the unsent portion

i wish i didn't feel obligated to do this, and i wish i knew if i was picking at old wounds by doing so. do you read them? delete them on sight? or maybe you just ignore that email account altogether, and there's six or seven years of christmas emails from me sitting in there, unread, unnoticed. i hope it doesn't hurt, if you read them. but i think it bothers you more that i hope and wish for things related to you, i imagine you just want me to move on completely, to forget about you entirely, to stop stop stop all this nonsense. i imagine us both with this same gaping hole in our lives, this great inner sadness that lurks and lingers and occasionally wells up to swallow us whole; i picture our mutual searches for love, as we try to forget what could never be. and i see you, unable to let go because i cannot let go. i imagine us both caught in a web; when i move, it hurts you, and when i don't move, it hurts me. it feels as though i've doomed us both, and that is the guilt i will never live down. i loved too much, i loved too hard, i smothered and crushed and drained the life from you, all in the name of love, love, love.

if i could do it all again, i wouldn't do it at all, except i'd do it all the same, because i'd get just as caught up, and feel just as unstoppable, like a movie where you know the ending but try to scream at the actors, no, don't, stop... this is torture, and i do it to myself, just me, me and no one else. i would stop doing this to us every year, just stop sending the letters, but i need it. i don't know why, but i need it.

everything reminds me of something about you, i'm sorry if that hurts to hear, i'm sorry for being sorry, i'm sorry...

recurring themes

so i had this dream last night, and while a lot of the setting was familiar, things didn't happen the way i'm used to. call it what you will, but i felt like there was a hand on my shoulder while i explored the same old ground, guiding my steps along a path i already knew but refusing to allow hesitation or deviation. driving north as always, nearing canada, but this time it's not me behind the wheel - it's dad, or something with enough authority over my psyche to translate as "dad" in dreamland. dad and i are going somewhere, brushing the canadian border, when he mentions Her. "she lives right near here, doesn't she?" he says. "yeah," i say, "couple hours away." "do you wanna go? we can spare the time, and i know you really miss this girl." suddenly i freeze, an unreasonable terror slowly creeping over me, at the thought of actually seeing her again. it was the sort of fear i've known few times in my life, a fulfillment of the worst paranoias, the ultimate in "getting caught". before i knew it we were on our way, "dad" taking no further role but to inexorably take me there. it is important that he was driving - in my dreams, i always drive. if i find myself going somewhere i don't want to, i turn the wheel. when the mind has conjured such glorious landscapes and impossible features as to boggle itself, i slow down. dad never did either of these things.

so we got there, at some point. the town had a four letter name that started with O and may have been "Omaj", a rather strange misspelling of "Homage". i didn't get to wander and enjoy it, suddenly street maps were forming and even though the town was wrong and she's not even there anymore it was the same as i wasn't sure i remembered it anymore - down that last long stretch, left on vega, second house on the left. she didn't meet me in the yard like back then, and there was none of that amazing movie-style running-leap-hug in the middle of the airport like i am so fond of remembering. i didn't even get a slap in the face. she answered the door and our eyes met and we couldn't say anything. she looked dead, like something had sucked all the life out of her - not in a cartoony way, or a literal way, but the same way you might say a coworker looks dead after an 80 hour work week. the door was open, and her face didn't change its expression, and i felt a deep seated sadness relax, just a little, as some of it came to the surface. at this point in the dream, emotion trumps reason enough that everything just fades.

there isn't much left to recall, after that. just dad, dragging me to see my "long lost love", only to find that the years have taken their toll, and reality never lives up to dreams. kinda meta, don't you think, my dreams referencing other dreams? not just referencing them, but correcting them, and kind of maybe mocking them a little bit? i dunno.

the mayan long count ends at 7:15am tomorrow. that's about ten hours away. i'll be at work, taking a carefully timed smoke break, facing east.

long unloved window

where did my ghost go?
she's not in the attic,
there's nothing up there
but boxes of static.
the trapdoor she slept in
is covered in rust,
the window she gazed through
all moldy with dust.
i came here to listen,
i came here by choice,
and by god i've forgotten
the sound of her voice.
with a sigh so loud
it would frighten the cattle,
there's no reason to linger,
so, come now, to battle.

magic is hard

i rose early
to be the one to spark the flame
to guide you in
to brighten your future
i rose early
to shake free dust in the sunrise
to create a cloud
to mark my passing forever

as the morning creeps across my walk
i double check my rings
meant to open the seals ahead
then in empty halls alive with wind
i trace anew my glyphs
meant to keep all stomachs fed

someone had to cast the spell
to make your evening soothing
someone had to speak the words
to get your fingers moving
someone had to cast the spell
to keep away the panic
it's not easy being a wizard
when no one believes in magic

hold

the fabric grows thin
day emulsified with dreams
sherbet melting slowly
but nineties kids smile
so quickly it seems
while a toe in the eighties
broke the rest of our hearts
with a fervor i've long forgotten

hold the line, dear lovers,
i swear the day will break

novemblues

xenogears and radiohead. yeah, it's a late 90s sort of morning, with the obvious anachronistic bits scattered about to drag me back to reality (xenogears on an emulator played with an xbox controller, in rainbows material)... i feel like i've gotten to know somebody better, in their absence. it's unhealthy, because i no longer have any business knowing them so well. still, it helps frame my own past, to put some things better into perspective. these two things effected my life a surprising amount back around the (sigh) "turn of the millenium". would we have laughed together about that, then held hands as we realized we were really growing old together? whatever the answer, i shouldn't care. i shouldn't! but thom is singing,


I'll drown my beliefs
To have your babies
I'll dress like your niece
And wash your swollen feet
Just don't leave
Don't leave
I'm not living
I'm just killing time
Your tiny hands
Your crazy kitten smile
Just don't leave
Don't leave
And true love waits
In haunted attics
And true love lives
On lollipops and crisps
Just don't leave
Don't leave
Just don't leave
Don't leave,

while fei insists,

In those dreams,
I loved one woman...
No matter the day,
no matter the era...
That did not change...
Nor did her name...

perhaps i'm doomed. perhaps this is what i came here to learn, of unrequited love with no obvious shelf life, of spiraling outward with a clear view of the only one i'd drag along, just out of reach, just beyond hearing. you know, you wouldn't think so, but i really do go out and live, when i can. she submerges, beneath the waves of my subconscious, and arm in arm i can step out into the night with brothers and sisters and would-be lovers, and my smiles feel genuine, and the laughs aren't forced - though, that's probably the liquor laughing.

but when, eventually, relentlessly, these quiet moments arrive, and momentum ceases, and i stop to look through the window, there is always a chill - a queer chill, cheek against the glass, wind seeking passage along unprotected spine. it is not unwelcome; it can only remind me of tenderness, of cold fingers seeking warmth, of snow reflected in wide eyes.

i am proud of the life i have built in your absence, and i am aware that i should have long ago stopped wishing that things could have happened differently. but there is an honesty within me that will not be denied, and i miss you.



