Brief Note

Another chapter finished. have just completed a project [well maybe not] that has consumed far too many hours of my time. which was the point of it, to see how much time i am willing to devote to this or to anything. for now, for this week, it is done, put to bed. so i will have more time to write!!!! and perhaps, post here? until i get consumed with the next project...

Why I Never Read the Papers

Raining. Sick. Afraid.
I know, you see. I've been there.
I can't see to drive.

Understand it all:
Twisted psyche. Possession.
Nine tenths of the law.

They think so. It's their
right, to own, have, and yes, kill.
Because it is theirs.
No one better touch their toys,
but a person isn't a thing.

A person lives, breathes,
has a mind, feelings and guts.
But to them, a thing.
Not person. A nobody.
Display piece. That's all. Or else....

You see, I've been there.
I lived that every day.
And the rain comes down...

House is Not a Home Part III

There seems to be an obsession or perhaps a synergy between damaged relationships and domiciles. I look at people, picking through the detritus of their lives, the vacant wounded stare as they turn over a broken bit of crockery. Over, over, over, as if they've never seen a shard before. I have. Shards have sharp edges, cut. Drag the shard along the length of my forearm and watch the pretty design well up. And a new work of art, see! red rain on the tiles.
Oh. Oh god. Oh. Oh no. Oh god. He'll...... Oh. It does not matter what he'll do anymore. He can get mad, he can get furious. I am not there to care, to hear it. Lovely spatter pattern, burgundy on cream colored tiles.
There is other flooring. The carpet is stained. It is red, not red with blood, or at least I do not think so. Green sofa, neutral chairs and bed coverings. The walls are beige, benign. Sterile. Functional. Anonymous. Air conditioning off and still cold, despite the Florida heat. Windows open to let in the warm air, but it does not help.
This monastic cell is cold, so cold all the time. A place of retreat, prayer, repentance. A place to reevaluate a life. Perhaps a place to begin a life. Perhaps a place to end one.
The furniture is cheap, knocked around. So many water rings on the coffee table, marks of the many faceless former residents. It is a no-smoking room, but there are cigarette burns on the counters, window sill, carpet. Cigarettes bring some small comfort, or at least a five minute distraction. And sometimes a five minute distraction is comfort enough.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands have slept in this room, in this bed, one night at a time. Covers pulled up over my head, trying to keep out the cold. Alone, hanging off the edge most nights. Perhaps not quite alone as my laptop lays here next to me, constant gateway to the world outside. Its bright glow calls me. One a.m., three a.m., five a.m., I turn to check the screen. Is there anyone awake, anyone I can talk to? Can anyone hear me? Count the tears?
It is supposed to be an oasis, a haven. During the day, the three blankets are smooth, tight. You could bounce a coin off that bed. Look closer. It is worn too. No sheet to cover the box spring, no dust ruffle to cover the bare framework holding it up. All surface and nothing underneath.
The four mismatched pillows are piled at the top. Two are old and flat, lumps of padding. The third is a feather pillow which never holds its shape. It suffocates the head that lays upon it. The fourth pillow will not be used as a pillow. It pretends it is Japanese, a carved wood head support, but that is more pretense. Obvious what it is and what it is not. Everything in this room, obvious in its pretense and pretend, its simplicity and reality.
Cigarette burns, stains in the carpet, so many. Can't clean it, carpet so worn that dirt and dust are all that hold it together. You can't tell if those are blood stains, the floor a puddle of blood. Except for the tiles. They are cracked. Once upon a time, did someone pry up a tile, test the sharpness of its edge? They are as sharp as the broken china which litters the floor where I lived, in a universe long ago and far away. I sit on the floor and touch the cracked tiles gently, stroke them with my fingertip. I suck the warm blood, a frisson, eyes closed with pleasure.
There is a table, or perhaps a desk against the wall. Crowded with work files, printer, CDs, a small incense burner, it is hard to see the surface. Scent floats up from the burner, but does not cover the stale damp smell of too many bodies. The desk lamp does not work. Ironic, a light which casts no light on any subject. This room sucks it up. Curtains wide open to the sun, but the sunbeam is anemic. The room absorbs the very life from those who enter. "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate." Yes, abandon all hope, you who enter.
The sofa, a two seater, sags in the middle. Directly in front of the air conditioning unit, it is even colder than the bed. No. Nothing is colder than that bed, except the bed I slept in before. The freezer isn't as cold as that bed. The void isn't that cold. Hell isn't that cold.
A small white tiled bathroom. Anonymous. The shower is hot, scalding. The room fills with steam. It cannot wash away your crimes. It cannot wash away the crimes committed against you. Memories set by a branding iron, scrubbing deepens the scars.
There is a one door refrigerator, full of food. I bought it. All of it. Every last item. Is there a party in this room? Are there plans for a party? Gourmet foods, sauces, rare chocolates and spices, four bottles of wine, champagne. The two-burner cook top is scrubbed, the cleanest spot here. I have to make it clean, scour it, scrub the damned spots from it, scrub them out. This is only place in this room that pleases me, that is me. Mixing bowls, mugs, pans, wok. How many kitchen appliances can fit into that tiny cupboard? Curries, crepes, chow fun, fondue, mashed potatoes, soups, every shade of ethnic cuisine emerge from this corner. This building is the honorary dormitory for the local culinary academy, $50,000 tuition for 15 months, but mine is the only room you can trace from the elevator. Hansel and Gretel follow the scent of cookies to the witch's home. I pretend that this is a home, although I suspect it is an oven which will send me, smoke, to the heavens.
Photos, embroidered pictures, throw pillows, stuffed bears. Art attached to the walls with push pins, not even hung. Shabby attempts in a shabby room. All transient. Does anyone notice the comings and goings of those who reside here? Does anyone notice me? Does anyone care?

