Tuesday, November 22, 2005

drawing II

"In order to see that basket, said Stephen, your mind first of all separates the basket from the rest of the visible universe which is not the basket. The first phase of apprehension is a bounding line drawn about the object to be apprehended[....]the esthetic image is first luminously apprehended as selfbounded and selfcontained upon the immeasurable background of space or time which is not it. You apprehended it as one thing. You see it as one whole. You apprehend its wholeness."

--Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce (emphasis mine)

its not that i like to draw. in fact, some days, like today, i abhor it. i loathe it. some days, like today, i want to gouge my terrible drawings out of my paper with my fingernails, and crush pencils in my teeth. yet no matter how much i enjoy the act of drawing, or hate my final product, it is the gift i got stuck with.

my parents always tell me this story: that when i was two, i took my crayons, and i put them in the shape of an airplane, and that's when they knew i'd be an artist. i don't know why i did this -- i don't know why i didn't just take the crayons and draw an airplane. it wasn't as if the concept of crayons could have been lost on me at two years old; i knew what they were for, and how to use them. i don't know why i chose to make the airplane out of the crayons themselves, instead of with the crayons, but i can take a stab at it.

i almost want to say i could recover this memory -- maybe i have, and maybe i haven't -- but i know what i am like, and how i have been for most of my life, and its safe to say i could approximate the reason for my deviant crayon usage. my guess is that the crayons weren't sharp enough, and i know that i've always hated coloring, drawing, and sketching with worn down nubs; anything less than a perfect point on my crayon or pencil could not be more useless to me. granted, crayons aren't known for the line quality they produce, but at two, that's all i had to work with. and they either hadn't invented crayon sharpeners yet, or i was too young to figure out how to ask for one.

at any rate, i was going to make an airplane. for whatever reason, the shape of an airplane was welling up inside of me, and dammit, i was going to get it out on the page, nubby crayons notwithstanding. i wonder if i thought: "well, the line is going to come out the same width as the crayon anyway," and instead of being hedged into producing a bad drawing because of my poor tools, i decided to put the tools to alternative and creative use. i like to think i decided to do this at two years old because i discovered that a real airplane doesn't actually have a line around it -- that drawing and using lines to produce a picture ultimately falls short of reality, no matter how realistic the drawing. i like to think i used my crayons the way i did to comment on the ineffeciency of the tools of the artist, to mock the inability of my crayon lines, to mock my own ability to draw -- to say perhaps that not only is the line a representation, but in realizing that, i was freeing myself from the burden of realism. i imagine the commentary of critics: "look! look how his work is a comment on the complete mastery of the artist's tool by the artist!" and "see how he is saying that all art is as much an abstraction as it is a representation?"

but of course, i was only two, and i forget that these are things i've only just figured out. still, i have always been frustrated by that line. the line is not real. its not really there. that is not really how we see things. yet, ultimately, it is how we grasp things, objects, reality. we grasp it through that kind of representation. the line is a symbol. it is not meant for revealing what is real, but, in a sense, for containing and representing a visual reality in the best way we know how.

the line is an attempt to join what is internal -- what we see, what is in our heads, what is welling through our hearts -- with the external. to make an object, an artefact that is at once our own, yet universal, accessable to others, ownable, viewable, palpable to others. a way of joining the internal you to the external world, and to a peopled world.

it connects spirit with matter, and in that respect, it is an attempt to create life, to breath our life into graphite and paper the way God breathed his into clay.

and the line itself is false -- derrida's dying metaphor, and nietzche's non-moral lie. it is zeno's arrow, showing us that how we understand and grasp reality is only a mode, a method of representation. all lines -- of a drawing, of prose and poetry -- are not trueness of form. they do not hold Truth. they chip away at it, so that it may take shape, the negative space that allows a block of marble to become the Pieta. the line is another reality altogether. its inability to recreate reality allows it to transcend reality; its shortcomings allow for a transfiguration, allow the not-real to enter the world of the real, allow the spirit of the fantastic to become incarnate. the potential for the line, like zeno's arrow, is eternal, all because of its unreality. the line is a false distinction, only vaguely definable at best. but when the realization creeps in that it cannot truly represent reality, that representation itself is necessarily not the same as what is being represented, then we open a new world for ourselves -- a world of modernist and impressionist and cubist truths that create their own ascended reality...which, in turn, informs and expands the understanding of the vastly profound place that is our reality.

