The Adventures and Philosophies of Chris Miles

Rise

2011-02-04T22:39:00.000-05:00

If anybody has reason to yell, it’s her, and she’s screaming into the receiver.
I hold it away from my ear.
It’s 8:30 on a Saturday night and I’m walking down cross streets and alleys, dodging traffic, and it’s cold, the wind whipping down the avenues of block buildings, the chill shaking my veins.
“What do we do?” She asks.
I’m mumbling.
Downtown New York is peaceful at night. People are everywhere, all scurrying by, giving the solemn streets of Wall St. life, passing by the churches that line Broadway, everyone’s head bowed to the cold wind as if solemnly, disappearing down the holes that lead to the subways.
I’m standing in front of Trinity Church. Orange lights glaze the dark brown façade. The steeple rises high.
“You need to calm down,” I’m yelling. “It does nobody good to panic in this situation. And you’re panicking.”
I pause for effect.
“We know how this will end. We know what will happen to him. This isn’t an unfinished story. And you don’t need to be afraid of it.”
She’s crying.
“Can you imagine his life?” She says. “Sitting in that facility, in those padded rooms. He was never crazy. He was never like them, inside that psychiatric ward.”
“But he’s in there now.”
“I don’t even know him anymore. This isn't him. I just wish, wish it would all be the same again. I wish we could start again. This is not how it should end.”
I’ve made my way towards World Trade.
Ground Zero is fenced off and harsh fluorescent construction lights flood the landscape. The sound of heavy machinery echoes through the hollowed out shell of what once used to be the Twin Towers.
And some fifty stories up, a welder works on beams for the new World Trade, the half-finished skeleton of the reborn skyscraper glowing with soft orange lights from within, the strung-up construction lights of workers on the floors inside, building up.
This is where souls must sleep at, and where lives are being reclaimed at.
“Calm down. And understand it will all be better soon. This isn’t the end. This was never supposed to be how it ends.”

Nine Ten

2010-09-12T00:23:00.003-04:00

New York, New York, New York.
Boom, Boom, Bam.
Sirens.
She's smiling at me with her eyes and I have vertigo because of it.
It's getting dark outside and it's warm inside, with her. And I’m sweating now.
Maybe sweating it all out.
Sitting, rain like shards of glass slashing against the window, and she asks me if I want a drink, smiling.
Boom, Boom, and suddenly I’ve had another and my phone is ringing. The doctor is on the other end.
I miss the call, deliberately.
And I missed the next call, deliberately.
I don't care. I don't want to pick it up. And she is rubbing the back of her hand on my shoulder. My phone was miles away in interest. But then again she is also miles away from my interest.
I’m trying to articulate that opinion to her, the break-up as it were, as the phone rings again after some time and it rings and rings and I finally look and it's not the doctor, but him, and I don't mind talking to him.
“I need to take this call,” I say, pretending it’s important, walking out of the room.
He slurs as he talks.
He's been drinking again and it's only 4 in the afternoon.
Then again, I’m no saint.
"5 o'clock somewhere," he says, more or less the signature slogan of a career alcoholic. "Join for a round. Or five. Tomorrow won't be that great a day, anyways. We can afford a hangover."
His voice is raspy. But his invitation is wrapped in sinister appeal. And five rounds seem perfect.
Besides, I don’t think I’ll be staying around her anymore.
I walk outside and it feels like the death of the universe just happened. The sky is dark, ugly and smeared on the horizon, the air chokes me, the smells sour in the mega city. There is no breeze, no wind in the trees, there are no sounds, just dampness from the just-happened shower. A car coughs by, spiting exhaust, and I cough.
She starts calling me as soon as I leave, craving for me to come back.
“I thought you wanted to talk about us."
“Whatever,” I mumble.
In the bar he and I drink and meet a banker and he is drunk and keeps handing me business cards. He says he's getting out of business soon. He asks if I want his business. He laughs. He thinks it’s funny. And then he looks at his watch and notices it's ten past 9, and he's already late. The babysitter can’t stay past 9:30.
I wave goodbye.
To my left, at a bar stool that is a little shorter than mine, my friend raises his glass and toasts, "to the economy," and we both gulp. His next toast is to our hangovers.

The doctor calls again around 9 a.m. when I'm slightly hung-over and working it off.
I've come to suspect early calls as harbingers of terrible news, and I hate when I'm right. She says that she had already tried calling yesterday. She tells me that my father is ill. She sounds somber. I hate when doctors sound somber, uncaring.
Medicine isn’t bureaucracy.
It makes her sound so lifeless, so cold, so devoid of anything.
I make a joke but it doesn't feel like a joke. It feels like I just said something wrong, or that I've just done something I should be ashamed of. It was really a bad joke, too, I think.
She doesn’t laugh. I'm talking to a zombie. Why would it be a laughing matter, anyways? Even across the distance, connected only by wires and radio signals, I can tell she doesn't even smile at me, or the joke, and I think that this really all is a joke, the whole damn situation.
"When can you visit him?" Her question is sharp.
I sigh loudly and it crackles over the speaker.
Maybe the sun is suddenly cloaked by streaking clouds and everything is grey. There is something inherently wrong, something rotten to the core with the environment all around me, and I'm not at ease. It's too early to not be at ease.
My head is throbbing and I'm fumbling with an aspirin bottle, the child-proof top anyways.
I ask what is wrong. The diagnosis is the same as it has been for years: he’s suffered another mental lapse, a relapse, and has been admitted into what boils down to an asylum and that I should be advised that he can’t stay there long because she knows he is medically able to quit being mental and as such the hospital cannot treat him. Drugs don’t help. And maybe she doesn’t want to help.
I laugh it all off, and it's a nervous laugh, and tell her I’ll be there as soon as possible, and she hangs up on me.
The cap pops off but the pills don't really give any relief.

The next day I'm thinking about calling the whole thing off, the whole grand affair I’m having with the girl, and I'm laying it out to him, the whole sad strategy to do so, and he's selflessly, longingly trying to reconcile the relationship because, as he puts it, "he hates to see a girl as pretty as a painting cry."
"It's not like she's holding a torch guiding us to freedom in this crisis," I say.
"She doesn't need to. You should hold your own torch."
"I passed that torch a long time ago, right after I used it to burn bridges."
I'm drinking a bourbon coke and the ice has melted but beads of cold perspiration still gather and drip from the glass and I put the glass to my forehead to cool my burning mind and I feel as a bead tickles and glides down my face, catching on my eyelash and the rim of my eye, then runs down my cheek as I blink it away.
"Weren't there good times?"
"Of course there were good times."
"Don't forget."
"I won't forget."
"Never forget."
"I won't forget."
"Don't forget."
There are sirens outside, rushing past.
I go to her apartment.
She asks if I want to come in.
I don't want to go, but it's getting dark outside and it's warm inside.
"I don't care where we do it.”
I guess things fall apart so quickly. I don't think she registers the end as I explain it to her. Maybe she's surprised. I half expect her to say, "Well this is out of the blue," because it is, on my end, because I didn't even see it coming until it was too late. Now it's kind of too late, and it's getting late, and I tell her it's getting late and I mutter my statement, my parting words, and tell her I really need to go. And I stand there, for a second, as it all crumbles.
She doesn't cry.
Of course I don't cry.
The TV is on behind her and the main character is in Miami and the character puts on sunglasses in one scene because it's sunny out and there is a pristine pale-turquoise sky, to use Crayola box terminology.
I think that tomorrow the weather man says it will rain. I grin at the irony. What is it that the Roman mantra says, "Great rains most typically occur after great battles."
This conversation is a battle, I think as she stares at me coldly.
The clouds are there. It was glittering sun today, like the sun on TV reflecting off the buildings and concrete. The main character adjusts her sun glasses.
Above a plane roars by. We hear it even inside.
Her phone rings. She doesn't answer. The TV cuts to a commercial.
Somewhere in the middle of it all we are a charred relationship, the two of us.
“Besides, I need to go to the hospital.”
I don’t go to the hospital that day, though.
I wake up early the next morning.
Cold sweat, nightmares, tossing and shaking through my sleep.
When bad dreams are on your mind, something is generally imminent.
The dream stays with me through the morning.
In the dream I'm somewhere, in some city, filled with lights and music. And the sky is falling, shards of glass-like rain slashing and splintering on the concert. Then there are the screams. The music turns into the distant sound of bagpipes. When did the Scottish get blended into the trip to the afterlife?
My throat tickles and I think I'm getting sick and I go get salt water to gargle. It's ten minutes after 9 in the morning and I won't be making work any time soon so I call in sick.
I need to go to the doctor.

High lights

2010-09-12T00:22:00.000-04:00

There's something about the Kentucky air.
It's sweet as I step off the plane, and suddenly I'm back home.
That's how it ends.
The 8 p.m. from LaGuardia, flight 3033, U.S. Airways, is 10 minutes late -- 30 minutes early by LaGuardia standards -- the stewardess happy to be back. She's from Louisville because she pronounces "LOOVUL" properly on the intercom.
I wait to check my voice mails. It's nothing pressing I need to do, not at this time at least.
As I gather my luggage a group of girls make a rush to get out first, from the back, and they look impossibly tan, and one has sunglasses on, in the night, and I reach into my pocket for my phone then, because I'm pushed farther down the queue, and fumbling to listen to my voicemail I'm surprised to hear it's Ray and she's back from Europe as of yesterday, and she says she knows I'm probably tired, and fed up with nightlife after New Yorl, and probably broke, but it was a ridiculous trip in Europe -- one she needed a few drinks after -- and we could review it all later, but I should come out tonight, again, because she was with friends and all of my friends wanted me out.
My mouth is parched and suddenly I want water.
The kids look too impossibly tan, they really do, racing out as the stewardess opens the air lock. Nobody cares about skin cancer any more.
We walk down the tunnel and into the terminal and I always have that feeling that I forgot something, left something back there.
Outside the stars shimmer, and it's surprising because I'm used to the light pollution of the mega-city.
It's not raining, but in central Ohio, before our descent, I looked out the window and saw thunder clouds built like cities flashing lightening and spewing rain down on the ground below, cars like ants in perfect little lines making their way through the storm with their headlights like little eyes.
I'm not worried about the weather. It's too damn humid and showers would be savior to my sweaty brow.
In LaGuardia things moved fast for the first time I had been through there. That hustle makes for a sweaty plane ride.
In the early night we took off from New York, and I think it was a little more humid there,actually.
The plane lifted, the wings catching a current, rising in the evening sky. Sunset was on the right side, the window opposite of me alight in an orange glow.
Lifting past Manhattan, the high lights of the city, I saw her apartment, or maybe the building next to it, or the general cluster of buildings in that area in which she lived. Then again I forgot what the facade of her building looked like and I didn't really know what I was looking for and I didn't really know if I would find hers specifically, and I guess it wasn't important because I thought of her none-the-less. I missed her right there, feeling like my life was a little more vacant as we flew over and away, higher and faster, and faster and higher into the clouds until her building was gone. The high lights faded.
I laid back and my wondering wandered and I thought that everything in the past seems to move faster and faster until you forget, and then it's gone. My memories are clouded. So I thought about her a little harder.
Manhattan is nice at night and it was a mooney night that night in the high lights when we first met, her and I. That's what I remember without even trying.
And if memory serves me well, she complained that she couldn't get a tan that summer because of the constant rain.
That's how it started.
There was just something in the air.
I think I smiled then like I smiled en-route to Louisville, Kentucky, the 3033, 8 p.m., out of New York.
In my car I switch the ignition, speed away from the parking structure. Alone on the highway, eyes adjust to lower lights of smaller civilization.

Text

2010-04-22T01:32:00.002-04:00

She texts me if I ran shirtless, I said, "Sure," just to get things a little hot.
No less than 45 seconds later I text back if she's shirtless, to keep the heat on, but she writes, "no," and that she's on the train, and she says, "But I am panty-less," followed by, "Seriously, I didn't pack them."
She claims she forgot.
I text, "hmmm," And don't know what to say, and refrain, or choke, or cough, or grin, or panic, or tense up. But she doesn't know.
"I don't mind." I say it without thinking. It comes out wrong, but seems true enough.
I don't get an instant reply so I throw my phone down, mutter, "tough," maybe said the wrong stuff.
She writes, "ha."
Simple, too simple, really, but a reply non-the-less.
I forget what I reply next, still it's nothing about sex.
Then the breakthrough: "I really like you."
I fumble the answer, draft a text, then erase, than do the same three more times. Normally I'm more tightly laced, I think.
I tell her I agree, simply.
"The train is moving too slow," she says, the conversation suddenly shifting.
I say: "Let's talk more about the things you didn't pack."
There is no response
Pick-up lines are a talent in which I lack.

Broken TV

2010-04-09T01:13:00.000-04:00

Broken everything.
It's 85 degrees outside and the AC won't kick on.
My computer blew two days ago.
The signal fades on my phone.
My tooth brush is old.
My contact prescription is wrong.
I see blurry everything, struggle to adjust my vision.
The office never sent my check from last week.
Ants invade my bathroom.
The milk was expired.
My car is almost out of gas.
Gas is too expensive anyways.
I'm driving to the airport.
To pick you up.
The sunset looks beautiful.
The car windows are down.
My hair is a mess.
I'm smiling.
I look in the rear view mirror and realize I'm smiling.
For no reason.
I had no idea I was smiling.
Or because I'm driving to the airport to pick you up and, suddenly, everything in my life seems so perfect, and there's nothing to worry about, and it all seems so put together.
I can't stop smiling.

Stupid thoughts

2010-04-01T00:43:00.000-04:00

Driving through the forest and there is snow on the ground, powdering everything.
I'm listening to the Violent Femmes "Blister in the Sun" and I think that it's a summer song and it's weird to have a summer song playing with snow on the ground.
I'm heading towards work and it's early and the sun is already above the white hills and the light glistens on every snow-covered tree.
The landscape looks good dressed in white.
I have the heat blowing on my hands to get them warm.
I'm thinking about drinking.
I'm in Germany on one of the most amazing adventures of my life and I'm thinking about drinking.
I shake my head, swallow a sour taste from my mouth.
"I'm such an idiot," I say to nobody in the empty car.
The snow looks beautiful in the alien landscape, and it's terrible I want to be somewhere else.

Science Hill

2010-03-28T02:11:00.000-04:00

My phone rings and I ignore it.
It's the first thunder storm of the season, and I feel like I'm watching rain for the very first time, captivated.
There is one big, fat cloud -- a purple, blue and scarlet blob -- applying darkness to the world, drifting slowly and cloaking the sun. I watch it from a hill miles from its epicenter, a hill still soaked in sunlight.
Science Hill isn't being rained on.
I stare at the opposite scene with mortal amusement, and she walks up and says it's beautiful.
"Isn't it?"
I don't take my eyes away, annoyed that she's suddenly broken my solitude.
"Cold air pushing warm currents, all invisible," she says. "Oxygen and hydrogen mixing a trillion times over, forming tiny drops. And that can sometimes lead to a flood. So much of such tiny things."
"Unbelievable."
We're quiet, staring, like in a museum at a portrait, the smudges of clouds the colors, the downpour the brush strokes.
It's Science Hill's Science Day, and there are a lot of people with an understanding of things beyond my understanding, talking about things beyond me.
They serve champagne and I tell her that I like the champagne.
I'm dressed as the best I think I am, blue suit, Hilfiger, darker blue tie, DKNY, brown shoes, shined, and she just grins at me with a smile that could easily beat all of it, handing me a drink from a shimmering silver tray beside us.
"Have some more."
There is electricity in the dank air.
Maybe protons and neutrons collide between us, but I don't feel them, lost in my own clouded thoughts.
We are talking about nothing suddenly, her and I, and I can't focus, focusing only on a text I got earlier with three simple, stupid words: "It's not good."
And I don't feel good, spiritually. Science Day on Science Hill may as well be a washout, for me. I'm done with today.
We talk more about nothing: informalities that are so much formalities that they are insignificant.
I stare at the rain and think that I wish it would just pour on me, drown me, wash me away, flood my mind and submerge everything in my mind.
She mentions that she's still paying for her PhD, and that the recession isn't helping, adding something or another about a student loan bill that just passed the Senate.
"I don't trust Senators," she explains.
"Can't trust everyone," I add with cynical emphasis
My phone rings and I ignore it, and she realizes that I'm ignoring her and she walks away after quick informal goodbyes.
I'm alone in a crowd of scientists, but it doesn't last long.
He begins talking to me, suddenly, about his work, how he's been recognized for his work, and how his work is changing.
He's the chairman of the science board.
"Politics, though, isn't my strong point," he says.
I mention that humans are naturally disposed to politics.
He explains that ideas are so hard to sell, for people to grasp.
"I have something new," he says, his grey eyes wild with a deep excitement. "Something extraordinary."
"When will you unveil it? Today?"
"Later," he says. "Always later."
At Science Hill the next big thing is always tomorrow, he says, and I'm thinking about tomorrow, not today, a wasted day.
I have eight missed calls, and I sigh, ignoring the voice mails.
I wonder if the scientists ever wonder about the human side of things. It's not always abstract. Today I screwed up and paid a consequence as a result and today I feel the storm building up and can only imagine how it will end. I'm surrounded by smart people, a lot of people. I want one of them to explain to me what to do.
Somebody gives them bad news, too.
At Science Day they announce that funding for Science Hill has been cut and, suddenly, it's raining on everybody.
I smile, actually, as misery suddenly has company, and, finally, I've found it at this party.
"That's what this Great Recession has done for us," one person states.
Then it turns into academic analysis, as it always does here.
"Economics is cyclical," he explains. "We'll get through it."
And he's standing next to me telling me the greatness of economics as a natural science, a cyclical science, something that has ebb and flow, or is seasonal, like a bountiful summer to cold winter. He smiles as he talks, his grey eyes and hair shimmer with the analysis. Maybe I forget, for a second, about the emotional weight of the natural process economics has on life, and look at it from an abstract way.
"Phoenix rises and falls, then again," he concludes.
His words ring in my ear, and I've finally unsorted the knotted rope of my problems.
Then there is another ringing.
Wires spark and satellites send an array of radio signals through the nothingness that is the atmosphere and a transmitter tower collects them and distributes them and the device in my pocket accepts them and my phone erupts, all in a split second.
The phone whines and vibrates, and I ignore it.
"Won't you get it?" He asks.
"It's just the same person who has been trying to get a hold of me all day," I say. "And I've had a bad day."
"Call them tomorrow," he says. "It's a new day."
Then he walks away.

Sedentary Traveler

2010-01-24T00:05:00.008-05:00

"Whale hunting, sometimes," He says. "And I've made an igloo. There are no nights in summer, no days in winter. All-night parties in the snow. The girls sometimes where bikini tops."
"Lush life."
"Lifeless, lushless," he sighs, drinks.
I tell him he's the first Eskimo I've met, that you never really think you'll meet an Eskimo, that I totally pictured Eskimos different,, and I'm in the middle of a mojito saying a variety of other politically incorrect things when she comes out of nowhere, yelling, smiling, saying we haven't seen each other in months.
More like years, I correct.
She's beaming with fake interest in me, all parts of her, and we proceed through classic "I missed you" formalities and she finishes by saying that she's just come back from London.
"Our little project has really taken off like a bottle rocket," she says describing a non-governmental organization she helped build there. "We're helping funnel food, radios, and diapers to Haiti now."
"That's amazing," I say. "Why diapers?"
"They're a mother's best friend."
"You wouldn't know."
"Men don't know."
I want to tell her something along the lines of "duh" and be really harsh about it when he adds, "I've never thought of that, either."
He's gazing at all the parts of her that are beaming, longingly. She seems annoyed by it, glances with ice cold eyes, and excuses herself, to make a phone call, "to London."
She says it with an air of superiority, and I'm flustered for a second, then tell myself I haven't done anything for Haiti lately.
Whatever.
Our waitress -- brown eyes shimmering, grinning at me with a certain lust behind her features -- asks if we need anything else, then lays down the check.
Maybe she's just doing it for a tip, I think.
And besides, I'm not interested. I'm talking to an Eskimo who says he'd love to go to Budapest, and nothing could be more interesting as he sketches on a napkin, pushing a boat out into the sea with a felt-tip pen the waiter gave him to sign the bill.
"There's nothing up there, for you to see," he says, meaning Alaska. "Budapest -- If I had wind pushing me, I would go to Budapest."
I'm entertained by the sudden culture quirk in his vocabulary.
"What does it look like?" Alaska I mean.
"Flat. No depth."
"I hear Budapest has nice architecture."
And he tells me something about its Western and Eastern European roots, and Turkish influence, or something he may have seen on the Discovery Channel, and I'm not really listening as the gorgeous waitress with brown eyes drops a pen and picks it up again.
It's only a momentary lapse.
As he draws I notice that it's a sail boat, not a canoe, or something native to his Eskimo tradition. I want to ask why a sailboat, and not a canoe, than think about political correctness and how I should be cognizant of such. It's so hard to be correct today.
"Where is it sailing to," I ask.
"Nowhere," he laughs, showing off bad teeth. "There's no wind!"
I'd been sitting at the bar with him for a few hours and the music that's playing has no rhythm and we were full on food so the beers didn't get us as buzzed as we'd like, so we leave.
Putting on my jacket I tell him how I just got a postcard from my brother, written from Paris, with love. It outlined how much he hated Paris. It was so superficial, he said. There was no depth, it was like so many other cities.
"Tourist pit," he said.
No layers to discover.
"I saw something on Paris on TV," he says.
Outside there is no wind. I can't immediately hail a cab.
"I think we may be going nowhere, fast, for a while," I say.
"Typical," he adds. "You can't really get away from it, I suppose."
His face twists with the irony, almost.
I laugh at the popcorn-opera reading of it all, the sedintary bore of it all.

Falling

2009-10-02T20:09:00.008-04:00

In the shadown of oblivion I'm walking, past Ground Zero, the epicenter of modern history, my coat over my shoulder, my tie flapping in the southside sea breeze, my sun glasses tucked in my breast pocket, smiling.
If the soundtrack of my life were playing at this very moment, the bass would be mosterious, shaking and large, a soft drumline adding balance, auto rock.
Ba Ba Ba Ba BaBABABA BA Ba Ba Ba Ba BaBABABA BA.
It would be powerful.
Because, walking two blocks away from Wall St. I feel powerful, confident.
Around the corner the door man greets me.
I walk in, 12 up, out the elevator, in the hallway and on to door No. B.
Shoebox-size, the apartment feels warm.
She's smiling, warm.
We're standing in the shadows, her and I.
How did all this start?
Where did it all begin?
She comes close.
And I feel confident.
In the present I feel steady.
In the past, I was more shaky.
What was it she said?
"What do you have, a girlfriend? Boyfriend? What's your story?"
"I, uh, wow, you seem to ask a lot of questions, like a journalist, are you a journlist?"
"Just interested. And interested in knowing what I'm getting myself into."
It was something to that effect.
Then after a few hours of talking: "Listen to what I say, because it's really complicated..." and I tell her how much I like her, want her. Something to that effect.
Actually I mumble something, make it more complicated than it is, really.
We're together, then, right now. Close, running our finger across each other's clothes.
The material is soft, my hand slight.
She's close.
Then hot.
Then her eyes are bright. Tractor beams on my own.
My fingers tingle.
Hers wrap around my waist.
She smirks, laughs.
I smile.
I can't stop smiling.
Smiling. And falling.
Falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Falling.
And I'm sitting straight up in the bed, my shirt off, the AC blasting cold on my skin, my hair a mess, my eyes dialated with some strange emotion, my jaw dropped and just laughing.
It's 7 a.m. and I'm laughing hysterically.
In the shadow of oblivion I'm laughing hysterically.
I fall back and my back falls on the mattress.
I tell her I can't stop laughing. It's not even funny anymore.
I don't even know where I am, when I am, the past and present can't sort themselves out. My mind is eliptical. This feels eternal.
And she smiles.

Parallel Lines

2009-09-05T23:00:00.003-04:00

Two-way highway ahead and I'm going 79 on a stretch of 65, clearly not thinking.
About driving, anyways.
The four lanes blend to two, and I get in the fast lane, thinking of you.
Black hair.
Brown eyes.
Eyes that smile.
A car pulls up next to me, also speeding, aligned with me, and neither of us pull away from the other, staying parallel for a stretch.
It's funny how much you and I are the same.
Two parrallel lines.
Two copies. Perfect copies.
Key and a lock.
If I say the lines, will you say them with me, I wonder?
I slow down, focus more on driving.
When I stop, there is a man playing a yukalaylee on a porch, smiling, squinting with the sun in his face. My music plays loud and streams into my car through of my open windows, and my stereo is going, but the beat of my stereo seems to blend with the strings of his song. I wave and he nods.
I smile as I think how much we blend perfectly together.

Dressed

2009-09-03T11:41:00.006-04:00

"I'm so tired playing," she sings. "Playing with this bow and arrow," the stereo belts. "Gonna give my heart away."
I brush my teeth, and rinse for a fresh feeling. I take off my glasses, set them aside.
With my contacts in I shave, then run my fingers along the smooth lines of my face.
Can't be a hot mess.
I exhale, wrestle with creased pants.
I adjust my tie, pulling and pushing it stout around my neck.
The fishbowl bathroom bulbs burn bright and I stare at my features in the mirror.
My left shoulder tingles, twitches, from a workout last night, and I rub it, then put the sport jacket on, button the first, but not the second.
Confidence swells.
This new frame of mine is just fine.
"..." The stereo belts.
I take a look outside, glancing for weather patterns and making my own novice forecast.
No umbrella.
"From this time, unchained, we're all looking at a different picture through this new frame of mineeee," she sings, bass heavy.
For a minute I sway with the music.
I tie my shoes, rub them, brush off a smudge for a cleaner, clearer shine.
In the morning I don't think about all the mess, the dirtiness, the faults, the failures, the causes or the actions, the decisions and the complexities. I inhale, I exhale. And pick up my keys, wallet, phone. And fix my hair one last time.
It's all perfect.
To think that thought seems disgusting. To say that thought out loud sounds even more vial. Nobody likes optimism, especially in the morning. But it's a thought I can't get out of my mind. My heart burns with the thought. My soul flourishes. I grin, or smile, or chuckle, or smirk, or am content with a twitch of my lips, or whatever the method of acknowledging one's contentedness is. And I adjust the cuffs of my sleeves, leaving them a half an inch from my coat, perfect, as I open the door.
"..., ...., ..." The guitar rifts. "This is the beginning of forever and ever."

