my brother, the writer.

this is a poem my brother wrote. The man doesn't so much as write words, but to me he seems to dance with them. Even when they break your heart it's still a dance, just a slow one. Sometime at the end of the night when the music has long since finished and still you can't let go. This is one such poem.

He didn't title it, it was just sitting in my in-box like a surprise. But I could never have said any of this better. My brother shares my heart and mind, When he is not around, I feel like an unfinished sentence. It is to our parents. To our family. And in a way, a partial answer to my question about the moths. Please read it and enjoy.

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Lands and oceans separate
but i still swim in her belly pool
 her genes
her means her eyes
 the same  as mine
 and we have watched eachother
from a distance climb
 i was born in troubling times
 but what was love kept holding on the line
 for
 it seemed another was on the way
with his fathers pale green eyes
the future etched itself a path for her to stay
there was no room to compromise..
 25 years later and my parents have not shared a
common  table
 the lies lie in the bile
 past acidic rebuttals
 strangers and papers passed in wood paneled offices
lawyers who advertised in the weekend edition of the
Times.
 Humans scared of making wrong decisions.  humans.
 My parents now and then.  Her hands shook
No control,  As she held the pen.
 How could that woman next to him
 manipulate his mind
til he could look at my mother
with such hate in his eyes?.
 Human pride.
once he read to her his favored poetry
when they were both so far from home.
 Her daddy died and left her
for the final time
 dad was next to Step in line.
 always liked to be listened to
 and he played her his music
introduced her to the Stones.
He took her to a cabin where apples grew
In the orchard outside
with little lace curtains to filagree the view
she says now she felt safer then than she ever knew
 and the sheltered girl  learned more in his bus
than from a whole life of school.
The sixties and sit ins. Free love and dependencies...
 the rainbows.  Rhubarb pies and california skies at
sunrise
sitting snug in a red bug.
He recited cummings
 she was sarah teasedale.
 In the end. The the book was never finished.
. now their baby has a baby
 and the two old foes take on a new role
grandma and grandpa will visit their kin
 and  cross paths midflight over the ocean
- two ships which once passed many nights.
 she and i now share space and wine
with dad  thousands of miles away with his wife
 she in her slippers next to mine
til the wee hours tracing  lost time
 flicking photos coming back these
 intricate moments we thought we forgot.
 All of those human times.
Humans scared of making wrong decisions
. Humans now and then.
 Humans.
 How can we remember
and bring them back again. ?

9:40 AM - 27 Comments - 34 Kudos - Add Comment

autumn's comings and goings
Category: Writing and Poetry

Autumn seems to have snuck up on me like a cat. With it's wind tugging at my sleeves, and it's leaves brushing by my ankles. I pull up my collar and think, when did this happen? A strong gust stops me while I try to light a cigarette and for a moment everything goes flying past. A plastic bottle, an empty paper bag, buildings, people. It is a surreal moment of dissolved time. The ocean sound of the wind in my ears drowning out the onrushing feeling of uncontrollable change. I can do nothing but stand still, bearing witness. Static. Immobile. It's a moment that lasts for an eternity, but is over in the span of a couple of heartbeats. Lit and smoking, I force myself on and around the corner to my café. It's a direction, but no one could say if it is a destination.

The room is bustling with activity, layers and layers of voices compacted within an airlock sanctuary. A waitress goes sliding past me with drinks precariously stacked on a tray, a loud burst of laughter erupts from somewhere in the back, a service bell bings in the kitchen signifying an order up. The bedlam takes a moment to adjust to after my dreamlike walk through the leaves, but once I do I find it comforting. Like a safe harbor from the storm, complete with welcoming waves and greetings from friends. Shrugging off my coat, I make my way to the back table where one waits.

"Sorry I'm late."

"You're not late, you're half a cigarette behind. See? I haven't even finished my cigarette. My coffee isn't even here yet."

"In berlin, that's not saying so much. You could wait a half hour for a coffee here and still feel like you got decent service."

I hold up my finger to the waitress hoping to get her attention. She sees the finger, she looks me in the eye, and continues her conversation with the busboy. It's all just business as usual. My friend is finishing an article he was reading in the paper so I have a moment to look around the café. Up in the front window sits a couple that I recognize. I have exchanged words with the both of them several times in the last few years. Between serving them in bars and mutual acquaintances, one realizes it really is a small town if you live here long enough. They seemed to be one of those staple couples you grow to count on. A symbol that it is possible to find someone perfect for you. After however many years their respective styles slowly homogenized into a similarity that is both spooky and cute at the same time. They cut their hair in a similar way, they share many common gestures, you know without proof that they will finish each other's sentences for each other. If you didn't know better, you might even think they were brothers and not lovers, that is how close they are.

"Did you hear about this bag of letters that washed up on the Jersey shore?"

"The wish letters? Yeah I heard about that."

"Isn't it fantastic? It's like out of a movie. It's almost magical."

"Some fisherman finds hundreds of letters containing people's deepest hopes and prayers, bobbing around in the ocean, and you think that it's magical."

"Oh Jesus..."

"I suppose it's nice to know where all of them end up."

Finally my friend folds up his paper and looks at me, although with a bit of resignation.

"You're in one of your moods today. Alright. What's up?"

"I don't know. I'm melancholic. It's the weather or something. This morning I took my ex-wife to the airport and on my way back I just got sad."

"So, she's New York's problem now."

"She's one of my best friends. But it's not just that. I don't know..."

