Disparagingly. What do we yearn for and motivate ourselves to do, so fervently? A misconception, a manufactured belief, shoved down our throats at birth, that inhabits our limbs and tears us omnipotently between lives. We’ll sit like this again with our hands to our mouths, fresh out of good ideas and choking on betterment. Feeling the good points get stuck between our teeth and try to fight their way out with thick blood and food.
I want a daughter while I’m still young
I wanna hold her hand, show her some beauty
Before this damage is done
But if it’s too much to ask, if it’s too much to ask
Send me a son (1)
I’ve decided that I’ll be artificially inseminated when time deems it appropriate, rather than wait on a man that doesn’t exist. Some clean, DNA-approved stranger’s sperm inside me, squirming in the juices of my fallopian tubes, seems more comforting than a forced love, doesn’t it? Rather than going through the motions of love, not feeling a thrill of excitement or wonder; rather than faking it; rather than lying to myself, this child could be born of me in a positive swell of reward and beauty. With it will be no negative attachments; no strange stories of wild encounters; no tales of some man wanting a child, close to me, close to them. No lies of forced rejuvenation. We’re here and we’re dormant; we’re ready for release and experience; for foolish games played elegantly toward goals we’ve pitched for ourselves.
I don’t have to tell my child about love. I don’t have to shatter their shell of splendor with falsified ‘realities,’ of which there are plenty, and I don’t have to see them fall into darkness in search of fulfilled majesty. We can simply live, and live simply, fed on the food of light and poetry and literature. We can relish in George Eliot, share Shakespearean poems, of which there are plenty not dealing with love, and laugh with Mary Oliver and CK Williams. I will read to her while she swims in my stomach, and I will sing to her, songs that are filled with sweetness which she will remember and sing to her children’s children.
We can remember our moments of truth when we are old, or make them when we are young, pondering the meaning of insect song, watching the rain fall onto leaves and blades of grass, and listen for the silent notes escaping each drop. This will be our faith, and our love. We will have no need for another.
Only for each other. Rococo (2).
(1) From Arcade Fire's The Suburbs
(2) "
Thursday, August 26, 2010
XXX
Sometimes I can’t believe it
I’m movin’ past the feelin’ (1)
Something turning, burning, polishing the severed nerve endings littered around the edges of my brain. Don’t you remember when love was fruitful? Don’t you remember when you could spin and spin and spin until you fell, tumbled, laughing, cackling onto the freshly cut lawns of remembrance, chuckling ‘til your sides hurt with glee and terror of the fall? I want to love like that again; I want to feel more than a bitter curdled sob rising underneath all of the happiness and fluff within my heart.
Memories of dreams swell, and I fall back into the unresponsive, out-of-touch, unreachable minor I once was, sitting on the playground swing-set watching youth bubble, as I pondered my own two hands and the wrinkled lines running around on my palm. A large Mount of Luna – would I be a good lover? A ragged Life Line – would I find something heartbreaking that would change my life forever; that would change my dreaming; that would change my ideals of fairness, judgment, self-worth? An estranged Mercury Finger – would this redeem my eccentricities and place me into a strange, distant relationship in which I could never fully give myself?
I watched as the beautiful girls never stared headlong into the clouds, over all of the blood spilled in snide curses and slanders on the football field, school gym, classroom, etc. Never wanted to explore how far the tide took them, how strong the current was, pulling and pulling down into the silent meaning of what it was to be alive. To live. To feel.
After years of envy, jealousy, spite – I wandered at ignorance and turned my back to density. My love was my loneliness, and my music; something that could never leave me. Something that could never wound me as harshly as others had wounded me. Arrows could no longer pierce my heart with their points of love and farce. I could no longer cry.
No longer love.
(1) From Arcade Fire's The Suburbs
I’m movin’ past the feelin’ (1)
Something turning, burning, polishing the severed nerve endings littered around the edges of my brain. Don’t you remember when love was fruitful? Don’t you remember when you could spin and spin and spin until you fell, tumbled, laughing, cackling onto the freshly cut lawns of remembrance, chuckling ‘til your sides hurt with glee and terror of the fall? I want to love like that again; I want to feel more than a bitter curdled sob rising underneath all of the happiness and fluff within my heart.
Memories of dreams swell, and I fall back into the unresponsive, out-of-touch, unreachable minor I once was, sitting on the playground swing-set watching youth bubble, as I pondered my own two hands and the wrinkled lines running around on my palm. A large Mount of Luna – would I be a good lover? A ragged Life Line – would I find something heartbreaking that would change my life forever; that would change my dreaming; that would change my ideals of fairness, judgment, self-worth? An estranged Mercury Finger – would this redeem my eccentricities and place me into a strange, distant relationship in which I could never fully give myself?
