The laptop is my torch. It replaces big lands of the west, kicking up dust in bland blinding cloudless form. Darkness settles down and up and down from the studio window in the fallout of the train yard steady with it holding failures and empty threats and raw footage of hope and letters to lovers and queer stories of boys looking for love as desperate and honest as bandits. The biggest lesson is that this is possible. Sweet poverty. Love poverty and water thickens. Give away what can’t be kept and walk light with what comes. Ask for nothing, receive nothing. Make what is true what to the birds is true. Accept the dirty boundless mean of flat borders and electronic blue. And write it all down, prose and poems and stupidity like laughter. The lord they say will come and scoop it up, use what is given, ask for nothing, speak.
One year ago tonight I met my lover and one year since that night I leave her.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Confessionals 2 (to be removed after one week)
The hot screen hits me like a bag of nails. Like a boy in Mexico who murdered his family by revolver and shipped his psyche off the human scale. That damnable human scale, the one that keeps even the faintest of deceit held to solid ground. Confessionals number 2.
I can ask directly, what goes through a man’s mind? What compels action? Despair compels it. The most noble and heinous acts arise from this neutrality. One is celebrated and the other is punished while both get immortalized. Even Marilyn Robinson knows that the hidden story is the moral tension that arises, even from banal acts, in the secret parts of consciousness. The rest is a dream. The "Darlin’, I love you", like a mantra built into spirit however unwelcome at times. The shaky hatred of fathers is in there too like a poem, even a sappy one. One line after the next like a sunrise before the boy awakes and the dream becomes the struggle again. Like the damnable change at the ordered and predictable turn of planets. Get your guns boys, firm your resolve because we ARE going to land and point toward our enemies and end them before they seize our land, bringing history with it and, once more, action. Science applied to these emotions doesn’t help but it also doesn’t hurt.
V-daddy in the back of his mind writes a book in his uncannily ordered way. It’s about common and popular myths that a public seizes and believes and sells which are built upon no reasonable science, even after studies and good practice and good thought have proved it beyond a doubt to be of no consequence. Like vitamin C doing anything to prevent a common cold. The advice is found in travel guides, in grocery stores, in doctors’ offices, in the goodly advice of mothers and grandmothers and nurses and well wishers despite carefully constructed and detailed studies that prove it a myth. Or, say, the beneficial effects of pomegranate juice, or that coffee increases risk of breast cancer or any myriad of notions that reasonably have been studied and shown to be myth. It says, we have a need to believe there is control. Recently I saw a published study, or more accurately I heard a summarized news report of a study that conclusively showed no life prolonging effects of positive thinking in cancer patients. On average, according to the report, people who think and live well and those who suffer curmudgeonly through terminal cancer die at the same rate and, on average, at the same time. It doesn’t however assess quality of life and living excellent because, I believe, there is yet to be a convincing measure of this. My grandfather died a frightened man, loathing his place in society, his family legacy and his final days in the VA hospital. I had no good words for him although he grabbed my hand and wept for an answer. My grandmother died with her family near, my mother too ill to watch it as she breathed her last when her lungs finally failed. I couldn’t help although I wanted to. I remember seeing her for the last time on Easter Sunday for a short visit as we all shuffled off to my uncle’s for the last time as a family. In wealthy families, poverty is a scorn and akin to stupidity or helplessness. The plans are fixed and distributed via unspoken lines and the events unfold like tests to be overcome. Most of it is not lived, or, more accurately, the experience of the poor is that the event is not lived. Finality is wisdom.
