Hiding in the corner of a dark room. A subway car filled with people. A basement shopping center and a French press made from ceramics. It’s red. It’s the same one your friend used to have. It elicits wonderful memories. Leave it behind. Along with the donuts. Travel. Go West. Dry out in the desert. Find yourself. Lose yourself. Almanzo. The words come naturally now. Bits and pieces from decades of living. What is a hero? What does that look like? Sit still. Time yourself. Track it. Wear the watch and count the heartbeats until the watch burns a hole in your arm and you realize that your heart has been cold. Warm it up. Read articles about self care. Make a tea. Brush your teeth. You still live out of duffle bags, but your shoes are neatly arranged on the floor and nobody can take that away from you. Every three weeks throw things away. Stay mobile. Don’t let the roots take hold. The black floor will swallow you up if you’re not paying attention. The stillness provides comfort and the cold air breathes fresh. Windows. Doors perspective. Remember when you were younger and there wasn’t a thing in the world that could set you back? Remember that feeling? Do you remember when it vanished? Forever? Is it really gone though? Perhaps it’s just a state of mind that could be manifested through the correct amount of time spent meditating? Try it. You might like it? You might find that somewhere between caring for yourself and riding your bike and spending time wandering different routes you might just see yourself in the reflection of the river and fully understand that there is only one you and that there has only ever been one you and that one you is beautiful and amazing and capable of caring and loving yourself and everyone around you? You might find that? Or you might find a five dollar bill on the ground and it might be the best thing that happens to you? It’s possible. Everything is. Sometimes you just have to get out of your own way to see it.
12.10.19 pt. 2
Christopher Crying in Columbus Circle
12.10.19
Day dreaming through a cemetery on 46th and absently wandering my way through midday traffic. A meeting in the Deep South and a trip to Alabama twenty years ago. Forget the man you used to be. Walk away from that identity. Business suits have no place in this present and Santa Claus probably won’t leave you anything under the tree. Scrabble. Babble. Circumcised. You are your father’s son and a baker’s wife if you can count to thirteen. Donuts and bottles of bourbon and a thousand sailors songs about coming home. Try to follow along and you’ll likely get lost because there is no rhyme or reason to the manner in which things fall to the page. Errors. Erroneous. Existentialism. A fraudulent newspaper and a dozen dried up Bic pens line empty shoe boxes left out for the mailman and a dog biscuit in case the neighbors get hungry. The giant box truck in the driveway replaces the rotted out RV, but it lacks the black lights and the ambiance of whatever college party you can remember the most. I can remember riding up and over Lyndale and through the woods near Cable. Sometimes I wonder if the mistakes I made are forgivable and if, in some strange world of make-believe, I’d ever get a second chance. I doubt it. I really doubt it, but if it happened I’d be sure to not screw it up...after all, the moose in the front yard was worth every second.
Remember? The second of November? I only know it as a calendar date and as a piece that rhymes. That’s twice I’ve used that word.
Forget. Forgive.
Live in the moment and stand over your feet. Undo your achievements and give more than you take. Squander not opportunities to become a better version of yourself.
Reflect. Meditate. Burn that stick of incense because it’s routine and it calms you down and it reminds you that there is so much good in the world. Positive affirmations. Speak them. Incorporate the language into your everyday life and see the changes it affects. Smile. Compliment. Give.
Become your own brand and market it for good. You have the skillset of a leader, don’t piss that away on selfishness and ego.
Sleep.
12.09.19
A frozen window and some street that abuts the train playground. A playground that, in the summer months, exists as some kind of memorial to a time when kids actually left the confines of their homes to play in some kind of poorly constructed neighborhood park. In the winter the place looks far more inviting and much less like a place one could contract some kind of disease by accidentally stepping on an abandoned hypodermic needle. Silently it just lives there. At the end of all of the presidents. Just south of the rail yard. Just north of the strangest portion of the oldest section of the city. The train playground.
To the east is the car lot where the human excrement lies quietly between the parked cars. The same car lot where the salespeople look just as one would expect them to.
To the south are houses. Lots of houses and parked cars and lights on in second story windows. People. Living out their lives in their low wage jobs making ends meet when they can. Middle America. Low-income. Realness. Solitude. Isolation. Here it is.
And in here it’s real quiet and the dog is lying on the bed and breathing loudly and another stick is about to get burned. There is routine here for the first time in ages. There is calm and collectedness. There is peace and comfort. There is here and here is there and everything is exactly as it should be.