The couple in the front window look different somehow today. Thinking back, I realize that I hadn't seen them together for the last few months, and watching them talk now, I can see a distance between them I had never witnessed before. Tight lipped, polite smiles. Quick glances at their cell-phones. An almost visible barrier between the two cuts the small table in half. Out of nowhere, I remember two nights ago over a couple of farewell drinks with my ex, she asked me who I thought would die first. It's not such a strange question if you know her or I. Neither of us are afraid of dying, but both of us do have a terrible fear of mourning. The best answer I could come up with was, I'll try my best to be the last.

"So you miss her?"

"Sure, but it's not just that either. It's more than that. Coming back from the airport, I saw buildings at Alexander platz that I don't recognize, hell I don't even remember when they put them up! Almost all of the friends I had when I first moved here have moved away. Or at least moved on. How many of them have started families and are pregnant now? My brother is now in Paris. I just feel like I missed something while I was asleep. You know?"

"You feel left behind. That's all. You're leaving soon too. It will be a new adventure, new experiences. Just another couple of weeks and it will be over. Get over it."

Over the din and chatter of the room, something rings. The larger man in the couple takes a phone call, leaving the other to look politely out the window. The moment just heightens the feeling of isolation between the two. I have heard that the end of an era is first marked by the death of it's illusions. This makes a lot of sense to me, however I must say that it is the illusions that are missed the longest afterwards. Something leaves and something else comes along, over and over. This is what we call living, but I can't help not wanting to hold onto every fleeting joy that blows by. Staying in one place won't protect you, will power is not enough. One day you wake up and realize that all the things you took for granted have moved on, and you are still there asking what happened?

My friend follows my attention over to the table by the front window, realizing that I'm not listening, he asks,

"Are they back together?"

"I didn't even know that they broke up."

"Yeah, like a couple of months ago. I heard they were fighting a lot for awhile, and then one night I saw one of them making out with someone else. I just assumed they broke up. Maybe I'm wrong."

"No, look at them. They aren't together anymore."

"That's a shame. They were nice together."

"Yeah.... They were."

The man finishes his call and gestures to his phone. It's the unmistakable articulation of having to excuse oneself, the kind you make at the end of a business meeting. The other shrugs and stands up to hug his old lover goodbye. There is no passion in the embrace, there is no promise, somewhere in there however, I think you can still see the echo of love. I want him to sit back down. To smile and laugh at whatever it is they have to say together. To reach across the table, as I have seem them do many times, and hold his boyfriend's hand. I want them to continue being the staple of hope in relationships that I had come to take for granted. But instead, he puts his coat on and walks out the door.

"Yep, it's definitely over."

"Yes."

My friend turns back to his paper and the room swallows the farewell like a sandstorm. Beyond the window I can see the man cross the street, buttoning up his jacket against the cold. The other man, the one still sitting at the table, watches as well. How could he not? How many times have I watched my past walk away from me like that? How many times has it been me doing the walking? The finality of a person's back is one of the most wrenching feelings in the world. Everyone will look after them until they are far out of sight. Many will continue to do so long after. This has nothing to do with me, so I decide to turn my attention away, leaving them both in their departure for each other. Just before I do however, the wind picks up, rattling the windows, and I look again.

Outside is a tempest of leaves, blowing in every imaginable direction. The energy in the movement is alive and mesmerizing. At the center of the maelstrom stands the lover, frozen in place holding his hands up. As I watch, he turns and looks back at his long-time companion with an expression somewhere between joy and awe. I can feel my heart start to race as he lifts both of his arms from the sides and turns his head toward the sky. This is magic. This is a letter of hope cast into the ocean. This is a man standing defiantly firm against the wind, laughing, and it's one of the most beautiful things I have seen in a very long time. On the inside of the café, I hear his friend laughing with him. One hand pressed against the window, the other waving. Finally, after a heartbeat and an eternity, the wind dies down and the man takes a bow.

Turning back to my companion, I can feel my cheeks stretching into a large smile. Having missed the entire episode he looks back to me quizzically and asks,

"What? What is it?"

Sometimes realizing you are a fool is the greatest feeling you could ask for. Sometimes it's all you need to keep on going. No, we will never hold on to anything forever. We will spend our lives saying goodbye far more than we would like and eventually, when the morning after our deaths comes, the sun will still rise. That's life, something leaves and another thing comes along. But the truth is, nothing ever really goes. It may change, but it never disappears. My friend is still waiting for an answer so I turn my full attention back to him to say,

"Nothing. You're right, everything will be just fine."

11:23 AM - 17 Comments - 18 Kudos - Add Comment

the mystery of moths

this is also long. sorry.

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The smoke curls undisturbed in the still room. There are boxes stacked where once there was debris from a life that ticked by day to day. A pile of books that once were read and then promptly forgotten, set aside to be sold in a flea market. The walls are barren and white, not a single hole to be filled from the ghost of a hanging picture. As I sit on the edge of a bed (sentenced away to a charitable organization) smoking a cigarette, I wait for an emotion to hit me. A call to say farewell to where I lay my head for over a year.

Nothing comes.

The failing afternoon light siphons off every available memory, leaving the room stark and lifeless. Like an alley you pass and is registered only briefly in your periphery. It is there, but for all intents and purposes... Not. Did I live here? Is that what you would call that? Was this ever referred to as my home? It strikes me, looking blankly at the four walls that held my life, that now when everything is packed away and there is nothing to allude to comfort, it looks hardly different than when I stayed here. Never anything nailed down, nothing to hinder a quick departure. I have heard that how one keeps their room says something as to the person's mental state. An organized room represents an orderly and focused individual. A messy one points to a scattered and chaotic lifestyle. If this is true, than what would this room tell me? It has been nothing more than a lay station. Neither here nor there. And yet I stayed in this apartment for a longer time than any since leaving my father's house, an eon ago.

