a Point of Light

I'm standing in a neighbor's yard staring at the sky watching a light unblinking travel quickly, south to north. I've left work and walked nearly home. Crossed the bridge between towns and spent fifteen minutes attempting to convince myself that existence itself wasn't some eldritch horror screaming from the depths, the black, craning it's unholy head, fourteen jaws and uncountable teeth shredding and gnashing, all seeing, all consuming, all defying anti-god DESTROYER and a small beetle had caught my eye.

I crouched and spoke to him for a moment. A one sided conversation and the ever-present imbalance poked again at me as if I were a beetle as well and I stopped and looked to the sky, maybe staring down the inter-dimensional inevitable, the unGod god, the great cosmic terror, however it presents itself and the sky was beautiful. A thought to the great clear night of centuries before electricity and then back to the moment at hand.

A point of light.

A trajectory.

Unblinking it slides and I am still. I walk away from the light of a street lamp into grass and between houses.

Planes

Two windows in my bedroom and from one, laying on my bed, I watched sometimes the rain and sometimes the snow. The day give out and the ambient street light, and some times a plane leaving the airport in the distance.

Over the roof of the house across the street. Over the trees. Over the power lines. In the day a steady shining plane and in the night a light, or sometimes two, gliding from right to left across my view. The plane happily fulfilling its purpose and the people happily or unhappily or ambivalent, awake or asleep or somewhere in between, not so far from me going somewhere far from me. I lay on my bed and sometimes we exist together, though they don't understand that I am with them.

This morning, the snow wafted easily by, finishing up.

November in Burlington.

We moved here six weeks ago. Elle and I were renting a room downtown. She worked from our room most of the day and I had taken a job in a kitchen and quit two weeks later. I panic when people are watching me. My vision becomes static and blurred and my heart races and my face and body get hot, and my mind screams at me. Screams Q U I T. Screams the truth of me. Screams all of the things it normally only whispers. But I have to keep it going. Keep it together. Keep working. Keep working. Keep working. Learn to understand my total lack of value and my total inability to be a human being or to offer anything at all to anyone regardless of my desire to and then I took an administrative job in a hospital. I also had been offered an administrative position for a hotel chain, both of which had been offered to me because I had lied on my resume and through interviews and I am okay to look at and I am also an okay liar, but not qualified for those (or any) positions, as far as I am concerned.

Snow.

Snow fucking everywhere.

Downtown

Grass growing tall as summer rolls out of bed. The game of 'will they mow it soon?' I always hope they don't and on my way to work in some months a snake and I will meet and we can call a truce and I will be on my way. I don't eat seafood anymore because a small fish and I called a truce some years ago.

Is the sky blue or smog? The humid haze and a breeze that stops and starts and the smell of the mill lilts through the town.

A bench. The canyon of downtown. Buildings reaching a few stories and the sunlight breaks direct for the mid afternoon and then shade again slips and I'm watching the people and occasionally writing in my notebook and wishing, but wishes are not worth writing about.

Outside. Sidewalk seating. A coffee, black, on the table in front of me and a man with a dog sits near me. I see him from time to time and always with the dog. White. The dog, but also the man. He sips and people know him. They stop, talk, and move along and he always stares out at the street as if waiting to begin, and I assume he has already ended. I assume he is fascinating to know, but I know it is fascinating to assume.

I borrowed a collection of Bukowski poems from the library but, as happens, I am bored of Bukowski and I also borrowed Hemingway's unfinished novel. I have read it three times and the first time I read it I went through a long period of creativity and the second time I read it I didn't, but now... well, also not much. I've been considering more Faulkner, but I'm always unsure about syllabus writers and so I find myself perusing the autobiographical graphic novels in the library. All of their trains were late and all of their coffees were lukewarm and all of their gardens wilted and I'm reading my seventh. I'd like to write one and I consider a number of talented artist friends who may want to collaborate with me. I swipe my hair across my forehead and sip my coffee and wish I had the courage to stand and pet the dog (white) and talk to the man (also white) and enjoy my coffee (black) in good company.

