48 posts tagged “writing”

I'm not much given to flights of fancy when it comes to folklore, tending to view it with a grain of salt and interest in the story, not the origin. However, as last night was the year's end festival of fire (Samhain) on the traditional Irish calendar, it also marked the fourth move of the courts of the aos sí (people of the mounds, or, in other words, faeries). If one looks at the old calender, the court would have last moved May 1st (Beltane), which coincides with the beginning of a lot of a long string of odd, bad luck for myself. This was punctuated with my being run off the road early Halloween morning and spending several hours in the rain waiting for a tow truck.

Faeries are mischief makers and a lot of the things that have happened in the past six months do seem rather Puckish. Additionally, this morning as I rose and all day I have experienced a feeling of... change? Something in the air seems different.

Perhaps it's too much reading lately. Perhaps it's the distortion of time from daylight savings. But something genuinely feels different and I just cannot put a finger to it, save for old folklore. I laugh at the idea that the Fool and his Unseely court might have been having their sport of me, but I have heard stranger things. Seen stranger things.

"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Unfortunately, in disagreement with the late and great Mr. Vonnegut, whom I hold in high esteem, I must say otherwise. I have reached an equilibrium between the beast of my ever-looming depression and that small cinder of hope that I kindle in the chambers of my figurative heart. Everything is beautiful, but everything hurts. I am miserable, however, this is a misery I can live with.

"My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college. After college, I called him long distance and said, now what?
My dad didn't know, so he said get a job.
When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance, I said, now what? My dad didn't know, so he said, get married.
I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need."
- Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

I have lived my entire life in the shadow of my own intelligence. I was ear-marked for advanced placement in first, third, and fifth grade. My mother fought vehemently against it each time, wanting me to grow up with my peers, my friends. I spent most of my early educational life bored. The latter part of my educational career has been spent exasperated at the professors and teachers I've endured. Friends make jokes that I know everything. People who've just met me comment on my intelligence, as it inevitably comes through in conversation. I live with the fear that I will never match the expectations that others might have for me. I fear that I will never be worthy of this brain I have been gifted with.

"Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts"."
- Henry Rollins

I dive wholeheartedly into things. I feel a lot. I think a lot. If something, anything is worth doing, then I throw myself into it with the vigor of a zealot and should things go badly I pick up the pieces and sew myself back together as best I can. This has been my undoing many times but the clarity with which is allows me to see at some moments makes it worth it. It is questionable whether or not I invest too much of myself in other people, however, the beauty that even a fraction of them show makes the gamble worth it. As I mentioned earlier, everything is beautiful and everything hurts. The people with whom I associate, the people who I call my friends are magnificent and glorious testaments to what any person should aspire to be. I fear sometimes that I may seem creepy, but I try to remind them of this when I can. I would remind them more were I able.

"The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything."
 - Friedrich Nietzsche

I love too easily. The counter to that point is that there is no limit to the love I have to give. Yes, my heart has been broken. Uneasily mended, but still it beats. I am not afraid of love. I do not fear the inevitable breaking of that shoddily repaired organ which beats in my chest. I throw myself willingly to the tigers of Eros knowing I will not come away unscathed.

This odd balance inside me leaves me at a loss. I do not wallow in my misery, but I acknowledge it's existence. I do not hope, yet I look for the best in situations. I can survive in this state, but would one truly classify this as living? For the moment there is naught else I can do. I draw breath, I place one foot in front of the other, and I trudge along as I am able.

There, just beyond the light's reach, that is where my heart lies. Draped in the shadows of doubt, fear, and uncertainty it beats slowly. The sound of a ragged bellow worked by a weak arm echoes from that dark place, the thin wheezing signaling the futile attempt to stoke whatever embers remain. The fire has burned out.

A thin and ancient gypsy woman once told my fortune at a carnival. Her nose was crooked with a wart above her left nostril. Her cheeks were lined with wrinkles and sagged like the jowls of a sow. Her eyes, however, were deep set gems in sunken recesses that burned with clarity and life. From across a small, felt lined table she dealt me a hand of ten cards, laid out in the tradition of the cross. A silent tsk, tsk slipped from her lips, which set themselves downward. She looked at me with those fierce eyes and splayed her gnarled hands above the card spread. I remember the well kept condition of her fingernails, the lines of her knuckles. Focusing on minute details instead of what lay below her aged fingers. The reading was short, as the cards dealt all agreed on many points, like a caucus for dismal news. The last words I heard from her dry, drawn lips were, "It's unfortunate and I am sorry."

Somewhere in the great divide between you and I is bridge that burns.
Somewhere in the space between is a silence I can't penetrate.

I could never be what you wanted or needed.
I could never become that man.

For a while I could have pretended.
I could have acted the part.

But I am no actor, nor do I abide a lie.
I could not be something I was never meant to be.

Somewhere in the silence are the last remains of yesterday.
Somewhere in the silence are all the things I didn't say.

The shape is hidden in the stone; the sculptor only needs coax it out.
The flame is hidden in the wood; you only need to beg the spark.

Perhaps all this time I have flown as a crow I have simply been a raven, lost.
Perchance I have been mistaken, distracted by the shining glimmers of foil in grass.

Head held high, shoulders back, I walk through the evening.
I cut through the darkness like a raven through the air at dusk.

I am beginning to remember who I am.
I am remembering to forget who I never was.