freed from realism, from the pressure of perfectionism, under the realization that all lines are inherently flaws unshackles an artist: he does not have to make anything exact -- because he has no hope of that. he cannot make it exact. but, though inexact, he can still make a beautiful drawing, craft a striking poem, render into language and line something lovely and magnificent. he can even use crayons to do it.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

its a wonderful life

sometimes i wonder if i should pack up and leave buffalo forever; other times i think i should stay and let it burn through me, that i should vandalize it with my fingerprints, catch its crumbling buildings, reraise its falling skyline, become a part of its skyline. and sometimes i just want to shake the dust of this crummy little town off my feet, and see the world. sometimes i feel like this is unquestionably, irrevocably my home, and other times that this home will always be full of strangers.

as an exile, i am unanchored. as a citizen, i am part of the human mortar that holds this city up.

it is either one or the other.
it is always one or the other.

i am standing on the bridge wondering what have i changed? and what change will i make? and right now, the answer to both questions is nothing, and i realize it is because i have been standing on the bridge all this time.

there is a false sense of freedom in the ability to deliberate, but it is in the action of choice that freedom is effected.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

two kinds of family...

saturday night, at four in the morning, i said goodbye to my best friend, and i truly don't know for sure if or when i will see him again. this was not the parting of people barely able to maintain even the pretense of a real friendship; it was a long goodbye, but it was not a Long Goodbye, not the long "fuck you;" this was not the burning of a bridge. this was an affirmation of love between two friends, and a recognition of our mutual yearning for each other, and our future together, and the things we hope to and know we will achieve. Kiran is leaving for Iraq in less than two weeks.

he has been living in Colorado for the last couple years at the "request" of the U.S. Army. he's come home when was able, usually every four, five months or so, but his visits are never for long enough, and their brevity makes them feel too few and far between. i have known him since i was twelve, since the sixth grade, and i can remember our first meeting. i had heard of him before i met him: i was told we should be introduced, and i remember being taken aback at just how friendly and socially capable this kid seemed. conversation came naturally to his lips, in his mouth words were only pleasant things; they were not bitter catalysts the way they were in everyone else's usage: to wield, to burn, to precipitate a conflict...Kiran was just...nice. the nicest guy i have ever met. Kiran glides through social situations the same way a dancer dances, or a painter paints, or a pianist sits down at the keys: you can tell he knows what he's doing, he's well practiced. but most of all, it comes naturally to him. a far cry from me, who can manage being sociable, manage it even with some deftness and charm, but who, at the end of the day, can't wait to get away from everyone so the unbearable weight of having to carry, literally carry, a conversation can float off of my shoulders. it is tiring work; i put in a good day, but i celebrate the moment i get to punch out and go home.

this is how well Kiran can get along: at twelve, he could carry a conversation with my parents. or my friend Joel's parents. or your parents. anyone's parents, it didn't matter. the point was they were parents, adults, grown-ups, and i was terrified of them, and sometimes i still am. i can't even carry a conversation with my parents now, at 25. but Kiran is gifted. he's not particularly overtalkative. he's just comfortable.

and he's a great guy. we weren't best friends in middle school, and we weren't best friends in highschool either. at least, not the way we are now. for awhile we lost touch a bit, during the diaspora of the college years, but here, in buffalo...this town has a way of scooping and scraping everyone back together, even if its only for just a short while. Kiran had made it out of RIT alive, but just barely: the ROTC program he used to get some extra funding for a top notch education also required him to put in some hard time as an officer in the Army. who could tell that september 11th would happen, that the Iraq War would spring up, that the whole plan would backfire? i'm not particularly political, and i don't have a stance on the war, but Kiran has to be over there for at least a year, and i'm going to miss my friend.

i love Kiran. you can't not love Kiran, but i love him. he came back to buffalo for a few months after college, awaiting his assignment to Fort Knox for training, and i found him again. there aren't three people on the planet that could have gotten me to come out with him and the ol' Amherst crew, that could make me feel comfortable and included with them the way he did. there aren't three people on the planet i can be so completely myself in front of without their flinching -- all the good, all the bad, all the ugly. Kiran has seen it all and is still the most loyal and encouraging friend i've ever had.

