and there are times when the panic is so overwhelming that the sheerness of it cannot be contained, can barely be comprehended, how to keep on top of it, this struggle to get a hold of it at least, a foot hold, a toe hold, some sort of purchase, it always runs away from me for one reason or another, some thing, some series of things, always an excuse, never getting ahead of it, never even getting close enough to imagine an end to it, exhausting, exhausted, i never catch up, i no longer dream it, i can only hope from time to time to break the surface, catch a gulp of air and pray that i do not drown in the short run.
catastrophe and change
through catastrophe comes change, whether you want it or not. either you choose to change or live with the changes that other people will impose on you. and they will. look at today’s date, 9/11. everything changed six years ago. writing became utterly meaningless in the face of cracked fate, brutal determination and sanctified hopelessness.
i was re-orientated and re-directed. i was horrified and struck bone scared. i was already bitter with graduate school and this was the tipping point. i was done with it. i decided after the towers fell that the world was going mad and there was no way i could write my way through it. but i could live, i could provide, and i chose that, i chose to leave the world, and start some other life that i could keep manageable and safe.
here we are six years later. i do not feel any safer, with one child and yet another on the way. but i’m writing again. and it matters. it matters for me to be in the world like this, with the world like this, because the world has continued to be this way. it wasn’t the world that had changed, it was me finding a new fear that i could not, and did not want to, understand.
and here i am now, finding myself yet anew, as if with a different set of eyes, back at it again, back to the grind, because the grind fucking matters. it was always a problem with scale, always too worried about the scale of it. instead of focusing on the work. it’s the work that does the work, whether it’s only on myself or the random hit from amsterdam. it doesn’t matter.
just get the work done, no matter the cost, the scale, or even the fear, especially in the face of fear.
there is no story here
there is no story here, only whips and snaps of something that has leaked through, that has made an impression, that has been butchered beyond recognition. you cannot see what is here, a funhouse mirror at best, only the distortion of noise where the signal found is your own. i am my own and only, as ever have been, this lonely fucking place, where there is no sound other than the roar that defined me as a child and set me apart, the curious detachment that i have lived this all before, nothing ever comes as a surprise, even the happy moments, even in tragedy, nothing at all. just the sound of there having been something here at one time, the trace of a breath, the outline of a something better than this, all but gone except for this blood rush, this fucking maddening absence that spills over and over, shits on everything, breaks everything, shows me for what it is, how truly empty every moment, how devoid, how clean, unblemished, pure and eternal, this thing in me that has no home, that keeps me exposed to it all, that keeps me away from you. this is the true always and forever, my own and only, this lovely fucking solitude where i am most at peace in its silence, where only the noise for company and you will never be permitted to see.
something of this
Something of this like the moment the wind dies down and I can breathe again, the head clears and the heart settles. Settle my heart down, keep it in your hands lest it leaps out onto this highway and we crush it into the ground with lizards and scorpions and the bones of men much more foolish than I.
pre-k oriententay
And at the pre-k orientation program it’s a litany of parents you must do this and not do that PLEASE. A whole tirade of how we as parents need to act. And it doesn’t matter to me, I don’t mind, I’ve heard most of this kind of thing before, but I have to wonder what kind of ridiculousness prompted the need for it.
i hate shit
i hate shit, i really do. i mean i hate looking at it, or god forbid smelling it. i mean i’ll wretch and gag if i get too close to it.
i hate having to clean it up. especially someone else’s. even my kid’s, i cant stand it. i mean she’s three and all so from time to time she has an “accident” (accident my ass) and i’m there by the sink getting the crust of it off her undies with my fingernails because shit is organic and it’ll stain if you don’t get to it quick enough. which in turn freaks me the fuck out and i end up using half a bottle of that soft-soap foamy nonsense and cutting my nails down to the quick.
but don’t get me wrong, i love taking a shit. i’m not one of those people that pops in the bathroom, scrambles for the toilet, shoots it out and can’t wait to run back outside. i take my time taking a shit. never mind magazines, i have books next to my toilet. i want to make sure i am good and done before i even go about the business of wiping my ass, which is a whole other nightmare to begin with. i mean, yeah sure, after two or three passes, the toilet paper looks clean, but what about at the microscopic level, i mean where the bacteria are still there running a three ring circus in your asshole?
i don’t know, but shit is just this big lose-lose situation you know?
the envelope
you will push the envelope wont you? you will push it until it no longer crackles or bend. you will push until something breaks, until she breaks, until you break, until it is all ruined and torn. you will keep pushing until we all fall off a cliff or you are left satisfied.
but there’s no real satisfying you at this point is there? too much, too much, seen and said and felt and already, too soon, too soon, forgotten. you will keep pushing until the seam reveals itself for what it truly is: shambles of a life you never really wanted.
korean mac’n’cheese
overheard: unless that korean cop gyps me on the macaroni and cheese.
limb and finger robe
he wore a robe of limbs and fingers, with a crown of intestines and femurs for sandals. he danced to the beat of a heart strapped on top of his chest that had long since stopped being his own.
i look at you and it all floods me, washes me anew, shoves me out of place. what a terrible, terrible thing your eyes could be.
after anarchy
after the fall, after the break down, after the deconstruction, after we go about the business of taking everything apart that’s been handed down to us and found offensive, which is everything, what do we do? what is there left?
we cannot, after all, live only in rubble. we would be covered in soot. we wouldn’t be able to breathe because of all the dust. we would cut our feet. our palms would bleed. our children would starve. our old would be forgotten, history lost. we eventually would need to build. and in building anything, some fundamental principles would need to be applied or no structure will hold, nothing will withstand our weight. there will be no comfort or shelter.
in other words, in order to be safe, we would have to come up with some sort of code to live by. the question then becomes, how much of it will be borrowed from the generations before? how much of it will be driven by biology? how much of it will be made straight out of thin air?
then, of course, we return to the beginning, after all that, after all this, how do we withhold what we’ve made, how do we maintain in the world we sought to destroy and make anew? how do we avoid all the traps and idiot nonsense that comprises both the margin and the center? how do we go about living as our own and only?
this after thinking about LaChappelle’s Rize, the reality show about tattoo artists in “L.A. Ink”, and my ambivalence to my own culture