and I will believe in children again.
And I can never be a child again but I will be something other for my own.
I will try to grow past the misery
and reach between the hiccup of her giggle and smile and find some comfort
beyond the 2 second fascination with her toothlessness
I will believe that I have a future without fear eventhough I cannot imagine it.
I will not imagine it in order to save myself from it.
And I will touch again my wife and feel again what it was like to be twenty with her and silly as I am silly again now with our child.
I will learn to forget shame and inhibition.
I will no longer crouch and I will no longer let myself linger in the madness of the night and the easy lazy sway of despair.
I will walk, I will straighten my back, I will run, I will make my heart beat mad from within to remind me of where it was when I was first born.
I will no longer try to settle debts with old demons but rather let them run amok. They do not have any hold over me for they are the engines to all this, the fears have driven me to make something more of my life than what it was.
It was the demons that brought my love to me, that brought me child to me. Random beauty from chaos.
I will believe.
Ioanna’s First Foray
N Nxm/zhkumdwam, dd KJI87HU6Y9JK,M.
suddenly dark I am hearing this
this come suddenly am I mourning in the dark
to hear you, here, over and over, you here you
suddenly dark I am hearing this, this over here
over hearing one breath too many, too winded
wind along windows, over and over, pushing the frames
and I have to stop, I can no longer be this, over and over
do you hear me, no longer this here in the dark
suddenly one breath too many
I’ve forgotten something and I don’t know quite what it is, I know it’s missing been missing for some time and although I cannot trace the beginnings of it I am sure it’s been growing for some time this forgetting, this leaving of something, some things, some thing vital, my vitals behind, along the floor, further back into the dark and I cannot see it despite the daughter I have brought in to this world, despite the woman who must love me desperately and patiently I cannot see it for them, to make sense of this, of what I am becoming.
I have always feared the night and the passage of time. I sat huddled against my window sill overlooking the highway on nights just like this, hot still humid the sounds of cars jetting across the on ramp and I listened to Pink Floyd and classic rock that spoke to me and sometime I would even make tapes and I cringe at the things I might have said. And sometimes I cried for the child I had been but somehow I remember that being mostly during the winter, where there was no air and only cold frozen. And the nights then were incredibly longer than they are now and there were such interesting things on TV: I have and will always have a love affair with the television, from Hawaii Five-Oh to Columbo to Kolchack the Night Stalker and the Prisoner. Nowadays there isn’t much late night watching that interests me; I don’t know if it’s me or the times.
this strange lightness
this strange darkness in life…
The truth is there isn’t any more darkness in my life: it is buoyant, light, strong.
I have a wife, I have a child, I have what seems to be career more so than a job. Outside of purchasing a home, it cannot really get better than this. But buying a home brings up a certain fears about job security and financial comfort, i.e. if I lost my job, could we keep the house afloat on Mari’s salary and if so, more than likely so, then for how long? The idea of unemployment, still sore in my memory from 2001, is too scary, too visceral and feels far too likely.
Still however I am afraid of growing up and it’s happening faster: first child has already arrived and then the next and who knows maybe another, and at some point I will have to begin to look older at the very least, my youth has to start to abandon me. All I see right now is a new crop of grays, but still slight. My friend Mike has lost his hair and shaves his head now, as does Pete the Foot and even Watersport Pete show signs of wear around his skull. Still thick head full of hair, no deep lines embedding themselves, no hardening or leathering of the skin. The weight sure but that’s more of a sign of excess than age.
I haven’t been remembering my dreams of late: with a job like this I wrestle myself into and out of sleep, there is little to remember in the exhaustion. And I’ve started hitting the gym again, although with a different purpose in mind. More set on losing pounds than pressing weight. Running now for the last two weeks six days a week, 2 plus miles at a time. I work with free weights three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays while running around the nearby park the other days. The progress I’m making surprises me and encourages me. I’m trying, trying to build the health I’ve taken away through over eating and smoking.
And the writing, save for a few ghost sentences here and there, the segment of an idea, the piece of something not broken exactly, but definitely not a piece of something larger, is entirely gone. I don’t know if it’s a question of discipline but I can’t seem to break through or go on in any sort of prolonged manner. There’s a spark or two, but then that’s it, nothing sustaining or maybe sustainable? Not a good idea in any of them. Or like I wrote somewhere else, “I get bored” and lose interest.
But what if the problem is not the idea, or finding a fresh idea, but rather, the impatience in taking the time to build something better than a gimmick?
shudderspeak
imagination dead imagine. Imagine this.
Shudder speak, a bone breaking across the chin. Did you see that,
could you have seen it
any better. Shudder speak,
the moment of greater things.
I once believed this, I believed you. Like this,
a tender breaking.
Shudder speak, the crawl from here to there, orchids across rooftops
could not have said it any better
breaking a silence two fold without walls
Here the shudder speak between the blades and muscle
bone picking
would you have dreamt it differently
had the ocean slung fingers backward of surprise?
forgotten stretch of street sweat
And there he was, dancing in the rain and looking for sewer pipes. He would have been blind if not for the stench of cut glass. Bloody fingertips along curbs, a kind of snaking along. Half serious, half alone, a slight tremble where her spine could have been. Lots of this there, he said, lots of this, he points, …there.
Stumbling to gaslight, bent on the knobs on his knees, he wretches. Gags on bits of hair and worry. Lots of this, he says again and holds his place where she could have been. He yanks and shudders, twists up into a crawl, standing. The blue shingles of an awning long forgotten and stretch of street sweat.
unmarked, unmarred, unblemished
how many keystrokes to nirvana, how many keystrokes to break through this wall of despair and silence.
The emergent sound of my daughter’s laughter, the half start, pre-giggle of an incomplete chuckle. It is like fresh apples, it’s like sun after a chilly night. It is her standing on the oh so tiny musculature of her legs, pigeon toed, steadying her by her forearms and her looking at you, toothless smile, all clean, all pure joy, unmarked, unmarred, unblemished, and the opening choke sound, the rise of laughter and just trying it on for size because it’s beginning to feel like the right thing to do, a thing that she can now begin to do so and here’s the occasion to try it out.
drifting
we had been waiting a few and really didn’t know what to expect. Jennifer was running her fingers through her hair, racing them around the edge of her glass, fidgeting with the loops in her earrings. This was going to be her first despite the fact she told us otherwise. We all knew she was lying but we would rather she was with us when she broke into this business.
Okay, and what business is that? What utter crap.
He has been sleeping, walking, jogging, farting, living, smiling and he then fell, kissed, slapped, promulgated, signed the waiver, which more or less, rather, supposedly, definitely, hesitantly sealed the fate, lives, plastic, hemorrhoids of his car, fiancé, boyfriend, couch, curb.
Ok, what the fuck was that?
You have to live to write but you cannot write while living. Always the furthest away from a pen or writing instrument of any sort and the voice or voices, sometimes a gaggle come and drift and whisper things that are prophetic and beautiful and meaningful and something you’d want to write down to leave behind but no in the stillness of this night of this rampant boredom and mad desire to go home, so unsupervised, I can’t get a bloody decent word out.
Make everything normal again
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.
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.