Bra

2009-08-27T00:39:00.006-04:00

It's humid.
Some time around midnight the AC kicks on, or rather, is kicked on.
Everything else is kicked off.
As dark as it is, it doesn't feel that way; the computer screen blazing bright, the electricity of it all, the room translucent, latent, lucid. Mixed and changing.
Circuits meld, blend, neurons process, gather, hard drives cultivate, save, lights flash, drives start, little speakers swell, tracks change, signal is found, then lost, fans cool, buzz, text and window fades.
Screen saver.
After everything is silent the AC is the only sound. It breaths polar into the room. It seems like the hot and cold should cause a mist, spiraling and snaking around skin.
In the catacomb of catacombs on the island, she remarks that, if it'll take this long, she'll take it off herself.
Then laughs.
You think of all the places in the world: Cancun, Clearwater, Munich, Montreal, San Francisco, Singapore, and a thousand other places -- and you really don't want to be anywhere else but here, now.
Sometime past midnight it all fades to dream.
Then the alarm is screaming, yelling, and eyes are ripped open.
You can't see the sun rising from the window, deep inside the catacomb apartment.
Outside the air smells different, fresh for the first time, a sea breeze.
Past Ground Zero and on Wall Street, the businessmen look like ghosts at 8 a.m. on a Tuesday.
Which is ironic. For all the right reasons.
She walks and her heels smack the pavement past Trinity Church, heading to the Green 4/5/6. And she smiles.
And lips lock.

Hot Minute

2009-07-20T23:02:00.012-04:00

iPhone says the weather will be stormy, he announces.
But she's not paying attention.
He slides the phone in his pocket.
I make decisions, decide to purchase. They beat me to checkout.
The iPhone rings.
Late night, the store is closing and the ring echoes.
Over the counter, I'm asked about paper or plastic. It's philosophical, really.
"Neither." I'll hold it.
I walk fast out the door.
I'm late.
We meet on the corner of an avenue and street, her and I. I'm semi-lost. She asks why I didn't get a bag. The moon dips behind a curtain of clouds. A car honks,a generator hisses, a man raises a cup half-full with change at passers-by. It's that normal soundtrack of the City. I say I'm so tired of honking cars. She says we need to make it 30 blocks in 30 minutes. I whistle as we walk.
She smiles.
Down the stairs, we head to the catacombs.
Red or blue line, 1/2/3, A/C/E, X/Y/Z? The train is late. I make a crude comment about the F train, making further crude comments comparing it with the local and express. She laughs.
Take the subway then, only halfway, and take a taxi across the island, east to west, where the trains can't run. Next to me, she's singing the song on the radio. We pull up, we pull over.
Stop.
Debit or Credit? Cash. Cash back, too. And a receipt. So I remember. It can't be another New York morning, staring into an empty wallet bewildered.
Riverside. Up a street, down a street, over a block. She's wearing high heels and they click on the pavement.
Stop at the corner. Cars shoot by. Everyone in a rush. A woman strolls up, walking a dog. She's in no rush. I look at my reflection in the mirror while she fixes her hair. The breeze blows. The doorman nods, salutes with his hat. I realize we're river-side. The air is better here.
Open door, close door. Up 30 stories to his place. More mirrors in the elevator. I fix my hair. She stares. I consider kissing her deep and long, and she stares at me with absolute passion filled in her eyes. The mirrors make it all seem multiplied. Open door, close door, open door, he's there. We're the only one's there, in the hallway, and he tells us to take our shoes off before we step on the carpet. He smiles as he greets us. I shake his hand, unknowing what to do as his girlfriend comes in for a hug. I smile. She smiles. We smile.
The apartment is cavernous for a New York apartment, and I sit on a couch a explain, "This is true living, especially on this island."
He pours a drink. Another for me, and one for them. They drink, I sip. He asks if I want vodka, rum, whiskey, bourbon, beer. "No, water is fine." It was a long weekend, I explain. He claims there is no water. "But there is wine." My decision turns from water to wine. "Never stand empty-handed." I smile. She smiles back. The two of them, him and her, smile at both of us. This is how porn movies start. And horror movies. I tell them that. "It's funny how the two seem related," I say. Everyone laughs. I'm the center of attention. In New York it's a magnificent feeling.
I turn to her and she's still staring, eyes deep in mine. It's a heavy smile, mine. She grins. It's a sharp grin.
Other's enter. Door opens, closes, opens, closes, opens, closes. Shoes are scattered across the hallway. Seven people have iPhones. Four say it will rain within ten minutes. One of them is juggling their phone with a glass of wine, careful not to spill it on the carpet.
The carpet is a gorgeous ivory.
More wine. More wine bottles. We uncork two within a minute, pouring.
Pretty soon we're all drunk and it's raining outside. Pouring.
"I want to give my soul what it needs. Tell me this is more than booze, sex and weed," he says. He's pouring, his soul, his drink.
I say I like a painting on his wall. He says he doesn't know the painter or era. I ask if he bought it at Wal-Mart. He stares at me with a blank expression.
"Ikea."
Whatever, and then there is a clap of thunder, and the thunder in the City sounds so foreign, so weird, echoing off the multitude of concrete and glass walls, rattling down the avenues.
"Come smoke with me," he says.
"Why?" But I walk out the door anyways.
He hands me a cigar and it feels so masculine, outside, in the rain, smoking cigars. I attempt to blow smoke rings and cough.
"I don't smoke."
He smiles.
We stand under a canvass overhang, the doorman behind the glass doors.
The rain is coming down and there is lightening and another clap of thunder and she walks out and he stares at me, then her, then us, then smiles, then walks back in.
I exhale, smoke escaping my lips.
She smiles.
For one hot minute we stand there.
It's raining and we step closer then, to avoid the water pouring off the canvass.

Spectacles

2009-05-13T23:22:00.001-04:00

Jason sits next to me in the cab, complaining that he hasn’t had a drink in four days.
We’re driving en route to a night on the town and he’s as impatient as ever to get things going. Personally, I’m enjoying the evening ride, watching the world blur by.
The midnight sky is dark and there is an electric blue moon arching high, reflecting off the flowing river next to us. It makes for a spectacular effect, glittering like champagne, lovely under the neon light.
We drive with the windows down and the breeze blowing through the car.
“This wind messes up my hair,” Jason complains to no one, then repeats to the taxi driver. The windows now closed, he slides his fingers through his gelled hair, realigning strands.
“How does it look?”
I fix my glasses.
“Fantastic. You’re a lady killer.”
He’s wearing a red and white striped shirt and blue jeans, at least I think they’re jeans, and I have to adjust my glasses in the glare of the moon to see them clearly.
I hate wearing glasses. The bridge keeps slipping from my nose. The arms chafe my ears. Normally it’s contacts I wear, but I ran out yesterday.
“Where are you from?” Jason asks the driver.
“Senegal.”
“How’s the winter there?”
“What?”
“Where is that? Is it warm?”
Jason makes you feel like you’re a good person, a better person, someone who gets the world. And that’s a reassuring thought. Not to say Jason is a bad person. He’s a bit crazy, lives too hard, and only tolerable in small doses. But his conversation is good and his philosophies make sense and, with certain friends, that's really all you can ask for.
The cab races down the road with an urgency to get this fare over with and move on. As we pull into the city the electric blue of the moon is replaced by the sickly electric orange cones of street lights. Jason mumbles that he’ll have a something and coke.
We stop at a bar called the Desert, or Dessert, I don't get a good look at the name, but it makes me remember a place I went to called The Oasis. The Oasis was in the middle of a forest in Germany, and you went there to get drunk. I stopped by a few times while on assignment covering the military in the area. It was nothing more than a watering hole for soldiers on R&R, back from down-range, who hadn't drank for some time. Typically things got out of hand. I remember that, when I left the Oasis, someone was on the verge of beating another's head in with a bar stool.
The Desert isn't that kind of place.
There's a pool table in the middle and a blonde and a brunette playing when we walk in.
They stare at us like vampires.
Jason is already at the bar and he walks back with two drinks.
“This is for you,” and he toasts. “To America.”
I lift my glass.
“I think Marie is here,” I say, unsure if he hears me.
Jason drinks hard, stares at the vampires, and they stare back.
I stare, too. Behind my lenses my eyes scan their curves like a Terminator. The blonde whispers in the other's ear, their chests rubbing close together, the brunette with a shirt too small for her upper body that's more angled than the corners of the billiard table, the blonde with eyes that make you wonder if you're already under the influence as she looks away and leans over to expose her already exposed back in her tank top, a strap sagging as she aims, positioning to get a stripe in the center pocket, arching for the perfect balance to avoid a scratch.
The Desert is a bad place to be when you're thirsty. And I sip.
Purple cigarette smoke spirals from an ash tray beside me, and Jason asks if I want one.
“I don't think I'll go to church tomorrow,” he says with a smile.
We meet Edison a little later. Edison is back from Iraq, on R&R from the Army’s 101st Airborne, and toasting to the occasion. Therefore Jason is toasting to the occasion.
“To America,” We all say.
Edison is built like he should belong in the ranks of an ancient army, the kind that would just bash the enemy’s head in. Still, he smiles constantly. He is friendly and begins talking about his time as a linebacker for a college team out west. He had so many tackles in so many seasons, and normally the numbers would make sense, but I’m not really focused as I study the pool game in front of us, and the players.
Edison says he considered the NFL.
“Country first,” he adds, and I don’t think he’s boasting; only stating facts.
“Where’s a journalist when you need one?” Jason says, looking at me with a wide smile. “What a fantastic story.”
“Are you a journalist?” Edison asks.
I nod and he proceeds to explain why he hates the mass media, citing that some newspaper somewhere at someone point attempted to libel his father. I quickly change the course of the conversation, intimidated. I’m hesitant to ask Edison about the military, though he touches on good stories, including his participating in the sacking of one of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces. I’m afraid if I push too hard the wrong stories would come out. Probably dark stories. Not stories for tonight.
Jason has gone to get drinks and is now talking with a man at the bar that looks Middle Eastern, dressed in a Western suit. The man is smiling and nodding and I can tell, even from afar, that Jason is talking about nothing in particular, probably himself. I wonder if Americans realize they’re the center of the world, the center of the universe for that matter, and that attention isn’t hard to come by.
I fix my glasses.
The two walk back to our table and the man says he is from Dubai, here on business. He comments that he enjoys this country and is happy his own country can help continue supplying our energy needs. I consider the comment odd, as Jason laughs and gulps hard.
Edison stares at the man, a certain fire in his eyes. I’m unsure if the man sees it and keeps laughing with Jason. They talk, then, about oil, as Jason is a businessman with an eye on investments. Oil, he says is what this country needs to continue functioning: “Cheap and easy, what the nation is built on,” he says. “Besides, alternatives are nothing more than pipe dreams.”
The man from Dubai commends Jason on his astute observations and reinforces his views, adding that it would cost billions to switch from the “Oil Age” to the “Tree Age.”
Still, you can’t help but wonder when the Oil Age will end, I say.
“There is enough for another 100 years,” the man from Dubai says. “We just need to make sure it’s in the right hands. Maybe 200 years. As long as more men lay down their lives to make oil a possibility.”
It seems like the man from Dubai was attempting to make a joke, but nobody laughed.
“Why don’t you go somewhere else?” Edison says.
I stare, and Jason stares, and the man stares, and Edison stares back.
The man from Dubai leaves. It seems like his exit is overdue.
“That was kind of unnecessary, don’t you think?” Jason asks.
“What do you expect, we’re children of 9/11,” Edison says. “And they’re the enemy.”
I laugh a laugh you laugh when you’re not sure what else to do. But it all makes sense. Sons of 9/11 in the Oil Age have a natural, ideological enemy in the Arabs. Or is it vice versa? The name too, works well, has a certain ring, and I wonder what history will write about the sons of 9/11, and of the Oil Age, and if it’ll be a good enough story kids will want to read about.
I adjust my glasses.
“Is Marie here?” Jason says.
“Who’s Marie?” Edison says.
“They were together,” Jason points to me. “And he’s still in love.”
“Let’s get a drink,” I say.
Cassidy is a vampire. She tells us her name perched atop the bar, swaying her hips to the music, dancing somehow gracefully in high heels.
Jason asks if he can buy her a drink.
“Absolutely.” And he helps her down.
As we wait, we talk, and talking to Cassidy I find out she’s 20 and she snuck into the Dessert with a friend. She’s wearing a low-cut shirt and she doesn’t look 20. The combination probably worked in her favor. She tells me not to tell anyone, and I promise not to. She slides the blonde hair from her eyes and tells me I’m cute. I don’t say another word to her. She turns her attention to Jason, who is interested in what she has to say in so much as a means-to-an-end objective can be. Cassidy is still swaying, her smooth skin and bracelets shimmering in the light. She seems unnaturally down to Earth in the bar, no excitement, like she’s done this a thousand times and isn’t impressed. It looks like the only pulse she has is with her rhythm. She allows only short smirks as Jason talks about himself. Her eyes constantly stay on his, though she seems weary. She herself doesn’t say much, and when she does her small talk is like chloroform.
The other vampire, the brunette, is bent over with the cue stick. Her earrings sparkle in the pale light, a tag the reads “Victoria’s Secret” clearly visible through her shirt. My glasses fog up in the humid Desert and I order a glass of ice water to come to my senses.
Jason, Cassidy and Edison head outside, to the patio. It’s gotten later and the night above has grown out of control. Staring up, my eyes adjust and focus. The moon is almost full – empty at the top and the sides – and has taken a bright, pale blue hue, the craters like pock marks on its face. The stars gleam like milky white pimples soaking through a black blanket; the smaller, more distant pin pricks barely visible, drowned out in the growing portrait. They are the most distant of distances, light years away, where time is tomorrow, or yesterday, or another matter entirely. The world comes into perspective as galaxies fill my view, tentacles swaying, swinging, grabbing, wine-red and deep blue, vibrant yokes, turning like cogs in the machine of the evening; the arms reaching out to grab me, pull my gaze, twist and turn my vision. I become lost in the evening’s vortex, like sweet Charybdis.
I fix my glasses.
Torches are set up around the patio, the metal kind which look like a mix between umbrellas and a car muffler.
We sit. Cassidy has her upper body sprawled across her arms which are crossed along her chest. A shoulder strap sags and she readjusts it. Her legs are crossed and her foot is bobbing as she smiles slightly. We make eye contact, but it seems frosty. She points over my shoulder and says, “Look at this guy.”
I turn around, and recognize the man. Lane Tammer is at the far end of the patio bar making a fool of himself. He’s speaking to the man from Dubai, raising his arms and half jumping to grab onto a beam that is exposed a foot above. Lane will periodically do five or so pull-ups on the beam. Women stroll over to watch. The man from Dubai is smiling, enjoying the attention his new friend generates. Cassidy is up from her seat now and walking over to be part of the flock. Jason doesn’t seem to mind, but his eyes follow every step she takes. In the dim light, with the people all around, Lane looks like a carnival attraction, like the body builder with a mustache who holds a woman up in his palm. Then again he always has been nothing more than an unfamiliar attraction, fleeting as the glamour slowly wares off. I turn around.
After some time Lane sees me, breaks off his antics and strolls to the table.
“You never call anymore,” he says with a slap on the shoulder.
“I don’t really bother.”
“Met someone over there,” he points to the man from Dubai. “He doesn’t have a lot of nice things to say about you guys.”
“Yeah?”
“Marie is here.”
She walks by just as he says it and I look the other way, trying to draw as little attention as possible. I glance back as she passes. Marie is wearing a white blouse, crisp, and white skirt that lands right above her knees, flowing, and wears her long dark hair across her shoulders. Lane grins as he sees her, and then turns his grin to me.
“What is she Spanish or French, or something foreign, right?” Lane asks.
I don’t answer, consumed in watching her.
She meets someone, her boy friend, and he walks over and leans in for a kiss. I tighten. It’s sweet, it really is, but I don’t have the stomach to look and instead look away. Suddenly he’s gone and she’s searching the bar for a friendly face. Our eyes lock.
She sits in the chair vacated by the vampire, and smiles.
“I didn’t recognize you in glasses.”
“Normally it’s contacts I wear. But I ran out yesterday.”
“They make you look like Clark Kent.” She says, her Portuguese accent faint.
“Can I get you a drink?”
“Not tonight.”
“Everyone else is,” I say. “Wouldn’t want to be the only one out.”
“Get me water.”
I come back with two waters. We talk and she smiles at me, twisting the straw of her drink between her fingers, brown eyes focused and bright. I realize that I’m tangled in them, her eyes, lost, my mind drifting in the night above. We talk about a thousand things seemingly forever.
Her boyfriend returns, talking loudly, drunkenly, running his hand up her thigh, cutting me out of the picture. Suddenly they’re kissing wildly. I feel like I shouldn’t be here, like I’m on the outside looking in.
I adjust my glasses.
They stand up. The wind blows and the breeze runs through my fingers, sliding through them, empty.
“We need to be going,” Marie says. I nod. Maybe I smile. Maybe she sees I don’t. Maybe it’s obvious. I wish it were more obvious.
I watch her walk away, disappearing in the smog of cigarette smoke, the flood of people. Lane walks back with the man from Dubai.
“She looks good.”
“Yeah.” I say.
“Always had.”
“What do you want?”
He takes a swig. “I bet I could have had a shot with her.”
I hesitate. “You’re confident.” A pause, then, “Really, you do know you’re talking to the wrong person about this. I mean, I’m still in love with her.” The last part comes out almost as a gasp, and to no one in particular.
“I’m not sure she ever loved you.”
I don’t hesitate. At that point I'd had enough and I let loose, let fly, fists pounding, knocking him to the ground. Someone pulls me away. I readjust my shirt and glasses and he gets up, sniffs, blood running down his lip, stares at me, reels back and then it's my turn to go down.
My glasses are broken. The bartender is dragging me out and I land on the curb, get up, readjust my shirt and collar.
“The police will be here in a minute,” he says.
“That's fine,” I dust off my pants. “I'm satisfied.”
And I walk away.
Maybe that's the way it should happen. Maybe I win. Maybe I lose. Maybe Edison helps out. He’d ask what we we’re fighting for. I’d say a girl. It wouldn’t sound as stupid as it does. Edison seems like he’d enjoy fighting the battle of Troy. But Lane isn’t on the ground, only in front of me staring, grinning something ridiculous. And I can only drink.
I realize I’m drinking memories, one’s I’d just vomited up, and I’m disgusted with it.
I don’t hesitate. “Yeah, she never really loved me,” I say. “Why don’t you go somewhere else. I’m done talking.”
I stare and Lane stares back. Then he excuses himself.
A band starts to play. I pick up my blues drink and swallow hard, then lay it back on its soggy napkin. The music, the bass is loud in the room, people scurrying all around. The vampires dance. Slowly. Intoxicating. I wonder what it would be like if they bit my neck.
“Do you think I'm getting too old?” Jason says lighting up again, suddenly next to me. The flare of the match flashes along the features of his face. He takes a drag, smiles a smoke-ringed smile.
I see he's buzzed. “No. There's still some kid in you.”
“You know how old that one is?” He points to Cassidy.
“No,” I say.
“I don’t think I want to know.” He takes a drag. “Shame. She’s the only girl here that’s into me.”
Jason smashes the cigarette into an ash tray where he’s already crumbled one before, ash and debris exploding on his fingers, the remains of the two sticks leaning jagged in the plate.
“I’m done,” he says with melancholy.
“What about Cassidy?”
“Never mind her.”
It’s like we’re playing poker and he’s just won, and I’ve won before him, and somebody’s won before that, but the winning chips are too hot and nobody wants them.
The other vampire is another story. She comes close to me after the band is done playing and tells me her name, but I forget it immediately, under the suddenly thick blanket of the alcohol.
“What happened to that foreign girl?” She says, brushing her hair out of her brown eyes.
“She abandoned me.”
Tragic as it all is, it’s not hard to find someone sweet in the Dessert. Soon she’s whispering in my ear, rubbing her hand on mine, kissing my neck, and I laugh at the irony of the moment. She thinks I’m smiling at her, and smiles back. For whatever reason, we begin an in-depth conversation on art. Impressionist paintings were really good, I say. They made you think what you wanted to think, feel what you wanted to feel, see what you wanted to see. Art is her aphrodisiac. She asks to take me back.
I’m in her car, then. Rock and roll plays loud and her windows are down to de-fog the windshield. Streetlights are flashing green, orange and red and I can't hear what she said, what she's saying – not over the music. I catch a glimpse of myself in the side view mirror. My glasses, the lenses, shimmer in the street light and I can't see my eyes. I wonder if they’re even there. I think about Marie. I look at the girl next to me. She’s sweet, she has to be, but I still can’t get the thought of her as a monster out of my mind.
I check my phone to see if anyone has called. Then I realize I don't have signal. I'd been having a lot of service problems with my phone, people would cut in or out, calls wouldn't go through, signal would fade.
I feel like I’m fading, too, as she rips open the door of her apartment, and I collapse on a couch. My head is spinning. I lean back, get a grip, and stare at the girl as she makes her way through the room. Undressing, she asks if I want anything to drink. I say no.
She takes it off: the Tiffany’s, the Victoria’s Secret, the shimmer and shine, throws the Coach bag to the floor and stands bare in the shadows.
Without all the flash she looks different, less filled out, more empty.
I’m suddenly less attracted to her.
I take off my clothes and wonder if Americans realize they play Halloween for most of the day, until they undress. I wonder if it qualifies them as the loneliest people in the universe.
I stand, then fall back onto the couch and close my eyes in an attempt to make the world stop spinning. It seems such a hard thing to do, cosmically speaking.
She stands over me, her body half covered by shadows. Taking off my glasses, she tosses them to the far side of the couch. I’m blind as she leans in and kisses me deep. I think I kiss back.
“Wait right here,” and she smiles and I smile and she walks into the next room.
I close my eyes and start to fall asleep.
My phone buzzes with an incoming text message and when I open it, I see its contents are empty. I write back to the sender to say I didn't get a message and couldn't read the text, and then realize that there is no message. The emptiness was all there was.

Composure

2009-04-07T21:59:00.003-04:00

Tetris blocks.
And I'm sliding through their creases as they come together.
I can't remember a time I've been more greasy, and I'm happy for all the times that have led up to this that have greased me up.
Those spring days, too.
Over the hill, down the street and through the path by the blooming oaks there is a stream. There is always a strong rush of water and it spirals wildly near a bottleneck at a bend. We would spend hours -- him and I -- throwing ripped up grass blades into the vortex, watching them submerge and reemerge on the other end of the suction. There is a beginning and an end to the water. Smoothly philisophical. The simplest metaphor. After you're sucked down, you'll pop back up. So the current flows.
Tetris blocks, those are a bit more difficult to navigate, though.
Requires a certain composure.

Botony

2009-03-29T22:49:00.002-04:00

It smells like spring outside, that fresh plant smell you seem to forget during winter. Tonight it smells of flowers opening up and the lushness returning to the world.
Inside the Orchard Bar and Lounge the crowd is loud. It's dim and I order a glass of beer, wait for the foam to ebb.
She's telling me why she hates journalists, and why not: apparently one of them "libeled" her father.
I'm surprised she uses "libel" in the right context. Most people would classify printed falsities as "slanders." She bumps up a point on my scale of attractiveness, her perceived intelligence pushing her past my general threshold.
I watch as she tugs at the waist of her pants as she talks, pulling down, exposing more of her naked hips. I scan the length of her. She has a small tattoo of a lilly on her ankle.
She seems interested in me, and that's interesting.
Or rather, the alcohol is making her seem interested in me, and, under the influence, I find that attractive.
I told her I was a journalist, and she started talking. Opened up.
I wonder if that works for all women.
I explain to her that the industry is falling apart, being mulched right before my eyes. The chaotic explanation I give seems to turn her on as she leans close. Anarchy is her aphrodisiac.
"You know what the worst part about it is?" I say, drawing from the depths of me. "I'm good at it."
"Is it the only thing you're good at?" She grins, staring me straight in the eye.
She smells like the jungle, or what I'd think the jungle would smell like were I there, my idealized version anyways, my Amazon interpretation, fresh and exciting and seductive.
"Yes. Journalism is the only thing."
"Rubbish."
"Rubbish?"
"There has to be something else."
"Who says rubbish?"
"What else do you do in your life?"
I drink.
The beer tastes tasteless and that's when you know you should cut yourself off.
"I was in Mexico once," I say. "I sang a song. In a bar. My friend played guitar. Everyone clapped at the end and the bartender said I should stay at his bar and sing more songs, that he'd pay me. We'd be a team. I should have stayed in Mexico. There would be more money in Mexico. And fame."
"And swine flu," She drinks hard.
"It's H1N1 influenza now."
"Whatever."
"Mexico could have used my charm," I say, spinning my glass and watching the contents form a vortex. Then I drink, consumed by the sweet Charybdis.
"Then you wouldn't be here." And she smiles, her eyes sparkling, or, rather, the alcohol making them glitter.
Outside it begins to storm. The people on the patio all scurry inside, some drenched and laughing. The sudden downpour intensifies.
"Mexico is a place to forget and be forgotten," I say. I had heard the quote somewhere before today, and right now was the most opportune time to use it.
I relish the timing and smile.
She asks me not to talk, going as far as putting her index finger on my lips. I stare at her.
She tells me I make her feel sexy. And I laugh.
And she's offended, or, rather, the alcohol is offended.
She says that she'd love to talk to me more, but has to go, and asks if she could give me her number. I oblige.
She writes her number down on my hand with a pen.
"I won't call," I say.
"Yes you will," she smiles.
"You wish."
And she walks away. I follow her as she leaves, scanning the length of her.
I know I should feel better about getting numbers, but I don't. I feel numb. Or, rather, the alcohol makes me feel numb. Or my life.
I'm numb on life, I think. Would that make me drunk on it, too?
I dismiss the thought. It's stupid. Just like all my other philosophies.
I check my phone to see if anyone has called. Then I realize I don't have signal.
I'd been having a lot of service problems with my phone, people would cut in or out, calls wouldn't go through, signal would fade.
And as I drank it seemed my life was reflective of the signal.
I'm a dinosaur, I think. More mellow-dramaticism, unnecessary. Still, entertaining. I consider stopping my alcohol input before it makes me depressed.
But, then again, you need to have a catharsis sometimes.
I think about journalism and everything I've given the industry to progress my career. If living is about giving and getting -- giving to get -- than giving and not getting to where you want to be of course makes you wonder, "is this it?"
That's where I am.
Later that night, leaving the bar, my phone buzzes with an incoming text message and when I open it, I see its contents are empty. I write back to the sender to say I didn't get a message and couldn't read the text, then realize that there is no message. The emptiness was all there was.

Lucky Boxers

2009-03-28T22:48:00.008-04:00

Need some encouragement.
At night, after a shower, I reach in my drawer and put on my lucky boxers.
Talisman, they are.
It's the trinkets in life that can give living the most meaning and I feel like there is a good day ahead as I pour a glass of chocolate milk. A fly bites my arm and I scratch and ponder.
Earlier in the shower it all came pouring out.
Lost in a sea of Lemony Snickets, unfortunate events, I wondered how the true melancholies dealt with prolonged downers in life. I guess Poe drank himself to death.
"Not a bad idea," I say out loud with the water streaming down me.
But then again the hangover would be terrible.
As the steam dissipates, my melancholy drys up.
Drying off, I think I'm happy to be sober, as I think clearer sober.
Around midnight I begin to write. I've written a lot in the last few weeks. Stories. Papers. But it feels good to finally get my thoughts down.
To think about all those things you feel.
Maybe this is catharsis. Or just words.
The feeling is fine no matter what.
By the end of it my lucky boxers are kicking in, and I'm feeling fine.