The power has already been turned off so every second I sit here the room slips deeper and deeper into obscurity. A year's worth of experience spent here, and where are the phantoms? I feel haunted with every new face I meet, every street I walk, and yet the apartment I lived in is totally stale. Forgettable.

Struggling to remember anything worth taking in my packed boxes, all I can come up with is the many long nights laying in this bed and smoking in the dark. Letting my thoughts dance around in this tiny room, spinning and cavorting with my heart, trying to hold on to one long enough to ask it questions. My home, this is where I lay.

Many of these nights I would get up and pull out my computer and try to write. Sometimes it would be something, sometimes not. A few times, very rarely, I would be driven to put something down, and then sit and stare at it as if it were never mine. This compulsion was always without direction, just word after word after word. Strangely, it is my own snippets coming back to me now in this moment, from a time capsule of one such night. I had abandoned it, forgotten it, let it collect dust until the day when I would perhaps understand why I wrote it. Finally I see what it was I thought about that night, and so many others here in this waiting room. I had named it "moths" and this is how it began...

The sun is set, and with the exception of this glowing computer screen, the room is now entirely dark. There is still the smoke and my swirling aimless thoughts in the air. I just can't see them. They're where the moths go I suppose, somewhere looking for the next shining sanctuary. Someplace out there between heaven and hell.

They live their lives defined by light, light they can never fully attain. Freed from that illusion, where do they go? Do they find someplace in the night to finally lay their head? Or do they just continue searching for another until they just can't fly anymore? Someday I will find out. Perhaps it will be in the next move, or perhaps it will not be until I am an old man. But I am sure, someday,

I will find out.

1:34 PM - 28 Comments - 32 Kudos - Add Comment

little girl blue

this is long.  sorry.  i want to post it anyway.

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I was lucky enough to get a window seat during the late-lunch crowd for my morning coffee. Generally the little café is so over packed at this time of day that I'm forced to wade through people who are all far too awake and cheerful to my liking, before finally finding a chair. Just as often as not, it will be a seat at a table already occupied by at least one other person. Today, as I walked in, my little heart started pattering happily when I saw that my favorite seat was free. The one with the afternoon sunlight shining on it as if it were blessed and the back of the chair pointing to the corner, where I can watch both the room and pedestrian life as it passes by. It was all I could hope for, and I didn't even mind having to wait so long for the waitress to acknowledge my presence.

It had rained earlier, but by the time I woke up the sun was again shining and the late afternoon was bathed in a lazy golden hue. I had the impression of watching an old movie, the slow movements on the other side of the windowpane, the silent interactions of strangers, all of them looking like actors waiting for a script. There is a tram stop directly opposite from the café, where a small gathering of people were waiting. While my day was just beginning, most of them seemed to be returning home from one already full with apparent enervation. Eventually a tram pulls up across the street and the group begin boarding, one by one, stamping tickets and looking for seats. Just as the door closes, I see a woman run from down the block in small awkward strides. The tram has still not moved, seeming to wait for her to fully reach the door and tap the "open" button before pulling away and leaving her standing alone on the street. Although I can't hear her, the curses escaping her mouth are obvious as she turns, eyes downcast, and returns to the sidewalk to wait for the next one. She ruffles around in an oversized purse, coming up with a cigarette and lights it two-handed. It's not until I notice her tuck a strand of curly brown hair behind an ear and glance furtively down the street that I recognize her as the sober version of one my regulars at the bar.

Other professions, when you use the term "regular", it has more benign implications than mine. For example, a salesman will look to a regular as a friendly acquaintance and valued customer, whereas in a bar calling someone a "regular" is quite possibly just a nicer way to say "lush". I remember her generally coming in alone and taking a seat at the bar. Her lips would already be stained red from the house wine of wherever she had been drinking before, and her eyes would take several moments before settling on a safe place somewhere around my collar bone before ordering. She always pays for her first glass of wine, but spends the time drinking it looking for someone to buy her the next one. There is always somebody who will buy a woman a drink after all. When she would leave, usually it would be that same man escorting her out the door, or in this case, perhaps "ushering" is the proper word. Her eyes drifting over her surroundings on her way out, never quite focusing, never quite seeing anything at all. Now, even in the daytime, I realize they still don't really see much. I could walk outside and stand right next to her, and she still wouldn't recognize that it was someone she knew. Her gaze stayed fixed on the sidewalk around her feet, interrupted by a quick peek for the tram. Strangely, in that moment she reminded me of a shy school girl.

This dichotomy of images can be a little disturbing. To see a woman plummeting into her middle years with little hope and the thought of a little girl looking timid before her life is something we don't ever like to put together. I know several people in fact who adamantly refuse that the majority of us were ever children at all. For myself, I have very few memories of my years before the teens and the ones I do have are jumbled willy-nilly without any sense. One that does stand out, for obvious reasons, was the first time a girl kissed me.

