He caught me watching them. I should have looked away. Embarassed. He assumed I would. Without flinching or blinking I stared back, enjoying him enjoying my voyerism.
1.31.2006
Solace
Two cars parked on a deserted side street devoid of lights. One masculine black work truck and one flirty dark sports car... a low to the ground racing model. Two bodies silhouetted in the scant moonlight, their faces obscured... their intentions not so much. She leaned on the hood of the second car, between the cars really, with her head tilted back and looking up at him. Her dark hair cascaded down around her shoulders, her tight sweater and dark jeans showing off her ample curves. He stood in front of her looking down, dark jeans hugging his hips, tee shirt and overshirt untucked, unbuttoned and a little askew. He leaned in toward her and she lifted a protective hand to his chest. There was a familiarity between them that was unmistakable. Friends? Perhaps. Lovers? Yes. Oh yes. Their voices low, carrying on a conversation meant for their ears only. Intensely treasuring their stolen moments together. The sound of low laughter, of contentment and sincerity would have given them away had anyone been paying attention. Just two random lovers, neither where they should have been on a late weekday evening, out with someone they never ever thought they'd cross paths with, on a desolate street in the dark center of any big city on any given day.
1.25.2006
The Phoenix
broken
bitter
jaded
cynical
drifting
lost
alone
hurting
in pain
weary
at war
exhausted
surrendered
humbled
ready
longing
wanting
aching
surrounded
passionate
inspired
desired
awed
ravenous
renewed
afire
loved
confident
strong
aware
at peace
alive
At least I'm working on the parts I cannot yet find my way to feel.
1.18.2006
He said, She said
He said he knew what she had been thinking.
She said that left her feeling unnerved,
quite.
He said he read all that she wrote.
As safe as she felt,
she still said it made her nervous
He said that as good as he was,
She was far better.
He said he was in awe,
and he didn't say it lightly.
She said thank you.
She was left feeling that it was
by far,
the greatest compliment anyone
had ever given her.
1.12.2006
Dandelions
Perhaps it would be easier if the footsteps were four rather than two, but nothing's worth doing if you can't do it by yourself, if only to prove that you still have the ability, the knowledge. You can always rediscover what you thought you'd missed out on. You can never live the same moment twice, but a moment never dies and it's always ready to be born. Hold too tightly and it'll all slip through slender fingers that strain to reach truth but fall short and land on passion instead. Truth, that elusive beast, cannot be tamed. It cannot be caged. It cannot be owned. But it certainly can be felt.
You can push your body to the point of exhaustion, to the point of breakdown, to the point of pure and utter destruction. The soul will live on for as long as it pleases, regardless of you. Perhaps it's better to house it as it sees fit. That is if you believe you have a soul.
There's more to living than merely surviving, existing. There's more to happiness than the letters which comprise the word. There's always more to something than just the sum of its parts. That is if you believe you have a soul.
I have a soul. I've felt it in orgasmic moments of passion and erotic moments of bliss. I've heard it speak softly to me in the night as I lay on my side of the bed, the other occupied by a human form, and filled with the soul of a ghost which doesn't haunt me but rather comprises that which I long for. Not because I cannot live without it, but because I've lived it already, long ago, and desperately want it back. I am living in the now because that's all I'm allowed. Everything is temporary and while I know that... I don't relish it like I once did. I want to go beyond keeping it to myself.
Have I been selfish for far to long to learn how to live with what it looks that I cannot have? Am I beyond ever learning how to accept those things I cannot change? Certainly not. Sometimes in the night, I curl up in the laughter of love and in those moments, I can still see so clearly. A moment within a moment. Is that possible? Am i insane? To be touched by the sound of laughter in this way goes beyond any physical contact. To feel golden embers of splattered life transcending the physical and conquering the metaphysical to a point of joy. These moments are what life is made of.
For a moment I think I wouldn't change a thing. Gleaning from a stream of consciousness, I realized that dandelions are yellow. And, it's the yellow of friendship whose tune fills my mind and vibrates out through my smile. Can there be hope in the tattered ruins of a tortured empire? Nietzsche would say hope in reality is the worse of all evils because it prolongs the torment of man. Maybe he is right. Or maybe the reality is that the empire isn't so tattered. Maybe the reality is that there is hope. Is hope in hope a bad thing? A good thing? Shall we get beyond good and evil? Is indifference the best of all states because one is simply beyond?
No talk of indifference today. I am not indifferent. I care not to be indifferent with such matters of the heart. Because you can starve a body and you can starve a soul and you can starve a heart, but in the end the fate is far worse than not having hope. Or having hope if you have nothing with which to at least choose to have or to have not. I ask again do we have a soul? Is it a part of us, an extension of us, is it us? Is it whole? Are there soul mates and body mates? Do some people choose their physical mate and never get beyond the mundane while some pick their soul mate and transcend it all? Do some people have a soul mate and a wholly separate body mate?