Fling With Calamity

2009-02-25T10:37:00.007-05:00

Calamity ended on Thursday, but began again on Tuesday.
I had a good weekend in between.
Sunday put it in perspective.
I went to church, and walking in I knelt, because that may be what you're supposed to do in churches, crossed my heart and hoped not to die, and sat in a pew. I hadn't been to church in a while. It was a nice church. Catholic -- the Catholics build the nicest churches -- and quiet. I sat, silent, and stared at the domed ceiling and buttresses. And stared at the golden crosses and stain-glass windows. And listened to the quiet, then prayed.
I couldn't think of anything to start the prayer off with, so I thanked God for soccer, and another Bayern Munich win, and the warmer weather, the bus not being late today, corrective lenses, my shoes which I just cleaned, and my new shirt which I felt I looked particularly good in.
Then I thought about laundry and asked God to remind me to do my laundry, hopefully in the morning, when was best for me. Then there was my laundry list, a list that was a jumble of to-do's that I couldn't do myself. And I hated to think that I was incapable of doing things, so I thought about it, but didn't pray it, feeling inferior, and skirted the issue.
Then I thought about the list. About budgets, aighlments, conditions, predictions, doctor's opinions, horror stories, fears, uneasy feeling, tense moments, akward silences, unreturned phone calls, unbalanced checkbooks, empty bank acocunts, scratched CDs, and, of course, the end.
And the flood gates opened. And I prayed that they'd close again.
And added that God help my mother, brother, father and Oma. And my health. And girlfriend, past and present. My roommate, past and present. Their fathers and mothers and brothers. And I prayed that my cell phone finally get a signal in the living room of my apartment. And that I wouldn't have insomnia again tonight, that I find some meaning when I'm thinking about what meaning my life has tonight.
And I prayed that wars end, but decided that was too vast to pray about. So I asked God to consider making the World Cup an event that happens every two years instead of four, for prosperity's sake, but then remembered that there's also the European Cup to pass the time. And basketball. And proper football. And internet radio. And Netflix. And cable. And cheese cake. And text messaging. And beer. And I thanked God for all of these things, decided that my prayer wasn't narrow enough, recinded my last comment of thanks and just grouped everything into one big category of things to be thankful for, a category opposite the category of things not to be thankful for. Those were things that really made me feel bad.
Then I wondered if there really was a God. Why would God want me to feel bad?
I dismissed the notion. There's not enough time in the day for God not to exisit. Only a higher power could coordinate such rediculous deadlines, and rediculous impulses in my brain.
I asked God to pull me from the edge.
I was flirting with calamity, and I don't mean a stripper who may be named such.
Maybe he heard me.
When I left the church the sun had set and the wind was picking up and my knee was chaffed from kneeling. I'm not used to kneeling.

Spectacles

2009-01-26T12:34:00.010-05:00

I fix my glasses.
Normally I wear contacts, but during the long nights glasses can be better.
I hate wearing them. The bridge pinches my nose, the arms chafe my ears.
But they do give me a Clark Kent look, and women like a guy who looks smart.
He's driving, yearning for a drink. "Haven't had one since Monday," he says, nothing more than a career alcoholic. He makes you realize your morals haven't slipped that much. A bit crazy. Lives too hard. And only tolerable in small doses. But his conversation is good and his philosophies make sense and, in this town, that's really all you can ask for.
We stop at a bar called the Desert, or Dessert, I don't get a good look at the name, but it makes me remember of a place I went to called the Oasis.
The Oasis was in the middle of a forest in Germany, and you went there to get drunk. Really drunk. An American military bar, for soldiers back from down range on R&R, drunks who hadn't drank for some time, so typically things got out of hand quickly. When I left the Oasis someone was on the verge of beating another's head in with a bar stool.
The Desert isn't that kind of place.
There's a pool table in the middle and a blonde and a brunette playing when we walk in, each with a beer.
They stare at us like vampires.
Behind my lenses my eyes scan their curves like a Terminator. The brunette whispers in the other's ear, their chests rubbing close together.
I order beer, wait for the foam to ebb and they stare at me, the blonde with a shirt too small for her upper body that's more angled than the corners of the billiard table, the brunette with eyes that make you wonder if you're already drunk as she looks away from me, exposing her already exposed back in her tank top, a strap sagging as she leans over, aiming, positioning to get a stripe in the center pocket, arching for the perfect balance to avoid a scratch.
I think how great it would be to kiss up and down her bare back, the sound of cashing in -- "$", "$", "$", "$" -- ka-chinging with every touch.
The Desert is a bad place to be when you're thirsty. And I sip.
Purple cigarette smoke spirals from an ash tray beside me, and he asks if I want one.
"I don't think I'll go to church tomorrow," he says.
He's just come back from New Orleans and says it's really cleaned up since Katrina took care of it. I wonder if what they say is right, that God really wanted to wash all the city's sin away. I don't say it. It doesn't make sense, but neither did the Great Flood. And all of a sudden I'm flooded with a nervousness in thinking about it because God doesn't like you questioning him.
I wonder why God made me a journalist.
"I'm getting high and going to see my girlfriend," he says. "Get some."
I scratch my neck, a nervous tick, pry my eyes away from the vampires.
"You live a life," I say. "All sex and all weed."
"I don't think it's all about sex and buying weed," he says. "But it feels good. Feels so good."
I push my glasses up the bridge of my nose.
One of the vampires walks past, the one with the vertigo eyes, and she brushes my arm.
I wish she wouldn't fuck with my feelings. The beer doesn't help calm any part of me down.
I was on Facebook earlier and a girl wrote on my wall describing my life as an alcohol-induced sex rave. I don't understand what that exactly means, but, in contemplating it, I wondered if I was OK with my life being like that. The easy answer was yes. If only what she wrote was true. And I wonder if I give the wrong impression to people.
Impressionist paintings were really good. They made you think what you wanted to think, feel what you wanted to feel, see what you wanted to see. Not like that Baroque garbage.
The other vampire is bent over with the cue stick.
My glasses fog up in the humid Desert and I order a chocolate milk with hopes I'll get a sweetness overload. Like a cold shower.
We sit.
A band starts to play. They play good music. The vampires dance. Slowly. Intoxicating. I wonder what it would be like if they bit my neck.
"I haven't felt as boring as I've felt today," he lights another of his purple cigarettes, not a typical cigarette. "I kind of want to let you know. Do you think I'm getting too old?"
I see he's buzzed. "No. There's still some kid in you."
"I got to go see my girlfriend. She said something about bringing something. Fuck, I keep losing my focus," he takes a drag, exhales, his eyes pounding with the bass, captured by the vampires' gaze. "I need to let you know this is a fantastic guitar rift that they're putting together. Great song. My mind feels like it's in Texas right now, you know? OK, listen. Get these girls over here. But don't let them talk. I don't want to hear another thoughtless bitch talk. I'm reading this book with only one female character. Fantastic. You should read it. I read too much. Does that make me too old?"
"I read too much."
"OK."
"What?"
"Don't let them say thoughtless things?"
"Do you really want me to get those girls over here?"
"No. I'm blunted, but I'm driving anyways."
"What?"
"What were you saying?"
"Got to see your girlfriend?"
"It's our anniversary, so yes."
"What did you get her?"
"Isn't the relationship enough?"
"I guess."
"No. Wrong answer. So I bought her some sun glasses that she's wanted. Hopefully they fit."
I fix my glasses. Without them I'm blind.
I'm thankful for corrective lenses, but they really take the nature out of life.
If God had wanted me to see the fat girl dancing with a bar stool in the corner, right past the vampires, he wouldn't have hindered my visual capabilities.
"You want a ride anywhere?" He asks, standing.
"I'll text my roommate. Thanks."
"The one who beat you up the other day?"
"He had his hand around my neck when he was drunk. He never beat me up."
"Not that you'll say. I want you to know anyways," he puts his hand on my thigh. "That I've all ways thought you were soft."
My roommate picks me up at a quarter past the bus stop, shortly around midnight.
Rock and roll plays loud and his windows are open to de-fog the windows.
Streetlights are flashing green, orange and red and I can't hear what he said, what he's saying -- not over the music. I catch a glimpse of myself in the side view mirror. My glasses, the lenses, shimmer in the street light and I can't see my eyes. It's not so bad that I can't make contact with myself.
Just means I can't see the spectacles.

White Stuff

2009-01-19T00:03:00.004-05:00

Hot breathe twirls from his lips into the evening, like spiraling smoke from a cigarette.
He's standing under a street light, waiting, an orange cone surrounding him, snow falling through it, littering the ground.
White stuff everywhere.
The night is quietest when it snows.
I'm flipping the cover of a match book open and closed, flashing the phone number that she wrote on the inside flap. I could use a cigarette right now.
But I don't smoke and the thought of needing a cigarette right now makes me wonder if it's really been that kind of day.
A text message buzzes on my phone in my pocket, the phone beep ripping through the tranquility.
I flip open the phone: "10 min."
Reply: "Cold. Any faster?"
There's waiting. And white stuff falling all around. And after a minute: "No. Sorry."
He waits, the man under the light. And I wait.
I'm not sure he sees me.
And I start typing a message on my phone and start walking, thinking that I don't want to wait in this cold, that the walking might warm up my blood.
It's a soft snow, a powder snow, and the man under the light doesn't hear me coming. He's startled as I walk past. I don't really pay much attention, keep texting.
"Hey, man, have a light?" He calls.
And I throw back the matches I have in my pocket. "You need this number?" He calls back.
And I wave my hand no.
The streets are empty, like the snow is a disease no one wants to touch.
Walking, she calls me.
"I've been up since 5 a.m., honey." She says.
"Was it a good day or bad day?"
"It was a work day."
The moon squints from behind a screen of clouds. For a moment there is blue light, the white stuff shimmering with it. The dark silhouettes of the fingers of trees stand out in the night now, reaching up and clawing, then disappearing as the moon falls back under its blanket, lost.
"Tell me a story."
"What?"
"Tell me a story. Keep me awake."
"Long day?"
"I'm trying to make my way home now, driving. Keep me awake."
A car navigates a road of slush, makes a sloshing sound as it goes on, cones of light beaming from its hood. And I'm alone again, save for the electric wires forming a speaker in my ear.
"I don't know if I have anything."
"Come on." Her voice is fluid, soft, like milk, if a voice could be like milk. Like verbal white stuff: words falling slowly, carelessly, almost meaningless, but beautiful when they land, perfect, her tone pure.
I tread through the snow, ruining the perfect film in my wake.
"Maybe last Friday, that was strange."
"OK."
"I come home from class. Everyone is in their underwear when I walk in. Keep in mind I live with only one person. I have no idea who the others are and ask what the hell is going on. They say they'll be done in a minute. And I left. Went to a bar."
"That's it?"
"I'm not really sure how it ended for them."
"There is no end?"
"Nothing spectacular. I came back and the place was empty."
There's a pause and in the tranquility of the falling snow you could hear the silence. I switch hands to give each equal time in a warm pocket while the other braves the elements.
"I remember that I miss your thoughtless, meaningless stories."
I remember that I miss her.
"What are you doing?" She asks.
"Walking home, in the cold."
"We'll keep each other company, then."
In the distance I hear sirens. But it's only in the distance. I walk on the street, talking on the phone, because no one is on the street. It's 1 a.m. on a snow day. For me, the clocks have stopped. There's only white stuff.

Little Speakers

2009-01-16T23:14:00.000-05:00

People all around and talking, all around, and I have nothing in common with any of them, I realize, and I leave the scene.
An odd feeling, really -- to have nothing in common with your own. Human beings are supposed to be interactive people, people people.
I'm in my room, door closed, but hear them outside.
"Listen, um," she says. And I tune out. And think about thoughts that have nothing to do with the situation, or conversation, then tune back in further in. It's an unideal point in her conversation: "I feel like I just keep growing," she says. "I've never felt this way before."
It's strange. I'm a people person. A common person. A human being. An interactive being, someone who this wouldn't happen to. Man, what a twist, I think.
The little speakers keep playing from the stereo in my room, bass and all. Thumping to the rythem. I wonder what the neighbors will think of the noise.
I've lived in my apartment now for two weeks and the first interaction I had with the neighbors was a noise complaint. The man knocked on my door. I answered. It was 10:30 at night. He said he had to get up at 4 a.m. and the music was too loud. It was a good song, though. Can't he understand that it's a good song? And that it's 10:30 p.m., a resonable time? And that you play good songs loud? Weird. It's strange. Who gets a noise complaint at that point in the night? I wonder if he can't do something about outside noise. I have a fan to drown out sounds, personally, white noise to give me a sense of solitude. He may not have a fan, though, I think. And I turned down the music.
It never used to be a problem.
She keeps talking: "I think I got some wild growth disease, something wild. I never used to grow like this." And I think that I have nothing in common with these people.
Someone asks: "How are you dealing?"
The little speaker plays and I lean back to enjoy the music, savor it. I'm alone in my satisfaction. I never used to be this way, so singular. Always was a people person.
The broken piano plays on the little speakers in my room, bass and all.
My roommate comes in: "You're still up, right?" I have no idea what he is talking about and realize I've been out of the interaction picture for some time now. "Did you get these from around here?" He means the cookies, showing them to me, from where I left them on the kitchen counter. "What store? They're great."
I can't figure it out, the situation, too drowned in the music I am. The rythem.
I tune out. And look away. And start to think about nothing, start to go back to the sound.
That same sound that got me in trouble, I think.
The little speakers.
And they play.
It's a devilishly nice sound. Bass.
I turn it louder, because goods songs should be played loud and the neighbors should know that.
"You're feeling well, though," someone says to her. And that sounds great.

Misdirections in a sunken economy

2009-01-12T00:15:00.001-05:00

The newspaper man tells me that if I buy today, I'll be happy tomorrow.
"Know everything there is to know, all on one page." He showers me with a gleaming white wide smile.
I stare at him, the newspaper man selling subscriptions. I had been searching in my pocket for my grocery list and he blindsided me as I walked into the store. He looks like a newspaper man, or what I think newspaper men should look like. Parted hair, mustache, brown jacket. I expect him, almost, to be chanting, "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" Extra loud. With his extra white teeth. And extra wide smile.
"Sports. Politics. Crime. All for a low, low price. Today only. What'd ya think?"
I tell him I'm a newspaper man, too, leaving out that I'm not the kind he is. Not with that smile.
"And where do you work?"
I tell him.
"Well, than you need a newspaper, friend."
"I'll read it online. Can't afford print. Not in this economy."
"Now, that's a hell of a thing for a newspaper man to say. You need to support your own. You're doing your industry a disfavor."
I want to explain to him what the industry has done to me, what disfavors the newspaper business has done to this newspaper man. But his smile is disarming. Extra disarming.
"I'll read you online." I walk away. "Especially in this economy."
I buy the knock-off brand everything: milk, applesauce, sugar. I use my plus card and the register tells me I've had $1.57 in savings today.
I wonder if the store brands even taste decent and laugh because this economy is devouring me from the soul out.
Later that day I'm speaking to my friend the technology man. He knows a lot about this world, the circuits of it all, the wires. He's guiding me through the maze of the Internet.
Than: "I hate my job."
"You have a job," I say. "How can you hate your job? In this economy, you should be happy to have one."
"You don't understand." He tells me, followed by the pent-up frustration of the proletariat workman: the hours, the pay, the environment.
"But pay is pay. Everyday."
"I'm tired of not being happy."
It's always the one's who have the most who complain the most.
I cut him off, almost insulted and tone showing it.
"Stop bitching. Worry about something productive, like getting a girlfriend. You should really worry about getting a girlfriend. Show us you're straight for once."
He pauses and it's cold.
After we end the call I curl on my bed. My mouth feels grimy, dirty, rancid and I need to brush my teeth.
I really enjoy brushing my teeth. Gets the plaque out. It feels good to clean out the grime.I spit the toothpaste out, rinse, smack, meet my own gaze in the mirror and just stare. Then I wash my face.
It all makes me so angry, this sunken economy. The misdirections. The mismanagement. The mistakes. I never knew money could make me so frustrated.
My stomach suddenly feels upset and I get a glass of milk, two percent.
I stand at my window and look out.
On the lawn there is a peacock: shimmering blue, emerald tail with opal spots, evergreen feathers as a hat. The green sticks out the most in the gleaming sun.
What an odd thing to be standing in my lawn, I think, but think that it's not so odd when you think about it. Just another bird. Could just as easily fly away. Can they even fly?
It stands and stares and maybe it meets my eye; I'm not sure. Then looks the other direction, walks away, emerald tail rounding the corner of a fence.
What a beautiful creature, I think.
Outside clouds grow. The sun is bright but the gray glides over it.
The day light gets dim. Through the window I watch as the silky blanket devours the sun and I close my blinds as the rain starts to fall, echoing through the room with me in the middle.
I wonder if I paid the heating bill this month. The day's getting cold.

Midnight Mirage

2009-01-11T23:49:00.000-05:00

The golden moon hangs high in the rusty sky.
Dusk, and I'm thirsty.
My eyes flutter once or twice and then there is dark and then there is light and the warm room around me and I'm somewhere else.
She hands me the drink and I drink.
She stares at me. And I lose my mind.
It's a spiral straw, neon green, like her eyes. I feel like I'm glowing. I take the glass and drink, falling. The white cursive ribbons that spell "Coca Cola" on the red can next to me begin to dance, then whip at me. Licking me up, I feel cool. There is a half empty bottle of bourbon next to her and she is smiling, consumed by it. And I consume it. And float with the fizz.
She's across from me, some pale princess poised and ready and I pinch myself to see if this is real and I don't feel a thing.
Drunk and dreaming and I'm riding in the desert sun, transitionless as it all is, face cloaked from the coming dust storm, eyes hard. Nomad. The desert was a place I've never been. The one place, really. That's where my dream puts me. The sun above is burning. And I'm burning with it. High from her.On the horizon something begins to rise.
Like a mirage she appears, walks to me, reaches out with glimmering eyes. And just as quickly she disappears.
I wake up in the morning and my mouth is parched. Somewhere along the night I lost my oasis.

Wire-less

2008-11-30T23:50:00.001-05:00

When the Internet connection failed me I couldn't rely on my DVD player, which couldn't play my scratched DVDs, and I had to give up on my scrambled cable, especially with nothing on the basic channels, no new news, and radio stations that could only play songs that talked about losing it all, similar to the books on my nightstand that read you to sleep, which was all my skunked beer was good for, no taste, similar to the cloths in my closet which weren't that dramatic, no flare, and the music on my mp3 that didn't really have anything to say, and the cell phone with no one to call because everyone was asleep and no text messages received from those same asleep people, or my girlfriend who is cranky and doesn't want to talk, or my lazy guitar with two snapped strings, wire less, or my pornography that has unappealing women, or soccer magazines with washed-up stars who looked like they've been walking for about 1,000 years, like my running shoes which were falling apart and teetering, unuseful, especially when it's cold and all I have is undramatic cloths, no thermal underwear, and my mind was teetering, like my roommate playing his game of poker, all in, like my life in this life on this craziest world, the craziest that I'd ever seen.

Moments Alone

2008-11-09T00:57:00.000-05:00

In the moments alone you find time to think about yourself.
Cyclical world spins. For a moment your brain does not.
Sitting there, in the bar, waiting for a friend, I let my brain unravel and tangle up with myself.
I wonder how long I'll wait for him, here, and wonder if I should get a drink.
I think I should get a drink. The bartender is pretty -- blonde har, blue eyes -- and makes it worthwhile to stand and wait, looking at her while waiting.
I wonder if my boss really thinks I'm valuable. I wonder if my job is necessary. I think I'm valuable. Maybe he thinks the others are more valuable, more necessary. Is thinking about this unnecessary, counter-productive? The others are kind of insincere, I think. At least I mean well when I try. I try. I've tired hard for a long time. It's been too long a time since I've had an easy time, I think. I think that I wish I could find momentum in my life. It's hard to get rolling up hill. That's what acceleration is for, though. Or a push from others. I think that I'm really tired of the others around me. Not help up the hill, that's the problem. It's hard to like them these days. No loyalty. No sincerity. I think that I'm sincere. Too much ill-intention on their part. Lunar, dark personalities, not solar. What ever happened to good intentions? What ever happened to friends? What ever happened to manners? Backstabbing makes me so angry, I think as I order a drink. A beer. Maybe I should have ordered something stronger, to dull it all, the emotion. I'm so angry. I've got a light bulb full of anger, and I can switch it on an off. That's what Mr. Johnson said. He was right and it fits me perfectly. Trouble is, even when you know when to turn the anger off, it's still there. Present. Maybe the alcohol will help, I think. It has a good way of numbing emotion. I drink.
I'm so angry at the world for spinning me out of control.
I'm so angry at my friend for being late. My job for being so insignificant.
I'm so disappointed my girlfriend cheated on me.
Maybe the alcohol will numb it, I think.
Lunar erupts and solar fades. The night gets darker, I think. I drink. Alone. Waiting for someone who doesn't want to seem to show up.
Music plays from the ceiling. I tap my shoes in rhythm and close my eyes. I close my eyes and my mind stretches like a blanket around me. It stretches my moment alone.
Then I open them to the world. The night says hello as the day says goodbye while the night meets its death somewhere else somewhere across some other sea.
I wish I was at that new day. I guess I'll just wait for my sun to rise.
The alcohol helps.

Traitor

2008-10-28T00:59:00.003-04:00

It was the Greek traitor Ephialtes who killed the Spartans at Thermopylae.
Just like Judas, Benedict Arnold or Brutus -- Ephialtes is remembered.
He found his way to strike the back of the Spartan body.
Greek turning on Greek.
And like a Greek tragedy, I think of you.
My world is a tragic affair. Yours makes it all the more so.
Et tu Bruti?
Still, it's a tragic affair I guess I lived through. The knife may have nicked my heart, but I sure as hell am not bleeding out.
I wonder if Ephialtes held a Spartan as he died. Did he ever consider loyalty? Did the Spartan ever consider trechery?
The great ones always believe in absolute loyalty, never expect the dagger to come from close.
This is all history, an old story, though.
Ephialtes, Judas, and Arnold are too cliche. Maybe history will give you your own name.
Unfortunately my name for you is "honey."
It's a poison honey, though.

Untethered

2008-10-15T00:33:00.001-04:00

"You don't look like much these days."
"Sorry to disappoint you, really am," I say.
"You can see it in your eyes. Your eyes say a lot. What happened to the guy I used to know. No, you don't look like much these days." He says it with some satisfaction.
"My luck ran out a long time ago. It's all about getting where I need to be now."
"That sounds like a blues song."
"Maybe the blues would be my perfect soundtrack, then."
I pick up my bourbon and coke, my blues drink, and swallow hard, then lay it back on it's soggy napkin. The music, the bass is loud in the room, people scurrying all around.
"What happened to your cheek?"
My hand goes to the left side of my face and rubs.
"Work." I drink.
"Is it really that bad? What kind of work do you do?"
I choke down the liquor. "The kind that requires scars." If he sees I'm visibly upset, he's happy with it and smiles. "How's Marie?"
"Easier than I thought."
"What?"
"She's up north. Went home for a bit."
"What did you say before that?"
"She's fine."
"Glad to hear it. I was curious."
"She doesn't talk about you too much. We have fun."
I choke down a gulp. "You should get a drink. It helps you become less of an asshole."
"Asshole? What do you mean? It's not like you loved her."
He grins at me, something ridiculous.
At that point I'd had enough and I let loose, let fly, fists pounding, knocking him to the ground.
Someone pulls me away.
I readjust my shirt and he gets up, sniffs, blood running down his lip, stares at me, reels back and then it's my turn to go down.
The bartender is dragging me out and I land on the curb, get up, readjust my shirt and collar.
"The police will be here in a minute," he says.
"That's fine," I dust off my pants. "I'm satisfied."
And I walk away.
Maybe that's the way it should happen. He leans on the table, staring, grinning something ridiculous. And I can only drink.
The next day I decide to run, to clear my mind, then decide I'm too tired to run and settle on running errands, and I drive.
I drive too fast down the road. And think. And she's somewhere in the back of my mind, untethered.
Open windows and the wind is splashing my face, sun bathing my face, and I wish to myself that I was content with the world. I don't feel like much these days.
Stopped at a red light a pretty face pulls up next to me, smiles, and I smile back, but it is an empty smile. I have my sunglasses on and she can't see my eyes.
I think, then, about what he said and think that I really am finally dead.

Negative Momentum

2008-10-15T00:21:00.001-04:00

The rain is pounding on the car.
Inside, windows all shut and fogging up, the storm sounds harder than it is, drops pounding on the hollow metal frame, echoing and lost in the silence.
And when it rains on a car when I am in it, I always feel that echoing echo through my soul.
In the car that's how it starts. Hollow.
The engine is on. And we kiss, and she is smiling and I'm not sure if I'm smiling back and only keep on kissing.
When I confirm I don't feel anything I pull away. She stares at me, brown eyes big.
"I don't know," I say, look away, at the rain slashing aross the parking lot in the dark midnight, the streetlights above us reflecting off the sleek ground.
"That felt good," she said.
"I don't know." And I look at her and draw one of those it-was-good-while-it-lasted smiles and she doesn't say anything. My voice is hollow and echoing. I look away. I step out, not worried about the weather, the rain streaking down my face, not worried about her.
My cloths are immediately soaked. And I walk away.
That's how it ends.
Back in my own car, then. And while driving I feel good or feel hollow and think that this is what it is to be dead.

Perfume

2008-09-24T00:38:00.000-04:00

I smell you in the strangest places.
With my window down, driving.
Jogging through the park.
The store today, the game yesterday.
A bar.
It's intoxicating and I'm still drunk.

Fall

2008-09-19T02:40:00.000-04:00

Falling.
Much more in love than I'd like to.
And that's odd, really. Because I'd like not to.
We're driving. And I've been drinking. And that's not to say I'm driving after drinking. I'm listening, as a passenger. After drinking. And we're listening to music, and there is an amazing guitar rift and I find myself ghosting it, air guitaring it. And while doing so, I find myself in love.
The feeling isn't original, very regular, hardly new. It's fall and I always fall in love in fall. And that's weird, because it really should be happening in spring. But the coolness of it all just gets to me, the chill of the night, the loveliness of everything, the oranges and the violets in the dusk sky.
The beat beats faster and faster on the radio and there is bass and it sucks me in, my conscience, and there is something oddly mesmerizing to it, familiar, sympathetic and deep, drifting, gliding, as the golden leaves of the trees in fall fall, hitting the ground and crunching beneath the world.
My heart falls as I listen, floating to the ground. I'm grounded, I think, and realize that I'm thinking of you.
We listen to the flux of the radio.
And I'm dancing with my shadows.
And I think of your face.
And then my life.
And you in it.
I should have kissed you. But I forgot.
And I'm sorry.