As per the rest of my life, it was in a bar. An Italian restaurant and bar actually, in Washington, D.C. sometime around the mid-eighties. My father was enjoying a beer as he talked to the owner, (and in such a family type establishment as this was what I would also guess to be the patriarch of everyone else in the room). We had the place to ourselves and I passed the time by making faces to a little girl hiding from me in the kitchen. She looked to be about my age, with long brown curly hair and a white dress. Her eyes pointed steadfastly to the ground but with quick little peeks up at me, before disappearing back into the kitchen. It was a childish way of flirting that I wish we still did as adults. It's just so much more fun. This went on until the afternoon turned into early evening and the first of the dinner guests began to come in. My father stood up, payed our tab, and was shaking hands with the old Italian man when I noticed the girl in the kitchen taking hesitant steps toward me. From this point on, the memory looks as if I were actually my father watching it happen. The kitchen staff, all of them Mediterranean, were slightly edging her on until she was standing right in front of me. I remember feeling nervous and looking around, very aware of the adults watching, shuffling my feet and not knowing what to do. She introduced herself and gave me a present of a book of cartoons. I still have this book, through all of my moves, I have never lost it. It's a book of Heathcliff comics inscribed on the inside with her name. The whole situation was so strange that I was still stammering out my gratitude when she quickly kissed me on the cheek and ran back into the kitchen. Everyone in the room was smiling and making awww sounds, as I would too if I were watching such a sweet interaction, while my little pudgy face was glowing red as if I were on fire. For the first time in my young life, my father's legs were not long enough to walk as fast as mine leaving.

Its almost painful to think that those children will perhaps someday become not unlike the people I see nightly. Just over a week ago, this woman standing across the street walked into my bar, dragging in behind her man in a brown suit. He had that out of town look, with a haircut and outfit designed for a salesman conference, lacking only the "Hello! My name is _____" sticker on his lapel. He bought her drink after drink, and she would slip farther and farther onto his lap. His hand sliding up her side until it cupped her breast. Every so often, as he sloppily groped her, I would catch a look on her face that could only be defined distant. It didn't matter to her at all who he was, as long as she had someone to want her right then. I knew it was irrational, but deep in my belly I felt hate for the guy swell into something big and ugly. To my left, I heard another regular talk about her, unworried if he was overheard.

"She's kind of like the back-up plan around here. If you can't get anyone else, there's always Mirna."

I turned quietly and walked over to him, forcibly grabbing him by the arm and walking him into the corner.

"If I ever hear that you do that then I promise, not only will you never drink in this bar again, but I will find you when I am not working and make it so that the thought of a woman is only a painful one. Do you understand me?"

I have luckily earned the reputation that when I say something like this, it is taken seriously and as a warning instead of a threat.

"Hey, really I was just kidding! I never would . . . "

"Should you ever talk to her, or even about her, I want to hear it done decently. Okay?"

To this, he nodded shamefully. Taken away from his friend, without the need to act like an asshole, I could see that he was genuinely ashamed. Still, he said,

"I understand. I do. But Noah, look at her. I don't think that it matters anymore."

The sad thing is, a big part of me agrees. Whatever the series of things in her life was that turned her into this, the damage is done. If she was ever a happy child, she won't ever really be happy again. I have heard people talk about a "real you", a pure sense of self that lies in wait underneath all of your experience. You get the sense that all one needs to do is take a brillo pad and scrub away the excess crap we have accumulated to get to it. But what I think? The real you is made day after day, night after night. It is layer after layer. How you live, is all that you are. Anyone watching Mirna walk in night after night would know, it's just too much of a struggle for her to ever get excited about much of anything again. I back off from the cornered man and say, not altogether confidently,

"Everything matters."

The rest of the night, for me, felt subdued and sad. Instead of fighting the feeling, I put a Nina Simone CD in and watched the customers thin out. Her voice wailing in that perfect, and all too human way. All of her songs seeming to express a view of the world beyond illusion and fantasy. When she sings about love at it's peak, its tinged with the belief that it will be taken from you at any moment. A voice that never seems to rejoice or mourn, but to always accept the world for what it is. It occurred to me then that the strongest people I have known, were all women. That the hardships they go through are so much larger than those of men, and so much more frequent. To all of your life be held down, both figuratively and all too often literally, and still find a way to triumph over it, is astounding. Women will always have my respect easier than a man. And perhaps I am sexist, perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I have more compassion for woman who have hit bottom than I do for men. A beaten man who does not pick himself up, I lose respect for. A beaten woman? I lose respect for the whole damn world.

Mirna and her friend were some of the last to leave, but before she did she walked up to where the bar opens to the room and called for my attention.

"Noah? I heard that you're moving away. Are you really? Is it soon?"

"Somewhat, I'm still trying to work out the details, but I'm going sometime in the next few months."

"Sick of us?"

I smile warmly down to her, but think yeah, I'm sorry, but Im sick of all of you. I dont want this to be me anymore.

"No, of course not, I just need a change of pace."

At this she made a real effort to meet my eyes as hers swam around in little pools. I felt her hand on my arm and she smiled, with pink teeth and dry lips, and she said,

"I just wanted you to know, a lot of us are going to miss you here. I will miss seeing you here."

Then she put her arms around my chest and gave me a wavering hug. I looked over to my right and saw her man of the night stand, fidgeting and impatient, uncaring. With a little kiss on my cheek that felt so much like that of a little girl, she whispered,

"Take care."

And then turned around and left with the brown suit. I thought about that for a moment. That she would give me any thought whatsoever, beyond the fact that I gave her drinks, and about the peck she had given me along with those little words "take care". I wondered for how long I would remember her at all.

Jesus Christ, I thought, this world always finds new ways to break your heart.

