. That’s just it. Most of you are discouraging and frightening. I find you baffling and questionable. I like you sometimes too, that’s the scary part. Like petting a tiger. It’s soft and the sensation is wonderful, but you just never know when it’ll turn. And you know them teeth and them claws will gut you sure as shooting.
And then there’s those things, the things we do to each other. Things in the name of love, heartbreak, justice, lust and Sunday mornings. How we cut into ourselves. Ol’ van Gogh was just more literal than most. But I’ve cut out pieces of me and dropped them in butcher paper to give as an offering to someone I wanted to see me bleed. A bloody mess left in the lap of one quite incredulous. Only to find out later that the choice cuts were to be made against my will. It all sounds like burnt offerings and the smell of sex left hanging in a room, the bedding in a heap on the floor and a strange look of astonishment on our faces. Ah beauty, it’s hideous and grotesque!
So there I stand. Fucking empty. A broken vase. Really, that’s a great description. A vase serves no purpose really, except to hold something. Flowers or sins, you see. And when you break one, there’s no reason to keep it around. At least that’s how I feel. So I continue to linger, feeling like a ghost. No one sees me till I make my presence known. And them that seek me out tend to do so out of fascination or mortification. Some experience to relate later around your kin and kind. About the time he did this thing you won’t believe.
Spending my hours alone, trying to commit myself to life. To stay put, to stick to some material thing because that’s what’s expected. But constantly wanting to be free. To fly away, to know what it’s like to feel the absence of chains, grief and the burden of languages.
Someone tell me it’s going to be alright…I dare you!
Hey you…out there on your own…
Be well.
“…we call him happiness
Oh that happiness
Is a miserable son of a bitch”
- Matthew Ryan -
Mr. Ryan is brilliant and often more insightful than I could ever be. And he’s right too, happiness is miserable, willful and fickle. It comes as it wishes and leaves without excuse or explanation. It’s mean and unforgiving. Don’t believe me? Next time you’re happy, do something that makes you sad or miserable or grumpy…How fast does happiness come back? The answer? It doesn’t…It’s a fucking coward and when resisted upon or push up against something it doesn’t like it runs.
So I say FUCK HAPPINESS!If I’m going into battle I’d rather go with misery, grief and suffering…They have real staying power.
Anyhow. Now that I said that. I’ve been thinking on love. Because to be honest nothing else is worth thinking about. Ignorance could truly be bliss, so please hit me with a brick. Render me ignorant. Let the flashing numbers, lit boxes and flesh coloured flashes of lust make me content. Let me fuck, drool and stare at flickering stories that could never be and become an ideal nothing.
But love…I came to write about love.
I fucking love love! No really. I ain’t half as bitter, angry or confused as it may seem. I love love. I am a romantic, a hopeless romantic and the last of the hardcore troubadours. Brother you best believe me. I would walk a hundred miles to see a smile that says “Hey it’s you” and I’d sit all night with you just to say we beat the dawn. I’d crawl inside an embrace to find some secret neither have ever said. Not out loud at least. And love is the only gun I trust. It’s got a cold hard aim, true and clear eyes. And the real thing will take down anything else. There is no wall, fist or folly it can’t beat back.
And I will say this, most people have no clue. Not a single clue what love really is. They know they got a shopping list, a wants collection and they got a picture in their head and if you can fit someone into that cage then baby it’s true love. And if they keep dancing in time and keeping step with some lame and crazy music only you can hear then baby that’s love. If they got some flag, shield and shiny rocks and they let you hang onto whatever you want and disregard the rest. Then that must be love….Right?
Right?
Yeah sure…In the celluloid dream you live in maybe it is.
But I know there is more, there is something greater. Nah it ain’t God…That’s something else. But there’s a whole mess of folks out there in love with God because they can’t find the right person to fold into the cupboard they keep for love and well, God is pliable, the most pliable.
Love is the magic seconds…It’s like a light the flashes on for an instant to give you perspective as you feel through the dark.
You want to know what it feels like? It’s that feeling you get, when you hear their key in the door. Not because you are lonesome, not because you are worried and certainly not because you got an itch and a little bit of rubbing and huffing will scratch it. It’s the sound of the key that says to you “They’re here…Now I can breathe”. It’s needing them to be there because you just know they’re the only one that speaks your language, they’re the only one that can read the secret words in the gestures you make and the signs that go unnoticed by the rest of the busy and deaf world.
