Bonaventure

Re-working of a post from months ago....still working on the other story.


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His heavy grip fisted a double whiskey into his gut until his head told him it was not far from bursting. He went home and lay on the couch, staring at the cracks in the ceiling and in his brain. His brain then pushed itself into the microcosm of the parallel life. The one he could have lived if he had ventured free from this day to day, or the one which could have led him astray in its call to survival, or the other one he dreamed of as a child, where all the parts of the dream were clean and unfettered by experience and circumstance, and where fate ruled the day.

But none of those parallel lives happened to him. He lay still and pretended the cracks in the ceiling (and in his brain) were the branches of a tree, the tree that held all he had been and all he couldn’t live up to, so full and tight that it was about to buckle like his headache, down into the floor and through the street, into the nightly sludge of other people drunk-dreaming the same thing. The sludge was the color of lost money, of booze and rot, of old feelings that never leave you, slowly gang greening its porridge brew into a pot somewhere on the outer shore, where the witches stood near the railway.

He had to make a list. A list of things that would save him, a list of prices he could live with paying. He got up and tossed a shoe that didn’t belong to him (it was hers, the only one, how does a person leave one shoe behind) down to the sound of a yapping dog somewhere to in the alleyway, but the shoe hit nowhere near the dog and its furtively confident belchy bark. Bastard reminder of another time and place. Funny how the sound of a dog barking in the country is soothing from afar; could be wild, running in the distance, reminding of the freedom still pacing in each of us. But the measly city dog just happy to shit where it eats and wanting to let the world know it’s fine to do so - well, that just didn’t cut it. But city people, they weren’t much different, were they.

The best part of this late night roll call of tremulous voices, illegible lists and calvinist shakes is that he Wanted to be alone. Escaping all the possibilities that could hurt him. All those people - ego lit their way like a cheap secondhand lamp, the kind that gets marked up for well-dressed, clean couples at the antique shop never having style, nor a place, nor anything that wanted its light. That was most people if you shined the light far enough into them. He felt no empathy for these clean people with filthy, dim souls, shopping for happiness and self worth at the matchmakers. Cluttered full of expectations of what and who their hearts should breathe in. They need and want for a companion, desiring like the worst case of a beholder without a muse. The opposite of a companion was usually delivered and its purpose served quite unextraordinarily so. People often lived together as two burnt out lamps (like a light bulb making a rattling noise, you know you just have to throw it away, its no good...) un-learning the beautiful tides that were offered them before they fucked it up on their own and were forced to stumble blindly into the flickering acquiescence of another fool. The other fool would tell them that this loss of spark and purity was perfectly ok (since they themselves couldn’t even remember what theirs looked like)…it would all be ok…for awhile. Marriage and its backseat companion love (more the scheme of love) shapeshifted into a shady loan offered by the meanest of men in stiff suits. Self created co-signers to bullshit, bigger and more faceless than a man and a wife, or even a woman and hen pecked husband could be - they now only found themselves dirty on the outside, hissing throughout, unaware of each other while standing at the side of the road, with a “Will Work For < hissing >” sign. Bankrupt for someone new to share their same old cracks, self contained skin, unchanging colours, or their original room with.

There was no one in his room. Hadn’t been for a very long time. Saying something to scare them off was usually the best way to achieve this perfect loneliness. But would he ever give in to that other way – tick tocking, rock rocking - you wanting to smash their head in if they said another word about their day, who they think they are, what they want, what they think they need, all while reading the city paper in front of you. How did they lose the sense of the Urgency. Whole food chains eating themselves, universe in constant birth and bloody peril, the mental cases killing their slaves --- can’t two people together know enough to put the paper down, toss it into the fire and devour each other from skin inwards, not just on the first day, but every single day forth? It was too much for most people’s minds as they licked past and flipped pages, people’s ideals were whipped from them hourly without the sexy veil of a lady in leather boots. It usually happened much more quietly than that. The sadder silent whip removed all the warmth, aliveness and heart from people, leaving them to die a little down there every day.

But didn’t he die a little in here alone every night. Or not. It pained him to know they were so asleep in their freedom, and it pained him to know he was too, but for these thoughts which accompanied him on his nightly journey up the bare wall to the ceiling. The branches cracked, reaching out to him - Jesus on his tree calling out as a warning. Better up on the tree in the end, than in the mire everyday, choking up the sickly muck of everyone’s sludge being shoved into his mouth.

