The sun is not compatible with sadness. I wish I awoke to dreary dampness, grey skies, and low lying clouds. To feel the drizzle on my face, the cool dankness in my joints, I would feel welcome in my sadness.
I don’t know if it’s American or if it’s just the human condition, a spawn of religion, I don’t know why we must feel the need to change when we are sad. To feel better. But I feel fine in my morning tears, I feel good in my bed, unmotivated to face the day, I’m ok today in a cave of darkness and air conditioning free of the desire to accomplish anything. If only I could smoke indoors and if only I lived on a cliff in Ireland, then the world would nod its head at my state of affairs and I would know the stars intended this day.
But I am in the desert, the southwest American desert. I’m sad and lonely and frightened in the sun. I feel its heat, I fear its heat.
The blue skies look down on me as if I’ve shunned their healing powers. The suns beams blanket the land, there is no shade in this sudo urban landscape or beyond, there is no coolness. My dismal demeanor is just brought to a boil in this late summer New Mexican afternoon.
I dread my days here. I dread them through this time and I felt dread for them before. Freedom was but around the corner, only to never happen. And now I’m stuck here in the bright, dry, desert daylight, destine to miss fall and miss winter and miss my life as it passes me by.
I should have gone without and taken on great burdens and worked to the bone to make rent. If I had I could have woke each day and stepped out on the roof to see fall. I would have seen yellows and reds, turning leaves in the millions. I would have smelled the dank dead leaves rotting in the streets, streams and yards.
Had I gone I could have spent my last dollars on gasoline and driven to the end of the country. I could have stepped out of my handed down Buick skylark with a hub cap missing and walked carelessly across the sands. There I would have stood, staring at the waves, looking across the water to Europe. I would have been held in a blanket of sound and felt the warmth of the waves breaking at my feet.
But here I lay on a dreary sunny day, in a bedroom I can’t afford, in a shity desert hideaway.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The Sun Is Not Compatible With Sadness, A Week Later (1st draft) 2007
The sun is not compatible with sadness, but perhaps god is. A week has past since I had wished I’d woke to dreary dampness, grey skies, and low lying clouds, and today I have. Maybe this empty entity, this being, known only to belief, lives and maybe, just maybe, it’s not the bastard I think it, he, she really is.
I guess when I cry and beg in pain, that leads to sleep, preceded by thoughts of ropes around my neck, cold steel in my mouth and shots in the dark, as I cry to the heavens in selfish pity and feel the end, as if the end of the world is upon me, and I have no where to turn, perhaps, just maybe I am heard. And maybe I too believe, maybe I know I will be heard and maybe that’s why I don’t decide my fate. Maybe that is why I sit back in my pain and sleep the day away, or drag myself to work or call and cry to ears who could probably care less of my pain and surely have no answer, no resolve to my anguish, to the conundrum, the equation I can’t seem to wrap my finite self around or at least feel good in my decision. As with all my decisions, the next day, hour, minute or moment, I begin to guess again.
I have no faith that is conscious, unless skepticism is the new religion. But deep inside I have a motor that won’t stop running, a motor that believes I’ll make it, a motor that thinks I can achieve and it will all be ok. But on the surface that’s the hardest sale to sell. On the surface I think it’s a lie, belief, love, marriage, contentment, serenity, happiness, all to me are frauds, something someone else wears in hatred and anger to other people. As religious practice I think it’s all a lie, life is cold, cruel and short. It’s nothing but a fishing line, I’m biting at a lure only to get stabbed in the head just when I thought my hunger was to be filled.
Life is the strangest thing I’ve been involved in. When I go to work today to do the noon news I’ll thank Steve Stucker, the morning weather man at my station, for the clouds and dreariness that has made my soul glow in it’s refuse from endless days of the desert sun. Last week or the week before I thanked Larry Rice, the evening meteorologist, for the cool breeze and the quickly descending evening temperatures, to which he responded “I’m in sales, don’t thank me, I’m not the management.”
Each day Steve ends his newscast telling the viewers to get out there and do something that makes their soul happy followed by a god bless. Fuck Catholicism, maybe it’s all in the seven day forecast. At least these guys don’t touch kids.
Maybe they are in tune, all their looking to the clouds, the wind, the earth, their personal understanding of what makes each day the way it is, their knowledge of it’s impermanence and knowing things could change, their not right, their just guessing with what they have at hand.