Tin Ear

"Somewhere over the rainbow..."
She can't sing, you know.
Can't sing a tinker's damn
But she will sit in her
Itty Bitty Honda
and sing her soul out
when no one is watching.
A karaoke of the self,
audience of none?
Audience of one.
One hears her.
One hears everything.
And to her,
That
is all
that matters.

Vodka Straight

He wore a lavender tee shirt
with a unicorn and a
raaaiiinnnbow on it.
A rainbow.
Could you get any more cliche than that?

But he was beautiful
broken tooth smile
Made my bones hurt
marrow boiling away

Stands there, microphone in hand
Eyes shut, so far away.
He sings.
Silly karaoke bar.
I watch lean back on my bar stool.
The counter holds me up
because
my bones are melting.

He unlocks the door
of his beat up civic del sol,
old dented.
The rear passenger panel is red.

I wish
I wish I knew
I wish I knew his name....

His Memory

Jeff died erev Sukkot. I was in Hong Kong or the moon, same thing. Every year, preparing for the Days of Awe which leads into his yahrzeit, I binge cry. I cry without awareness of the tears or the root cause. The tears slide down my face, splotches on my tee shirt.
Jeff was...Jeff. I am truly blessed to have known him. I am not the only one to make that claim. He was special. A gay, short, in recovery alcoholic, a fussy little bantamweight with a broken tooth and you could not find a more beautiful person. He glowed. When Jeff came into a room, all heads swiveled to see "who"? He's cute in photos, but live he dazzled.
He was my brother's bashert. When they met, my brother said, "I prefer men shorter than myself." Jeff looked him up and down carefully. Said "I'm only 5' 6-1/2" myself." He was lying. But he knew and David knew. This was The One.
They each told me, independent of the other, what it felt like. One would wake up. Look at the other and say to himself, "This is my home. This is the one who completes me. This is the one who makes me whole, a better person, a better me."
I'd spend time with them, absorbing that glow. I was so happy for them. And oh, how I envied them! I was sick with envy and desire. To feel that way, to know, to be so sure.
One of Jeff's biggest complaints about being ill and dying was how cranky it made him. He became needy, irritable. We told him that he wasn't a burden, it was our pleasure to tend, coddle, indulge him, but he worried about it. Silly boy. The only burden was that AIDS took him before he became a burden.
At his memorial service, on what would have been his 30th birthday, there were so many serious speakers. Everyone extolling the virtues that were Jeff til I wanted to scream. I am one of Jeff's biggest fans. If there were a Jewish counsel to propose sainthood, I would enter his name. Still, after a few hours, I gave into my rebel streak and spoke of Jeff's wicked sense of humor, his ability to tell a joke and lighten any occasion. I related a few of his favorite, filthiest jokes. In sign language. And pantomime. Which made them even more explicit and filthy. His jokes were raunchy, never cruel, never mean.
Jeff saved at least one life. Directly. As metaphor, as influence, he saved so many, enhanced so many. His feet were guided one day, one cool autumn morning. A friend told this story. Jeff never knew what Mark was planning that day. How could he?
