Getting into the shower tonight I had a flash of junior high. The humidity and temperature the last few days has been mild. Today’s temperature was too, but the moisture built up throughout the day and made it so that the temperature clung to you, inside and out. Impossible to not immediately sweat while outside, shivering inside in the conditioned air. Getting into the shower with a chill and feeling the contrast of the hot water and cold skin took me back to when I was a child, showering at night in preparation for school the next day. I could smell the hallways, feel the fear of girls, the rubbery smell of the wrestling mat, the taste of trough water during football practice. It’s an emotion that is discomforting and nostalgic at the same time. Sometimes I forget what those days were like. I think my life to be so complicated now in comparison. During the flashback, I was reminded of the complex internal and external negotiations that made up everyday school life. The fear of girls mixed with the hormonal longing for them. The lack of any experience to that point that would allow me to navigate through those rough waters. The chuckle that Coach Webb got when I called my lower body garment “breeches.” Now I realize that the joke was largely on him. He was a gym teacher after all. I wonder what became of him. Probably 30 years old at the time. Younger than I am now by 4 years. If that was 1988, he would be 50 or so now. Does he still torment...
You don’t realize when your neighbors are gone. Not in a city like this. You’ve never met them, but one day their car is not parallel parked across the street and you missed the end of the month move-out. Were they really there for a year or had they made different arrangements with the landlord? We all pray to a landlord here. The tall girl I took for an actress because she lived next door to the playwright is gone now. I don’t really know how gone she is, or where. I never knew her. I know I saw her sitting out on the patio one night with said playwright until they went in and for once she did not shut the blinds and I saw them in an awkward one night embrace. He has to be her senior by 10 years I would say. She always was up and out before me, leaving for work in her pickup truck and a semi-pants-suit, which belied my illusion of her being an actress, and an actress only. I have been here for over 3 years now. Longer than I have lived anywhere other than my parents house. I don’t want to leave, but what I fear more is that if I do, the neighborhood will not miss...
There’s evil little spiders about tonight and the girl want the other boy, the movie star, to come and kiss and play games and then move on. We are trying to save our friends from destruction of themselves, and possibly others. Don’t play Jesus, you will surely be disappointed with the results. On the outskirts of town the Marxist are meeting and the thought of the meeting makes me feel a bit out of sorts. What secret upheavals are being planned. They don’t show this part in the movie. They also don’t show the part where the brother of the protagonist makes a face, says something funny, asks where that one went, and why it didn’t all work out in the end, and the protagonist says, “It got too hot, the summer, it was too hot, our brains started to boil in our head, we ate chemicals and didn’t know it, there’s nothing really to explain it all, we don’t live in this different time and space and place, we don’t live her on this farm, and this family. We live in the city and things are difficult.” And the brother says, “Oh, now I see. I didn’t...
It’s been a week now since the news came down that one of my colleagues at the paper, Diane, had died of bile duct cancer. She found out about 3 weeks prior and it was too late. Single and 42, she was in the process of trying to adopt a child from China, and had a self-help book for women dealing with stalkers coming out soon. I can’t say that I knew her incredibly well, yet I found myself incredibly moved, disturbed, distraught over the news. Although it sounds a bit cliche, I guess events do come around with some frequency that throw you on your head, with sorrow, doubt, confusion, analysis etc. Viewing my life through the lens of what I now know about Diane’s, and her early demise, has led to some severe existential dilemmas that cut across all parts of my life: work, romance, happiness and it’s pursuit, the future, the past… But a week that began with such bad news could surely not continue in such a way. This was also the week that Barry Bonds would tie Hank Aaron’s home run record, A-Rod would hit his 500th home run, and in the waning hours of the week that began for me last Monday, Tom Glavine would get his 300th career win. It was also the week that I would spend every night trying to finish the never-ending freelance project that seems to grow every time I touch it. It was a week without therapy, a week on new medication, and a week that I ended in Chattanooga where I finally saw Rock City, hated...
It’s the summer of the wine cooler, of hiding something in a way that someone specific will find it, and the summer of keeping a secret that you will carry to your grave. It’s the summer of the dead wrestler and his dead family, and the summer that you stopped watching wrestling, and that we finally lost the rest of our childlike innocence, and that we found other childlike innocence, and the summer that we stopped and started talking, and that the heat rose from the street and straight up my trousers and took us all a little closer to the stars when it was night, and the clouds when it was day. It’s the summer of the homeless woman on a pre-paid roundtrip to Chicago, and the summer in which the Cubs may make it to the post-season, and the summer of baseball in general, and the summer in which I will gain and lose 20 pounds. It’s the summer in which the dreams will not stop, painting dreams, and fluorescent light tube dreams, and dreams of a conspiracy of women, and of multi-million dollar contracts. It’s the summer of the hyphen, and the end of history. It’s the summer of rapture, and rapturous living, and dangerous life, and winning when you didn’t even try. It’s the summer of saying goodbye. It’s the summer of the witness, and death penalty, and heart sinking, and rising, and sinking, and rising. It’s the summer of cordial women, and turning Muslim, and wanting more, and being Zen, and indie rock, and Canada. It’s the summer that Rick Bass began, the summer...
