Another night spent in the quest to determine how much is too much of a good thing. The night moved as easily as socks on a varnished floor, and it’s always fun to be able to take those socks off and on at will. Something about the motion carries the whole evening forward, somewhere past the phone ringing or the music playing somehow underneath the whole tableau. Another two dollar word cheapened by overuse. Every time I look toward a clock, another hour has passed and still the quiet neighborhood turns light switches on and off in a weird synchronicity, more evidence for a shared conscience perhaps, or some shit like that. It takes time to dissemble the various threads into a more coherent situation, and a lot of time is spent trying to learn how to react after the fact. There are actually few times where the reaction moves in concert with the event in question, but usually slithers after the realization has struck one of us dumb. Look up, see that everything that was where you thought you’d left it was now someplace else. In the confusion I must have acquiesced to an agreement without formal acknowledgment. What else could possibly explain everything being somewhere other than where it should be?
Of course this didactic exercise can and will go on all night long. Longer, even. In the intervening moments between deeply biased thoughts comes a feeling of calm acceptance, as if every trouble swamping my boat would sooner or later pass me by. I question the validity of the scene, but only out of habit. There isn’t really much of an answer to the question, just a feeling like swallowing spit. The best that could be said about it is that its yours. Until and unless the spit hits the ground, it’s just another wad waiting to hit the wind. The whole world outside may never considered the issue, but it certainly arose out of the evening. With a break to solidify the mental compact, the machinery moves on, and without seeming to notice my raspy exhortations.
Despite the positive vibrations so far, something still seems out of sorts and untied. Without a barometer to get a handle on the pressure, we require other means of counting or diagramming, and all I got is poetry. I wanted to pay someone to come over and write the definition of poetry on the wall, but we’re all out of paint. That kind of thing. Elusive in the same manner as a word that we all can recognize when we see it but never define beforehand. Confusion again; is it just my circuits missing a beat? I have poetry coming out of my ears, it’s all I see and feel, everything I touch and say. Nobody can understand a word of it, like this;
blessed material amongst indifferent glances,
watchfully roaming amidst murmuring voices that seem to agree
that the answer to the question
is 4.
It all comes together except it doesn’t feel that way. It doesn’t feel like anything except that nominal disquiet that comes with speaking a dead language. On other nights, it would be a frustration, but tonight I think it might be a blessing in disguise. Wherever you wish you were, whatever you wish you’d done (or not done), whatever you might have said if the circumstances had been more in your favor, none of it matters except on the wavelength of poetry. I’m eating all of the M & M’s out of the trail mix, and people are starting to look. I can’t even imagine what the fuck they might be saying. In addition to speaking a dead language, I hear it too.
And still we’re falling through the layers of the evening and sitting back the whole time, sucking on cigarettes and envisioning what it feels like to be rooted to solid ground. I can’t even imagine it, not really. I’ve never felt at home, never known what roots really are. I know what they look like, and I’m pretty sure the rough bark would feel like the soft bark of a Sycamore on a sunny summer day. What their value might be remains a mystery, and even being aware of their existence isn’t the same thing, not by a long shot. Another way of speaking…again. Another sentence spoken, given out like candy on Halloween or presents on Jesus’ birthday. By all rights, the words should trail off like…
And it’s all said in poetry and it all means so little except for the importance of standing up for the few things in life that are worth actually standing up for. Even handicapped by a child like ignorance of the future is no excuse for letting an impostor speak in your place. At some point in every snake hole we come to that same question repeated over and over again, and always the same answer. There isn’t any other thing to do than admit that just like everyone else, I do what I can, and all that entails. In poetic terms, I worry that equivalency is being mistaken for adequacy. The word itself could shrivel up and die before I’d spend much time living up to it. On a good night, it doesn’t even exist. On a good night it’s the same whether it’s poetry or just a few words thrown together to speak to a common cause.
forever finding that whole contraction
is a token appearance of faith
masquerading as a subway token
without which bar won’t drop
and we won’t move.
More evidence of the dead language speaking to me rather than from me. I find the distinction amusing, which is about all I require from a night lost to clocks somewhere between seven and two. It ends with sleep, or so I’m told.
Filed under: thoughtful trips
There is frustration when I look to the ceiling and don’t feel the pull of gravity bringing me down to the right level. I’m OK when the come on isn’t as strong as advertised, or when time is short and the feelings fade to a jarring conclusion, because a conclusion represents the end of a journey. Money paid, trip taken, a fair deal all around. The problem comes as something of a doppelganger, a stand in for the real deal. Mornings like this leave me pleading for that feeling to arrive on golden tires and get my mind off to the temporal. I can’t help it…the nature of the beast I suppose.
All things being equal, the daily reminders of the wounds festering under the cloudy sky are ever more frustrating in light of the failure of the medicine to take hold. My expectations led me into a classic trap. The door slams shut behind me the instant recognition crosses my face on the way down through the rest of my body. I’m stiff in all the wrong places. I want to laugh amidst the carnage, but i hold back out of respect for the uninitiated. I really only smile when I lie anyway.
With a forceful shove into a mindset of vanity, I grit my teeth and proceed to wait for the sign that all is well and the joints are smooth and oiled, ready for movement. I plead for things to make some kind of sense besides the occasional break in the static but am left with the burned out hope that if this one doesn’t work, the next one will. Under the aegis of emblematic sorcery and supplicated prayers (offered to some mysterious hooker in the sky) comes the laughter of the thunder. Is it a reply? I don’t know. Any kind of answer masquerading as laughter is beyond a sick joke under these circumstances. Sooner or later all of the accumulated wisdom sparks one of those momentary crises of faith. It’s dark out, the kind of darkness that hides the sun rather than covering it up, leaving a halo around the darkness. Their are some kids playing in the street, probably evading a teacher or some other kind of fucking administrator, but they don’t seem to notice. They just run around and laugh a lot.
In the ensuing minutes, my crises of faith ends with a washout. My blood carries the long awaited edge the cuts through the fog of the morning into the afternoon. It’s crucial for following the long train of thought into some kind of narrative. Not that it actually means anything, but it will seem important while it’s all going down. Like many other things in life, the whole process slides between controlled contortions and impervious random vibration. Sans the repeated calls for faith in the process, the whole thing just keeps moving on, defying every attempt to capture the release of joy. Look around you and it isn’t hard to find examples in various states of distress or extreme rapture. More than anything, they want to hold on to that moment when everything comes together, and for the briefest of moments they (and I) are enraptured with a colorful world of wavy lined souls that always wear smiles.
In the end, the rationale I’ve just laid out for you is the most important thing you could ever hope to know when it comes to this kind of egress. It is a weary and often unintentional collection of ideas and suppositions that keeps hope alive; the elusive moment we’re chasing down a blind alley with no turn-around. (note: I later discovered there is indeed a turnaround. A big one. First you hit the bricks. Then you stop. If you’re lucky, you turn around fast enough and brace yourself quickly enough to rebound right back out of the alley. Of course, you have to quit chasing the moment and give up on your quest.)
The only fitting analogy is thus: I left the remote control across the room and I want to change the fucking channel. I want to watch the music video for John Hiatt’s “Sharon’s Got A Drugstore.” My cable box is set to HBO. The damn remote isn’t even close to being in range of an arm or even a leg, and rather than get up an get it, I’m sitting here typing away trying to express my frustration with the current state of internal supply and demand issues and wait for a blood rush realization, scoping patterns in the seams of the day. Time to move, I cant take anymore of this waiting shit.
