caveat emptor

this one night when we talked

Me and him known each other since we was kids. This one time we stayed up all night and walked around talking. Next day I was real tired. He moved away now. Sometimes I wonder where he's at and if he remembers that night we walked around and talked. I can't never remember anything we said, but I remember that night. I remember I was real tired the next day. I remember I felt this kind of big sadness and it was good and bad. It's real hard to describe. It was like inside I was getting bigger and everything was opening up or something. Outside, though, everything was just getting farther away and harder to reach. I don't know. I can't say it right. You ever feel that way? That's how I felt that night we talked. I wonder if he felt that way too.

Be careful when you cast your eyes
Be careful what you see
Be careful what you touch and feel
Who do you want to be
Be careful when you listen close
Be careful what you hear
Be careful what you choose to trust
Your safest friend is fear
You cannot unlearn
You cannot unknow
You cannot unyearn
You cannot ungrow
You cannot unburn
You cannot unshow
You cannot unturn
You cannot ungo
Every breath and every step is your last chance

I was just thinking about what I said before about how I felt that night we talked. It was like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and the wind is blowing and all you can think is "Jump, jump, jump" because you think you can fly or something. And you don't jump because you're afraid you can't really fly. And then you think, "If I won't never be able to fly, might as well jump anyway." I don't know. That ain't really right either.

Hello, friends. How have you been?

Love.

dried wallflowers pressed between the pages

There is a song, sung often, that I cannot sing. I cannot make out the words. The chorus is something like, "Me too. Yes, me too. I am like you. I feel that too." Everywhere people gather in clusters to sing the song and to dance the dance and I cannot join them. One at a time they step, in no order I can discern, to the center of the circle for a verse. All around they sit or stand, smoking cigarettes or holding cocktails in perfect casual repose, and they sing the basic things of life, foundational things, the fabric. They love, it seems, the pattern of it all, and they all sing in harmony. None of them notices, it seems, the deep communion of their participation. They are simply living an organic life, touching one another as intimately as the circle allows, pulling ever closer. You cannot notice all of this and still join in, I think. Their eyes are closed as they live and your eyes are opened, observing and describing from outside, from the edge. They talk in perfect rhythm and you only measure the meter. This is me. I am like this, a wallflower on the dance floor of everywhere, the voice of a director's commentary breaking the flow of their romantic comedy, criticizing their drama, analyzing their terror. Maybe I'm a different sort of animal, only half human. Maybe one parent was some faithless fallen angel, condemned to write the story her fate, doomed always to notice where he was not. From time to time my human blood wants to sing or to dance, but you cannot join into the middle of the song. You have to wait until it ends. And it doesn't end. It never, ever ends.

closed

why?

1. [redacted]
2. love writing and sharing what i write but hate everything i write lately
3. feel lately like a homeless guy shouting obliviously to the world and not participating in any sort of community
4. can't think of anything interesting to say; haven't been able to for a while

how? (for the few who might be interested)

1. not going to post here until i want to so badly that i can't stand it any longer
2. if i write anything that's "writey" i'll post it on my cogito writing site
3. if i write anything that's "talky" i'll post it on my old livejournal site. the lj sense of community will be good for me.

i hope you're all here when i get back. if not, i'll find you. the internet is not that big.

hello, friends. how are you today?

love.

Where?

Maybe I'm facing the wrong direction. Nothing makes sense from the angle at which I find myself. I read things, and they seem reasonable, but I can't seem to apply them to my situation. I wonder how things are done. I know where I want to go, but I don't know where I am. My map says, "You Are Not Here" beside every red dot. I hope I'm somewhere. Maybe I'm facing the wrong direction. Which way is toward? I can never seem to turn toward, only away. Nothing makes sense from here.

Take David, for example.

David sits sweaty in the stifling night heat of his homeless home, a box trailer abandoned unlocked in the parking lot of a forgotten shipping company. He's in shorts and nothing else and he's lying back on the soft blanket he found. Found? He stole it. It was a lucky find, and no one needed it. Well, no one was looking anyway. There is no air movement and David cannot sleep. The heat is the problem with his life, he decides. Air movement. "How would things have turned out," he wonders, "if it just wasn't so damned hot all the time." Then he remembers January in the shelter when they stole his bicycle, his bike. If not for the ice and snow, the fear of freezing to death, he'd still have his bike. Meanwhile, not a mile away, rows of homes hum with air conditioning, moving air. He rides by them sometimes, walks since January. Sometimes he finds things over there. Once he'd found a blanket that no one needed, a lucky find. He's been there hundreds of times, maybe thousands. "I wonder how you get over there," he thinks, but he is pretty sure you can't get there from here.

There is something wrong with us, David, but it's okay. There's something wrong with everyone. We can't all be in the same place anyway. Only the second person or the third person can be there. The first person is always here.

Hello, friends. Where are you today? Can I get to you from here?

Love.

Misplaced for a Time

When I saw the grand piano in the middle of the gigantic, well-appointed hotel lobby yesterday I wished what I always wish in such situations. "I wish I could remember enough Spanish and played piano well enough to sit and belt out an ironic rendition of the Eagles song Desperado in a melodramatic Spanish baritone." Why? Who knows.

I've spent the week in tourist luxury, where everything is palatial and abundant. Everything is lovely and elegant. It's really starting to get on my nerves. I'm having the exact feelings of rebellious disdain that, while attending a week-long conference in San Diego a couple of years ago, inspired me to write this:

Gods once walked these halls of stone, long ago, and men and women of great renown shed blood to water the fledgling seeds of their legacy. And here am I, coming such a long time after, following the whims of small concerns. The echo of those old footsteps still drowns my patter, and the vaulted stone around me shouts my insignificance at me like an accusation, as though my presence offends. If I could, I'd rise up like a titan and rend these old bones, casting their dismay into the dark, boiling sea. I am here and I am now. Whatever boasts these ghosts have etched into these walls, they cannot claim this feat of mine. I am here and I am now. No one has written my story. I am free.

If you're hiding in the shadows, come out and walk with me. We'll cast off these old bones and burn down this old world. We'll let the flames light these low places, chasing all shadows far away. We'll tell our own tales to the world, rooting them in truth but embellishing them with lies. We'll clothe ourselves in greatness and cast our echoes out into the ages ahead, for others to tear down.

There's just something in my nature that can't abide such materialistic gaudiness for long. It grates on me. One day I'll crack and start tearing the fine wood trim from the walls of an opulent hotel meeting room called "Ravenwell Salon" or some other ridiculous name. I'll kick off my shoes and start to pile the broken wood in the middle of the room.

"Sir," the presenter will say nervously into his lapel mic, "what are you doing?"

"Let's build a fire," I'll respond, tearing off my shirt. "Let's build a fire and dance around it!"

People will start to close their laptops, grab their packets of conference information and move slowly to the door. Soon security will show up to take me, but I won't go quietly. I'll brandish the broken leg of a Queen Anne console table at them and growl.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Love.