M83

What are you looking for?

"What are you looking for Mommy?"

Julie's words jolted Mary back into reality. She been rummaging through every cupboard in the kitchen for the last 10 minutes. It didn't even occur to her that she didn't remember what she was trying to find until the little girls words reminded her that there was a goal. She just stopped and stared into the baseboard molding for a moment.

"Honey, I'm not even sure anymore."

She stood up, leaving the left over spaghetti in the Tupperware on the counter still uncovered, and picked Julie up. She was bigger than Mary had remembered, but it had been some time since she'd held her child. There just didn't seem to be the time anymore. She was thankful for the extra hours at work, even though they barely covered the increase in childcare costs, it gave her an escape from her reality.

It was a place that she could go and everything was in order, her place on the line never changed, and all she had to do was inspect one shoe after another. They all looked the same but every so often there would be an obvious defect, which she would throw casually to her side. She could usually see the bad ones coming from up the line, once you've seen as many shoes as she has the small faults become obvious. It was all second nature to her now. Often times she'd daydream at work. Her mind would wander and eventually it would always come back to Greg. Why wasn't she able to see it coming? What was so different between the men she meets and the shoes on the conveyor belt?

She laid Julie down on her princess comforter and kissed her on the forehead. "Mommy, do you think Daddy has found what he's looking for yet? I miss him."

"I'm not sure he remembers what he's looking for either anymore honey."

****
"Let me just grab my coat and I'll meet you outside."
It was early in the evening. The sun had set hours ago, but with the solstice only a week passed that didn't mean it was late. I had so many people to talk to, I didn't even know where to begin.

"How've ya been? Did the year treat you well?"
"Yeah, it's crazy though."
"Ha, tell me about it. Oh, by the way, I'm..."
"You're what?"

Everyone was wearing masks. There was no real reason, just wanted to try something different. Is it easier to express the truths of ones self while hiding behind a counterfeit facade? Gin has a way of making me over think things.

"Where's my goddamn coat?!"
"Did you check on the coat rack?"
"Do I look like an idiot? Just cause I'm drunk doesn't make me an idiot."

Somewhere across the room a shot glass falls to the concrete and a group of party goers gasp in horror as their taste buds burn away in an ecstasy that only 100 proof whiskey can provide.

"So, it's almost midnight and I promised myself that I'd talk to some people before the new year. You're one of those people..."
"Cool, what's up?"
"I'm....I guess I'm not sure what else to say here."
"You don't have to say anything else."

The clock struck and a song from years passed came on. I looked around the room at all the faces, many I'd known much longer than I'd known myself. I hope you all know I'm not doing this for your benefit.

"Have you seen my coat? It's blue with cigarettes in the pocket."
"No sorry, have you checked the coat rack?"
"Ugh, yes I have, keep an eye out."
"You just need a cigarette? Here you go."

Outside the air was cold, but clean, the same couldn't be said for the ground. Half finished cocktails and joint roaches littered the parking lot. It's funny how so many believe refuse to believe.

"So, you may have heard but I'm..."
"What? No, no no."
"It's the truth."
"No, you're not. Now let's go dancing!"

The smell of stale booze hung heavy in the air while everyone said their farewells. It would be another year before I'd see some of them. Others I'd probably never see again. When the only ones left were those I'd see again tomorrow, I found my jacket, hanging on the coat rack.

****

I thought about doing a third piece here, but now that I'm here it's not what I'm looking for right now.

Sonder

Now here's a word that I can get behind.

There's a lesson in here somewhere.

I saw it. I thought "this is gonna happen". I could have stopped it from happening then, but I didn't. Now it's happened. I'd be lying if I said this was the first time...


When I walked into the living room it was clear that something was out of place and while this was a common occurrence, today was different. As soon as I'd rounded the top of the stairs I could see it sitting there, a large ceramic pitcher we'd be using a vase to display a large bouquet of dried flowers and other various ornamental plants. Instead of sitting centered on the makeshift kitchen counter it was placed on the carpet, only slightly off the main path to three of the bedrooms. This was when I first thought about it being knocked over, not maliciously mind you, more that someone wouldn't notice it was so wide and catch a cat tail on the hem of their pant or an overly excited Wes dog tail shatters the porcelain as he tries to muster the strength of Atlas to hold his bladder just a little bit longer. It would have taken a small amount of effort to reach down and move it back to it's original safety but I thought to myself, "someone must have put it there for a reason, it's best not to disturb." I released the dog from behind the door and watched carefully as the scene I had just envisioned nearly took place at the speed I had predicted. We were lucky this time and in that found a false sense of security. Three more times we passed by without incident and I forgot entirely about the inevitable, until it happened. My thoughts were sidetracked from the never ending war in Alexander's former empire and hazy from too much weed so it came as a complete surprise when the left seam of my pant leg brushed just enough against the foliage to cause the entire still life to become animated and fall to the floor, spreading dried seeds and petals over the stained blue carpet. I just stared down at what had happened. Why hadn't I just moved the pitcher earlier? I wondered if there's a part of me that wanted this to happen, need it to happened, a part that feeds on the chaos created. A pining within for the days when Shiva ruled over men and all that existed did so only to be destroyed. We are so focus on bringing order to our surrounding it seems no one takes the time to stop and ask if the alternative is better. I spent far too long entranced by the situation.  