12.08.19
There is something agonizing and painful and lovely and encouraging about struggling through the perils of an average life without the escape that was once provided by a magical elixir. That is not to say that liquor actually solved any of my troubles, but it did provide an outlet that allowed me, if only for a moment, to forget about all that bothered me. To live without it, now for nearly twenty years, is to live alongside my demons as the manifest themselves in my every day being. At times they are silent and still. At others they are raucous and rambunctious. They are always there. Especially on Sundays during that long drive between there and here. They sit in the back seat. They whisper. They loom. They sit back there and they taunt me and they force me to live with them until the mundane existence of work reveals its patterned self on Monday. This is every week. Ninety minutes of memories and a soundtrack that would push most to pull into the nearest bar. Onward. Forward. Acknowledge the alcoholism for what it is and move on. Drinking isn’t going to solve anything and this has been made clear time and time again. Face the mirror and appreciate the reflection. Face the mirror and love the one who looks back. This tiny brain and all of its ability is wound to go back and forth between joy and misery and it’s just like every other tiny brain out there. Feel it. Turn the light down and feel and write and breathe and be. You are not unique. You are not special. The suffering you conceive it’s not unlike the suffering of others and your circumstance is not alone. Go until the end and whenever that day come make certain you’ve laid out your plans. Share them and be clear. Find those that fill your circle and make everything evident.
For example:
When I die you can drag my body into the hills just west of Borrego Springs. Drag me out there and leave under a pile of rocks because that is the first place I realized how amazing this life can really be. I’ve chased it ever since and when my time comes it seems only appropriate to return me to the place I found life. I don’t know when the day will come, but you can consider this my final wish. In writing.
12.07.19 pt. 2
A conversation about how power reveals a person’s true self. More words about influence and effect and how not all people that find themselves in a position of power end up being assholes.
I definitely had influence. The work I did leant itself to being adopted by the machine. I have no regrets. I do, however, find myself wondering how it was that what I did had such an impact while I was so lost as a human being. How was it that I could be an architect for an entire movement and not recognize myself in the mirror? How was it that I could live so passionately about one thing and, at the same time, be so absolutely insecure about myself and my place in the world? It’s a mystery to this day.
In hindsight, I think my ego had a major role. I think the fanfare and the accolades drove me. I believe that I had, at the time, a thirst for success and it isn’t that I don’t feel like being successful today, but rather I think my perception of what success is has changed. Today, for example, I believe success to simply mean happiness. If I am happy and content, I have succeeded. My younger self would disagree. My younger self would tell you that success was material. A house. A car. A bike. Influence. Power. All of those things meant so much because I was taught they meant so much and it wasn’t a hard lesson laid out by my parents and much as it was a soft lesson laid out by the world I grew up in. I grew up comparing things. Making observations and discerning differences. To have more things meant I was better than. This is part of the problem with our current culture. The lessons I learned as a kid and as a young adult are still being taught. It’s a thing. For certain.
Stuff does not define me. I am not the sum of my accomplishments. I have lived an incredibly privileged life and have had access to things that most do not. Undoing those privileges and unteaching those lessons is where you can find me these days. Loving myself for exactly as I am in this moment first and everyone else second.
It is never too late to wake up. It is never too late go lay down. Look in the mirror and if you don’t like what you see, do something about it.
12.07.19
What’s the goddamn difference anyway? Every fucking day I wake up at exactly three-thirty. Every day. I open my eyes and I wonder what time it is and then I check and I see the same time every time. Some days I can fall back asleep. Other days, like today, I can’t. Instead I’m just wide awake and listening to the dog snore and wondering a million different things about my life and how it intersects with other people’s lives. This is how it goes and I don’t think it makes any difference at all.
12.06.19 pt. 2
Holed up in a cabin near a lake in the deep woods on the North. A weeks worth of rations, a carton of cigarettes and enough coffee to fortify a month of mornings. Lock yourself in and write. Write all the words down and don’t come out until there are three hundred pages.
What would that even look like? Is it just the romance of the idea that captivates? Three hundred pages. A full book. Twists and turns and dead end streets. Walks in the woods with the dog as a stimulant for the mind. Couldn’t one just as well wrote the same thing in the confines of one’s own home? Why the need to escape? Make the date. Commit to the commitment. Just get out of your own way and make it happen. No circumstance is going to make it happen any faster?
Stop
Walk a mile in the shoes I have on and then you can come up to my desk and ask for the keys to my car. You have a lot of nerve asking for something that you never worked for and didn’t earn and you have no respect at all if you can’t even respond to the boundary. A simple fence was put in place and the posts and the rails very clear so as not to be disturbed and you can’t muster up enough common sense to respond with any kind of acknowledgement as to how you upended my peace of mind. There are a million miles of beach just waiting for you and your knuckle-dragged fists.
