Twenty dollar fire cracker. Folded sheets. Paired socks. Coffee mug stack of books.
Where do we draw the line between what we’ll do and who we are?
How many times will we cross the very line we’ve drawn at the boundary for ourselves to take something that we see as appropriate in exchange for the breech?
If the person I am in the mirror does not match the person I am to others, all of us have a problem.
Bullshitting through the maze will get you through it, but at what cost?
In my dream you bought a giant house on top of a giant hill. The house had spiral staircases behind glass and a garage that was large enough to shelter school buses. There was an office off the back with empty bookshelves. There was a dining table that sat thirty, but that chairs didn’t match from my perspective. In every direction there was poured concrete.
We were all there as a group and there was pizza being offered as a celebration. The whole thing didn’t make a ton of sense, but somehow, at the same time, it did. The pizza was stored on ice in the kitchen, it was self-served. There were no beverages available. I was obsessed with the spiral staircases.
When we had a moment, you and I discussed the purchase price. I had it sitting around $100,000. You told me it was $850,000. I was shocked.
In the very next moment I walked into an otherwise empty barroom with my mother. We were there with a larger party to celebrate my sister’s wedding. My mother and I, and a couple of others, sat down at a high-top table near the main bar. The elevated chairs were round and had that shiny, faux leather stretched tightly over them. I remember sitting in the chair with my arms crossed across my chest. In no way was I welcoming.
Two gentleman entered the room from outside, they took standing positions at our table. One of them, the younger one, made a comment to me and then proceeded to spill his shot glass full of liquor on my shoulder. He had ever outward facing quality of a bully. He laughed at me and pushed me a bit. I refrained from responding. He continued. I remember the rage boiling up inside me. I remember wanting to punch him in the mouth. I remember visualizing wrapping my arm around his arm, shoulder and neck. I remember choking him until he yielded.
I remember it all so clearly. I remember not reaching any resolutions. I remember the stories jumping immediately from one to another.
I remember it all so clearly.
Pizza party heart attack, twelve beers beat down.
Bread napkins concrete landing, log jammer video collection.
Thrown of empty bottles, dirt floor bunk bed.
Gonna get a job in agriculture.
Guns drawn in the kitchen. Liquor bottle book shelf. Christmas light ambiance.
You worked there for four years and the punishment was to run the loading dock. Nobody knew that the loading dock was your sweet spot. It was the only place where all the cigarettes could get smoked and all the questions of life could get answered. The loading dock never gives up its dead. Tell that story another day. Now is not the time.
Now, however, is the time for broken dreams and scraped up water bottles. Mind made. Bed made. Hand made.
Be grateful. Stay hungry. Dog kennel day dream. Cracked ceramics basement kiln. Get em from that little shop on seventh.
Radio mic. You’re late. Don’t come in without your name tag.
All I really want to do is tell a story from start to end. Oh how I dream of locking myself in some wilderness retreat with a stack of paper, a typewriter and an endless supply of coffee and cigarettes.
Get back to work.
Early morning commute with light snow falling. Coffee lingering in the back of the mouth alongside the discontent that pours from the apps online. Apples, oranges, college football. Order a pizza and swing from the vine. Alligator, alligator, pit fall.
Seven struggles and it’ll be a weekend in therapy. Jokes on jokes on jokes.
Waiting for the bus. Hanging by a fingernail. Can I call you later?
All you do is write the same goddamn thing over and over. A couple of short sentences stapled together in rhythm, followed by a handful more than stretch out into something that more closely resembles a narrative. All of which is punctuated by some abrupt ending that leaves the reader wondering. It’s like the breathing that follows any kind of anaerobic activity in that it always seems to be fast paced, short and intense until it isn’t.
There is nothing new here and you’re nothing special and the self-loathing is aging out and so are you. Nobody is going to stumble onto your little corner of the internet and even if they did, what do you believe they’d find? More importantly, how do you believe they’d respond? Nobody gives a shit. Period. Nobody gives a shit about you or your goddamn words. Nobody gives a shit about themselves. Why they’d stop for a moment and take time to recognize you is question that will never have an answer.
Give up.
Don’t take the phone call.
Swap the garbage bags. Sweep the floor. Cut the ice. Shut your fucking mouth.
One of these days you’re going to run out of bridge and you’re going to find yourself standing there waiting for the floor to get cleaned. It’ll be the most stunning example of brevity the world will ever know. It’ll be you, dressed in your flowing gown, and a handful of others, dressed in their flowing gowns, and you’ll all be tip toed right up to the edge to look over. You’ll see it from where you are, and they will, too. And then you’ll turn around and it’ll all be gone. Poof.