We live in such a hard place. Over and over, I am genuinely amazed that so many of us survive it for as long as we do. Beyond the window pane I see people in transience, no longer looking lazy or slow, but weary. Passing by to and fro, enduring whatever trials or hardships they undergo just to reach the end of their day. Life seems to sit on us so heavily, all of us under a constant state of pressure that will turn some into mountains, and others into dust. Across the street, the tram finally comes and Mirna gets on. For a moment, the large streetcar blocks the low angling afternoon light, and I see before me my own reflection. I have no idea what I looked like when I was ten, but I doubt that you can see much of that boy in my face now. One way or the other that little boy and girl had to grow up. That is what children do. To be honest however, I'm still not entirely sure how good of an idea that was.

6:17 PM - 20 Comments - 24 Kudos - Add Comment

my backbone

Somewhere deep into a quiet night I sit in a closed bar, with its windows covered by a metal grate and its door locked, fortified from all untold events that might be conspiring against me. Possibly I will leave here and walk directly into a trap laid by destiny, its primal intention of twisting and unraveling all of my ambitions managed in one master stroke. But that's for later. That is simply what will be coming next. It always does. For right now I will lay back on advice I gave to a customer just the other night.

No matter how bad you think things are now, they will inevitably be far worse sometime in the future. And still, somehow, you will find a way to deal with that too.

Some of the strangest things I find comforting. But this fast post will not be about one of them. I am taking a brief respite from my responsibilities to write about comfort and security at its most natural. About blessings for a man who has long since given up on the idea of god.

I want to write about love, and friendship, and... and monuments beyond the reach of words.

From time to time, I meet people who pronounce that they have all of the inner strength they need within. That in fact, they are their own hero. For these people I can do nothing but stare and think, how silly.

I will state right now, and for the record, I rely on my friends and loved ones entirely for my self worth. In my mind, there is no better judge to my character than in how I treat them. There are no words of advice accepted from any others, no criticisms taken seriously. They are the reason why I struggle and laugh. They are my reason for everything. It is important to be comfortable with one's self, which I undoubtably am, but my strength comes from without. And really, I should say this more often.

Those who know me think that I am strong, determined, and perhaps even stubborn. And I am, all of that and more. But I do not arrive from a vacuum. I am built, brick by brick, from you. My strength is in your backs. And honestly? There is no where else I would rather have it be. It is strange that I want to write, when in fact writing is something done in the most still and private of moments. However, I would have long ago stopped had it not been for the words of encouragement I have received from those whom I respect.

And it is strange that I choose to spend so much time writing, when in fact the things most important to me are said without words. I read the sentences before and think, no. that is not enough. That is not all. All I can say is, this is for you.

For all of the couches I have slept on and food given. For all of the kind hands offered. For the extra effort without any expected return. And those who stood fearlessly by my side when a smart person would be standing somewhere far away. This is for the arms that have held me, and let me hold. For every shared laugh and cry. Every dream, plan, and conversation. I forget none of them. I write this inadequate letter for the ones who dared me to do that which I never did, but always wanted to. To those who drank with me, and the ones who flat out refused. For the crazy ones, the voices of reason, and that grey area in between. This is for every person who believed in me when I could see no rational reason why. For the time spent but never wasted. For the drunken phone calls in the middle of the night. And the new things learned I had no idea I was ignorant about. This is for all of the tenderness, hard truths, honesty, and fire. For those who let me be weak when I needed to be, and strong when I could be. For the loyal. The persistent. The courageous. For the letters and such sweet messages like,

You may make it hard for me to get to bed at night, but you are my reason for waking up in the morning.

So, for just this moment, all of you stand and take a bow. In a line on a majestic stage, hold hands and listen to the applause. It is all for you. The roses thrown at your feet are from me and those that know you. How could we not? You are mythic. Somewhere out there beyond the lights, I am giving you a standing ovation with tears running down my cheeks. If you can see me then it is because my face shines out of awe. Just take the moment for yourself and know that you are seen, and loved, and appreciated back. I am but one face in a sea of others out here.

For these things, no, there will never be enough words. I will have to settle with a mere thank you. And a reminder, should you need it, that I am never far away.

5:07 AM - 9 Comments - 17 Kudos - Add Comment

dead air.

The cell phone lays in my hand, unused, no signals to be sent or received, and yet I can't quite turn it off. We should get together, she said. We have to go over all of our papers. I replied, that would be fine, that I have a few hours free this Thursday, in the afternoon. And she says that would be great, say around two o'clock?

Two is fine, I counter.

She says that's fine and that she hopes that I have a nice day.

I was going to go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. I was on my way to shave and make a cup of coffee. The phone call was not what I was expecting from my morning, but the moment I heard her voice I switched into a cordial tone of voice. This was a business matter, both of us becoming craftsmen in constructing the six-foot box called "a relationship". Each word said was just another nail and we had gotten used to this kind of dialog long ago. Even so, when she hung up, it felt a little anticlimactic.

There has been a fly problem in my apartment all summer. I have no idea where they all come from, and normally it drives me nuts, but just then I did not even notice them. They would land on my eyelashes and stay there until I would blink. Cows put up more resistance to their pestering. It wasn't until I noticed that they seemed to be swarming over the phone as it lay in my hand that I opened my balcony door and stepped outside. Something about that thought turned my stomach, which is probably why I still had not broken the connection.