I don't.

From the Window of the Kitchen Where I Work

Spring unfurls under the grey New York sky and I kick slow through town, through home, between the shifting shops and restaurants, the library and the cemetery. The skyline grows and shifts as coral, millimeters a year, only noticeable through photographs and "Oh, I remember..." and "that was when..."

I walk the bridge and climb the hill toward the center of town, and the air is still cool mostly and the traffic is always impatient and in other parts of the country people smile when you catch their eye and here they look away or tighten their brow or mouth inaudible curses and it wraps around me, warm and comfortable. Fuck you. Get out of my goddamned way. How've you been?

The open mics are all gone now. The musicians have all moved or moved on. The drugs have become rare or weak. The joy has been sucked out. I kick through the town and I will get coffee and borrow a book from the library and walk home and enjoy


Not Drinking


and


Not Participating


and


Barely Existing.


This has all been a choice I have made. A search for a deeper meaning, or meaning at all. An attempt to center, or rescue myself.


From the kitchen where I work I gaze through the window at faces I have grown with over the last handful of years, people I didn't know in my previous life, people I will forget shortly in my next. Knocking through this town, building to building, lover to lover. Job to job, dream to dream. And where does it end? For me? We'll see. For them, please, o please, don't end here my friends.

I watch from the window of the kitchen where I work and morning, then day, then evening, and night. Morning, then day, evening, and night. I type in my employee number, clock in, clock out. Go home, every seven days I put away all but twenty dollars of my pay.

This grey New York sky.

Through the week I get mostly coffee at the coffee shop and sometimes I get food at a gas station and the rest of my money I hide away.

They all drink around me. Go out to eat. What's five dollars? Ten? Twenty? What else is there to do?


Grey.


What else is there to do in this town?

We come close. Hold each other. We kiss. We fuck. We cry. We start bands and we hold hands and we move in together and break apart and what else is there to do in this town.

Go out. Get drinks. Celebrate, commiserate.

Please, o please, don't end here my friends.

I dream.

I lay on my bed, in a small nearly attic room with slanted ceilings and a stuck open window and someone's old butterfly stickers glued to the wall. I lay on my bed and close my eyes and dream.

The window down. The forest sliding by. The road under me. I dream and I am moving. Fading into the air. Disappearing and if I never come home again good and if you never hear from me again I'm sorry and if I find myself... if I learn who I am...


The grey New York sky.


Lay on my bed and dream.


When I get enough money.


When I get my license back.


When I get out of this town.





We all wake up together and roll over together and go to work together.


We all live and love and dream together, we all waste and rot and fuck and snort and pretend together and





one of these days, I'm gonna leave this town.

A Handful of Snakes

It was evening and the summer of 1989. I was five, turning six, and sitting in my bedroom reading a Ghostbusters magazine in deep woods Maine. We had come the year before, I assume fleeing a landlord, or chasing the dream of 'work up north', or maybe as a way for my parents to find a new beginning. I was in my second school and third home in that year (which had become standard) and had made a few friends. At the moment things were still gold and green and evening shared a haze of dream, the exhaustion from spending the day outside with the cats and my young sister in the yard, or the treehouse, or the puddles, or tall grass surrounding the property. The adventures of Ghostbusters. The sun across the land, falling slow in fading sheets through my windows.

I had washed for the night, excitedly, after just beginning to take showers instead of baths, standing and reaching and becoming a strong man. I had brushed my small teeth and found pajamas. Laying on my bed and reading and the sound of the lawnmower outside of my open window. My father cutting the tall grass near the house. Further away and within the next few days he would set fire to the rest of it and my sister and I would watch from the porch or when the flames were smaller we'd come close and watch the border burn and eventually die, leaving only a scent I love to this day, and blackened stubble waiting for rain.

