1. I need to find a way to make everything normal again. I’ve been looking at my life and all I see is emptiness. Yes, we’ve had a child and she is the most amazing and fulfilling thing I have ever seen, but everything else about myself seems hollow and empty. Downloading movies, an insatiable need for ripping dvd’s (so disciplined I am, as if it was a business), endless and recording and encoding of movies… I don’t know, there’s a hole and I’m in it and I don’t know which way is up.
2. She’s gotten into the habit now, after an angry spell where she’s been jolted suddenly or picked up when she didn’t want to be, that as she settles down a type of complaining sing song language comes out of her. And at first she complained off to the side, as if talking to an imaginary friend, but more recently she talks to us directly, letting us know that we upset her greatly and how she felt about it and even how it frightens her still. It’s not total nonsense or the aftershock blubber of a crying fit; there’s a cadence, specific stops and starts and the movement of a mouth on the verge of articulating language.
And we laugh and laugh with a glee that must be maddening to her: This is serious business you two, are you two making fun of me or what?
3. Things between us worsen then strengthen then worsen again. I think my condition is worsening and as I am getting older, while the edge of sorrow has dulled, I feel as if the schizo-ness she mentioned in recent days is the indication of a greater breakdown. I feel as if I’ve been decomposing for a while now and I really don’t know how to light the darkness that is my heart these days. I am so frayed and terrifying alone and I wish I could have been a better man, a better writer and not live like this in an apartment above my parent’s home and not work nights like some addict and never see her for hours at a time. I wish it had all been different and pushed myself off course of this career track instead of being afraid of failure, of this I am certain I would have failed as a professor. I would never have gotten even past the dissertation part, I did not have the conviction for it.
We should have left Albany first chance we got, but I was greedy for you and our time together and weak for not going further on my own, so delusioned to take Michael Blitz’ foot steps.
4. Ah, such as it is, leave it be, leave it be.
Category Archives: words
Children beyond our imagination
and so we lived quiet lives of sweet subjugation to our children. Lives of rustling grass and soft cars faraway on asphalt. We spun tales of the big city as night fell and dreamed of the daily routines our children fell. We nursed them and tossed out into the wild when they thought they were ready. Oh sure, we clung to them the way a rock climber the sheer of a cliff but their legs and voices grew stronger than our brittle bones, we were far too old for them anymore. She struck the big city upside its head and it dances to her tune. He, on the other hand, much kinder, has Thoreau’d himself further than we have, writing in and of the emptiness of Montana. This is what I dream of, write of, breathe of, of children stretching beyond the you and I we could have been. Children beyond our imagination.
And here we were, holding and dreaming, holding the last vestiges of our youth, cuddling our daughter while she took our youth from us. It’s bitter, but it is true. Our daughter will never know us as we are now, will never know the zest and heat of our ideals, the silliness of our bodies. She’ll be embarrassed of us at best and perhaps wonder how we must have squandered a youth that she will make better of. She’ll never know.
Mommy’s Day Note
mommy mommy mommy
new in world what a place harsh
light sharp sounds the scent
of peach calm skin swaddle
diamond eyes so sweet
mommy mommy mommy
tender coo coo soft lips across
finger touch feather my scalp
warmth envelope rocking
stave worry fears away
mommy mommy mommy
one love true love all love giant
burst into tears full longing
arms wrapped around suddenly
this calm thing this mommy thing this everything
mommy mommy mommy
can I love you this way?
can I be you for a day?
Dear Mommy,
I hope you like your presents. I picked ’em but I didn’t have any money to paid for them but daddy did for me. He said he would take it out of my allowance later. He said you said you wanted just jeans but I told him he was just being cheap and picked out the tops to match them. Anyways happy mommy’s day mommy I’m glad you made me before mommy’s day so we can play together on mommy’s day or you wouldn’t be a mommy just a lady with a cute little belly that’s me!!!
Love,
Ioanna
What does allowance mean?
peach tracing paper before it tears
as she’s all limbs and angry mouth and her skin is peach tracing paper before it tears and she is the not-me that I’ve been dreaming about since her conception and even before, the not-me that can be all the things I could never have been and will no longer be.
Serious eyes and perfect fingers, lips that sharpen into ‘O’ and the mock surprise of raised eyebrows. This little bundle that fills heavier and heavier, this reach of flesh apart from myself. Personality out of nothing, out of gestures, out of a nervous system that still doesn’t know the difference between night and day.