Wagon wheel wire cutter.
Power line helicopter.
Baseball through college and I’m short on funds.
Leather gloves cheese stick. Run the hose until it overflows.
Cold bitter winter. Crawl through the ditch to your death. The family will never be the same.
Release.
Blinding lights pepper city streets. Lace decorations adorn windows to the heart. Pleasantries exchanged at the transition. A CT scan, an upholstered couch and a table full of trash.
Another night in a hotel.
Another night of terrible sleep.
The holiday was horrible on the body and all an act of choice.
Camouflaged coif cascading toward the spine. Sunrise. Sunset. Sandstone. Brimstone.
Everyone you know will die and you will be held accountable for your sins. All of those beds left unmade and the dishes in the sink will come back to haunt you. The times, oh the times that you didn’t take the recycling out. The stop signs you rolled through. The subway fare you cheated. You will be held accountable in some make believe land in the clouds. A long-haired man in sandals will come to meet you at a large iron gate. He will rattle off every crime and every sin you’ve committed and you’ll just stand there in the clothes you died in, because that’s how it happens. You’ll stand there in the same clothes you chose on what you didn’t know would be your last day and you’ll wonder why you have all of the same feelings you had when you woke up, but now you’re standing in the clouds in front of a strange man and an even more bizarre suspended gate. You’ll wonder why you’ve never met this man and yet he somehow knows everything about you and it won’t ever make sense until you get beyond the gate to the recreation area where all of your old friends are. When you get to them your life will be complete and you will know it and then you’ll be shuffled off to a giant escalator that’ll take you back down to earth where you’ll be stripped of your clothing and jammed into a wooden box and pushed beneath six feet of dirt and sand. This is how it goes when you die. You die, you ascend to the clouds, you meet a stranger, you see your old friends, you lay in a box.
It’s all fun and games until somebody tells it how it is.
Have another cookie and stop checking the stats. The coffee comes black, as does the heart.
See you in the box.
Eleven thirty twenty-five.
Coffee, sidewalk, shovel.
Pedal, pedal, stand.
Unwelcoming and unapproachable. Dressed in black and failing to find community in the nine to five. Burnt candles and stacked books. Plants leaning for the windows. Rearrange the rug. Move the furniture. Refinish the floors. Load the dishwasher. Invite them into your home. Have the dinner. Pass the wine. The people around you aren’t your friends and you’ll come to learn that in the next two years.
Baseball games and group chats and piles and piles of bullshit. A framed photo of you in uniform. A framed photo of a Christmas tree. A framed photo of a framed photo.
Pancakes. Dust pans. A leather couch.
Shoes by the door and you’ll break every rung on that ladder.
Plays disguised as movies. Movies disguised as opportunities to connect. A sandwich in heartbeat. A heartbeat in a river of tears.
Go to breakfast and stop complaining.
You’re a fat bitch with an eating disorder. You’re an eating bitch with a fat disorder. You’ve disordered your eating you fat bitch.
Sad. Unsettled. Discontent.
Not angry. Not upset. Not outraged.
Disjointed. Disconnected. Isolated.
Where I wondered about community, I lost it. Where I wandered into community, it lost me. Winding. Windy. Wendy. When. Why?
I don’t believe.
I don’t believe.
I don’t believe.
Origin story. Globe shaped glass bottles. Wrong buses. Mismatched maps.
Coffee. Tea. Bread and wine. Steps that lead down to certain death.
Ambient sounds and methodic music as a background to everyday life.
The reality that the next creative thing lies on the visible horizon is palpable. It’s so fucking close. What we don’t know is the exact form it will take and that’s the unsettling part. Everything was always crystal clear when it came to making things, but then the practice slowed down and the rhythm broke up. When the reps stop happening, the form fades and the images become blurry.
Forced words. Forced feelings. Retract.
Paintbrush.
Hang the paper towels in the closet and wipe down the counter. Scrub the side of that big ugly machine and wonder why there is no process. You asked and they told you. Consistency. Process. Leadership. It’s literally that simple.
Put the thing together. Put it together, figure out where to send it and make it happen.
Horrible dreams.
Restless sleep.
Bottle cages. Food trucks. Messages of hate.
Rewind. Undo.
Vomit under three.
Pushing the words out onto the lawn for all of the world to see is horrifying.
Dead end.
Lighthouse.
Boardwalk.
