I am nothing other than time. Time and agreement – a temporary living arrangement between some carbon and some oxygen, some hydrogen and nitrogen atoms who migrate in and out at all hours, carrying supply to meet demand. (As I typed that last sentence a babbling group of foul-smelling methane molecules made it past the last border checkpoint – and in a zone far north, thermally charged caffeine and lactose molecules were admitted.) L’etat – cest moi!
But though the molecules themselves be most apparent, make no mistake, it is the time in which I swim. My constitution carries an addendum – a morbid post-script scribbled at the bottom, making clear the genre in which I act, “This message will self-destruct in ___ “ And there a careless clerk has left a t uncrossed, as it were, and an empty opening, left to be filled in later, comes to dominate by virtue of the power invested in its emptiness. It yawns at me in the morning -my telomeres are ticking, my stem-cells running thin.
I see my hands before me now – the hair upon the knuckles which I burn back with an old cigarette lighter left over from years ago when I still smoked – the hair upon the knuckles which I burn back when it becomes long enough to reach out and touch another finger – I see my hands before me now – and I see the beginning of the first liver-spot. The first spot – yes – but not the first sign of the impending revolution – no – there have been others. The sound my knees and wrists and ankles make have been with me for years – but only recently has rising from bed begun to sound like a string of small, pathetic fire-crackers – hair has long harbored in my nose, and for years even my ears have produced hair with an abundance and energy usually more assoiciated with the fierce and misplaced fecundity of youth – but now abundance has doubled down upon abundance, but instead of pliable and whispy young tender shoots I put forth black stalks of the kind to be found upon the more intimate zones of a matronly rhino.
The silver has sparkled in the lines beneath my lips for some years now – some ladies say they find it attractive – which doesn’t stop it being what it is – a sign the times has left lying across my face, encircling my lips, so that whatever words I offer are seen as emerging from a well of wisdom distilled from experience, as opposed to the fresh leaping genius of youth.
I am time – time cest moi. I am conscious of time – I am self-conscious. I know well the potholes of my road, and I watch them deepen with mounting alarm.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
What I hope to achieve
I have babbled, I believe, at great length about the list I have made for my life. I recently found out that it can be called a bucket list. Unfortunately for me, I find the very sound-quality of this name distasteful and trivializing. Nuff-sed.
I have been recently adding to, explicating, and regrouping this list. Actually, I should say it in plural, these lists, as it is really more than one. There are reading lists, travelling lists, learning lists, etc. Sometimes the handling of these lists is nothing more than a mental vacation - a quick visit to fantasy land, a reshuffling of the cards, and mental fondling of fantasies - at other times I consult or work with the lists in order to check on a goal, or add to, or modify it. I don't mind, I don't criticize myself if I find myself using the lists for a momentary bit of fantasy fuel and escapism - I don't discourage this at all - because if I am escaping into a world of my own goals for my life, then at the very least I am keeping my dreams in front of my eyes that I may not forget what aspirations I have.
In doing so, a number of questions have occurred to me, regarding the nature of the list. For example - what value is there in the fulfillment of a goal? As a specific example - If my goal was to climb mount Kilimanjaro - what if sudden illness or accident took me at 500 meters from the top - would I count that goal achieved? If the goal I wrote down was to read the Masnavi, and after finishing a gruellingly nasty book-length translation I note that this was only book six of the entire poem - must I continue? If my goal was to achieve conversational fluency in a total of 5 languages - if I end up with three, was it a total wash? If my goal was to learn to cook five things really well - does french toast count as one? If my goal was to earn a black-belt, but the martial art I have fallen into does not have belt rankings - do I need to take up a new sport, or once I achieve instructor status, is that enough? Furthermore - what if I don't fulfill a goal - how much of a failure is that?
By asking these (no doubt trivial to anyone with real things on their mind) questions, I am pushed into examining the reasons FOR the list - the role I expect it, want it to play in my life. I realized at one point that the point of entering a marathon was not to be able to cross the finish line. Were that the case, they could just start everybody 20 meters from the finish line and be done with it. The finish line exists only as an arbitrary marker to delineate the defining edge of an experience, with the experience, the achievement, the value within, located in the experience that is in every step of the way. Minus the experience of the pain and sweat and cramps that dog your every step of the road, the finish line is meaningless.
Thus - if I become sick 500 meters from the top of Kilimanjaro, I shall regard it as a success to have travelled to Tanzania, to have talked with the people there, to have confronted the logistics of planning, to have learned about the mountain, to have felt the pain of the climb - all of that, even minus the summit, makes it a success.
On the other hand, if by counting French Toast as one thing I can cook, I learn nothing, then this goal was meaningless.
Which reveals to me that the main goal of my list is to establish arbitrary points, far enough removed from my present condition that by the time I am near that point, I will have travelled sufficient distance to have (inshallah) learned sufficient or experienced sufficient that I am left changed by the experience. In other words, the end goal of this list is not to do the thing, but to mold myself.
If my goals stay largely unmet, but in the process of struggling I have molded my body and my mind into a finer tool, or molded myself into a finer person, then it was a great success. The man is molded by his experiences, and the goals are but arbitrary points established sufficiently far removed from myself that in the process of there arriving I may find myself changed by the experience.
Today, by the way, I will be working toward my goal of 100 pushups - (website here: http://hundredpushups.com/) and studying the constellations (I have picked 18.) I may even crawl through my ceiling and see if I can spot any stars from my roof. And in between I will be reading "Culture and Imperialism" by Edward Said - (or, failing that, I might just watch "Game of Thrones" on my computer - we shall see!)
