A Brown Corduroy Dress

 I had been up for an hour.

Christmas morning, 2020.

It was 5:30 and the night before I had set the coffee maker to begin brewing at 7, but I got out of bed and turned it on. Pissed. Took my daily shovelful of vitamins, medications, and ibuprofen, and opened my laptop.

It wasn't that I couldn't sleep or that I was necessarily excited for Christmas. I slept fine, for four hours, and beyond the three day weekend, and in general, spending a day being able to express my love was not a bad way to spend it. But I wasn't Christmas excited. I was just awake. 

Elizabeth and I had decided to spend our Christmas Eve shoving large amounts of sandwiches and pie in our mouths and I physically ached afterward, certain my ribs were going to crack outward each time I moved. I don't mean that in jest. I was legitimately concerned. I assumed this had something to do with the early morning.

Over the last month I had begun having vivid dreams. Not lucid, and still dream-like in many ways, just more engaging and lifelike than my normal fare. Last night was no different. 

I was in the modest and nice home of friends I used to know, a different lifetime, asking their forgiveness. They were kind and obliged and we spoke and laughed a bit and when the conversation ended I stood with them by my car (one I do not recognize now) and I felt more complete. We said our goodbyes and that is when I woke up. 

Sure, the dream had it's elements of absurdity, such as a moment where I requested their butler give me a Pepsi because I was time traveling and Pepsi was apparently a "special" item, which I was aware of and put on an act ("Oh, wow. I haven't had one of these in so long! Oh, how special!"), but still it was vivid. Like many others had been recently. In fact, it wasn't even the first dream with similar themes I had had in the last year, where I had been time traveling to meet my friends in the future, tell them I love them. Ask their forgiveness, and say my goodbyes. Sometimes, the tone is more somber. But not this one. I felt stronger. A singular human capable of growth and acceptance and humility. I felt a bit more complete, in a way.

That feeling of completeness, and the conversation in general, was the focus of the first hour of my waking thoughts and though it was a dream seemingly out of left field, I was glad I had it and even now, I do feel a little lighter in being. 

Also of note; in the dream, I was wearing quite a nice brown/orange button up corduroy dress/jacket thing. A real beauty.

Sitting at the computer now. Typing. Waiting for the coffee to finish, and ultimately waiting for Elizabeth to wake so we can celebrate our day together, and I am thinking over my last few Christmas'. Particularly one I had written about only three years ago, toward the bottom of the pit, and the contrast. 

I'm thankful that I was able to hang on. I'm thankful for the people in my life who helped me hang on. I'm thankful for the dreams in which I can revisit and reconcile with people who are long gone into the haze somewhere, and I'm thankful for each morning now and especially this one, when even though I have had a few cups of coffee, I may go back to bed to just lay next to Elizabeth and take the moment to appreciate the fact that it exists. That I exist in a space within it. That I exist at all.

Good morning. Merry Christmas.

 

The World as it was to Me on a Rainy Saturday in November.

 In the North it snowed.

In Texas, rain. First only while I slept and then on a Friday a mist in the air all day, and on Saturday constant rain.

Almost December and cold, as far as cold goes here. I hadn't worn shorts in a few weeks and sitting at the kitchen table with nothing to do I wore a large sweater that read "Thank You" over a red hoodie with a lighthouse, over a large black v-neck t-shirt with white paint all over the front of it.

I had tried to paint earlier in the day. Now, waiting for paint to dry. I imagine I will still be waiting when you read this.

Waiting for paint to dry.

In the other room, a series of records I have loved, some too much, and some not enough, play through the television, and I keep thinking of a photo a friend had posted earlier in the day that brought me back to adolescence and I'm listening to the band Hum now, content and nostalgic, waiting for paint to dry.

A few days after Thanksgiving. The empty world of the post-holiday, and in a few days the anthill world of the pre-HOLIDAYS.  