Memories of the kids walking on the ledge.
Masks. Jackets. Abandon.
If anybody knew how wild it is inside my head, they’d probably call it in.
Broken winged doves leap from their pens far above fifth avenue. As they plummet to the concrete below, they squawk and holler and they twist and turn, feathers falling from their being. Just before they near their unquestionable fate, they awake in their beds, silently awaiting the morning’s first light.
Nonsense. Words. Some grand opening to supplement the reality that my skills as a writer are weak. I’d be better off spending the morning making eggs and preparing myself for another round in the squared circle that is my everyday life.
Eggs and cheese and a little bit of salsa. One french press of coffee. A quick shower and a thousand miles in the truck.
Fast food is for fat folks and the uninitiated.
Fat food is for fast folks and the unintended.
Fat fast is for folks food and the uncircumcised.
Text message. Chat room. Pedaling squares down in the basement inside a circle of my middle-aged peers. Acceptance. Inclusion. A trip to Arkansas. A trip to St. Louis. A trip to Madison. Rinse. Repeat. Repent.
That’s all.
Hand tattoos and the river that flows uphill will both pour into the nightmare that is an empty dashboard. The agony of defeat and the summary page at the end of a weeks-long report will cascade into infinity. Punctuated by exclamations. Perforated by death rattles. Escorted by the deceased into a box buried below the surface.
Do you remember sitting in that cold church crying at the sound of the bagpipes?
Do you remember the painful experience that was walking through those halls to see the aged aging in their wheelchairs?
Do you remember the machines and how they hooked themselves up to the dying?
The brown plastic dinnerware. The vending machines. The chipped ice.
There used to be holidays of filled houses. Championships between cousins. Camcorders and photographs. Books filled with memories. The chair in the corner where all the unwrapped presents got stacked. The cookies. The pies. The laughs. The football games. There was so much connection and it seemed like it would go on forever.
Until it didn't.
People got separated by death and by time. People got divided by age and location. Some sort of canyon laid itself down right there in the middle and the group split. Time passed. Time passes. Time is passing.
There are no more presents. There are no more cookies. There is no more cake. There is no more connection. There is no more family.
We all came in alone and we shall all go out alone. What happens in the middle is irrelevant.
Somewhere along the line I lost faith and hope in the extended portions. I stopped caring when I stopped feeling cared for and I detached. It’s what I am great at. No one on this earth is better at segmenting myself from the rest. I’ve practiced it my whole life. It’s not a badge I wear with honor, but rather one I wear with honesty. I don’t want my legacy to be isolation.
Isolation. Insulation. Mutilation. Amends.
Separation. Degradation. Commendation. Ahem.
This. That. Otherwise.
To be seen. To be heard. To be undone.
A cataclysm, a baptism and a death by firing squad.
I crawled inside the neck of the giraffe you owned and I made my way up to the second story. I looked out onto the battle field at the wreckage of my past and I said, “I see you and I hear you.”
I baked animal crackers with the Mother and we fed them to the children. When it was our turn to sing again, we passed. We ate butterfly wings made of crystalline sugar. We lounged by the pool that was filled with brandy. When the attendants came by we laughed under our breath. We read books about leadership and took notes in the margins. We herded elephants up to the edge of the dirt road. We laughed and laughed and laughed.
Tomorrow it’ll be your turn. The next day, his. Get the groceries. Carry them up. Cry yourself to sleep under the couch.
Be done.
Broken. Busted. Dusted. Wrangled.
Forgiven. Forgotten. Forlorn. Wrestled.
The train stops on three stripes and a white sea. The car drives past the house. The trips to Santa Fe and the lost relationship. The hotel. The motel. The dust.
Breakfast on the veranda. Broken wrists and exploded lungs. Empty cans thrown into the back seat and you’ll never be able to look at yourself in the mirror.
You don’t paint anymore and you lost your eye for photos. You’re broken. The job fucking broke you. The mindlessness and the unending apathy. The branded sweatshirts and the meetings. The mindless meetings. Oh, the mindless meetings. You are broken.
Thanksgiving dinner. A hockey game. A series of videos. Red chair, red chair, brown couch. Low light. Low light. Low light. The weeds in the front yard need pulling. Late night party time. Six buses and they’re all empty.
Shuffle through the deck. Send a copy early. Make a coffee. Drink a coffee. Leave New York in a rush.
Forget. Forgot. Forgive.
You’re going to go blind.
You’re going to choke on the ashes of reimbursed expenses.
You’re going to go blind.
