Intermittent explosive disorder is a behavioral pathology that manifests as anger, sometimes rage, disproportionate to the situation at hand, immediately followed by deep remorse. For something that sounds like an awesome excuse for every impulsive stupidity ever committed, I can’t quite get behind a disorder that sounds so much like what it is.
Condescending asshole disorder
Posted in: Fragments, Monologues Tagged as: anger, asshole, diagnosis, excuse, intermittent explosive disorder, manifests, mental health, mental illness, pathology, rage, remorse, sounds, stupidity Leave a comment
Eulogy
Here, then, lay our reflections
Silent hymns to our complicity
The capricious change of heart and
The biases of memory
The rapture of despair and
The inevitable agony
Of off-white lies and furtive cries
And doe-eyed volatility
The promise of redemption
And shame at our complacency
Duplicitous omissions
That mock our claims of honesty
I burn for a reprise
Of our consumptive, common fallacy
The brief joy of our repose
From the familiar nihility
That nonpareil moment
Of our rage against eternity
Posted in: Creative, Fragments, History Tagged as: agony, biases, blank, breakups, change of heart, complacency, complicity, duplicity, fallacy, hymns, rapture, reflection, volatility, white lies Leave a comment
Correlation, not causation
The tortured artist is one of the prototypical characters of modern pop culture, with examples across the spectrum of the creative process. And, it’s hard to articulate why this particular subset of artists grabs the yoke of people who struggle with mood disorders, but there is an obvious and tangible correlation. It’s not a coincidence that among my favorite artists are Kurt Cobain, Ian Curtis, Janis Joplin, and Hank Williams, all of whom were dead before age 30, by their own hands and choices. My favorite writers include Anne Sexton, Ernest Hemingway, and Sylvia Plath. Also dead by the ultimate self-medication. Radically different genres, but with a common thread of suffering; all singing in perfect pitch, but to the tune of The Truth The Dead Know
Clearly, however, there is nothing inherent in the act of creation that causes the obsessive, all-consuming sadness, the hopeless, Sisyphian struggle between stillness and mania, the furtive grasps at integrity and other false nobilities, or the belief that darkness must be experienced to be communicated. These seem to be bad choices. More accurately, a series of choices that, paradoxically, become a self-fulfilling prophecy and are often at the root of suffering and despair.
Buddha Lite
To call my knowledge of Buddhism shallow would be generous. Here is my exposure in a nutshell:
1. I saw five minutes of the movie Little Buddha and when I realized Ted “Theodore” Logan was going to be representing the title character, I cleaned up the rivulets of pee then watched Spinal Tap for the 8,657th time instead. You should have seen what they wanted to use it wasn’t a glove, believe me. More rivulet cleaning. But I digress.
2. I think I tried reading Hesse’s Siddhartha after having to read his Steppenwolf for a class. I was surprised for as thin as that book is, it was literally impossible to finish. The word soporific was invented for Siddhartha. Or maybe it was for the movie, The Piano. The opening credits start running on that and my eyelids begin a two-lid race to my cheeks. I remember asking whatever girl was making me watch, “I heard Harvey Keitel shows his dick, wake me up for the that,” and that sounds more gay than it was intended, but, full disclosure, it is true and I did say it. (At this point my memory fails me. In recounting, I vacillate between thinking, I could have got a few more minutes of sleep and a few less of this movie, but the more likely memory is, If that was my dick I would have fired my agent for making me show it. And now I think Is it creepy that when Anna Paquin comes on screen I think about fucking her because of that scene in True Blood? The true answer to that question actually depends on where you’re reading this from. Back to the Buddha.)
3. Dalai Lama. He seems pretty cool.
4. I got another book called The Buddhist Way and when I’m all spiritual I imagine I can probably follow most of the rules contained therein with a few exceptions, of course. (Don’t worry, only monks have to abstain from alcohol and meat, and since I’m too old to get Kwai Chang Caine kung fu skills the idea of meditating all day was also summarily dismissed.)