Mark had decided it was time to end it all. He went out to buy some junk, to put an extra large dollop of heroin in his needle that day and float away on a cloud of bliss, never to return. Went downtown to meet his supplier. Mark turns the corner and runs smack into Jeff. They hadn't seen each other in a few years. Jeff did not frequent that part of Manhattan.
"Mark! I haven't seen you in ages. Oh, we have to catch up. You must tell me what you've been doing, what's going on. Look, there's a coffee shop. No, Mark, I am not taking no for an answer. It is so good to see you. And hey, they have seven-layer cake. How can you resist seven-layer cake?"
Jeff put his arm around Mark's shoulder and led him into the diner. They spent the rest of the day together. And Mark did not buy heroin that day. Or the next. Or even the day after that. Jeff gave Mark a chance at life just by being himself.
Why was Jeff there, just then?
There is no such thing as coincidence.
Everything leads to everything else.
Paths diverge, converge, digress.
Time passes. The strands weave in and out, to that one moment which changes your life. Which gives you life.
"I'm only 5' 6-1/2" myself."

Moshe ben Esther of blessed memory.

Candide

If This is the
Happiest Place on Earth
Why do so many people look
sooo miserable?
Great expectations lead to
Great disappointments.
Too often.
Your family will not change
Your friends will not change
You will not change.
Will you? Can you?
Whatever miseries
you had
you bring with you.
Can you let the joy out?
It's in there, hiding.
Let it out.
Let yourself be happy.
A day, an hour
even a minute.
Let yourself.
The only one who has to give you
permission
is you

14 days

All that is left are
Three White Crosses
Cars pass by
too fast to notice
But I notice
I see them
When the crosses, too,
are gone,
beaten into the ground
I will still see them

It's been another two weeks. Ordinary weeks. Everyone went back to school or back to work. Sloshim is not even over. It is not yet 30 days but everything is normal or at least gives the appearance of normal. No more memorials. No more flowers. No more drapes or teddy bears or pictures. The only markers now are three small white crosses. And nothing will ever be the same again.
I still pass it. Three, four, five times a day. Every day. Cannot stop crying. I see the cars whiz by. They don't know. I don't know. It is not my grief. I am just a bystander, a witness. But I cannot stop crying.
I am glad I cannot stop. I am glad it hurts. If I could touch them, tell them I don't know, can't know.... I have a shoulder and tears to mingle with theirs. The world is shattered. You do not cry alone. You don't know that, know me. I am a stranger who saw. A stranger who cries. And cries. And cries.

Epiphany: Control Alt Delete

Clear memory
deleting old files
write new pathways
over the old.
They are there.
But...
Links are broken.
Dust on them
I do not need them
any longer.
Build new ones
Faith in this
Faith.

Moments of awakening
Arise, ye sleepers, arise!
Moments when I am
conscious.
Each one
I was not here.
Can't hear god talking
So full of noise...
I stand
one foot on the other side
pale shadows of music.
Then,
I hear.
Understanding will come later.
Maybe. That is not important.
But I hear and I obey
Sed audio obsequorque.
Sed...