Earth wasn’t created in a day and you wouldn’t know how to turn left out of a wet paper bag. The blood seems to be boiling this morning and for no reasonable explanation. Time has been sucked out of life in the same way that dollars disappear from wallets.
Another trip. Another overnight. Another departure. Another arrival.
Make plans. Unmake plans. Hang the jacket on the hook. Slip into something that will drown you. A red pen. A white sheet of paper. Eight studded tires and a bucket full of emptiness. Garbage bags folded just so. A Petri dish. A lab coat. An assumption. Close the rink door. Sweep the popcorn. Change the garbage cans.
You parked out back on the street out front. You put a show on the tile. You left the door open. You smoked the cigarette. You drank all the water. You mowed the backyard. You did.
Lost. Found. Rearranged. Make a deal with whomever to shore up the fear of loneliness. Forever is now. Now is tomorrow. Tomorrow is yesterday. Forget. Forgot. Fuck off.
Twelve days elapsed. No practice practiced.
Twelve days elapsed and a sickness has settled in.
A mirror in New Orleans. A van in the six ten. Wandering around out west. Searching fearlessly for something that was never to be understood. Reckless abandon. A timeline speckled with fear and insecurity.
Who am I? Where do I belong? Why do these words hold me down like an anchor?
Fresh baked cookies. Bags full of them.
Hand tattoos. Cigarettes on fifth.
There’s snow on the ground outside and it’s beautiful. Dog fights. Ballon rides. Merry go rounds. A staple, a paper clip and a plastic cup full of brown ale. Jam the discs into the bag and walk right out the front door. Make amends. Try and get your brain to line up and tell the story the way it happened and it all falls apart. Write things down as they roll through the mind and it all feels scattered and separated…but it all ends up on the page. Thousands of words. Tens of them. Hundreds of them. We’re not done. A giraffe and a chance meeting. Hold the line. Tell the lies. Drink all the drinks.
Travel. Travel. Travel.
Unraveled. Untethered. Unbroken.
Run a million miles and then again for the park. Signs in the front yard.
WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE ME!
Busted. Dusted. Done.
Writing again for practice. It’s incredible how quickly the process leaves when it’s unattended. The same applies to photographs.
To get to one-hundred words feels like an insurmountable task.
I do remember, not so long ago, when I engaged in a one-hundred word activity with a friend of mine. We held each other accountable every morning and we both completed the exercise for at least thirty days. It was nice to have somebody on the other end of the task. We didn't read each other’s work, we simply wrote and then checked in with the other person.
What’s real interesting about that exercise is that the work we do during the day has since separated us. We both applied for a role and one of us got it. The promotion meant that one of us moved upward into a space that oversees the other space. There aren’t any rules that govern who can interact with who, but there seems to be some unspoken borders that prevent it.
Maybe it’s a me thing? Maybe it’s not?
Regardless, that person and I don’t talk much anymore and I think that’s kinda sad. I suppose it’s a nice reminder to me, and to anybody that might stumble across this, that work is just work. It’s not a place to make friends and it certainly isn’t something to confuse as family. Work is the place where you get money to pay for things in the spaces of your life where you’re not working.
Everyone deserves the right to earn a living wage.
Everyone deserves the right to pursue their own happiness.
Everyone deserves the right to be loved, appreciated and valued.
Golden leaves against a powder blue sky. Coffee stains on the inside of a brand new mug. The whir of a fan inside a laptop on the couch. Red ball. Red tray. Red water bottle. The lights go off at 9:30, after all the emails leave. Cookies on the couch in a bag of remorse. Bags still packed. Clutter. Lawn yet to be mowed. This is practice. Again.
The eyes are heavy this morning and a headache lingers from not enough water yesterday.
Unfortunate cancer diagnosis.
Twelve Sundays through the summer.
Pharmaceutical commercials for everything that ails you.
You’ll be dead before that donut shop. You’ll be asleep before the falls. Go outside and stop complaining.
Life. Death. Cigarettes.
Failure. Failure. Failure.
Drive the truck. Park the truck. Drive the truck. Repeat. Oil change. Tire rotation. Drive the truck. Repeat.
Lower back pain. Knee pain. Lost eyesight. Overweight.
Gym membership. Utility bills. WiFi passwords. Rake the lawn. Mow the lawn. Die.
There is frost on the windows of the cars in the street and the garbage truck is out for it’s early morning rounds. The dogs are curled up in their spots and the neighborhood is on the cusp of waking up. It’s Friday.
Go outside. Turn it off and go outside.