Confessionals due. The hardest and most painful loss of my young life, getting younger by the moment, if it has not been demonstrably and painfully clear over these past 10 months has been the loss of my wife. Knowing so, it continues to be pointed out that one (that is, I) must not harbor these things. Clear them away, move on and ahead, wisdom follows. How sad a reminiscer and how stupid a man and weak a soul that would not live what sound reasoning and time and health have awarded. But still life continues, the work and exploration continue, good food is eaten, good friends shared, good love shared and it is not unlike me to audibly exclaim, “I love life”, as a reminder that the excellent things experienced are profoundly worthwhile and the fact that pain follows and a need arises to express the thing and connect in visions or words or thoughts or feelings exists and that I stand on the clumsily successful actions of my predecessors and enjoy an education and mind and heart and brazen arrogance to exclaim it. Still, in times of crisis, in the dull thud of chemical neurosis and the clinical reality of depression and panic I think of suicide. The hardest time was just after the news that my wife, whom I love, announced, through insistent inquiry, that she was in love with another and was willing to abandon any hope of reconciliation while consummating that new love in my former home and among the company of my former friends. I begged at first in my heart and then in words and then fell ill. I could barely move and every morning and evening was darker and shakier and full of horror. I tried all I could; even immediate dating to relieve the reality but the despair was thicker than blood and I fell more ill until it became clear that the wrenching reality of it would not end and I did what all medical advice would indicate I do and reported to the emergency room after many weeks of agony and all friends and discussion were exhausted and the need for some relief was necessary or the blade would fall and I would see a plan through to end myself, over a woman and a damnable introspective heart and overactive mind. The usual routes of speaking to the clinicians had failed, resulting in a 3 week wait to see a psychiatrist as was indicated by the reported symptoms. But I knew it was acute and I knew I would do it or I would do what I did and use my head and follow the advice of countless suicide prevention websites and pamphlets and clinical advice and seek immediate help. So I did this and called good friends in Jersey to report the action as my last resort to fleeing town or sanity or life. Eric, understanding bi-polar madness and empathizing with depression, drove me to the hospital and waited while I paced in fear and horror for the attendant to take my information and failing mind into the helping hands of the medical community. What I got instead was involuntary restraint, stripped of my shoes and belongings and moved in an ambulance across town to a psyche ward of a neighboring hospital where I was placed in a room to wait alone for hours on cold vinyl furniture and linoleum flooring. The attending doctor eventually interviewed me, determined there was nothing they could do and released me. The shoes and belongings were returned. I was escorted to the exit and set free into the dark cold of night. I called a friend, who picked me up and saw me though the rest of it on her couch in stunned terror. I still get bills from the various departments, doctors, and hospitals including the ambulance company. The friend doesn’t speak to me anymore. This all happened during the month directly preceding the completion of the visual component of my thesis work, the entire reason we had moved to this place and the focus of my study for the preceding two years.
I can ask directly, what goes through a man’s mind? What compels action? Despair compels it. The most noble and heinous acts arise from this neutrality. One is celebrated and the other is punished while both get immortalized. Even Marilyn Robinson knows that the hidden story is the moral tension that arises, even from banal acts, in the secret parts of consciousness. The rest is a dream. The "Darlin’, I love you", like a mantra built into spirit however unwelcome at times. The shaky hatred of fathers is in there too like a poem, even a sappy one. One line after the next like a sunrise before the boy awakes and the dream becomes the struggle again. Like the damnable change at the ordered and predictable turn of planets. Get your guns boys, firm your resolve because we ARE going to land and point toward our enemies and end them before they seize our land, bringing history with it and, once more, action. Science applied to these emotions doesn’t help but it also doesn’t hurt.
V-daddy in the back of his mind writes a book in his uncannily ordered way. It’s about common and popular myths that a public seizes and believes and sells which are built upon no reasonable science, even after studies and good practice and good thought have proved it beyond a doubt to be of no consequence. Like vitamin C doing anything to prevent a common cold. The advice is found in travel guides, in grocery stores, in doctors’ offices, in the goodly advice of mothers and grandmothers and nurses and well wishers despite carefully constructed and detailed studies that prove it a myth. Or, say, the beneficial effects of pomegranate juice, or that coffee increases risk of breast cancer or any myriad of notions that reasonably have been studied and shown to be myth. It says, we have a need to believe there is control. Recently I saw a published study, or more accurately I heard a summarized news report of a study that conclusively showed no life prolonging effects of positive thinking in cancer patients. On average, according to the report, people who think and live well and those who suffer curmudgeonly through terminal cancer die at the same rate and, on average, at the same time. It doesn’t however assess quality of life and living excellent because, I believe, there is yet to be a convincing measure of this. My grandfather died a frightened man, loathing his place in society, his family legacy and his final days in the VA hospital. I had no good words for him although he grabbed my hand and wept for an answer. My grandmother died with her family near, my mother too ill to watch it as she breathed her last when her lungs finally failed. I couldn’t help although I wanted to. I remember seeing her for the last time on Easter Sunday for a short visit as we all shuffled off to my uncle’s for the last time as a family. In wealthy families, poverty is a scorn and akin to stupidity or helplessness. The plans are fixed and distributed via unspoken lines and the events unfold like tests to be overcome. Most of it is not lived, or, more accurately, the experience of the poor is that the event is not lived. Finality is wisdom.