It feels like you’re going crazy, like you’re giving away your mind…Along with your heart. And you don’t care, because it is the most natural thing in the world.
It feels like nothing else will ever equal it. That you’ve reached a perfect place in your existence. The rest of your life was simply doing time till you found this place and time.
And there is fear, because you got to hang yourself over the edge and you’re letting another imperfect being push or pull you. Not with malice or ill intent. But with the flaws and weaknesses that are made into all people. And that is fucking scary man. That can gut you and leave you to bleed. Loving is dare. And it isn’t ever, ever guaranteed. And two things are certain if you know that. One, not many people ever truly dare. There are few fearless hearts out there. They want the thrills but with the safety nets. And real love don’t have those safety mechanisms built-in. And two, if you believe your love is certain then you are mistaken.
That is the great truth about love. It haunts you, it fills you, it touches you in ways you’ll never truly understand. But it will slip away. It has a wandering spirit and nothing you can do will make it stay when it decides it’s time to go. It will escape. You can’t stop it and the heartache that comes often comes slowly, like watching the train that will run you down from miles away as it approaches. The noise, light and smell of that big cold machine getting bigger and bigger and looming larger and larger. And all you can do is hope that when it hits you it might just knock you clear and leave you scarred but still alive.
Most people aren’t brave enough. To dare that ghost. And those of us who do are often beaten and torn up from it. We don’t group up or shine out. We carry this inextinguishable torch. But only a few can see. But the scars, they are bleeding and obvious and many folks just don’t understand what they see. They see ugly, they see broken. They don’t see that somewhere inside is something they should be privileged to experienced. But instead they disdain and shun.
And it’s a lonely place to be.
Goddamn it’s lonely.
If you’re one of them that see. Please know you are not alone. You are not insignificant and you are not expendable. You are the tissue and skin of the empty hollow bones of life. You matter more. Your life counts. Your heart is treasure. Care for it like it deserves. Don’t come apart, not now, not here. It will come to you…I swear this as truth. I am after all the last of the hardcore troubadours.
Be well.
“People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.”
- Kurt Vonnegut -
In a few days I turn 39. THIRTY FUCKING NINE! And here’s the truth. The honest to goodness truth, if I’d have known I was going to live this long I would have done more and taken better care of my life. But I have lived like a terminal patient…No plans, just funeral arrangements. I was startled when I made it to thirty. Geez man I was even kind of taken aback that I survived to twenty. I mean I turned 19 in a treatment center for addiction and alcoholism 1500 miles from my home. And I sure as hell wasn’t done tearing myself apart. Man I did it for…Well a long, long time after that. And in all that time I have learned things. Observed things, gained opinion the hard way, by living it.
So in the spirit of earned wisdom, here is what an old dog thinks about as the time turns…
WAR – Or to be more exact, the current conflict where young men and sometimes women die far away from their homes. These are neatly covered corpses, draped in flags. Processed in a somber tradition. But the truth is that these folks don’t die for ideals and beliefs. They die for money, the true reason most of these kids are there is because THEY’VE GOT NOTHING ELSE! THere’s no rich kid in a foxhole. These volunteer soldiers are mercenaries. They do it for money for education. They do it so they can access benefits Walmart or McDonald’s won’t give them. And in many cases it’s the only job they can get. These lost lives were lost before they ever set foot in some desert. And that’s why we can’t win. No matter how many of the “enemy” they kill. It cannot be won, because they are fighting for a belief and for a cause. And they won’t just stop. It will go on and on. And if western powers pull out it will still go on. Unfortunately these belief systems are violent and are antagonistic. You cannot legislate morality or peace. The human animal doesn’t work that way. And you sure as hell can’t shoot a man full of get along. It’s almost cause and maybe if someone would just say that, cut our losses and bring back all those kids. Give them decent wages and a chance at a good life at home. Maybe in time, a long, long time the rest of the world might just fall behind us. We need to learn to lead by example, not might.