saturday night was Kiran's last night in town before being deployed. he managed to find two and a half days to come home, and have a last hurrah. Katie Hurley and Jeff Addis both flew up and out of NYC to see him off. i had gotten out of work late, and i couldn't make it to Mr. Goodbar until about 1:30, but the usual crowd of Amherst grads was there. i was only supposed to stay for a drink; i had to get up at six the next morning and drive out to White Plains to see my sister Becka as Ezekiel Cheever in 'the Crucible.' but how could i leave? i stayed for an extra drink and made it last until last call -- at around 3:30 in buffalo -- at which point i loaded my car with a drunk Kiran and a drunk Jeff to take them back to their parent's houses. my apartment is only a three minute walk right around the corner from Goodbar. but i would do anything for Kiran. and driving 25 minutes out to the suburbs to drop him off is really not that big of a deal. we let Jeff off first, and i took Kiran to his street, right outside of his building. he told me to park, and we got out, and had the last two cigarettes of the night; it had to be 40 degrees out.

"when i get out of the Army in two years, man, Jeff and i are heading out to L.A., and you know who's coming with us..." it was more of a statement than a question, and anyway, yes, i did know who. "you gotta come with us." that was where it was going to happen, he told me. that was where things happened, and that was where we would go make them happen. "i know you can do it, you have the looks, you have the talent. we're going to go out there. when we get there..." when we get there, we would write. we would make movies, and act and direct, and make it happen. "its not a question of 'if' its going to happen. it will happen." in his mouth, i knew the words were sincere, genuine. true even. it was not a question of if it was going to happen. it wasn't even a question of when. it wasn't even a question. "we're 25. we are so young. we have all the time in the world. and i'm going to come back from Iraq, and get out of the Army, and we're gonna go to L.A...."

i'm glad someone besides me can feel this, the inevitability of it. i am going to create; we are going to create together.

"you and jeff, you're like my brothers. i love you." he said into my shoulder as we hugged; he kissed me on the cheek. "i love you too." i kissed him back. we are brothers. even if any of that stuff never happens. if we never make it happen, if we never get to L.A.; if he never gets out of the Army, and God forbid, even if he never comes home from Iraq, Kiran will be my brother, and my best friend. there is no one like him.

it was cold out, and he was shivering, and we let each other go, and he ran up to his apartment door, and into the apartment like he always does. i stayed to watch and make sure he got in all right, like i always do (because you never know when your parents might lock you out or when you'll forget your key).

and i drove to back to my parents' house, and got down the stairs and into the sofa at about 4:39 to take a nap and get ready for the long drive the "next day" that i meant to start at 6. i thought i set my alarm, but i didn't wake up until 6:30, and i didn't really get on the road for another hour. i had to be in White Plains by 2pm, when the curtain went up on 'the Crucible.' much coffee and gasoline were purchased, and i made it to Manhattanville College by 1pm, which is a time unheard of, and should be logged in all the record books. five and a half hours, from Buffalo to NYC. all on a suspended liscence. and other than the fact that i counted 25 patrol cars on the way there, the other details of the drive are mostly uninteresting.

my sister Rebekah had invited me up to see her in the play. she had invited me months ago. and whenever my twin sisters invite me to their shows i always try to go. i knew this was coming, and i had planned for it, but really, between the loyalties to saturday night and sunday morning there was nothing to do, and no sleep to be had. i was not looking forward to this drive. and i feared the slow creep of sleep that might blot out the performance i was supposed to be watching later. but i had to go; i wanted to go. Beka was in a show, and besides, Rachael would be there too. and i haven't seen my sisters in a year.

i didn't grow up with Rebekah and Rachael. i didn't grow up with Michelle and Autumn and Liz either. the sister i grew up with was Katie; we were both adopted; me at seven weeks and Katie at seven months. about three and a half years ago i found my birth family. i used to think that i never cared to find them, that i was never curious about them. i used to think it was what my parents wanted of me, the duty of an adopted son; that anything else would be disrespect. for years i stifled the desire to know my birth family. people would always ask me: "don't you want to meet your real mom?" and i would lie to them and tell them "no," and i had myself so convinced that the only sign of the truth was reduced to a dark tickling thrill i would smother inside of me and never pursue. "i'll get to meet her one day in heaven," i'd say.