Fallen Vase by Mofazio (deviantart)

In with the ferns and hemoglobin

I've got nothing, we'll see where this goes...

She was sitting on the bus, lamenting the morning commute and what awaited her on the 23rd floor in an office with no windows, only waist height walls. She was familiar with every aspect of the ride. At 7:42 they would stop at Juneau and three men would board the bus, she could always accurately guess their attire based on the weather. Today there was no rain yet so two of the men would have North Face jackets, slacks and white button up shirts just slightly exposed, the other man would be in his trench coat and freshly polished black shoes, he carried an umbrella just in case things got worse. A middle aged woman that she named "Pollyanna" would be walking her two dachshunds just passed Dawson. Anyone who would try to convince you that humans are not creatures of habit has never worked a 9-5 job before. The mountain was out that morning, as people would tend to say when they couldn't think of anything meaningful to discuss but still felt obligated to initiate a dialog. Five people throughout the bus began such conversations. She over head one of them, "When's the last time you made it up there?" "Oh it's been far too long, at least a couple years." She was 34 years old and had never been to the mountain. Her whole life it had always been there in the distance like some relic of a long forgotten religion that no longer has meaning in a world of touch screens and RFID technology, but the people still respect it for its cultural significance. She imagined it was a similar thing for the people that commute around Notre Dame or Wat Arun, but she'd never been there, and had no desire to travel, so she had no way to prove that. Her whole life thus far had been spent within the confines of the city limits, the only cow she'd ever seen was in the part of the zoo called "Family Farm". She often dreamed of going to other places, seeing with her own eyes the things that she'd only viewed in magazines or featured in the background of mediocre television dramas. For lunch she had four carrot sticks, a fat free yoplait, one third of a chicken breast she cooked three days ago and a shot of insulin. By the time she left to go home it was raining, she thought about the man with the trench coat and his umbrella, but knew she wouldn't see him on the ride home. She often wondered which bus he took back. She imagined the phone call that he might make every night to his wife, explaining how things got crazy at the office and apologizing that he won't be home for dinner. As soon as he hangs up the phone he immediately makes another call where all he says is, "She's starting to get suspicious. Hurry, I can't be too late." It reminds her why she still lives alone. When she got home the rain had subsided into a mere drizzle. Three weeks prior a stack of phone books had been left on her door step, they were now waterlogged and soon they'd start to smell a little funny, but she walked passed them like she had each day before. She had completely forgotten about the mountain.

I guess that didn't turn out too bad.

Resuscitation of an old friend

Sometimes the things that we miss the most, we don't realize we even miss until we have them back...

Growing up I had a very good friend. We had a number of classes together and spent time outside of school as well. I wouldn't say that we were inseparable by any means, but we enjoyed each others company and never fell victim to the awkward silences that speak volumes about the underlying differences between people. Time inevitably progressed and there was nothing we couldn't talk about. Some things were still left unsaid, but only because the most important things have a way of making themselves irrelevant. There was one particular encounter that always stuck with me. In the moment it seemed like any other evening in June, just another insignificant piece of a mosaic that made up my life after graduation. We went to the beach. Not the sand beach mind you, the kind of beach where the concrete runs right up to the high tide and when the tide is low a landscape of jagged, barnacle covered rocks is exposed. As a child I'd go to this same beach to over turn rocks in search of small crabs, and the occasional large one, wearing shorts and saltwater sandals. In this particular situation we just sat on a bench and looked out over the Olympic Mountains as the sun fell slowly below their peaks. We talked about people and life and nothing. I didn't know it when we parted ways, I should have, but we wouldn't see each other for a long time. I've thought about the park bench more than I'd care to admit. In the following years we didn't see each other but for a brief moment when my mind couldn't handle itself much less the seemingly simple task of interacting with those close to me. I thought of them from time to time and how things might have been different, if the circumstance were different, if they were different, but mostly if I were different, a thought I entertain all too often. I used to tell people that there was nothing in my life that I'd done that I could regret because I liked the person I was and wouldn't want to change that. The truth is that hated parts of what I'd become but was too afraid to admit that to anyone, and even more afraid to admit that to myself. In my life I've spent so much time wondering what other peoples impressions of me were that I rarely stopped to ponder my impression of myself. It seemed like something that I shouldn't have to think about. Something that should always be right. I've learned that isn't true at all. We ran into each other again, nearly ten years later. We drank cold beers in the summer smog of our old neighborhood, the cars passing by only yards away while bands, that probably should have stayed in garages, performed in the streets. The conversation was trivial to say the least, but not in the way we'd talk about nothing before. It wasn't the kind of nothing where everything exists between the words but the kind of small talk that you'd make with a coworker or teacher, a hollow nothing. But even within that conversational void you could hear echos of the past. We saw each other casually at various events after that, birthday parties or celebratory events. It happened so gradually overtime I can't even say exactly when things changed, but they did. It struck me one day while sitting at my desk, it was as if the last decade never happened, like we'd always been friends. It seems sometimes that life goes out of it's way to make sure some things don't last. Then there are some friendships that, no matter how your life plays out, will always come back to you. You can call it fate, destiny, divine intervention, zah-mah-ki-bo, or whatever your heart desires, I'm just glad that it exists.