The beer is no longer imbibed as medication, but as a pleasure.
The nights are no longer stretched out endlessly and full of doubt.

The morning will come in its own time.
The dawn will bring the sun, burning away the fog, whether I wish it or not.

I am a raven, unmated, not a solitary crow.
I am flying through the pitch night finally aware of what I am.

Related: Seven for a Secret Never to be Told

I have partaken of various substances this evening.
I am feeling quite high and quite low at the moment.
To compensate, I am singing along, voice at it's loudest, to Say Anything.
I cannot wait to be out West.
I cannot wait to be out East.

I really, really want to hug K-mart right now.
I was telling someone tonight how she was one of most wonderful people, and women, I knew.
Oh, her and the puppies and the ponies.

I need more friends like that.

At the street party this evening I was surrounded by people I knew and have known.
It was nice.
I'm still hung up on her, though.
Think I may always be.
How do you really turn that off for the person that showed you how to love again?
Regardless, I do not doubt she and I have a friendship that will last our lifetimes.

I often lament the fact I do not have direction for myself.
I curse that I have not found my niche yet.
I cannot appreciate the freedom I have at this time.
I know I will look back on these moments fondly. Someday.
Someday.

For now I sit and work and wait.
I shall see what I see.
I will record these moments.
I will share my life.
I will live.

He spoke honest words to me.
I saw them for what they are.
Observations on who I was, who I am, who I will be.
I heard the sounds of a friend's voice.
I saw what he sees.

There are complications to the simplest task.
Nothing is easy.
There are no quick answers.

I am full of guilt and fear and pain.
I am full of life and love.
I have brown eyes, so I'm full of something.

What is it I want?
What is it I really want?
Who is it I am chasing?
Who is it I will become?

So many answers now.
I do not know the questions to ask.
I am an essayist with a standardized form.
I am all of the above.
I am none of the above.

Chuck Palahniuk wrote, "Someday I'd be dead without a scar and there would be a really nice condo and a car. Really, really nice until the dust settled or the next owner. Nothing is static."

Getting laid off didn't frighten me. Being unemployed doesn't frighten me. It wasn't a death penalty, it was a commuted life sentence. It was freedom. The cross-country drive I am about to undertake is something a number of people don't understand. They question my reasons for it, ask why I don't take a plane.

It's the journey. The act of doing something. There's also the time I will have to myself. There are a lot of questions I need to ask myself. There are a lot of pieces of me that still lie broken upon the floor. I need time, without interruption, to look at these pieces, to dust them off and file them down and to fit them back into myself.

I will never be complete. There will always be more to experience and more to see. There is also one more person to talk to and one more laugh to share. There is love without end that must be shared. There are smiles to cause and sorrows to comfort.

I came to a realization today while observing a few people engaging in corporate shenanigans -- I live my life with the only goal being that I enrich the lives of others. Certainly, I have some private goals, as all mammals do, but at the end of my run I hope that those I am surrounded myself with are better off for having known me.

That idea is wrapped up in my reasoning for the trip as well. I need to be stronger for others. Physician, heal thyself. I strive to improve my understanding of myself so that I might better help others.

Rain was pit-patting against the window. It was a small, rectangular window, a double hung single pane affair as you might find in older urban homes or historical buildings. This window could be found in the former, a squat brownstone facing out upon an empty street lined with trees holding their first buds of the year. The street was also quiet, a young girl not quite old enough for high school who was walking a West Highland Terrier and huddling beneath an umbrella being the sole pedestrian. A dishwater sky hung heavy above the girl and the terrier and the brownstone. Clouds resembling so many suds were reflected on one side of the single pane of glass in the window, with a young man reflected from the other. Alabaster skin was drawn over the young man's face the features of which told the story of a mixed ancestry. Wisps of brown hair hung across his brow and long curls of the same color tumbled about his shoulders. His lips were drawn tightly against one another, thin enough to be a cut in his flesh rather than an orifice. His eyes were wide, seas of white with islands of darkness floating within them. His gaze was fixed on a book resting upon a desk that was placed underneath the window. Lying open to a yellowed page some three-fourths through the volume, the book had an antiquated menace about it. Perhaps it was the contrast between the careful hand lettering of and the hastily scrawled and trailing margin notes. Maybe it was simply the weight of age the cracked binding and the thick time-colored pages lent to the work. Regardless, the young man sitting before the book and the window and the world was held by that bound tome and the spell it had woven upon him.

The steel frame of the Beretta .84F is cold and smooth in my hands. It is precisely designed do to one thing. It does that one job perfectly. It fires a leaden projectile through the air at speeds faster than sound. Projectiles that will rend and tear flesh, destroy wood, and splinter stone.

It is cold and uncaring in my hand. It does not care for what purpose it is drawn from its holster. It is callous and dismisses the rest of the world, only considering what lies directly before it. There is no need for blinders or misdirection -- it will not look anywhere else.

It is cold and inhuman in my hand. An instrument of destruction. A tool of ruination. A machine meant to remove obstacles. It rests easily in my hand, as easily as a pen or paintbrush. It is simply another tool, meant to do a job. It has no malice, no cares, no remorse. It is inanimate, only having whatever meaning I attach to it.

It is cold and smooth and rests beneath my head. It is a constant companion and reminder. It is the only friend I can rely on.