She is no longer on the other end. She has hung up, crossing another item off her to-do list and is continuing about the rest of her day. How strange, I think, I was married to that voice for four years. I have a tattoo on my chest and a ring hidden somewhere. Once upon a time, that was my wife. Now she is a woman on the other end of town, who can manage a polite conversation with me just so long as it is not a lengthy one.

Yes, how very strange these conversations are.

Seven miles above, dozens of satellites circle my head like vultures, and I wonder where my signal is being sent to. I look at the phone and see that it's still receiving, but she's not there anymore. Does it just ricochet endlessly in the ether? If I follow that signal, will I just get lost, as I always do when I try to understand what happened? Gently, I grasp the wispy gossamer thread by my fingertips, reeling it in. Through all of the bitterness and misunderstandings, through all of the jumbled memories that are so confusing I can no longer see an order to, I find myself in the mirror on the morning of September eleventh, in the year two thousand. There, a twenty-four-year-old Noah is looking at himself in the mirror. He is standing with his crooked tie hanging loosely from his neck. It needs a tighter knot he thinks, it needs to be better. Looking into each others eyes, I ask him,

Do you know what you are doing? Do you know how many fights lay ahead? How many times you will watch her cry knowing you are the reason why?

Are you really sure you want to do this?

And he stops. Six years can do a lot to a man's eyes. He wants to say it doesnt matter. To be young and certain, but looking his future in the eyes makes him pause. I tell him,

He tries, he honestly does, but instead he thinks about the desert.

He thinks about flying down the freeway with her at his side, the sun rippling the horizon into obscurity. He feels her hand on his lap and he says to her with awe, "No one knows where we are."

The realization coming to him as the words leave his mouth.

"No one we know has any idea where in the world we are. All this is . . . is us. All we have right now is this." And he looks over to her and sees a smile so hungry it could eat the world. She asks him "Where do you think we will end up?"

The twenty-four-year-old in the mirror asks this question back to me, now a little unsure.

"Where will we end up?"

Standing on the balcony holding a phone with no one on the other end, I wonder if I have the answer to that yet. I had only thought of the arguments. Remembering only how unhappy we had become. But that young kid looking back at me had a memory I had all but forgotten.

Lord, that was truly a great smile.

I check the time and see that it is getting late. I have a new future waiting for me to get started, and I am just as anxious to do so. But for a second longer I think about that desert drive, and that boy looking at himself nervously in the mirror. Finally I hold the phone back to my ear and listen.

The space between her and I sounds large and vacuous. It sounds empty. That void used to be filled with something I think. A long time ago, there were promises and plans in there somewhere. There were whispers and trust. These thoughts echo back to me the question, "where did they go?" And the man in the mirror waits with me for my answer. Finally, into the receiver, into all that nothingness and the remains of a broken connection, I ask,

Do you want to hear a joke?

Two inmates escape from a mental asylum together. They have climbed a building to the roof where but a jump will take them to the next rooftop, over the fence and to freedom. The first inmate jumps easily and looks out at the hills of glittering lights and shining possibilities ahead, but turning back sees that his friend has not yet made the plunge. He urges him to hurry, any minute now they will start to look for them. But his friend just shakes his head with fear.

"I can't make it. It's too far." He says.

"You can do it! I did it, so can you!"

But he just will not budge. Finally, the one who already jumped has an idea. He says,

"Look here, I have a flashlight. I'll turn it on and shine it across to you, then you can cross safely on the beam of light!"

From across the chasm the other inmate stares at him skeptically and says,

"What do you think I am? Crazy?...

You'll switch it off when I'm halfway across."

Cue the drum roll and high hat, but the phone doesn't laugh. I decide it's not that funny either, and the man in the mirror shakes his head with disgust before departing to get himself married.

For what it's worth, I'm glad he did. Even as I tap the End button on my phone and say goodnight to all of those beautiful dreams, still . . .

I'm so damn glad that he did.

12:53 PM - 22 Comments - 35 Kudos - Add Comment

the assistant
Category: Writing and Poetry

Yeah, okay, I lied. So what? It seems I have more to say after all . . .

During the world cup, I was working an outdoor arena with a massive LED screen projecting each and every game. The place sat between 800 to 1000 people including a grassy plane and high bleachers. In the median of the stands was a small pool constructed from a container train car, where everyone would periodically remove their clothing to cool off. It was an impressive endeavor and a great many people took advantage of this little oasis hiding in the middle of Berlin.

There were three bars, the main bar underneath the center of attention, a beer bar up in the stands next to the pool, and a "jungle bar" residing behind the screen in the wooded area of the lot. Generally, I would work the main bar, as that was where the most action was, and then move down to the jungle bar for the socializing crowd after the game. It wasnt really my typical choice for jobs, preferring in most cases to stay in dark hovels where a bartenders personality is an actual factor to the establishment, but the pay was good and working outdoors was a massive boon in this summers heat. However, in jobs like this, you are a machine. You turn off most of your higher consciousness and turn to professional programming. No longer hearing words, but reading faces and noticing how many fingers are held in the air. You dance around your co-worker, slipping into patterns and claiming your own territory without ever discussing it, like the little toy ballerinas in a music box. You become pure movement and stop thinking almost entirely, until the crowd thins out and you look around to think "how long have I been here?". It is a job of reaction, nothing more.

Of course, notable circumstances lie here as well.

One night, toward the end of my shit, I was drying glasses alone in the bar. My only patrons were my brother, the maintenance man, and his assistant. The maintenance man is a rugged individual in his upper forties, whom for the purposes of this story I will call Bob. Obviously more of a blue collar kind of guy than our average guest, with a deep workers tan and a tool belt surgically connected to his hip, he still managed to blend in fairly well. His assistant, on the other hand, stood out like a third tit.