So with apologies to the above here are my tenets:
1. Suffering – This seems to be the main idea and sort of the most abstract to grasp. But it makes sense. Life is suffering. Fair enough. This suffering is cause by attachment to things. Because everything is impermanent it’s inevitable that you will lose everything, including your life. I don’t think I have the time or the inclination to get so Zen that I can self-immolate at a student protest and end up on Rage Against The Machine’s comeback album. And frankly my attachment to certain vices ain’t going to be meditated away. Paradoxically, taking the step of removing that middle-ground stuff actually makes it easier to do the small and large stuff.
Let’s use Scott Baio as our real-life example in reverse. Someone asked him what was his secret to having sex with most of the Playboy centerfolds and certainly all of the second-tier ones on the back pages circa 1985-2000. I’m sure he’s cracked a few for old times sake since then, but those were his golden years. His answer? You treat them like you know that somewhere outside the walls of The Mansion, there’s at least one guy that is so sick of her bullshit that he avoids her.
Now for the wannabe pseudo-Buddha you reverse it. Your girlfriend or wife or whatever leaves you. To get over this you focus on lessening that attachment by remembering that you weren’t the first one to plant a flag in her dirty bits so there’s gotta be at least 3 guys that only remember all the bad parts about her that you are also familiar with. She was always late, liked Harvey Danger, smoked meth for 12 out of the first 15 days of the month and when you were holding her still so she didn’t kick or scratch you again in her frenzy gets a tiny mark on her arm and you get arrested and she tells her friends your an abusive shit so she can fuck some other guy she’s been eye-balling on Facebook for the last two months and looking for an excuse to make you the monster so she can move into the empty half of his house and not pay rent like she did for three years with the ex- before you.
You know, whatever it was. Just concentrate on that. Still hurts don’t get me wrong, but it’s easier to see how many alternatives their really are.
2. Karma – Colloquially, everyone uses it wrong. Karma’s the next life, Baby! And since my pseudo-Buddhism rejects the supernatural aspects? No worries here.
3. Don’t hurt anybody or any animals except the ones you kill to eat.
That’s it. Next stop Nirvana.
Posted in: Messages, Monologues Tagged as: anna paquin, dalai lama, full disclosure, harvey keitel, little buddha, new friends, rivulets, spinal tap, stillness, ted theodore, true answer, true blood Leave a comment
One from the vaults: 7 April 1998
I found this excerpt from my journal from 11 years ago. Can you feel the angst? And yes, all of my journal entries were written for a potential audience, with the explicit goal of being perceived as clever. To wit:
Love, or more precisely the feeling that one is in possession of this emotion, is the decisive factor in determining the failure of an erotic relationship. And by this, I do not mean that failure is the result of some absence or inadequacy, but rather it is the mere presence of love that prescribes failure. So many of our resources are used in the pursuit of love, and the success or failure of this pursuit is so intertwined with how we define ourselves, that the day-to-day dynamic of most relationships present an emotionally unacceptable risk.
Posted in: Monologues Tagged as: 11 years, 7 april, decisive factor, erotic relationship, excerpt from, explicit goal, inadequacy, journal entries, unacceptable risk, unemployment, vaults, Venice Leave a comment
Excuse me, I was choking on the irony
I have spent the last six hours in a Kafka-esque blur. I am attending mandated training meant to facilitate the mandated change in our corporate culture. The irony, of course, is that the exercise is a perfect microcosm of the culture that created it, and is a painful example of how badly it does need to change. It is reactive, amateurish, half-assed, dogmatic, inflexible, and boring. And that was just breakfast. Don’t get me started on the poorly defined non-sequiturs being touted as talking points of the cultural shift. Really, don’t. I keep secretly hoping we’re all being punk’d because the alternative is depressing on more levels than I care to think about.
Posted in: Monologues Tagged as: blur, corporate culture, cynical, exercise, irony, kafka esque, microcosm, punk, six hours, talking points, the man Leave a comment
The early favorite for best text of the year
Him: I smell like blood and come and too much wine.
Her: OK. You win best text of the day.
Him: It’s only 5:30 a.m.
Her: Trust me. You win.
