Dust

 I remember walking into that familiar place, like so many times before, alone. There was dust in the sanctuary caught up and set on fire by the prismatic colored split rays of the sunlight fractured by the stained glass window. The smells were a mixture of furniture polish and old low shag carpet. Everything seemed so quiet. Rows and rows of wooden pews and the colors of scarlet and gold. A comfort always and yet a dread that seemed just as loud as the silence that walked in with me. A weekday. No Sunday service or Wednesday prayer meeting. Dad wasn’t in the study preparing for a sermon.  I always felt like I would know if just one person entered the building anywhere in that place when I was alone inside. Just me and the hopes that this place was as full of the fullness of a promise that I was brought up to believe. But today the layout of the overflow section was changed. The chairs that were usually there were all missing and some eye catching arrangement was in the the center of all the arranged emptiness. It took just a second and I knew what was there.

    As I walked back I could remember hearing that she had passed. The viewing was later that evening. I had a guest to share this space, this moment, this...ritual. But she wasn’t really here, was she? Now I can see the juxtaposition. I was with her in this place and I was truly alone, even though I had a visage to look at. Was it the opposite when I walked these hallowed chambers on any other day? Physically alone and filled with presence? I walked up to that casket and looked at her face. So present and so absent. I thought that one could make a more life filled sculpture out of clay. Her features fit what I recalled to be her face but there was a flatness an emptiness that seemed so sad. The dust sparks swirled around her and me and I recalled my grandfathers funeral.

    I was too young to fully grasp the passing of one so close to me, my family. I think I cried that day because my sister was crying. Because my Dad seemed not quit in the place of power I had always known him to be. But then by this woman’s casket, there was no pretense. I was on the verge of becoming a man,  my emotions fully aware of what it meant that she was no longer here. Every opportunity to have a vulnerable emotional moment. Just me, God and the late house of this woman’s energy. There is a small sacredness inside us if we have the ears to hear it. I found that my hands were folded and I couldn’t stop looking at her. There was beauty here. Beauty in a life lived and I could see the lines in her face were worn by experiences I had yet to have and some that I might never have.

    My Grandmothers funeral. I had grown apart from my grandmother over the years and the whole thing it seemed strangely distant to me. It had been the first time in a long while that all the Vivona’s were in one place at the same time. It always seems so strange that it has to take the passing of a loved one to accomplish something that should occur more frequently. This place was foreign to me. Absent the particulates of fire and the smells that carry with it the touch of home. I didn’t know any of these strangers that loved my grandmother. When I went to her side, I felt compelled to touch her hand. It was cold and stiff, not the soft suede like touch I remembered from my youth. I insisted on carrying her out to the hearse. I needed to feel the physical weight of this situation to help me bridge the emotional weight that seemed to be very alarmingly absent here.

    I was hugging my sister and brother in law at Wanda’s passing. I walked up to the casket and everything fell into an order that makes up all I know of the physical passing of people. The alarm keeps ringing in the back of my head at the mystery of numbness that surrounds my experience of death. Alarm isn’t the right word, it’s a buzzing. As my life expands death closes inwards towards me, all of us really. Mortality isn’t a new concept or a new subject for me to ponder, it’s just that it’s nearer. A buzzing. Acquaintances, Grandparents, friends. all a wonderful and terrifying buzzing at what it all means. They say ashes to ashes and dust to dust. All I can think of is that solemn silence and the dust blazing against the light in a sanctuary of my adolescence.

5:23 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Me, myself and I

The topic for this early morning? Oh come on, stay with me here folks. We'll get to that shortly, but first, a moment to bring us up to speed on how we got here. And by "we" I mean me, this is just a form of talking to yourself anyways, just not out loud. So another great night of drinks with a couple of friends and some great conversation. The topic? Who cares. Anything, everything and nothing at all. The stuff of legend and benign "who recalls ?". But it's raining out and all I have on is a t-shirt barely concealing my nearly month long sickened frame. I don't want to walk home in the rain so my friend offers his couch. Looks cozy, feels cozy but I still stare at the ceiling and try to block out the poor statistician, logician and poet that creeps into my upper ramblings at this hour in the morning.

So I get up and leave, looking at what is becoming my only reliable companion, the digital six a.m. blinking at me in what is so appropriately a sad electric blue haze on my stylish but cold stainless steel cell phone. Now we come to...yes the question at the start of this whole thing. It has to be one of three for me at this point and every point that is foreseeable. Politics, Religion and Romance? The last 'R' if it suits you fine. And it does, so onward.