I watched as the beautiful girls never stared headlong into the clouds, over all of the blood spilled in snide curses and slanders on the football field, school gym, classroom, etc. Never wanted to explore how far the tide took them, how strong the current was, pulling and pulling down into the silent meaning of what it was to be alive. To live. To feel.
After years of envy, jealousy, spite – I wandered at ignorance and turned my back to density. My love was my loneliness, and my music; something that could never leave me. Something that could never wound me as harshly as others had wounded me. Arrows could no longer pierce my heart with their points of love and farce. I could no longer cry.
No longer love.
(1) From Arcade Fire's The Suburbs
XXIX
Vince declared how he wanted to date a professor from Lynchburg. Apparently, her husband died a tragic death – a tree branch fell and killed him.
They planted a tree in his honor.
They planted a tree in his honor.
XXVII
We don’t find redemption or perseverance. We don’t find bereavement or pleasure. We seek derivatives and wish for something that explains the dreary bullshit that fills us. I don’t know if commitment is my oven, or if waiting tells me to hold on, but I know I’ve become numb to the love so expressive in our souls.
I was made to love, and I wish I had the care inherent in the weakest rain. But I know I cannot strive to fulfill anyone else until I have fulfilled myself.
It’s the hardest decision I’ve made. To take the possibilities and weigh the depressive outcomes. To take each luck of the draw and realize my possibilities without succumbing or dreaming. Fantasy presses on my reality like an ice cube on a hot sea. Melting to the desire of the surrounding waters, and giving way to larger creatures. Yet I want to advise and believe that there is something greater than all of us.
That someone watches our little loves and rewards the stretches and realizes the strives we take to love.
I was made to love, and I wish I had the care inherent in the weakest rain. But I know I cannot strive to fulfill anyone else until I have fulfilled myself.
It’s the hardest decision I’ve made. To take the possibilities and weigh the depressive outcomes. To take each luck of the draw and realize my possibilities without succumbing or dreaming. Fantasy presses on my reality like an ice cube on a hot sea. Melting to the desire of the surrounding waters, and giving way to larger creatures. Yet I want to advise and believe that there is something greater than all of us.
That someone watches our little loves and rewards the stretches and realizes the strives we take to love.
XXV
Windows down, blaring Nirvana – Drain You. I feel the sun on my arms, the nicotine buzzing around in my brain, the church sign advocating “True peace is found only in Jesus Christ,” passing school buses with children waiting for the summer and heat. The blacktop sizzles and blurs before me. Yellow double lines. I cross them anyway.
Something whispers to me on the wind swirling around in my car. A quiet secret slishing and sloshing. We’re all in this together. We all bait and switch, eliciting strangers to smell our palms. It’s a lazy love, and we’re all guilty of something grand.
I’m not sure where I’m going, but I’m having one hell of a ride. My 22nd year spent in a drunken haze, smoking cigarettes, laughing without a care that I’ve stained my underwear with blood. It’s the time and the place, and I’ll pass out wherever there’s an empty space. Time pending absolution.
Whatever. I’m free, I’m full, and I’m fondling the illusionary blanket I’ve wrapped myself in. It still doesn’t help me sleep at night, but I’m finding new ways to collapse into darkness. It’s the insanity and morose tragedy within me that allows my folding. I haven’t killed, but I’ve creamed.
I’m still dry. I’m still looking but I’m not searching, and I’ve had it with the bigotry. It’s not a small thing that we haven’t stalled, or slackened.
Something whispers to me on the wind swirling around in my car. A quiet secret slishing and sloshing. We’re all in this together. We all bait and switch, eliciting strangers to smell our palms. It’s a lazy love, and we’re all guilty of something grand.
I’m not sure where I’m going, but I’m having one hell of a ride. My 22nd year spent in a drunken haze, smoking cigarettes, laughing without a care that I’ve stained my underwear with blood. It’s the time and the place, and I’ll pass out wherever there’s an empty space. Time pending absolution.
Whatever. I’m free, I’m full, and I’m fondling the illusionary blanket I’ve wrapped myself in. It still doesn’t help me sleep at night, but I’m finding new ways to collapse into darkness. It’s the insanity and morose tragedy within me that allows my folding. I haven’t killed, but I’ve creamed.