How could he share this with anyone? Maybe their cracks were in the bottom of the bathroom trash, or hiding with the feelings he himself tossed into the bottom of the ocean just for the thrill of someone finding them. Still, it’s hard to see deep down to the ocean floor. There would be other nights, other rapturous dreams, other angry slipstreams on which to surf over all our failures both alone and together; there was tomorrow and the night after. The cracks weren’t going anywhere, but would he ever climb on in, or up or over, and see who lay beyond them and if they really saw. Could anyone every shine their light into his eyes again and with it, his heart find rapture, and accord. He passed out before this made any sense. The yapping dog was let back in about 5 minutes later. The last whiskey he barely touched was still at his side.

Cruel summer...

Working steadily on a piece about some bad times not experienced by me...should be ready to go in a week or so...might actually edit a little this time.

Dream 5.14.09

Haven't been posting anything, as the few things written have all included names, faces and memories that would be best kept private...
This dream incriminates no one.
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Half awake for a few seconds. Too much white wine, heavy hard stomach from Cornish hen and mushroom wild rice. A lot of chatter echoes from last night’s dinner conversation. Bright sheets, the vibrations of cat against thigh had reverberated in the murky smoke of the last dream, not remembered. Slept in the bathrobe again, because would rather keep warm with fresh air from night windows. Turn over, look at phone. 6:01am. Another hour. Even though hot now, am too lazy to remove bathrobe, due to eyes drifting closed again. The last bout of sleep is when the most vivid dreams come.

Only still pictures to start with, time jumping - a minute, an hour. Manhattan under construction. In a car with a family of Jesus fearing, born agains. I am with them, but I am completely the same in this world as I know myself to be in waking life, my mood exactly as it was before I fell asleep. A father – dark hair, mustache, somewhat silent and weak in that he rarely speaks, is driving the large, clunky and spacious rental car. They are on vacation in the city. Why I am with them I don’t know, but I know it’s only for long enough to get them to their destination. The road is bumpy, somewhere in midtown, orange cones everywhere and torn up streets. The father is navigating and barely looking at the street in front of him, miraculously avoiding cars swiping and zig zagging past. He looks often to a sort of old, gray and white version of a GPS screen on the dashboard. The low graphic image also pops up on the electric road signs at certain points, as if just for the family to see. The children are in back of the car, anonymous thus far. The mother is a big woman, typical of middle America – stern and blonde, with glasses. She is dealing with the children and looking around to the city streets, judging everything whilst maintaining some sense of interest about the new surroundings.

Cut ahead – we are all at the water’s edge of the west side of Manhattan now – the construction left behind to our right, along with the silent noise / feel of chaos. We glide up stone steps with the car, then walking, then simply coasting on up on our own wheels of some kind. To the left is the wall of churches with Catholic imagery, some painted up at points like Egyptian wall paintings, as bright as the same hour they were originally painted. Too ancient for New York City, feeling more like Rome or the Vatican, but existing here in this version of things. We ascend on, with our wheels, feet, car; all modes of transport at once – stop/start, both the distance we cover and the time it takes to get up to the top, where their hotel destination is, is choppy. The father is still silent, but the children (two boys, two girls with blonde hair and a girl with dark hair) are all intermingling and climbing onto and past these grand stone structures and their likewise mismatched ornaments: among them a stone-faced white lion, a colourful hawk, and large black crucifixes with Christ hanging onto them. At one point we stop and look left into the black darkness of one of the church entryways. Solemn men in robes mingle, and a priest walks past the doorway. The mother says something like “they in their pompous Roman ways do not accept the true Christ into themselves”, encouraging her children to look, while the children (all under five years old), just gaze in wonder and without care or judgment.

Finally, at the top of the rocky stone steps is the last, very steep step leading to the entrance of the family’s very fancy New York City hotel destination. The car is gone, as only the father remains trying to haul up one mammoth suitcase on wheels. The last step is almost five feet tall and it seems impossible to get the suitcase past it. The father tries, I try, others try and it drags them down aways. At last with help it is up, as the mother and children wait impatiently. The children are playing raucously around the place. Cut to a cafeteria where the children will be eating together on a daily basis without their parents. Even though they are all around toddler ages, the siblings make fun of one of the sisters and won’t let her eat her meal with them. She sits alone, crying her eyes out about it. Her mother only gets involved to tell her that I will eat lunch with her (while pointing up at me), as the others have cast her out. I say I will and go over to her, feeling I have to help her and at the same time feeling a tremendous love for her. She looks like the dark haired girl at first as I talk to her, but then becomes one of the blonde girls, almost as young as a baby. I kneel down and tell her twice (once when she has dark hair and then again when she has blond hair) what she has to do. Even though she looks too young to even sit up, she is crying uncontrollably at me, but listening. I try to calm her by placing my hand on her back near her neck and I tell her that she needs to not care what the others say to her. That she doesn’t have to eat alone. I tell her that next time, when I’m not here, she should go over to where the other siblings eat, sit down with her tray of food and tell them “I don’t care what any of you say, I’m eating here too”. The other kids look on as I say this, as if they feel bad about their former behaviour. The mother seems to have stepped back in order to let me say this, as if it is why I have been there with them. I tell the little girl that she is the most special one out of all the children and she begins to calm down. I sense she is about to be upset that I will soon be leaving them, so I hug her very tightly and tell her I love her, feeling at that moment as if I have never loved a child as much as I love her.