a few years ago, i found them. i had called the adoption agency and asked them to open the files. i knew a little bit of information: my mother had married, and had given birth to two girls, twins. i had twin sisters out there. they would be eighteen now. i couldn't stifle the curiosity any longer. other people take their family, their parents for granted. sure, sometimes you don't get along with them, sometimes you hate them, but if you are particularly stubborn you know which parent to blame for that, or from which parent you get the shape of your lips or the color of your eyes, or your predilection for reese's peanut butter cups. and if you have siblings, you can see what they got, and what skipped you, and it all tells you a little bit more about yourself, and who you are, and how and why you are. other people take that for granted, and i wanted that -- i wanted to know those things. the parents who adopted me, my parents, are great -- they are truly wonderful and loving people -- but we do not get along in close quarters, and if they ever have at all, it wasn't until recently that they understood me on a fundamental level. everyone always tells me that all families are like that, that all children have this problem with their parents. but they cannot know precisely how different it feels from what seems like the norm in everyone else's family. they cannot know how truly bewildering it is, how awkward it is to be of completely different stuff than the people you call father and mother. other people have these problems with their parents, but mine have caused a rift that feels so gaping at times as to seem almost uncrossable.

the lady from the agency called me back one morning. she woke me up out of a dead sleep to tell me that yes she was able to make contact with my family and that she was sorry to tell me that my mother had passed away seven years ago, but that my grandmother was excited to hear from me and did i want to get in touch with her? "of course," i managed to exhale into the phone.

after awhile i recovered this memory: i was fifteen, and i was home from school, alone, in the afternoon. there was a message on the machine, from the adoption agency. "hello, this is New Life Adoption Agency, we just wanted to let you know...we recently heard from Philip's biological grandmother, who asked us to get in touch with you..." i don't remember all the words exactly, but i remember the awkward pause, the apalling 'i don't know how to say this' pause..."...Philip's birth mother passed away last week..........." i don't remember what the rest of the message said, if anything. but i saved it, and pretended i had never listened to it, and later, when my parents came home, i heard them discussing whether or not they should tell me. i don't remember if they did or not, because i could have blocked that too, but i have the distinct inpression that they kept that piece of information to themselves, because i remember now being in the basement and eavesdropping, and being angry about it.

it was strange that the second time i found out my mother was dead really was the second time i had heard it; it came as a shock each time, but i suppose news like that can never become commonplace. i had known her name, and i had searched online records for it, but until now i never knew the real reason behind my unbudging refusal to look for her name in the online obituaries.

and now, all that's left of her are my sisters, and her sisters, and her mother. and part of me is gone, never to be discovered again on this earth, and only now do i realize the irony and the gravity of telling all of my friends that i will leave the meeting of my real mom for heaven. i hate that i said that. i hate that it is true.

what is two hours of sleep and six hours of driving to see my sisters, then? any time i spend with them is too short a time. i know i am my father's son. Rafe is as much of a good guy as he is an asshole, and he is both in his own way. and i am cut from the same cloth, i see too much of the same pattern to even think of denying that fact. and i'm glad that i know it. but i can't help wondering how much, if at all, am i my mother's son, and what parts of me come from her, and if i will ever be able to see them and if anyone else will ever be able to recognize them in me. i want to know those parts of me, to clutch them, to save them from being drowned out of my life and out of the world.

what a pleasure it is to see Rachael and Rebekah. what a pleasure it is to see them laughing and smiling and agitated, and pissed off, and depressed, and hungry, and happy, and talking, and sleepy and anything else they are. i wish i saw more of it. i would never tire of it. i love being their brother. i wish i was more of a brother for them. i wish i was more a part of their lives, a part of them. we are all practically grown now. and truthfully, i barely know them. i can't help but wondering sometimes if its past the point of my ability to create a bond with them. i am so much an outsider. but i love watching them and being around them, and hugging them and playing with their hair. i wish we weren't so far away.

they were only 11 when our mom died. i can't imagine what that must have been like for them. and i can't believe what amazing women they've turned out to be after everything else that has happened between then and now...which is more than i know about, i'm sure. in some ways i am jealous of all of it: the family, the hardship, the loads of well-earned character, and yes, even the pain.

i've never known my own blood before. 'related' has always been what other people were. it is bizzare to me to know that i have that too, that there are pieces of me in other people...that i share something with them. it is nothing short of surreal.

maybe, in a couple years, they can follow me out to L.A. maybe i'll have a play written. if i do i'll save a couple spots in the cast for them, and some room on the fold out couch. or, for God's sake, they can just take my bed; i'll sleep on the couch.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

reasons not to have a girlfriend: reason #2

i have been having to fight, with all my being, the overwhelming compulsion to snag myself a real live girlfriend. i just cannot have one right now. having a girlfriend right now would be bad for me on so many levels -- not to mention the level on which it would be bad for said girlfriend (who would,as a result, make my life a living, firebreathing, headsplitting hell -- this level is a many-layered one).