I’m still dry. I’m still looking but I’m not searching, and I’ve had it with the bigotry. It’s not a small thing that we haven’t stalled, or slackened.
XXIV - Venus' Girdle (Ctenophore)
Tell me why what you need is good for your soul. Whisper to me the sweet relishment of your desires, and I will do my best to make them realities, fervent and sweaty and streaked with luminous and glowing doctrines. I’ll trace the contours of your face with my fingers so that I may better remember their grace, and I’ll sprinkle soft kisses the length of your body. So you can feel their electricity as your brain fires from the collision of electrons.
Ravish my mind of all that you seek to know, and I will share what my body remembers. I’ll select the positions depicted in your eyes – the subtle changes in your vision, the seclusions in your withdrawals, the phases of the moon colliding in your smile, the sweet redemption present in the corners of your mouth. I will suck the sly, the swimmers, from the tips of your appendages. Your phalanges, your dreams, your bereft supply of positivity.
I will emphasize that you are everything but alone. That we love and yearn is in our natures. That our lives are all divine, and our excesses are only temporary.
Pour the admiration out through the colander holes and savor the thick globs of beauty stuck in the bottom of the bowl. These I will spoon-feed to you in your hours of need and want. In those moments when you cannot swim or stand in shallow water.
To let you know the water is never shallow.
Ravish my mind of all that you seek to know, and I will share what my body remembers. I’ll select the positions depicted in your eyes – the subtle changes in your vision, the seclusions in your withdrawals, the phases of the moon colliding in your smile, the sweet redemption present in the corners of your mouth. I will suck the sly, the swimmers, from the tips of your appendages. Your phalanges, your dreams, your bereft supply of positivity.
I will emphasize that you are everything but alone. That we love and yearn is in our natures. That our lives are all divine, and our excesses are only temporary.
Pour the admiration out through the colander holes and savor the thick globs of beauty stuck in the bottom of the bowl. These I will spoon-feed to you in your hours of need and want. In those moments when you cannot swim or stand in shallow water.
To let you know the water is never shallow.
XXII
Insufficient and delirious. Today was a mark on the perfection of God. Oh how she mocks.
Another potential, gone. Went out Tuesday, had deep intellectual conversation, experimented with sentence structure, fondled movies with my mind… It was like breathing Perrier Air in comparison to the mundane, everyday bullshit city smog.
No. Of course he would sound broken and unsubmitting over the telephone last night, declaring his timidity and wariness with seeing someone intimately, or at all. I tried to be unapproachable as to my un-sober demeanor. He rambled on; something about us eventually disagreeing on things and not really comprehending each other’s natures. “Welcome to the joy of compromise, fag.”
I’ll burn his fake blue flower tonight, in honor of the acidity of love.
Another potential, gone. Went out Tuesday, had deep intellectual conversation, experimented with sentence structure, fondled movies with my mind… It was like breathing Perrier Air in comparison to the mundane, everyday bullshit city smog.
No. Of course he would sound broken and unsubmitting over the telephone last night, declaring his timidity and wariness with seeing someone intimately, or at all. I tried to be unapproachable as to my un-sober demeanor. He rambled on; something about us eventually disagreeing on things and not really comprehending each other’s natures. “Welcome to the joy of compromise, fag.”
I’ll burn his fake blue flower tonight, in honor of the acidity of love.
XVI
Practicing for the encore. I remember finding you streaming with creativity and pulsating with sexual experience. You were not lost, but I’d like to imagine saving you. Soulful and beautiful.
Alive and heading for a collision, we took every chance we could to collide, to feel the breath of age and grace soft and steady. It was crazy and undiluted, something passion bestows upon those who listen and volunteer for experimentation.
Chewing on used fragments of faith and creeping up on illusion, I’ve eluded attachment but still struggle with old moments. Old remnants of contentment in small moments. Repetition in the brain, rumination in the juices of sex. Not your sex. I will not have it. Not ever.
Not with what you have decided. Not with the elusive tactics you’ve employed on that one whom you have given promise.
Livin’ in the corners of my mind (1).
(1)Nikka Costa song reference
Alive and heading for a collision, we took every chance we could to collide, to feel the breath of age and grace soft and steady. It was crazy and undiluted, something passion bestows upon those who listen and volunteer for experimentation.
Chewing on used fragments of faith and creeping up on illusion, I’ve eluded attachment but still struggle with old moments. Old remnants of contentment in small moments. Repetition in the brain, rumination in the juices of sex. Not your sex. I will not have it. Not ever.