Trying to keep busy, between waking up this morning and going to bed tonight, but I am waiting for paint to dry. Listening to records. Fucking with my phone. Daydreaming and over-analyzing. Clenching my jaw and eating left over mashed potatoes. Pacing through the house in boots I guess I don't need to be wearing and waiting for paint to dry.

Dim grey light soaking through the curtains fighting against the yellow light of the kitchen. The contrast gnaws at my vision and I keep having to choose a direction to absorb. Pacing through the house in boots I should just take off. 

The thought; why is it so miserable to waste time today? Why am I not comfortable?

This fucking paint.

If only the paint would dry I could be distracted and occupied and then I could go to sleep.

A Bridge

I kicked it over the edge. The empty bottle spinning, falling toward the water. A few hundred feet below me it splashes into the water. I do not hear it over the wind and the rushing water. 

It is 1997 and I am fourteen, keeping balance on the steel girder running most of the length of the trestle bridge.  There is a game I play. I stick my toes over the edge. Keep my arms stretched out by my sides. Stand up straight. Soon, I inch a bit forward and now a third of my foot is over the edge. Soon half my foot. Eventually, amid the wind and November clouds, above the river and the town, I am weightless on my heels. I inhale and hold it.  I am weightless and I am not here and I am, for a moment, free. My only god the wind. And he spares me, always.

A few moments pass and I slowly bring my arms down and move back toward the bridge. Sit on the elevated ties and let the drunken haze wash over me, staring into the town below.

In a few months I will be kicked out of school. I will be alone. I will be institutionalized for the first time. In a few more months I will be in an apartment in the projects a few towns over. Tending to my pregnant girlfriend, and avoiding her drunken mother's wrath, in whichever form it takes at any given time. Screams. Knives. Threats. Kicking the doors off the hinges. Speaking to the air. In a few months I cross a gap and I never return. These are last days, but I do not then realize it.

I lay back and set my head on the steel rail and it hurts but I don't mind. There are no vibrations and everyone says trains don't use this bridge anymore. I've never seen one on it. All I see are the grey clouds above me. Thick and endless, spreading forever beyond the mountains and forests surrounding the town. Where I want to be. Away. Above. Beyond. 

My stomach twists with the stolen whiskey and not enough food and I roll to one side. It clenches and I am on my knees. I feel a splinter in my hand and recoil and as I do I clench again and vomit. I try to aim between the ties and some of it goes between them, but most of it hits the tie and splashes and I vomit again. Again. Soon only my stomach is clenching but nothing is coming up. My head is spinning and the splinter in my hand stings and there is puke on my clothes and face and I am glad I cut my hair a few months back. 

Spent the summer outside of Chicago. Cut my hair before I left. My mother felt it was best for me to go to Colorado and work with my uncle, doing construction. Might lift my spirits. Get a little money in my pocket. Give me a positive male role model. I flew out of Rhode Island alone and then to Houston, where I sat alone in the terminal and stared out at the skyscrapers in the distance and all I could think about was children living in vans with junkie parents and some of them would get sold and some would run away and thought that even though everything had happened the way it did, I was lucky. I mourned for those kids, sitting in that airport in Houston, and then I was on a plane again, into Colorado. I worked two days before getting sun poisoning and blisters. After work my uncle took me to a bar for a few hours. I would drink coke and read Stephen King's "Desperation", and after a little while he would fuck the bartender in the back room. Then we would drive home. My aunt and I began to leave Colorado some time after midnight about a week into my stay. She ran into my room. Hid beside my bed. 

He came in. I covered for her. He made threats. Smashed a glass. Went outside, cut her tires and drove off into the night in his large and senseless truck. On shredded rubber and rims, she and I, and my small cousin, began our journey then, slowly and with only a brief stop to sleep and get new tires in the neighboring town. In Chicago, at another Aunt's house, I stayed another month. Made friends on a Navy base. Met a girl. Used the eighty dollars I had earned to buy CD's. Eventually, came home.