oh, i could get one. that is not so much of a problem for me. the problem is that once i get one, and the falling in love part wears off as it inevitably does......well...then what? when you figure out that you're not in love, what are you supposed to do then? or, if it is love...wouldn't you know it? wouldn't you not constantly lament it as a burden? and, most of all, wouldn't you stop wondering what the girl who got the vanilla nonfat latte is like, and what she meant by "thank you," and whether or not she has plans on saturday? shouldn't you stop thinking like that when you're in love?

or is it natural to find other people attractive while you're in a committed relationship? It is, isn't it? i mean, you can't just turn that off, can you? something tells me its somewhere in between, but for a guy like me that just needs answers and is trying to figure out what to do, that doesn't help me too much. "somewhere in between" is where i've been living for the past fifteen years. "somewhere in between" is a sign above the gate on the way into my ranch. its just a euphemism for "weird and confusing."

and maybe its just that i haven't ever found a girl that was ok with the idea of me finding anyone else attractive other than her. and maybe that is the type of girl that i need to find. but to tell you the truth...that kind of weirds me out a little bit too. if i'm going to be in an exclusive relationship i wouldn't want secret weird attractions going on with either one of us, even if they never made past the bouncing around upstairs stage. i myself am not really okay with it.

so why am i like this? have i just not found the one woman who can be enough for me? have i just not yet found "the One?" is that even real, does she even exist? i don't know.

all i know is that there is no one to get mad at me, no one to offend, no one to hurt while i am single; what is a normal and healthy way for a single man to behave is utterly unbecoming in a relationship. what would have made me guilty in a relationship is only normal for me to do outside of it. really, its only fair to any prospective girlfriend that i refuse to take things to the next level....

because of reason not to have a girlfriend #2: i have a wandering eye.

Monday, November 07, 2005

autumn

the other shoe of autumn has finally dropped here; the leaves somehow managed to cling to their trees throughout the entire month of october, only to be butchered off the bough by wind and rain yesterday. the wind was thunderous, like it had been pushed out of the epicenter of nuclear doom. i went for a walk in it; it was strikingly less cold than it should have been. the sky was heavy, a roiling surge that was a thousand pounds of grey on your eyes, on your head. i would have fallen beneath it, but for the wind picking everything up; raking leaves, hats, trash into the sky. i imagined it rocking the buildings back and forth; apartments that, from the inside, creaked at hidden joints, the wind screaming around it like a trainwreck, or a trumpet-blast.

there were bursts of rain; the rain was cold. the wind had buffeted, beaten the trees, grabbed them by the shoulders like an angry husband. their finery, golden reds and oranges, tingling greens, deep purples and fiery browns had not been given up willfully. on the day before, they blazed proudly, catching light in their upturned palms and roaring, each tree a burning bush, and unconsumed. on the day before, the scant foliage sprinkled at their feet were so many sandles removed on the holy ground of backyards and grasspatches. but the next day, the wind came and plundered them, and the trees that clawed too tightly were left for the rain to pick off. it came in short, controlled bursts, combing through the trees and clogging the trench of the gutters with the dead and dying leaves. the rain, in its short duration, was particularly unmerciful.

i walked in it. why not? i had actually considered driving the two blocks to burger king, i had actually thought the wind, the spotty rain should be enough to make me get in my car. could it be enough, should it ever be enough? what did i have to fear from wind and rain? the sky, the weather, as brooding and violent as it was, was not out for me.

i walked to burger king, and i was only a little bit cold. above me, the clouds tossed and turned and coiled around themselves. yes, they were frightening. they were glowering at me, at the city, and at me, and the wind bellowed. i listened; but my name was not in it.

on my way i turned the corner: the sun dipped down, glazing the shredded trees and their wet black stems in cold light. slices and shafts of light struck the grass, the sidewalk, the wetness in the street, frosting it with a pale but indifferent smile. there was only a moment's worth of cheer in it. i turned my face into the wind, into the sun and thought: that is where this is coming from. the wind was blowing directly out of the sun. the sun, in ancient times, was the source of the wind and weather. it is the source of the wind in modern times too. i fear it doubly; as a modern man i know that we are only ancient men in modern times. it is terrifying: a broken seal, a burning censer, an eye-splitting angel with his mouth pursed on the last horn. today, though, it was not out for me.

i had eaten; i walked to the coffee shop, and it was clogged with customers, as if they too had been raked by the wind, fearing colds and runny noses, and other nameless illnesses no doubt carried in cold air and rain. i took my cup outside, to the empty patio, shivering until coffee warmed me. i read, and underlined, and read some more; "the Sorrows of Young Werther."