Back to the hotel lobby. The mother is checking in, seeming occupied with the details of their stay, while the father is busy somewhere, playing games nearby in the recreation area. I know that the family does not sense me anymore. I hear a ringing tone and the scene fades to soft white. My eyes open – still hot, in bed, phone tucked under the pillow vibrating and ringing my head awake. Very groggy, still somewhat caught in the images of the dream, awake in my bedroom. 7:00am.

Writing Exercise #1

(A Call to Punctuation)

Plotter is a field smack the central of her head. From across the way of the low riding waters, our energies lie to themselves, to the kelp, the minnows, the dead men lost at sea. Penetration in order to feel, breathing in the muddy air-waters, fire seeping from your eyes, as you attempt to swim across, to the harbour lights and self knowledge finding itself in dreams on the other side.

Dive in, don't let the whispers of fat bruised souls who have fallen back frighten you from the doing of your one will. Waterways eventually push you to sink just when you think you've cleared the halfway mile towards the shore. End shore-start more reasons to forget why you started seeing pictures at the age of five. Numbers dance in their own lifelike cast from cotillion to orgy every time. Your arms stride limp, as kale dying from heaven in the midst of a broadcast. Too terrible when the ocean catches your tears, so you can't see which way they ran to this time. If you think you're swimming through, just turn around and spot the salts trailing, its own phalanx commanded, growing up into a twirling sphinx, ready to crush any who follow you to the promised dry land deep within the coming, golden shore.

Get there, find a plan, make a man and bury yourself - the sand will do the same as the ocean. The tears will dissolve away, the great ancient machine ceases to be. Each bought formulated in number, fear...and straying arms will sink when the thing you move through doesn't recognize you. Take notice of your fools and the way they find their circumstance. Hair in eyes growing form and spinning your footsteps like an oversexed top gone wild. More than sized in your intentions, but naked in your surest experiments, slowly building stars in their wake. Disease in its best place stands as a reform. A substantiation of what memory brought it all on.

So look back (again) the tides astray in song after you. You know what they're calling for, the active dreaded parts of you, draining down the causeway until you sit up in the sand, hands gripped bloody with your better nature, looking horizon wise to the next local race.

Today's the Day it's all worth Fighting for.

Elementals suspended pry
but lizards lie
on their backs --
my mind its own seven courses
of rotation,
stains in wine.

While the sound of clinking bottles
filled to the brim in familial liquor
sit, safe at home.

At the Foot of the Giant Dipper

***At the corner stool of the Sand Bar (near the video poker), Mission Beach (backdrop: rollercoaster), San Diego, CALI 7:12pm PST, while Misha is upstairs @ casting (Skyy) 3/9/09 (JMV bday), dressed to the Rockabilly 9's -- Bud Light (2), pen borrowed from blonde bartender. TShirt, busty, a smile.***


Dear Dad,
I'm in California with Nasha Misha. She loves you still, and we are having the best time together. I know I struggle, especially with missing you and wanting to live out in my life the greatest and truest heart of yours (most particularly love), but in my own voice.
This world is numb and silly sometimes, but I know where the fire lies, where the heart of life is. You taught me that. I will miss you - every day without you since - but I am so proud of the life you lived, right down to the imperfections and the simplest bliss. And feel your broad spirit swirling everywhere around me, our family, and the best parts you loved, Misha included. I know you look over me.
Forgive me if I am not perfect, but I promise to stay alert, grounded, and brightly tuned to the spirit of Life and its second.
We love you, I love you and this next silent cheers is to you (drinks).
You are alive as the lights are twinkling on the oceanside rollercoaster next to the darkening, warm overcast sky over my shoulder. No death ever calls; we are all together and on our own, again and again, screaming and smiling our palms to the world.
Thank you for being my father. I love you always...and U zdravlje,
Mimi

The Loss of Solitude

A guy fists triple whiskeys into his gut until his spleen tells him its time to burst, goes home and stares at the cracks in the ceiling, his brain / pushes itself into the microcosm of the parallel life. The one we could have lived if we had ventured free from this day to day, the one which could have torn us apart in its call to survival, or the other one we dreamed of as little children, where all the parts were clean and unfettered by experience and circumstance and fate ruled the day.