A positive male role model.

Second verse, same as the first.

The November air bit at me through my sweater, with most of the alcohol now splayed violently across the ties I laid on. What was I to become? What was I to gain? Why should I want anything? Nothing lasts. No one sticks around. Your home is only as good as the people inside of it and suddenly I wanted to go home. To know my mother would be home soon. To play guitar and eat a sandwich. Take a shower and watch TV. To be home.

In a few months it would all be behind me, and I would never be able to return.

I  got to my feet and began walking. Took my sweater off, wiped whatever puke off me that I could, and threw it into the woods. 

Walking to Work

A stone wall runs along the belly of a cemetery near my apartment, bending idly with the road and eventually fading into the underbrush. Patches of shadow sway and slide with the trees and I am walking, watching nothing as cars pass. 

Behind sunglasses. The incline of the hill, the heat of the day. The weight of passing moments.

A sludge of lifetimes spattered around my feet like the wet ash of a burnt photo album.

the weight.

the weight.

I dosed too much before work and I can feel it now.

The greens GREEN and the air CLEAN and the sky SKY.

I work with a horrible person. A small scoped and loud, wicked human. 

I dosed too much before work and I know my afternoon is about to become more than I want.

 

Crest the hill and stop to peer into the "little library", a small red cabinet affixed to a post at the end of a driveway. A cookbook. Poetry books I may grab another day. Some magazines. Microwaveable pasta. A package of mens underwear. There is no more perfect example of anarchy in action than a little library. Humans, for the good of humans. 

I'm nauseous with anxiety and depression and disgust. I imagine we all are, but I know we aren't. The year has not been kind to us, and some have been affected more than others. I don't know where I land on the spectrum, but I don't feel great. I spit into the grass near the sidewalk and continue walking. My mouth is both dry and over salivating and I am dizzy and I can feel my heartbeat.

Breathe.

Breathe.

The old tricks. Count my fingers. Find something blue. Yellow. Green. Red. Breathe.

Walk to work.

Near an intersection I see a man crossing, and he turns toward me. He will pass me, I guess near the third driveway away from me. I'm not always right, but often enough. I dig around in my bag for my mask and enjoy the last moment or two of the air on my face and my mask is on. 

The momentary and mandatorily passing moment of horror passes at the third driveway with the man and I count to thirty and take the mask off again. I haven't been able to process the pandemic. I have to force it out of my head any time it leaks in. I understand it. I see it. But I can't grasp the scope of it. Of the sheer horror of it. I begin to choke and I feel my heart pick up the pace again and oh, look, a cloud that looks like a rose.

The rose. 

The rose.

The air is thick on my skin and the sweat on my forehead. I can taste my breathe. I can taste my teeth. I can taste blood and I worry I'm clenching again. I am. I relax my jaw. Breathe. Breathe.

The corner across from work. Wait for the white lights of the Cross man. White cross and I cross.

I have no feeling toward my job, beyond not wanting to be tripping when I have to deal with the person.

Breathe. Focus. Get water.

Cross into the building. They take my temperature. Check my nametag. Ask for symptoms. All clear.

I walk the sterile hall and slip into the first bathroom. Into a stall. I crash onto a toilet and heave the breath in. Out. In. Out. Choke down a pill. Small. Green. Hydroxyzine. They make me tired and out of focus, but what other choice. Part of the diet. 

Okay.

Get up, head to the sink. Wash my face. Breathe. Breathe.

Out the door, and off to work. Panicking. Tripping. Breathing.

 

A Full and Brilliant Blue

Love in the time of Corona.

it says, and the joke passes.


then

And here I am.



A moment on the deck near the water. We bought sandwiches and had walked for a while. By the water. Near the condos. In the sun.

I had taken you to the treasure. The Source. The Place.

But now sandwiches and water and the cold breeze on a cool day. The water and the evening to us and the Place.

I stand and take footage of the water. Of the day. Of you. You eat your food and I sit next to you and I eat.