Lunar Eclipse

I have not written here in a week. Oh, I've written. I am almost always writing, even when I have writer's speedhump, I am writing something or other. Indeed, last week I wrote a ‘started out 2500 ended up being 4200 word' story, a few partial poems, some short essays and sundry others. In fact tonight, home from class, I did a first draft of an assignment due in three weeks.
After doing some other research, studying and contemplating my future as if it were a navel orange, I intent to watch the moon. My future as seen in an orange. The oracle of Delphi was much more polite and not as lint filled, but an orange is handier. An orange, the lovely, soon to be eclipsed moon, both ridgy spheres. There are tiny depressions, craters in the surface. These craters give you a better grip when you want to hold onto this sphere.
It is the same when you love someone. The imperfections, those tiny ridges, are what you hold close. The imperfections make us each unique. The way we each want to be respected, desired, given credence, loved is what makes us special. And our flaws, so many flaws? To be loved as much despite yourself as because of yourself is what each person wants. We each know our faults, and they are so much larger in our own mind than anywhere else.
Nobody can flagellate us as well as we do, no one. But the beloved will take the whip from my hands, set it aside. Accept the flaws and treasure them as much as the perfections, pressing fingers into those tiny depressions to keep me from drifting away on breath of wind. Fingers are not chains holding me down. They hold me close, tight, but not down. I can feel the wind but not be blown off course by it. The imperfections catch the wind, too, but are not conquered by it. Wind is just wind.
Full moon tonight. I look up and its beauty takes my breath away. If it were perfect, a smooth glass orb, it would not be as lovely. I can stare for hours at this moon, the shadows, ridges, its cycle of new to full and back again. Never the same, but still the same. Loved for being itself. What else can it be except itself? What else can I be except me?

Does this End Justify the Mean, Median or Mode?

I pass it at least four times a day. An ordinary intersection. Before. It's been a week now. The memorial on the median is no longer shocking in its newness, no longer attracts stares from every passing vehicle. It has become just another place marker on the roads.
One week tonight.
One week.
I passed there a few hours ago. It was still daylight, much safer for driving than twilight or full dark. Does not matter. There, it is full dark. A gathering to mark the anniversary night. Vehicles formed a protective wagon train around it. Adults and teens, holding their obols, flowers, stuffies, stood there or knelt on the damp ground. How appropriate that the ground be damp. If it was not so before, they would make so now. They freshen the markers and add new ones. It is a public mourning, a warning. The grave sites are private and warn only Ophelia, who wanders the cemetery wearing a flower wreath. She will have no wedding, nor will they.
I am selfish, relieved, grateful. It is not my child there. I am spared this grief. For tonight. My daughter drives past here, too. She knew them. They all seem to know each other here. It is a small, small world. The three teenagers killed in a high-speed spinout went to school with her or her friends. I count my blessings tonight and cross my fingers. She's not home yet and her cellphone goes to voicemail. I try not to stare at the clock.
What a waste. Young promise. Still in diapers, I mean high school. I think of my own recent brush. If I'd turned over, as they did, I'd be dead. But I have lived, done things, will leave a memory or two beyond myself and my immediate world. Their memorial is a warning and will be gone in a few months. The next group of children will speed past it, too happy to notice the slickness of the road, the shredded pink silk cross, the grass grown over the skidmarks. Who will remember them except for their own? Is that enough?
They had no chisel, no sandpaper to hone their granite. The inscriber is a stranger for hire. He is given a short story to work from, not a novel, not an epic.
And that is wrong.

What Is In The Cards?