Confessionals due. The hardest and most painful loss of my young life, getting younger by the moment, if it has not been demonstrably and painfully clear over these past 10 months has been the loss of my wife. Knowing so, it continues to be pointed out that one (that is, I) must not harbor these things. Clear them away, move on and ahead, wisdom follows. How sad a reminiscer and how stupid a man and weak a soul that would not live what sound reasoning and time and health have awarded. But still life continues, the work and exploration continue, good food is eaten, good friends shared, good love shared and it is not unlike me to audibly exclaim, “I love life”, as a reminder that the excellent things experienced are profoundly worthwhile and the fact that pain follows and a need arises to express the thing and connect in visions or words or thoughts or feelings exists and that I stand on the clumsily successful actions of my predecessors and enjoy an education and mind and heart and brazen arrogance to exclaim it. Still, in times of crisis, in the dull thud of chemical neurosis and the clinical reality of depression and panic I think of suicide. The hardest time was just after the news that my wife, whom I love, announced, through insistent inquiry, that she was in love with another and was willing to abandon any hope of reconciliation while consummating that new love in my former home and among the company of my former friends. I begged at first in my heart and then in words and then fell ill. I could barely move and every morning and evening was darker and shakier and full of horror. I tried all I could; even immediate dating to relieve the reality but the despair was thicker than blood and I fell more ill until it became clear that the wrenching reality of it would not end and I did what all medical advice would indicate I do and reported to the emergency room after many weeks of agony and all friends and discussion were exhausted and the need for some relief was necessary or the blade would fall and I would see a plan through to end myself, over a woman and a damnable introspective heart and overactive mind. The usual routes of speaking to the clinicians had failed, resulting in a 3 week wait to see a psychiatrist as was indicated by the reported symptoms. But I knew it was acute and I knew I would do it or I would do what I did and use my head and follow the advice of countless suicide prevention websites and pamphlets and clinical advice and seek immediate help. So I did this and called good friends in Jersey to report the action as my last resort to fleeing town or sanity or life. Eric, understanding bi-polar madness and empathizing with depression, drove me to the hospital and waited while I paced in fear and horror for the attendant to take my information and failing mind into the helping hands of the medical community. What I got instead was involuntary restraint, stripped of my shoes and belongings and moved in an ambulance across town to a psyche ward of a neighboring hospital where I was placed in a room to wait alone for hours on cold vinyl furniture and linoleum flooring. The attending doctor eventually interviewed me, determined there was nothing they could do and released me. The shoes and belongings were returned. I was escorted to the exit and set free into the dark cold of night. I called a friend, who picked me up and saw me though the rest of it on her couch in stunned terror. I still get bills from the various departments, doctors, and hospitals including the ambulance company. The friend doesn’t speak to me anymore. This all happened during the month directly preceding the completion of the visual component of my thesis work, the entire reason we had moved to this place and the focus of my study for the preceding two years.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Decorative Sword
Dad calls. I answer. “Hey, Danny, listen, I got a decorative sword.”
“What?”
“Ever since I can remember, I mean ever since I could remember, I’ve wanted a decorative sword.” This reported with enthusiasm in thick Jersey accent.
“Oh, ok.” In all the years I’ve known the man I can’t recall a single instance of discussion about a decorative sword. “Where’d you get it?”
“Sometimes I just leave the TV on to the home shopping station. You know, when I’m dozing off. Most of what they got on the TV there is real crap but every once and awhile there’s somethin’. Then they put on this sword and I thought, this is the one for me.”
Jesus. “Oh, ok.”
“It has like an ivory handle and the blade is like the Washington monument but really nicely done. They do the fine etching work with laser. I thought, if there ever was a decorative sword for me this is it.” “I’ve always wanted a decorative sword but never really found the right one for me but this is the one.”
The word ‘sword’ is always preceded by a ‘decorative’ indicating safety has been considered.
“Ok.”
“It comes with a 500 piece cutlery set. I really didn’t want the cutlery but I had to take it with the package.”
“Seriously? What are you gonna do with ‘em?”
“I put ‘em in the trunk.” “I’m just gonna give ‘em away.” “You know the Saturn’s got 280,000 miles on it now, I think I can get another 100,000 out of it.”
“You know, I’m not sure it’s legal to drive around with that many knives in your trunk. You might want to at least check about that.”
“Well, I really don’t have any other place to put them right now Danny.”
“Ok. Well, I gotta go, I’m right in the middle of something here. Congratulations on the sword. Maybe you can kill some Ninjas with it.”
“Yea right. No, this one is just decorative.”
“Yea, I know, It’s a joke.”
“I know,” Dad answers in half-mocked laughter.
“Ok, I’ll talk to you later then. Thanks for calling.”
“Bye bye.”
“Bye.”