At night, when I fall asleep with the light on I feel the fear of what they have embraced. I’m alone now, my life’s little bit’s of certainty were removed in a day, in a single act of another person who took an oath of certainty. I fall asleep with the light on in fear, in fear of the uncertainty; I drag through the day with depression, seeking to turn known unknowns into known knowns. I do this for my sanity, for my soul, to find happiness, only to create more sadness and anguish and depression, because I don’t have what it takes to be weather man. I don’t have the resolve to take the information at hand, decide what it means and say it out loud, and move on to the next day whether I was right or wrong.
I guess when I cry and beg in pain, that leads to sleep, preceded by thoughts of ropes around my neck, cold steel in my mouth and shots in the dark, as I cry to the heavens in selfish pity and feel the end, as if the end of the world is upon me, and I have no where to turn, perhaps, just maybe I am heard. And maybe I too believe, maybe I know I will be heard and maybe that’s why I don’t decide my fate. Maybe that is why I sit back in my pain and sleep the day away, or drag myself to work or call and cry to ears who could probably care less of my pain and surely have no answer, no resolve to my anguish, to the conundrum, the equation I can’t seem to wrap my finite self around or at least feel good in my decision. As with all my decisions, the next day, hour, minute or moment, I begin to guess again.
I have no faith that is conscious, unless skepticism is the new religion. But deep inside I have a motor that won’t stop running, a motor that believes I’ll make it, a motor that thinks I can achieve and it will all be ok. But on the surface that’s the hardest sale to sell. On the surface I think it’s a lie, belief, love, marriage, contentment, serenity, happiness, all to me are frauds, something someone else wears in hatred and anger to other people. As religious practice I think it’s all a lie, life is cold, cruel and short. It’s nothing but a fishing line, I’m biting at a lure only to get stabbed in the head just when I thought my hunger was to be filled.
Life is the strangest thing I’ve been involved in. When I go to work today to do the noon news I’ll thank Steve Stucker, the morning weather man at my station, for the clouds and dreariness that has made my soul glow in it’s refuse from endless days of the desert sun. Last week or the week before I thanked Larry Rice, the evening meteorologist, for the cool breeze and the quickly descending evening temperatures, to which he responded “I’m in sales, don’t thank me, I’m not the management.”
Each day Steve ends his newscast telling the viewers to get out there and do something that makes their soul happy followed by a god bless. Fuck Catholicism, maybe it’s all in the seven day forecast. At least these guys don’t touch kids.
Maybe they are in tune, all their looking to the clouds, the wind, the earth, their personal understanding of what makes each day the way it is, their knowledge of it’s impermanence and knowing things could change, their not right, their just guessing with what they have at hand.
At night, when I fall asleep with the light on I feel the fear of what they have embraced. I’m alone now, my life’s little bit’s of certainty were removed in a day, in a single act of another person who took an oath of certainty. I fall asleep with the light on in fear, in fear of the uncertainty; I drag through the day with depression, seeking to turn known unknowns into known knowns. I do this for my sanity, for my soul, to find happiness, only to create more sadness and anguish and depression, because I don’t have what it takes to be weather man. I don’t have the resolve to take the information at hand, decide what it means and say it out loud, and move on to the next day whether I was right or wrong.
Two Shorts
1
Outside Power Plant Live, we sat in my black Jetta at two am watching streams of look alike state-school girls and boys pour onto the red brick street from the club. Chris G. tall, thin, covered in tattoos, a local star, sitting shotgun, Ian, Asian-Irish, snotty and spoiled, dressed in the split second latest fashions, we called him the “Little Prince”, I think he goes by illustrious now, sitting in the back. Then came Brittney across the bricks, as we pondered how anyone chooses a date when everyone looks the same. To this Brittney proclaimed “I’m dating the dj”.
2
“Ten thirty and eleven degrees in Baltimore” the Pilot announced as we descended through the moon lit clouds and snow. Courtney’s dad greeted me with a hug almost as tight as hers. Court and I made it to her downtown apartment through the slush covered streets around one a.m. sipping coffee over two trays of brownies she had just made for her work party the next day. Huddle together naked in each other’s arms drifting to unconsciousness around five. The brownies were still moist and chewy at her Aunts house Christmas Eve.