This seems redundant. And by 'redundant' I mean that it repeats. Redundant, yes over again. We've been over this ground. And by "we" I mean "I" and this is the last time that 'I'll' tell the audience of 'me' that 'we' are going to be referring to 'me' in the royal tense...on occasion as it suits me or us or we or whatever. So I'm thinking to myself about changing habits and thinking about taking more risks and more responsibility and more growth and all of the other things you think about doing directly the next day. Then you get damn busy doing everything else to forget the convictions you just made the night before. Well, I haven't fallen asleep yet, so if I write it down now, then I can embarrass myself tomorrow and laugh about it the same time next year...or cry, whichever comes first.

So I'm on the fourth paragraph and I haven't even found a hypothesis for us or me to latch onto. I'm sure it's all very confusing to us and me all at the same time. Which is to say that one individual here sure as hell doesn't know what the fuck is going on. So here we are and here I go. I'm thinking about being thirty and single and not having much to show for it in the way of past relationships either in quantity or quality. The same old cliches apply. Am I attractive? Of course, but nothing to be vain about. Do I offer anything as far as security and prospects? Sure, but lets not call Forbes quite yet. Am I intelligent? I try to be and I'm sure the I.Q. faery gives out points for effort. Am I funny? I 've heard a few people laugh at me and in this context we are going to chalk that up to a 'yes', plus that whole last sentence was sarcastic, so let's say close enough for horse shoes and hand grenades. Am I attentive and sensitive? Am I writing this damn thing or what? Yeah, O.K. but these shoulders might need some dusting and things have gotten a tad bit bitter around here. Do I answer in the affirmative to these questions just to make myself feel better about the possibility that I might completely strike out on one or all of those questions? That was wholly unnecessary for my conscious mind at this point, alrighty? Alrighty.

So I begin to come around to the 'It's me' thing. Self defeating, guarded that whole line of fun thinking for the, "You're alone and liquor is at hand" precious moments. Like on the Hallmark cards, with rotund children who have the round bobble-heads and moon-saucer teary eyes. Yummy times. But I remember. I remember how bold I was with 'her' back five years ago and how I pursued 'her' doggedly three years ago and how direct I was with 'her' over there, one year ago and remember? Remember!? Yeah damn right, I've pursued and all that Alpha male shit! And Omega too, no doubt, plenty of that. "It'll come if it's meant to be", I've said that a few too many times to be comfortable with. Being pursued also, hell yeah! I'll be damned if I don't feel like a shit when I'm being sought after and couldn't give a rats ass that she doesn't get any of my attention. It seems to go on like this though and I'm starting to think there is a major example that I've left out.

It is a cowardice, no argument there. But the cowardice isn't in not being vocal enough or pursuing someone I'm on fire for and it isn't a cowardice in turning down someone I'm not interested in (O.K. I need to work on that a lot more). It's the middle ground. That moment you meet someone and there is an attraction, you know it, she knows it but no one makes a move. This isn't a new revelation either. It's just so damn hard to remember, to reinforce. I want so badly to have this mutual atomic chemistry explosion that I think I've shored up all gambits on that one long shot. Fuck! How many of those does anyone get, really? I haven't even put my chips on the table for those other moments, the molasses moments. That trickle trail of sweetness that might very well be the mother of all honey pots! Excuse that last bit, a bit much I know, but come on!!!

I need a drill sergeant walking around my noggin beating my brains with a baton at almost every moment during those awkward social moments. How many have I fucked up? Sadly, I think I can hold a pretty accurate count. Can't you? Sorry, this is actually a rhetorical question posed to the phantom audience in my head and yes, I am asking and answering this question myself in the third person, if that's even possible. Apology accepted. Why, thank you...me.

So what am I taking away from this? If I'm going to start making those changes maybe I need to start paying attention to life lessons I've already learned. Enough theory, lets get into some practice here. O.K. 'we'? Absolutely 'I'. Onward 'us'.

4:06 AM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Truth

The Genius Of The Crowd
Charles Bukowski

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

12:51 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Danger Will Robinson.

I'm in a dangerous mood. Truth isn't too far behind. Time to go to bed.

12:48 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

expatriate my disconnect

I think it was sometime in the early eighties. Nurture not nature? I think it was sometime in the nineties. Grunge sold us angry apathy but the sentiment was to wear your heart on your sleeve. I think it was sometime in the new millennium. No decided direction but maybe we we wanted to go back to materialism. I think there was a newly burgeoning adult insight into the movements I didn't understand. But none the less I've found that as we approach the ten's, I'll be left somewhere just outside the margins. Never quite inside them anyhow, I'm certain the outside is where I'll be left... looking in.
I think it happened when I was angered at the source of pain in my sibling. I think it happened when I built up walls around myself yet at the same time I offered others to tear their walls down for me. I think it happened when I cried next to her on the couch. I think it happened when I moved from coast to coast to follow a dream. I think it's going to keep happening because I can't let all of it go.
But sometimes what happens is what makes you who you are. Sometimes the pain of the disconnect is the only thing that keeps you plugging it back in. Somewhere somehow I'm too sensitive or too callous and all at the same time. Or maybe just the one applied at the wrong time and vice versa.
What I want to say is that there is something wrong with a culture that decides from decade to decade how a man should feel, how an adult should decide, how a human should behave. Nothing is more a convincing advertisement to go awol from this society than a cultural redefinition every ten years. It makes me wonder what it would be like to expatriate to an old country, unmoving, stoic and unchanged. But I wont. Not for too long anyways. No, because sometimes the pain of disconnect is the only thing that keeps you plugging it back in.