October 26th
...And my lively imagination carried me off to the bedside of these poor
people. I can see with what terrible resistance they turn their
backs



[sky got dark here]

on life...a stranger lies dying.



the sky got eerily dark, and it was not the darkness of twilight. it was as if the shadow of another season passed overhead. a season of the future? or one already long gone? it was dark, but soon, its eeriness had passed. it was like a breath of winter.

today, leaves litter the streets; their colors are already fading. the trees look bare and sorrowful. do they not know the price they would pay in the coming months to hang onto their leaves, their living pride? winter would crush them, would pull them down in boughfulls, would bury them under the weight of their ragged, snow-soaked garments. they would not live to see a new spring or ever bear new leaves. they should not fear the little death of autumn; there is life after it.

i too am shedding my leaves; i am clipping my hair, and growing a beard of clouds. my spring, i know, will one day come.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Long Goodbyes

my father's side of the family, my biological father's side, likes to make fun of their Grand Patriarch, my Grampa. among the number of things they tease him for, one of them is his penchant for long goodbyes. anytime he leaves someone's house, anytime someone leaves his, it is an issue. really, it takes at least a good ten minutes to say what needs to be said, give two rounds of hugs, say the i love yous, and then say more of what needs to be said. it tickles me to see this, the formality involved in saying goodbye, making it official: this is exactly how i am. i understand the need for closure when saying goodbye. there is a fear that my heart will flutter away without performing the proper ritual. its hard enough to part with people i love as it is; what's worse is the unrest when i part their company abruptly. you need time to prepare; you need time to come down. you need time to say goodbye. finally i've taken mine, so its time to say goodbye to some people with whom i've parted ways, and make it official.

Bill:
first, let me apologize. i know it was kind of a shit thing to do; all in one swipe, just quitting as your 'oldest friend.' i know the deep love you have for your friends, and i'm sure you're feeling burnt by me. i don't blame you. i miss you. a lot actually. but we both have changed. Nyack changed you quite a bit from the best friend you used to be to me; honestly, i didn't mind that so much. you were more or less the Bill i expected you to be most of the time, but Nyack cultivated some of your faults: your obsession and snobery over New York City; your constant grandstanding about Macs and Mac products; your addiction to cloves. i was willing to join you at least partially in these newfound enfatuations, but i can't follow them deep enough. i don't think anyone can, which is why they've become faults for you and jokes to anyone who knows you. you used to see things, i think. and you've come back from Nyack a little more blind. by what, and to what, i can't put my finger on. i know i'm a little more blind now too.

for a long time i considered you the single person who understood me the way no one else ever would. sometimes it seemed we were inside of each other's heads. sometimes it seemed we were two halves a person. i liked that; i was proud of that. i wish we still had that, but we don't any more. i've changed a lot too. thing is, i think of you sometimes as being so much like me in certain ways that i can't handle it, and here's where we come to my main problem.

you are extremely talented. you have loads and loads of raw talent, you have an angularity of wit, an abundance of intellect and you don't use it. you are allowing it to stagnate. honestly, i understand how it is, i empathize. because its me too. i have talent too, talent that just showed up, and i didn't have to do anything to get it. built in tools to make things, to be creative. maybe you aren't confident enough in your gifts to have the revelation that if you don't use them then you deserve to be robbed of them. i know you have done a lot of work for Mosaic and other christian media, and that you probably feel that what i have to say, what i have been saying, is unfair. i've always been disappointed that you felt called to that; i never thought it was your calling. sure, church should be cool, people should want to go, and it should be beautiful and earthshaking when they do. maybe its because i know my gifts are not called by God for that use that i am frustrated that yours are. i struggled with the meaning of art for awhile, its use, how God could use it, and where my vocation and my duty to God intersect. i discovered that they don't. to be an artist 'for God,' is a cop out. i would be an artist anyway, i can't make it count doubly as my devotion to God as well. God doesn't call everyone into a life of career-service, and even if he did, it would be no way around the devotion that God wants from everyone. it is why the sacrifice of Cain was not accepted.

at any rate, these are conclusions i've come to for myself. i wish they were yours too. i don't know if your call is genuine or not, but either way i'll still be wishing that you were motivated to create, to be an artist, to use your talents to make things. we could have made such beautiful things. we never did. i resent you for that.