(That, by the way, is not my analogy, but boy do I like it.)

He is a nineteen-year-old kid who looked as though you could have yanked him straight out of my junior high school class and stretched him to two meters. Wait, I need to clarify that a little further. He looked liked the kids in junior high that I couldnt even figure out then, seventeen years ago in the early nineties, but now tragically misplaced in the new millennium among the most rich and fashionable of Berlin. Almost albino white and towering over the average man, he would wear baseball caps obviously too small and sitting high on his head, presumably to show off the lightning bolts shaved into the back of his blond hair. I never once saw him wearing anything other than baggy white overalls and a T-shirt imbued with neon urban memories from a time long past. And, of course, loosely tied high-top shoes. All in all, He is everything we laughed at on vanilla ice, back in the day when we ever gave it any thought.

Now, I am not really the fashion judge I am making myself out to be here, I only mention it because of the contrast to his position at the bar. When I say assistant, I am perhaps being too kind. The word "assistant" implies at least a modicum of respect, at least a measure of responsibility, and perhaps a little on-the-job training too. What would describe his function better there would probably be the title "servant". Instead of either, and for the sake of this story, I will call him Zeb.

Zeb would spend his days loping around behind Bob until he would receive an order and then run off enthusiastic to do it well. It would not matter if it were to clean the porta potties or to drag something heavy by a bit in his mouth, he would nod repeatedly and his gangly arms and legs would flail about in whatever purpose he was deemed to do. Strangely, you get used to someone like that being around fairly quickly. You need to arrange all two hundred beer cases? Point your thumb at old Zeb.

So, my brother was sitting at the bar talking to Bob as his lap-dog lurked close by in the shadows, while I was cleaning up the rest of the bar. I had stopped paying attention to their conversation and was lost in my own thoughts when I noticed the look on my brothers face. It was subtle, one that none but I would catch, and so it was that it was intended for me. It was a look telling me to tune in. Bob, in his heavily accented German, was saying,

"When we first meet, he was getting into trouble. He was not a good boy. So his mother, she ask me to help. He was then sixteen."

My brother, obviously thankful he was no longer involved in this conversation alone, prodded him on.

"So you have been friends for three years?"

"No. Friends, no. I start teaching him, what is the word? Zimmerei?"

"Carpentry." I say.

"Yes, and he starts to do better, stops doing drugs, so his mother, she gives him to me."

"Wait, what?"

My brother is looking at me with that yes thats right, I need you to hear this too look, and I turn back to look at both of them together. I say,

"You mean like an internship thing, a practicum? Right?"

"Yes, but also he lives with me and I tell him what to do. It gives him order and stability. He does not even drink now."

Glancing past them to Zeb, I try to read his expressions, to figure out what he thinks about as we talk about him as though he were not here. When I was nineteen, I would . . . never mind, there is no point in saying what I would be doing in this situation when I was nineteen. I still cant deal with people telling me what to do, and I should be damn well used to it by now. But he just stands there, quietly attentive, looking for all the world as if he were in a mental holding pattern until someone yelled fetch. I casually look at Bobs hands and notice that he is wearing a wedding ring. What the hell does his wife think about all this? My first thought, of course, is that it is a sex thing, but perhaps not, perhaps I am losing a subtlety in the language gap and its all a little more innocent then I think. My brother on the other hand cant quite contain himself and asks,

"What about sex?"

At this, Zeb snaps to attention in a way so Pavlovian it gives me the heebie-jeebies, and nods his head enthusiastically.

"Oh yes."

There are times when I hate my fast and graphic imagination. Where I could just stand there and look at Bob, smiling at his lanky protégé with pride, and not see the two of them naked and sweaty in a bed. Disturbingly, I still see Bob with a tool belt in this picture.

We are all a bit quiet for what seems to be far too long, so I direct my attention to Zeb.

"Hows that working out for you?"

"Oh, he does not speak English."

My brother, again, pointedly clarifying the situation asks,

"But you do . . . "

"Yes, sometimes, of course."

And I let the quietness just go on with that one, deciding to stack the beer cases in the back myself.

Later, my brother and I are walking alone down empty streets toward whatever might be coming, both of us in our own ways trying to come to terms with how other people live.

"Where the hell do these people come from?"

Im thinking this happens, these things are around every corner, and for them its normal.

"His mother gave him away?!"

Im thinking should I be outraged by this? The kid is old enough to think for himself . . .

"Did you see the look on his face when I brought up sex?"

We keep walking, on and on, our lives always a remarkable jumble of chaos, and wondering at what people would do for a little order. I think,

My brother says, "I wonder if thats how everyone learns carpentry? You know . . . Jesus was a carpenter too . . . "

And then we laugh, like we do so often, even when we jump head first into uncertainty. As long as we see it together, it looks pretty goddamn funny.

9:57 AM - 12 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

my second to last myspace blog

When people ask me what I do (and strangely it is most often asked when I am working), the answer is always the same,

I am a bartender.

And to be honest, I am a damn good one. You could say it is biological, that I am genetically built to perform this service. My eyes rarely itch or water, my lungs breathe smoke as casually as air, and I can drink as much as the most hardcore of patrons while still competently performing my job. But really its just that I understand why people go to bars. All of these orbiting lives clumsily dancing around each other by the warm hearth of alcohol, I am amazed by anyone who does not spend a few moments in a bar a day. It is like a support group for all of lifes encumbrances. Escapism? Sure, but you are reading this on myspace, so let us not talk of the respites we take from reality. I cannot judge, I will not tell you what is right or wrong, only what it is in my experience that which human beings do. And bars, Ive seen, are necessary.