Not with what you have decided. Not with the elusive tactics you’ve employed on that one whom you have given promise.
Livin’ in the corners of my mind (1).
(1)Nikka Costa song reference
XIII
By waiting and waiting for the opportune moment.
For the right time in our lives.
For the confidence that you would feel the same.
For the interest in exploring a relationship.
For the seduction and the chase and the flirting.
For all the countless sweaty days spent running in the sun, laughing and joking and leaning on each other.
For the moments we caught each other’s eye in a clarity and a chemistry not-so-foreign to love.
For the way you read me like a book when it’s so hard for anyone else to look beyond their own two hands.
For the advice and the friendship you’ve given me over the years, and the summer nights of drunken glory.
“Hell, you could’ve had me!” Hell, I wish I’d known.
Maybe things would’ve turned out differently. Or maybe they would have been the same. Our friendship was never something I wanted to ruin, never something I wanted to test or taint with insecurity. I didn’t want you to see my vulnerability and shy away, or feel our relationship was then owed something.
I don’t think I can experience physicality with anyone else without the feeling of desire and intense passion and love.
We could have made waves, my dear. If we hadn’t hesitated, and you’d known how I’d felt. And if I knew that maybe you felt more than just physically for me.
For the right time in our lives.
For the confidence that you would feel the same.
For the interest in exploring a relationship.
For the seduction and the chase and the flirting.
For all the countless sweaty days spent running in the sun, laughing and joking and leaning on each other.
For the moments we caught each other’s eye in a clarity and a chemistry not-so-foreign to love.
For the way you read me like a book when it’s so hard for anyone else to look beyond their own two hands.
For the advice and the friendship you’ve given me over the years, and the summer nights of drunken glory.
“Hell, you could’ve had me!” Hell, I wish I’d known.
Maybe things would’ve turned out differently. Or maybe they would have been the same. Our friendship was never something I wanted to ruin, never something I wanted to test or taint with insecurity. I didn’t want you to see my vulnerability and shy away, or feel our relationship was then owed something.
I don’t think I can experience physicality with anyone else without the feeling of desire and intense passion and love.
We could have made waves, my dear. If we hadn’t hesitated, and you’d known how I’d felt. And if I knew that maybe you felt more than just physically for me.
XII
When I don’t shower, my hair gets that greasy rocker-chick look of unkempt gorgeousness. It shimmers in the light from the oil and blonde streaks, which decide to come out of hiding in the summer time with the excess of light. Golden, sparkling, and beautiful. So many people tell me I have the hair of a goddess, and if I ever cut it I would have to face their wrath. It makes me feel whole when I donate it to cancer patients. It grows like fresh grass; fast and fresh and healthy. The tips are what I worry about, since they like to split quite fast.
I’m not really sure where I’m headed, and lately it seems like I avoid future-questions posed by my parents or the people around me. My mind isn’t ready to establish a permanence. Neither is my heart.
Lenore kneads bread in my lap when she sits with me at my computer. Her black fur is short and pitch, smooth and shiny. She is the most beautiful feline I have ever seen, her Persian/Siamese bone structure, particularly in her face, so refined and godly. I see her as a Baast or Egyptian guardian of the underworld, her body covered in gold jewelry and her idolic stance revered and held in awe.
My English professor told me his son would kill to have my ball cap today. I sported my green Doors hat over my hair’s shiny roots, partly in embarrassment for not having taken the time to clean up as most of the other students in my class had. There were a couple of grungy-looking 21-year-olds that came in that way every day, so I felt a little consoled.
But Mangum said his son had made a pilgrimage to see Jim Morrison’s grave. I thought it would be a wonderful thing to go to France and see it. I remember an ex-friend of mine bragging to me that she’d seen it, and I wanted to shout “DO YOU EVEN HAVE A FUCKING CLUE WHO JIM MORRISON IS?” and hear her apparently-justified reaction in “well gosh, Lauren, I’ve listened to the Doors before, jeeze.” Listened to the Doors before, warranting your obvious knowledge of Jim Morrison’s soul. I read his poetry often, and have delved into his music with a pulsing passion only given to the select few on this planet (who at least recognize and harness and use it regularly. I use it on a daily basis.). My connection with Jim is something unrivaled by many others’. I can say that confidently, as Jim has helped me through some difficult times with his words and his voice and his music. And I will defend to this day that he was more of an alcoholic than anything else.
He captures the moving soul and the emptiness branded on and in me.