Sanctuary

2008-09-16T00:21:00.000-04:00

A year to the day. That's when I had peace. Work and live in the Rhineland, a dream of all dreams. When I'm there it seems my whole entire life away from the place has been a life spent in exile.
Is it strange that I feel more connected to a place that has never been my home?
In the afternoon sun, on top of one of any of the many hills overlooking that corner of the world where Germany intersects with France, that's when the breathing feels the sweetest. That's when you can inhale and feel life entering, exhale and let it out. This is a place where a trillion wars were fought. Where Rome stopped. Where unrest lay. World conflicts started. I remember one night a friend of mine reminded me of that: "What does this place you go to look like? Can't look like anything worth anything. Dirty, disgusting place." That night he was the drunkest man in the state and the alcohol was talking. He can't understand. No, no body can, really. Hardly a graveyard. No where near a barbarian cesspool. Nothing of a wasteland. Far from ordinary. It is sanctuary, on top of any of the many hills.
Peace.
Thoughts.
Recharge.
Exhale.
It is all less sanctimonious these days.
So I yearn. I miss my home in that corner of the world. Pictures, they help to reflect. And I smile. But yearn.
For sanctuary, in the strangest place in the world to find it.

Soul Aid

2008-09-15T01:18:00.001-04:00

Staggering down the sidewalk as I walk he catches my eye, which I can't hide, stands upright, straightens, smiles.
"My friend," and it's a thick Irish accent. "Can you spare a few quid?"
I'm feeling generous, and it's Friday and everyone should be able to buy a drink or two.
"Take four."
I hand it to him, he smiles, I walk away, he waves, screaming "God bless ya!" and wheels around, making a pump motion with his fist, smile wide.
It's the little things that make the sun shine brighter, just like when you called.
It was right after I had a beautiful burnout, lingering smoke and all.
Your voice felt good, if sound can be a sensation.
Helped clear the air.

A Matter of Time

2008-09-14T02:20:00.000-04:00

The top of the world is the best place to see the sky.
That's what she told me as she led me through her bedroom window, onto a ledge that led to the slanting part of the roof where we scrambled up the side, to the top.
And sat.
It was late and the night above had already grown out of control.
Staring up my eyes adjust and focus.
The moon, almost full, a little empty at the top and the sides, is bright, pale and blue, the craters like pock marks on its face. The stars are milky white pimples soaking through the black blanket; the smaller, more distant pin pricks barely visible, drowned out in the growing night portrait. They are the most distant of distances. Light years away. Where time is tomorrow, or yesterday, another matter entirely.
The world comes into perspective.
Galaxies fill my view, tentacles swaying, swinging, grabbing, wine-red and deep blue, vibrant yokes, turning like cogs in the machine of the evening. The arms reach out, grab me, pull my gaze, twist and turn my vision.
Around midnight I become lost in their vortex, like sweet Charybdis.
Smudges of clouds crawl by, pushed by the warm breeze, en route to nowhere. Nebula fills the voids of it all, a scarlet and purple.
An orchestra of night voices is deafening: crickets, cicadas, toads, the wind on the trees, leaves rustling, the highway not far away, the bass from her stereo inside. Off in the distance I hear sirens.
I slowly get cozy, still not used to the height, the magnitude of the circus above sending me further into vertigo.
She got up here easily with one hand, holding a full drink in the other, hardly bent over, while I crawled and hugged the roofing. Danger was intoxicating for her. I could see it in her eyes, her swagger. This was sexy. A little more terrifying for me.
"You want a sip?" She asks.
"I'm fine." I try and mask the worry from my voice.
And that's how it starts. She's sitting there, on an apartment roof, of all places, genuinely smiling at me, her dark eyes gorgeous, pulling me in, competing with the giant arms of the galaxies, sending me spinning, her body shimmering in the moonlit sky, glowing, lighting me on fire.
She stares at me. I think I'm grinning, or smiling too much, and I look away.
And we just look up at the world from below. Eyes adjust and readjust to the dimness of the infinite portrait.
We don't talk.
Slowly my grip loosens and I get comfortable.
She leans in and kisses me on my cheek and I kiss her back.
"Are you sure you don't want a drink?" It was rhetorical and she gulps, long and hard, her eyes glazing as the alcohol takes hold.
"I don't need it."
"Finally sobered up?"
"Had to happen sometime."
"Easy to get drunk off this, though." Her hand brushes the sky and with it makes a wave through the stars, their glistening sparkle splashing together in the pool of bubbling night, a twinkling wake of dust behind her fingers. And maybe the stars fall or the moon smiles or the galaxies finally manage to snatch me up. The planets align. The world stops spinning. I'm sober and feel alive, though as punch drunk as my soul can be.
"Too bad the night has to end."
"Too bad it's just a matter of time." I agree.

beatless

2008-07-31T16:23:00.002-04:00

She had an allergy towards excitement. Loud music, specifically. It had to be beatless. Excitement made her skin tingle. Not that that is a bad allergy to have. It keeps you alive longer. But that's not how I looked at it. For me, that's how you died quicker.
Maybe that's why we're not together: allergies.
It's a stupid thing, really. Something that an over-the-counter couldn't fix, really.
I wish there was an over-the-counter for life.

The Darkness

2008-07-30T23:33:00.000-04:00

So there I am, sitting on the edge of the wall, face in my hands, humbled.
I used to have so much and want so much more, you see, and now, here, on the edge, there is nothing.
As you join me, I've realized that I've cuaght a classic case of complete and utter failure.
Suddenly,really.
I have lost most everything, you see, or, rather, most everything has lost me. Left me behind, departed -- the world has -- and I was too slow to catch it, or, rather, not quick enough to miss it. And now it has hit me. Lost, a loser, broken, silenced, cast aside, weakened from what I precieved myself to once have been. And the fact that I am those things and not those things has truly humbled me.
Next to me is an invisible man who cannot speak, and who I'll scream at every now and so often, then slump again, elbows propped on my thighs, hands clasped around my eyes.
And now I ask him how I came to this place, and there is no answer, and I scream it again, and again, and again, and there is only the quiet.
Above us is the sky and there is no moon, and I can see white pimples of stars, and scarlet swirls of galaxies and purple smears of clouds. Walls are on either side of us, the black ground below, featureless in the bleak night.
"I used to be able to see for miles," I say to him who doubles over as Nobody. "Now, not even the back of my hand."
And I laugh, a deep, sinister, fuck-my-life, ironic, devilish laugh.
I find myself thinking at night.
About all of the stereo-typical things you think about in the dark, when the night is deepest. Mostly I wonder how I got to this, the edge.
Naturally I know that I walked, strolled and sat, but there has to be something deeper, and that is where I start.
I don't know on which side of me the invisible man sits, so when I talk I talk straight forward, into the darkness, and hope that he hears me.
After a while I get tired of asking unanswered questions and wonder who I could call, who could be my lifeline.
My cell phone has died, though. Died a while ago.
I look at it and the screen is as dim as everything else. I toss it. I hear it shatter below.
"That phone used to be the most important tool for me. Hell, it used to be me."
There is a breeze and it is a cool breeze, though the night is warm, cooler than the day, which was too hot and too muggy.
"I used to get calls and receive calls and people used to answer. People used to hear me. Led to adventure. Now silence. Not that anyone calls it in the first place. It's dead, you see?"
And there is only the breeze, nothing else in the darkness.
"Do you see?"
I can't. Not a thing around me. No walls, no ground, no horizon. Up is down, down is sideways. I'm only lost in memories.
"This chapter is going to be a long one?" I ask.
And maybe he nods or shakes his head or shrugs or laughs like I did or does something entirely different.
And maybe I smile, or grin, or outright ball at the irony of it all, or the sinisterness of everything, or at the thought of total chaos enveloping my life, that classic feeling, or of the idea that chaos is a word that should describe a solitary event, the peak of action. I'm already past the point of crisis, at the point of aftermath, smack dab in the middle of desolute.
I'm enveloped in darkness at night.
My hands are enveloped around my face and I wonder why I'm hiding from the world in this darkest of nights. But it's the sheer loneliness of it all, the silence, the fact that I can't see anywhere around me.
Is this how Bruce Wayne felt, after the death of his family, after he lost everything, everything that mattered most to him, and the world started leaving him behind?
"Where does it end, I can't tell." I mutter through my hands. "God."
And the wind hisses and there is thunder in the background.
"Where is the ground?"
The smears of clouds grow thicker.
I leap off the wall, or rather fall.

Roses Fade

2008-07-02T17:50:00.000-04:00

Early Sunday morning there was a cloud on the horizon and as the sun rose, the cloud moved with it. Midday everything was dark.
Somewhere, past where, the sun shined, but not there.
Days turned to weeks and weeks to months, and the sun that had lit the land lay dormat, cloaked, concealed, shrouded, and the world was dark.
"God's grace lost and the Devil is proud," the stereo told him, one time.
Clouds grew thicker and the world was darker and he knew, somehow, past sometime, a little later after yesterday, that he was alone and the cloud was here, the sun unable to penatrate.
"What a world,"
"Beautiful, isn't it?" She says
"When you're on top. All I have left are dried roses."

Six months of winter, three months off

2008-05-26T23:43:00.000-04:00

The paycheck came in the mail, but never mind that.
It was never really about the money. Or business as usual.
No, something else, deeper, more attractive, more elusive, definately more unusual.
Adventure, and a lack there of.
Across the country, on the other end of the line, she's asking me why I don't sell out, get a 9-to-5, a cubical, some office furniture, a fake plant -- likely a fern -- a coffee maker (and a taste for coffee to go with it), a $125 office chair and maybe one of those squshy seat cushion things to go with it. I wonder why I would want any of that.
"Walking shoes would be better spent for my money," I say, because, no, it was never really about the money, or spending it on uselessness.
Wallets are what we're talking about, then, and how hers is by some designer, but actually a knock off, and how it cost less than what it actually looks.
"Something cheap that looks great."
"In this economy, that's what you shoot for."
She tells me she's in Las Vegas and has $45 of $550 she brought with her.
"Just gambled it all away."
And I smile.
"Roll the dice once for me," I say, and my voice wanders as I wonder.
I think my wonders are lost with the enthusiasm of it all. I think my words are lost in the whole meaningless of it all.
Since the winter I can't really think straight. Like something is inhibiting the thought process. Maybe it's the warm weather. Heat makes you content. And I'm content and I hate it. I feel like lately I've really lost the lust for life that Iggy Pop so passionatly called for.
"And that's my soul."
It all seemed better in Europe six months ago.
I tell her I want another job, something like Europe-six-months-ago, with soldiers and bombs and guns and intrigue and adventure and enthusiasm and fireworks and victories and early mornings and late nights that were all spent in the advancement of society.
And passion, too.
I feel I've lost passion.
She asks me if I've ever had it in the first place.
"At some point. That time we were looking at the stars on your roof."
"How do you lose passion in six months?"
"I guess I just came back."
Six months ago I embarked on the greatest adventure yet, and the philosophies were tested. Then I came back and when I was coming back I knew I would hate to be back once I got back. I remember the moment. I was driving on the autobahn.
It's strange, but I remember that I could think straight those days. Maybe because it was cold. The sharp breeze always keeps you on your toes.
Now I feel I can't even write straight. Like I've had three months off and I haven't done a damn thing, just laid there, let my soul, my mind, my body, my existence atrophy.
The writing is the reflection.
Really, it's become one of those frame stories, a story mirroring a story mirrored in a story. Like "Fall of the House of Usher".
"You've always seemed to have a way to find passion around midnight," she says.
"What does that mean?"
The wind outside begins to blow harder and as it sprays me, I wonder if this is the end.
"Never could get you off my mind," she says.
And I smile, concealed as we talk, and I tell her I don't feel alive anymore and she laughs. Then I laugh, darkly. She's the dozenth person I've told that to who has laughed.
"Around here everything isn't too serious."
"In Vegas?"
"I wish I had your job."
"To make up the $515?"
"Among other things."
"You wouldn't be happy with my job, there's so much more out there."
"It wouldn't be bad to have the $515 again."
"It was never really about the money."
"I'm happy you got your money in the mail."
I sigh.
"Yeah, me too."
And she laughs.
"There are two great tragedies in life; one is when you lose your heart's passion. The other is when you find it. That's what Gorge Bernard Shaw said."
"How did he know?"
"Must have known somehow."
"I guess you really do just know when you know."
Six months ago U.S. Airways flight 842 flew into Lexington, Ky., from Charlotte, N.C., the final connecting flight from Frankfurt, Germany, and stepping off at Blue Grass Airport I knew I'd lost something.

Lost in contents stirring

2008-05-26T01:52:00.001-04:00

At dusk I try and remember why I left this place in the first place. A specific reason, I mean.
And the reason I came back
Tossing, turning, wondering, wandering; waiting for the moment when things make sense, I realize that a lot of things don't make sense. Questions lead to answers that are more questions.
“So glad you’re back. How was Europe?” she says. “You must tell me about it. And your job. You were a journalist, or just a writer, one of those expatriates?”
“A little bit of everything,” I say.
At dusk the sun setting slowly lights the sky afire in a hot rust, and I am almost blinded as we drive, so, squinting, I take out my sunglasses.
Her hand is on my thigh, running over my jeans.
The breeze is warm, getting cooler, and there are clouds on the horizon as we cross a bridge, drive into downtown and park for a drink. Windows up, doors closed, locked, then over to the bar, where the night starts, and I remark that it’s nice to be back, but don’t know if I mean it. The sound of her heels clicks along the pavement. She is wearing a thin white shirt and as the wind picks up, it dashes her long strawberry hair about. She keeps brushing it from her eyes as we talk. Our arms are locked and it feels familiar, but strange, and with our arms locked I’m not thinking of her, but someone else.
In Europe I covered the U.S. military. There were terrorist plots and military plots and bomb threats and bomb demonstrations and often men with guns and I remember that I had left to get away and I got away, I guess almost forgotten. I came back because I was lonely.
I don’t tell her that.
Outside on the patio we finish wine and she’s smoking and I ask for one too, even though I don’t smoke.
“Maybe it’ll help with the thoughts,” I mumble, lighting the tip.
“What?”
I have a bourbon and she has a vodka cranberry and is stirring it with a thin black straw and is smiling and talking and will brush my leg lightly with hers. She downs the liquor, then orders another and says, “I’ve needed a drink since last Thursday.”
Tonight we’re sitting in that place with the sky big above us.
A band starts to play. People scamper around. A waiter passes. Across from me a girl with piercing features and strawberry hair is staring at me with absolute lust filled to the brim in her eyes, and I'm flattered. But I’m thinking of someone else, and hate myself for it.
I'm searching for answers as I stir my drink, memorized by the motions of the alcohol making a cyclone in my hand. I wonder if I’m really even thirsty for a drink, this liquor and wine, or if water would do just fine.
“Did you meet anybody? Did you buy European clothes? How was the beer? Were there terrorists, men with guns?” she says, and I want to tell her that these are all things I don’t really care to talk about. The cigarette doesn’t help.
The drummer plays and somewhere from the back there is a guitar.
“Do you need more to drink?” And I think.
“I’m fine.”
My eyes are focused on the ceiling and I'm exhaling strong, sighing, and sitting opposite the cigarette in the ashtray on the small table in between us, which burns slowly, thinking thoughts as she talks and the purple smoke clouds over us, watching as a ceiling fan spin in a counter-clockwise position listening over the music.
“Italy is the most beautiful place,” she says
“Oh?”
“I fell in love there.”
“I wonder why all women in the Western world west of Lisbon and north of Grand Cayman fall in love with Italy.”
“It’s just gorgeous.”
“There is so much more out there.”
She takes a drag.
“Hardly. Were you in Italy?”
“No.”
“My heart is in Italy. I fell in love with Italy.”
“Don’t let love damage your heart.”
And my thoughts drift as I swirl my drink and I wish She would call, to save me from this place, just even say, “hey.”
Across from me she smiles at me as smoke expands over her head and it's a shallow smile.
I bring up the rest of Europe and she tells me it’s a dump, culturally, and goes on about the Italian men and the coffee and something about the architecture and the soccer and the history and the art.
Then fashion for a while.
“These clothes,” she motions to her chest. “All my clothes are Italian.”
“Congratulations.”
“They really have to be, you know.”
And I stop listening to her and picture her naked as she continues to point at her chest and realize, oddly, that the only thing pretty about her is her body and laugh because she doesn't know it. Then I think about myself and laugh harder.
She laughs with me and takes a drag and the smoke is caught by the wind and circles her head. She brushes my leg, I move it away.
The place fills up and there are people all around us, talking, and the band is playing louder, some deep, metallic song with an electric current, and there is a man with a tie leading them in song, who squeezes his microphone and jabbers about losing the prettiest thing he’s ever had in his life. “…Can’t find my happiness anymore….” The guitar plays. I think the band would be better without the singer.
“Could you do this?”
“The music?”
“Could you?”
“I could never play guitar for a living.”
“I could, maybe. I want to be an actress.”
“That's cute. I wanted to be an actor once.”
“Did you?”
“When I was young.”
“Aren't you still young?”
“Are you a journalist?”
“Do I ask too many questions?”
“You ask a lot.”
“You’re a journalist. How do you like it?”
“It doesn't pay the bills.”
“Then why do it?”
“Back stage access.”
“That’s a perk.”
I tip my drink, and then, “Do you want more to drink?”
I stand to get another round from the bar. She watches me with a smile.
Drifting in the night above is my mind, and I hate to leave her starving.
Another girl walks past, nice legs, lips, eyes, hair, waist; but it’s not Her.
Smoking, I walk to the bar and ask for two bourbons and a vodka cranberry. The bartender pours and I want to tip him and get my wallet, fumble it, catch the contents, all save for a picture that floats to the counter.
He grabs it for me, looks at it, grins, “She looks pretty.”
On the back is a name, written in a black permanent marker, slightly smeared.
“What happened to Marie?” He asks, and I feel like I’m in one of those classic black and white movies, circa 1949, where the main character is alone at the bar, eyes dark, talking to that friendly bartender, who is smiling as he cleans glasses, spilling personal secrets under the haze of increasing intoxication to someone who more than likely doesn’t really give a damn.
“She didn’t really love me,” I think, I mumble.
“Lemon?”
“Something like that.”
The first bourbon is for me, there.
At the table her eyes flow across me in my chair, and I hate myself.
I sigh and sit and she smiles, and I collect myself, and my thinking, without the aid of the cigarette, and quickly decide to make the most of the situation and to maybe drink harder and shove my thoughts in the ‘sometime later’ category of my brain.
The liquor doesn't take long to run through my veins, and I realize that it's exactly what I needed.
The smoke rises and disperses above the ashtray. I forget about the photo in my wallet.
And as the dusk turns to night, I start over, collected, and not thinking about a damn thing that I don’t want to. After dusk I forget why I left this place in the first place. Forget the specific reasons, I mean. And I don’t care why I came back.
Everyone outside turns their eyes to the night sky as a firework explodes some 100 yards away, bright for only seconds, then glitters down.
“That was pretty,” she says.
And I agree.
“You know who you remind me of?” She reaches in her purse and shuffles for a cigarette. “An actor. Can’t think his name.”
Then another firework explodes, dazzling across the sky as its tail flares for a second, then crashes to earth.
Around the end of my next bourbon we start to discuss her friend or sister's friend or someone of that relation being hit by a train recently, which is highly morbid and actually brought on by her vodka cranberry, I think. She’s already had a few, to loosen her tongue. It seems to help with the details.
“The bad thing about that is that there are a lot of pieces,” she says.
“That's kind of morbid, but true.”
Pieces are always hard to pick up, I think.
“It’s harder to find all the pieces,” she says.
She takes out another cigarette and lights it in her mouth and hands it to me.
“Take it.” And I do, and I take a drag.
She mentions something about quitting smoking and drinking harder, or smoking harder and drinking less and I laugh.
My eyes scan the evening horizon, the stars and rooftops, searching for more fireworks that may streak by. Then I look at her. She slants her body and the night light makes the curves of her chest shimmer. Her eyes look up and meet mine and she smiles, and I smile back and at that point I’m somewhere else. Under the influence of something else, of someone else. And I’m thinking of her and her hair, her eyes, her smile, looking at her and nothing else in the world matters for a second as the cigarette smoke makes a frame around her face.
“Let me light mine,” she says.
I’m just staring and she reaches in with her cigarette in her mouth and leans forward, eyes closed, to kiss, and the tips of our smokes join and there is a flare. She takes it in, satisfied, and I’m satisfied.
And she leans back and smiles.
We both have more to drink and the drinks help me forget for a bit, but seem to help her remember and she continues on about the train, the details of which I tune out.
Around midnight we decide to leave. She’s had a lot to drink and I think I’m a little over the edge, too. We hail a taxi.
Above us the stars are shining and I’m thinking again and I can still hear the band inside and there is a cool breeze and the liquor dulls it at first and there is a crescent moon rising, horns pointed up, and I’m remembering.
We drive and the driver has his window down and there is a breeze and the breeze catches her hair and she pulls it behind her ears and says she’s happy I came out with her tonight.
We cross the bridge. I can’t judge if she’s drunk or not, or acting. I can’t focus. Her hand is at my side, her other holding down her dress so as not to have it blown everywhere. I look at her legs, then at her hair, her smile, then at the night and think that I’ve lost my ability to think clearly, and to feel, but still can’t seem to forget.
“Are you happy to be back?” she asks.
I don’t answer. I start thinking about Her, then about Europe and Italy and how much I really actually hate Italy, and then about her again, and her hair, her eyes, her smile, and in the haze of drunkenness I’m lost.
In the seat she kisses me on the cheek, hovers beside me, leans on my side, and I feel nothing, and hate myself for it.
We stop. She gets out, asks if I want to come in.
I say, “No.”
She is still smiling and says she’ll call.
Then, “It'll be a lonely ride home,” she contends.
But it gives you time to think, I think. And I want to tell her that I'll drift along alone alive, and thinking, and that would be better for me anyways. As I pay for her fare I look at the contents of my wallet and sigh.
And I wave goodbye.
“That’s it?” She says.
Like an eyelash caught in her eye she blinks.
“Got nothing anymore.”
The best ‘The End’ is just to end.
I wave goodbye.
The last act.
Back home I look at myself in the mirror, eye to eye. I wash my face in the sink, then get in the shower. The water is warm and I just stand there staring at the ceiling, watching the steam rise and swirl as the jets pound my chest.
Wearing a white towel, I walk over to pour a cup of water, with lemon. My wallet is at the counter and I question if I should dump the contents.
Outside the night is clear.
I sit down and I think that I want to fall asleep, but can’t.
The quiet is disturbing. I turn on some music, then turn it off again, then the TV, then turn that off again, the just listen to nothingness. I think about the band and think that it really was a bad band, or at least the singer, but think that if it were a different singer with the same lyrics, it probably wouldn’t have been so bad. Or maybe different lyrics. I turn and look at my clock and realize it’s late in the early morning. The quiet is disturbing, makes me wonder.
So, late in the early morning my thoughts stir. I wonder why I left this place in the first place. Where did I ever go and why?
Sometime later my phone rings, screaming through the darkness.
I search around for my pants, find my pocket, juggle the phone.
A haze frames around me as I’m staring, smiling.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.”

White Knight

2008-04-10T00:37:00.001-04:00

She was blond.
I think if you laid with her next to the river at night, under the Amazon moon, the stars pricked into the blackness, her hair would shimmer.
In the sun there was a tree and that tree was white and I wondered if, at night, the tree would still be white. There was not a green leaf on it, only snow-colored flowers, each a separate flake.
Across the way there was the lamp.
Later, after the sun was setting over California and rising in Australia and it was dark here, I found the tree again and looked at it. It shimmered under the crescent Amazon Moon whose horns point up, under the pin specks of stars, and across from the orange glow of a streetlamp, across the way.
My skin glistened in the lamp light.
And I wondered if I was a white knight.
More importantly, I looked for her, the blond, in the black night.
It's hard to find your princess.

Lastly spoken

2008-04-10T00:10:00.000-04:00

"She spilled coke on it, was a big black stain, you see, can't wear it, not without a stain everywhere else, to make it uniform, a proper uniform."
"No, no, no, no, no. Can't have that, not before the ball."
"Fortunately she had another one. Similar, in reserve. My favorite thing."
"The black one?"
"Little black thing. With mocha shoes."
"Bet she needed one after that."
"A cigarette? You bet. Let me have one, too. Thanks. What about you? Too breezy to light up here. Here hold the flame. Tomorrow it'll rain, shame. Spring is the best time to smoke."
"I thought you were giving up."
"Can't hardly give up the good things in life. Don't tell her that. She knows another me."
"Who are you?"
"Oh, come on."
"We need to pay, hold on for a moment."
"I hate my job. I hate my lifestyle."
"Both aren't that bad, trust me."
"Money, sex, music, beer, is that what that song was saying?"
"Might as well. Throw in porn and some of my other favorite things."
"Never anything wrong with that, we all need the good things, favorite things. Such as my Facebook crush, pretty little thing."
"Helicopters."
"New shoes."
"Pine trees with a heavy snow."
"Nap time!"
"Home. I miss the mountains, the culture, her and him and the cool summer evenings. Soccer, too. Castles, hiking, the air, the juice. Gorgeous place."
"Hardly a place for me. Never thought it could be. Good things aren't places, silly."
"'Good' is where you're at, a feeling, and, unfortunately, not here."
"Let me take a drag of that."
"Silver spoons. That's where money, sex, beer, whiskey, vodka, porn, cars, helicopters and sofas come from, but never mind that. It's too hard to get the good life."
"The good life is an illusion, really."
"Hardly."
"What are you wearing to the masquerade ball?" She asked.
"Well, a mask, of course," I said, lastly, without saying that much in the end.

Print

2008-03-24T02:17:00.001-04:00

Really it's the lack of adventure that's got me down.
I learned yesterday that I've never actually seen the eye of a hurricane and I hate myself for it.
I can't stop reading National Geographic.
Reading is the wrong word, really.
I can't stop looking. I can't stop pretending. I can't stop feeling like I'm actually in the jungle or the desert. Turn the page and it's the ocean or the arctic followed by some ancient village or Budapest or Kyoto. I can't keep myself from being in those stories. Like constantly hitting a refresh button on your wildest dreams.
The pretending really just is a Nicorate patch of nonsense that I use to pass the time from dusk to dawn. Never mind the reality that happens in the middle. It's not important.
One photo, circa 1953, black and white, is of a man holding a harpoon gun, with a 7-foot swordfish hung by the fin next to him.
He's smiling.
I've never fired a harpoon gun and I hate myself for it.
I actually hate reading the stories, the articles. Truthfully, they're the best part. The substance. They tell you about sandcastles and real castles and castles in the sky and your mind's eye draws a portrait of a place you can't be and you learn about wild, obscure facts that God had, in reality, never meant for you to learn in all your years on Earth. Like President Bongo of Gabon, who is the longest-serving world leader. Or that the United States of America, technically, stretches half way around the world, up and down or side to side, however you want to look at it.
But all that is worthless. I'm tired of words and reading their empty serif, san-serif black block letters. Pictures let you see the pictures they describe. The orange sun licking the beach, the stars scattered across the universe, the flower bloom, the sky. You can almost smell the dirt or the ocean or the trees. If it was real, you would. That's where the pictures get you. That's when you snap back to wherever you are, realize you are just looking at an image, realize you're wherever you are.
The other midnight I went walking and it was warm, but I had a coat because there was a wind and the wind was cool and the coat kept me warm, though it was heavy for the night. A storm was brewing, you see, trees were bending, dust balls rolling across the street like in Westerns, followed by dead leaves clawing the pavement like something sinister was about to happen. Shadows were moving every now and then, real and fake. The people I ran into that midnight were like those shadows. You felt like you were in the magazine, everything was so vivid.
Felt like there needed to be a photographer, to document.
Looked like the world was alive.
I got tired and went in an hour later and hated myself for it.