Outside Power Plant Live, we sat in my black Jetta at two am watching streams of look alike state-school girls and boys pour onto the red brick street from the club. Chris G. tall, thin, covered in tattoos, a local star, sitting shotgun, Ian, Asian-Irish, snotty and spoiled, dressed in the split second latest fashions, we called him the “Little Prince”, I think he goes by illustrious now, sitting in the back. Then came Brittney across the bricks, as we pondered how anyone chooses a date when everyone looks the same. To this Brittney proclaimed “I’m dating the dj”.
2
“Ten thirty and eleven degrees in Baltimore” the Pilot announced as we descended through the moon lit clouds and snow. Courtney’s dad greeted me with a hug almost as tight as hers. Court and I made it to her downtown apartment through the slush covered streets around one a.m. sipping coffee over two trays of brownies she had just made for her work party the next day. Huddle together naked in each other’s arms drifting to unconsciousness around five. The brownies were still moist and chewy at her Aunts house Christmas Eve.
Usually we turn left on Denison
Usually we turn left on Denison, Billed pulled over to the right, I knew he was short. I knew he was short the whole way down Edmonson. Burnin’ ‘em in Chadwick’s one thing, we never go down there. But Denison, we’re here everyday!
Same blue pick up same to white dudes. Us! It’s not like in any other car they can miss us anyway. I weigh 250 and rock a purple Mohawk. Not even a hats gonna help me out. Does he really think 4 lanes to the right is a whole ‘nother world?
“Your door locked?” Bills only verbal warning.
“Ya”
“2 for 15” he says across me, out the passenger window, to the middle aged junky serving rocks on Dennison this fine sunny Tuesday summer afternoon.
They exchange cash for product. As the junky we just burned figures out its only six bucks we lurch forward to make our escape. 20 feet and we’ve pulled a bit from the corner to be stuck in rush hour traffic. My locked door opens as the middle aged black man tries to get his rocks back.
Our car is still not moving,
I grab my door back and hit this guy with it, as the light ahead turns green and we begin our descent further down Edmonson Avenue. Just as fast the man grabs a gas can from the back of our truck and throws it at us, it hits the cab of the truck and falls away. The boys on the corner either aren’t with him or could give a fuck less about the loss, amused by the quarrel but unwilling to risk a scene in rush hour over 9 dollars, or they figure the old junky has to come up with his end either way. It doesn’t matter to us as we round the corner deeper into west Baltimore to make a get away. A block and a half down the road and we know we’re free, free enough to pull over, stand around, shoot the shit and never cross the path of the hoppers we fucked over.
Same blue pick up same to white dudes. Us! It’s not like in any other car they can miss us anyway. I weigh 250 and rock a purple Mohawk. Not even a hats gonna help me out. Does he really think 4 lanes to the right is a whole ‘nother world?
“Your door locked?” Bills only verbal warning.
“Ya”
“2 for 15” he says across me, out the passenger window, to the middle aged junky serving rocks on Dennison this fine sunny Tuesday summer afternoon.
They exchange cash for product. As the junky we just burned figures out its only six bucks we lurch forward to make our escape. 20 feet and we’ve pulled a bit from the corner to be stuck in rush hour traffic. My locked door opens as the middle aged black man tries to get his rocks back.
Our car is still not moving,
I grab my door back and hit this guy with it, as the light ahead turns green and we begin our descent further down Edmonson Avenue. Just as fast the man grabs a gas can from the back of our truck and throws it at us, it hits the cab of the truck and falls away. The boys on the corner either aren’t with him or could give a fuck less about the loss, amused by the quarrel but unwilling to risk a scene in rush hour over 9 dollars, or they figure the old junky has to come up with his end either way. It doesn’t matter to us as we round the corner deeper into west Baltimore to make a get away. A block and a half down the road and we know we’re free, free enough to pull over, stand around, shoot the shit and never cross the path of the hoppers we fucked over.
Johnny Rockets (1st draft) 2007
Maybe I was being desperate. Maybe I was forcing a fire to ignite that was barren of fuel. Maybe it was foolish to jump back in right before she went across the country to the left coast for graduate school. Maybe it was something lacking in me, which needed to latch onto her in the name of love to start life again in L.A.
