Monday, August 28, 2006

bum

i have no problem taking handouts. for this reason i am officially a bum. if a person insists on paying for dinner i will not put up a fight... because personally, i was probably hoping he or she would do that anyway. i mean, let’s not kid anyone people. i know what it feels like to buy someone a meal. it feels good. and it is a whole lot easier if the person just lets me pay for it and is appreciative... the whole, “no, I’ve got it” thing is really quite tiresome. whoever insists on paying for it first, wins the prize. the other person should just graciously concede. now granted, there is a little gamesmanship involved. there is a little get a little, give a little vibe that should be hanging around. I am just as likely as the next guy to throw down a little change for a buddy’s meal, but if my friend has his credit card out before the waiter/waitress even rolls around the corner with the check... that’s it... i lose. or win, however you look at it.

Monday, August 14, 2006

swirl

What the hell. Confusion is intoxicating in its various colors. I think today’s color will be blue. Blue for my eyes that close when I wonder what is going on. In my bedroom underneath a lopsided ceiling fan, I lay back on my bed, head on the pillow, and feet dangling off onto the floor. My elbow crooked over my forehead with my hand slackly open. These things are real. They are physical and I can describe them. I could build them with clay if I were so inclined.
I could even paint it blue, for the color of the day.
Because my confusion is blue.

turtle

Sunday, August 13, 2006

finally

a pleasant vibration hummed through my skin, making all the hairs of my body dance on end. it was her voice again in my ear. tinny and distant through the speaker by my ear. it had been almost five weeks since i’d seen her last and it seemed like an eternity, the way a minute must feel to a scoop of ice cream on a hot summer sidewalk. i would wonder if there was any way i’d be able to reconstitute myself again. or if i would liquify underfoot and be spread about in a sticky stain. oh how i yearn for her still.

i wonder sometimes if things have a built-in order of complexity to them. an automatic ratio of smooth-goings to bumpy-times. this ratio cannot be meddled with nor altered. it is your recipe for disaster or glory, depending on how you look at it and put the pieces together. my orders of complexity seem to revolve around debt and unfinished business.

today i’m sitting in my hotel room two thousand miles from the woman i love so completely. from my window i watched fireworks explode in a spectacular ever-aweing display of color and light. the concussion of the explosions set off car alarms and rattled my lungs in my chest. i felt them in my stomach and my heart. in my mind’s eye i could see her on the opposite coast clapping her hands together and squealing with excitement. her grin practically devouring her face and her eyes squeezed into tight little slits with gleaming bits of wet green shining through. Oh how she loves a good fireworks show.

but then the fireworks were over and the only sound rattling my heart was her voice, making it quiver and skip a beat from time to time.

an approximate measure of soul

 

mute

I have lost the ability to talk on the phone. I used to be rather good at it, but recently it seems I’ve run out of things to say.

Or perhaps I feel my space is compacted and that I have lost the ability to ground myself into my surroundings... most likely this comes from the fact that I have to share a hotel room on this particular business trip. He’s a nice enough guy and we get along well enough. Normally, however, when I talk on the phone I talk fairly freely. I let out my own actual person... and that particular person is not one that I like to share with those persons that I work with. This person is no exception.

I was not always this guarded. In fact, it kind of pains me to refer to myself as guarded, when surrounded by people I trust and choose to be around.

It’s a strange thing, trust is.

It shapes the flow of our vent into the world. When there is lots of trust the valve is open and we flow into the world. When it is lacking, the valve spins down to crush off our excessive energy. We shut up and sit against the wall. We don’t smile as much and we don’t offer as much.

Sometimes it is even easier to open up more to a total stranger than a person we interact with everyday, because it is free and safe and at the end of the conversation there is a parting of the ways. How many people have you sat next to on the plane, only to hear every little detail of their life? Chances are, you know more about some aspects of them than some of their closest friends.

Otherwise we get compacted... constipated with our insides... and when the time comes to open our valve... nothing comes out.

Friday, August 11, 2006

perhaps a little getrunken

It occurred to me today... perhaps as recently at a few minutes ago... that it is possible that I get a tad too serious when I drink.

I spilled a gentleman’s beer a few minutes ago and he was rather upset... he called me a great number of names, some of which I started to take somewhat personally... before I thought better of it. Then I realized that I myself might have called someone a few names, had they spilled a tasty beverage of my own. Then I thought, why punish a person for losing track of a stray appendage for a moment or two? Why not praise and reward that person for having the sense to let go of the societal rules of acceptable behavior and express him or herself in whatever way feels natural and free in the present moment. Why do we lock ourselves down into our little spheres of autonomous space and prohibit ourselves from expanding that volume of space into the surrounding environment? So what if we sometimes collide with each other in a sporatic dance of chaotic vibrations?

You only live once. How well do you know the person next to you after all?

How well do you even know yourself... if you never get far enough away to get perspective?

 

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Nonaudible expressions of discomfort

So this just happens: I am wearing flip flops (also known as thongs, sandals, or go-backs in different parts of the world) and as I am getting out of my car my left large toenail gets caught on some maldesigned part of the car door and kinda peels back a little bit (just past the quick). I feel it immediately, of course, but instead of saying “OW!” or “SON OF A...” or just “FUCK!”, I stand there and make a silent agonized scream face with my mouth all open and screamy like and my eyes all scrunched up in mid scream fashion as if I was giving some age old battle cry before running forth to slay my enemies.

I can’t imagine what it might have looked like to the casual observer, or anyone else for that matter who may have, at that precise moment looked up from their peaceful little world to behold such a countenance of twisted proportion.

Why, I ask, do I choose to express my intense yet transient agony in such a silent yet expressive form?

I do not know such things for sure.



hanging 2