Zorb

2008-02-27T01:49:00.000-05:00

I start thinking about myself.
My eyes are focused on the ceiling and I'm exhaling strong, sighing, and sitting opposite the cigarette in the ash tray on the small table in between us, which burns slowly. I think about thoughts as the purple smoke clouds over us. I'm watching a ceiling fan spin in a counter-clockwise position listening to her over the music.
She tells me it was beautiful.
"Italy is the most beautiful place."
"Oh?"
"I fell in love."
I wonder why all women in the Western world west of Lisbon and north of Grand Cayman fall in love with Italy.
"There is so much more out there," I say.
She takes a drag of the cigarette.
"Hardly. Love is in Italy. My heart is in Italy."
"Love is a strong word. Don't let love damage your heart."
She smiles at me as smoke expands over her head and it's a shallow smile.
I bring up the rest of Europe and she tells me it's a dump and I'm offended, culturally, and she goes on about the Italian men and the coffee and something about the architecture and the soccer and the history and the art.
Then fashion for a while.
"These cloths," she motions to her chest. "All my cloths are Italian."
"Congratulations."
"They really have to be, you know."
And I stop listening to her and picture her naked and realize, oddly, that the only thing pretty about her is her body and laugh because she doesn't know it.
She asks me if I've ever seen any of the world and I lie and say yes and all of a sudden I feel guilty for saying that because I really haven't seen much of the world - or enough - and at the moment I think about Fiji and postcards with beaches of Fiji and think to myself that I don't know what all the fuss is about. I want to know what all the fuss is about. And I feel shallow.
"I want to zorb. I'm not sure, exactly, what zorbing is, but I want to zorb."
"What?" She asks, almost coldly, as if I've interrupted. "I think it involves rolling off of something in a giant bubble, a cliff or something."
I'd like roll of something more often, I think, just build a bubble and fall and land somewhere totally new. It's good for your heart, they say.
And my mind drifts and I think of New Zealand and her, there, in Wellington, and what she's seen and done and her pictures of zorbing and all of a sudden I'm struck by how travel-starved I am.
Someone, who's merged with our conversation bubble and invaded my thoughts, points out that I'm a German-American born in California, who's lived in New York - the center of the world - and has Southern pride. And I smile.
"But I've never been to New Zealand."
"New Zealand can't...." And I've tuned her out again.
And I'm thinking of her, there, at the bottom of the world and think about the guts it takes to go to a place like that, just take your bubble and fall. Even Magellan never made it to New Zealand. Magellan had seen a lot of the world.
"New Zealand would impress you, I'm sure."
"I think I've seen enough of the world already," she says and smokes again, then looks at the cigarette and frowns. "I miss Italian cigarettes."
I stare at her and think about a girl I knew who may or may not have killed her boyfriend (bad story, but happy-ish ending), who was some way tied in with his death and had to leave her life and escape in a bubble and fall somewhere she'd never seen before to collect herself. She fell into Africa.
And I think about her pictures of Africa, and the places where she went, and think that Africa seemed like a world where you would find something.
"You know all of Christianity is based in Italy? Your soul feels free there." She says.
"Hardly," I say.
I think your soul is really free when you zorb, whatever that may be, when you take your bubble and fall and hope and see the beaches of Oceania or stare at those green hills of Africa, where ever they may be.
It starts raining in Lexington and I think about my adventures in Germany and remember that my soul really felt calm there, then remind myself that this is my fall and my zorb is here now.

Deadline.

2008-02-26T02:38:00.000-05:00

I have a pen in my hand and I'm clicking the clicker as fast as I can, then stopping to twirl the pen between my fingers, then clicking as fast as I can again and doing this more quickly as the time rolls by when I notice the man next to me is starring at me with a pissed-off look on his face, watching me click in annoyance, and I catch his drift so I stop and say "Sorry" and stare back at my computer screen.
Then I'm angry that I said "I'm sorry." He didn't deserve it.
I stare at the computer screen and can't figure out how to end the story I'm writing.
I click the pen top again, faster, and the man next to me looks at me again, more annoyed. He has an old face and deep, sunken black eyes and this ashen skin and white hair and he always looks like he's frowning at me - not ayone else, mind, just me - and as I stare at him I think that this is journlism and this is my profession and I'm suddenly sickened tremendously by my surroundings: the pale walls, the sharp lights, the cofee-stained carpet, the word cursor that keeps blinking, waiting for me to finish the last sentence of the last paragraph of the last story I need to work on for the night. Trying to make deadline is hardest without the music to beat to. My music is the pen clicks, a thousand a minute.
Ash Face has a dying look on his face, the look of journalism, and I wouldn't be surprised if he missed the next deadline, due to death.
And I'm more frustrated at my sense of frustration and this frustration is vented in me clicking my pen, which apparently annoyes Ash Face. I think to myself that if he keeps on looking at me with his coal-black eyes I'll stab the pen in his throat.
And as I think that thought I begin reconsidering my life.
Because this my life.
I think that that thought was too much and too unnecessary.
Still, around deadline I come to the surmising that my future is this dead lined. No silver about the lining.

Pinnacle

2008-01-25T00:30:00.000-05:00

Munich, Germany -- It's the 2006 World Cup. And the World Cup is a beautiful sight.
We're here, both of us, happy.
Around dusk, just after dinner, we are walking down the main walk in the Old City with three story buildings on each side of us (no one bigger than the other) and it is warm and the sky is purple and rust and the sun is glaring behind the rows of buildings to our right and there are people all around, each talking another language, and we are all smiling.
The World Cup does that to people.
Munich is old and charming, like the postcard you would think any European would be, and each building looks like someone took about 20 years of their life to design it. Everywhere you walk you walk straight into an architectural masterpiece. And now, as the dying sun reflects on their facades, I feel at peace.
I feel like I could die in Munich and be content.
In Munich, on a night like this, you begin to wonder if you are in the middle of living the happiest day of your life, the pinnacle of your existence, and that thought is baffling. And as you walk past the two-story high marble statues of lions (the city mascot), and arching cathedrals reaching to the purple and gold sky, and cafes with small chairs and tables set out and a flower and candle on each one, and as you walk down the cobblestone sidewalks that wrap through the city, you do feel like this is the pinnacle of your existence and it wouldn't be that bad if you died here, tonight, because it really only gets worse after this, but then again, your not thinking about what comes after this.
I'm stuck in the moment. I exhale and then breath in the night air.
And I'm thinking that it's funny that this is the place the Nazis started out. But then again, why not? On a night like this you really do feel on top of the world, like you can do anything. How about a revolution!
We walk and end up at the Hofbrauhaus, a Munich tradition, and the atmosphere there is electric, much like a circus. Like a United Nations circus. Everyone is screaming in a different tongue. In front of me are some Mexicans, waving a flag. To their right, Costa Ricans. Koreans or Japanese off to the side (I don't know the difference). There are some Americans in the middle of the room, arguing with Italians, and the rest of the room has written those two factions off, as they should, because they are making fools of themselves, as those two factions usually do. A German girl walks by and smiles.
We buy beer and we are drinking and we find a seat and all of a sudden we're surrounded by Australians and they ask to sit with us.
The Australians look starstruck. The Mexicans begin singing their national anthem. The Australians are smiling.
"That's a damn good chorus," one says, like Crocodile Dundee. I ask him to say Dingo.
"Dingo."
And I laugh and we drink and they drink fast and hard and soon they are ahead of me and drunk and are talking about singing themselves.
"Sing 'Waltzing Matilda'," I say.
"Should we?" He says.
"We should."
And then, just as quick as I said it, two of them are standing on our table with beers in their hands, arms around each others shoulders spitting out, "....will you go a 'waltzing Matilda with me....'"
And then some Koreans come and I know they are Koreans because they are wearing Korean jerseys and they are further along, drinking-wise, then the Aussies and they sit and laugh at the scene and take pictures with their Kodak cameras that won't be available in the U.S. until next year.
They talk to me, in mostly-fluent English.
"Where are you from?"
"That's hard to say," I say.
"Where do you live?"
"Kentucky."
"Like the Chicken?"
"Better."
"What?"
And I hold up my drink and he holds up his drink.
"Gunbae," he says.
"What?"
"It's...host...or...no...."
"Toast. Cheers."
"Cheers."
And we drink and to my left a Korean girl is running her fingers through my hair and it's weird for me, but, culturally speaking, blond must be weird for her, too, and the guy I just...er...Gunbae'd with is telling me he's from Singapore and I tell him, "You all look the same to me."
"What?"
"That's the alcohol talking."
"Who?"
"You're from Singapore?" And he proceeds to tell me that he knows six languages and that his group has made an odyssey of coming from Korea to Germany for the World Cup and he's in the middle of telling me their adventure traveling from India to Spain and how they were mistaken for friends of the Korean president, who he tells me is also here, and as he tells me the story I stop listening and focus on the carnival scene around me.
The Aussies are teaching the other Koreans the first half of "Waltzing Matilda" and taking pictures with their Kodak's and I get up because my drink is empty and as I do I feel high and weightless and I drift away from the table and a French woman stops me and asks something in French, then German, then some other language and I just nod and walk away and then into a mob of Costa Ricans and they envelope me and I'm walking with them, all of a sudden, and they're singing something, shouting the lyrics at the Mexicans who shout back. I'm holding up an empty beer glass and trying to keep up with the alien lyrics and all of a sudden my posse is in lyrical harmony and the rest of the place is quiet and...is that?...yes!...one of the Costa Ricans is attempting to scale a wall to plant their flag higher than the Mexican's. Two of my compatriots lock arms with me and start swaying so I start swaying and then the chorus stops and I'm just smiling and high fiving people and one man, who is euphoric and introduces himself as Carlos, embraces me and says: "Where are you from?"
Sweat is dripping from his brow.
"That's hard to say," I say.
"I'm from Costa Rica."
Another man buts in, "I am German!" he says in a typical German accent. He had been singing, too, and his blue eyes were alive and smiling with the Latin's and the Costa Ricans kept running their hands through his blond hair.
"I'm half German," I say, pointing to myself.
"Nobody's perfect," he says. And I think that's funny because he's Aryan. And laugh again, thinking about the Nazis.
And we hug as the Mexican anthem is started and the Asian version of "Waltzing Matilda" echoes from the back.
"In football we are all friends."
Everyone is taking pictures with Kodak cameras, a thousand flashbulbs and my world is in slow motion as I'm wondering, through the haze of it all, if this moment is everlasting.

The Dying Day

2008-01-14T02:16:00.001-05:00

During the night there was nothing to do and that was unfourtante because at night I felt most awake.
It was cold and the weatherman kept mentioning the snow storm.
"Don't bother going out tonight," he said, explaing the windchill factor. But that did little to help me, or sway me.
I left anyways.
And when I left I regretted it (I hate to regret) because in the cold night outside there was nothing good to be found, no adventure or peace of mind, and I ended up running into a monster that I didn't need to see, not on that night anyways.
I was on my phone and calling and talking and making conversation in an attempt to kick-start the night. It was too late. The day was dying and with it the goodness of people and as the day lay on it's daily death bed, that evening, and the cold night came to carry it to tomorrow, the people of the world went the same way and said such to me. And I was alone in the world. That's when I knew the weatherman was right.
In that transition between today and tomorrow, when I felt the most awake, the monster came, appearing at the horizon as just a silhoutte. The other day I wondered where he had been, wondered if I had lost him and as he approached me, through the darkness, I remembered that you never really lose the monsters in your life.
At that point I was standing under a streetlight with my coat zipped up because the windchill was unbarable, and I had one hand in my pocket and the other blitzing through the keypad of my phone, trying to send a text message as fast as I could in order to get that hand back into the warmth of my pocket, alongside his com-patriot. The monster approached.
I say "monster" because I truly mean monster, or beast, or fiend, or whatever other names you'd like to give him.
He bothers me to death, he really does, because he is always hunched over, always huffing and snarling, his lips always pulled back in a sneer, his eyes always sharp and squinting and his brow always arched and angry. His silver mane waved in the chill wind and he would routinely spread his claws, I figure to show them off. His jagged teeth were the real sight to see.
I was talking on the phone, then, angry at her for being the way she always is and telling her just that and at that exact momment she hung up on me (in the middle of pissed-off rant by me) and at that exact momment the monster walked into the beam of streetlight along side me.
A black cat came sniffing at our feet.
I sighed and thought to myseld that I hate people. I hate the way we treat each other and the way we end up up-ending each other's lives. Courtesy is a lost art.
And then the snow storm started, slight at first, but picking up with the wind and blasting the countryside and frosting everything around us.
And I took a deep breath and exhaled and shook off the coldness of the world and just...walked away, hating the weatherman for being right.
Snow Storm. Brings me back to the norm.
But this melody. Seems to stay with me.

Thirst And Serenity

2007-12-30T00:42:00.000-05:00

Dim light and outside it's cold and I've had way too much to drink and she's leaning on my shoulder, also intoxicated, as we drive on our ride to the next bar.
I have the window open to splash cold air on my face in an empty attempt to sober myself up.
She fades in and out and that's a warning sign and I see the electric blue sign burning in the air in front of me and I'm staring outside and I stare at the building of my new employment and I say, "Hey, that's where I work."
And she wakes up and stares at me in the dim light that is getting dimmer by the mile and she half whispers, "Congratulations, again," forcing the words out as she wakes up.
And she is smiling and leaning on me and I stare at her smile and wonder and look away again and again I'm looking outside in the dim night.
"I don't know if I'll like it. I don't know if it'll be good for me."
"Don't panic, now."
"I want to go back. I want to go to Iraq. Iraq would be good for me."
And at this point the ride is over and we're at the next bar and I take another drink and drink harder, for no apparent reason, I think. But I'm wrong.
"Iraq would be good for me," I say and I'm forgetting what I'm saying.
Light gets dimmer, even in the headlights from the street as we walk out of that bar and on, to yet another one.
"I'd miss you."
She said it a hundred times. She said it a thousand times. I wonder if she is looking at me and I wonder where we are and I think that I can never get away from the same old themes in my life.
I look at her and then away and then at her, again, and we're drinking together, the two of us, in the last bar, and the light is so dim that we can't see anything else and there we are, the two of us, somewhere, in that dimming haze.
"All that I know doesn't really make sense."
"I think we drink for the same reasons."
"I think you lead me on."
"Blame it on whatever."
"I'm thankful for whatever."
We toast to ourselves, drink, stare at each other because there is nothing else to stare at. And then it's all dark.
The lights go out.

Starring at the blue sky, dreaming of the ocean

2007-12-26T02:30:00.002-05:00

The turbulence wakes me up.
My headphones have fallen off my head and I was about to drool on my shirt, but then the ride got bumpy and my dreams got shaken. My eyes rip open, back to my world. It was a good dream, I think. I shake the sleep from my eyes and cough. The stale smell of fake oxygen fills my nose. A headache follows another cough.
The movie on the screen in front of me is still playing, but there is a glare from the sunny sky outside and I can't see the screen. I think it's a good film, the beginning was anyways and I put back on the headphones, not to listen to the movie - never mind fantasy - but to drown out the sound of the twin engines pushing us through infinity, engines that drown out every other sound.
I look out the window, at the day from the point of view of the sky, and out into infinity, the endless world.
I wonder how hard it was for Magellan to find out the world was round during his attempt at circumnavigation, finding out you can really only go on forever, that there is not fantasy edge of the world. He searched for the end of infinity. I think that we've both found out there is no end to it.
The speaker above my head blares and hisses and comes to life and over the roar of the engine the captain says that we're passing over New York City and to fasten our seat belts because turbulence is expected. I tighten the belt around my waist. Sit. Think about infinity, and look out the window. Sailing through infinity and I wish there was a good song playing right now. One that describes Europe to North America. Dream to reality. Germany to the States. The Rhineland to the Bluegrass. Frankfurt to Kentucky and everything in between. And infinity all around. I look out the window and down onto New York City and wonder if the people below realize they are the center of the world.
The center of the universe, really.
I watch as it passes and I head back into infinity and in my headphones, over the monotone hum of the engines, that endless hum you can't escape, I hear a guitar and wonder if Magellan ever played guitar as he traveled aimlessly through the world. Seems like something one would do passing through infinity. I bet he wished he had a guitar.

Dark Eyes

2007-12-09T21:04:00.000-05:00

At night I try and remember why I left this place in the first place.
A specific reason, I mean.
Tossing, turning, wondering, wandering; waiting for the momment when things make sense.
A lot of things don't make sense. Questions lead to answers that are more questions.
Now I'm back home.
"Home."
Doesn't feel like home. But Home is relative, anyways.
I think I left home to find Home but in the end only found more questions. That and a deeper yearning.
Tonight I'm sitting in that huge open room with the skylight windows three stories big above me. Starring out at the stars and the bleak open space of night I wonder why, exactly, I left this place in the first place. And what I learned.
People scamper around.
Across from me a girl with dark, piercing features is starring in my direction with absolute lust filled to the brim in her eyes, and I'm flattered. I think to myself that there are more important things than sex, though, and think that I never thought I'd say that.
Away from her starving glare I'm looking for answers on a computer screen, sifting through the vastness that is the internet and finding only space and all of this makes me thirsty for a drink, I think, but wonder if I really want liquor and wine, or if water would do just fine.
The guys behind me tell each other how drunk they'll get come Friday, when their week is over, each one trying to one-up the other in a brinkmanship of envisioned binge drinking. Dark Eyes vodka is on their to-do list. Cheap, but whatever gets you there.
Friday nights can be better spent away from the watering hole, I think.
But what kind of statement is that? Stupid me. Friday nights are to be lived, experienced, where sex, lies, drugs, lust, life, liquor, feast and fortune come together and torch everything we hold pure and sacred - forgiven, in the end, because Sunday morning is right around the corner.
I've given up singing on Sunday.
God doesn't hear my song.
I think to myself that God has left me, truley, and that's a hard thought to think about so I turn my attention to the girl, passing, her perfume leaving a wake around me, filling my emptiness with... something. Lust is a lost life for me, as it should be.
Evening light seeps through the skylight.
Drifting in the night above is my mind.
Focusing on the task at hand I wonder what the task at hand really is.
Clouds gather above. Storm sounds. Rain beats down on the glass ceiling and echos through the caverness, empty, five-story building filled with written words and frustrated faces.
I'm a frustrated face feeling as empty as my surroundings.
Another girl walks past, nice legs, lips, eyes, hair, waist. Her dark eyes flow across me in my chair, yearning for that appetite that we all yearn for from the oppositte sex. Or the same sex, I think, and laugh, watching as a guy stares at me with the same look. I wonder if emptiness can be filled with lust and liquor.
It has before, in this place.
Things seem different now.
I left and now I'm back. Back to lust and liquor. Back to what I ran from and finding that I'm still running in an endless triatholon.
I left for all the right reasons. And landed back in the grasp of those reasons.
Why did I leave in the first place? And where did I ever go?
The girl across from me slants her body and the night light makes the curves of her chest shimmer.
Her dark eyes look up and meet mine and she smiles, and I smile back.

Hard To Explain

2007-12-01T18:57:00.000-05:00

Pirmasens soccer stadium.
At the top.
Inside the crowded room I'm warm and the alcohol is partially to blame. I sip.
I'm looking outside, at the grey, hazy day and below, on the field, as the whistle blows and the game starts.
Someone asks me how I got tickets to the VIP suite. I tell her it's hard to explain. That is a good way to let people know that you don't know how to answer their question. Usually that's how you answer when you don't want to talk to someone. I do anyways.
"Where are you from?" She asks.
That is a question that is also hard to explain, I want to tell her, but I don't feel like expalining. Born somewhere, raised somewhere else, definately not what people claim I am, but, rather, something I think I wish I was. I don't really know.
I settle on, "Kentucky."
"I've never been there," she says. "What does it look like?"
At this point I drink and am really only interested in the conversation because she reminds me of Kentucky.
"Beautiful."
"Didn't you invent fried chicken?"
"Not personally." And then I remember that they have Kentucky bourbon at the bar and we go and get a drink and then walk outside to watch the game.
The cold hits my face as soon as I open the door. I think to myself that I'd rather not feel right now. She tells me she hates this place. I think to myself that I could die here and be content.
I'm not really focused on anything as we sit: the game, the cold, my drink, her conversation, her breasts...nothing.
I feel empty.
Rain falls on the field. I'm sipping on my drink a little faster.
She leans close to me, her coat pulled tight because of the cold wind and whispers into my ear. I half listen.
"You want to go back in?" She says.
The other team is mounting a come-back. I watch as they score to tie the game and then get up and head to the clubhouse. Inside I order another drink and she talks to the owner of the club, who doesn't seem to be interested in her at the momment because his team just blew a 2-0 lead. A waitress walks up to me and hands me my drink and asks what I'm doing later and I drink and tell her, "Nothing. I really don't have anything...."
And before I finish she writes down her phone number and slides it over with a wink. I smile a half-hearted smile. And drink.
The rain falls harder and I think to myself that I could stay here a little while longer.
She asks something.
"I go back in a few days," I say.
"How long is the flight?"
"Too long," I say. Gives you time to think about where you're going and what you're doing and how to do that and what people will say and what you will say to them and how they'd react and how much you'd drink based on their reaction.
I settle on the fact that all of that is hard to expalin and don't say it.
I feel useless, talking to her.
We leave when the game is done and head to a bar. Somewhere. Outside a man and a woman are fighting. I focus mostly on their hot breath, coming out of their mouths in a spiral of smoke and disappearing into the night. She shoves him. I cough as we walk past. He looks at me. She is shouting. Hee drops his bottle and it breaks on the ground, the sound shattering the cold night. I look back to see, but they are in the dark.
We walk into the bar and order drinks. The wind outside blows hard, cold.
We talk. The bar is loud around us.
She asks me again and again I say, "In a few days." She's drunk. I'm drunk, too.
"Are you excited?"
"Not really."
"Why."
"A lot of reasons. It's hard to explain."
"If it's as nice as you say it is, I'd be excited."
"There's a lot I didn't say."
"Why leave?"
"Kind of have to."
"Stay a little longer."
"I've stayed long enough," I lie. I cough again.
"Are you sick?"
"No, just...tired."
"It's early. Why are you tired?"
"What are you drinking?"
"It's a juice with...either....vodka, no, something else...I'm not sure what kind of juice. Or if it's even vodka. It's juice and vodka, I guess."

Woolgathering

2007-11-11T18:41:00.000-05:00

YOU'VENEVERHEARDOFIT, Germany
The sound of nothing was loud at first.
Then bearable as he coped.
It was pitch-quiet now, in the room.
The Germans love their quiet, he thinks in the middle of the night.
It's always so lonely here, in this Nowheresville. The German country side. Where the loudest thing is the street lights, if that makes sense. Their sharp, pale-blueish light alien in this place. So out of place that they scream at you in the middle of the night.
He looks outside and away again. Isolated. Working. Mind wandering.
He twirls a pen around his fingers and then sticks it in his mouth, pretending for a moment that it is a cigarette and he is taking a drag. For a second he really does see the haze of smoke as it spirals from his lips and fogs the white glare of the computer screen.
It's late and he's playing make-believe.
The room is completely dark, the only light coming from the laptop screen on the desk in front of him. The glare gives everything in the room a weird outline, he thinks, the kind of sharp outline you see in comics. He never really read comics, he thinks, but the picture-panel stories were always something that interested him. So he sits and pretends to smoke his cigarette and the panels of his comic flip by and he has a thought bubble over his head with lyrics playing.
The room in quiet. Everyone in the house is asleep. The whole fucking country is asleep. But he can't help but put a song he heard earlier in the day on repeat in his head, full volume, bass pumping. In the darkness he can almost see the faint outline of a DJ in the corner, mixing albums, sweaty-skinned bodies dancing the zombie around him, hands high.
Maybe he's just tired, he thinks, because when he looks again there is no DJ. But the song is still there. He hums the tune as he works.
"Searching." That's what the screen says.
Outside it is cold and the wind is blowing hard.
He thinks about Germany and how ancient this place really is. The savages that forged this land. The gods that built this nation. The wind blows harder, cooler outside and he thinks what it would have been like to be one of those savages, pawn of those gods. A picture takes the place of the lyrics in his head. A large man on a larger horse, both of them all muscle, shadows drawn in to give a sinister appearance. This place can be sinister. The man is a product. Interesting specimen. Long red hair and a red beard. Or blond? One strand is braided. Dark eyes. Sharp features. He doesn't smile. His shoulders are wide, his head hung low, hair everywhere. He wears a bear skin. Sheepskin boots. Brown. His sword is tucked under the fur, glinting in a pale-blue moonlight that seems to make his appearance sceam out.
The wind blows through the fur, his wavy hair. He doesn't feel cold.
Then the figure is pushed out of the bubble by the lyrics and the band strikes up in the corner of the room. A guitar, this time. Drums and a bass behind him.
It's dark. There's a candle burning. He lights another cigarette with it, in the back of the bar.
He smokes and thinks of visions of her- as he is woolgathering- then sees her.
She's not really here.
He thinks he might be losing his mind as he's searching on the screen, working.
It's dark Somewhere in Germany and he's alone. Isolated, it seems, save for his dreams.
He blows smoke in the middle of the bar with the band playing in the opposite corner from where his table is and there are people all around, their bodies high-lighted in the pale-blueish light, all zombies to the rhythmic sound.
He searches.
The smoke from his lips spirals, lingers, fades and through its curtain his eyes stop.
The screen posts the search results.
The room is dark.