I have been recently adding to, explicating, and regrouping this list. Actually, I should say it in plural, these lists, as it is really more than one. There are reading lists, travelling lists, learning lists, etc. Sometimes the handling of these lists is nothing more than a mental vacation - a quick visit to fantasy land, a reshuffling of the cards, and mental fondling of fantasies - at other times I consult or work with the lists in order to check on a goal, or add to, or modify it. I don't mind, I don't criticize myself if I find myself using the lists for a momentary bit of fantasy fuel and escapism - I don't discourage this at all - because if I am escaping into a world of my own goals for my life, then at the very least I am keeping my dreams in front of my eyes that I may not forget what aspirations I have.
In doing so, a number of questions have occurred to me, regarding the nature of the list. For example - what value is there in the fulfillment of a goal? As a specific example - If my goal was to climb mount Kilimanjaro - what if sudden illness or accident took me at 500 meters from the top - would I count that goal achieved? If the goal I wrote down was to read the Masnavi, and after finishing a gruellingly nasty book-length translation I note that this was only book six of the entire poem - must I continue? If my goal was to achieve conversational fluency in a total of 5 languages - if I end up with three, was it a total wash? If my goal was to learn to cook five things really well - does french toast count as one? If my goal was to earn a black-belt, but the martial art I have fallen into does not have belt rankings - do I need to take up a new sport, or once I achieve instructor status, is that enough? Furthermore - what if I don't fulfill a goal - how much of a failure is that?
By asking these (no doubt trivial to anyone with real things on their mind) questions, I am pushed into examining the reasons FOR the list - the role I expect it, want it to play in my life. I realized at one point that the point of entering a marathon was not to be able to cross the finish line. Were that the case, they could just start everybody 20 meters from the finish line and be done with it. The finish line exists only as an arbitrary marker to delineate the defining edge of an experience, with the experience, the achievement, the value within, located in the experience that is in every step of the way. Minus the experience of the pain and sweat and cramps that dog your every step of the road, the finish line is meaningless.
Thus - if I become sick 500 meters from the top of Kilimanjaro, I shall regard it as a success to have travelled to Tanzania, to have talked with the people there, to have confronted the logistics of planning, to have learned about the mountain, to have felt the pain of the climb - all of that, even minus the summit, makes it a success.
On the other hand, if by counting French Toast as one thing I can cook, I learn nothing, then this goal was meaningless.
Which reveals to me that the main goal of my list is to establish arbitrary points, far enough removed from my present condition that by the time I am near that point, I will have travelled sufficient distance to have (inshallah) learned sufficient or experienced sufficient that I am left changed by the experience. In other words, the end goal of this list is not to do the thing, but to mold myself.
If my goals stay largely unmet, but in the process of struggling I have molded my body and my mind into a finer tool, or molded myself into a finer person, then it was a great success. The man is molded by his experiences, and the goals are but arbitrary points established sufficiently far removed from myself that in the process of there arriving I may find myself changed by the experience.
Today, by the way, I will be working toward my goal of 100 pushups - (website here: http://hundredpushups.com/) and studying the constellations (I have picked 18.) I may even crawl through my ceiling and see if I can spot any stars from my roof. And in between I will be reading "Culture and Imperialism" by Edward Said - (or, failing that, I might just watch "Game of Thrones" on my computer - we shall see!)
Of the wealth of nations no end
I cannot adequately express, without descent into cloyingly trite-sounding language, the depths of gratitude and joy that walk with me through my day to day life.
Of course, I have moments many of annoyance impatience apprehension daily, but the emotion dominant my days throughout is the feeling of deep and abiding gratitude - thankfulness - recognition of gifts given undeserved to me.
From the sun upon the skin to the shimmer of the water the raven black in silhouette that perches upon the marbled minaret rail the coffee so common the flowers profusion the salad I lazily consume.
The books upon my shelf the bag my books surrounds the endless cups of dark sugared tea consumed in gardens green sheltered in shady by floating ivy trellis the photos of her eyes heavy-lidded locked in an embrace with death made manifest in brass - the muscles (mine) that scream or creak or cry - whiskey glass rum glass small cherry tomato walnuts.
The sweat slicks and neck aches and wrist cracking - for these I am grateful - the hip hand-hollowed, the tenders exposed - the dust and the ants that own my kitchen - the jeans my ass over, the blanket my bed upon - sniffs, yawns, sighs, even students complaining - for all this, Lord, I give thanks.
Of course, I have moments many of annoyance impatience apprehension daily, but the emotion dominant my days throughout is the feeling of deep and abiding gratitude - thankfulness - recognition of gifts given undeserved to me.
From the sun upon the skin to the shimmer of the water the raven black in silhouette that perches upon the marbled minaret rail the coffee so common the flowers profusion the salad I lazily consume.
The books upon my shelf the bag my books surrounds the endless cups of dark sugared tea consumed in gardens green sheltered in shady by floating ivy trellis the photos of her eyes heavy-lidded locked in an embrace with death made manifest in brass - the muscles (mine) that scream or creak or cry - whiskey glass rum glass small cherry tomato walnuts.
The sweat slicks and neck aches and wrist cracking - for these I am grateful - the hip hand-hollowed, the tenders exposed - the dust and the ants that own my kitchen - the jeans my ass over, the blanket my bed upon - sniffs, yawns, sighs, even students complaining - for all this, Lord, I give thanks.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Ay, there's the rub
I am haunted by something which I cannot name, and am therefore powerless against. For if naming provides identification, and identification aids in classification and if classification could assist in finding similar examples and if similar examples could provide a solution which when taken might apply also to my own problem - it is the namelessness that matters.
But what am I saying – it does have a name, and a well-known one at that. They recur – my dreams – they are recurring dreams, and by their unpleasantness we know them, they are nightmares. I can no more stop them than I could stop the a wave in the open ocean. Not every night (thank heavens for that - to wake with this feeling that I have now, and will carrry with me for much of the day – to have that everyday, that would be too much – what I have now is not too much – is is much nonetheless more than I would have,) but not every night they come to me.