But it was what it was. I couldn’t stop thinking of her; I couldn’t stop dreaming of her. I was with another, a lot of others, but one in particular, which I wanted to be with. And lying next to her I’d wake up consumed with dreams of another. Dreams of C. and
I pushed, and I pushed, and scratched and scratched the match and it lit only weeks prior to her departure. And she went, and there I was in bed with C one day, and after she got on a plane I was back in bed with the other.
But there we were in Pasadena on her dollar, looking for places to rent in the California sun. And still I wondered if this was real, if she loved me, if I loved her, and I did and I do. And at a Johnny Rockets, somewhere outside of L.A., looking for change or a card or something, it fell through the air, straight from her wallet to the table to my eye. I stared at it and Son Of Sam stared back at me. What had I done? What had I been thinking? Why had I ever left, what had gone wrong? How could I put her through so much when it was clear, well over a year later, that she did, it was true, it wasn’t a lie, there wasn’t a question, she loved me.
As I stared at the movie stub staring back at me, I flashed through the prior five years to the day I pulled up in my Vdub, to her town home on Eutaw Street on the edge of hell. I was dressed up, in a black button down with baggy black non-denim dress pants made only for members of the underworld, a different world and she entered the city through her gate dressed up as well, in a tight black button down, tight black dress pants, thick black sandals, and the toes painted black on those perfect feet, together we knew it was official, this was a date!
Years later at that Johnny Rockets somewhere in our minds we may have known it was destroyed. We may have known that all the applications we filled for apartments were wasted paper, that before I earned the 3 grand as planned to float on my return to California, the relationship would end. But at that moment, and at many moments after, I was filled with regret. I was filled with grief. And I look back always wanting to know how my life would have been different, wondering what is fate, and what is faith, and knowing, under it all, that you can make the wrong decision.
But it was what it was. I couldn’t stop thinking of her; I couldn’t stop dreaming of her. I was with another, a lot of others, but one in particular, which I wanted to be with. And lying next to her I’d wake up consumed with dreams of another. Dreams of C. and
I pushed, and I pushed, and scratched and scratched the match and it lit only weeks prior to her departure. And she went, and there I was in bed with C one day, and after she got on a plane I was back in bed with the other.
But there we were in Pasadena on her dollar, looking for places to rent in the California sun. And still I wondered if this was real, if she loved me, if I loved her, and I did and I do. And at a Johnny Rockets, somewhere outside of L.A., looking for change or a card or something, it fell through the air, straight from her wallet to the table to my eye. I stared at it and Son Of Sam stared back at me. What had I done? What had I been thinking? Why had I ever left, what had gone wrong? How could I put her through so much when it was clear, well over a year later, that she did, it was true, it wasn’t a lie, there wasn’t a question, she loved me.
As I stared at the movie stub staring back at me, I flashed through the prior five years to the day I pulled up in my Vdub, to her town home on Eutaw Street on the edge of hell. I was dressed up, in a black button down with baggy black non-denim dress pants made only for members of the underworld, a different world and she entered the city through her gate dressed up as well, in a tight black button down, tight black dress pants, thick black sandals, and the toes painted black on those perfect feet, together we knew it was official, this was a date!
Years later at that Johnny Rockets somewhere in our minds we may have known it was destroyed. We may have known that all the applications we filled for apartments were wasted paper, that before I earned the 3 grand as planned to float on my return to California, the relationship would end. But at that moment, and at many moments after, I was filled with regret. I was filled with grief. And I look back always wanting to know how my life would have been different, wondering what is fate, and what is faith, and knowing, under it all, that you can make the wrong decision.
They'll Be Here Till Tuesday (unfinished) 2007
I could title it They’ll be here till Tuesday. But I know I’ll never take the picture of their embroidered towels, Judith, Brad, Allison, hanging over my toilet. As an image it will never fit into a series. Where would I stop if I began? Would I photograph all their stuff, the room they’re sleeping in, them asleep, them awake, all day, in front of the TV? No, I’m not that kind of photographer. I like a catchy image, a photo joke, but not from me.
My friends saw it too, the photo, not as art but as my grief. The grief of having my apartment invaded for what I thought would be two days and three nights, by Ma Black, Pa Black and sister in-law Black. But of course, for my graduation, I got a little something extra, their Thursday arrival, followed by their announcement a day in of their Tuesday departure. What are a few extra days?