That said, I dont think I can do it anymore.

I had originally justified writing this blog under the precept of documenting bar-life. The nuances of this life become the whole of your reality when you work six nights a week, as I have done, and your perception of how people live changes. I became fascinated in the lives that pass through, dropping off remnants of their existence to be preserved and forgotten in bottles of distilled spirits. The stories told so desperately, the beginnings of new ones, the transition of others. No human being has a defining moment, but the static snippets I take of them individually paint a landscape in my consciousness of vistas overlapping whatever other people would consider to be life. I had this idea that the bartender could be the fly on the wall, not only seeing everything objectively, but seeing everything at once from every direction. When I work, this is what you will see if you take a peek in my head, images over images over images. But that isnt really how it worked out.

It is a funny thing about justifications. They are like stakes we try to plant in unstable land, or flags we wave over our head in war. Something to rally behind and work for, but rarely do they have much to do with anything at all. "Bar-life" has defined my adult years to the extent that I could write anything, and it seemed applicable. After rereading some of the things I posted, I saw that my detached point of view was merely a detached view on myself. This landscape turning into an aria for me to say something, for reasons I am not altogether clear, that I needed to say. I saw not people anymore, but only connecting points of reference. When did I stop having experiences, and start to have only echoes?

Myspace is a social forum, not totally alien from that of a bar, and so I felt comfortable trying this here, but my need for justification is over. For those of you reading this, thank you for taking the time. Soon, I will take a long break from serving drinks and listening to the drunken ramblings of a multitude of people, all great and small, as they sat resting elbows on my bar. I have a notebook full with notes, most of them scrawled in states of deep intoxication, that I will try to edit and compile into a last entry for this forum. Consider it my resignation letter. Even if I come back to working in a bar, I will not come back the same man. No one ever comes back from anywhere the same.

8:53 AM - 6 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

a word on violence
Category: Writing and Poetry

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." -Walt Whitman

This is eleven years ago, and Jojo and I are walking home. A group of three kids our same age, but otherwise in another world, stood drunkenly on the corner. They wore baseball caps with Greek letters (that I seriously doubt they understood) and colorful parkas advertising something or another. "I'm looking at three big piles of jack shit." And just like that, Jo had thrown us into another storm.

2:35 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

hope and cum-trees

I became self-aware standing amid a warm breeze, and stepping out from under a green canopy into the sun. slow, cautious synaptic pulses took in my surroundings. It is bright, vivid, and warm, and I am standing in Berlin, somewhere in the beginning of the twenty-first century. There is the sound of children playing and music streaming from open windows. I notice that Im standing by the canal, where swans drift lazily and a dog is barking at them from across the water. Looking down I see that Ive, thankfully, managed to dress myself. My face is smooth and clean shaven. If I concentrate hard enough, I can visualize myself conducting the actions appropriate to achieve these small miracles. I wouldnt call this memory, only extrapolation from the obvious proof that it must have happened.

This is no dream. I awaken into the wonder of springtime. Abruptly and grand.

There is a white flower that grows here every spring. They are unremarkable in all respects, save for their smell. Tangy, not sweet, unmistakably familiar, and yet I could not place it for the longest time. It was not until my father came a few years ago that the elusive scent was finally, unequivocally, classified. We were taking a walk through the park, when he stopped, pointed his prominent nose in the air, and inhaled deeply,

"Hmm, why, that smells like semen."

Berlin, it seems, is bursting in its pants. Trees, dogs, cats, men, women, it doesnt matter. The breath of every warm day is soft on the neck. It feeds thoughts of supple skin and wet lips, slippery movements that are explorative and new. Faceless thoughts, not so much biological, or even honestly sexual. They are not feelings of desire, but pure lust. An ethereal hard-on. An arousal of the soul. I suppose one could simply call it hope, but hope at its most primal.

I am old enough to know that spring is the shortest season of the year. That the dreams that were planted in may will grow and bloom, but rarely survive until the first chilly winds of September. And I am now, finally, old enough to not give a damn. This serene hope may be short-lived, but it is far from weak. If you can get it for just a few days, just a couple of precious moments, than its aftershock could carry you for months. Standing by the canal, I close my eyes and lift my face to the sun. Im thinking,

When I hear my name spoken behind my back. A man, two short steps from being a stranger, stands smiling at me. The last time we saw each other was a month and a half before in a bar at three in the morning. At the time, all that we did was nod and shake hands, we stood awkwardly and exchanged pleasantries. Today, however, we embraced without hesitation. Engulfed in all that brightness, we had what I would call a pleasant exchange. He was charming and engaging in a way I hadnt remembered him being. For myself, I noticed that I was far more forthcoming than I had been even just yesterday. We talked amicably about what we were doing and other trivialities, mostly we were just enjoying the beautiful day and all of the friendly faces we saw on the path. When the sound of a clock ticking deep within our thoughts became too much to ignore, we graciously excused ourselves. It was a day to keep moving, some divine tether pulling us onward, and I turned to go my way. But before I did, he asked,

"By the way, are you feeling alright? You look very pale."

I feel warmth on my shoulders, and the leaves above us rustle in the breeze. Without modesty I smile, and shrug.

"Its been a long winter."

6:19 AM - 4 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment