Many days I must remind myself that I am essentially a happy person. I have insight and love and a real need to belong and pitch in and move ahead, fast and foreign and built for speed. Money slows me down, desire definitely does, fear, enemies, loss, momentum, movement, piles of sin, backward glances, pork, and then I'm stopped and then I'm slowly inching backward as if sliding on the scree. And then I'm regressing and a day may be lost to the clutching of bellies and the want for more works of art. I look up at the computer screen and see the thing refreshing as electronic things do and I look for the message. Nothing, so I deliver one. "You cocky bastard, take that!" Boom, done. Silence.
This morning is a terrible one and for those who have experienced it will know the feeling I'm about to describe. It's a dull swoon of headache, like drinking all night but haven't had a drop. The flood of depression chemicals leaking in on caustic waves in a cool wash over brain folds and ash and soot. No desire for much of anything, not even a cigarette (cancer having purged any desire for that shit long ago). Buttercup gone and having no idea what I might want or need, knowing all along that the pull is down. Down down down. Stupid, at the bottom, not an ounce left. Or so it feels. The car fixed but $500 low and with what needs to happen and what I need to come up with I am stuck. This is my last effort and so it goes. I look to the foods, a few boxes of cookies, some pasta, an apple. I think of the week I ate popcorn and laugh. This is funny. Why are you doing this? I think, to prove a point? No, it is the boulevard of broken dreams and most of us are on it. I hear J say, "loser." I hear that loudly because I know what that means. I can't let that happen, I won't let that happen and I can't let that happen. So since I know better I call mom, mom of course understands. Mom always understands, herself unemployed, a victim of the economy crunch at 60 and with no higher education, just experience, there is less of a chance there will be employment waiting. I know what I have to do, I see it. It's the rise or the fall but maybe that's too literal. Maybe the whole thing is too literal. Bah. Barometer. My weight is your weight, your weight is my weight. We both weigh just about the same, loser. We both weigh just about the same, lover.
Bas Jan Ader
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
ब्रेन Gray
One year ago today I met Buttercup. I know because I made this photograph
on that day [large]. That's her looking down at the newspaper, in the middle between Constance and El. By this time in the evening I had likely popped several pain meds and smoked half a pack of cigarettes on the way over to the BBQ joint and the birthday party where this photograph was taken. I was even more arrogant then than I am now and so was she. I've looked at it several times today. It'd be several months before we'd get into it over beers and cigarettes and several more before we'd find out what that pain was that took her eye and why her intestines would seize up and then in the coursing pain of a February visit, why grandma June would give in to her own advanced stage of disease and we'd be burying her remains under catholic blessings. We were separated today by the necessities of work and labor and practicality and a border and a state of being.
I woke up confused by the distance and by the distressing phone call from a friend at 3AM. (3AM phone calls are almost never good.) I never recovered and the distress led to unrest and confusion. That's the best word for it, confusion. I made coffee and noticed the fruit flies had gotten unruly and were swarming my attempts, the little bastards, so I decided to finally deal with the trash. The building has no pickup so once a month or so, when the sealed lid Oscar the Grouch trash can that I harvested from a previous tenant gets full enough that the living things from within kind of seep out I double seal the container bag and bring it down to the trunk of the car where it usually stays for a few days until I spy an open dumpster and gorilla toss it Alice's Restaurant style. This time however I thought I'd kill two or three birds with one stone and bring the checks for deposit, the post office box key and run some errands to get groceries, etc. The trouble is with a troubled mind the stress can cause confusion and seize even the most mundane tasks into vicious circles or worse, a dead brain halt. And that's the way it went. In the car, trash in trunk, I leave the lot only to realize I had forgotten my cash, credentials and the damn checks. I swing the car around, park and go up the stairs. On the way I up I remember the discs and mugs left in the Design Center and how I'd better get 'em. Down the stairs again. Out on Main toward the Post, cops lights, inspection again, stupid, so I manage to talk the cop down to a lesser offense as the post closes and I lose my window to check the box. Turn around and I'm back toward the city uncomfortably behind the cop that just ticketed me, by this time sort of audibly barking at nothing in hopes of a hard wired mind reset. Half way back I recall the bank, turn around (U style illegally on the main cross city artery), drive and park in the bagel joint next door feeling hungry. Standing in line for food, nearly forgetting the damn deposit I make a quick break to get it done, leaving the order to toast, clerk waving frantically. Deposit slip in hand, I pat down my inner pockets, second check missing, realizing I grabbed the wrong envelope. In a confusion, leave the bank, return to the studio, stop by the office to pick up the discs and mugs. Inside, still hungry, having abandoned the bagel, I get distracted by a bag of chips and in a soft shift of memory I'm heading out the back door, bag of chips in hand, half way up the stairwell of the adjacent building recalling the discs and mugs. This is funny, I thought, and pat myself down for the moleskin to record the thought (I never leave without it) only to realize it was left bedside. So I stood there half paralyzed, thinking of the festering bag of trash in the trunk and then Buttercup and all the things that make up a life in between, between slow fists of chips, alone in the stairwell, half mad and numb.
on that day [large]. That's her looking down at the newspaper, in the middle between Constance and El. By this time in the evening I had likely popped several pain meds and smoked half a pack of cigarettes on the way over to the BBQ joint and the birthday party where this photograph was taken. I was even more arrogant then than I am now and so was she. I've looked at it several times today. It'd be several months before we'd get into it over beers and cigarettes and several more before we'd find out what that pain was that took her eye and why her intestines would seize up and then in the coursing pain of a February visit, why grandma June would give in to her own advanced stage of disease and we'd be burying her remains under catholic blessings. We were separated today by the necessities of work and labor and practicality and a border and a state of being.I woke up confused by the distance and by the distressing phone call from a friend at 3AM. (3AM phone calls are almost never good.) I never recovered and the distress led to unrest and confusion. That's the best word for it, confusion. I made coffee and noticed the fruit flies had gotten unruly and were swarming my attempts, the little bastards, so I decided to finally deal with the trash. The building has no pickup so once a month or so, when the sealed lid Oscar the Grouch trash can that I harvested from a previous tenant gets full enough that the living things from within kind of seep out I double seal the container bag and bring it down to the trunk of the car where it usually stays for a few days until I spy an open dumpster and gorilla toss it Alice's Restaurant style. This time however I thought I'd kill two or three birds with one stone and bring the checks for deposit, the post office box key and run some errands to get groceries, etc. The trouble is with a troubled mind the stress can cause confusion and seize even the most mundane tasks into vicious circles or worse, a dead brain halt. And that's the way it went. In the car, trash in trunk, I leave the lot only to realize I had forgotten my cash, credentials and the damn checks. I swing the car around, park and go up the stairs. On the way I up I remember the discs and mugs left in the Design Center and how I'd better get 'em. Down the stairs again. Out on Main toward the Post, cops lights, inspection again, stupid, so I manage to talk the cop down to a lesser offense as the post closes and I lose my window to check the box. Turn around and I'm back toward the city uncomfortably behind the cop that just ticketed me, by this time sort of audibly barking at nothing in hopes of a hard wired mind reset. Half way back I recall the bank, turn around (U style illegally on the main cross city artery), drive and park in the bagel joint next door feeling hungry. Standing in line for food, nearly forgetting the damn deposit I make a quick break to get it done, leaving the order to toast, clerk waving frantically. Deposit slip in hand, I pat down my inner pockets, second check missing, realizing I grabbed the wrong envelope. In a confusion, leave the bank, return to the studio, stop by the office to pick up the discs and mugs. Inside, still hungry, having abandoned the bagel, I get distracted by a bag of chips and in a soft shift of memory I'm heading out the back door, bag of chips in hand, half way up the stairwell of the adjacent building recalling the discs and mugs. This is funny, I thought, and pat myself down for the moleskin to record the thought (I never leave without it) only to realize it was left bedside. So I stood there half paralyzed, thinking of the festering bag of trash in the trunk and then Buttercup and all the things that make up a life in between, between slow fists of chips, alone in the stairwell, half mad and numb.
Monday, February 16, 2009
tennessee
If I listen to myself long enough I can hear the contradiction. Shut up, listen louder, quiet, let them in, repulse your embarrassments, use your failures, think more clearly, stop making sense, hone your logic, divide yourself, make more sense, build your treasures, stop your fears, fend alone, open more doors, drive faster, feel, produce, let it be, watch, sequester, produce, go blind, produce, silence, noise, pause, time...
Oh, old boy, if we had to strain and see you and your world, lost in ours, waiting.
Where did the maggots go?
I opened the steel garbage lid to look for the maggots. Two days back they were crawling up the edges, popping about. Now they were gone. Probably a good thing, I thought. Eh. So I shoved in more trash (the contents of the plastic bin I used to collect my hair trimmings), compacting it down and sealing the lid tight, fearing the crawling things. I imagined waking up to the flies like a horror flick. I prayed that tonight the press below would stay quiet and chemical free but I knew it was a lost cause. Then I woke up screaming (I do that) to Buttercup shaking me, her face and skull throbbing in the early morning. My heart sank for how cruel I'd been and how cruel I'd stay in my collective stupidity.
You're not stupid Rose.
What's that Doll?
Silence. She was fast asleep but I still think she managed the words.
I love you, I say, in the silence, knowing we'd be burying her Grandmother in less than twelve hours. Poor girl, having been released from the cruel and advanced stages of Alzheimer's. Her body, in this case, the last stone to turn. And I cried in silence, cupping Buttercup's cheek where they'd removed the nerve. Praying the words that we'd picked for her mass over my caustic logic, my dead religion, mercifully free from doubt through the strength of family.
Job 19:1, 23-27
Oh, old boy, if we had to strain and see you and your world, lost in ours, waiting.
Where did the maggots go?
I opened the steel garbage lid to look for the maggots. Two days back they were crawling up the edges, popping about. Now they were gone. Probably a good thing, I thought. Eh. So I shoved in more trash (the contents of the plastic bin I used to collect my hair trimmings), compacting it down and sealing the lid tight, fearing the crawling things. I imagined waking up to the flies like a horror flick. I prayed that tonight the press below would stay quiet and chemical free but I knew it was a lost cause. Then I woke up screaming (I do that) to Buttercup shaking me, her face and skull throbbing in the early morning. My heart sank for how cruel I'd been and how cruel I'd stay in my collective stupidity.
You're not stupid Rose.
What's that Doll?
Silence. She was fast asleep but I still think she managed the words.
I love you, I say, in the silence, knowing we'd be burying her Grandmother in less than twelve hours. Poor girl, having been released from the cruel and advanced stages of Alzheimer's. Her body, in this case, the last stone to turn. And I cried in silence, cupping Buttercup's cheek where they'd removed the nerve. Praying the words that we'd picked for her mass over my caustic logic, my dead religion, mercifully free from doubt through the strength of family.
Job 19:1, 23-27
Oh, would that my words were written down! Would that they were inscribed in a record:
That with an iron chisel and with lead they were cut in the rock forever!
But as for me, I know that my Vindicator lives, and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust;
And from my flesh I shall see God; my inmost being is consumed with longing.
Whom I myself shall see: my own eyes, not another's, shall behold him...
Friday, February 13, 2009
Teeth
I bit down into the grainy goodness of an organic loaf and felt a crack. The porcelain inlay split down the tooth, became dislodged and floated to the front of my tongue. Shit. I thought immediately of health care, my situation, and the way a person can get caught in between. I grabbed the piece uneventfully and laid it on the table beside me.
I hadn't eaten all day. I do that from time to time as days get busy and we get in a hustle. So in the last efforts before evening, driving across town, I planned a stop at the grocer to get something. It's either this or the bar but I thought better of it and continued on. I went for healthy, a good choice.
So I cracked a beer, sipped and felt the wincing pain as the cold hit the tooth. Felt good. What to do? I finish the beer, crack a second and place the call to the guy who put it in less than two years ago. No go. Without health care there are no options. Fight harder, don't panic. I look to my laptop and the shiny new cover. Two weeks back I called about the cracked armature so they sent out a technician to replace it. On warranty, it happened quickly and at no charge. Dignified. This is my tooth on the other hand, down into the bone, two of them, less than two years out. No warranty and no responsibility. There is an option, for a couple hundred a temporary solution can be made until my 'situation' improves. Don't take it, move forward, demand what is medically called for. So I ask, "What is medically called for? Is it the repair of the inlay or this temporary splint?" No answer. Money will provide it. So back to the hovel, head high, mind low and we go. I'll need some options with more teeth... I already know what that is, money, as I head out to my position in the not-for-profits, civicly engaged, open belief, community, an organism.
I hadn't eaten all day. I do that from time to time as days get busy and we get in a hustle. So in the last efforts before evening, driving across town, I planned a stop at the grocer to get something. It's either this or the bar but I thought better of it and continued on. I went for healthy, a good choice.
So I cracked a beer, sipped and felt the wincing pain as the cold hit the tooth. Felt good. What to do? I finish the beer, crack a second and place the call to the guy who put it in less than two years ago. No go. Without health care there are no options. Fight harder, don't panic. I look to my laptop and the shiny new cover. Two weeks back I called about the cracked armature so they sent out a technician to replace it. On warranty, it happened quickly and at no charge. Dignified. This is my tooth on the other hand, down into the bone, two of them, less than two years out. No warranty and no responsibility. There is an option, for a couple hundred a temporary solution can be made until my 'situation' improves. Don't take it, move forward, demand what is medically called for. So I ask, "What is medically called for? Is it the repair of the inlay or this temporary splint?" No answer. Money will provide it. So back to the hovel, head high, mind low and we go. I'll need some options with more teeth... I already know what that is, money, as I head out to my position in the not-for-profits, civicly engaged, open belief, community, an organism.
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