Between Thoughts

2007-10-30T18:38:00.000-04:00

KAISERSLAUTERN GERMANY
Under the shadow of the church we sit at a cafe where the atmosphere looks good and there is a breeze in the air and the clouds rush by the moon in the night sky.
People are darting around outside and I think to myself that it's about to rain.
She is to my left, at the table, and says she only wants a drink, but instead orders food.
I'd be happy with just a drink. It'd be enough to sit and get a buzz and listen to her talk and probably tune out for the duration it takes to drink a drink. I order food, too, becuase I'd hate to get hungry watching her eat.
It's rude to watch people eat anyways, I think.
Our table is the only one that doesn't have our candle lit.
The light in the cafe is dark. I look outside the window.
The church by the cafe is in the middle of a three-way fork of the alleys in the old part of town. Kaiserslautern is quaint, I think. Sexy. Very European.
But at the same time easy and cheap and as I think that she says something.
I don't listen. I'm looking at the church and how it reaches into the black night sky. There are those soft yellow street lights dotting it's side, and a big tree next to it.
I hate the way trees look at night, when street lights are shinning on them. Dark green shimmering with orange. Looks disgusting.
My drink comes and I drink as she talks.
On the church wall a sign is hung that says "Thank God It's Sunday" in German.
I think to myself that it's Monday and I usually hate Mondays.
She asks if it's OK to smoke and I say yes because even if I had said no it would have made no difference because as she asked she was already smoking.
It's rude to make someone put out their cigarette, I tell myself. She blows a cloud out from her lips and it envelops us.
As I drink she keeps asking me questions about where I'm from and where I've been and what I like to do and if I like doing what I do. I answer her questions looking off to the side, not really looking at her face, as it would be polite to do, but starring off at the alley and starrig at the long shadows made by the church in the street lights and watching people as thet dart by.
The Church is jagged in the orange light. Is it late medieval architecture, I think?
People scamper back and forth in the alley. I notice that the ground is wet outside.
She talks more. I don't really field questions. When the food comes she makes room on her side of the table by moving her effects on my side and, becuase it is polite when you are with a lady, I move my things farther away from me.
She talks with her mouth full as she eats.
The rain gets stronger.
I remember that I hate driving at night in the rain in Germany and suddenly want to get up and leave.
I drink. I have bannana flavored beer. It doesn't taste exotic.
I look at the church. It looks sinister at night, in the rain, with the orange light. Late medieval and sinister.
It's really been a bad day, I think, and am happy for the drink. And as I sip I wonder how I could have screwed so many things up and as I think I sip and the sips last longer and I'm thinking about the church and how I wish it was Sunday, but that it's only Monday and there are people outside and they are in the rain and they are laughing.
She asks a dumb questions and pretends to be amused at my answer and I think that she really is a Kaiserslautern girl and I really like Kaiserslautern for what it is, but not those kind of girls.
How many days til the weekend? Maybe then things will change. I think about my day and it's been a bad day. I drink.
Rain starts falling harder.
I finish my food. I finish my drink. I'd have another, but my keys are jabbing my leg.
The cheap date ends when I say I have to get going.
She asks if I can walk her back to her car, because that would, of course, be polite of me.
I say yes.
I want to just leave her in one of the dark alley's where she belongs.
She picks up on it. She asks me more questions. Asks me if I like what I do.
I say yes.
I feel, I think, that I'm reading a novel as we get to her car.
The rain and the shadows and the bad girl and the guy and the night covering all of it.
This novel I'd throw away.
Six days til Sunday.
I wonder if God ever thought that.

Free Falling

2007-10-29T06:04:00.000-04:00

Wondering how this all happened.
Wondering where it's all going.
No support.
Like a unit out-flanked on all sides, can only go into the fray.
Faaaaack. Honestly.
Almost zero support from everyone who says they support me. Like cheerleaders for the blue team all wearing the red team's colors.
To hell with naming names. They should know who they are.
They'll keep on kicking me in the face, or keep helping kick me in the face. Then they'll say they're sorry. They always say they're sorry afterwards.
Empty words.
Thanks, then. And you're welcome. For everything I've done for you. Apology not accepted.
I'll be free falling for a little. Maybe try and catch on to a ledge and break my arms in the process.

Golden October

2007-10-17T17:57:00.000-04:00

In the afternoon my cellphone rings and I get up and head out the door.
In the middle of October the air is cool, refreshing and there is a breeze.
The forecasters here call it "Golden October" and it looks like that as I walk down the street of the small town.
Sunday afternoon and all the windows have their blinds drawn and no car is on the street and no walkers walk with me along the sidewalk. The breeze is cool and you can here it ebb and flow through the trees. The town sits in a bowl of a valley, surrounded by hills covered by forests. Seas of forests, the hills like waves a surfer would die for. I walk through the town and up one of the hills where the ruins of the Medieval church are and where the cemetery is.
Golden October and the trees are red and orange and purple and fire and yellow and green and brown. As the wind blows and I'm caught in a storm as a down pour of the bright leaves are flung from the trees and rain to the earth below.
I'm walking up the hill and the world is quiet. Save for the waves.
At the cemetery I stop and unlock the gate. The black metal is cool. I latch the gate closed again and walk into the cemetery on the main boulevard that intersects the rows and alleys of walkways lined by tombstones and flowers, the dead's last apartment.
A few blocks down, near the end of the city the blind grave digger tries to light a lantern but can't find the candle stem. The breeze keeps blowing out his flame and he struggles to relight it. I find myself near a tree and the tree is leafless and brown and gray old and it zigzags up to the blue, cloudless sky. The tree doesn't move in the wind.
Behind me an angel statue smiles, or cries, and as I wonder which one it is the blind grave digger walks over to me.
"Can you, my friend, light this?" He shouts, though he stands next to me and I'm annoyed with him but light the lantern and hand it to him.
He thanks me by patting my shoulder with his boney hands, but then doesn't let go.
"What do you want old man?" I say.
His eyes are white and his face stares away from me and he wears rags and is hunched over and struggles for breath.
"The night is coming." He shouts.
"I'm right here."
"Are you?" And his hand tightens.
And the sun is shinning bright, but in his white, pupil-less eyes I see the clouds gather and it is dark and there are clouds - grey and blue and purple and green - that streak across the sky. There is a moon and it is full and blue. It's light shines bright on the graveyard. The clouds speed past and make the moon's light flicker, like the flame of the lantern the blind grave digger holds. The angel behind me cries, or smiles, I don't know which one.
My cell phone rings and it is loud an annoying and I answer and brush the blind grave digger's hand away and he stumbles but catches himself.
There is no one on the other end, no call received.
"Always quiet here," he says.
And I am alone.
And I stand and stare at the man and using his lantern I light a cigarette, but he doesn't know it and keeps talking.
"Beautiful isn't it," the blind grave digger says and gestures out towards the city of tombstones. "The way the blue light splashes on the grey headstones, the dark, oozing green of the forest, the hiss of the wind, the glittering stones, the white bones, the air and sky and stars and blue night. And the lantern lights it all. Do you see?"
The lantern flame is orange and yellow and glistening and splashing warm light on the world. And the ground shakes and the skeletons come alive, their empty eye sockets looking where I look and at what the man gestures towards.
"Even the dead have eyes."

Friday

2007-10-12T17:17:00.000-04:00

These days it's Friday that's the hardest.
Used to be another day.
Usually Monday. Sometimes Wednesday.
These days Fridays I just sit and ache and wonder what I'm doing here. Wonder.
Working in a self-depricating profession, spending more than I make (and not on drinks, that's for sure), dealing with battles that aren't mine or I don't want to deal with.
Been up since 5 this morning. Nothing better to do. Worked for eight hours and took a one hour driving test. Somehow managed to get my German license. Drove 40 minutes to the place, 40 back. Little real conversation at any point throughout the day. Little meaningfulness.
"You want to get drinks later?" She asks.
"Sure."
"Hope about next week?"
How about now. How about I drink til the bottle is empty and order six more.
Ate lunch alone today. The conversation wasn't that great. Me starring out a window, thinking about the people who tell me it'll get better or it'll get worse or the ones that told me so and the ones that say they think about the same things I do. I think about everyone who has pissed me off in the last couple of weeks and realize that it's a long list and that a lot of the people really should be put in their place. But I'm in no position to do that. And that just makes me angrier.
And what about all the ones that try and rationalize or turn it around to make me the villian?
I want some whiskey, I think. Gin would be good, too.
I come home. Want to be alone. Been working for the last 14 hours. Realize I got up too early. Close my eyes. Try and enjoy the Friday afternoon because that's what that time is for, closing your eyes. Then people start yelling, screaming, shouting, fighting.
I walk out of my room. Think somewhere else.
Around dusk I realize I'm depressed. For all the right reasons, of course. Mostly the people in the world, the people in my world.
Him and her, her and him, them, me, us and everyone is on my mind.
No use arguing, I think. It's Friday and I should rest, I think.
Wednesdays used to be hard. I was born on a Wednesday.
I'm listening to St. Germain's "Forget it" and the song seems appropriate for my life, I think. Then I make the decision to add it to the soundtrack of my life - a list of twelve songs I've decided to pick that describe me.
Then I forget what I'm talking about.
Who knew in the first place.
Forget about it.
Forget about her.
Forget about him.
Forget about them.
Forget about us.
Forget about most, if not everything.
It's Friday.
Like the song, just different, really.
Friday I'm alone

Vampire

2007-10-04T16:39:00.001-04:00

In the morning I feel like a ghost.
It's 5:30 a.m. and I'm on the train, starring out the window, into the still night, wondering about nothing. I see my reflection in the glass. I wonder who I'm looking at. I'm not looking at myself. I have no reflection.

Random Dispatch

2007-10-01T16:19:00.000-04:00

Oct. 1
Kaiserslautern, Germany- I start listening to Jack Johnson's "Bubble Toes" as I watch as an Army Blackhawk helicopter with a white cross on it's nose big to rise in the air.
Earlier my partner told me about his adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't think I could ever go there. I don't think I could ever go to war. I think that all of this, all the land around me, all the hills and woods and mountains and the city, all of this used to be in it's own war. I wonder if it was easier then, for Morrow, in Bunkered-in England, for the cameras of the Stars and Stripes crossing the Rhine.
I guess, looking back it's always easier.
I watch the helicopter rise in the air and speed away, and I can still see its white cross and I think that it might be going to help the world, maybe. It's kind of deceiving to have "Army" and "help" together.
Kind of odd that the same machine that kills people also saves people.
Weird how people are. The white cross kind of lies to you, when you think about it. Only helps those who have been injured in meaninglessness, caused by the same powers that sent help.
I don't think anyone can help the world.
My cousin, he's a nutcase (but who isn't?), he showed me a brochur of some evangelist who cures people. Blind people. Crippled people. Deaf people. Dead people. Doesn't matter. In the middle of the brochure is a three-page pullout of this evangelist in the middle of Dark Africa with, as he puts it "600,000 people" standing around him.
It sure looks like 600,000 people. It also sure looks like a computer enhancement. Who cares.
Liars make the world go 'round.
I turn my music up to stop thinking and remember that I have a train to catch and think that it might be a good idea to sleep on it.

Fortress America

2007-09-26T17:36:00.000-04:00

Sept. 26
One week later. Past the check points. The random searches. Armed guards. Where getting out of the country is like getting into it. I'm in Little America, Kaiserslautern, Germany - the self-proclaimed largest concentration of Americans outside of America: 50,000 people strong - and I'm thinking that I guess it looks American, or like America, but not like you would think.
Been to Little Italy.
Been to China Town.
Little Havana.
I heard there was a Little Tokyo in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Most of the Little Anythings really are in America, though.
Not in a place like this.
It's a cool September day and it feels cooler, like October, because it's Germany and Germany is colder, even though the sun shines bright and clear, and the wind is blowing and the trees of the endless forests surrounding Little America are already changing colors and their leaves are being plucked and flung away in the breeze and I think that I guess it feels like America, but not really because I would really expect some college football game to be going on right now, in this perfect fall weather, and tailgating too. But Germany doesn't know what football is. Or tailgating.
This is Little America. The lite version. It has a certain ring.
America invented the Little City of culture. But the fact that it's created it's own Little Self in the Middle of Nowhere...baffles me.
Doesn't quite feel American because any Little Place should be in America, I think.
The security is here, though. Always the security. America can't even trust it's own populations. I hear in Japan the crime rate of young people is next to nothing. In America Americans are the enemy.
Since 2001, security has become America's culture.
"Little Fortress America" has a better ring, I think as I watch as a German truck is denied entrance into the base and waved away from the front gate.
All of a sudden the road opens up, a sheet of concrete rises out of nowhere to block the truck from going any further: the median slides into the ground and a new road is created. Military Police with Beretta's and M-16's wave the driver out of America, back into the rest of the world. The funny thing is as they wave him out they wave in countless other cars, not checking a single one of them for guns, bombs, missiles, fire crackers, Chinese rockets, Roman candles, daggers, etc.
Odd, I think, if that's what safe means in Fortress America, not being "American".
I'm pushing the clicker on the top of a pen frantically because I'm waiting and I'm nervous and I'm bored and I'm thinking about my future and thinking about people entwined with my future.
I'm standing outside the gate to Little America.
The MP's see me, approach me - guns shown - ask me why I keep clicking the pen, ask me what I've written on my hand, ask me if I speak English, of course after they ask me everything else. Everyone speaks English.
"What does 'flowers' mean?" The bigger, uglier one says.
I had written it on my hand as a reminder.
"What do you mean what are flowers?"
"Is that a code word?"
"For...what....?"
He calls in backup and the German police and more MP's come and I'm surrounded and as they surround me I mouth "fuck" because you don't fuck with America, because America is trigger happy and nervous and doesn't care if they put a bullet in your head...even if you happen to be American.
"I'm American," I say.
Who cares anymore. Maybe some backward, Dark Age, cave-dwelling fundamentalist in Arabia. But they'd kill me, too.
The American MP standing next to the German tells me to stand on the curb, six feet away, for my own protection. Shows his sidearm to make sure no one's laughing, and I'm thinking this is all a joke. He asks for I.D., I ask how I'm supposed to show him if I can't hand it to him and he walks over and takes my: passport, student I.D., Kentucky driver's license and military I.D.
All for clicking a pen.
That's how it comes apart. The way it does in bad films. Where all you can do is mouth "fuck"; because this is Fortress America, where the sun doesn't set on the battlements from Japan and Korea, to Germany and Italy, to New York and California.
Little Fortress America.
The less touristy-version of the American classic.

Oil Tanker At Sunset

2007-09-25T18:05:00.000-04:00

Fanta sky.
My, oh my.
Leaving you would be silly.
Paradise is relative, really.

I once had a dream that I lived in a small house in a wheat field. Everything was quiet and the sun was warm and there was this orange juice sky that stretched for years.
That would be nice.
A few years ago, on a train in Europe, I saw that field. The sky was partly cloudy, there was a breeze, it was cool. The wheat swayed with the wind. It didn't feel right. Didn't feel like my dream.
I guess dreams never do feel right if made into reality. Their whole point is that they are elusive. Unicorns.
What happens when you win? What happens when you capture a dream? Does it all just go away?
Something like that.
There is an orange juice sky, crisp, yet smooth. It reflects itself on a glazed ocean.
You can feel the sea wind. Taste the salt. Smell the ocean, that sharp smell of baked water and the life within it. Hear the waves crashing.
The sun is perfect. It always is, but you never really noticed it before now.
A billion bubbles are created and dashed to nothingness as the crest of a wave foams and batters itself on itself.
But this is harmony.
Sun. Sky. Water. Warmth.
And the oil tanker on the horizon, polluting it all.

Treatis

2007-09-22T18:19:00.000-04:00

Listening to the UK game on internet radio. Miracles of technology. Clear skies, 81 degrees, left-to-right wind. Like I'm there. As I write, deep pass, Andre Woodson to Steve Johnson, 44 yards and then Rapheal Little scores the touchdown.
Middle of the night.
Wondering what other people are doing else where. Middle of the afternoon for them.
Really don't want to talk to them, though. Would be the same old garbage that sucks me in when I'm there. Dealing and fighting and yearning and hurting and then numbing myself to it all.
Seems like the only thing that has changed is University of Kwntucky football. Seems like we're a good team these days.
They're a reason to have a drink and hold it up high. Then again haven't drank in a while. Don't want to.

Lemon Juice

2007-09-21T19:02:00.001-04:00

The moon was behind the hills and we drove beneath their shadow. Hanging above us, glowing, it looked like a slice of orange, like the kind I used to stick in my mouth after soccer practice and suck out the juice, but not chew because it was always too big to chew.
Always just threw the drained peel to the ground.
I lean back in the passenger seat and look up through the windshield at the slice of light above us and I am worried and I wonder if I bit off more than I can chew in this place.
Not like I haven't bitten off my fair share of choking bites before. This might be different, I think.
There is no more light in our world, as we drive, save for the beams from our headlights, leading the way.
We're through the fog and shadows and around bends and down the hills and I think that this could all be very symbolic, but I'm not one for symbolism.
I look more at the moon.
Taking out my digital camera I wish I had a better camera to take better pictures.
If I knew how to take pictures.
I wish I had and I wish I knew.
Maybe I'll need a fork and knife, but this looks like one I'll eat with my hands.
I taste lemon juice in my mouth as we keep driving.
I always like adding lemon juice to water and am suddenly thirsty.

Somewhere Over the Atlantic

2007-09-19T18:58:00.000-04:00

Sept. 18- 19. Day One. On a plane. Nervous and calm at the same time and it doesn't really make sense. Thinking about things doesn't help it make sense. I think that the term "things" is vague, no matter how you use it.
Turbulence. Jitters spring up in my body every time it happens.
I wonder if this will break me. I think I'm doing it for the challenge. Something tells me I'll pull through.
Then there's that something else that tells me that failure is a distinct possibility. How can it not be, I think, I can failure not be a possibility?
The sky is a purplish blue. A lot of clouds, those are darker, but the sun is nowhere. I look at my watch. I guess we're over France. Or England. I don't even know the route, I think. Just know when I'll get there. Last time, I remember, Europe didn't feel so foreign. Seemed natural to me. Aside from the fact that I was a stranger in a strange land.
Munich. Maybe they'll send me to Munich.
Maybe this will be the greatest moment of my life.
A baby is crying. The Stewardess asks her if she wants any chocolate milk. The stewardess told me earlier she didn't have chocolate milk. She's obviously lying to one of us. Why would you lie to a baby? Then again we've all done it.
How many people have done this, have been here, like me, somewhere over the mid-Atlantic, before? According to Facebook the Stars and Stripes doesn't exist. Facebook is, of course, the be-all and end-all of modern civilization. Thank you, God, for facebook. Lifeline.
Does the Stars and Stripes really exist? Haven't talked to the guy that hired me in weeks. Never returns my calls, hardly an e-mail. When communication exists it is short and swift and doesn't leave room for conversation. Vague.
I slept for 2/3 of the flight. Somehow. Then got up and sat next to some random girl who was asleep with an open seat next to her and watched the movie "Fracture" because my personal TV thing didn't work. Weird look on her face when she woke up to see me. Guess she thought I was putting the moves on her.
I think, deep down, I'm confused.
I feel the plane dip. We're going down, into the clouds and my ears are popping. A military man is sitting next to me. He looks rugged. G.I. Joe. I wonder if he is scarred or has ever been scarred or knows what scarred is. I wonder if he knows where he is going.
The plane dips.
Streaks of pink lick the sky and clouds. The sun is coming up.
Dawn is a nice time. Kind of symbolic.
Dawn. New day, new start, new adventure.
We land at dawn. Like Steve Zisssou, we land at dawn.

Walkie-Talkie, with clarity

2007-09-17T00:59:00.000-04:00

"Once more with clarity," the marching band instructor says to the army of instruments below him. "That wasn't...well that wasn't that good."
I think to myself that I've never heard any instructor remark that his students work was bad.
Earlier that day a photographer taught me photography and I was pretty bad. Lacked clarity and vision and I knew. His remarks were good. That makes things interesting, I think, when remarks are good.
Helps with inspiration and inspiration gets you were you want to go.
Quick remarks.
Like Hemingway.
Like that night.
The cool of the evening, before the night heat rises.
There are six of us at the counter and I'm in the middle and she's across from me and the whole situation is weird because the two of us are looking each other straight in the eye and sending volleys of conversation back and forth and remarking in lightening speed that the other's remarks are meaningless, though they are never meaningless. The other four only look at us, consumed.
"Could you do this?"
"The music?"
"Could you?"
"I could never play guitar for a living."
"What do you want to do then?" She asks and I think that earlier I thought she wasn't attractive but in low light and starring straight into the surge of her glare, watching the flicker of life, she doesn't look half bad.
"I don't know."
But then again I don't really like redheads.
"I want to be an actress."
"That's cute. I wanted to be an actor once."
"Did you?"
"When I was young."
"Aren't you still young?"
"Are you a journalist?"
"Do I ask too many questions?"
"You ask a lot."
"He's a journalist," someone tells her, pointing to me.
"Oh. How do you like it?"
"It doesn't pay the bills."
"Then why do it?"
"Heard of Bayern Munich?"
"No."
"Soccer team. In Germany. My dream is to get a press pass."
"Back stage access?"
I tip my drink.
"Really?" She asks.
"No." I say. "It's really the only thing I'm good at."
"Really?"
"No." I wink.
Later that night, in the shower I think about the actress and think about remarks. I'm looking for inspiration. Remarks make such great inspiration.
Minutes ago a drunken phone call with news to break my heart. Something about a loss that is dear to me. I'm looking for inspiration to move on. Move up.
Earlier, before I left the night behind me we said:
"We just walked her home." She points with her thumb in a general direction behind her, talking about her friend, who called me a journalist.
"What about me?" I say. "Who'll walk me home."
"You can take care of yourself."
She throws her arms around me.
"Have fun in L.A." I say.
"New York," she corrects.
"I'll never see you again," I correct, and maybe that is aweful to say because that means she'd fail as an actress, but, whatever.
"It's always a lonely walk home," He says next to me. "But gives you time to think, on the walk home," He says. He is walking out the door, too. "This walk home my mind is vacant, can't think. And I'll drift along alone alive, and thinking that it is good to be alive.
My bones feel lazy.
I think as I leave that I wish there was a train station close and another one close to where I need to be so I could just step on, step off and be there. Without all the traveling my legs would have to do.
I wave goodbye.
"No random quirp? No quick jab as you leave?" She says, the actress.
"Got nothing anymore. No more remarks."
The best 'The End' is just to end.
"See you never."
I wave goodbye.
Gertrude Stein once said remarks aren't literature.
Remarks don't help.
But I'm in the shower looking for inspiration. Tell Gertrude Stein that.

walkie talkie

2007-08-20T02:29:00.000-04:00

"I want to be an actress."
"That's cute. I wanted to be an actor once."
"Did you?"
"When I was young."
"Aren't you still young?"
"Are you a journalist?"
"He's a journalist," she tells her, leaning in close, pointing to me.
"Oh. How do you like it?"
"It doesn't pay the bills."
"Then why do it."
"Heard of Bayern Munich?"
"No."
"Soccer team. In Germany. My dream is to get a press pass."
"Back stage access?"
I tip my drink.
"Really?" She asks.
"No." I say. "Only thing I'm good at."
"Really?"
"No."
I wink.
Later in the shower I think about the actress. I'm looking for inspiration. Before I left we said:
"We just walked her home." she points with her thumb in a general direction behind her.
"What about me?" I say.
"You can take care of yourself."
She throws her arms around me.
"Have fun in L.A."
"New York," she corrects.
"I'll never see you again." And maybe that is aweful to say because that means she'd fail as an actress, but, whatever.
I think as I leave that I wish there was a train station close and another one close to where I need to be so I could just step on, step off and be there. Without all the traveling my legs would have to do.
I wave good bye.
"No random quirp? No quick jab as you leave?"
"No, I tired."
The best 'The End'.
"See you never."
I wave good bye.
Gertrude Stein once said remarks aren't literature.
But I'm in the shower looking for inspiration.

Another Saturday

2007-08-12T02:06:00.000-04:00

The world seems out to get me.
Can't blame it, though.
Too good looking, I tell myself. Too potent....if that makes sense.
If it doesn't, then it's like everything else in the world: unimaginable.
I don't understand a lot of things. And I can't blame myself for that. Too uneducated.
Or at least that's what they tell me.
I say I'm beyond them. And maybe I'm not. But I like to think that way.
I don't like being treated like scum, and that's why I am me. And they'll continue to be them.

Last Train to Lexington

2007-08-08T00:20:00.000-04:00

Wake up.
Eyes Flutter.
Slap alarm.
Brush teeth.
Play Music.
Louder.
Add bass.
Bass.
Walk outside.
Wear Sunglasses.
Too hot.
Wish it wasn't
Too cold.
Wish it wasn't.
Step in. Close door. Key to ignition.
Play Music.
Louder.
Bass. Bass.
It's raining. Windsheild wipers. On/ off.
Step out. Climb stairs. Step in.
Hello. Volley back. Not friendly. Fake smiles. Fake tans. Fake views. Fake lives. Fake dreams.
They talk. You listen. Pretend to listen. Can't stand it.
Play the music in your head while they talk.
Bass.
Stand up. Shake hands. Smile, fake smiles. Walk out.
Down the hall. Camera on you. Long shot, first. Then a close-up. Just your face. Maybe your eye. Inside the soul. Something deeper, maybe. Let them think that. Camera fades out. Like a huanting dream.
Music plays.
Meet people. Fake people. Eat, breath, talk, listen, think, remember, dream and wish. Check her out as she passes. Check him out as he passes.
Think of the beach. Summer nights on the beach. Think of her. Or him. Think. Maybe remember. Remember. Like a haunting dream. Fade out.
Walk out. Step in. Close the door. Play the music. Windows down. Wind blowing wonderfully through your hair. Summer night. Stars above. Quaint. Let down your guard. Feel good. Fall. Drive 65 on a 55. Speed. Breath. Turn up the music. Feel. The stars above glitter. The moon shines. Nothing is fake. Not here. Stop the car and get out and order another drink just to order another drink. Another day lost somewhere in the empty glass.
Stumble home. Lock door. Lock windows. Set Alarm. Lights off. Eyes closed. Sometime around morning fall asleep.
Fade out.

Tanning in the Evening Sun

2007-08-04T01:37:00.000-04:00

Things seem impossible.
Like tanning in the evening sun.
Walking home alone around midnight I find a man laying face-first in a bush and I ask him if he's alright.
His girlfriend, a few feet away, tells me he'll try and kill me if he wakes up, if I wake him up. She has a bandage around her arm; a casualty of some sort. And I laugh and I shake his arm and he roars to life, just past midnight in the half moon light, a giant of a man with hot death in his eyes.
And then he's throwing punches. Wildly. And I'm dodging them. Like a boxer.
All the time I'm dodging punches.
Too many times I'm always dodging punches.
I need a new past-time.
But dodging what they say will get me has always been what I've done.
They tell me I can't do the impossible. But all the time I've grown up learning to do just that. Nike tells me 'Impossible is Nothing.' And I want to say that it's everything.
No it isn't. That doesn't make sense. What does any more?
A bridge falling, a plane crashing.
I still hear the screams of the dying at night.
Who cares?
Who cares about the adventures we fall into, the punches we dodge?
I've worked tirelessly only to come to the conclusion that I need to work harder in order to get what I want and need and dream. A sprinter tired and asked to run a marathon. They tell me that I can't get what I want and need and dream.
And I'm thinking, one hot afternoon, that life is good and that there is a thousand more days to be lived and in those thousand days there are a thousand more victories to be won. I'm at the pool and the sun is setting and I take out sun screen because I want to tan in the evening light.
Might as well do the impossible, I think.
And then the night comes and the vampires arrive and there is no more dreaming, not until dawn at least, and the vomit and sicknesses of reality and faith that has been lost is hung in the air like the thick haze of that afternoon. Dodging takes your breath away. The punch that hits you knocks you out.
And I want to run away again. I want to dream again. I need to be alone again.
Forty days until I leave for Europe. Forty nights of searching.
I've been happier there.
I've learned to be happy here, though.
I've taken sunscreen out in the setting sun.
They say you can't do that, that the UV rays aren't hitting you directly enough to get a tan. I've never believed in science. I've always dreamed instead. Makes it easier when yo don't think about the world around you and just...lay back and tan.

Sometime later

2007-07-08T23:56:00.000-04:00

Columbus, Ohio.