MUSIC - Music today SUCKS! It’s plastic and tinsel. I recently watched a documentary about a band and it talked about their struggles 30 years ago to get off the ground. They spent 10 years changing line ups, playing shitty gigs, driving in cold vans and living for the music. And the whole time they were growing and becoming better musicians. But now there are television shows and networks who pre-empt the experience of growth and development and in 4 or 5 auditions and a few special evenings featuring the music of some lame ass “legend” these pieces of crap become celebrities first and then maybe they sing a little. Play a little guitar. It’s manufactured and contrived. I hate it…There is no exceptions to this. And I think what makes me most annoyed is that you all eat it….Hey world, just because someone puts a pile of dog shit on a pretty plate don’t mean you have to eat it. Come on man have some dignity and taste.
SEX - Okay this is a quick note. To women mostly. I love you all, you’re attractive, sensual and smell nice. But get the fuck over yourselves. Really. I know this is going to sound slightly misogynist and angry. But it’s what I see. You have the right parts and even if you’re funny looking and the most annoying creature on earth, there are men that are going to want to touch you in places your bathing suit covers. And you know what? I hate being told what to like or being given this bullshit beauty standard, this myth of the “perfect woman”. The blond cookie cutter chick that is drooled over on TV and at car shows, dance clubs and shoe stores are fucking boring. I love curvy girls, I love a woman with thoughts and interests. I love a woman with a nice laugh and sweet voice. But please….Please. Stop taking yourself so fucking seriously. I see these girls every day. Ones that believe that because some rutted up stud on a Saturday night swore to them that they were beautiful. Doesn’t mean we all are going top fall over you. Example. I see this girl on a daily basis. I smiled at her the first few times I saw her and was just being friendly. I never got a response to the smile not even a returned smile. So I figure fuck it, she’s a douchebag…That’s okay we all got our crutches. I had no intention of approaching her or trying to talk her up. But now every day I see her now I am quietly amused to see quite intently trying seem like she isn’t noticing me, it’s that out of the corner of her eye watching me to see if I am looking. Which I am, but not for the reasons she thinks. And when she walks past me she does it with her nose in the air and a look of arrogance. And it amazes me. I know a few women like this. Men are assholes and clueless when it comes to just what they are like. But damn girls you’re a delusional bunch…For the most part. I need to add that there are times where I see a woman and am just taken aback by how beautiful she really is. And she has no idea. She has done nothing in particular to look beautiful, in fact in many cases she has been told by the media and by the pricks and prongs in the world that she isn’t. But her light, her smile, her eyes, her shape or maybe just the energy she shines makes her absolutely stunning. And I of course become shy and can’t say anything, because I am in fact no better off than I was when I was 14 and used to blush when a girl smiled at me.
Except I’ve got some wicked moves…I’m like Kung Fu Love…Just saying…Ladies if you want to know how just you wait and see.
Wow! My inner pimp just struck…Maybe I should erase that? Naaaaaah!
WORK – This is a short thing but important. If you work in an office or you work in some capacity that allows you sit around fucking with a computer all day. You don’t work hard. Don’t tell me you do. I don’t care what some sitcom tells you about the dog eat dog world of cubicles. You’ve got it pretty sweet. Okay Dilbert? Until you’ve served slop to hungry fat faced ignorants or worked in heat that will melt your clothing, or shoveled shit all day you know nothing about hard work. I work hard. Harder than many of you. I am not bragging (well yeah I am but I am attempting to be modest) but I come home after spending a full day on my feet, covered in burns, oil and cuts. I get to sit down MAYBE 30 minutes on a good day and that’s during breaks. I made my choices. I am a machine operator. Actually a die caster. I am responsible for my life. But it makes me irate when I hear someone complain about how hard it is for them at their air-conditioned little cubical farm. I mean I know it’s a bitch when someone messes with Troll dolls and pictures of you and your BFF being “wild and crazy” on your last vacation. But really. Be aware, you’re lucky. Hell I know I am lucky. There are people out there, even right here in my city, that would want to do what I do, to make what I make. There is some poor young guy who is dealing with entitled selfish pricks for minimum wage while mopping up shit who would give anything to get a chance to do my job. I see them coming in whenever we post an ad and they interview. It may be tough. But it’s respectable. And I am grateful I live in a country where I can make a living wage and drink clean water and believe what I want and I can live in a space that in many other nations is a home for multiple people. Every night I go to sleep thankful for my own furniture, my own home and my fridge with food in it. I’ve known poverty real fucking gone hungry poverty. But it’s still nothing like the poverty the MAJORITY of the world lives in.