So this is the real summer in this city. There is not the solitude that allows for the solitude. That allows for introspection every night. There’s the crazy summerness of the Southern existence, like Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Conner, and other crazy heat-stricken ladies with various talents. I have spent the night praying to clothing and the lack of and the way that clothing makes certain things and can ruin others. This is the nature of the city. Nothing is laid bare, nothing is truthful on the surface. Everything takes an extra level of interpretation. In Summer, in this place, things turn rotten. Corpses rise from the depths of bodies of water and surface and create a narrative that will change this city a little for a few moments. Desire overcomes us boys in the city at this time of the year, and we know not where to aim our compasses. There’s nothing that pulls completely. There’s just the Summer. There’s just the crazy lumpy ladies. There’s just desire. And it burns hotter than summer. It burns hotter than expectation. It gets under your skin and we’ll take your mind away from all that you need to get done in this pre-Independence Day heat. Play a Sousa tune and light a Roman candle. Tonight is lonely and secure and will come to be a good memory for me if I allow myself to...
It’s 1 AM and I have now been awake for 39 hours straight for a reason that involves zip codes and home sale prices and that’s about all that is worth mentioning. What I have is not exactly synesthesia, but I do have an acutely aware sense of smell, especially of those things that are on the not so pleasing end of the sensory scale. I keep smelling bad flatulence, cat piss, rotting corpses… I am starting to think of this like some of my friends think of detox diets, lemonade fasts, confession, etc. It’s been years since I last stayed up all night, and that time it was writing and recording a bad song. This time it was a bad map. But I do feel like I a resetting my clock. Tonight was one of my most relaxed in recent memory. I felt like most of the synapses were firing properly, so I went to see a baseball game. The boys of summer in this here town put up numbers that would have won all of their recent scoreless games. I stepped into a pile of melting summer bubble gum today that is still collecting gravel on my out-of-season boots. I should learn how to dress better for this weather. The words “I love you” can save a life. I will sleep like a baby...
Today was one of those go to the Korean market and get a ham sandwich and eat at your desk type days at work. I am working on the zip code delineated home sales data map and apparently the data is not mean prices, but median prices, and you cannot do an accurate weighted average of median data. I had to google the difference because I could not quite extract that one from the catacombs of my brain. I used to be a designer, now I am becoming, reluctantly, something else. So I go to the Korean market and feel that the humidity is down so the low nineties don’t feel like they will later on this Summer. Outside the market there are two semi-homeless white guys talking about what to buy and they decide upon an Icehouse and a pack of Rave cigarettes. I know the Icehouse trick from baseball games, as cheap as the other beers but with more kick, but you will find it kicking you in the head in the morning, but I figure living in this moment is probably what these guys want. It’s probably what I would want if I were in their shoes as well. So I find myself in line behind the one of them sent to procure the goods in the market, and upon hearing his total, he begins digging vigorously in his sock, partially removing his shoe, and produces several singles and probably three dollars in coins. I wondered how he was able to walk. I wondered was this one of the safe ways of the street. Then I...
Today there was three homeless folks that I saw, met, and felt sorry for. I could not give the money because it was not Friday, which is my alms day. I gave a cigarette today, and a light, and realized that I need to stop smoking, except I do not want to think myself better than that. It is the beginning of summer in this crowded and cluttered city. In this city in which you cannot even pick your nose in peace on the way home because there are eyes from every angle always watching you. There is a Miller Light bottle cap in my pocket because I didn’t know where to put it. It is a badge of shame or honor depending on the crowd the you inhabit when you confess. I am so tired of confessions. I just want the truth to be real, to be something that we can all touch. My body is all swollen with the mess. The heat gets in my head. My body feels old. To day was the longest day of the year. There was a party to go to at a recording studio. I thought of Gatsby. You should always have a party on this day of the year. I just wish we were all in linen and hats and that Dorothy Parker was telling jokes in corner. I listened to This American Life today and the episode was about camp. Summer camps, places we made friends and lovers, maybe even got married, cried and wiped each other’s tears away. Places we were away from mom and dad in which...
Recent Comments