In the evening we sit and drink around a glass table on her balcony.
I'm in a place I don't know so that makes me not care and me not caring makes my whole world feel like the cool beer I drink which is smooth and pushes my thoughts into the "sometime later" category of my brain. Or maybe the beer makes me feel that way. Either way, things are calm and I'm calm, and collected, and not thinking about a damn thing that I don't want to think about.
There's five of us. We all turn our eyes to the night sky as a firework of sorts explodes in the sky 20 yards away.
"That was pretty," she says.
And I agree.
She keeps talking and I half listen because at the same time I'm thinking to myself that me not really thinking about anything important is a welcome relief. Usually I think too much about things and that makes me drink. Right now I'm just drinking for drinking's sake and I think that that's alright. She talks. Something about her friend or sister's friend getting hit by a train.
"The bad thing about that is that there are a lot of pieces," he says.
That's kind of morbid, but true.
Pieces are always hard to pick up, I think, and picking up the pieces is always hard.
"It's harder to find all the pieces," he says next.
How incredibly morbid. Searching for something like that. But it's true and I feel I should praise him on his philosophy because the hardest part is finding all the right pieces. And all of a sudden I'm thinking. I drink again. How incredibly paralleling to my life, I think.
"Where are you from?" He asks the girl next to me who is pretty and whom he's been eyeing since we've sat down.
"California."
And next somebody asks me where I'm from but I don't know because I don't think I'm really from anywhere because of all the places I've been and I can't say I'm from Nowhere because that would be wrong, I think, so I settle on the place I was born, but spent little time in.
"California," I say.
And the one from California smiles at me.
We decide to go to a bar and we drive.
We drive passed some rivers. Over some bridges. Down some roads. I have the window open and am staring at the night sky thinking that I wish I wanted to go sky diving because you can really see more of the world from higher places and the rush would be nice to feel and he leans over and asks, smiling, if I know where I am. I'm a tourist. I don't. Crossed too many bridges, passed too many rivers, seen too many things and now I'm lost, I tell him. Lost in Ohio.
I don't like Ohio. The whole place seems so fake. Too perfect. Too many malls and luxury houses and backyard pools and every family living out the American Dream with cookouts on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'd like Ohio if I had my own Ohio, I think. But Ohio is just a place I visit. Like many things I strive for.
Myphone rings and it's my rommate from back home. I decline the call. He leaves a message saying no one has seen me for last couple of days. It feels good to have disappeared, I think.
We step into a bar in between two others, one called Sugar, the other Spice.
"A lot of things nice." He says, glancing at a girl with a skirt too short. I stare at her and drink.
I finish my bottle. The girl next to me hands me a Corona, while everyone else in the group a Miller. I thank her for the better beer and toast to California and think that I could have thought of a better toast, like to life or friendship or her half-exposed chest or that girl over there's lower body.
The bartender is cute, I'm told. I don't know which one is the topic of conversation so I just nod.
I'm sitting with the three girls and my friend at a table by the bar and they talk about a spicy topic and I start to argue with the one from California and she argues back and we are shouting and I think about smashing my bottle on the table and holding up the jagged edge to force her to see my side, but then...
"Lets just agree to disagree," she says.
"The perfect conclusion. Very PC." I say. "I was just about to say that exact thing." And I think that that's weird, because I would have said that.
We talk more, about the failures of soceity and the failures of life and I think that I need another drink so I start looking for a gap in the crowded bar and she sees my distressed face.
"Wait here." She says. And I wait. And she comes back with another drink and I think that, if all the other women in my life were like her, then I'd probably be living in Ohio.
As we head out of the bar I see a toothless hobo walking up to people. He walks up to me and asks for cash and I hand him the beer I hadn't finished and he thanks me and I keep walking, thinking that alcohol always shut people up. Or makes them talk more.
"You're cute," my friend says to a girl and she doesn't know what to say because he moved in on her so fast.
"My ride's here." she says and she disappears around the corner. He runs after her screaming that he could drive her home.
The emptiness of shadows is always near in the city at night.
Driving back, I think that things would be a lot easier if we all agreed or at least agreed to disagree and let it go.
We drop the three girls in our group off at their apratment as another firework sizzles in the sky.
One of them looks at me.
"I'll never see you again." She says.
"Probably not."
"Will do you leave tomorrow?"
"Yes, for a while."
"I forgot I had to work tomorrow."
"I wish I could forget more."
"Tonight was fun."
"Tonight was fun."
"Well. Sometime later then."
"Sure." I lie.
"Ohio is here." She puts one fist up. "You are here." She puts her other fist under it. "Easy."
"Sure." I lie.
And I leave.

Another day

2007-05-31T01:40:00.000-04:00

Guitar solo plays.
I'm sitting.
Drinking again.
She walks up, the angel from my nightmare.
"Hello," she says.
"Hello," I say. I think a thousand thoughts, most worthless. We sit under a tree and the bugs bite my leg. The tree shades the courtyard where we sit. How can it shade at night, I think.
She talks. I think.
I miss you.
I'm used to it by now.
And I think some more. Where are you? You know, you haunt my dreams. All I do is believe. And think. Think too much.
And I'm so sorry, all of a sudden. The feeling randomly overcomes me.
It's dark. A sick strange darkness.
The tree makes it dark.
I think about calling. I don't. My indecision to call you bothers me.
I miss you.
Guitar solo plays.
I breath.
I exhale.

a shot and a mission

2007-05-23T00:14:00.000-04:00

Flying down the street was the silver bullet that I think ultimately hit him harder than he could handle, knocking him off his feet and to the ground.
The bullet flies. Low set, new tires, Mitsubishi Eclipse, a convertable, of course, because that would be all she'd drive.
She's that kind of girl. Speeding down the street.
I'm on the sidewalk and I give one of those glances where it is pure luck that I'm glancing in the right place at the right time and right to her - becauses she is flying - and I see as the car bullets by that she's in the driver seat smiling and I think to myself that I haven't seen that smile in about....
....a year.
That's how long it's been, hasn't it, a full year since the gun - which, may I add was already loaded in the the first place - was cocked and the safety flipped off and the trigger pulled straight by her at her former boyfriend. A crosshair was coincedentally placed dead on his heart. Funny how she works. When the bullet finally exited through his back, after piercing it's intended target, he was, in many ways, no more. That's what they'll do to you I supposse. He hasn't seen her since, doesn't want to, not after what she's done to him. Not after he took the shot. She was that cool sniper that ended everything he ever hoped and dreamed.
As I watch the bullet race by me and see her cold-as-steele-grin, the one that I'm sure is the last thing he saw before he was no more, I think to myself that it's kind of ironic that he'll now be pulling the trigger for real.
He's headed to the Marines.
Headed to war.
Sounds cool, until you really think about it, I think. Blood and guts and horror and pain. Sure, you're on an endless beach along the hottest part of the world (great for tans) and sure you get to drive a tank (great for chicks), but, c'mon, how many hearts are shot to death after somebody comes back from war, alive or otherwise? That's something that changes people.
But maybe he needs a change, I think as I'm watching the brilliant shimmer off the car as it bullets forward. Change for him is what he's looking for. Tables reversed is what he's looking for. He wants to break hearts. After being hit with a bullet once I think he got it in his head that he would be either more of a man or less of a failure if he got shot (at) by a thousand more real life bullets. That's a weird way to look at it, I think, but more or less true. He's out to prove something. Maybe that will help him feel like the first blast he took from her was actually one that he could handle. Maybe his solution, war, is the one thing that will help his broken heart feel fixed again. Doing to others what was done to you in order to feel like you're...stronger.
Maybe I'm all wrong.
Maybe I'm thinking too much.
Maybe he'll be an expert at building sand castles. That would do him good. He would need that more in his life than a jihad against him. Sand castles. Because his original castles in the sky got blown to hell along time ago.

Cliche'd

2007-05-20T22:55:00.000-04:00

As he talks the cigar smoke swirls from his lips. His head blocks the light of a porch lamp, the only light in the summer night. It makes for that effect where his head is covered in a silhoutte of beaming yellow light, but I can't see his face.
"The perfect cliche momment right now," he says.
We're all sitting outside, in the summer night, and he plays "Wonderwall" by Oasis on his guitar and we all listen.
"The perfect song, though."
"Wonderwall" can debatably be the quintessential song of our generation; that perfect song that everyone knows and everyone knows the words to and everyone wants to hear at a moment like this, and that any able guitar player will play at a momment like this. The song touches everyone. Has that special feeling for everyone. Maybe it saves everyone. Makes them all think about their wonderwall.
I don't believe anybody in the entire world feels the way we do, here, right now. That's what the song does to you.
He puffs on his cigar and tells me about his upcoming trip to California. I was born in California, haven't been back since. Does that mean I'm from California, I think? But I don't say it because I'm not in the mood for back porch philosophies on just who I am.
Wonderwall is kept strung in the air, with a chorus of cricketts to go along with it.
Nobody really talks, they just jabber. I don't really talk, I just listen and watch as his cigar smoke spirals and is swallowed up by the moonlight. I'm quiet. I feel peaceful.
As he plays I begin to sing the second verse, "All the roads we have to walk are winding...," and I think about another time I sat and sang this song, in Mexico, two years ago.
Needed to get away then, find some sort of wonderwall, I remember. That was a winding road, a blinding light. Mexico was a wonderwall.
I remember there were four of us: my Colombian friend and two Swedish girls we met at a bar the night before and me one warm night. We were walking down one of the allies in the quaint little tourist town of Playa Del Camren. Near the end of the Cobblestone road was a bar and we walked in and after I walked in I noticed that I was the only blonde-haired, fair-skinned person in a room full of 20 or 30 Mexicans. The two Swedes were burnette and both had a very defined sun tan. I've never been a minority.
We sat down and eyes followed me to the table. The owner of the bar, short and grey-haired who spoke good English, came over. He had a guitar in his hand.
"Those guys," he pointed to a table of Mexicans looking at me, "want you to play."
I've never played a guitar in my life. I wanted to tell him, but didn't know how on account I only speak German and English. My Colombian friend chatted him up and smiled after a few jokes that a lot of other people laughed at but where I only sat and listened and faked a grin because I had no idea what was going on. My friend took the guitar and began stringing Wonderwall, the only song anybody really would play in the middle of a Mexican bar, of course, and I sang the lyrics because everyone in the whole entire world born in my generation knows those lyrics - even the Mexicans - and as I sang everyone in the room listen and smiled, but didn't talk because, when you hear wonderwall, especially the acoustic version, you don't talk and only think and smile and remember that time you found your wonderwall. Even in Mexico you just listen.
Like tonight, on the porch.
Everyone on the porch was now smoking and talking and I leaned back in my chair and undid the wrapper of a piece of chewing gum. Gum has become my cigarette. I didn't talk.
There are a lot of things I think I'd like to say, but don't know how.
Like in Mexico.
I began singing again, as my friend played.
"And there are many things that I'd like to say to you, but I don't know how...."

knee slapper

2007-04-16T11:25:00.000-04:00

"Guys I've hooked up with have been nicer to me than you," She said.
My life is hilarious.
I usually laugh the hardest.
Especially when the rest of the room is quiet.
It's one of those momments.

The million dollar question

2007-04-10T22:33:00.000-04:00

She and are talking at a four sided table.
He takes a seat without asking.
"So how have you been?" I ask as I continue to eat lunch. She finishes.
"Good, great, awesome." He says. He got the same greasy garbage that I got. If I wasn't hungry than I'd complain about it.
While eating I had been talking to her and now she got up as he sat down, uninvited, and left.
"Where's she going?" He asks. He's six-foot-three, two hundred something pounds with crooked teeth. He looks like he could rip my arms off. He always speaks in a threatening tone, like you just insulted him.
"Huh, where's she going?" He says when I don't answer quick enough.
"Leaving." I say.
"Where?"
I have no fucking clue and don't care.
"I don't know. Leaving."
"Oh." He says like the situation had just donned on him.
I ask him whats next. Figurtively speaking. What will happen for him in the future. What will he do? It's a good conversation starter, I think.
"Gonna make millions."
"That's a strong statement." I say.
"Really." He says. He stops eating and stares me down. "It's true."
"How?"
"I'm not going to tell you."
"Oh. Why?" I stare at him, wondering if he really could be this dumb.
"Because."
Great answer. I think to myself that I've had a bad day, just like yesterday and the day before. I don't need this. I get aggitated quickly.
"I'll make millions, though," He reiterates.
Next i imagine him asking me how I'll make millions. I wouldn't know where to begin. i just want to eat. Or I imagine he'll switch the topic of conversation because I obviously look pissed with the current topic. I mean that's what any sociable person would do.
Instead he begins his million dollar speach.
"I have a plan. Do you have a plan? No? That sucks. What will you be doing in the future? You don't know? I'm making millions with this plan. You won't be making millions. Don't worry. I'll remember the little people, like you. Hopefully I won't crush you on the way up though. I'll be making millions in a year." He laughs to himself.
- little people, like you -
Should I tell him i'm six-foot-nothing and have made more out of my life so far than he ever will, that he is a nobody and nobody cares for him.
That sonofabitch.
I think about standing up, grabbing my chair and breaking it across his 25 pound face, just to add another dent in it.
"No," I say. "I don't have a plan. Good luck with yours though."
"I don't need any luck. You do."
He'll need luck if he thinks a million dollars would help his face any.
I imagine that he's coughing blood after I throw to the side what's left of the shattered chair I broke across face.
"Well, I'm happy with my life." I say, not meaning it and just trying to get him to shut up.
"Why? What do you have." He says. "I'll be making millions. You?"
Why did he sit down here across from me. I just wanted to eat.
....
I just can't get away from the devil anymore.
....
I think about what would happen next, after breaking the chair across his face. He'd take it, no doubt. He's big. Next he'd run me into the wall. The weight of the impact would break the plaster, my back would brusie immediately, I think, and I'd fall to the ground screaming in pain. Game over? I'd like to think I could win the fight. Maybe with another chair.
I'd like to think that.
"I'll be making millions." He laughs to himself. "You."
I get up. Push my chair back in.
Walk away.

endless nothingness of something

2007-04-09T21:03:00.000-04:00

I need to get out.
They keep telling me to stay; I'd be a soldier for a great cause.
Who gives a shit about causes any more.
nobody ever gave a damn about my causes.
I work for the newspaper.
I spend more
sweat
blood
heartache
And time - than anyone I know. Always striving, making things better, making things work.
I. Am. The. Best.
I know I am.
But who gives a shit.
I work till my eyes burn. The finish product is on a floor somewhere around this town. My name stained, my work ripped.
I wonder if Hemmingway had the same trouble.
I'm proud.
Every day I watch as someone else gets picked for an award.
Every day I listen as someone else gets praised.
My mom doesn't even praise me. My girlfriend doesn't even praise me.
My boss calls what I write dumb.
"This is stupid, what you wrote."
It's a fucking sports story, honey. How can anyone fuck that up. She says I can. That makes me feel good.
I'm getting out. Sorry I'm not soldier material. I've been passed over too much, spit at too many times.
Why did I even try?
You just get tired sometimes, honey. Tired of trying.
Tired of endless nothingness.

Losing my edge

2007-03-20T15:47:00.000-04:00

I fell behind and I was hit by a fucking rock in the head.
I turned around, first stunned, before the pain hit me.
I didn't see the thrower. Darkness only, because I'm blacking out.
I reach to feel.
I feel nothing. Then a sharp pain and it hits me. And I'm as angry as I've EVER been. But
I can't scream.
I'm blacking out.
I'm blacking out from the pain and I'm mad ass hell.
I think that I got a compliment today.
I think of a good song I heard today.
I think that there is work to be done.
I never want to be tired again.
I hear my friend has sold his turntable. I think that he'll be more quiet.
I'm falling and looking at the path I've traveled and see everyone and everyone is going past me, going somewhere.
I'm losing my edge.
That's the last thought before the pain and anger take control and I crumble.
I crumble.

Orange line on white chalk

2007-02-05T01:05:00.000-05:00

A glare in the night, odd and eerie.
A mist of snow in the cold reflects the city lights.
I'm on my steps, looking towards State Street. The snow flickers down slowly, caught up by the wind. In the light you can see the flakes, in the dark they're hardly there, only the soft crackle, if it is that at all, of the flakes hitting another surface. It's cold enough that they stick.
The snow is a shimmering film, perfect and pure.
I step off the deep incline of my steps, the haze of powder envelopes me.
The single sheet of snow is interrupted as I walk through it, kicked around like the nothingness it is. It's all around me, soft. Things are quiet now and I walk through the night, the smoke of breath coming from my lips.
My chest is warm, two shirts and a coat deep, but my throat is ripe, and aches.
I feel fine but wonder if I'm getting sick. Sicker?
Walking through the night the streetlights spalsh my shadow on the snow along with their orange glow. I got both my hands in my pockets. My shadow is one fine, sharp image, but as I walk under the ornage-burning street lights, the reflection makes my shadow split. Walking in the cold coldscape, I now see two shadows, of me, splashed on the ground. And as I walk I notice that they don't come together, won't come togetherm that there are always two. Just can't get it together.
I see a snow flake fall and die on the street, exploding.
I smile. The cold feels good. I'm warm. I can't tell if my smile is noticeable. No one is out to tell. No one around. I smile.
The phone rings around midnight and it's bad. Purity has been destroyed, rape, somewhere, else where, over there, somewhere, and the Boss needs someone to walk through the snow, someone with two shadows. A dirty worker, no heroics.
I'm walking down the street in the cold.
Freezing, but I'm warm.
After midnight, I'm reminded of you, for inspiration, and I smile.
Can't do more than that today.

Empty drank Coke can

2007-01-30T00:32:00.000-05:00

Everything.
Can't have less.
Don't have less.
Still empty.
Beat connection vibrates from little speakers as I take out my contact lens and stare at myself in the mirror. Without the aid of correction. My image appears through the haze of optical blindness. Me.
Everything for something.
Something-less.
I go to the kitchen. Throw away a brick.
An empty coke can is crushed in my trash bin.
Consumed, already.

echoing images

2007-01-28T01:27:00.000-05:00

Mirrages shifting on the dark river in the night.
Reflections.
Cityscape.
Escape.
We're standing on the edge of the black river; it's glimmering.
We have drinks, both of us, and she keeps smiling.
A plane flies low overhead and she tells me she's afraid of flying.
I stare as another follows it almost immediately, the huge headlight on its nose borrowing a way through the dark, its strobe reflecting on the water, its engines echoinging in the night.
It passes overhead, disappears behind the curtain of a night time cityscape, escaped, but for the echoing after thought.
"Over the Rockies, going to California, our plane started to shake," she tells me, still smiling. "I was afraid."
"It can get scary." I drink.
"When was the last time you were in California," She asks and I'm surprised..
What an odd thing to ask, from a girl like her, I mean, a stranger.
I was born in California, she doesn't know. I stare at her. The air is cold, colder by the river.
"It's been a while." I say.
"Where are you from?" She asks.
I sigh, think. I don't know, how to answer I mean, so I drink harder, finish and toss the can off the ledge, to the edge of the shoreline below. Another plane flies in low.
"It's not here," I say.
Subconsciously there is a piano playing in my mind, a soundtrack to the situation, mysterious, random keys tapped in random order.
"You shouldn't be out here alone." She says.
My friends have left. I turn to the curtain of the cityscape behind me, bright, beautiful, draping the dark in light, reaching high. Another plane slips through the drapes. My friends have long gone behind them too, readying for the next act.
We follow in their footsteps, walk back together, her and I, and make it to the hotel. It's still cold as it was by the river, though we're three blocks away. The broken piano is still playing, added now with a trumpet that blares as I stare up at the 18 floors of the hotel in front of me. We find that the front door is locked. I am wondering why the hell the doors to the lobby of an 18 floor hotel are locked. A custodian lets us in, grins at me as she walks ahead and to the elevators. I figure out what he is thinking later.
A ding sounds, not from the piano in my head. The sound echos. The elevator doors open. It's a glass elevator. The doors close. We speed upwards. I watch through the glass as the world races by. I thimk its funny that this is all real. The doors open and we are on another floor. We find the room, 18something or another on the top floor. People are inside, all smiling. It's warm. I'm warming up. Earlier, before we walked in, we could hear the murmers of their conversation, but the words were unclear.
"There he is," A beat starts, drums. Trumpet and piano. My world is spinning. "Have some more," he says. I've never met him in my life, but he knows who I am.
"It was funny," Another one says. "We've been watching people in the glass elevators. One guy got in after another got out. The one before him had hit all the elevator buttons and we just watched as he stopped from one floor to the other. Then he got pissed and got out."
They laugh.
My soundtrack turns their laughs into a beat and it makes sense to me.
I go to the bathroom, look at myself in the mirror. I see that there is a red mark streaking on my cheek and touch it but realize that I am touching the face in the mirror, not my skin.
I walk out. Everyone is laughing. I see the river from the 18th floor window view of the room, reflecting the city.
Reflections and echos in my memory.
After thought images.
"Is this real? Is this it?" He asks me holding up a piece of paper with my name in black printed on it.

The Man I Am

2007-01-07T16:15:00.000-05:00

An electric sound fills my ears as I walk through the door. A heavy bass is making the walls tremble.
A thick throng of people are moving within, dancing, dressed up in short skirts and khakis, holding glasses up so the contents don't spill, shouting so they can be heard.
Drums and more electricity.
I walk through the mob, trying to push my way through. The lights are dim and neon. White pupils of women wearing less than little in the sweat of the place stare as I brush past, interested.
Screams and laughter and banter and a couple is sucking each other's face as I find a door to the next room, squeeze past and through.
More crowds, more beats, more lights, more electricity. Drums pounding harder, like a lustful heart. I scan the room.
Across the distance a voice and two peering eyes.
"Chris Miles!" And she's holding a drink. I walk over, people bouncing off me, laughing, the smell of sweat everywhere.
"Come here, come here," and she wraps an arm around me, tight under the influence. "Its just one of those nights."
"I know."
"Crazy. You look nice."
"I know."
And I as she looks at me my thoughts drift and I think of the last time I didn't look good, or try to at least. I'm grinning and caught up in my own narcism as she begins talking again and as she does her eyes gaze at me like she wants something, a sign of the influence.
She drinks, still looking at me, and her chest is in full view of everyone and I'm starring and no one really notices because they're starring too, even the girls and that puts an interesting scenario through my mind and I'm thinking.
"Give up the cockiness, I want you to meet someone, do you want a drink?"
And she pulls my arm and we dodge through the crowd - a lot of crowd - and a short fat girl is making the same run we are, trying to get through the crowd, and we're following her, and people are bouncing off her size and she just darts through like some juggernaut of a running-back, and another girl that doesn't see her coming starts to sip her drink but is suddenly knocked from behind by the sheer force of the fat girl's momentum and she's thrown to the ground, her drink splashing everywhere.
"Fuck you fat girl," I hear.
The fat girl does not hear and bounces in front of us and is bouncing through until we, myself and the girl pulling my arm, hit the dimly lit wall where a group of people are sitting, each with a glass half full.
"Great fun!" She says.
And they all look at me and I'm introduced and they all stare at me and smile with looks of "I've heard of you before!" And I stand there, happy that I am loved.
One girl that is staring at me and leaning on the wall has a flower in her hair.
"That's cute," I say.
And she takes it from her hair and puts it in my coat pocket and I fell loved and continue to fell so as the other girl comes back with a drink and they ask me how I've been.
"Good," and tell them a story of how I was drinking with the president of the alumi association a few nights ago. "He loved me, intro duced me to his wife, bought us all drinks."
And they're intranced with me until my friend comes along and I notice that he's dressed better than I am and has a more expensive drink and all of a sudden he is swarmed in hugs and awe and I am forgotten.
I am pissed.

I Want To Talk

2007-01-05T01:40:00.000-05:00

I want a cigarette.
Maybe its the devil in me, or the idea that it'll take the edge off things.
I hit the CALL button on my phone again. A red sign pops up, signal busy. Another try and the same thing.
I just want to talk. Can't get through. So I just want to throw something. The devil under my surface trying to break through.
I need a cigarette. Maybe more. A smoking partner, too.
I want to talk.
A life coach would be good.
We'd talk about the strong defense that life is presenting against me. X's and O's.
He'd ask if I was ready. "Hell," I'd say, "Tougher times have enveloped me."
"Maybe a trick play," he would say.
"Fake out the world."
"Exactly. Show them something they've never seen before."
That's what I need. Pull and upset, I'm the kind who could.
And we'd talk about perseverance, a good word in times of fear. Noun- steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.
All behind a cigarette, of course. Maybe a beer. To calm that devil in me.
This town can have that effect on people. Everyone here has got something to run from.
Me? Myself.
"I don't know what to do," I say to myself out loud as the BUSY sign pops up again.
The future has that effect on people. Confusion. These days I feel lost and incomplete. And the defensive line of life is rushing down on me. It's the warning sign. I'm in the envelope, covered, protected- for now anyways- but the protection is crumbling and my eyes are scanning, searching, for an escape route. X's and O's, life's as simple as that.
And this is the finale, the big play. My bones are shaking, sinking. Escape route. Hail Mary.
I wish I knew how to blow smoke rings. Good conversation starter.
I want to talk. To anyone who will listen. And listen good, not ignore, because nothings really don't make any sense for me anymore. Hail Mary.
I dial again and it rings.
The other end picks up and I want to talk but don't know what to say.

recovery beat

2007-01-02T02:01:00.000-05:00

Downtown in the inner city I lean on a building and smile as she walks up to me.
The good kind of walk.
I'm smiling. I'm taking a break.
"How's life?" She asks.
The air is cool now and there is a wind that seems to have picked up stronger from the river behind us and its colder because all I have is a collared shirt, no coat.
"On pause," I say. "Lets go."
"Where?"
"Any where."
I smile, I've been here before, this life. Life on pause, that's the good life.
I need recovery.
The city lights sparkle on the black water of the river and I look to one of the bridges.
"We can't cross it now," She tells me. "Not in these heels." She looks down.
I look down, take her in with my eyes, smile.
"Buena." I say.
The skyscrapers of the cityscape shine in brilliance, beacons on what's on the other side of the river.
"I don't know if I've ever been over there before," I say.
"We can't go now. Not in these heels."
And I look to my right.
A band plays from the club around the corner, stringing strings and tapping a soft melody. Soft and happy. Then their beat picks up. We head there, to the club, arm in arm. Life on pause for the night, for a lot of people.
The club has an electric red sign, with some colorful symbols around it, and it reads "Good Times." The bridges over the river get darker as we get closer to the light and the symbols get brighter and hurt my eyes to look at, so I look ahead.
We see through the club window. There's dancing. Smiling. Soft lights, to make the atmosphere comfortable. A man hands another a drink. They hold their glasses up and toast.
"To the good life."
The music picks up as we walk through the doors.
More electric, no longer soft. Faster.
The sound is carried across the river, past the bridge and to the other side.
"Couldn't figure it out, and that ain't right, found in the colorful drought, in the middle of the cool night, too little of a sight to see." The band sings.