I am troubled
Immeasurably
By your eyes
I am struck
By the feather
Of your soft
Reply
The sound of glass
Speaks quick
Disdain
And conceals
What your eyes fight
To explain
-From Wilderness
Well, here goes another dream.
I’m not really sure where I’m headed, and lately it seems like I avoid future-questions posed by my parents or the people around me. My mind isn’t ready to establish a permanence. Neither is my heart.
Lenore kneads bread in my lap when she sits with me at my computer. Her black fur is short and pitch, smooth and shiny. She is the most beautiful feline I have ever seen, her Persian/Siamese bone structure, particularly in her face, so refined and godly. I see her as a Baast or Egyptian guardian of the underworld, her body covered in gold jewelry and her idolic stance revered and held in awe.
My English professor told me his son would kill to have my ball cap today. I sported my green Doors hat over my hair’s shiny roots, partly in embarrassment for not having taken the time to clean up as most of the other students in my class had. There were a couple of grungy-looking 21-year-olds that came in that way every day, so I felt a little consoled.
But Mangum said his son had made a pilgrimage to see Jim Morrison’s grave. I thought it would be a wonderful thing to go to France and see it. I remember an ex-friend of mine bragging to me that she’d seen it, and I wanted to shout “DO YOU EVEN HAVE A FUCKING CLUE WHO JIM MORRISON IS?” and hear her apparently-justified reaction in “well gosh, Lauren, I’ve listened to the Doors before, jeeze.” Listened to the Doors before, warranting your obvious knowledge of Jim Morrison’s soul. I read his poetry often, and have delved into his music with a pulsing passion only given to the select few on this planet (who at least recognize and harness and use it regularly. I use it on a daily basis.). My connection with Jim is something unrivaled by many others’. I can say that confidently, as Jim has helped me through some difficult times with his words and his voice and his music. And I will defend to this day that he was more of an alcoholic than anything else.
He captures the moving soul and the emptiness branded on and in me.
I am troubled
Immeasurably
By your eyes
I am struck
By the feather
Of your soft
Reply
The sound of glass
Speaks quick
Disdain
And conceals
What your eyes fight
To explain
-From Wilderness
Well, here goes another dream.
XI
I’m ready for another pitfall. Exactly when and what’s going to happen, I don’t know; but I think there’s a possibility for one, and when it comes I want to expect it, so I’m not distraught.
By this point, by 22 years on this desolate planet, you would assume I would have a clear grasp on reality and morality and suggestibility and frugality and maturity and potentiality. Maybe it’s only a plot to implant these ideas in our minds so that we get used to the idea of thinking this way, and would then, by this time, have these thoughts and plans already laid out in motion. Maybe it’s all just some underground conspiracy to intrude on the lives of the youth and declare our obsoletism and inability early on. Or corrupt us and manipulate society so that each rising generation becomes stupider and stupider. I use ‘stupider’ as a key example of a word that should not exist, yet my spell check doesn’t pick up. Yet it picks up ‘obsoletism’. Could be because I just made it up. It’s my instinctive grammar. Eat me. And I also don’t believe in sentence fragments when I’m writing in a speech-like manner.
Poetry only serves as a frail substitute to human connection. I think one night of passion and reading an Anne Sexton poem go hand in hand; either or. I’ve been reading a lot of Anne Sexton lately, and her words seem to paint me a bright orange. Or Sylvia. Or C.K. Roethke probably takes the cake at the moment. I wish the empty gin bottles on my bookshelf would magically refill themselves. I could use a stiff one.
Younglings, the small fish keep heading into the current.
What’s become of care? This lake breathes like a rose.
Beguile me, change. What have I fallen from?
I drink my tears in a place where all light comes.
I’m in love with the dead! My whole forehead’s a noise!
On a dark day I walk straight toward the rain.
Who else sweats light from a stone?
By singing we defend;
The husk lives on, ardent as a seed;
My back creaks with the dawn.
Is my body speaking? I breathe what I am:
The first and last of all things.
Near the graves of the great dead,
Even the stones speak.
-Roethke
I keep listening to OOMPH!. They are wonderful
By this point, by 22 years on this desolate planet, you would assume I would have a clear grasp on reality and morality and suggestibility and frugality and maturity and potentiality. Maybe it’s only a plot to implant these ideas in our minds so that we get used to the idea of thinking this way, and would then, by this time, have these thoughts and plans already laid out in motion. Maybe it’s all just some underground conspiracy to intrude on the lives of the youth and declare our obsoletism and inability early on. Or corrupt us and manipulate society so that each rising generation becomes stupider and stupider. I use ‘stupider’ as a key example of a word that should not exist, yet my spell check doesn’t pick up. Yet it picks up ‘obsoletism’. Could be because I just made it up. It’s my instinctive grammar. Eat me. And I also don’t believe in sentence fragments when I’m writing in a speech-like manner.