oh, excuse me. for a minute there, i lost myself, i lost myself...

dusty muses

fall has arrived!
and as i raise myself up
to greet the brightest
kaleidoscope of days
this worn-down city
can muster,
i coax blood
back into timid joints.

for i must scurry about
this worried mess,
this monument to absence,
in search of history -
yeah, in search of that
aging, neglected motivation;
by god,
i know she's here somewhere,
lovely muse,
lonely muse,
a girl all covered in dust...

soon, it is the pens creaking to life,
the gears greased with promises of
whatever it is that gears desire.
i hover somewhere
between the living and dead
and open my heart
(though not as wide as my eyes)
to attempt once more
to retain something
from the ghosts
who float
here.

method for living

deep within a late-night lullabye, your crybaby rampage unveils ramparts left stagnant in the dust. in the key of ill, forgotten tripwire alarms spit chaos into the silence of the night. why can't we all just be left alone? why can't we all know the loving embrace of another? beneath the trapdoor is defeat, the trigger is doubt, and the bypass is a carefully guarded secret home within our hearts. lay deep into silence, and prepare to be the champion of the dawn - because no day deserves to be treated like any other day.

perfect ten

oh god she was a perfect ten
she took me home
but not to be her friend
that's one night i'm sure
will never ever end

i was somewhere i'd never been
drinking something bitter and brown
when she was suddenly there
asking for the time -
i told her i had a few hours to spare,
she said i was sweet
then played me out the door
with a well-practiced melody,
so effortless and subtle
i would have sworn
it was i who sang

oh god she was a perfect ten
she took me home
but not to be her friend
that's one night i'm sure
will never ever end

the clouds that evening
hung low grey and bright
all around her head
the stars took up
residence in her eyes
and their glare stole my sight
but not before i saw her home
above an old church
with "KARMA" etched above the door
in place of a cross
blind as i was,
she took my hand
and led me along

oh god she was a perfect ten
she took me home
but not to be her friend
that's one night i'm sure
will never ever end

it was not yet dawn
when her sheets were stained
and it was soon after that
when i never knew her name
i never had a chance
like the dozens that came before
but don't get me wrong
she's anything but a whore
she sucked out my life
with our hair all awry
and dragged me out back
for the rodents to find

oh god she was a perfect ten
she took me home
but not to be her friend
she found worth in my heart
and i supplied for her demand
i left a mess when i left
and we made no amends
oh god this night
will never end

no metaphorical heartbreak here
just blood on the linens
and alleyway scavengers
shuffling home
with bellies full

everything matters

oh mother,
i've been away in the world
so long, so long -
what has become of your son?
no more a child to feed,
just a distant wandering worry.
everything matters.

oh father,
i've been fighting the war
so long, so long -
what has become of your son?
no more scraped knees,
just bloodstained shirt cuffs.
everything matters.

oh brother,
we've chosen these separate paths
so long, so long -
what has become of our home?
no more bunk beds,
just miles of lone silence.
everything matters.

oh lover,
i'll remember one night
so long, so long -
what has become of your heart?
no more soft landings,
just gravity and a beautiful view.
everything matters.

it's hard to remember
we will be remembered,
or at least i will remember you.

everything matters.

admissions

you know what i hate? what i *really* hate? when somebody is really wrong about something, and you call them out on it, and they refuse to A) realize that they were wrong, B) admit their mistake, C) listen to constructive criticism about said mistake, and D) learn a single goddamned thing from the experience. no, please, practice being a stubborn bullheaded fuck. it's made you a lot of friends so far.

unfortunately these are the people who will probably grow to be much more successful than i could ever be.

aside

(1:49am, wed27jun)

i'm stepping back.
the sunlight hurts my eyes.
i'm headed for the trees.
come see me when you like.

in the mornings,
the fog makes
this place eternal.
i am a child and an old man;
scars healed, fresh,
open, and not yet there.
you've long since forgiven me,
and i've still never hurt you.

when you call me,
i'll be here.
i know you won't.
but you
might.

i never knew
that i could feel
so far from home,
so near my bed,
under the same moon
we all share.
a numbness creeps in;
shades of grey
sweep through our lives,
lead us away.

i'm stepping back.
tomorrow's a new day
to sleep through.
but i'll rise for a minute,
in the morning,
for the moment when
three words
can still always
make you
smile.

(2:01am)

some clarity

let's talk about some stuff. things are changing, and i am tired of being vague, except about the things i feel obligated to be vague about - identities and such. you know.


let's back up a bit. a month ago, a coworker told me he was going to need a place to stay for two months. i said sure. i've since reconsidered my position a few times, in a few ways, but he helped me pick out a pretty goddamn nice suit so he's somewhat earned his keep so far. the suit will come in later. but through all of this, he has been an added distraction and annoyance in the house above all else and goddammit what was i thinking. oh well. like certain other things, it shouldn't last past august.


at around 5:30pm, saturday june 30th, my boss came into my store. when i say my boss, i mean the guy whose name is on the awning out front, on my paycheck, and on a fair handful of the stuff for sale in the store. he went to my manager, who had put in her one-month notice a week before. i'd made it known around the store that i wanted her job, and it seemed pretty well assured that i'd get it. it's something i'd wanted for a while, to get out of kitchens and more into a "making sure shit's getting done right" position; i'd still have had to learn an awful lot about food, but from a *tasting* aspect for a change. the word "salary" kept ringing in my ears too, let me tell you.


anyway. chef makes his way over to me. "i wanted the family," that's what we are, family, not staff - it's not the only mob-esque thing about his little empire - "i wanted the family to know first, we're closing the store."


well, shit. mind you this wasn't entirely unexpected - i'd been employed there since october, and i'd started seeing the signs around january. when head chefs and managers started leaving in the winter and spring, and the replacement staff was - like, at times, myself - somewhat unsuited to the task at hand, i could feel it in the air.


"i can't say i'm surprised, chef. when, may i ask?"


"closing time tonight."


i just expected more warning than that, that's all. i looked at the clock - two and a half hours til close - then at the crab cakes i was most of the way through making. it was a big batch, and the raw mix had real promise. crab cakes were somehow my thing, there. don't ask. i'd formed four of them, and had the makings ready for about twenty more.