What if I were Samson and you were dead?

Sometimes I'll wake up with no memory of my dreams except a statement or phrase. It's impossible to tell if it's a synopsis of what has just occurred, a fracture of the greater whole, or something completely unrelated entirely...

When I was younger I had long hair. I wasn't so young that it had a certain element of carefree jubilation, but more an testament to the complete hatred for all the existed around me in my teenage years. At it's longest it fell just below my shoulders. I would be lying if I said it was a thing of glory. More accurately it was a tangled, greasy rats nest, the unkempt nature of which I felt accurately expressed my general malaise with my own existence. I didn't like myself and it was a means of ensuring that not too many other people like me either. I don't remember this being a conscious decision, but things always seem more clear in the rear view. My parents always begged me to cut it. They would do anything to be rid of the horrific mop that adorned my head. As any good teenager, I resisted. It was a tragedy, but it was my tragedy and I embraced it like a child with a new puppy that hasn't been told yet that if you squeeze him too hard he might die of asphyxiation. It began as a sort of security blanket, but as with all things that give us a false sense of comfort in time it became a burden. I remember one specific day as I was lumbering between classes, out of the corner of my eye I could see a group of other kids chuckling in my direction. I gave it little bearing as it was common place for the social elite of my high school to look down upon those that were of a lower caste. I could see that one of them had broken from the group and was heading in my direction. I can't remember exactly who it was, but it could have been any of them as a major tenet of being a part of the upper echelon required that individual thought be suppressed and replaced by that of the collective. "Are you a boy or a girl?" Engaging in this conversation was futile, but I felt an obligation to respond. This is an ongoing thing in my life and maybe it's a character flaw, but in situations of conflict I am unable to simply ignore the problem. It doesn't always make things better, in fact it generally makes them worse, but it's not something I could change then and I'm not ready to change it now. "What do you think?" A grin reminiscent of the Grinch crept across his face, never have I seen a greater physical display of schadenfreude, "A girl right? I've wondered for a while but could never tell." At that moment I wanted to embed my fist into his face, wanted to tackle him to the ground and repeated beat his fragile face into the cement until blood covered the ground around us and anyone within view shrieked in terror as they realize that this is the first time in their life that they will see someones life end before them. Just the thought of it made me crack a grin so subtle Mona Lisa would be jealous, "Go with that." Laughter erupted as the boy returned to his group of friends, "IT'S A GIRL!" I shook my head as I trudged on to class, the sounds of their elation still ringing in my ears as I entered the building. I made my way into my math class, where I never participated in class but instead spent the hour sitting on the teachers computer composing a sort of murder mystery. I always finished my assignments weeks before they were even assigned and when it came time for the test the only time I would have to study is when I'd completely the material so long ago that I'd completely forgotten what it was. For that entire year it became a sort of refuge in my day. I miss that. It wasn't long after I decided to forgo my senior year of high school, to take classes at the local community college, that I cut my hair. My father joy's may have exceed that of the mocking children, but this was a more pure joy, without the flaws of malice. He took me to a small salon, there were only three chairs, in Bellevue and introduced me to one of the most animated people I've ever met in my life. He cut my hair with a fervor greater than anything I'd encountered. With each snip of the sheers his jaw would clench and release, like some demon faced insect feasting on a field of freshly fertilized grass blades, his joy was the greatest I'd seen thus far. I left with hair shorter than I'd had in nearly a decade, dyed red as the fire that was beginning to grow inside, of self acceptance and contentment that still has yet to reach it's full fruition. A few weeks later I was sitting down for dinner with my father. As we sat waiting for our food an elderly woman, who was as much 85 as she was 110,  walked passed our table. She more struggled with her walker than walked as we are accustomed to doing. It was then that she made an unexpected detour. We were maybe 8 feet out of her path, but she painstakingly made the adjustment necessary to come right up the edge of our table and with a voice as wise and understanding as it was serene she said to me, "you have the most beautiful hair." I could tell from the look behind her eyes that she wasn't talking to me, but to some lover, long dead, that now only exists in her memories. She saw him again in me and for that brief moment we were what each other needed. To this day her face is one of my fondest memories.