She wondered if this was an omen, that disembodied voice calling out, "No new messages." Before, the little man had been a harbinger of good tidings of great joy. Now he was still as the tomb.
Did familiarity breed contempt? Was there a casualness resulting from increased availability? She rejected the question before it was even fully formed as irrelevant to her life. How increased? A few more hours here and there? More telephone time? The increase in time they allotted each other directly correlated to increased stress and strife in their real world lives. Ergo, all good negated.
She closed the laptop. If she couldn't see the blank screen, it didn't exist. Keep your head in the sand at all times possible and even at times impossible. Ignore what you will. The world will go on with or without your consent and say so.
Say so. The things he said to her. She drummed her fingers on the laptop. Open it? Check mail again? No. Leave it be. For now. Remember their last conversation. Caring without tipping over into solicitous platitudes or falsehood. Patient. Balanced. It was foreign to each of them. They'd never... Or never in a million years anyway. This newborn life to walk through, so tentative after eons of familiar. Uncharted, after sleepwalking with eyes open only when the tension and anger boiled over. Which it did. Often. Too often.
To live and know your life was wrong, but not see a way to fix it was painful. Wake to hopelessness, sorry to be awake. Filled with such despair that the nightly prayer had morphed into "If I should die before I wake... Let me die before I wake. Please let me die." And now this. This quiet. The very thought of which made her smile. Even feeling ignored, she smiled. Pulled the ugly green paisley blanket higher on her shoulders.
Her cell chirped. And his name flashed on the screen.

My Bonsai

My bonsai is talking
To me
I do not listen
It sits there
in its box.
Waiting to grow.
Ignored
Poor bonsai.
So patient
It is crying
and I do not listen
I carry it around
Torment it
Torment myself
Hearing it cry
but not listening
It is white noise
a song I hear for so long
I can pretend I don't

But I can't.

I still hear it
know it
feel it

Try so hard
to continue
to ignore it

and so afraid
of succeeding.

Stickley Stupidity

People are amazing. They get stuck in a mindset and will not change or leave it no matter the cost. The ability to call it quits, to backtrack is hard won and too often viewed as defeat. Pride, ego is paramount. If I stop, then I lose. Does that mean someone else won? Maybe. This is a problem because why? Life is a zero/sum game? Sez who? Calling it quits, knowing when to stop is not the same as being defeated. Why do people view it that way? It can mean cutting your losses. Learning when to stop is one of the great challenges of human existance and relationships. Stop, pause, think, consider. Know when to hold them, know when to fold them. Let's all take a deep breath before we continue, whether it means continuing the discussion, argument, world as we know it. Or not. Why are people afraid of the unknown possibility? Better the devil you know than the enigma you don't. The definition of madness is repeating the same behavior in the same or similar circumstance and expecting a different outcome.
My point is actually much simpler than the high philosophic discussions of man's psyche I seem to be espousing. I want to talk about Stickley, Stickley nesting tables to be precise.
I inherited a set of Stickley nesting tables. Useful, fairly attractive to some, moderate value. [for more info, go to:
www.webteek.com/search.php?sid=1&keywords=Furniture&keySub=Stickley]
Their beauty was in their utility, in their very simplicity and cleanness of line. I had no use for them, so I put them with all the other furniture and goods to be sold.
A couple was very interested in the set of three tables, oohing and ahhing. "The tall one could go here and the medium there and the little one is juuusssstttt right for over in the corner" I quoted them what I thought was a reasonable price for the set and paused, expecting them to make a counter-offer. They were silent.
"Ummm,, Are you interested in the tables? I quoted you a fair price, based on maker, condition and completeness of the set."
"Oh. Well. That's too much. We can't go higher than [$75 less than my proposal]."
I made a counter offer, a bit higher than midway between my request and their offer.
"Nope, still too high."
"If you can't then you can't. No problem." They settled on a few other small items, paid and left. I sent the tables to auction a few weeks later.
Can you imagine my surprise when the auction house sent me the name of the purchasers and the winning bid? It was the couple from the garage. Not only had they paid my original requested amount, they went another $50 over that. Go figure.
They spent more instead of just calling me and admitting they really wanted those tables. I suppose the cost in pride was greater than the cost in dollars.
That sort of behavior extends to the business world. I was hired as a subcontractor for a business management office. I wasn't surprised to discover that I had worked with or offered my services to a few of their clients in the past. Orlando is a small town, complete with a mainstreet and a cinema and cotton candy and a dog and pony show!
In any case, I had offered my services to one particular family in the past. And was turned down. So now I will be doing the tasks originally offered and getting paid more than originally requested. And its taken longer and cost more than if they hired me in the first place.
Such is life.