"guess i can stop working on this, then, huh?"


he laughed a bit, i think - moreso it would've been his impression of a laugh, for as far as i can see the man lacks the ability to feel mirth - then offered me a job at the restaurant. there were appealing things about it - it would look fantastic on a resume, for starters. there were unappealing thing about it, which mostly centered around the crushed spirits of everyone who has spent any real time in close proximity to him, god bless their weary souls. i hadn't felt this effect as yet, but i had yet to spend extended amounts of time around the man.


i told him i had to think about it, and he asked if i wanted to help pack up the store, which i agreed to. the next few days, packing up and all, are better left out of this - for space and time, let's say the days were spent working hard between bursts of weird emotion at seeing a place i'd grown to love get dismantled before my eyes, my own hands taking apart countertops i'd scrubbed to a shine just nights before. there was no closure, no goodbye to the community, no sign left in the window to appease passersby. when july 4th dawned, we were already drunk, and the store was empty, and we'd all accepted jobs at the restaurant. for some it was a step up, for some a step down.


i skipped out july fifth. i couldn't do it. i'd told one of the other workers there, a hired hand i'd seen around the store more than once, that i'd help him with a construction job. it seemed more appealing than charlie trotter's, a good way to make some honest money, and maybe get a good workout in the process. i didn't go to that. i was hungover as hell, because i'd never had off work on the 4th of july since moving into the city. we climbed onto our roof, where we found most everyone else in our apartment building (despite the rather treacherous climb over a locked gate at the third story required to get up there), and enjoyed a panorama of fireworks. with a girl at my side it would've been magical; there were five, but they were lesbians. i managed.


but when i say i couldn't do it, i mean i couldn't do it. what i knew about the restaurant suggested that it was nothing like what i'd been trained for, nothing i'd ever wanted to be trained for, and not a direction i wanted my career path to go. it seemed like an undue amount of stress for minimal payoff - there was no pay increase, as such a prestigious position may have offered, but it was two more months of somewhat-less-than-guarenteed-employment. for, as i have not mentioned, the restaurant is closing at the end of august. this was announced back around new year's. so, beginning of july through end of august. two months.


the anxiety attacks the first night were incredible. i needed to borrow suit, dress shirt, slacks, tie, dress shoes.  within the first hour i'd started to recognize the flow, but my own cycle of things i felt confident doing seemed rather small - and mind you this is not normal confidence - it should not take a man any amount of confidence to do something like place a plate at a table. however, this is fine dining we are talking about, and as i have come to learn, that is synonymous with codified madness. one does not simply place the plate at the table - one does it right. the first time. or get the fuck out. if this seems like an exaggeration, you have not met my boss. or worked in a fine dining establishment, which is apparently more about choreographed ballet than actual customer service, more about food as a sensory experience than as sustenance. but i found the cycle, and i can run it, but many of the steps ring hypocritical and/or counterproductive, designed to produce punishable missteps. though these, too, have a place in the dance.


the second week got easier than the first, and the third easier still, but here i am on the cusp of the new week, work 5p-1a tuesday thru saturday, and i know by the end of it i'll be running the treadmill like a champ. but the treadmill is ridiculous, and i am better than a piece of conveyor belt disguised as a rockette. it was last weekend when we found the suit, after hours of searching through the racks of various marshall's looking for that perfect slim-fit number that wouldn't break my nearly empty wallet, and that has made a difference; between that and the haircut, i'm starting to look goddamned respectable.


and it was with that in mind that i walked into an interview this morning - i should say monday morning, it's tuesday now. the interview was for a line cook job in what turned out to be a quiet little neighborhood cafe; however, during the hour of conversation, we began to talk more about management positions, and she sent me off saying i'd get a call for a second interview later that week. that call came later in the afternoon, and now on wednesday i get to go hammer out the details on what i apparently wanted all along.


but... in the meantime, i'm still at the restaurant. i'm getting edgy right now, thinking about going in there, and it's thirteen and a half hours away. coworkers insist i should stick it out, to say i was there at the end, that there's phenomenal experience to be had there and that we really do provide a once-in-a-lifetime experience for people. and we do. that's all true. there's been talk of not letting the madness win, to suffer through it to come out a better person afterwards. i don't know how i feel about all that. i've been in the fire for a while, and if i'm offered water, i'm not going to say, "no, i need these scars to prove i'm hardcore." i'm going to take that water and douse the flames. if i'm offered a management job on wednesday, then i'll finish out the week at trotter's, call it quits at exactly one month instead of two, and walk away without regrets.


i look forward to the three or four days off i'm going to give myself between jobs, no matter what. i have a story i want to write, and it's been there for long enough that one good long sit should let me flush out most of it. there are plenty of other things from the past few weeks that i have left out, but i need sleep.


be well. 

Post

I have not been posting much, nor have I done much other writing for a month or two. My computer situation is stabilized if not entirely fixed. Primarily, I have been working, living, and learning. I would write more, at the moment, if I felt more adept at translating pure emotion into written word. Unfortunately, trying to constrain these things within the limits of the English language would prove inadequate, and thus sully the purity.

This hiatus is not indefinite.

surfing dali's comedown

(2:15am, wed14mar)

the discussion i sought

had been pre-empted

by not-so-accidental

slips of the tongue

it was a surreal evening,

running across the country

to sleep in a house

just like the one you fled,

laying down in the end

and looking up from your bed

to see dracula hanging above your head -

just like home, just like home

it was blind chefs and pineapple foam,

finishing hundred-year-old wine

with strong swigs off the bottle

and saying, "not bad,"

as though there were anything else

to truly say at the moment

silly little problems

like happiness and survival

if only we could juggle both

while running on a tightrope

sing and the world sings with you

sing backwards and the world looks weird at you

this is all a confidence trip

(2:27am)

damned lullabies

another damned lullabye, set to the tune of a crossfire melody...

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"you've got a blood infection," said the dentist. he set aside his clipboard, looked me in the eye. "you've got a year to live, maybe less."

"oh, thank God," i breathed a sigh of relief. "it's about time." he was raising an eyebrow, and i was pretty sure he'd never gotten that reaction from that sort of news. i felt a smile creeping across my face, fought it, and failed. "and there's nothing you can do? like, if i had a rich uncle or something who wanted to pour a couple thousand dollars into blood transfusions or something...?"

"uh, it's not really that simple..." he put his glasses back on and picked my records up. "there are treatments, of course, but it'd just be adding time. we're talking a year, tops."

"no need," i stood, recovered my coat, "a year might already be too long." he watched me collect my things silently, correctly guessing that there was no point in trying to talk about billing, payments, followups... "by the way, what's the date today?"

"november twenty-third."

"2011," i prompted.

"of course."