I read, and he mowed.

My mother, I assume, bathed my sister or cleaned up after me, most likely both.

The mower stopped and I was only vaguely aware.

My father mumbled outside and after a moment shuffled to my window.

"James," he said.

I rolled over and hopped to the window.

"Hi, Dad!"

"Check this out." He lifted his hands. They were cupped and he opened them and in them a mess of pink and red and brown and bits of white. Wet and small. 

"What is it?"

"Snakes," he said. 

I didn't see snakes. I saw nothing. Meat, at best. Slime.

"Where?"

He turned. "Right over there. Hit'em with the mower. Must have been babies in a nest or something. Pretty cool, huh?"

"Uhhuh," I said. The image of the snakes moments before and the blades shredding them in panic was all I could see and the image sits with me now, thirty years later. 

He turned and threw the wet mess into the grass and wiped his hands on his pants. "Back to it." 

I watched him start the mower and thought that the tall grass had more nests and that when we burned the grass in a few days the snakes would be able to escape into the woods or under the ground as the flames slowly moved outward and I hoped he would be finished with the grass near the house soon and I hoped there were no snakes in the rest of it.

I laid on my bed and didn't want to read anymore and soon the sun had gone down and my mother had said good night and I was in bed. Back to it.

Cars Pass and Days Pass

I've been sleeping close to eighteen hours a day. Some aided with two or three of my diminishing anxiety meds, most not. Work in the evenings. Come home and sleep until I work again.

In sleep I can dream. In sleep I can set things right. In sleep I am not awake, alive, or a part of this anymore. I dream of ghosts, I dream of you. I dream of cities and futures and plans and the longer I dream the more linear it becomes. The more real. Beg to stay.

I wake. Go to work.

Walk the hour in the wind and through the traffic and I have no interests now. I no longer desire music, or art, or creation at all. Friends keep reaching out. I keep nodding and agreeing and smiling.

I argue with myself about you, about letting that go, about letting it all just go, and when we speak you are full of anger and vitriol and I should ignore you, block you, but anything is better than nothing. Anything.

I argue with myself, to let go and forgive so many of you. I argue with myself that there must be better days ahead and what a waste it would be if I don't see them. I argue I argue I argue.



I see nothing in the mirror.



I've been visiting people I've lost. Contacting them, and soon I will start visiting the people I need to forgive. I want no more weight. I want my heart to be clean and I want to tell you all I love you, because I do, in ways all your own.

I'm not sure why I am writing this, or even who I am writing it for.

I suppose I just need a witness, and this is the easiest way for me to express myself.

I've been sleeping eighteen hours a day. I have no interests. I am making the rounds.


Walk the town. Watch the snow melt. The cars pass and the days pass and I mourn. Futures, people, my self.

Better days might be there, I keep seeing signs, or maybe I'm looking for them. Come downstairs and hear the radio say "you are important". Open a book and the characters discuss the sadness of lost sunsets. I see the signs. But it just feels like I'm being talked at. Not to. I don't think I can be convinced. I tried. I took a year. I cleaned myself up. I found better habits and I made an effort and yet, now.

I don't think I can be convinced.

I tried.

Sixty Degrees and a Hot Cab

Finishing out a prescription bottle of pot and then not doing that anymore. It's still not for me, but I am better at it than I used to be. An attempt to sate that goddamn transcendence void that left with alcohol.

"Just work on the things you love!"

"Take a class!"

"Aw you don't need that!"

Sitting on my bed. Typing. No, I won't die without the feeling of transcendence, but it brings me small amounts of joy that I've yet to find elsewhere.

"Try meditation!"

"Get plenty of sleep!"

"No, really, try meditation!"

I do meditate, and since becoming medicated, I sleep much better. I drink large amounts of water and I get a good amount of fresh air.

I think about home a lot. Who I was there and what I had. How it had a short lifespan and if I was there now it would be over and I would have no hope.