FAITH – I don’t have a clue…I just can’t believe in anything anymore. It doesn’t add up.
FATHERHOOD – Tomorrow is Father’s Day and I have been thinking about my dad. And about my own daughter. Here’s all I can conclude. Nothing has been so heartbreaking and rewarding as being a father. Sometimes at the same moment.
And I miss my dad, very much tonight. I miss the man he may have been. As a grandpa. As a father. He would have fussed over my little girl and never missed it when she wore a new little dress or did something amazing. He would have sat through endless run-throughs of the ABC song and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and he would have loved it. He’d be so proud of her. She’s clever and funny and willful and all the things he taught me to be.
But he’s gone and he never even got a chance to hear her say “Grandpa” and maybe in a life full of things I can regret that is one of the biggest ones.
LIFE - Lately I am left wondering why…
Be well.
““Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough”
- Jean-Paul Sartre -
Sad Sunday night. It’s become a regular thing. I go through it every time I send my little girl back to her mother. I cry every time, after I give her back I retreat and sit alone and cry. I mutter an apology, to her and afterward to time and fate. I never meant for it to work like this. I never meant to set her up like this. My guilt and my responsibility are tangible there. There in the delivery room in some gushing and frightened exhaling statement of faith and truth I swore to her I’d never do this. I’d never fail her. I’d never let her hurt because of my actions. I would never fall short in the ways that I experienced.
Yet that’s what I did, somehow. I am not sure of who’s to blame. Exactly. But mostly I am sure it was me. I gave her a broken home. I never cheated or strayed. In fact I tried the hardest I ever have to get myself into a place of sincere and ferocious dedication. But things were so decayed and the erosion so complete that the relationship caved-in anyway. My crazy machine spinning it into the sun.
My father’s death, my emptiness of faith, my flawed being, my violent being, never quite at rest. Like a simmering pot that rattles and steams. And the actions of the universe and the organisms that act in selfish attraction all combined to destroy the home I wanted to have my child grow to and know. If you do not fully understand yet, I can say it without prose and flowery sentiment. I fucked it…Badly.
And now my penance seems to be these tears, this loneliness and this feeling of failure. And in that I feel this great shame too. I know many people who live this way. Who are parents who only visit as parents. And yet I seem to be the only one who hurts like this. Who goes through this. And maybe it’s because I am just too fucking sensitive. Too introspective. Too fucking messy. I just don’t seem to be able to grow the callousness to let it pass. I fucked the one thing I swore I wouldn’t and I can’t forgive myself. And nothing anyone can say will make it better. The stupid feel better speeches and the idiotic one line fix-alls “Turn that frown upside down” , none of it will change my feelings. My failure.
This is just another on the list of things that have shoved my away from the river of life you all seem to move in. I feel drawn back to grow thirsty and dry. My experiences and my battle damage…All of it. It adds up. Like an old soldier sitting in the very back of the barroom staring off into some unseen tragedy, I have hundred year old eyes. And nothing in language or gesture can share with you the experience I have had that has left me this way. Sore and sensitive, cold and misfiring, angry and frightened. No matter how I try I cannot relate to you and yet I still hope and pray that you never feel these things. the flawed existence. The lonesome so deep and permanent you cannot blow it away with a hundred mega-tonne bomb.
I can tell you what it was like to stand over my father’s lifeless body, the livor mortis discoloring his shirtless torso. The smell of foulness and death in the room. The feeling of overwhelming disgust that filled me with shame. But you would never really understand.
I can tell about watching a car pull away from a curb, in the back seat she looked back at me crying. Because she swore she’d never leave, but always knew she’d have to. The heartbreak that drove me to linger on a bridge too long and contemplate the feeling of flying you may get before you hit ground. But you would never really understand. Though you probably have had your heartbroken too. As it goes we all got or breaks and scars.
I can tell you about the nights where I could feel my life slipping away and not giving one good god-damn if it did. The warnings of doctors and family that I would died if I lived this way. But they meant nothing. A slow suicide really knows no shock. But you’d never understand.