Poetry only serves as a frail substitute to human connection. I think one night of passion and reading an Anne Sexton poem go hand in hand; either or. I’ve been reading a lot of Anne Sexton lately, and her words seem to paint me a bright orange. Or Sylvia. Or C.K. Roethke probably takes the cake at the moment. I wish the empty gin bottles on my bookshelf would magically refill themselves. I could use a stiff one.
Younglings, the small fish keep heading into the current.
What’s become of care? This lake breathes like a rose.
Beguile me, change. What have I fallen from?
I drink my tears in a place where all light comes.
I’m in love with the dead! My whole forehead’s a noise!
On a dark day I walk straight toward the rain.
Who else sweats light from a stone?
By singing we defend;
The husk lives on, ardent as a seed;
My back creaks with the dawn.
Is my body speaking? I breathe what I am:
The first and last of all things.
Near the graves of the great dead,
Even the stones speak.
-Roethke
I keep listening to OOMPH!. They are wonderful
IX
It was raining today. Not that pleasant rain that carries with it a faint smell and feeling of freshness and velocity, but an icy rain coupled with vicious wind ripping through the thickest jacket and laughing with its steely corruption. And it didn’t bullet down with passion or violence; it was like a sad story oozing out from the clouds and falling down lazily to the earth, disparagingly and sluggish. I felt branded and insecure.
“That red mustang ran that light and almost hit you.” I was walking briskly with a thousand rants running through my mind and hardly heard the older man beside me, blatantly making a statement directed at me through my shielding hair. I jerked myself out of enmity and further wrinkled my brow, knowing the straight line next to my left eyebrow would be cruelly indented and give off a “piss off” glare.
“What?” My voice was cracked and dry from disuse. I’d sat through an hour and fifteen minute lecture on how JD Salinger defined “love” and was not feeling as alert as I should have been.
“That red mustang ran straight through that red light and nearly hit you.”
“Oh? I didn’t even -”
“You should be more careful.” The man gave me a condescending look and crossed right in front of my path in the direction of the business building.
“Yes, Father,” I mouthed at his turned back, feeling like throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of the commons and screaming that “I can’t control whether or not somebody’s gonna run a red light, ass hole!” But I held my tongue back, wagging brutally within the cage of my lips, and picked up my pace to get to my car before the 2-hour limit was up. Something about his manner was so demeaning. He had to run to catch up with me, too, just to reprimand me for walking across the street when the little walk signal lit up. And I looked, but didn’t see anyone coming obscenely fast. Anyway, the insurance money would be pretty kickass at the moment. Maybe I should go play in traffic. I could use the beer money.
But douche bags will be douche bags. I got to my car and threw my shit in the front seat. The cab itself looked like a dump, and the dash was covered in a layer of thin dust from rolling through summer camp with the windows open. So it’s a nostalgic thing for me. Everyone keeps telling me to clean it off, but I kind of like it there. It’s a reminder of the good times, and I need that in the dead cold heart of winter, when people are dicks and we all actually realize and accept that we’re alone in the end.
I drove in the city and nearly rear-ended a few Richmond drivers. No one can stay in their lane, and when the buses are driving in the right lane they take up most of the lane beside them reserved for non-bus traffic. So Broad Street ends up looking like a mass exodus of the surrounding area with people driving crazily away from some zombie outbreak. Resident Evil IV could easily be shot on and around Broad, near the new government building on 7th, particularly.
Visibility sucked. But I got to Murphy’s Law and slipped on my heels from the back seat of the trash-mobile. My feet chilled instantly when I removed my suede boots in preference for my black heels, and I sighed. “Meeting band member #65.” But it wasn’t so bad. The short young man sitting close to the entrance sucking on an Icehouse bottle seemed okay, and we moved to a table and talked business. We shot the shit for two hours, me downing 3 Yuengling’s and him trying to keep up.
“You know how to put down a beer,” David laughed, sipping gingerly on his bottle. I remarked it was easier drinking out of a wide-mouthed glass and dually noted I was taking it slow. I folded the napkin under my drink into an octagon and turned the napkin over so that the folded edges were face down on the table. David did the same. I noticed when I came back from the bathroom for the second time, and he remarked how I had inspired him to fold his napkin into the similar shape, adding a smile to the end of the phrase. The creepy black man sitting near the bar with a great view of me kept staring, and I kept avoiding his glance.