There are a few – a menu – you may choose if you like. Do you dislike men without skin, whose muscles visible to the air red and angry across ligaments come beckon to you as you sit with friends and only you can see him – no one else notices – and you would notify them, but when you go to speak ofyou’re your voice fails and is not your tool – he turns off your voice for you because he knows your thoughts, and he would not tolerate your dragging others into this intimate moment of stark terror shared between you two, old friends of many nights since childhood. Eventually he will beckon, and I will go – I have no choice – I am not mine own. There are also the lizards, of course – the large, muscular-bulging variety, slate gray often in color, but possibly green – they wait for me with mouths of pink, and move but rarely and then to the purpose.
Am I afraid of heights? Indeed, in waking life, I am, but not so much than I cannot swallow it and push forward and continue – but in my dream, and it is always structured the same – in my dream it overpowers me, the fear, and leaves me – cowering on a finely graded ledge, one foot-slip away from . . . But I should begin with where it begins.
Always, always, I am always in a strange place – and usually, I want to get out. Last night I wanted to get in – but only to another builidng, and to that end, rather than go down into the very narrow and oh-so-inconveniently placed drainage ditch between the two buildings, I thought I could save time by going UP the small steps located on the side of this building, on this side of the ditch, and then cross over on the small walkboards that are strung between them.
Quickly up I go, the easy stops on the outside of the building. As I get to the top I begin to notice that I had failed to notice that the top few steps are dangerously minimal, and angled in the not-healthy 4 story drop direction. But ahead is a landing – then the crossing – yet somehow when I get to the landing, either the changing nature of the dream, or my own cursed lack of attention earlier result in me finding myself upon a landing that, while safe, makes going back down a fool’s errand. There are no handholds now, and the steps are very dangerous, so I must got forward. But when I turn to look at the walkway in front of me, there are details I had not noticed before – it is cracked, the wood is rotten, it was thin to begin with, has somehow grown yet thinner with proximity, and it will surely not carry my weight.
Suddenly the fear just rises like a sneeze – you could fight it, but once it is upon you, it has a life and determination all its own, and you would be best served to get out of the way. The fear sets in with a sudden downswooping of panic, and I clutch onto – there is always something there to clutch on to – and usually it is mostly stable – I clutch it and I absolutely cower in agonizing fear of falling. Sooner or later, though – it is not so long – 20 – 30 seconds in the dream – I have to get on, and there is always a door or a window available to me.
Last night it was a door. I knocked on the door, and then looking across (while waiting for the door to open,) I saw two people from work, the assistant director and her assistant, stuck in a similar plight on the rooftop of the house opposite. And – oddly enough – I recognized that rooftop – I had been there about 2 or 3 months before. One of them was waiting on the other while she collected her courage – they had just come out of a gable window, and I knew the route they would have to take – up, across the faded cedar shakes that came loose and slid clattering down the roof to dissappear off the edge – they had to transverse the roof – but I couldn’t remember what came after that.
The woman who answered the door was quite old – probably in her 70’s. She had me wait while she fetched her husband – all I wanted was to ask for a set of stairs – can you show to the hallway so I can take the stairs down and out of the building?
When her elderly husband showed up I was nude – except for a cap, and the bag I was carring with me – it was rather embarrassing – I was keenly aware of how inappropriate this was – but what is one to do – apparently I wander naked today – I asked for the stairs – he did not seem to understand, which is odd because I know the words for stairs – it doesn’t seem like such a far out request – but he wasn’t at all sure. He walked away and came back – and using his hands he asked me if I wanted the riser (up) part of the stairs or the tread (flat) part of the stairs. He had obviously misunderstood – I explained that I wanted to WALK DOWN the stairs. Can he just show me where the stairs are? He eventually agreed,and told his wife to do so – as she was showing me the way – first down this set of stairs in their apartment, through this room – she used a couple of slavic words. I was in the middle of asking about this when her husband came back, and now I could hear the slavic words he was using, as well – they were immigrants here – perhapst that explains the misunderstanidng about the stairs. But after a down staircase, now there were also winding up tightly two up staircases, and still no sign of the main hall of the building, where I can acess a stairwell and go down to the ground level. And now they are taking me to these internal, UP staircases, that are terribly rickety to boot – but I don’t want to go up – but they seem to be telling me that up is the way to get out.
Now in case I have not bored you with this topic before, this is ALWAYS the case. For one reason or another, I always end up travelling UP, trying to get down. And the means by which I am travelling up get progressively thinner, smaller, and less secure. I cannot believe this is happening to me again.
I think these people are Bulgarian immigrants – they certainly aren’t Turks – I follow their advice,and go up the staircases, squeezing myself out a hole at the top and emerging half-way out a window only about 10 feet off the ground. I am in luck.
I throw my backpack to the ground first, and then prepare myself to vault out the window. But in that moment, a young boy scurries through and seizes my bag, and runs off. I jump.
The family below are gypsies, I think. They are . . . malformed . . . unsympathetic, and one of them stole my bag, and I know it is somewhere nearby, and all that needs to happen is a quick word from the right guy, and it will reappear. Unfortunately, my first few inquiries leading nowhere, I decide to adopt a more straightforward approach. I seize one of them, a kid of about 20, and tell him to get my bag here or . . . I’ll burn him. He is not sufficiently pro-active and motivated, so I seize him by the neck, flick my lighter, and hold it up to his cheek – but it goes out. So I try his forehead , and then his hair with slighly better success. But really, this lighter sucks. His friends and family are all watching – some of them offer their lighters to me – mine keeps going out. I am glad, (albeit slightly bothered) by their happy willingess to help. Eventually I get my hands on a properly functioning lighter, and hold the flame to his ear. He wiggles, but the ear does not do much – the hair dissappears, the color changes, it crinkles slightly - I don’t recall seeing smoke, though I am sure there was. The main effect (he doesn’t squirm nearly so much as would be appropriate,) is that the top half of his ear shrinks, and practically disappears, leaving a bit of a shrunken, half-ear behind it.