Samson and Delliah - Peter Paul Rubens 

Where I live

Here's a piece that I've been spending some time on recently. It seems to work better in my head as a spoken piece, which is where I've been struggling with it lately. I can't decide exactly how to express the inflection that I hear in my head as I recite the words. I also still hate half the words, I really like the other half of them. Being that as it is I doubt that it's actually done, they never are, but I'll put it up here for what it's worth...

Where I live

I want to tell you about where I live.

Encircled by steel rails and encased in concrete,

it’s rather nice mind you.

The people are friendly.

Dogs hide like rats behind the sheetrock,

if you listen carefully between the smell of freshly baked bread and the city skyline

you’ll feel the the person that you used to be slowly creeping out the back of your spine

and you’ll just watch with wonder and amazement

as that part of yourself distorts

mutates

before your very eyes.

The people aren’t really friendly.

Right now I can hear moaning from the other room

what the walls might muffle is only echoed upon the cathedral pitch

lightly refracted through loose ceiling tiles

I’m not even sure who’s moaning.

It doesn’t matter, at some point we all moan.

We moan because of pleasure.

We moan because of pain.

We moan because 20 years ago, she told us that we weren’t who she wanted us to be.

And now we moan with laughter at how silly it is,

that we give people that much control over us.

But this isn’t about me,

it’s about where I live.

Because, between the longshoremen and the hills

there is no concept of right and wrong,

truth and falsity,

morality and sin.

There are no sins here,

just mistakes that are long forgotten

and mistakes we still hold dear

like some kind of poison for which an antidote never existed

or maybe it did exist

but only after we became so far removed from the disease it’s become irrelevant

and by some twisted fate of the infection,

so have we.

But this is supposed to be about where I live.

Where at 3 o’clock in the morning the walls tremble

from the locomotive outside the door

and no one wakes up.

Sometimes people stay the night,

too drunk to drive home,

but not drunk enough to sleep in my bed,

and mention how it wakes them up.

I usually chuckle,

call them soft,

then ask how it feels to live in a normal house?

On a street with sidewalks,

with neighbors.

Where people have fences that aren’t crowned with barbed wire.

And a friendly conversation isn’t

“dude you come by here every single day, cracked out of your mind,

asking for cigarettes, I haven’t given you one before,

why would I give you one now?”

And then for some reason I can’t explain

and have no control over

I give him a cigarette

and tell him to fuck off.

I guess we’re friendly in our own way.

2 years and 20 days later

Strange to think that it's been over two years since I've had anything to say here. I don't remember making a conscious effort to stop blogging, it just seemed to trail off. Maybe it was just replaced by other things in my life that I found more important. It's perfectly natural to expect that things will change in time, so why am I back here now?

At first I thought about starting a new blog. After so long I thought that this place was done and finished, a testament to someone that I used to be, left lost between the 1's and 0's in some vain sense of obligation to posterity. In fact I did start a new one, three of them to be honest. Well, I got as far as giving them a title and then trying to write a first post. With each new attempt I found that what I was really looking for wasn't something new, it was the same thing that drew me here in the first place. If you asked me to define or explain it I'm not sure that I'd be able to do it. It's just a feeling.

Isn't that what this place has always been to some extent.  There's never really been a coherent story line or even a loosely established form of chaotic prose. Sure at time it may have seemed that way but really in the end it's just a feeling.

(I just accidentally closed the window I'm composing this in and thought all was lost. Thank you Google for preserving text in recovered windows.)

When I started this blog over 6 years ago now I posed the question "What is Desomnia in Drull?" I'm still not really sure how to answer that any better now than I did then, but I'm glad it's still here.

I can't help but wonder, is anyone still out there? If you are I'd love to be able to tell you what to expect, but I'm not sure yet. I have been writing more lately, so that's probably what you'll see most of for now. There's sure to be the random musings of the past as well. It wouldn't be the same without it.