I have a soul. I have hope. The truth is I know. What did i say about the truth? What did Nietzsche say about hope? What does strangelove say? Feel. Being numb only ends in a whole lot of pain. There's more to life than floating through...but one can truly float when one truly lives.
1.08.2006
As Good As It Gets
As good as Friday was... and it truly was. The park, the grocery store we almost got ourselves thrown out of, the pharmacy and starbucks. Laughter and giggles... that's how we spent the day and I loved it... that someone would try that hard for me.
I digress... as good as Friday was... Saturday was equally if not more so, worse. Who knew one could pull a muscle on the top of their thigh.. and not have anything momentous to remember it by. Who knew that sliding while bowling could cause a knee to hurt a week later. Who knew that I could go from happy to pissy and bitchy in 6.3 seconds.
But as bad as it was... I did have some moments that weren't all that. Taking P to see her Grandma always warms my heart. When you set aside the idea that maybe I don't burp her enough, I'm evil enough to allow her to suck her thumb and think it's cute, I did infact purchase a pacifier for her (I refuse to call it a binky) and... she just might... horror of all horrors.. be a lefty, my mother in law is only trying to be helpful and she loves her granddaugher almost as much as I love her son. My heart is even thawing a little towards the dogs. Baby, who is anthing but, is cute and sweet and friendly. The other one is afraid of everything and keeps her distance. I'm all good with that.
What I cannot handle and we've deftly avoided lately... until last night is the step-father. I took a good hard look at him last night for the first time in perhaps a year or more. He is dying. He is not aware. Sitting at the table hunched over he appears 85 rather than 65. Still working, going through the motions on broken sleep, confused thoughts, wildly imagined stories and the haze of alcohol. My mother in law says to me that milk puts him out like a light... so he drinks milk before bed. Milk and the three shots of cheap vodka that not so discretely went into the generic glass tumbler along with the ice when he assumed no one was looking. I outted him just to see if she knew. She does and is powerless to put a stop to it. Or she does not want to, I don't know. Four hours until he is supposed to leave for work and he's downing enough to get my whole household feeling pretty damn fine. I'd be out like a light for the entire night. He only makes it an hour, before he's back up and at it again.
A single this time... again with the milk. I have to ask about the grapefruit juice in the fridge before I have any... to make sure no one tampered with it. No, I'm assured he did not. He tired of juice weeks ago and has moved onto the milk. There's a cycle here... V8, grapefruit, milk. All things that go well with the booze. Nice. He sits at the table, randomly changing the channel on the tv and messing with the volume at whim. Then he asks what we're watching and who turned off his favorite show. I busy myself with the baby and dinner.
He is a small man, made smaller by his broken-down appearance. Dressed in dark boxers and a tattered wife-beater, I can't remember the last time I saw him fully or appropriately dressed. Barefoot too, not that it matters much. His skin is still dark, not from time in the sun, but from his herritage - whatever that is. He has taken on a sallow and chalky appearance. His feet and ankles are swollen terrible, not that he seems to care. He has a bruise the size of a footlong overstuff sub sandwich on the back of one leg. It's been there a long time and it's black, not that he seems to notice. He is dying and he does not feel it.
His arms that once were intimidating and powerful are now shrunken and battle scarred. The tatoos that once proclaimed his love for parrots and for Joyce, in that order, are as faded and blurred as the memories they embraced. His children want nothing to do with him. They are embarassed by him and probably a little saddened to see how far he has sunk. The mind that was once agile and strong is gone. He wouldn't remember if they came to visit and while they were in attendance he would do everything in his power to humiliate and alienate them.
His face is concave, sallow, wrinkled and weary. He cannot form a sentence of coherant thought to save his soul. Does he even still have a soul? His hair stands up from his head like troll doll who met a blonde bottle and lost the good fight. His hair would surly be grey if only he would let it. It's his one last stand at vanity. That along with the dentures he rarely wears and nightly dousing with cheap cologne before work. He sits now at the kitchen table demanding whatever his foggy mind decides he must have next and usually it's nonsensical. He mutters whatever is on his mind without regard to the setting or the appropriateness of his verbage. He is like a dog with a bone when he gets going. Spewing forth filth, ugliness, hate, racism, whatever crosses his mind. It's like a giant word association riddle that's unsolvable to the rest of us.
His mind plays tricks on him, his imagination conjuring up wild stories that on their face are impossible. Two guys tried to carjack him in downtown and he had to shoot them both. Yet here he is... no police intervention, nothing on the news... didn't hear about it at the time it supposedly happened. Hmm... me thinks not. He supposedly fell off machinery at work, 50 feet and nearly died. Was unconscious for 45 minutes... they all thought he was dead. Yet there was no trip to the hospital, no workman's comp claim, no osha investigation, he simply up and drove him. Likely not.