"close enough. thanks, doc. have a good life."

he didn't respond, and was still sitting there when i left.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

the next day was thanksgiving, which i greeted by drinking enough wine to fuck up the holiday for everyone around me. good, i thought; they'd have something to look forward to next year. i decided to celebrate by dressing up nice and walking around shitty neighborhoods trying to get jumped. it proved to be pretty uneventful - who knew gangsta took thanksgiving off? i didn't. "learn something new every day, i guess;" there was nobody around to address, but i spoke aloud anyway. only 364 more things left to learn for me, give or take a few accounting for diet and general health - and i planned on taking a *lot*. would saint peter care that i didn't stick around to learn a few more things?

nah, he'd probably focus on my ability to fuck up my friends' lives, and, just like them, would forget all about the two incomes, constant food, and unceasing companionship i brought to the table. they're easy things to forget about, unless you're me - and if you are, i apologize for all the stress, exhaustion, and headaches. i'd say you - that is to say, me - I - threw the ol' hat in with the wrong crowd, but if there's a more right crowd out there, then they dropped the ball by not making themselves known. but that's alright. it's all alright. a death sentence is the ultimate anti-depressant; too bad it can't bring peace as readily.

my bottle was half empty (or half full, i couldn't decide) and i was walking past yet another desolate, empty alleyway (who are all these dollar bills poking out of my pocket for? there's nobody here to want them; maybe i should start knocking on doors.) when i put a few moments of thought into trying to see my family, maybe hooking back up with old flames, tracking down lost friends. only a few moments, because i knew all those meetings would play out essentially the same - tears, pleas to seek treatment, painful goodbyes. it wasn't something i wanted to hear, and it wasn't a burden i needed to lay on loved ones. let it be a surprise; hell, let most of them never know, only vaguely suspect. ignorance, after all, is bliss.

sigh. truth, lies, or silence? really, i'd been working towards silence for years, so resorting to that sooner than later was no big leap. it would be nice to stop trying to have all the answers, as nice as it would be to quit all the deceptions, all the half-truths. it really didn't matter anyway - there are so few people i'd even want to see, and as of today there are no more friends or allies to worry about. i drank some more, pulled my jacket a little closer, tried to ignore the flurries falling in my general vicinity. elsewhere, thanksgiving carried on, deaf blind and dumb to my whining. tables were set, glasses filled, turkeys cut, and prayers spoken. out there, too far away, quiet threats forgotten as plates and stomachs groan beneath the feast.

habits reach a little harder towards infinity, and get a little closer.

my wine is empty; the bottle finds a home across the side of a garage, a thousand shards destined to leave scars that will outlast me. one hand seeks eternity while the other digs a shallow grave. cigarette, puff puff it's over; well, the cancer can't possibly catch up with me now, so another can't possibly hurt, right? puff, puff. these trees realize that technology trumps anything human in this day and age, that we'd rather keep the lights on than buy groceries.

it doesn't matter; i find a fight, a screaming match in the middle of the street, a family with guns drawn on each other, and i stroll through the middle, slowly. the crossfire melody i seek never comes; rather, the guns vanish, voices grow quiet, as if my presence were enough to solve whatever problem i'd found. by the time i turn down the next random street, they embrace each other.

their peace is not my own.

tenses blur - is this yesterday, or january '03? - the wine comes up, or maybe it's just blood, the stain i leave on the sidewalk clarifies nothing. my head is steady, but when i pull out my compass, the needle spins uncontrollably. reminder not to grab the alcoholic compass when leaving home; it reeks of whiskey and cheap whores, and is that maybe a touch of gonorrhea i see forming at the southern tip? as technology ages, it seems to fall prey to all the old human follies. i have become a shortwave radio, and i seek sleep... but these alleyways are no shelter for me. i guess which direction home is in, and i'm climbing my front steps before i've walked ten feet. the compass throws up in my hand - there's no mistaking *that* for blood - and my pocketwatch grumbles about the arthritic weather, slowly. i could wind it, but the complaining would just get louder, faster, more elaborate. i'm upstairs, falling fully clothed into bed, where i listen to the increasing volume of waiting between ticks, holding the watch to my ear, feeling the expansion of time. soon the ticking stops, and i can hear the ocean. nothing to do now but sleep.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

when i wake up, chicago is somewhat more on fire than i remember it. ungodly shrieks and yells thicken the air along with ash, blood, memories left abandoned in dying shells - thick, like soup, like dough, everything in slow motion except for...

they fly, they run on too many legs, they seem more gaping maws with locomotion than anything else. there is not even a hint of stomach on most of them, though that doesn't stop them from swallowing arms, heads, whole bodies. i can no longer pick out the corner where i threw up, because every square of the sidewalk is caked in entrails and fluids. soup. the people run in slow motion, arms working the air like swimmers, snatched up mid-stride by lightning-fast glimpses of teeth. windows in nearby houses are either full of terrified onlookers, or shattered, home to the same carnage running through the streets below. i reach for absent wine, grope for missing smokes, come up empty. no friends, no allies - where have i heard this before? cruel echoes. i try to tell new stories but always find myself retracing old trails. i decide to test last night's luck again by going out on my back porch, digging through the ashtray for a suitable butt. the lighter leaves me blinded for an instant; when my vision clears, one of the winged monstrosities is before me, bobbing up and down, otherwise totally motionless. the wings stick out in four directions, somehow keeping it aloft while remaining still. they look like props, pasted on to make it that much more horrifying. the mouth hangs open, wide enough for me to climb into, which i consider. caught in the teeth are... bits, pieces, remnants of people, pets, and totally unidentifiable things. there is a constant exhalation of sulfur, and the vague scent of burning feathers.

i keep smoking as we regard each other, and when the smoke is gone and it still waits, i walk down my steps to the yard. it follows. alright, i think. i always wanted a nice, big, obedient dog. this unspeakable extradimensional horror is close enough. halfway down the steps i realize my movement is unrestricted, that the slow-motion disease which seems to have crippled the rest of the city has no effect on me. i walk to the fence, find another smokable butt on the ground, and as i light it i notice a gorgeous girl running towards me from across the street.

her face is sheer panic. there's blood on her arms and hands, but it doesn't seem to be hers. all her effort has her running a little slower than my normal walking pace. she's spotted me, comes straight up to the fence, fingers gripping the chain-link as she struggles to scream something. a plea for help, a warning of the creature behind me? the voice is too deep, darth vader at half-speed; she shakes the fence, but it's such a gradual motion that it doesn't even rattle. she's close enough for me to see individual beads of sweat emerge from her face like mud. her head turns to the left, ever so slightly, and a scaly green blur dismembers her as it passes without losing stride. she manages to let out one more yell as she dies; "why?" she screams. the sound lasts as i walk away, back up the steps, finally dying out as i reach my back door. i look back as i step through; my companion has resumed its position hovering just over the railing. it watches me.

i consider a shower, note that the water looks wrong; by the time i shut the water off, only a few moments, the apartment has filled with the stench of brimstone. i splash on some cologne for some residually vain reason, stuff my backpack full of bottled water and food from the fridge, dress in clothes i haven't worn for years. it doesn't seem to matter anymore, so when i leave i don't bother to lock the door. i don't expect to come back.

it's going to be an interesting year, i think, looking deep into the throat of the still-waiting entity floating next to my porch.

mirrors

in the town where i grew up, there was a telescope.

the people who told the story always told it as if it had just happened yesterday, and indeed for most of my life i assumed the town had sprung up there, complete to the last worn cobblestone, the day before i was born. they spoke in such casual familiarity of its discovery, by chance one day as the landless nomads we descended from followed a river in search of a land to call home. each and every one of them, family, neighbors, and friends alike, could tell the story through the eyes of one member of the group, but it was though they had each captured the viewpoint of a particular wanderer, so it was as though hearing about an event from each of a hundred people who'd been there and seen it with their own eyes, with their own lifetimes coloring the image, their own opinions about the truth of the matter.

the nomads found the telescope, intact, exactly as it is today. there was no evidence of other buildings ever having existed in the area, a twenty-odd acre clearing in the midst of miles of unbroken forest. there was tall grass, and the water was clean, and it would've suited their purposes just fine, telescope or no.

the telescope itself was a rather remarkable feat of engineering by any reckoning. it was supported by what appeared to be a brick and mortar tripod, though metallic joints showed through at various intervals to facilitate aiming and shock absorbtion. a lever built into one of the legs slid the thick cover off the lens, and though this required a bit of physical exertion, it was a rather quiet affair. with the lens cap off, the viewing dome - a brick building built into the base - would unseal and allow entrance.

the viewing dome was windowless and dark, though various angled air-slits allowed in enough ambient light to see by. these slits could be covered by a crank in the control booth during viewing. upon entering, one immediately realized that the 'dome' was in fact a full sphere, half-buried in the ground. the control booth, set to one side, was ringed in angled seats all around, allowing for the seating of precisely 256 people - more than twice the population of the town. the far wall was left blank.

the true power of the telescope has never been tested, and truly it cannot, for the controls offer only three zoom settings: 2, 4, and +. set into the panel above them is a smooth round trackball, allowing for movement, and a small lever, for precision zooming.

364 days a year, activating the telescope allowed rather restricted viewing of the stars overhead; but, on the summer solstice, from 5PM til 7pm, the earth aligned properly to allow the viewing of the past - earth's past.

>>>

there were, it seemed, three mirrors which had been blasted into space on three consecutive summer solstices. the first one reached one light year's distance from earth before stopping, the second one stopped at two light years, and the third appeared to still be moving directly away from earth at a little less than the speed of light.

as light from earth took one year to reach the first mirror and another year to return to the telescope, it allowed clear viewing of the earth as it was two years prior. the second telescope showed the earth four years in the past. the images were remarkably clear, and with the provided controls one could theoretically view any point on that hemisphere.

the third mirror, viewable with the '+' setting, was rarely used, as it was mostly irrelevant to the people of the town. it was like a tape on rewind, watching events play out backwards at almost real-time. there was no way of knowing how far away the mirror was, or exactly how the telescope managed to find it by flicking a single switch, so it was impossible to know just how far back in time one was viewing.

<<<

for decades, the people of the town only used the first two settings, dependant entirely upon the long-delayed imagery for learning about the outside world. it was much as it is now - barren and empty. the town's founders had little knowledge of the state of the world and made no attempt to pass their limited information to later generations. as a result, by the fifth generation of villagers, the world outside of the little clearing existed only in the past and offered very little of interest. every few years someone would get an itch of wanderlust and leave, only to return with no stories, no news, nothing.

by my time, the telescope was more a novelty than anything else. the parents would dutifully shepherd the kids into the dome once a year to listen as the caretaker relayed the stories i've just told you, manning the controls for long enough to prove them, then taking requests for a bit before the window closed. most kids wanted to see themselves, though some expressed interest in the world at large. they were, by and large, disappointed by the unbroken miles of trees sliding past in crystal-clarity on the wall (though most of the kids, and even a few of the adults, enjoyed the sensation of flying). after a few years of this, many of the children lost interest, and attendance dwindled. i never lost interest; the telescope awoke in me feelings of awe and infinite possibility. if man could build this, i thought, what else could we accomplish? my village, all the world i'd ever known, suddenly seemed very small. i dreamed of great things for my people.

the year i turned twenty, the caretaker died a month before the solstice. i had no desire to follow my family's long tradition of sheep farmers, so when nobody else stepped forward to fill the position, i did so happily. when the solstice came around, absolutely nobody came to the viewing. perhaps they'd finally all gotten tired of it, but i found myself sitting in the control booth, looking over rows of empty seats. my earlier feelings had not diminished;

with little else to do, i flipped to '+', a setting i'd only seen demonstrated for a few minutes when i was twelve. after scrolling across a few miles of the same unbroken trees we'd seen on '2' and '4' - all the birds flying backwards, everything slightly tinted red due to the mirror's motion away from us - i found something.

several square miles of rust and debris, all of it vaguely metallic. zooming in revealed the debris in more detail but offered no clues as to what i was looking at. with the rest of my two-hour window, i found several more similar expanses. then the alignment shifted and i was once more staring at stars. i made notes of where these were, then put the matter from my mind. caretaker or no, the sheep needed tending.

each year, i checked these locations, and the rust brown slowly receded to reveal silver. the trees slowly retreated, the inner fringes eventually going as black and ruined as the debris. when i was twenty-seven, thick cloud cover prevented viewing for the first time since my birth, and i was left to wonder for another year. in the meantime, slight interest was rekindled in the telescope, so when my 28th solstice rolled around there were actually a few people who filtered in when i cranked the lens cap off and opened the doors.

i gave the speech as best i could remember it, showed the town two and four years ago as was customary, then switched to '+'. i began explaining, for the first time, about the strange sites i'd discovered in previous years as i traced the now-familiar steps to the nearest of them.

there was dense cloud cover over the first one i visited, as well as the second. as i was about to scroll away, i noticed the clouds beginning to condense, then glow. the clouds collapsed into the light, burning as bright as the sun, which itself shrank down and sank into the earth. when the light vanished, a small cylindrical object rose up then chased a thin stream of cloud away to the southwest.

the ruins were gone. in their place stood impossibly tall buildings, shining bright in the afternoon sun.

the dome, silent until now, began buzzing with excitement. i quickly scrolled around to the other sites, where similar scenes were playing out. after watching it happen for the fifth time, i decided to zoom down between the buildings. there, standing on a flat black landscape marked with intersecting yellow lines and full of strange metal boxes, was a single man. he was looking, impossibly, directly at us.

the window closed, and the sudden plunge into the stars left us all silent once more.

i never saw such lights again, in all the years since, though i've found a great many more of these cities. we even mounted an expedition to the nearest of them, though nothing was there - i estimate that the events we saw had to have happened at least a thousand years ago, as nature had clearly had plenty of time to reclaim lost land.

to say i was intrigued was an understatement. i spent most of my years hypothesizing about this ancient world, filling books with observations and theories about who they were, where they'd gone, what had happened. it was a vast civilization which clearly dominated most of the world - at least, most of the hemisphere i could see. the cities each housed millions of people, making the total human population something astronomical. when i was thirty-nine, one of the children asked me how many people were alive back then; i laughed, told him to count the blades of grass in the town, then multiply that by thousands. his eyes grew wide, and i saw him in the front row each and every year after that. occasionally, in the spring, i'd spot him cutting down swaths of grass, bundling them up, then carrying them home to sort and count.

it was bizarre, watching people who looked generally like you or me going about esoteric lifestyles in reverse. we watched as they got in and out of their little metal boxes that transported them around, entering and exiting buildings. i saw no evidence of farms or wildlife, and never did i see anything like our telescope.