And still no sign of the bag. It is time to move – they are moving – they push me into one of the waiting multi-passenger cars, and smile a not nice smile at me. As one of them leans past me – a man of perhaps 55 or 60, I see a piece of broken glass bottle bottom pinned between thumb and forefinger, and as he leans past me to put something in the back, he takes advantage of the moment, and the opportunity, and grinds the piece of broken glass into my back. I don’t react, and so he starts cutting long lines down my back – I wonder what my shirt will look like in an hour, but say nothing.
I say nothing because I can see something – everyone in this family keeps constant vigilant half hooded an eye on the guy who is the leader – he is the one sitting in the driver’s seat of this car – and when another guy tries to get at me with a screwdriver, he does so with both eyes watching the driver, to be sure he does not see it. I twist the screwdriver out of his hand, and plunge it a short way into his leg – only a short way, because I am beginning to catch the fear of the attention open conflict might draw. The man I stabbed makes no noise, just rubs it and stares malevolently at me – I can only imagine what is coming later.
But what interests me most is the fact that the driver, the leader, seems to be aware of what is going on – he has a slight smirk on his face all the time, and yet the others seem deathly afraid that he will actively notice – which, given what we are doing now – what does he do to people when he gets lathered? The longer I wait, the more I realize this guy is Vesuvius on a coffee break – the pressure and heat are slowly building, and he is enjoying it, and when it comes, we will all suffer exquisitely, and horribly, and we will pretend it is all fine, because we are so afraid of what else may be inside him, waiting to find its own creative realization upon us.
Over time, (and there is much,) I see that many of these people are trapped, like me. They want out – but slowly the leader’s mind and their own captivity has twisted them into stunted sadistic beings who can no longer think their way out. We go to church, the whole group of us, a lot. It is there that I realize one of the women in the group is working for law enforcement, and her contacts are here in the church – it is the only place we get to interact with anyone. As we leave, in the parking lot I walk past basement windows and realize that it is far too busy down there – emotion-laden sounds come up from below, and the the sound of much machine clanking – none of this bodes well, and slowly I feel myself losing my confidence that I can, when the moment comes, screw my courage to the sticking point and finish one or four or all of these fuckers. I know when the moment comes my strength in my hands will fail, and I will fear and move too slowly and then I will be caught, and I will throw myself at their feet in abject fear of what is to come, not so much the death as the losing, not so much the death as the pain, the pain not so much the pain as the helpless grinding humiliation exposed, and I will beg and I will be broken and thus one of them.
With my hands upon the keys
I have drowsed upon the couch –
Today I will write no more
I must go and close the door.
But what am I saying – it does have a name, and a well-known one at that. They recur – my dreams – they are recurring dreams, and by their unpleasantness we know them, they are nightmares. I can no more stop them than I could stop the a wave in the open ocean. Not every night (thank heavens for that - to wake with this feeling that I have now, and will carrry with me for much of the day – to have that everyday, that would be too much – what I have now is not too much – is is much nonetheless more than I would have,) but not every night they come to me.
There are a few – a menu – you may choose if you like. Do you dislike men without skin, whose muscles visible to the air red and angry across ligaments come beckon to you as you sit with friends and only you can see him – no one else notices – and you would notify them, but when you go to speak ofyou’re your voice fails and is not your tool – he turns off your voice for you because he knows your thoughts, and he would not tolerate your dragging others into this intimate moment of stark terror shared between you two, old friends of many nights since childhood. Eventually he will beckon, and I will go – I have no choice – I am not mine own. There are also the lizards, of course – the large, muscular-bulging variety, slate gray often in color, but possibly green – they wait for me with mouths of pink, and move but rarely and then to the purpose.
Am I afraid of heights? Indeed, in waking life, I am, but not so much than I cannot swallow it and push forward and continue – but in my dream, and it is always structured the same – in my dream it overpowers me, the fear, and leaves me – cowering on a finely graded ledge, one foot-slip away from . . . But I should begin with where it begins.
Always, always, I am always in a strange place – and usually, I want to get out. Last night I wanted to get in – but only to another builidng, and to that end, rather than go down into the very narrow and oh-so-inconveniently placed drainage ditch between the two buildings, I thought I could save time by going UP the small steps located on the side of this building, on this side of the ditch, and then cross over on the small walkboards that are strung between them.
Quickly up I go, the easy stops on the outside of the building. As I get to the top I begin to notice that I had failed to notice that the top few steps are dangerously minimal, and angled in the not-healthy 4 story drop direction. But ahead is a landing – then the crossing – yet somehow when I get to the landing, either the changing nature of the dream, or my own cursed lack of attention earlier result in me finding myself upon a landing that, while safe, makes going back down a fool’s errand. There are no handholds now, and the steps are very dangerous, so I must got forward. But when I turn to look at the walkway in front of me, there are details I had not noticed before – it is cracked, the wood is rotten, it was thin to begin with, has somehow grown yet thinner with proximity, and it will surely not carry my weight.
Suddenly the fear just rises like a sneeze – you could fight it, but once it is upon you, it has a life and determination all its own, and you would be best served to get out of the way. The fear sets in with a sudden downswooping of panic, and I clutch onto – there is always something there to clutch on to – and usually it is mostly stable – I clutch it and I absolutely cower in agonizing fear of falling. Sooner or later, though – it is not so long – 20 – 30 seconds in the dream – I have to get on, and there is always a door or a window available to me.