9:55 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Manna

I start to think about why it is I should rejoice instead of morn. There's a tiny secret I hold in my heart and I'm superstitious not to say it out loud lest it dispell from becoming incarnate. How long have I wandered in a desert and found my fill on the manna that seems to fall from heaven? The birds don't want for their next meal and I find mine in the small pocket fertile places of the earth, as I seem to follow their migration.

We all struggle and we all hold a pain or misery to our bosom but what is mine in comparison to true neediness? I could long for more security. I could long for a lover's touch. I could long for the influence over mankind. But longing has only brought the promise of things greater to behold and more magnificent than my small hands can handle.

Bring a thing of promise here and watch it wilt. Bring an expectation of copper here and watch it verdigris. Should I move to the next harbor and expect to find my fill? No preparation. No expectation. No wonderment but the fullness of now? And if I starve or if I wilt or if I stumble will it be as it was meant to or will it be due to my unreadiness, my arrested maturity?

I would grovel at the gravel. I would consume the sands. I would wonder at the benign. I would worship at the ordinary but to see the proper place of things and of my life's line. I walk with my eyes to my feet and ponder why people don't wonder what's in front of them. Manna at my feet. Meals for my soul at the foot of my soles. Is this the path that I would be on if my eyes were to raise to the horizon? Surely a benefactor or malefactor leads me? How long can a fool prosper by following his feet?

Manna from heaven or a poisoned man's ration?

1:45 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Mirror

I stood and looked upon that black polished surface and behold, before me was the reflection of a thinly made thing, weak with intolerance and twitching with the impulsive quality of its nature. It was clearly bound by the obsidian quicksilver that I observed it upon. Swaying and unsure of itself, dimly aware of its prison, it gestured an advance towards me to no avail. I turned to face the origin of the doppelganger whose visage beckoned to me and there, behind, now I saw another reflective surface, gold and radiant full of light. Who should stand there in that reversal but the thing itself, abominable and twisted? Another, calm but weary and bloated with inner light. Whose eyes were averted but whose gesture towards me stroked the bang of my hair as a gentle breeze.

            Quickly now I spun to discover the trickster in his true form but only found that impoverished rail wildly trying to grasp hold of me or my attention. Now back again upon my heel to see that golden strength passively issuing its spring breeze and call to introspection. I spun and again that obsidian, I spun and again that precious metal. Round and about to a fever pitch until all at once the corners of the polished surfaces seemed to pull together and no difference could be made between refined gold and the chill of deep blackness.

            Now I stand dizzied and unable to move but the spinning of the mirrors continues to revolve about me. Everywhere I turn my head I see a new thing a new being, married by the merging of blurred motion. A horror and a beauty beckoning me and warding me away, full and emaciated it stands still and violently shakes. My mind splits and my soul shudders to perceive what is before me and all around me. I can no longer recall if I ever made a motion of physically turning but a new notion appeals to me: that I never pivoted at all. That my need to know what was behind me set a carousel in motion and my unrest has put a perpetual energy to this roundabout. I could stand here forever and at once feel the crushing weight of madness put me to the point of begging for collapse but neither seem to happen.

            Now I am an observer to this motion picture playing out before me. Pushing me to merge with it or asking me for the hidden word that would desist its spinning. I have to ask in all of this madness who's reflecting the beasts that were and the thing that is? I raise my hands up to my face and feel for any similarities of my features to what I now see about me. There are none. But mayhap I should stop perceiving with my hands and eyes and start understanding that there are other tools to observe with, other venues of information gathering, older artifacts whose use to decipher keener. Perhaps if I could just turn around they might be behind me in time or space.

            Or I might try to close my eyes and find a respite in the quiet oblivion of sensory deprivation.

9:36 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Do you kennit?

This dark shape with the sun blazing around its head has dragged her out of a mostly comfortable life ( oh yes, she had her ghosts- and at least one mean-hearted demon, as well-but which of us don't). He has introduced her first to love, then to pain, then to horror and loss. The deal's run pretty much downhill, in other words. It is his balefully talented hand that has authored her sorrow, this dusty knight-errant who has come walking out of the old world in his boots and with an old death-engine on each hip. These are melodramatic thoughts, purple images, and the old Odetta, patron of The Hungry i and all-around cool kitty, would no doubt have laughed at them. But she has changed, he has changed her, and she reckons that if anyone is entitled to melodramatic thoughts and purple images, it is Susannah, daughter of Dan.