This past Sunday I had not slept the night before on shift, nor throughout the following day. I could not, too excited and forward looking, the day with my daughter after missing her for so long, missing the not-me that she can be, the not-me that I can pour myself into and keep pure of the mistakes and fears of my own.
Even the first nights in the hospital and home, she cried in her sleep. So little time on this earth and already the nightmares have begun. Who was it that said that the normal state of the human mind was one of anxiety’ I held her close to my chest through the shudders wondering how much of my sadness have I already passed on’
Washing dishes over the sink, my wife wept today. We’ve been unbelievably strained. We miss each other, but I think we are also different to each other. How much of it is has to do with change, with the arrival of our daughter, or fear of own future together, a sense of anxiousness about how long will this center, as if, now having brought a child into the world, no longer just a couple, but now a ‘family’, the clock is suddenly ticking to an end.
How ridiculous to fear an unimaginable future.
Would you have picked us if you knew
everyone wants a piece of my little girl and they won’t leave her alone. They want to hold her close to their chests and hold her in their hands. They want to feel that something I feel when I hold her almost all in one hand and she bops her head up and briefly makes contact.
She sleeps legs curled up like frog in the center of my chest, face pressed into soft of my neck and her arms in splayed wide embrace. There is nothing like this in world, and they all want a piece of it. They want to feel it again and want to know what it feels like for the first time.
But she is mine and only ours and she’ll always be ours and we will always suffer for her, we will always feel a pang of despair when someone else picks her up and turns away from us with her in their arms
(My mother had done exactly this, our daughter was beginning to ball and I asked for her and supposedly my mother hadn’t “heard” me and turned away from my outstretched hands and my heart panicked)
First born, first cursed with all this anxiety and love and hope and fear. Ah my poor little one, would you have picked us if you knew what you were in for?
Every day of my life is getting quieter. Everyday of my life consists of a little more peace, a little less static, a little more music.
A father of all things
I became a father on March 4 @ 9:09PM and I really don’t know how to be one. I look at her now and especially when she is crying and I really don’t know what to do. If there has ever been a more pressing need to change, to change again how to approaching living, it is (again) now.
Cliches.
When could I have ever been ready to be a father. I know she only belongs, I look at her the way I contemplate the design of my hand. She is mine, mine as Morrison wrote in Beloved.
I would like to say that I moved (back again) to art, to making pictures with words, to making movement with words and lines, to making something out of nothing as I literally have in the quick breath and swell of skull and aged fingers of my daughter. Right here in front of me, this thing, breathing, demanding, crying, feeding, alive, alive, as if all of this has been a dream without resting, a dream without failure. I’ve been a lucky one, I’ve struck it rich with this woman who has endured me and endured with me.
From nothing something comes, a child plucked out of the womb, just like that, a rabbit out the hat. Don Byrd, “…a strange way to make humans.”
I need to write you and maybe the story of my life. I will need to write. I need to change (again) into something more, a father of all things. Would anyone have believed it?
who would have thought (short)
who would have thought that the world would stand still for one moment, when she emerged from her mother’s womb. Who would have thought.
9:09 pm. Ioanna Sophia Savopoulos.
I laughed to the point of breaking joy.
I’m going through nights like this
1.i’m going through changes.
my body has never been at once so familiar and foreign. looking at her body go through it’s swelling and knowing what that belly holds, what precious DNA from this paired generation, returns the gaze to myself and how much has changed and how little has. i still don’t look like what i imagine myself to be, even after 31 years of looking.
2.nights like this.
nights like this are full of dead space and yearning for sleep. perpetually restless like the urge for a cigarette but knowing that the bitter smoke will never again cross these lips. it’s almost as if it’s become out of fashion to myself more than anything else. i’d love to have one, but i don’t know, the will to smoke seems dull now.
3.shorter than the rest.
shorter than the rest and happier for it. quick and not terribly incisive either. reading websites revolving around Ellis’ PLANETARY. Good stuff, not too heady but hits all the right points. i could have done stuff like that if i only had the attention and stamina for it. it’s always been a question of stamina.
4.he walks in to a bar (something i do often).
he walks into a bar and comes up to the stool. he looks around it for a bit, spins it with his left hand. he bends down close to seat and listens to it whirl. the bartender is cleaning beer glasses when he notices this guy. he shakes his head.
it just dies there.
5.of all the things.
of all the things i could have said, of all the things i could have wanted, there would have been something like this, a lake, a highway, a tree, of all the things that could have been, part of the telling and the wanting, of all the things, just these few, a dress, a table, an apple, of all the things i should have said, should have wanted to say but for the exhaust and the storm and the laughter, wanting to tell you of all the things; that surely would have been something.
Somehow the butter rolls
1.
And somehow the butter rolls are the best in the morning with a cup of hot chocolate and a bit of a chill. Sometimes even an arcade game while big burly men talked about lumber and cement or something. They were big and fat and wore beards. I was always invisible and always on the way to somewhere else. In the morning, when the rolls were at their freshest and the world had only just begun to roll itself out into the light.
2.
And I can be very good at this, when things come together, when the traces of the logic begin to appear it gets exciting the way this used to, and it’s quick enough and simple enough in its design that, although the task might seem daunting at first, it’s ultimately done the moment it ever appeared. And what makes it more precious is the fact I’m the only one doing it and although I’ll brag there’s a secret rush and peak of joy that I cannot translate with gloating. And it’s good.
3.
And truly things cannot be better save for the lack of money, wouldn’t it be great to have a couple of bucks more, ok, maybe a couple of thousands. Ok, a million and then it’ll set everything straight.
4.
And The West Wing, while the banter is missing, a very keen sense of tension, drama and cinematography has filled the void Sorkin has left. At first it felt very technical, but as the season has moved forward, its gotten more slick and while I’d like to write emotional, it’s not, but rather empathic, less obvious stresses and just beginning to test the waters about what it’s characters are supposed to raving about.
5.
And although the nights are certainly strange I feel a new change come over me, slow and sure but I’m not sure if it’s for good or bad, another degree of coldness and sterility, and it doesn’t quite feel like that, something else entirely, as if each cell is being slowly replaced, which its supposed to, and where does the soul hang out anyway if not in your cells and isn’t quite entirely possible that every seven days or so, every three years or so, you’re an entirely different person from the cells up, even from the soul up. Shouldn’t you change? Wouldn’t you?
6.
And a baby shower tomorrow. And women and presents and laughter. And possibly children and the hope for. And later men, men and their tales of their wives giving birth to their children. And when it’s all done there’ll be just her and her belly and me, my wonderful life locked away within the heart of this woman who is about to offer our child to the world. And to the world I say, I beg, I plead “Please be kind to this child and all the rest if we’re lucky again, please be kind.”
7.
I still dream of horrible death and anguish. I still run with his death heavy across my eyes.
Drove against the sun, against time
1.
every once in a while you get the urge and you stick your hand down your throat and make sure you don’t throw up in the middle of it and try as hard as you can to get a piece of it but you never do it’s always there that gnawing that there could have been more there could have been something else, some one else, you could have been someone else and how much longer can you yearn for it and how much longer can you write it out, ride it out and it all comes down to having said this many times too often and you wish it was as dull as that but there’s an absence there where there should be something sturdy and strong like the hole a tooth makes when it gone missing.
2.
And it doesn’t come to me as easily anymore the eyes are starting to puff, dull over, and I have my hand on her belly almost every other night, whenever I can and I don’t really know what to make of it, this baby she is making, this baby that was somehow made and will be made throughout my life, but I put my hand there whenever I remember to because that’s my skin in there too, and something of me is growing inside of you while I’m out here dying and the cycle continues, here it is lurching forth bursting at her seams. Look at it, belly abounding.
3.
I love her more than I ever have and I could have sworn that I loved her then as I do now and it all appeared to me then as she crossed the room and here we are now eight years later after a lifetime as children, with a child growing between us between the cover throughout the night, she walking belly first, baby first and ain’t that something all this out one little drop that found all the right angles and slopes to get through that little crack.
4.
Of course she wouldn’t appreciate that one at all.
5.
My father turns to my mother and in front of my wife asks about where his niece’s invitation for the surprise baby shower was.
6.
It’s amazing how increasingly surreal life is working between daylight and moon light, names of days disappear, the week flows and stutters then >snap< just like that, it's gone. Days off filled with silence and loneliness and the nights are prisons, especially now without the smoking, and I run at the gym and still cannot catch my breath, but the days bleed and the nights wear on to a dawn that is relentless and unforgiving.
7.
And I used to dance in crowds to feel alive and I drove against the sun, against time.