Are you with me?

Are you here with me?


My heart hides the thought away and above me the sky is a full and brilliant blue. Eternal and love. All.


"I love you," you say, touching my hand.

"I love you also," I say,


touching your hand.

Donut Has it Figured Out

It is morning. Earlier than I prefer. I've been awake for hours, one sleep cycle through the night. Wake up, sit up, close my eyes and clear my mind. Begin the day fresh and without the pulse and usual storm of fears and questions.

The room is dim and the air is cool. Summer was here but now is at the door, slipping on its shoes, coat, hat. It's been nice catching up, but I have to be going.

At a table with coffee. Laptop. The cat asleep and dreaming, gently twitching and moaning next to me. Long hours ahead for the rest of the week and so I take this moment of quiet to look for work in a new city, in a new state, in a new life.

I've never been happy standing still. One day into the next and look now I'm older and nothing has changed. They put a new restaurant downtown and isn't it lovely that we are all growing old and apart? Same bar stools. Same walks around the block. Constant and immeasurable fade of light behind our eyes. We got a dog. We got a house. We got a raise. We have a life. Over and over, around and around.

I've never been happy standing still.

"That will change, you'll want to settle."

I'm nearly forty now. I may become too tired to keep moving, but I doubt I will ever want to settle. Big world, short life.

That isn't to say I'm not envious. To see people who want to get married, who want to buy a house. Who want to spend decades building a career and die accomplished in those three things. I am. I don't care for those things, or to be more clear, I don't care for what they symbolize, but I long for the simplicity of the dream.

The cat is awake now and stretches and goes about cleaning himself. The bell around his neck chimes faint as he does and I watch. I read an article recently about cats and telepathy and I try to send him a message but he doesn't hear it and in my mind I call him a donut but he doesn't care and turns to face the window and lays down.

Donut. Has it figured out.


Sending resumes. More kitchen work. Not what I would choose to do, but it is easy to come by.



Keep moving.

Dissolve.

Futility eats at me.

Pointlessness.

Running fast and hard into the dark so we can run fast and hard into the dark and eventually fall over choking and exhausted and happy that we ran fast and hard into the dark.

Makes it impossible to keep work.

To stay in one place.

To be motivated, goal oriented, or successful in the eyes of anyone or myself.

To be impressed, inspired, interested, or interesting, inspiring, or impressive.

Lay on the bed. Stare at the wall or out the window. Remember the fire of drinking. Remember my cremation.





day.








night.








day.








Lay on the bed. Stare at the wall or out the window.



Dissolve.

Small Room

This small room.

Daylight, cold and barren, fills gently against the walls and over the bed and across my face.

The tops of skeletal trees from the bottom of the window and horizontal six thick black wires all touched with snow and ice.

A house plant I can't name in the corner of the window. A cat with three feet curled soft and asleep next to me. A pile of books. A basket of sleep medication and pain killers and life ephemera. The absence of a ghost retched weekly to life from some memory, some bottle, some sum of many and wasted lives.

This small room and a moment of peace.

Close my eyes. Inhale. A meditation in a moment. Exhale. Open my eyes.

Take it when I can.

A year ago I was some one else. In a dim and nicotine stained room in Texas, packed full of anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medication. Gripping tightly the bed sheets and the hope and some fucking job and some fucking need I didn't understand.

A year before that I was someone else. Drunk and screaming. High and alone and never alone. Glass to walls. Staring out from rooftops and seeing nothing. Nothing forever. Wasting into the mold in my basement, dissolving into the trash of my home. Screaming.

A year before that I was someone else. Singing. Exploring. Living. In love with you and the world as I came to see it and as I thought it should be.

A year before that I

A year before that

Before that.

Before that.

An eon.

This small room, an unimaginable distance between all of me.






This small room and the gentle breathing of a cat, curled next to me. Daylight on my face. Someone else, and soon someone else again.

This is okay. Now.