the telescope. i was sixty when i finally realized the importance of it. the civilization i'd been watching, at least a thousand years dead, had certainly had the technology to create such a thing. but the mirrors, at least the '+' mirror, had to have been launched about halfway between then and now - maybe 300 years before the founding of the town. remnants had to have survived, presumably isolated from the rest of the world in order to retain the tools, materials, and knowledge to produce such a feat. but who? had they the means to survive the desolation of earth, only to die out after creating this one telescope? i couldn't believe it. i wouldn't. they were our ancestors.

i vocalized these concerns during that year's solstice viewing. afterwards, i was approached by a man in his mid-twenties - the boy had grown up, had traded in his grass-cutting ways for a hunter's lifestyle. we spoke of the matter for a while, then parted ways. i saw little of him over the next year. during the next solstice, he requested i set it to '2' and explore the edges of our hemisphere.

it must've been a hunch, or divine intuition. within five minutes, we discovered a small band of people near the western border. they had a camp, tents, meat roasting over an open fire. they were strangers. they'd come from somewhere else. there was somewhere else!

after the viewing, i noticed the hunter speaking to a small group of teenagers and young men. i thought nothing of it. the next morning, most of them had vanished. they'd left no word, had no pre-existing travel plans. there were no ongoing hunts. the town briefly mourned the loss of a dozen young men in their prime, then forgot all about it.

i was eighty-seven when they finally returned, twelve strong. my eyes were starting to fade by then, and though i still dutifully tended the telescope, i relied on others to observe, direct, and take notes. so, when twelve arrived, i did not immediately notice that two of them were not from our village. they were different. for one, they had blonde hair. there were no blondes in our town.

they told of their own homeland, a town not unlike our own, located exactly half a planet away. they claimed that an industrious digger could dig straight down from our telescope and eventually come up beneath their's - for they, too, had a telescope, and though it was calibrated for the winter solstice it was identical in every other way. they claimed to be directly descended from the builders.

there had been two groups of builders, once. they had, as i'd theorized, hidden themselves away before the planetary destruction had rained from the heavens, living in self-contained ecospheres deep underground. 500 years from when the bombs fell - that's what they called them, "bombs" - they re-emerged into the sunlight to recreate society.

the two cities had some form of contact, apparently, for our visitors knew that our local city had been wiped out almost immediately after emerging. cataclysmic earthquakes had rocked the area, burying the underground city and leaving the two small groups exposed. one of the groups was comprised of scientists and engineers, their main project being the construction of the telescope. the other group were hunters, meant to support the builders and generally explore the region.

the telescope was build to spec, but soon afterward the builders were wiped out by an epidemic. our visitors said - though, i think, this must be partially mythical, for how would they know? - that the very last scientist collapsed after launching the third mirror, having kept himself alive by sheer willpower, happily surrendering to the fire of the booster rockets as they lifted his life's work into the sky. the hunters moved on with their secondary mission to explore, though as time passed they forgot their origins. whether it was luck or some primal instinct that their ancestors wandered into the clearing and founded our town, we'll never know.

but on the other side of the planet, the reconstruction had gone as planned. while not widespread, they claimed a population around ten thousand, three cities built from materials reclaimed from the underground city. their technology was somewhere between the ancient civilizations and our own - they lacked the mobile metal boxes, their cities were somewhat less sprawling, but the buildings rose all the way to the clouds. their hunting party had come to our hemisphere in search of any surviving traces of the world that was, but upon meeting our villagers and learning that there was nothing to see here, they returned home with two of our own, sending two of their's as ambassadors.

they did not seek to change our way of life. in fact, the two were in awe of our lifestyle, claiming it was exactly what had been intended for them, as well. they said that the devastation of a thousand years ago had been as result of our growing too fast, upsetting the natural balance of the world; we destroyed the environment, enslaved or annihilated plants, animals, and other cultures alike, and in the end the only solution that could save the earth from becoming permanently barren was to wipe out 99% of the population.

the survivors were to be equipped with what they'd need to survive, and little else - only the telescopes, they'd hoped, would show us the true price of avarice. the builders assumed that humanity would once more be on the verge of making the same old mistakes around the time the telescopes would be revealing the apocalyptic results of those mistakes, hoping against hope that the sight of bombs dropping across the world would be enough to keep us mindful of conservation, of moderation, of our proper place in the ecosystem.

for our brothers on the other side of the planet, the warning came at the perfect time. for us, it was completely unnecessary - with only a hundred-odd people living utterly rural lifestyles, there was little to no risk of such things ever happening again. this warmed the hearts of our visitors, who soon left with a few of the hunting party - including their leader, a young man with infinite blades of grass still reflecting in his eyes. they never returned.

in their wake, i passed on stewardship of the telescope to my own grandson. i no longer desired great things for my people; in our conversations, learning about the ways of the ancient civilization, i had come to realize that, no matter the trappings, the most important thing was to keep living. if we could extend our species' lifespan by a few millenia by sacrificing the frills and extravagances, well... that was just fine by me.

i am ninety-five, now, unable to see to write. thankfully, my grandson has been patient enough to sit with me these past two years as i get the last few ideas out of my skull along with what little i've learned since my hands lost their ability to grip a pen. now, with all said and done, i believe i will go to sleep.

i do not believe i will awaken in the morning. but others will, and will continue to do so for a long time to come, and that is enough.

life is enough.

no fugue

(2:10pm, fri02mar)

thanks for bearing with me

as i reassemble scattered bits;

i swear they were a memory, once

(at least that's how i remember it) -

it seems to me that i used to be a lover

but Love hopped a late plane out west,

not in fugue as i'd hoped

but a new name nonetheless

and a fresh face to protect the innocent,

yeah, no fugue

but a mid(?)-life(?) crisis(?)

"i been gone a long, long time,"

Love touching down in vegas,

beautiful springtime desert;

"now help me fill up on whiskey and women,

i've got promises to break

and good names to tarnish!"

not so static as rumor would have it,

Love brought heart back to

the good people of sin city (all two of them)

then ran, chasing ghosts further westward,

escaping from the mother of all hangovers,

leaving all the little moist details

for the scribes to sort through.

and, once safely on the coast,

Love added up all the betrayal,

all the fast-held secrets and regret;

the sum, then, appearing as a face

not nearly as lost to time as was apparent -

a soft face, slightly judging,

impossibly forgiving,

into whose ears poured every apology,

whether uttered aloud or whispered alone.

the setting sun caught the tears in her eyes,

their glow rivaling the sad sweet smile on her lips.

cry all you like but she'll never answer direct,

nor will Love be tempted to speak again,

resting on the hood of a car parked on a beach

softly, they both are lulled to sleep

by the din of the seagulls' screech...

and then we all woke up in our beds,

yes, you and me, and her as well

none the worse for wear

but perhaps a little crippled

by a brief brush with eternity --

(4:15pm)

leap day

(2:20pm, wed29feb)

as we humor this soft false spring,

breeze carrying seasonal memories

both real and wrapped in fiction -

open roads through unknown lands,

mountains mistaken for clouds -

we find ourselves again by the sea,

no longer an icy maw of blistering cold

but a gorgeous blank canvas, upon which

is painted all the thousand places

we could've met, or should've, or could've.

while the prophets insist,

no matter what,

we would not have,

ever.