Twenty, maybe thirty, commandments, each crazier than the last
A large majority of people that describe themselves as religious literally do not know what they believe in. Let that sink in. It sounds oxymoronic, but it’s true. I have a theory on this. Religious training is rarely a moment of epiphany. It is a patient, years-long inculcation. It is not a moment of conversion, but a life-long assimilation. For a person to self-identify as “religious,” therefore, means that his indoctrination was for the most part already successful. At this point what a person believes is no where near as important as who. Any successful brainwashing program does not measure success by the comprehension of ideology, but by submission to its authority. Obedience, and willful self-ignorance are far more reliable than accurate recall. If a person never truly understands a concept, but has been taught to accept its veracity, not only are others less likely to change his view with fact-based arguments, but he is also less likely to question his own beliefs.
Let me give you a real-world example. Most people that have gone to church their whole lives cannot name all ten commandments in order. In fact, if a person can name more than seven correctly, in any order, they are the rare exception. Rarer still is the person who knows that on three separate occasions Moses presents different versions of the Decalogue to the Israelites. The first set, and the one most people would recognize from the movie and Sunday school, are Moses’ impromptu recollection of god’s words after returning from Mt. Sinai. Humorously the version that relies on Moses’ memory is not even close to the ones that eventually appear on stone. The contents of the second set are, technically, never shared in the Bible because Moses gets pissed at the Israelites for creating idols and smashes the tablets on which they are written (Moses can’t take a piss without some asshole forging an idol and worshiping it). The third set, the only one specifically referred to as The Ten Commandments, would be unrecognizable to most. #10 in this version? “Thou shalt not seeth a kid in his mother’s milk.” (And, yes, they’re talking about a baby goat.) Timeless advice, isn’t it? Yet this is the supposed basis for the entire system of morality and ethics on which our society is built.
The depressing truth is that this is essentially the system that provides a large part of this country (and world) with some of its ugliest talking points. Given the deity’s description in the Bible it is a reasonable conclusion to believe that god actually does hate fags. (Why he’s been silent on more prevalent transgressions like ham, divorce, and multi-cloth garments, which are all unequivocally verboten, is anyone’s guess.)
With all this, believers are still not the only ones with culpability. Non-believers have been complacent. I am. It’s a common platitude for polite agnostics to say when referring to the Bible that, “It’s a beautiful book with bad interpretations.” Wrong. The problem is not the interpretation of the material, but the source material itself. Yeah, I said it. I have a suggestion for those of you that disagree. Read it. Cover to cover. No skipping to Christmas and Easter. The book suffers from far more than lapses in logic, difficult syntax, and enormous continuity issues. Like its main character, it is usually self-serving and often morally repugnant. Taken as fact by too many people, the outdated tome is systematic superstition, obfuscated by numbing ritual, and received with blind acceptance. It is the primary source of ideology for countless hate crimes and atrocities. It has and continues to inspire apocalyptic fanaticism, nonexistent next-world dystopias, and repressive theocracies, that thrive on fear, intolerance, and the truncheon.
Even if I have to do it myself, I’m calling bullshit.
In the past, my half-hearted attempts to be tolerant resulted in a disingenuous labeling protocol, i.e., the sheep were misguided rather than ignorant or malicious. Their brainwashing was so pervasive and their assimilation so greatly rewarded, that it hardly seemed fair to rage against the inevitable. No more. My new passive-aggressive strategy to defuse potential interference by this confederacy of dunces is to respond to their condescension in kind. To wit, when confronted with ignorance, I proceed to stare doe-eyed in the direction of the chosen one(s), slightly shake my head with quiet pity for their children; compliment their Orwellian ability to suspend disbelief; patronize the mantras they use in place of empirical evidence; act incredulous over their inevitable hypocrisy; and, take comfort in the fact that they don’t practice what they preach. They don’t even like it.
Exhibit A: pornographic movie sales and rentals earn more than the entire output of mainstream Hollywood movies. I didn’t buy all 32,987 copies of Pocahotass.