Jeff:
you're a fucking asshole. i know its not that you didn't have any time to hang out with your friends this summer, and the couple years or so before that; its just that you didn't have time for the single ones, the ones who haven't started a family yet, the ones whose girlfriends you didn't like because they were too young or shy, the ones who don't go to the church your dad pastors, the ones who actually would make creative demands on you, the ones you think are a little too uncouth, unpolished, unshaven for polite company. though i'm sure if i grew up with perfect grades, a perfect family and a perfect life, few things would be good enough for me too.

i feel a little bad for being so harsh. but at the same time i don't know that any of it is inaccurate or undeserved. i have much to be thankful for from you. you were there for some major milestones in my life, and much of who i am i owe to you and your influence. the bands i like, the movies i've seen, the books i've read: almost all of them have come with your recommendation. there is no doubt you knew what you were talking about.

i think i also want to thank you for being there for me during my crisis of faith, and for inviting me over to your house for those awkward dinners with your folks, and for hanging out with me in general. don't think i didn't know how awkward i was most of the time: i was completely aware. it took me awhile to develop my own personality and actually inhabit it around you and eventually i figured it out. and we've been growing apart ever since. not to mention you did what every married person does once they say "i do." sometimes i wonder how often you venture out of the cocoon of that existence, or whether or not you realize that it is what you are in. chances are you realize completely and are in love with every minute of it. God, that makes me sick.

you must be thinking of having kids now with Janine, now that you've got your house and your grown up job. i was looking forward to being an unofficial uncle to them. i'm not seeing that in my future anymore, and, again, like with Bill, what frustrates me the most about what i see in your future is the absolute fumbling of your talent. i can't imagine being as good at anything as you are at music and not wringing out all i could from it. i can't imagine not taking it and running as far as i could with it, as far away from anything that could ever stop me or get in my way. you could have done it. maybe you still can, but something tells me you made an exchange in there somewhere, and whoever you did the deal with swindled you out of your motivation too. i hope its worth it, because (not that you care) it will always be a disappointment to me.

i know, it sounds funny that i should be so critical of you; me, this awkward, little brother of a kid. you were always a better friend to me than i was to you.......in both senses of the phrase, now that i've come to writing it. but still. you should've called. you could have written.

have a nice life, i guess. and say 'hi' to janine for me.

Sarah:
Goddamn...i don't know how much more saying goodbye i can handle. just when its getting tough, i get to you and you make it tougher. thats kind of what you do anyway though, isn't it? things always have to get difficult with you before you can bring them back to some normal, rational, reasonable level.

ah, i'm going to stop myself here. Jeff deserves all the shots i took at him, but i'm not writing this goodbye to offend you. i'm going to try to lay off the sarcasm as much as possible, and swallow my desire to really let you fucking have it in the interest of clarity, something we never had in our 'friendship,' often by design. i owe at least that much to the formality of goodbyes.

took me six years to fully understand the subtleties of our relationship which ultimately served to undermine it. don't think you got away with it all unobserved...you're terrible at hiding things. the vehement denials usually give it away. and the feigned ignorance. the feigned ignorance thing kind of makes me smile...that was always your bait...pretending not to understand something just to lure me out, and then completely ripping me to shreds with my own words. pretty clever. i wonder if you do that with tom? anyways, now that i think about it, i should try and use it in an argument some time.

at any rate, we're not friends anymore, and after six years of fake friendship and six months of real not talking to each other, i've managed to piece a lot of things together. instinctually, i knew it all along. i just didn't know how to make it make sense.

this was you and me:
i almost want to say i never had a chance with you, romantically. but what that really means is that at some point in time you decided it would never happen. it was a decision you made, and you made it in spite of how i made you feel and how you sort of felt about me. i'm more clear on the "how i made you feel" part, and at the time, i think you were too. maybe you knew it was fake, and you knew you were using me, because the way i looked at you made you feel beautiful, and the way i treated you made you feel wanted. it came so easy, so cheap: you didn't have to do anything, really, except keep me where i was. i was an open valve inflating your self esteem. i am learning this about women, about how they massage their own egos like this. men do it too, by having sex. women do it by not having sex. women do it by not even kissing. i never kissed you. i wanted to. you knew it. it made you feel attractive, and that's why you kept me around. i was kind of your dog. which i think is where we come to why you decided that you and i would never happen: it killed any respect you could have had for me. you still have none for me, even to this day (and fuck you for that). you could never love me because you had no respect for me.