"take only what you need,"

so of course we took it all;

"be careful what you see,"

so it was everything we saw;

"go quiet when you leave,"

so we screamed our way home,

lured by barely-forgotten melodies

played on barely-tuned pianos.

but on the way we fell in love

with all the fairies we were warned of,

and summoned sultry succubi

to clean up all our excess lust -

yet even so, the flood gates burst,

and as the weather remembered its way

the streets were buried 'neath miles

of raw, unleashed emotion.

when the storm broke,

i heard your whispered

wish for immortality

and obliged, as only i can;

for within these lined confines

you will forever smile
in springtime sun,

forever young,

free,

and in love.

simply because i say so.

thunder claps,

the blizzard begins.

(6:45pm)

tomorrow -

(12:06am, sun26feb)

i lit a cigarette

off the last glowing embers

of a mostly dead world

you and i had arrived together

while the flames still soared

as high as ourselves

broken glass and carbon crunching

echoed loud, the heavy footsteps

of the only two people left

we left before the wind picked up

you wanted to explore, but i knew

you'd hate the ash in your eyes

home, brushing off dust,

"where were you?" inevitably asked

a shared look - "tomorrow."

(12:14am)

punctuation

an isolated bark in the night

is a fine period for a day

slinging a thousand words about nothing

while quietly chanting "living the dream"

until i believe it

blue twilight

this blue twilight din

comes in waves

when acting as a

compliment to the

streetlights

it caresses

moving in step

across all downtowns

it is not the wind;

for the wind is fickle

this blue twilight din

contrasts rush hour lullabyes

coaxing us to

nod our heads

to rhythms or

the tune of sleep

it makes pillows of damp street corners

and palaces out of underpasses

from within its thrall

all houses seem wanting

this is the romance

in empty stomachs

this is the siren's song

of railroads, boxcars and harmonicas

this is where we all go

when the grace of god has been lifted

and gravity takes hold at the crossroads

dragging us inexorably south

for the winter

this blue twilight din

is ringing in my bones

calling me outside

to wander

f, s, and other curses

so i made some crab cakes tonight, and brought some of the mix home. when i tried it, it was terrible.

now, instead of sleeping in and going into work at a leisurely 4:30 as scheduled, i'm waking up at 7 so i can get in and fix this before the store opens.

fuuuuuuck.

dinner

so tomorrow i work from 9-7, then hop a bus down to hyde park, which i'll be seeing for the first time since 2007. maybe early 2008. i'll be meeting a girl, we'll go for a walk, then back to her house to write about the experience. after that is when we'll exchange our first words, and then i'll make her dinner. i set up a menu, she bought the ingredients, and i'll be making soy sauce and brown sugar infused salmon fillets, lime & cilantro cauliflower salad, and baked-egg-avocados for the appetizer.

here's the catch - we've never met. we haven't even exchanged pictures. i found her on craigslist via a missed connection that wasn't about me, but it was so well-worded i sent her a message saying i hoped she was a writer, and that if the winter got too lonely i'd be happy to come cook her dinner. she accepted. the bit about the silent walk followed by a quiet moment of writing was her idea.

so, this has the potential to be either insanely romantic or amazingly disastrous. hyde park can be sketchy, but we're meeting near the lake, and i plan on pulling the kill switch if she starts leading me towards questionable areas. the intersection we're meeting at is a fairly open, public sort of one. she knows what i'll be wearing.

rachel. here's to adventure.

buildup

what happens when you slowly but surely deprive a man of all the ways he unwinds and relaxes after the horrors of a day?

stay tuned.

psychedelia for modern drugs

herp.

last weekend i briefly connected with two ladies via craigslist. one of them, a girl i found i had a lot in common with who lives about ten minutes from me, wanted to hang out on monday. monday rolled around, i found myself battling anxiety attacks all day, and eventually had to call it off. i'm not sure what the source of the anxiety was; maybe just the fact that it was someone new, or maybe it was because i told her so much about myself via e-mail already. i called it off, told her we'd try again in a week or so. i dunno if i will.

the other was via a missed connection. i wasn't the missed connection, but the post was elegantly worded (she'd held hands with a stranger as they walked across town together, spoke little, left him at the bus stop and regretted it) so i fired off a short reply, hoping she was a writer, quietly offering to come cook dinner for her if the winter got too lonely. she accepted the offer and went one further - "let's meet up on a corner near my house," she said, "and go on a quiet walk around the neighborhood. let's not say a word until we get to my place, then stay quiet a while longer while we write about our experience walking around together. let me know what you'd like to cook afterwards, and i'll pick up all the ingredients."

cool, i said, and set it up for thursday. fast forward to this morning, as i'm getting showered and mentally prepped. work calls. someone got sick, they need me to come cover the shift. "but i've got a date," i said, hoping that since i had to cover for another coworker's date last week that i could get away with it. nope. mike's dreams get put on hold for other people's shit. as usual.

tuesday afternoon our house gets a buzz from a friend who needs someone to come test a batch of mushrooms he got in. he gave us a bag with a bit over an eighth in it, of which i got about a gram. it was a pleasant afternoon, aside from listening to my roommates bitch and complain about how there's no goddamn way i can feel anything off a gram of mushrooms, and how i was just taking away from their trips by asking for any at all. oh, sorry for the massive fucking inconvenience, asking for a solitary gram of drugs you were freely fucking given. regardless, i had a smile on my face all day, woke up feeling just as pleasant on wednesday. it's mostly worn off now. sad, though now i'd be interested in taking 1g doses once a month or so as a sort of antidepressant. it certainly seemed to help.

last night my computer permanently muted itself and is starting to show other strange symptoms. fuck. it keeps de-selecting the browser window every minute and a half or so, which doesn't sound irritating until you're trying to type a long entry and have to click on the box again every third sentence.

fuck. fuck.

when i was at work tonight my boss could see i wasn't in a good mood. "what's wrong," she pressed after a while. "c'mon, mike, i know you had plans tonight, but you're here now, just roll with it." bitch i do not want to talk about this with you. "i mean, you don't HAVE to talk to me... though i am your manager, so you kinda do," she said, and laughed. i didn't.

you want to know? okay. so i told her. i told her i'm tired of feeling like god's plan for me is to spend my best years single, celibate, and alone. i'm tired of every plan i get really attached to getting fucked all to hell thanks to 'circumstances'. i'm tired of this past decade of putting my goddamn plans on hold so that other people can try to realize their dreams. i'm fucking tired of being an expendable part of everyone else's plans when nobody else will get on my side when i've got shit i want to get done.