I know that when I walk into a room you wish I hadn't.

I stay in this one.

Focus. Paint. Draw. Try to write, try to write music. Nothing really comes out and I think it is an after effect of the pot and an inability to focus rather than a side effect of the medication (even though that is what happened last time). Think about money. And think about how to sleep. Think about connection, and think about how to wake.

I really have no idea what tomorrow will be. I never know anymore. No sense of stability and no sense of safety. Constant state of anxiety. When I meditate I focus on the fear and try to expel it and maybe I have to some degree. I'd be in an awful state if I hadn't, maybe.

This tea tastes like hot cabernet.

An idea strikes me and I think it is a dangerous one so I type this sentence to let it out of my brain and I move on.

I try to move on.

Work in an hour.

At home it has snowed and people are shoveling and cold and slipping on ice and shivering and holding each other and eating dinner together and walking in it all, hand in hand. Watching a film. Hand in hand. Smiling. Hand in hand. Freezing. Hand in hand.

60 degrees here and I am sitting on my bed typing in the toxic yellow light of nicotine stained bulbs and I am thinking of so many of you.

Okay, It's the New Year

Okay, it's the New Year. 

Central timezone feels like the silver medal new year.

So, where am I? To look back later, where am I? Where do I think I am, anyway?

I am beginning my fifth month in Austin, Texas. I have met only a handful of people and I don't think I consider any of them friends. I am two weeks into my second job here (third if you count the one that I skipped out on the first day). Me, as per usual. 

I am 130 days sober (or somewhere in that area), and I have never had a drink in Texas, which, 'Land o' Cowboys' seems like a wasted moment, but it's one I am happy to sacrifice.

I am (we are) mending, or attempting to mend, a relationship that though we both abused it, I beat it to near death. Gasping and spitting blood and broken teeth and swollen blackened skin. Bottle in hand and mental illness completely unchecked, I tore through love and connection with complete galactic apathy. And now we cautiously thread needles and speak quietly and we sew the small patches together and we hope. I hope.

The mental illness, however, is now, officially, checked. Witnessed, assessed, diagnosed, checked. I am a few weeks into medication and the effects are noticeable. I am calm. I can breathe and brush away intrusive and destructive feelings. I can sleep. Well, I sleep better than normal. Occasionally panic sneaks up on me and I have a pill for those moments and they work, but they make me drowsy. Mute my libido. Didn't kill it, but told it to shut the fuck up for a few minutes once in a while. A welcome change. I do sometimes note that I can still feel the untamed ups and downs, but my brain refuses to acknowledge them and I end up in a bit of a haze when that happens.

I'm lonely. I'm uncertain about the future. That makes it difficult to plant roots. To reach out and start a life here. Uncertainty ignored leads to disaster. Leads to unpreparedness, but am I really all in if I even consider other options?

Am I really all in if I consider what I am going to do if none of this works out?

If I start to drink again?

If I can't keep a job again?

If I lose my connection with her?

If I can't afford my medication and therapy?

Oh, but the loneliness. I realize that may have sounded mopier than I wanted it to.

This year unfolded the way it did because I needed to fix myself or die. I have been to behavior units. Twice. Short term doesn't work for me. Nothing works for me unless I really, honestly, want it to. I hit bottom in March and I stepped out onto the road and I began a journey I am still on. I am lonely because it is necessary. I need to know myself first. I need to understand myself. I need to listen to myself. Away from distractions. Friends and bands (though I miss them both deeply), strangers, and people who think they knew me. I needed away from that and now I find myself hesitant to rekindle that spark here, in Austin. 

I am fearful of the person I was, and right now, in these first moments of 2019, I have no idea who I am. Not yet, anyway.

I'll find out.

Maybe not this year, but eventually, and that is my sunset. My draw to keep walking.

Someday, I will know exactly who I am, and I will be thankful.