that makes this part, the "how you felt about me" part a bit more clear now, i guess. you were not unattracted to me, because i am an attractive guy. that isn't enough for you though. for some girls it is; it is enough to make them want to bear my children and do unmentionable things with me. you liked me as a person too, somewhat. you ripped on me for being too dorky. but i admit that part of me, and its never gonna go anywhere, and there are some things about me that offset my dorkiness: i can draw, and you loved to have me draw for you. and i was a nice guy, and intelligent, and a good hang, i like to think. that really isn't enough for you either though. that's ok, some girls aren't into that.

what i don't understand is how it was almost enough for you. how it was so close to being enough and never was. you genuinely did return at least a part of what i felt for you. i know you did. tell yourself you didn't, tell whoever you need to that you didn't, but don't tell me that. i know you did. there are too many moments, too many words between us and you cannot deny what they add up to.

i can forgive you with toying around with me. i can forgive you for all of the friendly "i love yous" and "i'm going to marry yous" and every ounce of their intended ambiguity, every particle of their ambiguity burying them in my heart. i can forgive you for the decisions you made in the face of that ambiguity which pried out every last one of those "i love yous" and "i'm going to marry yous" to expose them as a collection of my shame and stupidity. the shame and stupidity were my fault.

i can't forgive you for the amount of real affection, however small, you had for me that you hid away. if you couldn't guess, this is what has always made me resent you. the fact that i know it is there, and you trapped it, choked it.

i am guilty of using you too, though. i'm not a perfect martyr here. i liked that a hot girl wanted to hang out with me. i used you to inflate my ego when i could; sometimes it backfired. sometimes the only way i could get it to work was to just be a good guy that you'd say nice things about. i did a lot of things to get you to feed my ego. flowers when your dad died, showing up at the wake. i wanted to flatter you, but mostly i wanted to know what a good guy i was. that's pretty horrible, huh? how did i ever get this insecure? ah well.

i don't know. i don't know how to end this one.

we tried being friends for awhile, but you were convinced that we couldn't be, that it was all fake. that hurt a lot: i'm not sure if it was because it was true or because it was the latest in a string of rejections from you. you called it out though: we were still using each other, under a facade of best intentions, under the alias of a real friendship. and it wasn't right; and you were married now, and there is no more room for ambiguity.

i tried to tell you that a long time ago; you said: "it will still be the same."

if i got nothing else out of knowing you, i at least get to be right.

but for the record, i don't think our friendship was completely artificial. i liked you as a person. you liked me. there was some undeniable, some unspeakable connection there. we never got the chance to build on it. we could have been friends. we wanted to be better friends than we were. but all we had was all we had, and after i dropped out and you got married there wasn't room for anything else. in fact, there wasn't even room for all we had between us anymore.

sarah, if you ever end up not married for whatever reason some day, look me up. i don't say "God forbid" because i am selfish, and i have visions of being a real friend of yours one day. but for now, i've got to say goodbye, and make it official. awhile ago, in june, i had a dream that you were dead. i told you about it then as an attempt to reestablish contact, but i didn't realize what it meant: that i must consider you as being out of my life for good. and so you are. that said, you will still receive a letter in the event of my death.

goodbye, friends.

love,
phil

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

life is hard; post short

i know, 's been awhile, faithful reader.

things have been...geez.
any minute now i'm going to come to the end of the zipper on this one.

i don't know what that means, but...any minute now.

sorry for the not-posting.

here are ten haiku i wrote today; i haven't written any haiku since middle school (ah, those...weren't the days either...)

for you:

ten haiku(s...?)

You think of the sun
As an eye blink’d out by clouds;
Yet, also, we hide

There, the crooked tree
With an old amber kneecap;
Ahab’s wooden leg

The oracle comes,
Slowness of speech folds its words;
It opens with time

The line reduces;
We grasp the world around us;
Zeno points our way

Why, now in autumn
Do you stare close at the ground?
Look up, falling sun!

Cold is between us,
So my arms wrap around you…
Winter makes us warm

Days fall from the sky
Like our ornery children;
Bury them and mourn

Night sails in the sky
Blow your breath into his wings
singing songs with friends

There is no woman
With power, when you’re resolv’d;
Yet you look at her

Age falls down my face
Gently, like a steady rain
Until it cracks me