Sunday, February 21, 2010

A Month Of Full Moons

I know that the core of whatever my troubles as a basic American fall short of any real issue. So, to some extent, meditating on it comes up wholly short. I can't comfortably craft fiction, fake characters or phantom problems because i can't fully discern for myself who I am or even who I am yet to be in any sense. Just spinning wheels. Life on hold. There's no interesting way to express it. It's just a bad hand, everyone gets them...no sense in publicly whining.

Reality is weird enough, that I've proven and has been proven to me over and over. Trust fiction because everything that falls in our lap on a daily basis will surpass whatever you can bother to dream up.

Sitting in this bar alone, I miss last calls. When the conversation isn't yet done, a half pint to go and you can't be troubled to stop talking to finish the drink that your blood doesn't even need. Tumble down the hill on bikes to smoke on the concrete stoop below the razor wire, out of view from the landlord's cameras. For all the free rent in the world, he doesn't like smoking. For all that he's using the cameras to see what strangers are doing in and around the house, you know he'll comment. Exhale as the train tumbles by and let the smoke get pulled west across the intersection. Sophie, the scraggly neighborhood cat would inevitably follow, like a drunk private eye obviously tailing at a distance. She'd slink along the broken pavement that lined the pale green warehouse, eventually appearing along the far concrete wall begging for attention. The corner lot where we'd sit filled the void left by where the edge of the warehouse could have been. We'd pile cigarette butts amist the chatter and the clamor of that evening's freight trains. Each one wanting the one underfoot to just be the last, but it'd always be too stressful to say no.

I spent most of my last days tossing and turning on the airmattress in my crumbling room, trying to remember how the fuck I ended up there in the first place. When the workday ended and the warehouse trucks quieted I'd know to roll over and finally get out of bed. Step over the open hole in the floor and around the boxes that had been packed like that for over a year, following me around like the neighborhood cat would. Items I could care less about, as the still sealed packing tape would indicate. Forgotten friends left in waiting, just like the city felt forgotten. Soaked in a kind of sadness that winter has as it slowly dies giving way to spring. Everyone I met had this kind of charmed hollow in their chest, some absence waiting to be filled. That scared me to some degree. I recognize that void, I had a sizable one inside myself and I know that when you join those kinds of empty spaces together, the pull just keeps you under; a black hole that lead nowhere, powered by the joined hands of everyone I knew. On the bad days, black fire licked the edges of this space. I imagined they could see it too, silently recognizing that their lost energy being sucked downward into that collective absence...blind eyes turned in unison. It'll get better someday.

Who am I anymore? It's simple enough to identify who I've been, hold the memory up to the light like a cracked negative and compare what's changed. Looking forward is far more complex.

Local Natives - Wide Eyes - http://youaintnopicasso.com/mp3/Local%20Natives%20-%20Wide%20Eyes.mp3

Thursday, February 11, 2010

"And though I am fearful, I think I just crave the relief..."

I get this knot in the pit of my stomach during the quiet times. The revelation that my life is a kind of pathless shell. I'm free of a proper release, not really understanding how to find a release that satisfies me. I've been trying to hunt it as long as I can remember, finding things that should add up...but it never does. I'm undisciplined is what it comes down to. Lazy and unable to follow through on the things I really desire. Even talking about it, I feel like I'm retreading the same road I have again and again. Words add up to the wrong. Solutions feel empty. My stories are hollow and I don't know what to do to find the right path.

Los Campesinos! - Who Fell Asleep In - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHQrX2YhNy0