Posted in: Monologues Tagged as: bible moses, brainwashing, decalogue, hypocrisy, inculcation, indoctrination, israelites, mt sinai, rare exception, religion, religious training, veracity Leave a comment
You have free will because I said so
My favorite example of god’s love was his willingness to brutally torture and kill his own son as a symbol of sacrifice. That’s a father-son story that really warms the heart. (Technically, it was the Romans with the literally dirty hands, but if you’re the supreme being of the known universe, I would assume you’d have some influence.) Sidebar: isn’t this really stretching the definition of sacrifice? Is it possible for an omnipotent, omniscient being to sacrifice anything? Anyway, this unsolicited sacrifice was made under the pretense of saving mankind from its inherently sinful nature, and is used as a primary example of why you owe your obedience. If it is inherent, doesn’t it mean that the creator put it there? The disingenuous rationalization for this ridiculous give-and-take is a circular argument called free will. The gist of which is that this supposedly perfect being with infinite power has ceded control of the sliver of infinity that is your life. By definition I don’t believe free will is even possible within the context of a predetermined master plan. But for argument’s sake let’s make the huge concession, that in this situation, your choices are actually yours. To avoid damnation still requires unfaltering obedience, or any sort of reasonable doubt. The best explanation one can hope for in times of trouble? “It was god’s will.” Or my favorite, “god works in mysterious ways.” Which, of course, is just a catch-all for “I haven’t the foggiest fuck.”
The reformed apologist
It’s not out of place to read my opinions here. Some jokes. Mostly I enjoy inflicting theories, predominantly my own. And when I say “theories” in this context I mean unproven or unprovable hypotheses that are so consistent in correctly predicting an outcome that I regard them as true. The way evolution is true but still referred to as a theory. I guess I should qualify that last statement; when rational people refer to evolution as a theory they do so in this manner. Ibrahamic monotheists that believe their myths are verbatim transcripts to be read literally? Smirk.
In fact, the recent public “debate” about evolution (and the incomprehensible, but very real, need to refute creationist propaganda at school board meetings) was one of the key factors in my renewed rage against the religion. But, I’m afraid I may have for too long been an unintended (mostly apathetic) apologist. I wasn’t proactive, by any means, but in retrospect I feel a certain culpability in my silence. I treated so-called piety as a harmless form of denial. As long as they left me alone, l would do my best not to mock the ridiculous specifics of their belief system, or the fact that they had chosen to eschew thousands of years of human progress to instead embrace a violent, misogynistic, fear-based set of Semitic tribal fairy tales as the ultimate arbiter on questions of science, philosophy, morality, and ethics. But when their unsolicited involvement began to threaten private, independent lifestyle choices, i.e., porn, gambling, and booze—you know, necessities—I knew that I had been, in the parlance of the enemy, giving comfort to the wicked with my silence.
I resolved then to be more proactive in my refutation of their choices. They invent an unpredictable, omnipotent no-show for a supreme being, then take every opportunity to project their own blood lust, tribal bigotry, and neuroses on him, while simultaneously paying lip service to supposed ideals like faith, hope, love. The result? The deity character is so unrealistic that the early fiction writers who composed the poorly-edited anthology of testaments and gospels made a rare, wise choice to split him into three separate characters (father, son, and super ghost), and give each one a different part of the personality to represent.
Otherwise, the capricious violence, hateful cruelty and jealous possessiveness god exhibits throughout both testaments would be a hard sell for the supposed king of the universe. Even with that use of creative license, god still seems more of an asshole than someone you’d want to be with forever. You will have no other gods before me? If god were a person he would need a restraining order.
Soliciting miracles from prostitutes
The public humiliation of any oleaginous preacher is usually cause for joy, but the fall of Ted Haggard, the poster child for self-righteous, hypocritical bastards, was sublime in a way that is often fantasized but rarely experienced. It happened almost three years ago in November 2006, but I still get school-girl giddy when I think about it. For those of you who don’t know the story, Ted Haggard was the founder of New Life Church in Colorado Springs and at the time was the president of the National Association of Evangelicals. He was also an active proponent of Colorado Amendment 43, the proposal to ban same-sex marriages in that state. The punch line, of course, is that days before the vote, it was revealed that for three years Pastor Ted had been soliciting “massages” (I wasn’t there, but I believe that’s a euphemism) from…wait for it…wait….a male prostitute.
Unbelievably, it gets even better.
Haggard also admitted to purchasing crystal methamphetamine for research purposes from the same guy. Not to use, but for research. Wow. That may be the single worst lie in the history of lying. I think it would have been more believable if he said he was the reincarnation of Jesus and was taking a gay prostitute as his first disciple (having already represented the straight prostitute demographic with Mary Magdalene.) The press release practically writes itself. Jesus’ first alleged miracle (John 2:1-11, for those that care) was at a wedding in Cana where he turned water into wine. So it’s just a short leap in logic that the son of god would require a more modern psychoactive substance to reach today’s audience. And what better venue than a “massage” parlor in Denver to show the world that everyone was welcome? How better to bring glory to god? I think I missed my calling as a publicist.
The actual ten commandments
The Ten Commandments
Exodus 34:13-28
- I. Thou shalt worship no other god.
- II. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
- III. The feast of unleavened bread thou shalt keep.
- IV. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest.
- V. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of in gathering at the year’s end.
- VI. Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord God.
- VII. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.
- VIII.Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the Passover be left unto the morning.
- IX. The first of the first fruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the Lord thy God.
- X. Thou shalt not seethe a kid [i.e., a young goat] in his mother’s milk.
Posted in: Monologues Tagged as: feast of the passover, feast of unleavened bread, feast of weeks, first fruits, firstfruits, leaven, lord god, lord thy god, passover, religion, six days, ten commandments, wheat harvest Leave a comment
Ridiculous and profane
Did I have to go there? I did. But there’s a good reason. You and I connect on such an intellectual level. I absolutely eat your brains. And I think you’re so fucking funny and interesting that I could listen to you speak for days. The mythical, perfect filibuster. That I don’t ever want to get too far off the road map to your being a woman. And a sensual being. And of the body. Corpus. Animus. Spiritus. So while this particular comment manifested in the profane, and perhaps ridiculous. It was rooted, and I do choose that word deliberately and carefully, in the fertile soil of absolute appreciation.
Posted in: Messages, Monologues Tagged as: being a woman, brains, email, fertile soil, filibuster, good reason, intellectual level, love, road map, sensual Leave a comment
The frailest of gestures
I open the door and I can smell her before I see her, that unique amalgam of Camels, Maybelline, and chardonnay. I find myself sometimes grabbing the short hairs near the back of her head to pull her smell to me, perhaps being rougher than I initially intend, because the urgency to have her inside me some way has become so strong. Of course, she shrugs me away. And with the frailest of gestures makes light of the heaviness of my movements.
Posted in: Creative, Fragments, History, Monologues Tagged as: amalgam, camels, chardonnay, email, gestures, love, maybelline, short hairs, urgency Leave a comment
Easter eggs
I spend the night eating chocolate Easter eggs. Crunching through the candy shell and letting the sweetness slowly dissolve on my tongue. It’s comforting. The sweetness. I use it as a proxy for my longing. The gentle ache she represents. Understanding always that the presumption of any future is a slippery slope. And dangerous to delicacy. The chocolate dissolves before the shell and as I lay on my back with my eyes closed I smile at the metaphor.
Posted in: Creative, Fragments, Messages, Monologues Tagged as: ache, candy shell, chocolate easter eggs, delicacy, eating chocolate, email, longing, love, metaphor, presumption, slippery slope, sweetness Leave a comment
Without it
Because, you see, honesty is not enough. And good will isn’t enough. And feeling. And kisses. And intention. And meaning. And, sadly, love is not enough. We get confused sometimes because all those things are present when the unnamed catalyst exists. But without it—IT! —these beautiful moments are just that: furtive grasps at the divine, more bricks in the wall. All squares are rectangles. But not all rectangles are squares.
Posted in: Creative, Messages, Monologues Tagged as: beautiful moments, bricks, catalyst, email, grasps, honesty, intention, kisses, love, rectangles, squares Leave a comment
I love you but you’ve chosen darkness
In times of trouble, we invent definitions of our desires as unique. We forget that somebody in this world, probably more than one, is sick of the person or situation we put on a pedestal.
We incorrectly believe wants are needs. We exaggerate the importance and the value of what we desire and choose pain as a sort of martyrdom. We abandon reason as the means to achieve our goals, and instead bask in the self-centered nature of depression. No other emotion can achieve the all-encompassing preoccupation with “the self.” It provides us with a state of almost complete self-absorption, a reward that is subconsciously so powerful it eclipses what our conscious minds want. It becomes our internal voice that repeats the myth of our lives we have created for ourselves. We believe this voice whether what it says is true or not, effective or not, self-destructive or not.
When ruled by our feelings, we are incapable of making clear choices let alone rationally reflecting on their consequences. People trapped in this cycle repeat patterns of counter-productive and self-destructive behavior. The tortured artist is the prototypical example. But even the word tortured incorrectly implies an outside source that is somehow in control. That pain is self-chosen.
Posted in: Messages, Monologues Tagged as: blank, breakups, conscious minds, duplicity, eclipses, internal voice, martyrdom, pedestal, preoccupation, prototypical example, reflection, self destructive behavior, times of trouble, tortured artist Leave a comment
Simple, focal
A feeling of dread washes over me. And suddenly I’m afraid of everything. I’m scared of the dark. I’m scared of my shadow. I’m scared of strange noises. I’m scared of the silence. I’m scared of dying. And all around I see death in everything. Something is whispering in my ear. Not the low, guttural growls of horror movies, but in a tinny, high-pitched, almost silent scream. “Be afraid.”
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Five feet, five inches
I had only ever heard her tell one lie before but it was a lie that she often repeated. I should clarify. There were probably other lies. But, this is the only one for which I had confirmation. Her lies were never actual commissions. There were no claims of I was with so-and-so at so-and-so’s house to be denied later or caught up in a web of entanglements. That was my domain. No, hers was a vague dishonesty often wrapped in a series of truthful statements. “I’ll think about it” was a favorite. Even with a pre-determined outcome, one could claim to think about it and never tell an actual lie. I digress.
I remember when we first met, and the subject of height came up, she would always answer, “Five, five.” Punctuating the second five, its resonance speaking truth to doubt while accenting the symmetry suggested by the repeated number. “Five, FIVE.”
As our relationship made the slow progression from acquaintances to lovers, slow being 4 months from April to August, it is surprising how often this question came up.
Casually in conversation:
“You’re what, about five, four?”
“Five, five.”
At the doctor’s office:
“Height?”
“Five, five.”
In mock debate:
“You’re five, five like I’m six feet.”
“Then you’re six feet.”
I measured her once. The result was five feet, three and three quarter inches, fully one inch less than her claim. And though this discussion may seem frivolous it is actually the perfect microcosm of what our relationship was to become. In many ways, both figurative and literal, we were just over one inch away.
I write this without triumph. This measurement was merely the first in a series of selfish mistakes; a perfect symbol. In fact, taking that measurement may be the biggest regret I have about our relationship. In that act lay the seeds of doubt and disrespect that were sown over the next years. And inherent in the gesture are the spectrum of poor communication choices—condescension, self-righteousness, obstinacy, blame–that once invoked, can almost never be forgotten. Why did it seem so important to sully her “Five, five?” It is not an exaggeration to say that if there is anything in this life I would change, and there is a long list of candidates meriting serious reflection, giving that back to her would be near the top of the list.
Today, her default answer is “Five, four.” Not quite right, but one would forgive the slight embellishment in the interest of brevity if nothing else. “Five foot three and three quarters” is an answer that betrays desperation. She was many things, but desperate was not one of them. Still, I feel a pang of hurt when I hear that number, “Five, four” and all that it represents. The irony, of course, is that she has probably long forgotten the declarations, the measurement, the redefinitions. I hate hearing the question or hearing the answer or reading or thinking about height. It’s a reminder to me of my failure to recognize, sometimes at the most crucial moments, what is important and what just feels that way, however intensely. The short-term glow of being right traded violently against the long-term bask of mutual benefit. I don’t ever lie about how tall I am anymore, and I can’t even say her name. And these two facts are inextricably related.
Lessons from a five-year old
“Daddy, who was that lady you were talking to?”
“Lady? Oh, the waitress? That was the waitress, Baby.”
“You like ladies don’t you, Daddy?”
“What? Yes, I guess. Daddy likes ladies, Daddy likes most…”
“You love ladies don’t you, Daddy?”
“What? what do you…”
“I mean, you love the idea of them.”
That’s my at the time 5 year-old daughter pretty much verbatim.
The downward spiral
I get to the restaurant five minutes late to find her waiting halfway between the entrance and the back. I feel good and it’s good to see her.
“You look like you haven’t slept in a few days,” she says. “Are you drinking?”
“It’s good to see you too.”
“I worry about you.” The moment of tenderness is unexpected and I have to blink and look away. But instead of appreciating the gesture I get defensive.
“You’re worried about me?”
And before I can say anything else to ruin the moment, she reaches across the table, grabs the back of my head and rubs her fingers against the short hairs just above my neck.
“I wish I had the energy to take care of you.” The look on her face is so profoundly sad that I can’t decide what to feel.
I’m disappointed in a way I wasn’t prepared to be when I walked through the door.
Posted in: Creative, Fragments, History Tagged as: downward spiral, few days, fingers, five minutes, gesture, grabs, prose, restaurant five, short hairs Leave a comment
à la mode
The mathematics of ice cream are never exact,
And for most of us, not easily grasped.
Like ∏, which undefined, still describes a circle,
Each scoop is perfect and unknowable.
Of course, we have machines that tell us temperature.
But none exist that calculate the velocity of flavor,
The atomic weight of preference, or the melting point of slurp.
None come even close to understanding.
Only slightly less obtuse, the dairy arts resist approach.
There are no poems of vanilla consequence,
No Butterscotch Fugue in D,
No chapel ceiling paintings of pistachio’s fall from grace.
Even language seldom offers more description
Than mumbled monosyllables of smothered “brr” or “yum.”
Of ice cream we know nothing.
But the cone, ah!
The brown, baked, hard, waffle-grid.
Whose volume is always ⅓∏r²h
Posted in: Creative, Fragments Tagged as: atomic weight, brr, ceiling paintings, close to understanding, fall from grace, fugue, melting point, poetry, velocity, waffle, yum Leave a comment
Hidden agenda
This poem is not concerned with language,
but rather with a gesture.
Truth be told it has an agenda.
See it speaking sweetly to you?
This poem misses you when you walk away.
See how it waits for you to finish your sentences,
and acts nonchalant as you answer the phone?
It hopes you’re talking to a girl.
This poem is sad because it wants
to be in control and is not; or maybe, it cannot.
It wants to be with you on more than one level.
It sits softly down beside you. It whispers, “Sweetness.”
This poem looks forward to you
like a three-day weekend.
Like a warm bed on a Sunday morning.
Like glazed sugar donuts and chocolate milk.
Posted in: Creative, Fragments Tagged as: acts, chocolate milk, donuts, gesture, hidden agenda, love, poem, poetry, sentences, sunday morning, sweetness, whispers Leave a comment
The bus to county
I remember three things: 1) The song playing on the bus (yes, they played the radio) was “Gangstas Make the World Go ‘Round” and all the gangstas—real and wannabe—rapped along; 2) There was a guy in the cage at the front of the bus de-toxing from something and every time he vomited on himself the people sitting directly across from him would laugh; and 3) An effeminate black man was handcuffed to my left hand and every chance he was given made sure that everyone knew that he was a homosexual.
“Does anyone have any special needs?,” a deputy asked during processing, “Medications?” Up shoots his hand and with it mine, “Sir, I’m a homosexual.”
Pause. “No shit.”
But after the laughter died down, they did separate him into the special population of prisoners that were at above-average risk; violence being the worry for this gentleman probably more than sodomy.
Posted in: Creative, Fragments, History Tagged as: black man, California, gentleman, homosexual, laughter, left hand, population, prisoners, prose, special needs, violence, worry Leave a comment
The Weekend
She sits alone at the plastic bench
She uses for a table
Holds a hot mug to her lips
Presses the hard bones in her elbows
To the roughly textured plastic
Of the off-white table top
This morning is softer and
She enjoys the solitude
And she, in fact,
Isn’t lonely, though
Maybe sometimes longs for
Another type of mourning
I like it best to think of her
Radiant and strong
As she purses to blow the steam
That rises from her tea
And sips a spectrum
That runs from peach to mango
I like it best to think of her
Smiling to herself with
A vague optimism for the day
And thoughts of all who love her
As I silently try to reach her heart
From half a mile away.
You are what you love (and not what loves you back)
She’d been gone for ten minutes before I decided to leave.
When I come to I’m face down in the dirt and moss, and I can see ants crawling over my right hand, which is still holding my phone. I have three messages.
It’s hot. Sweat is pooling in all the cracks of my body. The arch of my lower back. My knees. My neck. I roll over to face the sky and feel beads trickling into my ears and eyes.
How did I get here?
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Monica’s gift to Hillary, and the worst part about everything
My first instinct was to prolong my ignorance. I didn’t want to know. Claims to the contrary are invented or imagined. Ignorance was lonely, but bearable, and lacked the inevitable apathy and casual cruelty that seemed to be the fate of knowing. The paradox, of course, is that the sheer audacity, once understood, brought calm rather than the anxiety or pain I was expecting. We say we lie to protect the other person’s feelings, but really what we’re doing is avoiding our own discomfort and withholding the only thing that can actually help the other person.
I had the epiphany that so much of everything I thought was spontaneous was actually premeditated, and probably on a checklist. After all the cosmic promises there was no meaningful deliberation at the end. I looked, and hoped, but there was no sense of loss. No mourning. Just the calculated efficiency of a hired killer.
Sadly, our conspicuous, public proclamations of affection given in May eventually became a threat to her freedom, and all but predicted the invocation of the worst-case scenario. I did not even consider the possibility of it being used as an exit strategy even as it was happening all around me.
It was quick, it plausibly explained a change that couldn’t have been predicted, it minimized culpability, mitigated embarrassment about a widely misunderstood decision, it allowed the denial of proclivities, represented rebuttal as retaliatory, and generated enough disgust to preclude concern about a quick abandonment, casual divorce, and certainly no questions would be raised out loud about the apparent overlapping timelines of the replacement. Having seen what that lie looks from both sides now, I’m pretty confident I recognize it, coming or going.
I liken this experience to Hillary Clinton’s though admittedly without as large an audience and on a much smaller stage. At face value Monica Lewinsky is merely a material participant in a personal betrayal. But in so doing, gave Hillary something that no one else had been able to: a situation that could not be denied and the opportunity to witness at close-range her husband’s willingness to save himself at any cost.
I expected a quick and merciless dispatch, and quicker rebound, having witnessed it in April. I expected duplicity in defense of reputation. I was shocked by all the lies. Others warned me of the possibility, but I disregarded them with the sincere belief that I wouldn’t have to consider it in my defense. Ignoring several chances to recant, a disconnect was revealed, so vast that I no longer had any urgency to reconnect it. Or even understand it. Like Hillary, the scope of the act and the subsequent breach in ethics has actually given me clarity and calm. Now that I know she will do anything to save the myth she has created, there’s nothing else to worry about. I have my first real consolation of the worst-case scenario
And for all that, it’s not even the worst part of everything. Individual sadness eventually subsides. But the irreparable damage to the collective belief in what is possible will probably never be made whole again. It’s difficult to believe that it even exists. IT! The unnamed catalyst without which not there can be no love or true faith. Need is not quite belief.
The fall of a person at every level, from an individual man to Man as we see ourselves when we are at our accomplished best, doesn’t usually happen in one calamitous plunge from the heights of glory. But rather, it is the little things we choose to do, by ourselves, when we think there’s no one watching, or when this one time doesn’t matter. It’s how the path of least resistance becomes the only way in or out, and the only way we know to go. We make small compromises, but in the most important places and the result is the slow-motion free-fall of our self-actualization. Eventually we end up lower than where we started. We look around, incredulous, as if being sprawled out on the floor required a fall from grace to get there.