Bikes. They aren’t going to make you smarter, but they can take you to places where you can definitely learn.
12.06.19
Missed communications. Miss communication. Lowside, bridge club and a small set of stairs. Turn the tv on. Unlock the locks and make damn sure your clear with whatever manner it might be that you set your fence posts. Make sure you dig the holes at forty inches or everything you’ve done will be undone when the frost climbs and claws it’s way back to the surface in the Spring.
Text, copy, handwriting. Words on paper or words on a screen. It doesn’t make much difference insofar as to how the letters are assembled or delivered if there isn’t a fundamental understanding as to the intention with which they were amassed. If one hand is signaling one thing and the other hand another, the receiver has no choice but to be confused. It’s mixed signals from the sun to the moon even though there is no more heartfelt kindness to be found in either the left or the right because they’re both too full to hold what they already have. Love and understanding and empathy.
Maybe it’s a train ride? Maybe it’s a separation of thought? Maybe there is no segue? Maybe the inside of that rail car has no walls and there is no way in and no way out? Maybe the old man in the deerskin coat shivering to stay warm by the dying fire has no more place in this world? Maybe the homeless aren’t homeless? Maybe our understanding of the understood is all wrong and backwards? Maybe the question is to not question? An entire paragraph?
Write another.
Set the pen down and go outside. Clean the yard and mow the lawn and put everything in it’s place. This is how the creativity is born. This is how things fall together and thoughts come pouring in. The creation is in the routine organization and the formality of finding homes for things. Especially when the homes for things are neat and tidy and separated by size and shape and color and alphabetized. Straighten up and fold the clothes and stuff them inside the duffel bag. Pick the pen back up and smash it.
12.05.19
He sent the kid out into the night with one of those old railroad style flashlights. The big kind with the giant lense that unscrews to reveal a battery the size of coffee can. I hadn’t seen this previously. As the kid walked away, the flashlight tumbled and turned into the darkness and there, from the balcony, the father emerged. He leaned over the railing and said, “Go straight to your grandfather’s. And don’t talk to nobody.” The kid replied, “I know. I won’t”, as he ambled down the icy sidewalk.
A pause in the darkness.
The father again belted our from the second floor, “I love you.” The kid returned with, “I know. I love you, too.”
12.04.19
Fire and ash and a million miles that separate. A goal in mind to undo all the things that tied this knot in the first place. A fish place. A dentist’s office. A yoga studio on the third floor downtown. The river and all it’s movement. The banners on the wall on the way out. A smoked cigarette. A ball of twine and a piece of foil. Under the earth and across the interstate. Go there. See the sights and snap twenty-four pictures on the disposable. Send the whole thing in to get developed while you sit at home and regress. Throw all the pictures into an album and try to get it to play with that broken needle. Seven times around and you’ll still be tired. Tired and hopeless and wandering around like you’ve lost something you were never meant to find. This will be the beginning. The beginning and the end. This is the present and it’s neatly wrapped in cellophane and you’ll never find it because it was never hidden. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. It’s just simply something that cannot happen. It’s time. Time and money and a hot dog stand and some monk handing you some shiny token in exchange for your twenty dollar bill. Take it. Put it in your wallet that you wanted so bad. Put it in there and forget about it until you find it years later and it reminds you of all those things you did when you were younger. This will be your path. Make sure you shovel.
11.27.19
Analog evening in a storefront window. Visible breath through the cold pane window. Fried fish sandwich and a cool bottle of water that washes away the anxiety from not knowing everything instantly. An adult life otherwise tethered to the internet. An answer to any questions moments away and the touch of a screen. Thankful. Grateful. Pause.
Change gears.
Crunching snow and an eviction notice. Out on the street the day before Thanksgiving. Thanks for giving, or is it thanks, forgetting? Shovels full of solid water and a warning determined to deter the masses and yet somehow the masses formed en masse to pollute the streets and sidewalks. A soup kitchen on Chicago and a few more steps to detox. Early morning afternoons leave tigers on the television, but you wouldn’t see it unless you were looking. Oh, and can you see the sky from here? Would it matter if you couldn’t? Isn’t there a basement with your name on it and some pillows left over from the trip out West. Cigars and scars and cigarettes and a sore spot from standing too long. The experience is the bottom line if we acknowledge it as such, but the line forms around the back! Unless of course you called ahead or ordered online or gave money to the last campaign. Whatever your position is there is likely a physician that’ll cut you open and take your money as long as you’ve declared your intent because those are the boundaries around this sandbox and if you don’t like it, or you can’t afford it, you can just kick rocks. Kick them on down the road and try to make your peace because there will come a time when you meet some maker and you’ll have to answer questions as to your whereabouts and why there aren’t any phone records.