It dawns on me as I watch him attempt with shaking hands to down the hot wings that came with the pizza, that in 12 years I have never seen him sober. I honestly think it's too late for that. He is dying and it's only a matter of time.
I digress... as good as Friday was... Saturday was equally if not more so, worse. Who knew one could pull a muscle on the top of their thigh.. and not have anything momentous to remember it by. Who knew that sliding while bowling could cause a knee to hurt a week later. Who knew that I could go from happy to pissy and bitchy in 6.3 seconds.
But as bad as it was... I did have some moments that weren't all that. Taking P to see her Grandma always warms my heart. When you set aside the idea that maybe I don't burp her enough, I'm evil enough to allow her to suck her thumb and think it's cute, I did infact purchase a pacifier for her (I refuse to call it a binky) and... she just might... horror of all horrors.. be a lefty, my mother in law is only trying to be helpful and she loves her granddaugher almost as much as I love her son. My heart is even thawing a little towards the dogs. Baby, who is anthing but, is cute and sweet and friendly. The other one is afraid of everything and keeps her distance. I'm all good with that.
What I cannot handle and we've deftly avoided lately... until last night is the step-father. I took a good hard look at him last night for the first time in perhaps a year or more. He is dying. He is not aware. Sitting at the table hunched over he appears 85 rather than 65. Still working, going through the motions on broken sleep, confused thoughts, wildly imagined stories and the haze of alcohol. My mother in law says to me that milk puts him out like a light... so he drinks milk before bed. Milk and the three shots of cheap vodka that not so discretely went into the generic glass tumbler along with the ice when he assumed no one was looking. I outted him just to see if she knew. She does and is powerless to put a stop to it. Or she does not want to, I don't know. Four hours until he is supposed to leave for work and he's downing enough to get my whole household feeling pretty damn fine. I'd be out like a light for the entire night. He only makes it an hour, before he's back up and at it again.
A single this time... again with the milk. I have to ask about the grapefruit juice in the fridge before I have any... to make sure no one tampered with it. No, I'm assured he did not. He tired of juice weeks ago and has moved onto the milk. There's a cycle here... V8, grapefruit, milk. All things that go well with the booze. Nice. He sits at the table, randomly changing the channel on the tv and messing with the volume at whim. Then he asks what we're watching and who turned off his favorite show. I busy myself with the baby and dinner.
He is a small man, made smaller by his broken-down appearance. Dressed in dark boxers and a tattered wife-beater, I can't remember the last time I saw him fully or appropriately dressed. Barefoot too, not that it matters much. His skin is still dark, not from time in the sun, but from his herritage - whatever that is. He has taken on a sallow and chalky appearance. His feet and ankles are swollen terrible, not that he seems to care. He has a bruise the size of a footlong overstuff sub sandwich on the back of one leg. It's been there a long time and it's black, not that he seems to notice. He is dying and he does not feel it.
His arms that once were intimidating and powerful are now shrunken and battle scarred. The tatoos that once proclaimed his love for parrots and for Joyce, in that order, are as faded and blurred as the memories they embraced. His children want nothing to do with him. They are embarassed by him and probably a little saddened to see how far he has sunk. The mind that was once agile and strong is gone. He wouldn't remember if they came to visit and while they were in attendance he would do everything in his power to humiliate and alienate them.
His face is concave, sallow, wrinkled and weary. He cannot form a sentence of coherant thought to save his soul. Does he even still have a soul? His hair stands up from his head like troll doll who met a blonde bottle and lost the good fight. His hair would surly be grey if only he would let it. It's his one last stand at vanity. That along with the dentures he rarely wears and nightly dousing with cheap cologne before work. He sits now at the kitchen table demanding whatever his foggy mind decides he must have next and usually it's nonsensical. He mutters whatever is on his mind without regard to the setting or the appropriateness of his verbage. He is like a dog with a bone when he gets going. Spewing forth filth, ugliness, hate, racism, whatever crosses his mind. It's like a giant word association riddle that's unsolvable to the rest of us.
His mind plays tricks on him, his imagination conjuring up wild stories that on their face are impossible. Two guys tried to carjack him in downtown and he had to shoot them both. Yet here he is... no police intervention, nothing on the news... didn't hear about it at the time it supposedly happened. Hmm... me thinks not. He supposedly fell off machinery at work, 50 feet and nearly died. Was unconscious for 45 minutes... they all thought he was dead. Yet there was no trip to the hospital, no workman's comp claim, no osha investigation, he simply up and drove him. Likely not.
It dawns on me as I watch him attempt with shaking hands to down the hot wings that came with the pizza, that in 12 years I have never seen him sober. I honestly think it's too late for that. He is dying and it's only a matter of time.
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