I look over and _ _ _ _’s asleep with the dog. She looks fierce, like a sleeping samurai and the dog looks mangy. We’re nestled in at the lake house, the new one, a little cottage place up the road from the lake front. It all sort of unfurled this way, so instead of sleeping at the studio we’re getting soft under the good fortune of family property. I’m up now, the television like a block of cinder, and listening to the woman across the lawn to the back lose her shit. “I don’t give a fuck. That’s my kid. Maybe you should tell your girlfriend…” All of this through tears and weeping and the battle cries of domestic foulness. Poor girl. I felt sick from fast food burritos so I jammed a finger in and puked it up like it was a routine piss. Standing at the mirror my face looked older, eyes dark and the scruff had turned to a beard. I sat there scratching it, forcing a smile on and off. It was a hot night, some 65 degrees in late October, nearly unheard of. I pop a beer, _ _ _ _ still asleep on the couch.
I look down at the yellow manila envelope. An entire year and there they are, separation papers, not even divorce. What is there to do really? Suck it up and live it. Any pain over the thing is wasted. I have the answers. Move on. Nearly all the friends have moved on, most I don’t even hear from anymore. Some have clearly taken sides, a whole shit storm of abandonment. Not even granted release. The fucked up thing is that I see both sides. I can understand their choices. I can understand hers, even from the beginning. I can see her actions as relationship suicide, I can see mine as indecisive. I can see a whole mess of others who never really live their thing. Success for me now is survival and laughter and good love, the kind that weeps.
“What?”
“Ever since I can remember, I mean ever since I could remember, I’ve wanted a decorative sword.” This reported with enthusiasm in thick Jersey accent.
“Oh, ok.” In all the years I’ve known the man I can’t recall a single instance of discussion about a decorative sword. “Where’d you get it?”
“Sometimes I just leave the TV on to the home shopping station. You know, when I’m dozing off. Most of what they got on the TV there is real crap but every once and awhile there’s somethin’. Then they put on this sword and I thought, this is the one for me.”
Jesus. “Oh, ok.”
“It has like an ivory handle and the blade is like the Washington monument but really nicely done. They do the fine etching work with laser. I thought, if there ever was a decorative sword for me this is it.” “I’ve always wanted a decorative sword but never really found the right one for me but this is the one.”
The word ‘sword’ is always preceded by a ‘decorative’ indicating safety has been considered.
“Ok.”
“It comes with a 500 piece cutlery set. I really didn’t want the cutlery but I had to take it with the package.”
“Seriously? What are you gonna do with ‘em?”
“I put ‘em in the trunk.” “I’m just gonna give ‘em away.” “You know the Saturn’s got 280,000 miles on it now, I think I can get another 100,000 out of it.”
“You know, I’m not sure it’s legal to drive around with that many knives in your trunk. You might want to at least check about that.”
“Well, I really don’t have any other place to put them right now Danny.”
“Ok. Well, I gotta go, I’m right in the middle of something here. Congratulations on the sword. Maybe you can kill some Ninjas with it.”
“Yea right. No, this one is just decorative.”
“Yea, I know, It’s a joke.”
“I know,” Dad answers in half-mocked laughter.
“Ok, I’ll talk to you later then. Thanks for calling.”
“Bye bye.”
“Bye.”
I look over and _ _ _ _’s asleep with the dog. She looks fierce, like a sleeping samurai and the dog looks mangy. We’re nestled in at the lake house, the new one, a little cottage place up the road from the lake front. It all sort of unfurled this way, so instead of sleeping at the studio we’re getting soft under the good fortune of family property. I’m up now, the television like a block of cinder, and listening to the woman across the lawn to the back lose her shit. “I don’t give a fuck. That’s my kid. Maybe you should tell your girlfriend…” All of this through tears and weeping and the battle cries of domestic foulness. Poor girl. I felt sick from fast food burritos so I jammed a finger in and puked it up like it was a routine piss. Standing at the mirror my face looked older, eyes dark and the scruff had turned to a beard. I sat there scratching it, forcing a smile on and off. It was a hot night, some 65 degrees in late October, nearly unheard of. I pop a beer, _ _ _ _ still asleep on the couch.
I look down at the yellow manila envelope. An entire year and there they are, separation papers, not even divorce. What is there to do really? Suck it up and live it. Any pain over the thing is wasted. I have the answers. Move on. Nearly all the friends have moved on, most I don’t even hear from anymore. Some have clearly taken sides, a whole shit storm of abandonment. Not even granted release. The fucked up thing is that I see both sides. I can understand their choices. I can understand hers, even from the beginning. I can see her actions as relationship suicide, I can see mine as indecisive. I can see a whole mess of others who never really live their thing. Success for me now is survival and laughter and good love, the kind that weeps.
Monday, October 8, 2007
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