“We’re having a party on Sunday for the Super Bowl, if you’re interested in swinging by. So far the count’s up to 30 people if you wanna bring friends.” Casually David stuck his hand in his jean-pocket and looked remorsefully at my car. We had exited the bar and were having that awkward “soooo I’m leaving” conversation. I was glad he couldn’t see the cab in the dark.
“Cool. I don’t have plans yet. Sounds like fun; I’ll see if I can make it.” I didn’t know if he regretted asking me after that answer, but something in his face signaled to me that he only offered to be nice, and expected a soft decline. I wasn’t too worried about offending him though; upon paying for my beers and my thanking him profusely, he had made the comment that I’d “definitely make it up in singing with the band”, and signed the receipt left-handedly. So I had him hook-line-and-sinker, and he hadn’t even reviewed my YouTube vids since the first time he heard them several months ago. From my hungover debut with the BluesTones he had deduced that I would be a perfect fit.
We parted ways and he got into his truck, interestingly enough parked adjacent to mine, and I heard the engine start with a howling muffler rumbling underneath. My car nearly sputtered out when I turned the key, and I knew I had to get gas if I wanted it to start in the morning. I think the Exxon lady was onto me when I walked in the front doors and wanted $10 on 2. She gave me that “you look like you’ve had something to drink in the past 8 minutes” look and kept her eye on me when I walked out. A train whooshed by with an obscenely loud horn blowing right next to the damn Exxon station, and I fumbled with the nozzle insertion. Ever since my dad tried to refuel my car with a gas can and dropped the top of the metal connector into my tank, nozzles have hated dishing out the fuel. I never know when it’s completely full because the damn nozzle cuts off every 3 seconds and I have to jiggle the thing to get it to keep fueling. Either way, I was pissed at the cold rain slicing open the skin on my hands, and flattening my hair to my scalp, and I was constantly looking for a cop car to show up and tell me the lady in the shop had called and was worried I would endanger myself and others on the road. I got home completely unscathed, and so did my car.
I think the moral of the story is that people should mind their own goddamned business. If I get killed because I was stupid, it’s my own fuckin’ fault. But if some idiot in their expensive mustang runs a red light and slams into an individual following the walk signal rules, it’s their fuckin’ fault for breaking the fuckin’ law. No old man need reprimand me for being a rule-abiding citizen.
“That red mustang ran that light and almost hit you.” I was walking briskly with a thousand rants running through my mind and hardly heard the older man beside me, blatantly making a statement directed at me through my shielding hair. I jerked myself out of enmity and further wrinkled my brow, knowing the straight line next to my left eyebrow would be cruelly indented and give off a “piss off” glare.
“What?” My voice was cracked and dry from disuse. I’d sat through an hour and fifteen minute lecture on how JD Salinger defined “love” and was not feeling as alert as I should have been.
“That red mustang ran straight through that red light and nearly hit you.”
“Oh? I didn’t even -”
“You should be more careful.” The man gave me a condescending look and crossed right in front of my path in the direction of the business building.
“Yes, Father,” I mouthed at his turned back, feeling like throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of the commons and screaming that “I can’t control whether or not somebody’s gonna run a red light, ass hole!” But I held my tongue back, wagging brutally within the cage of my lips, and picked up my pace to get to my car before the 2-hour limit was up. Something about his manner was so demeaning. He had to run to catch up with me, too, just to reprimand me for walking across the street when the little walk signal lit up. And I looked, but didn’t see anyone coming obscenely fast. Anyway, the insurance money would be pretty kickass at the moment. Maybe I should go play in traffic. I could use the beer money.
But douche bags will be douche bags. I got to my car and threw my shit in the front seat. The cab itself looked like a dump, and the dash was covered in a layer of thin dust from rolling through summer camp with the windows open. So it’s a nostalgic thing for me. Everyone keeps telling me to clean it off, but I kind of like it there. It’s a reminder of the good times, and I need that in the dead cold heart of winter, when people are dicks and we all actually realize and accept that we’re alone in the end.
I drove in the city and nearly rear-ended a few Richmond drivers. No one can stay in their lane, and when the buses are driving in the right lane they take up most of the lane beside them reserved for non-bus traffic. So Broad Street ends up looking like a mass exodus of the surrounding area with people driving crazily away from some zombie outbreak. Resident Evil IV could easily be shot on and around Broad, near the new government building on 7th, particularly.