"y'know, i know it's hard when you don't have anyone, but look at me. i'm 36, i've been dating guys for years, and i've never felt really attached to any of them. i just broke up with a 22 year old; he was a sweet guy, but he wasn't ready to settle down and get serious with me." i couldn't help but snicker. "yeah yeah, i know what you're thinking, 'at least you're getting laid,' right?"

bitch, that was not what i was thinking. i was thinking that it must be nice to feel wanted, to feel desirable. it must be nice to look forward to a little solo time and not be terrified at the notion of waking up cold and alone for the two-thousandth morning in a row. and yeah, maybe i do wonder what it'd be like to have sex in a world where saddam hussein is dead and bush isn't president. (yeah, it's been that fucking long.)

i mean, maybe if i was hideous, or a raging asshole, or homeless or something, i could understand. but i'm pretty sure i'm not any of those things. she kinda sighed, irritated that i wasn't falling into the trap of talking about her problems when i'm trying to focus on me for once. "well, maybe you just need a change in your life. maybe you need to get out more."

uhhhhhhhhhhhhh no thank you. fuck bars, fuck clubs even harder. those are not my kind of people. unfortunately, my kind of people don't really get out and mingle in large numbers. and as for changing my own life, i wish this was the first time i'd heard that this year. if i knew how to just go out and be different, i'd fucking do it. what, you think i'm miserable like this on purpose? yeah, sure, maybe some tiny percentage of me is still pining away for elyse (six years later), but that voice is so quiet and distant now that i manage to ignore it on all but the worst of nights. i don't let it make decisions for me anymore, not since the long winter when i almost starved myself to death out of pure despair.

sigh. fuck.

finally, here's a piece from a week ago. all apologies: even though she's gone i can't help but occasionally use some of her words.

(12:28am, mon23jan)

led about

til the end

sets its sights,

draws me in -

play me out

i am my fire at nostalgia

(12:32am)

onehundred

post 100. i thought i'd share a pair of nicely worded thursday mornings with you.

----------------------

3:53am, thu05jan

i was able to follow you

all the way to the sea

you see you left a trail

of mostly neuroses

for which i wrote these songs

long since lost in the trees

i breathed

your scent carried deep

leaving in its wake weak knees

no thirst slaked here,

just a feared naked breeze -

lacking beard insulation,

breaking hard in the freeze

listen to me

(4:08am)

-----------

1:48am, thu12jan

"did it all just get too real?"

your going is unreasoned

basic point-and-run stuff

latitudes wrap you like silk

you're a season to believe in,

you're warm coats on the beach at dawn

i, to the almosts and maybes,

"was it good for me?"

should be; safe journeys to the sea,

to sleep freely in heated relief

i'm the water treaded in the waiting,

i'm a cigarette and a shot of bourbon on waking

(2:05am)

2. auld lang syne

tonight, i worked from 4pm-2am at navy pier. this is my other job, the one where all the meat is already long dead before it gets to my hands, and my job is just to put it together with non-meat stuff and make sure it makes it to the customers - or at least out of the kitchen, having finally leaned sometime recently that i can't really control everything. which is probably for the best.

at around 7:30 i went out for a smoke break, one of my last, as they took away smoke breaks as of 2012 at that job and my other one never gave them in the first place. it's not enough to make me quit smoking. after lighting up and getting about halfway through, i realized i had a text from Mxxxxx asking if i was working. i said yes, and she said to let me know when i had a smoke break. "on one now," i said, and five minutes later she came around the corner and kissed me. she was nearly drunk, out at the billy goat for an hour or two before heading off to a half-dozen other parties for the night. it was the first new year's kiss i'd gotten in years, and i told her so. she kissed me again. it was the first time i'd seen her since october, and it lasted five minutes before i went back to work. "don't be a stranger," i said, holding her face so i could look in her eyes as i said it. "you know my facebook," she said, and that was it. despite the stupid smile on my face when i went back in, i was thinking. i know i haven't made much in the way of moves on her recently, but part of me definitely wanted her to say something about it. maybe that was her way of doing so, i thought, still smiling. she still smells amazing.

about 11:30 i managed to duck out for one last smoke, texting her a "happy new year, you beautiful bitch". an hour later i'd gotten no response, got nervous she'd taken the bitch part seriously (i don't like using 'bitch' to refer to women unless it's really, really accurate), and followed up with, "just kidding, you know i love ya". five minutes later, get a reply that ends, "love you too." haven't heard that in a good few years, either. but did i really mean it, what i said? i didn't know.

later, on an incredibly crowded bus, waiting to pull out of navy pier at 2:30, i messaged her to see what she was doing. turns out, she went to her ex's place (no surprise there, her circle of friends seems to use that house as their main gathering point), where he hit her in the face.

...now, i'm not a particularly violent person. used to get in fights in second, third grade, but who didn't? but, and let me emphasize this, if there is one rule that men should be expected to follow it is that you do not hit women. if you break this rule, your physical well-being becomes forfeit, and you should not be surprised by this. she claimed one of her other friends took care of it, but i'm sure he could still see afterwards, which means it was probably for the best that i wasn't there.

she'd left by the time i heard this, thanked me for the offers of violence, and i didn't hear from her again the rest of the night (though i asked, twice, if she'd like to come by here, and never got a response). hopefully, seeing as it's almost 6am, she's safely asleep somewhere. just like i should be.

...one more time: you do not hit women.

1. lobsters

yesterday, i started work at 7am. i don't often work the morning shifts at this job, and have never pulled the 7am card, had to work my other job starting at 4. so as i trudged out the front door at 6am, waiting for the sun to rise and the rain to lessen, i already knew it would be a long day. the drizzle had become a strong shower by the time i reached work. the walk always takes an hour, and i was well soaked by the end.

after setting up my station in the back room, the chef brought me a box. i popped off the top and was greeting by about a dozen live lobsters.

i'll spare you the details of the process - you can probably look it up on youtube if you're so inclined - but suffice it to say, i learned what color a lobster's brains are, which is something i never wanted to know. i cannot unknow this. i'll also never forget how a lobster hunches its back and crosses its claws when threatened or scared.

i'm not a squeamish person; after being shown the process, i had no trouble replicating all the tears and cracks. the chef assured me they don't feel pain, to which i offered doubt. it wasn't until i got home and relayed the story to my roommates that i realized it was my first time killing a living thing - and not just one, but a full dozen, disassembled, cleaned, and thrown in the fire still twitching. not an insect, not a mouse, but something about the size of a puppy. they were almost cute, i'd think, staring at some of the ones edging their way around the box while dumping various innards into the trash, looking at them while mentally going over the next sequence of cuts and breaks. it's moments like that when i can really cherish having the ability to disconnect from what's going on around me, and if it had happened fifteen or twenty years earlier in life i can imagine it having a pretty large impact on how i'd grown up.

it's not something i particularly want to do again. but, apparently, i can.