Last night it was a door. I knocked on the door, and then looking across (while waiting for the door to open,) I saw two people from work, the assistant director and her assistant, stuck in a similar plight on the rooftop of the house opposite. And – oddly enough – I recognized that rooftop – I had been there about 2 or 3 months before. One of them was waiting on the other while she collected her courage – they had just come out of a gable window, and I knew the route they would have to take – up, across the faded cedar shakes that came loose and slid clattering down the roof to dissappear off the edge – they had to transverse the roof – but I couldn’t remember what came after that.
The woman who answered the door was quite old – probably in her 70’s. She had me wait while she fetched her husband – all I wanted was to ask for a set of stairs – can you show to the hallway so I can take the stairs down and out of the building?
When her elderly husband showed up I was nude – except for a cap, and the bag I was carring with me – it was rather embarrassing – I was keenly aware of how inappropriate this was – but what is one to do – apparently I wander naked today – I asked for the stairs – he did not seem to understand, which is odd because I know the words for stairs – it doesn’t seem like such a far out request – but he wasn’t at all sure. He walked away and came back – and using his hands he asked me if I wanted the riser (up) part of the stairs or the tread (flat) part of the stairs. He had obviously misunderstood – I explained that I wanted to WALK DOWN the stairs. Can he just show me where the stairs are? He eventually agreed,and told his wife to do so – as she was showing me the way – first down this set of stairs in their apartment, through this room – she used a couple of slavic words. I was in the middle of asking about this when her husband came back, and now I could hear the slavic words he was using, as well – they were immigrants here – perhapst that explains the misunderstanidng about the stairs. But after a down staircase, now there were also winding up tightly two up staircases, and still no sign of the main hall of the building, where I can acess a stairwell and go down to the ground level. And now they are taking me to these internal, UP staircases, that are terribly rickety to boot – but I don’t want to go up – but they seem to be telling me that up is the way to get out.
Now in case I have not bored you with this topic before, this is ALWAYS the case. For one reason or another, I always end up travelling UP, trying to get down. And the means by which I am travelling up get progressively thinner, smaller, and less secure. I cannot believe this is happening to me again.
I think these people are Bulgarian immigrants – they certainly aren’t Turks – I follow their advice,and go up the staircases, squeezing myself out a hole at the top and emerging half-way out a window only about 10 feet off the ground. I am in luck.
I throw my backpack to the ground first, and then prepare myself to vault out the window. But in that moment, a young boy scurries through and seizes my bag, and runs off. I jump.
The family below are gypsies, I think. They are . . . malformed . . . unsympathetic, and one of them stole my bag, and I know it is somewhere nearby, and all that needs to happen is a quick word from the right guy, and it will reappear. Unfortunately, my first few inquiries leading nowhere, I decide to adopt a more straightforward approach. I seize one of them, a kid of about 20, and tell him to get my bag here or . . . I’ll burn him. He is not sufficiently pro-active and motivated, so I seize him by the neck, flick my lighter, and hold it up to his cheek – but it goes out. So I try his forehead , and then his hair with slighly better success. But really, this lighter sucks. His friends and family are all watching – some of them offer their lighters to me – mine keeps going out. I am glad, (albeit slightly bothered) by their happy willingess to help. Eventually I get my hands on a properly functioning lighter, and hold the flame to his ear. He wiggles, but the ear does not do much – the hair dissappears, the color changes, it crinkles slightly - I don’t recall seeing smoke, though I am sure there was. The main effect (he doesn’t squirm nearly so much as would be appropriate,) is that the top half of his ear shrinks, and practically disappears, leaving a bit of a shrunken, half-ear behind it.
And still no sign of the bag. It is time to move – they are moving – they push me into one of the waiting multi-passenger cars, and smile a not nice smile at me. As one of them leans past me – a man of perhaps 55 or 60, I see a piece of broken glass bottle bottom pinned between thumb and forefinger, and as he leans past me to put something in the back, he takes advantage of the moment, and the opportunity, and grinds the piece of broken glass into my back. I don’t react, and so he starts cutting long lines down my back – I wonder what my shirt will look like in an hour, but say nothing.
I say nothing because I can see something – everyone in this family keeps constant vigilant half hooded an eye on the guy who is the leader – he is the one sitting in the driver’s seat of this car – and when another guy tries to get at me with a screwdriver, he does so with both eyes watching the driver, to be sure he does not see it. I twist the screwdriver out of his hand, and plunge it a short way into his leg – only a short way, because I am beginning to catch the fear of the attention open conflict might draw. The man I stabbed makes no noise, just rubs it and stares malevolently at me – I can only imagine what is coming later.
But what interests me most is the fact that the driver, the leader, seems to be aware of what is going on – he has a slight smirk on his face all the time, and yet the others seem deathly afraid that he will actively notice – which, given what we are doing now – what does he do to people when he gets lathered? The longer I wait, the more I realize this guy is Vesuvius on a coffee break – the pressure and heat are slowly building, and he is enjoying it, and when it comes, we will all suffer exquisitely, and horribly, and we will pretend it is all fine, because we are so afraid of what else may be inside him, waiting to find its own creative realization upon us.
Over time, (and there is much,) I see that many of these people are trapped, like me. They want out – but slowly the leader’s mind and their own captivity has twisted them into stunted sadistic beings who can no longer think their way out. We go to church, the whole group of us, a lot. It is there that I realize one of the women in the group is working for law enforcement, and her contacts are here in the church – it is the only place we get to interact with anyone. As we leave, in the parking lot I walk past basement windows and realize that it is far too busy down there – emotion-laden sounds come up from below, and the the sound of much machine clanking – none of this bodes well, and slowly I feel myself losing my confidence that I can, when the moment comes, screw my courage to the sticking point and finish one or four or all of these fuckers. I know when the moment comes my strength in my hands will fail, and I will fear and move too slowly and then I will be caught, and I will throw myself at their feet in abject fear of what is to come, not so much the death as the losing, not so much the death as the pain, the pain not so much the pain as the helpless grinding humiliation exposed, and I will beg and I will be broken and thus one of them.