Part of her would turn him away, not to end his quest or break his spirit (only death will do those things) , but to take such light as remains out of his eyes and punish him for his relentless unmeaning cruelty. But ka is the wheel to which we are all bound, and when the wheel turns we must perforce turn with it, first with our heads up to heaven and then revolving hellward again, where the brains inside them seem to burn. And so, instead of turning away-

Excerpt from:

The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower VII

by Stephen King

10:08 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Mass of mouths

I am a mass of mouths. Feeding, starving, vomiting, cursing, silent. Gibbering. Mass of me tongues and teeth. Slapping snarling grinding spitting gnashing. I am a mass of mouths.

8:05 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

:::then leave:::waves

You are beautiful

-you were dark haired and flawless you moved with grace

-you were dark haired and flawless you moved with grace

-you were dark haired and flawless you moved with grace

I liked you right away and pursued you openly. I was tired of the cat and mouse and my self appointed maturity resolved to do away with charades.

-it was the age of rash youthfulness and a campus of possibilities

-it was the age of rash youthfulness and a campus of possibilities

-it was the age of rash youthfulness and a campus of possibilities

There was an instant connection. No amount of time will convince me otherwise. Although time has convinced me that arguments with justifications before a cross-examination is a premise for self doubt. You were enamored with such brutal honesty and you liked the attention.

-I knew in my heart of hearts that I was mistaking flattery for attraction

-I knew in my heart of hearts that I was mistaking flattery for attraction

-I knew in my heart of hearts that I was mistaking flattery for attraction

So I romanced you and loved the idea that love was an idea that might bloom here. Love me, love me. I tried so hard to convince you that you didn't need convincing. Just listen to what's there. Hear me and ignore what's there. So I set my mind to things dead to this world. Resuscitate Don Juan DeMarco.

-i drew you teddy bears bearing roses and left them on your desk to be found in the morning: i whored my talent again and again for your class projects and brought you praise from professors

-i went to italy and collected a petal from a flower from each province and wrapped them in silk with an italian coin from each denomination wrapped yet again in a journal entry that expressed how each petal reminded me of a different facet of your beauty: I drew you dead things in love for each holiday to appease the freak in you the freak in me

- i took you to the most expensive restaurant in town coffee and erotic poetry compact discs and movies money always concerned you and i tried so hard to show that it was no object for me because of you i would break my financial security: roses and dinner and a shower of petals in anger on a hot california night

I showed you commitment. Thick and thin I kept coming to you. Relentless then tired. Like waves on the ocean shore; advancing, receding, advancing. I showed you that this was a person who could commit and do it in love. No reciprocation and still I was there. You would come back when you needed attention and you needed to feel beautiful. You would come back when you wanted to feel a sure thing. You would come back to laugh and be entertained. You would come back to hear dead words rejuvenated with life and feeling again. You would come back…then leave. Waves.

-you would come back and apologize it seemed like you were using me just to get good grades and that's wrong we need to hang out more:::then leave:::waves

-you would come back and say you didn't want to loose a friend and you felt so safe and i promised i never would leave then you gave me two months of performance bedroom eyes as fake as your promises take pleasure and never give it:::then leave:::waves

-you would come back and tell me about the countless make out sessions and I would ask why you never let me kiss you and you said it was because we were never drunk and alone then you said lets hang out and watch a movie alone and grab a few beers:::then leave:::waves

And I bought you so many excuses with my actions. And I told you so many lies with my truths. All this time I've been fighting a battle to convince myself that you are actually out there. Your face has changed with each new argument but still I try to win this debate. It's only you. And I wonder if all of life is a cliché chess board. Maybe each different she has been a beautifully whole person with a vice planning her moves. And likewise I'm a beautifully whole person given over to a vice controlling my actions. Playing to an audience that just isn't there and occupying a moment in time. But these "she"s wear on my soul. I have trouble arguing that I don't find myself in this same situation over and over again. The wheel of fortune is turning, trying to tell me of my cyclical mistake.(thanks, Mike) Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Attracted to the same outcome, the same personality type, the same exotic beauty, the same bleeding pain, the same struggle to convince, the same longing for a mutual quicksilver moment, the same verdict:::then leave:::waves

-you were and are beautiful you were and are ugly you were and are waves:::leaving

-you were and are beautiful you were and are ugly you were and are waves:::leaving

-you were and are beautiful you were and are ugly you were and are waves:::leaving

2:33 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment