Out tonight with JT and G3, to the brauhaus with a aging German band playing Elvis covers, of course it was hard not to think of G1 when I first met her and a Montero with a bumper sticker that cried out “recognize me.” This city has swallowed me up this weekend, like telling me of what I have been missing in a city all of my life. It has not been too hot, or cold, or anything. It is just a city, and of the best variety. There were times of sport and times of longing and times of beauty involving a Journey song played loudly amongst Sox fans on the Southside. It was beautiful and made me realize how alike we all are. How if G had been here for that party, she would have been the most comfortable she has ever been in this city. JT and I both agreed on that. “Don’t Stop Believing” has been the mantra for Sox fans this year, and when I come to think of it, it could be my mantra lately as well. I have been adopted into a family very few times like I was last night. Except Durham and Spartanburg, there hasn’t been such love in my life in recent years. Like they had known me forever, and apparently I am a tap-dance god. Who knew? I have realized some things over the weekend though. First, how precious our good friendships are. How they can bring us up from the doldrums and make us whole again. The second is that country music and blues can make you...
Porch view (click photo to enlarge)Sitting here in this room at J and S’s, and they have gone to bed as S stayed an extra night and is leaving for her trial early in the morning. Tonight will be the last time that they see each other for about a month, and I wonder how they do it. I used to flip out at G going away for a weekend! Outside I was staring over the sky that is dark now, but this afternoon had the most brilliant sunset. J called us outside just to witness it. We probably should have headed up to the roof. Anyway. The last time I was in this room was during the visit here with Robert in July, and G and I slept together here on the futon where I sit writing. I wonder if a little of the spirit that I have always loved about her is not still swarming about. I hope tomorrow that fearless spirit still remains with me. Traveler before trip (click photo to enlarge)It is cold in the city, but not really any colder than it was in Atlanta. However, it feels colder here, like the city is anticipating the coming cold. You can see it in the faces of the people and feel it in the air, just like you could feel the anticipation of Spring and warmth when G and I were here after my birthday in March. We are so spoiled with weather in Atlanta. We don’t have this anticipation and longing for climatic change. Out tonight to a pub dinner at a place I...
Sitting in the Atlanta airport awaiting a flight to Chicago where I will have a date with destiny and the course of my whole life could change – for better or worse I do not know. Getting here was an adventure. It involved a skittish emphysemic cab driver named Gerald Cody, who seemed like a really nice guy, but couldn’t help from going over the lane separator lines and quickly jerking the Atlanta Lenox Ford back into the correct lane. Upon dropping me off at the airport, he told me to have fun at the party in Chicago, and to try not to burn the city down. I didn’t tell him of any party – I guess I did tell him about Chicago, but I do not remember – so I guessed he was referring to the White Sox win in the World Series last night. I told him I would put out any fires that I saw. Earlier in the day I was preparing for my departure: packing clothes, printing itineraries, balancing my checkbook, checking batteries etc. I had a couple of loads of clothes still to be processed. Now I know I have mentioned before that throughout the breakup laundry has been a surefire way to get the memories rolling. I don’t know really why this is. It seems that it takes so little. While downstairs removing the last load from the dryer, I cleaned the lint filter afterwards. I usually wait until I put a load in to clean the filter, but today I remembered that G used to clean after unloading, and I wanted to...
It’s nearing 2 AM and game 3 of the World Series is still on the TV. I am still awake watching and trying to get all of my financial information entered into a budgeting and accounting program so taxes and keeping track of expenses will be easier. If you really know me, this doesn’t sound like me at all. With the medication making it so I require less sleep, and the wagon making it so I have extra sober time on my hands, and because I need things to do to keep my mind off the obvious situational difficulties i am having, I do things like getting on top of my finances. I also keep my fingernails pruned and I am reading no less than 5 books concurrently right now. B dropped by this afternoon and we talked for 15 minutes or so about how the wagon can really do this for you. I never understood when I drank all of the time what how people got so much done in their lives, how they had time for it all. Now that I am on the wagon, I don’t know how I ever got by before. I don’t know how I kept it all together the little bit that I did. It’s like my life, like the baseball game, is having extra innings on a daily basis these days. Granted, this means extra time to let my thoughts go crazy at times as well. After my weeding remembrances earlier this afternoon, I had a half hour of brief sporadically explosive sobbing episodes, each lasting maybe 15 seconds tops, then...
I thought I was doing alright coming home this afternoon. I’ve had a day that was pretty good, not too much depression or melancholy, managed to really throw myself into some work that needed to be done. Was looking forward to having a willing night at home alone until I arrived at home, and coming along the sidewalk by the side of the house, I remembered that the area where the azaleas now sit empty, was where earlier in the late spring or early summer we had weeded together when we got back from dinner. We were quiet and intent, only talking to figure out how to dispose of the refuse. G was so happy out there just pulling those weeds with ugly stalks a pretty, but tiny, flowers on them. It seemed the more that we pulled the more there was. There was another day when we came home and G decided to stay outside and weed. I could’ve stayed with her, but I didn’t. I was hellbent on getting in the house and probably to something of no real importance. She was out there for maybe 30 minutes, and I bet she was happy. I wish I had gone out and helped, or at least looked out the window to see if she was happy. I know now that things were already starting to change then, but it seemed so simple and perfect that first day we pulled weeds. Perhaps our relationship needed more weeding. I don’t know. I thought I had learned to stop trying to figure out these things. But this afternoon, it all snook...
Out this morning the malignant gardener moves the bin to the curb and straightens his shirt. Later he will do a little pruning of this and snipping of that until it is right or he is tired. I sit in the Florida room putting out a cigarette in an ashtray that cannot let one in without letting one out. The gardener will later turn into a bird. It will not be many days now, as they are turning cold enough to crack bones. I will later turn into a bird as well, an autumn bird, and will migrate, this nest left behind, and flight and warmth and motion will become home. It’s been restless being man lately. The pleasures of the bird have appeal. Success, then, is that when you are gingerly nudged from that nest, like the cigarettes in the ashtray, your wings will work before you hit the ground. On the other hand, we must continue to feel failure in our hearts, even as all the world lays its garlands on us. What does the bird know that we don’t? Or the gardener when he turns into that sparrow? What does he then know? What can that cigarette butt there teach us? Or the end of these days? Or ours? And, where will we winter this year, or next? To be a bird, maybe, get to the end of it all, a good son, a good friend, a good husband, and father, And nothing...
Ah, day 40. The amount of time it took for a full inundation, and I had an inundated weekend. You would have thought my eyes were the cause of the flood. I couldn’t seem to keep it together. I fell apart at every juncture. I guess that is always the danger when you feel you have gotten stronger. J says just mark it up as a bad day, or a weekend in this case. I finally went on the archaeological dig today. I decided it was finally time to dig myself out of the constantly accruing sphere of junk and items that were surrounding me on the sofa. I’ve needed to do it for weeks, but just couldn’t bring myself to. I knew that discomforting artifacts would be found. I guess deciding to do it today made me feel a bit stronger, even though I knew it would ultimately bring more tears, and it did. I dug out of the 40 million books I fortressed myself in with, and the miscellaneous scraps of paper with phone numbers, notes to myself, addresses, receipts and other information written on them. And the empty boxes that various items and books came packaged in. I could even have a friend or two over now to watch the game if I wanted to. Going through it all, though, brought memories. Finding the sheet on which G laid out what bills I had due and how much right before she moved out. When we were sad but relieved, and thought that we were saving the relationship by living apart. Then I found several of the...
It’s all gonna be alright, breathe fucker, breathe! Ooooohhhhm! It’s all gonna be alright. I am a bird and there is no land and no nothing, and I will fly on knowing it’s all gonna be alright, and on and...
Up too late again. This is how it goes these days. After the break up I could not wait to get to sleep. I would sleep anywhere at any time if given 5 minutes just to relax. Now, I have not had but about 8 hours of sleep over the last two nights. I have been feeling mostly good until today. I spent much of it by myself. I went tonight to a movie and music festival by myself, but it only stood to remind me of how alone and lonely I have been all day. I have gotten used to weekdays, but I have far fewer Saturdays – many of them spent other places – and it takes some getting used to when you awake alone and realize that the rest of the day will be much like that. I don’t know. I want some sort of relief and I cannot figure out how to get it. And all of this after having a great day yesterday. I was strong, forward-looking and hopeful. I don’t know where it all went today. Listening to sad songs and reading way to much good, but sad, poetry probably doesn’t help the cause much. I think the medication is part of the late nights. I want to fall asleep right now and sleep a very long time. Maybe the morning will bring a new reason. We’ll...
It was on that last night, before I took you out to the truck, and before mother’s litany of photos from the Northeast, and before the phone call, that phone call, later the next day, and even before the final foot rub for my parents, and all the world, to see, as we sat on that love seat, and I believed that being there may indeed make the love possible – you and I were in the bedroom one last time (why were we there?) and I asked would you sleep here with me again before I have to leave this place and you said, “yes,” and I fell for it, and later we kissed and said goodbye for the final time out by your truck, and that too was before I knew what the next day would bring, and now I sit here in this bed, and I haven’t washed the sheets or made the bed since then, and it stays wrinkled and in the space where my body usually lays there’s an indentation, and where yours laid there is a chalk outline surrounding a lone pillow, and where my heart lies, restless most nights, there’s a chalk outline around it...
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