Visibility sucked. But I got to Murphy’s Law and slipped on my heels from the back seat of the trash-mobile. My feet chilled instantly when I removed my suede boots in preference for my black heels, and I sighed. “Meeting band member #65.” But it wasn’t so bad. The short young man sitting close to the entrance sucking on an Icehouse bottle seemed okay, and we moved to a table and talked business. We shot the shit for two hours, me downing 3 Yuengling’s and him trying to keep up.
“You know how to put down a beer,” David laughed, sipping gingerly on his bottle. I remarked it was easier drinking out of a wide-mouthed glass and dually noted I was taking it slow. I folded the napkin under my drink into an octagon and turned the napkin over so that the folded edges were face down on the table. David did the same. I noticed when I came back from the bathroom for the second time, and he remarked how I had inspired him to fold his napkin into the similar shape, adding a smile to the end of the phrase. The creepy black man sitting near the bar with a great view of me kept staring, and I kept avoiding his glance.
“We’re having a party on Sunday for the Super Bowl, if you’re interested in swinging by. So far the count’s up to 30 people if you wanna bring friends.” Casually David stuck his hand in his jean-pocket and looked remorsefully at my car. We had exited the bar and were having that awkward “soooo I’m leaving” conversation. I was glad he couldn’t see the cab in the dark.
“Cool. I don’t have plans yet. Sounds like fun; I’ll see if I can make it.” I didn’t know if he regretted asking me after that answer, but something in his face signaled to me that he only offered to be nice, and expected a soft decline. I wasn’t too worried about offending him though; upon paying for my beers and my thanking him profusely, he had made the comment that I’d “definitely make it up in singing with the band”, and signed the receipt left-handedly. So I had him hook-line-and-sinker, and he hadn’t even reviewed my YouTube vids since the first time he heard them several months ago. From my hungover debut with the BluesTones he had deduced that I would be a perfect fit.
We parted ways and he got into his truck, interestingly enough parked adjacent to mine, and I heard the engine start with a howling muffler rumbling underneath. My car nearly sputtered out when I turned the key, and I knew I had to get gas if I wanted it to start in the morning. I think the Exxon lady was onto me when I walked in the front doors and wanted $10 on 2. She gave me that “you look like you’ve had something to drink in the past 8 minutes” look and kept her eye on me when I walked out. A train whooshed by with an obscenely loud horn blowing right next to the damn Exxon station, and I fumbled with the nozzle insertion. Ever since my dad tried to refuel my car with a gas can and dropped the top of the metal connector into my tank, nozzles have hated dishing out the fuel. I never know when it’s completely full because the damn nozzle cuts off every 3 seconds and I have to jiggle the thing to get it to keep fueling. Either way, I was pissed at the cold rain slicing open the skin on my hands, and flattening my hair to my scalp, and I was constantly looking for a cop car to show up and tell me the lady in the shop had called and was worried I would endanger myself and others on the road. I got home completely unscathed, and so did my car.
I think the moral of the story is that people should mind their own goddamned business. If I get killed because I was stupid, it’s my own fuckin’ fault. But if some idiot in their expensive mustang runs a red light and slams into an individual following the walk signal rules, it’s their fuckin’ fault for breaking the fuckin’ law. No old man need reprimand me for being a rule-abiding citizen.
VI
This is an era of finite progress; of exorcisms and green living; of prolonging despair and unsatisfactory addictions; of particular description and neglectful specificity; of self-dedication and virtual conspiracy; of providential fads and introverted fear; of over-mystification and peopled monarchy; of jaded experience and fabled aristocracy.
We are prohibited and exempted. We are disenchanted and provided for. We are mindless yet swarm to exhibits celebrating individuality.
What endures in humanity, if not the progressive ideals of man and his abhoration of expectation? So slimy the bowing head; so rigid the bending back. What dream can hold water and be deferred?
“Childhood’s over the moment you know you’re going to die.” Our own fear of mortality baits us. We are the guilty and the experienced. We are no longer innocence and sweetness and light.
We are prohibited and exempted. We are disenchanted and provided for. We are mindless yet swarm to exhibits celebrating individuality.
What endures in humanity, if not the progressive ideals of man and his abhoration of expectation? So slimy the bowing head; so rigid the bending back. What dream can hold water and be deferred?
“Childhood’s over the moment you know you’re going to die.” Our own fear of mortality baits us. We are the guilty and the experienced. We are no longer innocence and sweetness and light.
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