August is Extremely Slow

Arriving at the outpatient clinic at the ungodly hour of 6:25 am, I enter into utter chaos. I wish. Seriously reader, this is Floriduh, not NYC. In NYC, any outpatient clinic adjacent to an emergency room entrance would be an obstacle course of gunshot wounds, stabbings, heart attacks, strokes and those who, lacking medical insurance or a primary care physician, use the ER as their GP. No. Wait. That was NYC in the bad old days. Now, post Guiliani, post 9-11, ER's are as eerily calm as the forested mountains of Idaho. You can't hear the buzz but you know it lies just under the surface, coiled and ready to strike.
In any case, I enter a ghost town. There is no one at the entrance, the admitting desk, in the corridors. I wander the halls, wondering how I'll get into the clinic. Maybe it's an omen that I should just turn about and leave. It is a medically indicated procedure, but not a medically necessary one. Preventative, ergo optional at this time. I can leave and continue the family tradition of acting against medical advice. I remember the results of my parents and brother opting to ignore their physicians' preventative treatments. Suicide by inches.
I stand there, in that deserted hallway. Turn. Turn again. Consider my options. Which, truthfully are more limited than you might think, as I have no escape vehicle to jump into and take off for parts unknown, exceeding the speed limit just enough to not be accidental. Suicide by inches? Oh no, that is not for me. When I go, if I opt out earlier than my five year allotment, it will be in a blaze of glory. Full tank of gas, skidding head first into a pylon and exploding with sufficient heat to melt whatever I crash into. Or just having the good luck to be on a structurally deficient bridge at the exact moment it chooses to collapse. When I was a child, I envied those who died on the bridge at San Luis Rey. Only a friar questioned their innocence, their reason for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, since there is no such thing as coincidence. I wanted to be one of them, feel the rush of free fall, of knowing that sooner than I could count it would be over.
I turn, in that deserted hallway, pondering my most recent brush with sudden death. How I knew I would be alright, that it was not time. There is a security in knowing it is not yet time. I can live life as the Shakers did: Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow. Put your hands to work, and your heart to God.
Except I know I will not die tomorrow or the next day or the next day after that. I have a reprieve. I still have some time to squander in idleness, although not as much as most. I cannot afford to waste time in illness. Ignoring medical advice will result in more intervention in the long run, more tests, more examinations, more poking prodding sticking drawing. More fear. Ever so much more fear. Chilling, paralyzing fear. Despite my outward calm, my blithe assertion that it is really just cosmetic, preventative, the memory loop playing is of my doctor twenty years ago asserting that, if certain changes were to take place, this procedure would have to be done.
Change happens. The exact changes I was warned about. And I am here. Turning around and around, ever so slowly in the deserted corridor of a hospital triage area. Making myself dizzy, giddy with dizziness, to cover the gut wrenching fear I try so hard to deny.
"Ma'am, can I help you? Were you looking for the main entrance to the hospital? The cafeteria? Outpatient surgery?"
I blink, startled. Look at the nurse as if I've never seen one before.
"Ma'am?"
"Oh yes. Thank you. Outpatient surgery, please. I'm supposed to be here at 6:30."
"Well, you're right on time. Let me get these doors and you just go right on through. Someone on the other side will guide you."
"Is Virgil waiting for me, then?"
"Virgil? No, he's not on duty this morning. I believe Kathy and Julia are doing intake."
She presses a code for the doors. They swing open. I smile my thanks at her and step through to the other side.