My advice to you is to come back with a warrant.
11.26.19
Four forty and the dog has moved onto the floor. With him there and myself in the space where I am, there is so much comfort in sleeping alone. In the hindsight and the foresight, lying in bed by my lonesome has pretty much been the case for the entirety of forty one years. When I think about it and whether or not it would be nice to have this not be the case I realize that this may, in fact, be a tough nut to crack.
Of course this is just an early morning observation and, as such, cannot stand to be included in the defendant’s testimony. There are rules here. Simple guidelines that are all plainly outlined in the handbook for use by those following along at home. It’s available through all the major channels, if you’re familiar with them? Smash it with a rock. Hit it with a hammer. Worst case scenario is that everything shorts out and flashes before the whole thing dies. Best case scenario is that it fires right up. Have a slice...everything is going to be fine.
11.25.19
A tortured soul and a deep sadness. A weekly repeat when the suns stays down. It’s real cold and real dark and it’s real hard. Some level of desire to just be left alone alongside some other want to be accompanied. Back and forth and inside out. Incense nonsense no sense. A smoke filled room and a tv on the ceiling. Drink more water. Argue with yourself.
What’s the difference.
There is none. Not one. Not one difference in this great big world. Go backwards. Find the roots. Dig them up. Store them in the cellar for the long winter. Can things. Salt the meats. You’re gonna be here for a while and when you finally get out you won’t even remember this because you come back here every year and every year it’s the same thing. Take your vitamins. Break the cycle. Look in the mirror you don’t have and smile at yourself and tell yourself that you have value and that you are appreciated and that you are loved.
11.21.19
Shirt
Shoes
Jacket
Pants
Dance
Hat
Cat
Fever
Wonder
Under
Over
Out
Again
Again
Again
Where does it end? Where does it begin? How many miles of this high desert sage wasteland must we walk before we find the end of the rainbow? Is there a rainbow? Doesn’t a rainbow need rain? I’m certain it certainly needs some kind of puddle or a lake or, at a minimum, some tiny stream of water flowing down from some higher point in the hills that likely stands in as some metaphor for the dreamers and the lonely hearts and the high school kids that find themselves wondering time and time again about what exactly it is that this life is going to bring after the comforts of the institution have escaped them. In that space long after the hallways are empty and the Friday nights are no longer filled with football games and warm beers at the home of that one who’s parents have left town for the weekend.
Or.
Perhaps the answers to all of life’s question lie somewhere in or around that beat up old trailer that was parked by the river underneath that bluff? Perhaps there is some age old wisdom in the ignorance and misunderstanding of youth? I am not, however, convinced, at this middle age of mine, that there are answers to any questions about these matters. There certainly aren’t road maps or printed directions or instructors standing by the road ready to assist. There is no fancy watch that will tell us the turns by the each and no super internet phone that can guide by voice alone. Our paths are crisscrossed and check-marked and jumbled in their appearance. Or are they?
11.18.19
Coney Island afternoons and some photos for the Instagram. A long train ride and an even longer drive back to the Midwest. Flowers for the funeral and an escape hatch back to the cornfield. I took pictures of a random old man in a furry cap near a fishing reservoir because he was there and so was I. Before that, or just after there were photos of the blue bells and the red dress. I was such an artist then. On the inside anyway.
Fast forward and rewind and stop the tape. Stop the presses. Stop the stopping and the restarting and the crying and the tears. Stop in the tracks or on the tracks or along some abandoned railway in the far northeastern reaches of Wisconsin. Do you remember the lake? The vacated beach? The car trouble on the way to Alaska?
Can you remember that awful night in September? It never happened. It never took place and there was never a race and there was never a trophy and there cannot be a winner. There was no dinner. No rest stop. No casino. There was no gravel road to destiny and there was no lake shore in Ohio.
You made it all up. You made it all up and now you can’t remember the truth from the fiction. You’re lost somewhere in the library trying to find the elevator back to the beginning. Back to the place where the book starts and the characters are just introduced. You’re lost and there isn’t enough sage left in your pouch to clear the demons from your new place, let alone wash away those that are left in your last.
Buy the cast iron and the antique canister and stuff all your collectibles inside. Cut the sausage on the counter and snap a picture because it’s just to good not to share. Sit outside on the curb and catch the bus as it rolls by. There’s laundry around the back and it’ll be the last place you call home. Second floor, first door. Have some memories and try to sort yourself out. A couple of years from now you’ll be wondering why it was that you could never get comfortable there.
