The quietest time is often when I have insomnia and am up at some “ungodly” hour. We have this borrowed space heater, though. It’s making things a little easier. Not too many hours left in this old house. It didn’t treat us very well, because the landlord, for the most part, was indifferent to our basic requests, and therefore we suffered, along with other tenants here, through some serious cold, and some serious electric bills. This new place I think will be amazing.
Hard shoes knock on the floorboards overhead at 4 AM in the morning. My hours are strange too, but I just walk like a cat in these socks, and lately I haven’t been listening to much music. Probably the only time I get very loud is when I’m vocal – joking around, laughing. Ideas come to mind that just trip me out, and I start laughing really loud. Like if Judge Mathis, for instance, this TV courtroom judge, says something against a guy, and then adds, “What are you from Canada or something?” – this has Canadians in an uproar. I don’t know what it is, but I find stuff like that hilarious. Definitely when I’m watching TV, I’m most always laughing pretty hard.
I like to write. I like to write in a flow, and can usually tell when I’m in one. Writing in my notebook is a different experience because it’s with a pen and I usually don’t cross out words, replace them, and so on. It’s just a constant flow. I might write an article like that. At least the skeleton of it. Here on the Mac, it can be different; I can write out a sentence and second guess it, then delete it. It’s not a good way to be in the flow, but it’s the best place to be during a 2nd or 3rd draft, getting down to the end, finalizing, omitting unnecessary words. Laying in bed and not being able to sleep, I had this idea that I should think really hard about what I wanted to go into my dream with, and while doing that, slow down my breathing into counted breaths from 1 to 10. When that doesn’t work, when I’ve tried it for at least a half hour, then I know it’s time to get up and force myself to write.
The space heater can really dry out a room. You wake up with lips all chapped, wake up to another day without a job. Always that stress under your skin in the morning. Still, I like what Morrissey said back in The Smiths: “I was looking for a job and I found a job. Heaven knows I’m miserable now.” Jobs, books, writing – constant themes in my life. Behind that, under it all, is philosophy. Some aspects of philosophy I’ve stepped back from, more as some kind of emotional quirk than any solid reasons at the front that I could fire off into a bulleted list. I weave in and out of religious life like I’m making a basket. But there are no picnics, none that I can find.
When I came to Roanoke I dived into to the poetry readings, at least for a couple nights. Besides the fact that I was smoked out of the place (everyone down here seems to smoke), I couldn’t stick to it. Everyone just seemed too damn silly. They were living in these imaginary picnic baskets, mocking any serious word that might have escaped someone’s mouth.
an old girlfriend
with mono
my friends said to me
maybe she was going
around kissing other boys
and that’s how it happened
I never said anything
a month later she was
drinking with some guy
laughing over the phone
as I was talking to her
I started asking her
what is going on
started getting mad
she dumped me
on the spot
that was the end of that
life took me to different places
even wound up in India
for almost three months
I’d learn more of the
dialect as I walked around there
what I could not speak with
my mouth
I could speak with my hands
I started to feel that the world
brought me up well teaching me how
to communicate honestly and
to the point
a gentleman asked that
I learn Hindi and stay
and preach to the Indians
in his country that had
gone wayward
that was too hard for an 18
year old boy who just
escaped nearly losing his mind
I would go back to the states
again make more mistakes
pine over a few more girls
and be thrown into the grinding
mill of terrible jobs
what if’s always plague me
I can’t help it
what if I would have stayed
in Potomac that day?
instead of going back and living
with my grandmother for a while, I could have gotten rid of the saffron, put on white and learned a trade right there. Yeah, all of course in theory. Only a few of us went that path. Some even went back into the Navy, because it was the only way to pay their bills. The armed forces, the ghetto, it’s all bloodshed to me, in one way or another. Losing bits of soul. Crying your goddamn head off. Some of us went off to New York or Boston or California. The whole thing has been a big struggle, a zig zag, trying to figure out what we can accept, what we have to admit about ourselves, struggling to find a path for ourselves that is real. Getting into Krsna was a kid’s thing. Living the life years on into it we discovered was an adult thing. Everything is heavier as an adult for some reason.
Doing what I did, moving around so much, changing up, I have to tell myself that there was some bravery in it, and that I did the right thing, that some choices were the best choices. Compared to everyone else around me, I felt I was a pretty intelligent kid. Whatever I had to do, I had to blast through my family’s negativism to do it.
I wonder if one day I’ll wind up writing a book of memoirs. Is my life all that interesting? I suppose at least half of it is in the delivery. The other important thing is, who would read it? Here’s a Live Journal observation. Please, no one take this the wrong way. The attractive girls on Live Journal always get the comments, like 10-15 each entry practically, no matter what. Myself, I could sit down here for a long ass time, write up a 2000+ word entry, and just maybe I’d get one or two people’s thoughts from it. Still, a girl might get plagued with all kinds of attention, but it’s not always sincere. People have all sorts of ulterior motives when a pretty girl is in the room, there’s no way they can be themselves completely. Writing this with an affectionate smile on my face, sympathizing with the plight LJ girls are in across the data streams.
desk cluttered
with necessary junk
“necessito” is
“I need” in Spanish
one day
I’ll learn the
whole language
how can I
cut corners
and learn it
without going
to school?
wife is stubborn
and won’t teach me
so I will do things
to get back at her
like hide
hairpins and
jam the bathroom
doorknob with toothpicks
I had met this kid who did the Amok anarchist zine in D.C. when I was a kid. Didn’t know him for very long, but picked up on a few tips like that, the best way to jam locks, to sabotage a big operation. He had a big effect on me even though I only hung out with him two or three times. Getting into straightedge I think shook that destructiveness out of me, at least to an extent. It wasn’t until KC that I became a little more peaceful. But I swear I came out of the womb peaceful, I didn’t have any grudges to speak of. It was the world that chopped trees down on top of me and took the worst words out of its pocket for me and slashed them at my throat. There was something about me that had me ruled out from day one. At least that’s what it seems. What a surreal event, getting through preschool and graduating on to Elementary school. Those of us who were terrified of going forward were separated by an invisible line from the others. That’s the way it was. So many fights and name calling. One kid cried so much I’m surprised he didn’t burst into bits. It was a spiritual experience for everyone. I wish someone could have been our martyr to show us that! If Greg just would have exploded out on the field from hurt feelings we would have known right there from that day on that there is something more to walking around in these bodies as if they are completely empty.
weaving quiet
and weaving loud
None of this is easy any more. The bones creak and do an awful job. Winter doesn’t help. I think it’s the main season that puts years on a face, puts the wrinkles there. Really, a guy just wakes up on one particular day in his life and notices that his face is not what it used to be.
accept that new
maybe not so
wonderful face
get back to basics
quiet the
wild stirrings
When things are in the mode of goodness you can read. I plan to explain this one of these days. Other modes, too – passion, and the lower, the mode of ignorance. All three of these we live in and know and are dominated by. The best men, they are the only ones that can reach it to number four, or the liberated state of pure love and act within that as a transcendent being. In all my favorite movies I see traces of this, people breaking free from their chains, fighting back against all odds and fears, and sometimes outsmarting their life long oppressors. These days, too, are the ones that change your life and become engraved in your mind. That’s what I want when my last day comes and I go down in blood spattered chaos and the moments begin to spark in front of the mind’s eye.
wake up in
a better place
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