Tuesday, April 24, 2007

i am unwilling...

...to return to the real world today.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

paradise by the refridgerator light...

...or something like it.

its pretty late. i've been working on a few beers (not simultaneously) to little effect (forcing me to rethink my method of alcohol intake), and smoking cigarattes that each make me feel a little bit shittier, a little bit closer to swollen glands than the last. if i haven't mentioned what a delicate boy i am on this blog yet, allow me to do so now: i have the constitution of equatorial vegetable life when transplanted beyond the tropics of cancer or capricorn.

luckily i've discovered the miracles that a daily dose of "airborn" can produce. and no, i'm not a compensated endorser. i go very uncompensated, financially. that's ok. i'd endorse airborn at a financial loss. it is just that good. only vitamins, you say? ah ha! with fizz! and a gritty, waxy scum that coats whichever glass it is contained in. no, sir. no, madam. much, much more than vitamins. it is nothing short of an ol' timey health tonic. you can heal palsy, and cast demons into swineheards with it, i swear. and call down fire from heaven. it will perform both old and new testament miracles.

i should be...any number of things that i have been too scrubbed thin by working to be. asleep might be one of those things. less satisfied with not really writing at all lately could be another. worried, about things i am too ashamed to admit i'm not all that worried about is definately another.

i think i don't really have anything of substance to say, today. i am reduced to talking about the weather, like this: it is getting nicer out, and that bodes well for me. in an "either i'll start being productive/or i'll start having more fun" kind of way. and speaking of things to say, i have been reduced to a wit that just barely scrapes by with my tables at work...you know...the kind that is like a gradeschool verbal spat...where you say something reasonable good though not necessarily a coup de grace, and turn around to think of something really skewering to say about thirty seconds after you should've said it. i've been getting by at work though; when the precision of wit fails, the double barrel of a smile and feigned sincerity get the job done. tonight was definately a 20% night for me. but i was lucky.

i suppose i could talk about my forays into the digit snatching game, in which i've had some recent victories, but that would just sound like bragging, and they probably won't pan out anyway. i find a lot of expectation comes along with this face, and the boldness of my charm that i can't really back up the way anyone wants me to. believe me, i'd like to be more than just disappointing, but i'm not at that stage in my life yet, and we're all just going to have to accept the possibility that i may never get there.

its not that things don't happen; its not that there's nothing big to talk about. i'm just...apathetic about it all at the moment. though i guess not so apathetic as to avoid feeling guilt over it. i guess that says something. (perhaps that want a little more credit than is actually due?)

anyway.
i have been seared closed by this apathetic streak. in some respects, i have been amputated by circumstance (i.e., work, spilling rum and coke on my laptop, not paying my phone bill), but i also haven't fought it quite as hard as maybe i should have. i guess what this post comes down to is this:

i owe a lot of people a lot of things -- phone calls, e-mail, general love. expressions of gratitude. i plan on making good.

..but right now, i choose pasta salad.

Monday, April 02, 2007

apoptosis/apotheosis

outside, there is a bird singing three notes from the movie music soundtrack i am playing in the house, as i have coffee on the front porch. i wonder if the squirrels that live in our crestfallen front yard tree have realized the old landlords, who used to fill the birdfeeder with seed, have moved; i wonder if the squirrels will move too, or just go on living in that same hollow branch, a little less fat than they used to be?

can that bird possibly appreciate this song as much as i do? i think maybe he is more capable; he speaks in music, and he is, after all, singing along. i've heard that man started playing instruments in imitation of birdsongs. funny, when you see a moment where things come full circle. this bird is chatting up my iTunes. he likes Clint Mansell, apparently. i like this bird.

outside, it is like the old poems say; spring is here, but not yet on its way. the ground is so frostbitten, it hasn't yet recovered enough to melt the last few dirt-scorched patches of ice and snow; hasn't yet been able to make the grass look like grass, or bring the trees back to life.

i learned a new word, the other day; a neologism from Greek, that means "to fall away." let me load the phrase with the not-entirely-fabricated implication that it is a falling away with purpose; a self sacrifice, a shedding of the heavy mortal weight to enable...something else. survival. life. paying out a portion to eternity. like insurance.

the insurance of trees is: the souls of fallen leaves come back as spring rain.

when the blind recover sight, ask them what it was they saw first. they inevitably reply: "i saw trees, walking around like people."

sometimes, when i think about why i left buffalo, i have trouble deciding whether i am the tree that shed the crispy leaf of my hometown? or am i the leaf who let go, whose weight is still spiraling towards some unseen floor? it is only half the question: you can't talk about going without conspicuously ignoring the coming, and perhaps in considering the dual nature of all such questions, we can synthesize an answer: i left my hometown to come to my birthplace. i shed a husk of an old life, hoping that the lighter parts might ascend, that the truer parts might become more refined. that i might be distilled; sharp spirits from a dull malt, rain out of escaping vapor, stronger life out of life, to penetrate and cultivate the unyielding earth.

i was a leaf, i like to think.

i looked, and i thought i saw my life, spiralling out of control. it was the husk of a leaf, exhaling its living parts. and if something spirals, it is never out of control. life is subject to seasons, and somehow we fool ourselves into using terms like "beginning" and "ending." life is a perpetual motion machine. the spiral is only a circle subject to time. what goes around, does, in fact, come back around. if all were chaos, there would be no reaction for every action.

so, this life is a loop; a rolling hula-hoop, or a tire like the ones third world children chase down streets with sticks.

if i am spiralling, it is not out of control.
it is no coincidence the bird outside of my window is listening to my music.
the squirrels? they have no seed? let them eat cake. or shed a pound or two. or find out where my old landlords live now.

i have recovered a little bit of sight.

i am a tree, also: walking back to my roots. letting go of my tarnished leaves, and reaching, even through the winter, towards the sky, towards spring...clutching at the skirts of a thoroughfaring God, in the wake of His green glory.

yes, a little bit of glory is what i'm reaching for. it is not as stupid as it sounds.
i give up life to gain life.

mens sana in corpore sano

"a sound mind in a sound body?"

i'll take a different sounding mind
and
you can keep the body