But none of those happened to him. He lay there and pretended the cracks were like the branches of a tree, the tree that held all he’s been and all he can’t live up to, so full and tight that it was about to buckle like his kidneys, down into the floor and through the street, into the sludge of other’s people drunk-dreaming the same nightly thing.

The sludge is the color of lost money, of booze and rot, of old feelings that never leave you, just slowly gang greening its porridge brew into a pot somewhere, on the outer shore, the witches near the railway. He’s got to make a list. A list of things that will save him, a list of prices he can live with paying…shut that yapping dog up- He gets up and tosses a shoe that doesn’t belong to him (it was hers, the only one, how does a person leave one shoe behind) down to the alleyway, but it hits nowhere near the dog and his furtively confident belchy bark. Bastard reminder of another time and place. Funny how the sound of a dog barking in the country is soothing; afar, could be a wolf running in the distance, reminding of the freedom still pacing in each of us. But the measly city dog just happy to shit where it eats and wanting to let the world know its fine to do so, well, that just doesn’t cut it. But the people, again, they’re not much different, are they.

The best part of this late night roll call of tremulous voices and calvinist shakes is that he Wants to be alone. Escaping all the possibilities that could hurt him. People just don’t get it, do they. Ego lights their way like a cheap secondhand lamp- not the kind that gets marked up for well dressed clean couples at the antique shop. The sort that never had style, nor a place, nor anything that wanted its light. He felt no empathy for these clean people with filthy, dimly-lit souls, shopping for happiness and self worth at the corner store. Cluttered full of expectations of what and who their hearts should breathe in. The need and want, desiring like the worst case of an already dead junkie, for a companion. The opposite of one usually delivered / its purpose served by another in the room. Two cheaply-lit lamps un-learning the beautiful tides that were offered them before they fucked it up on their own. A co-signer to bullshit more than a man and a wife, or woman and hen pecked husband. Marriage and its backseat companion love made into a shady loan offered by the meanest of men in stiff suits; only to find themselves dirty on the outside, hissing throughout, at the side of the road, with a “Will Work For ________ sign”. No one to share their cracks, or skin, or colours, or their room.

There is no one in his room. Hasn’t been for a very long time. Saying something to scare them off is usually the best way to achieve this perfect loneliness. But would he want it to be the other way – ticking ticking, rocking rock you can smash their head in if they say another word about their day, themselves, reading the city paper in front of you – No sense of the Urgency. Whole food chains eating themselves, universe in constant birth and bloody peril, the mental cases having their day --- can’t they know to put the paper down, toss it into the fire and devour each other from bottom chakra upwards? It’s too much for most people’s minds…still while they read away, people’s moralities are whipped from them hourly without the sexy veil of a lady in leather boots. It’s usually much much quieter than that. Sadder- the silent whip that removes all the warmth, aliveness and heart from people, dying a little down there every day (Babbitts unite).

But wasn’t he dying a little in here every night. Or not. It pained him to know they were so asleep in their freedom, and it pained him to know he was too, but for these thoughts which accompanied him on his nightly journey up the bare wall to the ceiling. The branches cracked, reaching out to him, Jesus on his tree calling out as a warning. Better up on the tree in the end, than in the dirt everyday, not even tasting the sickly muck of everyone’s sludge being shoved into his mouth.

How could he share this with anyone? Maybe their cracks are in the bottom of the bathroom trash, or hiding with the feelings he himself tossed into the bottom of the ocean just for the thrill of someone finding them. Still, there would be other nights, other rapturous dreams, other angry slipnslides of our failures to surf on, tomorrow and the night after. The cracks aren’t going anywhere, but will he- ever climb on in, or up or over, and see what lies behind them. He passed out before this made any sense; the yapping dog was let back in about 5 minutes later; the last beer he barely touched was still at his side.

Welcome to It

There was a fable of a blinking star gone green in the distance, across shore and simple sea; self indulgence alights our enemies. Thoughts process to grow while ego choking hard our castle with its single diamond room. Because just thoughts, simple chaos, in the far reaches of what's happened to our bodies, letting those minutes in time eat up our minds-insides : color coding
trauma equals drama, offers a good impetus to curtain call.
Sing yourself home; no one can rise up from your ashes for you. None, but you. Let the thorns binding up your heart's pelt trunk down, twindle, swarming, free. Your arms, they're bleeding happy trails to mark the way behind you. You'll find yourself always watched over.
Heart born again a lump of dust mites in clay, without sculpture or circumstance. Etchings over ridiculous arithmetic parameters of breath and mistakes.
Indeterminism is a clean contract.