The middle of Nowhere

2007-01-02T01:39:00.000-05:00

I think the death hit her hard.
But why not, how not? Death hits anyone hard. But the impact on her seems to be unimaginable, unthinkable in my mind. The sheer pain from it all is something that I just can't fathom.
Somehow she's made it through.
Don't know how.
I have nightmares, we all do, about the past. But hers... a cold wet night, in the middle of no where, walking away from the still-warm wrecked car, just a scratch down her leg, a bit shaken up, but walking out alone. Her boyfriend is still in the car, cold in the passenger seat, gone.
The sheer weight of the fact that it was all because of her. Unimaginable. What darkness she must have felt.
Days later:
I remember her starring blankly at the ground during the memorial, not in touch with the world, starring at Nowhere, in the middle of it. Nothing. What was happening behind those beautiful brown eyes that were dry with shock?
Months later:
Two pass, exactly. Walking, a cold gray day she surfaces again. I hadn't seen or heard from her, no one had.
"How are you?" I say, like nothings happened, with a smile on my face, like nothing's changed.
"Well."
And she stares at me, her brown eyes dark.
"I just got back from China," She says.
"China?"
"The middle of Nowhere," She wants to say.
"I've heard of it," I'd say.
"To think," She would say. "To think and wander."
How far she must have wandered, wondering. The guilt following her, preying on her.
"I just got back from China," She says.
And we say our goodbyes and walk away.
But how hard it must be.
Her heaven is to get lost in the middle of Nowhere.
Nowhere is a hard place to find. I'll say I know.
But how hard it must be, to think that Nowhere is not far and you'll get to it someday.
And no she's running again.
"To Africa," She says. "Got to get away."
"Had to happen," I want to say.
"No it didn't."

Promises to the End

2006-12-27T02:25:00.000-05:00

The day after Christmas I walk outside and shivers shoot down my spine.
I haven't shaved in days. Nor have I left the warmth of my house. And it's cold out. I pull my jacket closer.
Outside it's dusk, the sun is setting, brilliant, orange. Getting colder. But it's not that fact that it's the end of December that gives me goosebumps. No, global warming's got that taken care of. I shake with the fact that after the peace of Christmas the war starts up again. My personal war. I'm sorry that it had to break for two days, to tell you the truth. Gave me a taste of freedom. Now what? The shots start back up, the offensive resumes. Engrained in me is the seige mentallity again, the one that I've built up to win this war. And win at any cost.
But I'm tired. Of all of it, this battle, this fight. It doesn't need to be, I tell myself. I should just submit.
"Submit? And then what?"
Lose. The losers life isn't the hard life. You're out of the play-offs and on vacation. The easy life. Sure, no glory, but sleep. And sleep is so hard to come by. But I've committed myself. And as I walk out the shiver ripples through me. The ghost of the past that is about to reap havoc on me once again. The ghost of the future that is about to pick off my emotions one by one until I break. Then the ghost of the present: panic, chaos.
I'm running the vanguard, hard and straight and with the same force that a thousand Zenidine Zidanes or Genghis Khans have. Sheer, absolout, fervor.
But the days are colder and will get colder. Where's the global warming in my life?
I still can't get away from my past, no, not after everything. The dreams are starting up again, more lucid, again. And my destiny is ever present. It's a hard thing to realize, that you've been destined for something and must fulfill it. It's something you can't let go. Me? My destiny is not letting go.
I made a promise years ago.
"If you give me the power, I will use it for you."
The hero? The villian?
I'll be both, and the ghosts will let me know that.
"If you give me the power, I WILL use it for you."
I wonder if whatever ghosts are left up there still remember.

Fuck You Chris Miles

2006-12-08T00:48:00.000-05:00

Ringing in my ear and it's all I can here, a voice on the other end hell bent on telling me that I need to go to a place that she calls hell.
On the other end I'm listening as freezing cold air sweeps through my hair and I shiver but don't care because my jacket is already buttoned tight and I know I can't do anything about it.
"Fuck you, Chris Miles," she says. "Go to hell."
And I think about telling her that I've been there a few times and if she's interested in me telling her about it, then she'll have to shut up and listen.
She's mad. Something I said. But, nothing that I did. She tells me she's mad about what I "did,"
and that gets me thinking.
"You don't care, you can't care," And the Devil is screaming into the receiver telling me to go to hell. I laugh, out of irony, at all the times she sent me there herself.
But the "not caring" part seems to strike a cord with me as I switch the phone into my other hand in the cold night and stick the former one in my pocket.
Why wouldn't I care, I think as she keeps rattling on about something that she claims to know more about in the world then me but has yet to tell me what exactly that something is. How can I not care?
"What have you ever done to care?"
And hell, why is she telling me to voluntarily go to hell when I did it before, and didn't like it.
"You can't care."
I hear her say that again and I think that the conversation is dying because she's getting redundant, but at the same time it, again, stings me because, really, I do care and have gone to hell before and she should know that before she offers up both topics.
"When was it?" I mutter under my breath as she's still talking, and start thinking about that time I cared for a second.
And I remember that I was in my room, lying on my bed in mid-afternoon, a warm afternoon, tired as hell, starring at my plain white ceiling waiting for a man I needed to interview to call me. My phone was on my chest and I figured that I would feel it if it rang so I closed my eyes and drifted into sleep where I came to a world that I had blocked out for the longest time.
You see, a few weeks earlier, prior to this memory there had been a plane crash- tragedy, 50-something dead, horrible, right after take off- and I had helped cover the story...Basically writing an obituary. I wonder if she's ever written an obituary, doubt she has.
Well, I called the family and the friends and the other people that wanted to talk and they talked about the crash and their love ones I was writing about and they cried and they painted a picture of the dead people that made me want to cry too...You know, "always smiling, had a dog, just bought a new CD and called me the night before to tell me about it, talked to him the other day and was just thinking about him when I heard he was dead," that stuff. I mean, I wonder what happened to the dog because I never quite found that out. I think I cared there.
Anyways, so I fall asleep, deep sleep, and I dream and in my dream there is a plane and it is half buried in the ground and burning. Inside I hear the screams. Burning. If voices could burn because that's what they were doing, the voices were burning, and screaming, and, in my dream I just stood there until the screams woke me up and I ripped my brain from unconsciousness and was awake again, sweating, the screams still echoing in my ears.
I cared there and went to hell.
"Fuck you Chris Miles, fuck everything you do," she says.
And I say I'm sorry she's mad at me.
"But I do care," I say.
That should never be an issue, I think as I shrug on through the cold.

Midnight's late reminder

2006-12-04T01:06:00.000-05:00

"End it all."
I think we were on the same level last night.
Maybe that's why it made so much sense.
Lately it feels like I've fell into the ocean without the luxary of a life vest.
No coast guard, may I remind you.
Like I'm left behind.
But it was smooth when we talked.
Fluid, calm, not a tidal wave.
Maybe its psycological.
Maybe paranormal.
Abnormal either way.
What did you say:
"Lets go to China, I'll take you."
"I've never been to China."
"Neither have I."
"Sure."
"Just like that?"
"Why not."
"Can't be that easy."
"Do you ever just want to swim away?"
"All the time."
"Too bad we're land-locked."
"Too bad."
"But there are lakes."
Something like that, snappy.
At midnight I think the realization that I wasn't suppossed to be there clicked in. Well, only breifly. It was a good feeling, though, being there, in that mental state of mind.
Like I had figured it out.
Thats when I understood who I was: A man bent on some distant driving goal that he couldn't explain but that pulled him in with the force of a tractor beam. I couldn't be derailed. At midnight I realized I was a maniac. Nuts. And i realized that when the sun came up i would be alright again; smart, sharp and searching, just with things on my mind. Right now I had nothing on my mind. Jekell and Hyde. Thats me.
The searching part is why I want to be a swimmer. At night, though, its all about the darkness that fills your head, the nothing.
Right then I was reminded that I wanted to get away but didn't know how.
"China would be nice right now."

Two months off

2006-11-28T00:11:00.000-05:00

My hair is wet as I step out in the bathroom.
My body is damp.
Goosebumps begin to speckel my skin.
But I don't feel the cold. It doesn't seem to bother me.
My body is hard and the skin is insensitive. Thats what I've been molded into.
A machine.
No.
Less.
A gear, a cog.
After two months off of philosophy I've come to the realization that I no longer have a will. I no longer yearn or strive. Only execute. My hand is guided not by my own thirst for wine, but instead a hunger for bread. Necissity. Luxary is lost to me. Philosophy is luxary. All I ever want to do now is complete the mission, rack in the cash, the measly dollars to contine to exist. Mission accoplished. Move on. Next mission. The thing is, I don't know what the mission is. Not anymore.
I need.
I no longer want.
Philosophy has left me.
Only realism remains.
One the horizon one no longer sees flares of the torch inside me, burning bright. Only a cold dark shadow, searching for warmth.
The Iceman cometh.
Hungary.
His heart Cold.
Two months off ends not as a vacation, but as a long days work.

colder if you stand

2006-08-17T00:38:00.000-04:00

Its steaming hot rushing out of the steel faucet.
Should be soothing.
Might be for all he knows but he's not paying attention.
He's in the shower, starring at a blue shower curtain, figuring out where things should go from here.
The soap foams on his skin. Its soft rushing down his skin as the water pushes it away.
He leans against the wall, lets the spraying jet jet him down. There's a smell of vomit from where someone throw up their gin too early in the night. They must be drunk. He's sober. Drunk with confusion, though. Well, maybe not confusion. Impatience. That nails it down more. He leans against the wall, lets the spray of the jet massage across his body. A smell of vomit and gin and soap fills the misty air. Somebody had been drunk in the bathroom earlier. Couldn't hold things down. He's sober. Drunk with impatience, though. And indecisiveness. You know, the "what's next?" question. Indecisive is a good one to use. He's in the misty shower, letting the water wash away the suds on his body, suds that smell of an 'Island Breeze' but still don't mask the stink of gin induced vomit, in the shower calculating his life and his future but not really getting anywhere because as he stands in the shower he can't really tell the difference between white and black, figuratively speaking. He's starring at the nothing on the white shower wall and the nothing stares back.
It'll be cold when the hot water is gone.
Off snaps the faucet, open rips the blue curtain, splash goes the mist of the hot vapor into the cool bathroom air. He stands there bare. There's a towel across from him and he grabs it and wipes down and ties it around himself and runs his fingers through his hair.
The air is cold.
Colder as he stands.
He thinks to himself that he has to do something about it.

wonderment

2006-08-04T03:44:00.000-04:00

there's a shuffle going on when i come out of the bar and i'm careless and walk straight into it and as soon as i do i'm pushed around and as i'm pushed my head jerks around and my gaze is shuffled all around and i see the city and the lights as a blur and that blur falls into my sight along with everything that goes with it; the sounds and smells and tastes of a night where i've had too much of one thing and not enough of another. both of those things can be debatable at this point. not now though. somewhere in front of me a girl smiles, not at me but at someone next to me, and i'm thinking that she's a pretty girl and i should make her lose the person she's smiling at but then i think that i'm more than happy with what i got and that's more than enough, even though, lately, it hasn't been there for me and i'm thinking that i'm all alone and though i'm not, the feeling still doesn't leave. weird. jiggles go off in my head when i stop thinking and i realize that i'm drinking a beer and there is a huge monster of a man that rushes through the crowd like a boat through the tide and i'm thinking not about him but a thousand other things as he grabs my drink. i'm thinking that its probably better because i don't need a drink and i'm thinking at that very momment they I have no idea where my life is going and i'm thinking that thats a wierd thought to be thinking because my life is wierd anyways and then i'm thinking that i need to find a way back home and that home isn't such a far off place but it is a bit away and i'm thinking how i'm going to get home and i think that thought until i find a way and the way is in front of me and its her and she's there, driving, and i don't care for her much, hate her actually, and as a result don't care if i walk, so i get out and then get back in and figure that my legs would enjoy it more if i rode so i ride. as i ride i'm thinking of alot and more than i need to and i think that i really have it good and also bad and that i have it better and also worse than the world and it makes sense to me at the time and i'm thtinking that i have so much and so many but at the same time feel so poor and so lonely and that gets me thinking more again.
i laugh. i'm as lost in my world as a person can be in their world of spinning lights and sounds and tastes and smells. but i can't do anything about it. not my world. i'm more powerless than a dead battery, i think, and i laugh and i'm wondering what or who actually did this to me and what that quake's magnitude was or monster's strength was becuase it apparently shook the hell out of me because i feel like rubble, if rubble could feel; heavy and a sight for seeing and noticible and steaming but also broken and no more than a collection of crumbs, but still crumbs that think and wonder and...drink. i want a cigarette as i roll up darkly to my apartment but there's none to be had so the only thing to be had is a deep breath of fresh air so i take one and take steps toward my door and then i'm bored and wonder where, if any where, my world is going. i'm thinking again, nausious about the thought, thinking about me and hating it, not the good things a people, just the darker things that are more apparent. the things that send the world spinning and drinking.

while jogging

2006-05-25T01:31:00.000-04:00

Lightening spills out across the night sky and a roar of thunder soon follows.
Trees begin to bend in the wind, as the vanguard of the Strom approaches.
I'm in the middle of a late night run and have now begun to sprint just to get home before the down pour.
The sky again erupts in a splendid blue as a lightening bolt cuts through it, branching out in five directions, then turns dark again just as quickly.
The first rain drops fall to the ground.
I think to myself that its funny how you run the hardest when you want to keep dry. Its that flight instinct that you get right when you feel the tears coming, even when they're from the sky.
Nobody really wants waterfalls streaking down there face.
Must be why I'm in such good shape.
The thunder roars.
I think about that,
We're really not afraid of all the glitz and glamour that come with storms, we're afraid of the down pour that follows.

impatience

2006-05-23T01:38:00.000-04:00

send me to a mess.
pick me up again.
how can you sweep the pieces under the bed?
becuase i sure can't.
couldn't find my rythme.
where'd you get yours?
felt like burning the bridges every weekend
with this sick and sunken sludge of a soul caught in a body like mine.
you know, when your there its not such a bad thing.
especially after all those filthy nights we spent.
now i want to tell you that i want you.
thats it.
no more.
take me home.
i want you.
never really understood how much you meant to me until you left me and now i have no idea what to do and only want to be with you, want to see you soon but realize soon is a while away.
send me to a mess again.
damn.
these days, thinking of you, i've become impatient.

the right words to say

2006-05-19T01:21:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the other day.
And the one before that.
And the one before that.
And the one before that one too.
And the ones before that.
And etc.
Really.
Now that you've disconnected from me and I've had my silent thinking in sanctuary its more apparent to me.
I hear your voice, between the sounds of the streets of the city.
I miss your voice.
Wish there weren't any boundaries or borders between us,
"Only these words
Just between your eyes and the green glass
as Karl Hyde would say.
"in the distantance
I'm your tourist."
said so perfectly.
Had a dream:
"You pick up the phone,
and I'm imagining."
It makes sense to me.

Out Of Town Blues

2006-05-19T00:34:00.000-04:00

Outside the rain has stopped and I lay awake in my bed thinking of you.
Its late and I can't sleep and I'm on my back gazing into a deep black nothing void and there are a thousand images running through my mind as I think and wonder where you are right now. Makes me feel good, the images I mean. The wondering doesn't. Gives me a sense of panic. Outside the weather seems to mock my thoughts. Behind me the window is cracked an inch open and a breeze rushes in and its cold and makes me shiver. I pull the blanket close, wishing there was more. Outside the wind begins to blow harder and I think to myself that another storm is coming. I'm tired of them. Water drips from the roof, to puddles below. Leaves sway with gusts and the branches creak and my arm moves to the side and it touches only cold and empty ripples from the sheets.
Its weird that I miss you. I never have before, before these days. Then realized that I do miss you. Bad.
All I want to do is fall asleep with your face as the last thing I see.
I can't sleep though. Fucking irony.
Too cold.
And I lay there.
Wondering with my out-of-town blues.
....
Sometime around dawn my eyes close and I'm asleep. Dreaming.

Not My Style

2006-05-17T18:50:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting in a chair, people all around, saying nothing, doing nothing and I realize for the hundredth time tonight that this place just doesn't fit my style.
If anything its the opposite: a tough crowd, seemingly out to get me.
I'm feeling a little defensive.
Feel like there should be a "WANTED" poster in this place, with my face on it.
To my left he explains to me that I don't exactly have the best reputation around here, "not in these parts" and all because I had threatened to break a pool stick over the "next mother fucker's face who touches me," one long ago night, as he explains.
"That didn't really go over well here." He says. "You remember that?"
I remember the moment well enough, I explain. "The fucker wanted to fight and he was asking for it."
"And you were drunk."
But not tonight.
So instead I'm sitting. Quiet again. Thinking that this place is not my style and I have better places to be.
"Great you guys came," he says.
Not really, for me any ways.
"You haven't said much tonight," he says to me. "Not the way you are usually."
"Don't have much to say," I say.
I'm thinking "mayday, mayday" in my head right now- plane is losing control, can't keep the storm at bay.
Some guy is starring at me cold from across the room, pure murder in his eyes. Death. Nothing less. I could see it in his face. He doesn't want me here.
To make matters worse he has company.
I'm surrounded by people but its the Devil that sits across from me, her legs crossed, drinking and laughing.
"Didn't know she'd be here," my friend says.
I think to myself that I remember telling him, my friend, that I never want to see her again.
Now this shit.
I'm in the room and wish I wasn't, lounging, watching, starring aimless at the scene and as it unfolds around me, feeling akward.
The Devil starts making conversation my way, the kind of conversation the Devil would make. The kind that cuts you down.
I'm thinking that I want to get out of here, desperately.
The guy across the room has a fixed gaze, starring at me. He walks up. He says a sly remark, walks away.
"Public enemy number one," I say to myself. But my friend doesn't hear me. I'm invisible to the people I wish I could talk to. Its the contrary with the others.
"Not my style."
This place stinks with revenge and deceit and all the bad things that make me sweat from my head to my feet and I'm thinking that I need to get out of here and on to elsewhere.
Call a taxi, tell the driver: "somewhere, fast."
But I can't.
Tied down. I'm the taxi, the driver tonight. And my friend just left with a girl. I told him earlier: "I won't leave without you."
That's not such a bad idea anymore.
But thats not my style. Not even tonight.
Around midnight I hit the PANIC button. Other people call it the bottle.
And I drink the situation away.
Thats all I have to say about a bad day.

Breath

2006-05-11T01:08:00.000-04:00

I brought you something close to me,
Left for something else
you see though your not here.
You haunt my dreams
There's nothing to do but believe, just Believe. Just Breathe.
I'm used to it by now.
Lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling.
Just breathe. I'm used to it by now.
Another day (I do believe).
Another day(so hard to breathe).
Another day(not so hard to believe) Another day.
Wondering about this feeling.

~Telepopmusik

Home

2006-05-11T00:55:00.000-04:00

Every time I leave this place I don't want to come back.
Maybe its the weather.
Maybe its the atmosphere.

Finals

2006-05-04T02:31:00.000-04:00

I leave wondering what I've accomplished today.
"Today's an understatement," I say. "When have I had the chance to really go to sleep?" to end my day.
Its been a while.
I can't help but wonder if the struggle was worth this victory.
"What victory?" I think. I walk out into the 3 in the morning dark, wondering what I've won.
Was the juice worth the squeeze? The ticket worth the price?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
A lot has changed.
there's been a lot of beginnings. A lot of ends.
A lot of final things. Said. Done. Never wanted. Probably needed.
Despite the fact that I haven't slept in months I still want more.
Last year I slept for days, after things were finalized.
This year I don't know what I'll do.
Not really tired.
"What time is it?" I ask the guy that walks by me.

somewhere

2006-05-01T22:24:00.000-04:00

I found my way through the dark and then I'm through the door and into the bright lights laughing.
"You do drugs?" He asks.
"Not today."
"Come on." She says.
Giving me an eye from across the room is another girl and I opt for her company instead of the two monkeys flanking me.
I walk away as they ask for a light for their joint, following the tractor beam gaze in front of me, stepping up as she asks, "You have a light?" for a cigerette as she pulls one from her shoulder strap and I reach into my pocket and pull out a pack of matches I stole from the bar I had just come from. She grins, then her boyfriend walks over and pushes me out of the way and I'm agitated before my shoulder slams into a guy's gut and I look up and me the giants gaze.
He has has spiky hair.
I just made him spill his drink.
He has no expression on his face and walks away. I feel like a giant killer. But before I can move again, somebody else is on me and talking fast.
She speaks in broken speech that I can't understand. Then falls into me, holding me for support. Her eyelashes tickle my skin. I'm wondering. She's clining to me. My phone is ringing in my pocket. I push her away so I can answer and she spirals across the room, unable to catch her balance.
I answer the phone just as she hangs up on the other end, missing her voice.
Then I turn around, to find a friend and run into another.
"I've tried. Can't think of what else to do. Just can't get the results. You know?"
"I Guess," I say.
I walk away, not really understanding.
Somewhere in the back room a man is singing.
I head that way and find him singing alone, to some Usher song. So I walk away again and head down a hall. There are doors all round me. Each one closed. I'm wandering around the house and remember that everyone hates a tourist. Then I find an open door, cool air rushing from it and all and decided its my best option.
Sometime around midnight I leave the scene and find myself drifting around somewhere.
Somewhere is better than nowhere, I think.

remember

2006-04-21T02:28:00.000-04:00

I'm thinking about a sunset as I listen to her, one like on a postcard.
It really is a nice image in my mind.
Maybe that's why I can't stop smiling.
But what does she care. She's screaming into the receiver, slurring speech every other line. I've barely said two words. I'm in my bed, watching the fan overhead, laying on my back. I cock my head to check the time. The conversation just doesn't seem to be getting on track. She's so drunk, skipping around in conversation. For some reason I let it go, tell myself its fine.
Don't know why she called.
Maybe that's why I'm smiling.
A song comes echoing from the little speaker at my desk and I'm imagining her and the sight of her. Makes me remember.
Whatever.
All I know is I'm smiling and can't stop. A happy thought. Something, anyways.
Maybe the "Boos," I think out loud, and she says, "I've only had some."
How many times have I said that, lying of course?
She talks.
There's a picture of a beach that I can't stop thinking of lately. Its a sunset, the postcard kind. And there's a woman. Makes me think of her. Don't know why. I like that picture.
Underneath of it is a tag line that reads: 'Searching for....'
I'm fascinated by the dot, dot, dot.
She tells me to hold on because she needs to take another shot.
Then she's back. Night cap, she says. I laugh.
She stops screaming into the receiver and I start to tell a story of a man I know who told his girlfriend he slept in a park during a thunderstorm. Maybe he did. I doubt it, I tell her. Probably cheated on her, I say. "And with a very ugly slut too...."
I don't think she's listening.
Falling asleep on the phone. Just like it used to happen, I remember.
That makes me smile.
I turn the light off after I say goodbye.
She won't remember this.

Strawberries

2006-03-29T23:31:00.000-05:00

Spring,
And the air is cool but not cold and there is a sense of warmth to come and the trees are in bloom and the birds are singing and the grass is flowing and wavy and the bushes are turning green again and everything smells like strawberries and its a nice smell and everyone is in a good mood and I'm just happy that I made it this far.
Winter,
Too long, too boring, too cold, especially when you don't have heat in your house, too cloudy, too slow, so much to think about, too much time, I mean, too full of adventure that I didn't need, but probably needed, in the long run I mean.
I like the snow. Looks nice when it falls. I like the snow.
Spring makes you know your still alive, though.

on the different heavens

2006-03-19T02:31:00.000-05:00

MUNICH, GERMANY- some time ago:
The sound of the Muslim's prayer in the morning.
He is up at dawn, sing-songing to the southeast where the bright orange disk of the sun grows with every passing minute.
I wake to it and stand on my feet, shirtless, and tie the strings of my flannel pants together so they won't fall from my waist as I walk to the sink to wash my face.
The morning rushes on. The man prays with it.
I walk out into the dawn, the towel across my bare shoulders, drying my face and hands. A breeze meets me and I shiver with it, then my body adjusts.
The Muslim prays on. He doesn't notice me at first, but then I see his eye dart to the side where I now stand as he bows his head again and touches it to the ground and continues. I walk to the edge of my balcony three stories from the ground and stare at the early risers of the city, then walk back and decide, instead of walking back inside, to stay in the breeze a little.
I lean against the white wall, still cool from the night, and watch him.
He finishes his prayer minutes later.
I step forward, hardly thinking to myself that the two of us have become great neighbors in such little time.
"You think He hears you this early?" I ask, half being a smartass. "I mean, you woke me up."
He does not look at me, but he smiles. "He hears at all times," he tells me in his thick African accent that doesn't match the pale German landscape around us. He tidies up the balcony he had been praying on, picking up his rug- or whatever you call it- and straightens two plastic chairs and his round little table.
"Come in and eat with me." He gestures me into his side of the apartment and he leaves the balcony and walks into his kitchen and I follow him because I'm not in the mood to make myself anything, still without a shirt.
"Something greasy?" He asks. "Are you hungover this morning?"
"Not yet." Truth was I was still drunk.
"I heard you come back last night. Alone this time?" He begins to fry something in a pan on the stove and brews water for tea.
"Yeah. Unfourtantly."
He laughs.
"You Latins. You only care about two things: sex and drinking."
"You should try it sometimes. It can be fun."
"Well, sad for me. I can not taste the fermentation of wheat, nor grape." He sets two cups down.
"Probably a good thing," I say. "Can get you into trouble."
And then I go on and ask him what in the world would possess him to wake up at this hour everyday, still half being a smart ass, and he simply says "Heaven" and I guess I can understand that.
Makes more sense then not.
"Probably a good thing," I tell him, and he agrees.
We keep talking, a little about heaven and God and all that fun stuff, and we eat and we drink the warm tea and we talk some more, still about heaven but also now about soccer, which is a little easier for me.
I finish my food and thank him for it and he welcomes me back for more whenever I want it and I tell him to be careful what he wishes for and then leave to go change and get ready for the day ahead of me.
He does the same.
I leave.
It's nice that we've become neighbors.
It's nice when two totally different people become friends.

on the roads again

2006-03-19T02:07:00.000-05:00

A thousand people all around, but the truth is I'm alone.
I'm tired as I walk down the sidewalk and through the criss-cross of streets that makeup down-town.
It's a party night. I'm in no mood to party.
The air is cold and I have to pull my jacket tight to fight the wind that blows through the darkness. I squint my eyes and they well up as cold air rushes upon them.
The smell of rain fills my nostrils. A sour smell.
There's shouting in the streets that I walk through. Music explodes from car speakers as they rush by me, bass rattling, or from the inside of the bars and clubs which I pass. There's fun and noise everywhere. Laughter comes from an open door as a drunk stumbles out. Smoke pours out with him. Two girls scream at each other, each on one side of the street, trying to figure out where their other friend is. They're drunker then most of the people I pass. The air is thick with noise.
I'm walking.
This is me running again.
I can't hear any of it, the noise. I'm too caught up in my thoughts.
It's not a good thing. It means I don't know what's next and I hate to know what is next.
My thoughts laugh at me. My thoughts mock me. And I can't escape them.
So I walk.
I wish I could hear the song that plays from a bar that I pass because I know that it is one of my favorites.
But there are only my thoughts, only them to fill my ears as they whisper and shout into them, and all I can do is think as I walk...or run.
"How can you be so far away, when you're still in my heart?" I ask myself.
And that's all I can hear.