Life goes on and so does the band. Take yourself back to those empty rollercoasters and the Zoltar machine. You’ve never not been you, you’ve just been circling the drain that doesn’t exist except in your head. Go to bed. Go to sleep. Go and rest, my friend.
11.26.15
On boats in cold water haggard men hoist sails for shores never seen at the edges of lands never crossed. Wrinkled hands and extinguished cigarettes draw the eyes to the hardened hearts of men lost at sea. Traveling for seasons without any true reasons these men know no homes and have long forgotten their loves abandoned and left for dead in the fireless chimneys of villages ruled by hatred and war. Adrift, these men are wandering the world in search of their oyster. If it shall ever be found is a concern that left them the first time the ocean came over the side rails and they struggled to cling to any sturdy and hopefully fixed object. Swept away from their minds and their liberated states, they simply go through the motions of their everyday lives.
Sleep.
Wake.
Eat.
Work.
Sleep.
Wake.
Eat.
Work.
Repeat.
Land will find you my friends. Land will find you. Whether under the sun or under the sea, you will touch the firm surface of this beautiful blue planet again. You will find your final resting place and all will be calm. Continue to raise your sails. Continue to follow the stars. Continue to set your course. Cold water, wind or otherwise, land will find you. It will.
12.13.15
In the break room there is an unusual silence that fills the air when it is only occupied by one. Occasionally there is the constant hum of some mechanical effort being put forth by a behind the scenes system, but mostly it's just silence. Once in a while the oddly pitched holler of another machine wails steadily as its top presses downward toward its bottom, but mostly it's just silence. Idle conversations and minor declarations perforate the doorway if it is left ajar, but mostly it's just silence. Crumbs and leftovers litter the table and one or two coffee pots rest quietly on the counter amid the dozens of dirty dishes. It's a break room after all. A place of seclusion and rest. A quiet corner of the busy world to sit and reflect and replenish and restore before heading back out into the chaos and splendor that is the holiday shopping season. The break room is so many things, but mostly it's just silence.
12.15.15
There was an open ended building with concrete floors where friends rolled toy trucks in my direction. The building faced a beach that was bookended on the right by scores of people. I was trying to ride over the train of trucks from nose to tail, but was on a bike whose gear was to big to turn over in a fast enough succession. I made it over, but it wasn't clean. We tried again. This time I went outside to get proper momentum. I pushed the bike to the right amid screaming beach goers on four wheel driven ATVs and my feet sunk in the wet sand. Side steps were made and shoes were muddied. Above me, people hung from parachutes and glided over the grass hills. With enough room to make a clean run, I started back. To my surprise and fully acknowledged content, the room was now empty and the trucks gone.
I joined a friend in an adjacent structure. A party was underway. A band had just gone on for its one song set and I was invited into yet another room. Here I was asked if I had any interested in getting away. I was asked if I was ready to start over. I replied, "I can start today." Things looked promising.
At this point, I shared some recent knowledge with my friend. They replied with some undisclosed insight as to me burning all the bridges I had once crossed by failing with my pen. I was perplexed.
Elderly people shuffled past and took their seats in what appeared now to be an industrial work space. Lights hung from long cords and tucked themselves into metal canisters. Long tables and simple metal stools filled the room. A video played on a screen where the band once was. I was confused, but certain. I woke up.
11.19.19
Why do you get up so early just to write things down? It’s foolish. You’re foolish. All those lies. If you had only been honest with me. What does that even mean? It’s almost as if you have no concrete knowledge as to where your bread is buttered.
A fucking sandwich
A sandwich and a salmon and a saddled sister swimming in from out of state. A seven and an eight and another round of trouble from the troubled twins and the conjoined faces. But how do they see? But how do the sea? But how!!
It isn’t obvious. It isn’t pretentious. It isn’t your business you lying piece of shit. How can you be so obtuse? Don’t you know that you are what you drive? Don’t you know that I never once asked to see who you are or where you live? Don’t you know that this depression is a killer? What do you know and where is it that you go? You don’t go down to Dixieland and I’ve never seen you at Disneyland. I doubt you’ve ever even been to Florida let alone driven there and back. Who are you, anyway? Why is your tongue split? Why do your fingernails curl backward? Why don’t you look like me? Why don’t you sound like me? Why can’t I smell your hair?
Go back to sleep. Go back to bed. Go back to where you belong. Go back. Go back. Go back.