With my hands upon the keys
I have drowsed upon the couch –
Today I will write no more
I must go and close the door.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Life is messy.
A snapshot of my life in this Sunday-morning moment would be deceptive. Chaos reigns across the living areas of my apartment. In the kitchen, on Friday evening I cooked a piece of salmon, with a covering of mustard seed, pine nuts, bit o' bread crumbs and lemon, and some capers thrown in for good measure. That was then wrapped in a bit of pastry dough, which was then brushed with some egg, and baked in the oven. The random remains were left in the kitchen, where they still are this morning. Then, Saturday morning I made a strawberry cobbler, of which I proceeded to eat half. Again, much of the remains and dirty utensils, sit still on my counters, largely where they were left when I put them down, having exhausted their use. Then, last night, I bought a chicken, and ate it piece by piece by dipping it in barbecue sauce, garlic yogurt, or sriracha sauce, all while priming the engine with a beer so bad it nearly makes me gag when I drink it. The sauces, of course, still sit out in the kitchen. On the floor, there is a pizza box, containing, yes, pizza. Thus, in short, my kitchen is a mess.
My living room has only a few disordered items of its own, chief among them being a brackish bowl of greasy water containing in it's discolored depths some salmon skin, some carrot pieces, and some lettuce. I know it sounds like that soup you once saw in a Vietnamese restaurant, but it isn't. It's just turtle food. You see, if I put their food in their main tank with them, the water gets all nasty much sooner. But if I feed them in a separate bowl, then I need to change the water less often. On the couch where I sit, there is a lap-desk, (bean-bag type construction on the bottom, black plastic on top,) which sits upon the sofa beside me, because it is really more useful at providing a stable base upon which a coffee cup might rest within reach than a lap-desk for the laptop, which balances on my leg which, wrapped in a blanket, balances on the coffee table, just fine. The coffee table itself is strewn with electronics - two hard drives of what a few years ago would have been considered phenomenal capacity, but now, given my penchant for taking photos and downloading TV shows, are both brimming near capacity. Were that not enough memory and entertainment electric, my ipod, wrapped in its little white cord, is also on the table, beside a computer mouse. Cords from all these devices in different directions writhe, each with its own kinks and folds rising and across the table snaking as though they had life.
When I said the living room had but a few disordered items of its own, I meant that - well, there is also my jacket on the chair across from me - but most of the mess in the living room is actually spill-over from the dining area. Yesterday I bought a rose bush. It is about 6 feet tall, and is supported by a reed which it twines around and up - I set it in my living room, next to the window, over the turtles, and it so pleased me to have a rosebush in my living room that I decided to I had to re-pot some other plants, but quickly ran out of soil. The project having been suddenly abandoned, however, the pots still sit scattered around the coffee table, looking, but for their new-ness, like something you would expect to find in the back shed of a gardener. Beyond the pots, on its side, lies an empty beer can, and beyond that a rug, having been thrown from across the room last night, lies crumpled, under a chair which supports an empty pizza box.
The pizza box is not there because, like so many other items, I just left it where it was when I was done eating pizza - no, I went and pulled it from the rubbish to put it on that chair, because I wanted to cut a circle out of it. In the end I didn't, or rather, I cut a circle out of the flyer pasted onto it instead - (it was just easier that way-)which goes some way toward explaining why there is a cut up Little Ceasar's flyer on the floor in the dining room, next to the pages of newspaper and magazine spread out over the floor. There are about 9 of them, and they were intended to protect the floor from the paint which was aimed at the poor canvas which sits atop them. Given the amount of paint on them, I suppose they did a bang-up job, but given the amount of paint on the floor, it would appear I should have used about 29 sheets, as opposed to 9. I don't suppose Jackson Pollack worried about this sort of thing . . .
Naturally, then, upon the dining room table overlooking the brightly colored floor and newspapers and of course, canvas, sit tubes and bottles and bottles and tubes of paint, plus a large bottle of milk that ought to be in the fridge, about half a chicken on a rather smeary plate, and a pile of bones and excess skin off to the side of the plate. There are brushes, tape, string, glue, pens, and a pallette with paint crusted over it. Yet let's not get too caught up there.
Allow your glance to travel beyond the table, and you find, across the back of a dining room chair, and scattered across the floor next to the bookshelves and the rugs that hang behind them, dirty clothes. Not just run-of-the-mill dirty clothes, but workout-dirty clothes. Amidst the mix I can also pick out a pair of boxing gloves and hand-wraps, though my view is somewhat obscured by a large pot, like the others in the living room, intended yesterday to receive a plant.
The plants I speak of are all around me - literally on four sides. Most of them are blooming right now - putting out runners and blossoms and blooms. There are wide, spreading spider plants, long trailing leafy vines, small pots of flowering plants, some meter-long bamboo stems, and a couple of things that could pass for small trees. And a rose bush, of course. We mustn't forget him, as he is rather my favorite, and I shall soon name him.
As we leave the living room, I was about to say that my entryway is ok - but it is not. Upon the table, there you will see receipts from food delivered, along with spare change, a wallet, various bank cards, and possibly an open switchblade. On the floor in the entryway there are two plastic bags which contain glass bottles intended for the recycle bin. Due to a recent wine-tasting I here hosted, there are, if memory serves, 6 empty wine bottles, as well as 1 empty each of vodka and bourbon and beer - but let us leave here.