I can tell you about jail cells, hospital rooms, institutions, bedrooms that smelled of expensive perfume and false hope, streets where hunger and need are all that you really own, I can tell you about the battles, the fights, the feeling of holding your organs in your body, of the blood collecting in a paling shocked hand. I can tell you about all of it..But you wouldn’t understand.
And here’s why. Because I don’t understand you. Because your lives are all so enigmatic to me. How do you save money? Buy a house? Own a car for longer than it takes to wreck it? How do you love and keep it alive? And failing that how do you heal your broken heart and just move on? How do you buy patio furniture? And how do you talk to a God you are so sure listens? Or how do discount a God you’re sure is folly? How the fuck do you live inside the neatly painted lines and stay sane?
Me I am fucking crazy…I am a broken-hearted father with a strong urge to…Fly away. Bye bye. I feel like only Bukowski, Earle and Burroughs really saw the world I know. And spoke of it in language I know.
Good Lord this shit is too heavy.
Next time I promise I’ll write about my top ten favorite CDs or the sunsets I’ve seen or about naked women, that might lighten things up…Maybe I’ll put up pictures of kittens. Kittens prancing. Kittens prancing in flowers….Next to naked women. This is the internet after all…It’s all out there.
Be well.
“In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.”
- John Steinbeck -
Often I will have these ideas for writing and I think they are brilliant and good, then I’ll sit down and they’ve evaporated or just seem silly. I think today I thought about writing about the difference between men and women. Because you know no one has ever written that stuff down before…It’s be groundbreaking! Ha yeah! Right…And there was some intensely important and emotional uttering I had in mind. But fuck me if I can remember what it was…So much for depth and meaning.
Lately I feel like nothing stays with me. Nothing is here, it’s either coming or gone. I don’t know security and I don’t believe in the future. Man I haven’t stayed in one place this long since I was a kid. Always running, always moving, the velocity shaking off the bodies….Reducing the drag. Nothing to carry with me but what’s in my pockets. Now I am too old to run and I got weights holding me down. Man I almost feel resentful when I picture what it might be like way out on the coast or where the city is still awake. How do you do this? How do you live this still life, the day-to-day, where you put your time in and try to give it meaning on the weekends? Is the posturing and posing all about trying to make it bigger and shinier than it really is. When you pretend you are one of those chicks in a television show or a guy in some two-bit movie. Is it really just taking a shot at feeling out of the cage? Fuck man, it’s for the birds.
But in my most puzzling paradox I panic at the thought of goodbye. I don’t take farewell well. I cry and grieve, I ache and long and I try to go backwards, or make you leave walking backward, so I can fool myself. It’s maddening. I wish I could be cold, be forgetting, be cavalier, like so many I seem to have known. Just cut it away like a strangling vine. My father has been gone for two and a half years and not a day has gone by that I don’t spend a bit of it sad and wet eyed. Yet I see some that just sort of accept the inevitability of death and move on. Not me.
I am a fucking mess, a loser and a train-wreck. I cannot imagine ever being too close to anyone. And if I am really and brutally honest I can say it is because of me. Because of my damage and my insanity. I am awkward and discordant and after a while I just seem to vibrate apart the machinery of love and friendship. I am ugly and dark. Why should you care really? I’m a bridge jumper looking for a foothold on the railing while you watch.
And sometimes even my positives just get all ass over tea-kettle. I have a huge heart, no really I do, I ache and sigh and love so much. But it becomes this fault, it manifests as weakness. I cannot be cold. I cannot just be flippant. I want to feel the big thing. But it seems that makes me odd. My intellect is called weird and it is seldom understood. Instead I am supposed to grunt and scratch. I am male after all. And forget even talking about loving my child unabashedly and without reserve…That’s a huge hammer I am hit with.
Nothing makes sense. No one thing…So how do you do it?
Being this gets harder every day. If you have a God, talk to him for me…My spirit is dying and my body is catching up. I am not going to play the GOd game anymore. And I am not going to pretend it makes sense to try.
So here I am…Two weeks from a birthday I never ever planned on making. And it feels like I deserve parole…I’ve done my time.
Be well
r