But what good did my child-like fit in whispers to my wife do, the same it did aloud over a period of weeks as they manipulated their way into our apartment. If the $230.00 they saved by staying here really did go to our graduation gifts were they really only going to give us $145 smackers each?
The money meant nothing anyway, I was where so many married men find themselves, in defeat. I was defeated long before the argument began, long before they asked if they could stay. As a married man I was defeated the day I thought about getting married. There should be P.S.A.’s made to warn, the gospel should be rewritten to spread the truth. The man is a selfless being the day she says I do. Of course it begins long before that but whatever. And I don’t want to sound spiteful or hateful. I’m just saying the way it is. Many men have said this before, single people laugh, and laugh, and take the warning as seriously as they take mine.
I awoke the other day a wreck. I don’t dream but I did. I dreamt of her. Her ears must have burned so much over the years she doesn’t even notice as her name falls from my quivering lips. I dreamt of C. No relationship since we lived together has gone un- compared to the idealized representation of C. created in my mind. And yesterday it was proven, marriage was no match for her, as I spoke with her dad in my sleep, walked through the moonlit woods with her in my arms and in dream time her clothes seemed to vanish, wearing only a blanket, we spoke of how we could never be together. And I burst into tears feeling sanctity in knowing the amount of my heart that she has taken has been wasted on something we both know won’t ever occur again. But then she said, as I wept furiously on her shoulder, “you won’t get me back doing that anyway” and as fast as the tears stopped and my head jerked up from her shoulder, ready to make my move of reclamation, I awoke, in my apartment packed with in-laws. I lay there wrapped in my blanket hiding from the life that I have, wanting so bad to go back to my dream. Wanting so bad to rewind quickly five or 6 years to never let myself leave her, to rejoin her knowing the weight and regret I would feel if I left her and using that knowledge to cherish her more. I quickly assessed all the things in the world that would be different, had I been able to stay with her, if god would only let me return to her, no loss seemed to matter as I only care to be back in her arms, to admire and idolize her as she deserves.
My friends saw it too, the photo, not as art but as my grief. The grief of having my apartment invaded for what I thought would be two days and three nights, by Ma Black, Pa Black and sister in-law Black. But of course, for my graduation, I got a little something extra, their Thursday arrival, followed by their announcement a day in of their Tuesday departure. What are a few extra days?
But what good did my child-like fit in whispers to my wife do, the same it did aloud over a period of weeks as they manipulated their way into our apartment. If the $230.00 they saved by staying here really did go to our graduation gifts were they really only going to give us $145 smackers each?
The money meant nothing anyway, I was where so many married men find themselves, in defeat. I was defeated long before the argument began, long before they asked if they could stay. As a married man I was defeated the day I thought about getting married. There should be P.S.A.’s made to warn, the gospel should be rewritten to spread the truth. The man is a selfless being the day she says I do. Of course it begins long before that but whatever. And I don’t want to sound spiteful or hateful. I’m just saying the way it is. Many men have said this before, single people laugh, and laugh, and take the warning as seriously as they take mine.
I awoke the other day a wreck. I don’t dream but I did. I dreamt of her. Her ears must have burned so much over the years she doesn’t even notice as her name falls from my quivering lips. I dreamt of C. No relationship since we lived together has gone un- compared to the idealized representation of C. created in my mind. And yesterday it was proven, marriage was no match for her, as I spoke with her dad in my sleep, walked through the moonlit woods with her in my arms and in dream time her clothes seemed to vanish, wearing only a blanket, we spoke of how we could never be together. And I burst into tears feeling sanctity in knowing the amount of my heart that she has taken has been wasted on something we both know won’t ever occur again. But then she said, as I wept furiously on her shoulder, “you won’t get me back doing that anyway” and as fast as the tears stopped and my head jerked up from her shoulder, ready to make my move of reclamation, I awoke, in my apartment packed with in-laws. I lay there wrapped in my blanket hiding from the life that I have, wanting so bad to go back to my dream. Wanting so bad to rewind quickly five or 6 years to never let myself leave her, to rejoin her knowing the weight and regret I would feel if I left her and using that knowledge to cherish her more. I quickly assessed all the things in the world that would be different, had I been able to stay with her, if god would only let me return to her, no loss seemed to matter as I only care to be back in her arms, to admire and idolize her as she deserves.
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