My hallway and bathroom, I am happy to say, are uncluttered - or at least no more cluttered than typically passes for well-ordered and clean. The hallway, however, leads unfortunately to the bedroom. Upon the floor of the bedroom is a rustic Turkish hand-woven nomadic carpet, brilliant in its reds and oranges, many of which you cannot see because of the pile of jeans and t-shirts and sweaters that begins upon the rug and travels like a great amorphous all-consuming living being from the floor to the foot of the chair and then up the chair, where it ponderously perches and surveys, via the window, life in the street below. The pile grows, and moves, from day to day, shifting its bulk this way or that depending on its mood. As of this morning it has crowned itself with a small black bra, the front straps of which each bear four little pearl-like beads suspended under a fine-tiny golden ring.
As our gaze approaches the bed, across the floor are scattered water bottles, perhaps three, empty all as of this morning. The bedside table upon which they stood one-by-one when full in turn, is currently covered in books, which were once stacked neatly, perhaps five in one stack, three in another, next to the lamp by which they were to be read, but which now lays over at a 45-degree angle, tilted precariously into upon and against the books that saved it from a crashing and untimely end. Scattered beside the perilously piled books and off-kilter lamp are three bracelets of a gold color, and a largish gold colored swatch watch, of the sort that seems fashionable these days, but which I think is a bit big for her very small wrists, which she holds beside her head which uses no pillow, but lays directly upon the red sheet. As her face is turned away, I from the door see only long black hair, and those slender hands with long fingers, stemming from her tiny wrists. Stretched out on the bed, even covered by the red duvet, she looks even longer than she is. She woke me this morning coming in at four. After when we were finished at five, shortly she began to snore. It was the first time I had heard her snore - it was, in an odd way, endearing.
The turtles are moving now, in their tank - banging about and having small dramas, I suspect, in which way they quite remind me of humans. They have heard me typing, and as the sun is now up, they know in their tiny brains that soon the morning sun will soon reach them, and they will take up their basking spots on the stacked rocks to sun themselves.
And I - I will clean today. I will put away the tubes of paint, and pick up the newspaper from the floor. The beer cans and barbecue sauce will go into the kitchen, and the chicken will be stripped from bones and wrapped in plastic and frozen in the freezer like in a civilized household. The flowerpots, empty, will go back in storage, to await the arrival of soil. The painting will go up on the easel, with the others, where I can look at it and think. The clothes will go in the washer, the boxing gloves, stuffed full of newspaper, so they may stay freshy-smelly, put away. The rancid turtle water will be flushed, the turtles brushed, and every rock cleaned in the shower. The dishes I'll wash, coffee I'll make, a new cake I'll bake - a strawberry cobbler, perhaps, again. What I won't do is scrub the floor - I rather like the paint splatters, and there will be time enough in life for scrubbing when I am older and done with the living.
My living room has only a few disordered items of its own, chief among them being a brackish bowl of greasy water containing in it's discolored depths some salmon skin, some carrot pieces, and some lettuce. I know it sounds like that soup you once saw in a Vietnamese restaurant, but it isn't. It's just turtle food. You see, if I put their food in their main tank with them, the water gets all nasty much sooner. But if I feed them in a separate bowl, then I need to change the water less often. On the couch where I sit, there is a lap-desk, (bean-bag type construction on the bottom, black plastic on top,) which sits upon the sofa beside me, because it is really more useful at providing a stable base upon which a coffee cup might rest within reach than a lap-desk for the laptop, which balances on my leg which, wrapped in a blanket, balances on the coffee table, just fine. The coffee table itself is strewn with electronics - two hard drives of what a few years ago would have been considered phenomenal capacity, but now, given my penchant for taking photos and downloading TV shows, are both brimming near capacity. Were that not enough memory and entertainment electric, my ipod, wrapped in its little white cord, is also on the table, beside a computer mouse. Cords from all these devices in different directions writhe, each with its own kinks and folds rising and across the table snaking as though they had life.
When I said the living room had but a few disordered items of its own, I meant that - well, there is also my jacket on the chair across from me - but most of the mess in the living room is actually spill-over from the dining area. Yesterday I bought a rose bush. It is about 6 feet tall, and is supported by a reed which it twines around and up - I set it in my living room, next to the window, over the turtles, and it so pleased me to have a rosebush in my living room that I decided to I had to re-pot some other plants, but quickly ran out of soil. The project having been suddenly abandoned, however, the pots still sit scattered around the coffee table, looking, but for their new-ness, like something you would expect to find in the back shed of a gardener. Beyond the pots, on its side, lies an empty beer can, and beyond that a rug, having been thrown from across the room last night, lies crumpled, under a chair which supports an empty pizza box.
The pizza box is not there because, like so many other items, I just left it where it was when I was done eating pizza - no, I went and pulled it from the rubbish to put it on that chair, because I wanted to cut a circle out of it. In the end I didn't, or rather, I cut a circle out of the flyer pasted onto it instead - (it was just easier that way-)which goes some way toward explaining why there is a cut up Little Ceasar's flyer on the floor in the dining room, next to the pages of newspaper and magazine spread out over the floor. There are about 9 of them, and they were intended to protect the floor from the paint which was aimed at the poor canvas which sits atop them. Given the amount of paint on them, I suppose they did a bang-up job, but given the amount of paint on the floor, it would appear I should have used about 29 sheets, as opposed to 9. I don't suppose Jackson Pollack worried about this sort of thing . . .
Naturally, then, upon the dining room table overlooking the brightly colored floor and newspapers and of course, canvas, sit tubes and bottles and bottles and tubes of paint, plus a large bottle of milk that ought to be in the fridge, about half a chicken on a rather smeary plate, and a pile of bones and excess skin off to the side of the plate. There are brushes, tape, string, glue, pens, and a pallette with paint crusted over it. Yet let's not get too caught up there.
Allow your glance to travel beyond the table, and you find, across the back of a dining room chair, and scattered across the floor next to the bookshelves and the rugs that hang behind them, dirty clothes. Not just run-of-the-mill dirty clothes, but workout-dirty clothes. Amidst the mix I can also pick out a pair of boxing gloves and hand-wraps, though my view is somewhat obscured by a large pot, like the others in the living room, intended yesterday to receive a plant.
The plants I speak of are all around me - literally on four sides. Most of them are blooming right now - putting out runners and blossoms and blooms. There are wide, spreading spider plants, long trailing leafy vines, small pots of flowering plants, some meter-long bamboo stems, and a couple of things that could pass for small trees. And a rose bush, of course. We mustn't forget him, as he is rather my favorite, and I shall soon name him.
As we leave the living room, I was about to say that my entryway is ok - but it is not. Upon the table, there you will see receipts from food delivered, along with spare change, a wallet, various bank cards, and possibly an open switchblade. On the floor in the entryway there are two plastic bags which contain glass bottles intended for the recycle bin. Due to a recent wine-tasting I here hosted, there are, if memory serves, 6 empty wine bottles, as well as 1 empty each of vodka and bourbon and beer - but let us leave here.
My hallway and bathroom, I am happy to say, are uncluttered - or at least no more cluttered than typically passes for well-ordered and clean. The hallway, however, leads unfortunately to the bedroom. Upon the floor of the bedroom is a rustic Turkish hand-woven nomadic carpet, brilliant in its reds and oranges, many of which you cannot see because of the pile of jeans and t-shirts and sweaters that begins upon the rug and travels like a great amorphous all-consuming living being from the floor to the foot of the chair and then up the chair, where it ponderously perches and surveys, via the window, life in the street below. The pile grows, and moves, from day to day, shifting its bulk this way or that depending on its mood. As of this morning it has crowned itself with a small black bra, the front straps of which each bear four little pearl-like beads suspended under a fine-tiny golden ring.
As our gaze approaches the bed, across the floor are scattered water bottles, perhaps three, empty all as of this morning. The bedside table upon which they stood one-by-one when full in turn, is currently covered in books, which were once stacked neatly, perhaps five in one stack, three in another, next to the lamp by which they were to be read, but which now lays over at a 45-degree angle, tilted precariously into upon and against the books that saved it from a crashing and untimely end. Scattered beside the perilously piled books and off-kilter lamp are three bracelets of a gold color, and a largish gold colored swatch watch, of the sort that seems fashionable these days, but which I think is a bit big for her very small wrists, which she holds beside her head which uses no pillow, but lays directly upon the red sheet. As her face is turned away, I from the door see only long black hair, and those slender hands with long fingers, stemming from her tiny wrists. Stretched out on the bed, even covered by the red duvet, she looks even longer than she is. She woke me this morning coming in at four. After when we were finished at five, shortly she began to snore. It was the first time I had heard her snore - it was, in an odd way, endearing.
The turtles are moving now, in their tank - banging about and having small dramas, I suspect, in which way they quite remind me of humans. They have heard me typing, and as the sun is now up, they know in their tiny brains that soon the morning sun will soon reach them, and they will take up their basking spots on the stacked rocks to sun themselves.
And I - I will clean today. I will put away the tubes of paint, and pick up the newspaper from the floor. The beer cans and barbecue sauce will go into the kitchen, and the chicken will be stripped from bones and wrapped in plastic and frozen in the freezer like in a civilized household. The flowerpots, empty, will go back in storage, to await the arrival of soil. The painting will go up on the easel, with the others, where I can look at it and think. The clothes will go in the washer, the boxing gloves, stuffed full of newspaper, so they may stay freshy-smelly, put away. The rancid turtle water will be flushed, the turtles brushed, and every rock cleaned in the shower. The dishes I'll wash, coffee I'll make, a new cake I'll bake - a strawberry cobbler, perhaps, again. What I won't do is scrub the floor - I rather like the paint splatters, and there will be time enough in life for scrubbing when I am older and done with the living.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
A slice of cheese, two half-bottles of wine, and TV downloaded from the internet, were paradise enow'!
One of the advantages of having wine parties, or wine tastings, if you will, is that the poor suckers who attend tend to leave half-finished bottles of wine at your house. And furthermore, you know exactly which ones are best.
I can't exactly say it offsets the cost of all the cheeses and olives and dips and strawberries and grapes and apples and walnuts and little hand-rolled whatnots, but nor is it to be overlooked.
One of the advantages of having a bunch of half-drunk bottles of decent wine sitting around is that they go so well with sleeping pills, and what's more, they make television really, really good. Ok, not really. I mean, the show I am thinking of was good even when I was sober. So - really, I would have enjoyed it in any case.
'Tis a piss-poor blog entry, really. But the aforementioned sleeping pill has caught up with the wine, and the two together are doing a tag-team whammy on me brain.
May the force be with you all.
I can't exactly say it offsets the cost of all the cheeses and olives and dips and strawberries and grapes and apples and walnuts and little hand-rolled whatnots, but nor is it to be overlooked.
One of the advantages of having a bunch of half-drunk bottles of decent wine sitting around is that they go so well with sleeping pills, and what's more, they make television really, really good. Ok, not really. I mean, the show I am thinking of was good even when I was sober. So - really, I would have enjoyed it in any case.
'Tis a piss-poor blog entry, really. But the aforementioned sleeping pill has caught up with the wine, and the two together are doing a tag-team whammy on me brain.
May the force be with you all.
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