| A New Place |
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| 10:01pm 01/11/2007 |
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I'm going to start taking some sort of time to try and do some documenting of my first year at least in Portland. This is more of an exercise in writing for me than anything else, but you are all welcome to be voyeurs.
http://fromportlandwith.blogspot.com
you are always on my mind |
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Read 5 - Post |
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| End Piece. |
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| 07:24pm 18/10/2007 |
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I have 8 days left here and then I leave and I guess it is starting to become something serious inside this skull of mine. The house is taken care of but the dog is staying. Everything is being thrown away or sold but books and clothes and most of those anyway. I wake up every morning thinking what day it is and how much time I have left to get taken care of the things that need it. Bills and accounts, just a general tidying up of things.
I am thinking of starting a new blog somewhere once I'm there in order to document my first year in Portland. It may be boring, mundane, but who knows?
There are many things I'd like to start over with. Writing is one of them. I think this will help.
I woke up wondering where my poetry was and realizing I didn't miss it regardless. For a while I thought about investigating the poetry scene in Portland, and sure it would be good for a quick fuck or two and maybe something idle to pass my time away with, but now I'm not so sure whether I want to invest the time. All this poetry feels like a sham to me anymore. I write and I read and I hear my voice and the emotion but it is like an emotion stripped from a tape recording, slowly losing quality with each repeat performance.
I guess it's over. A love affair found out and set aside to move on with something else. Perhaps we'll see each other now and then, but mostly we'll just remember here and there. Pleasant or not so pleasant moments. Wishing things were better, regardless of if they happen to include each other at all. |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| Room for rent in Tempe: $415/mo |
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| 10:20am 23/09/2007 |
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Hey gang, I'm moving to Portland in a month and need someone to take over my lease at my current house.
It's in the neighborhood behind Casey Moore's at 12th St and Roosevelt. A five minute bike ride to ASU, Casey Moore's, Downtown Mill. I have two other roomates, one that goes to school and the other that works all the time. Pretty easy going place. Pets are okay as well. Nice backyard, dishwasher, washer and dryer.
If you have any interest let me know. The lease lasts until the end of July 2008. |
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Read 3 - Post |
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| Embed this. |
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| 10:40pm 19/09/2007 |
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About a week and a half ago I walked out on the second job. A final farewell to something I no longer wanted much of anything to do with. Why bother, really. A little over a month left in this state and then gone for good. A quick see you later and goodbye. I am pondering last moments. Last directions and last stands. I've fallen asleep at the wheel.
In a century what will any of us really have to say. |
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Read 3 - Post |
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| Juxtaposed Jitters |
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| 10:56pm 29/08/2007 |
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This is no terrible life. In the morning at 8 with NPR my eyelids raise themselves forcefully. The not dim enough awareness of the patterns of my ceiling stagnant and plain. I work the bookstore and I finish and I work the call center and I finish and every other or every night I drink and I sleep at 3am after reading a bit and then wash away my sins in dreams about creating more of them.
Occasionally I have a morning or afternoon off and this excites me. Four hours of time to sit around and jack off or drink coffee or both if I time everything right. In the middle of these unusual gaps of space I more often than not find myself staring down my dog wondering what he thinks about.
But really. This is not so bad. The money comes in and goes out but it does what it needs to. I have created everything I am. Over time, which is at least somewhat reliable in its ever pressing forward at least, I will either take care of things or care less about them than I already do. Either way is acceptable.
Last night, sitting at Three Roots with Mark and Brent (well, Brent by proxy I suppose) I watched a 4 piece bluegrass group rehearse. I watched the woman with the standup bass slide up and down its amber colored curves and felt as if I had been missing a part of my life for a while. I have not written anything creatively in some time. Not since school, not since before that it feels like. I have accepted this and simply been content with 65 hour work weeks and the constant haze of drunkenness to separate them. I thought about writing though, and put down my book, understanding that what is happening now is stronger and more important than what has been written. As they practiced, made errors and finally got things together, I felt the splintered ache of creativity itching in my fingertips. Though I didn't act upon it.
I've given up on things here. At the end of October I am moving to Portland and that will be the end of a large part of my life.
In the car in the heat without much air conditioning and the sun driving spikes of invisible flame into my skin I think of a river and I think of old homes and trees and mountains and an ocean breeze and it makes me happy for just a bit.
I don't write much here. Or anywhere. There just doesn't seem like there's anything much to say. |
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| What Remains |
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| 07:30pm 28/07/2007 |
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I got home from my shit job this afternoon to find that someone had stolen my bicycle from my backyard.
If anyone in the Tempe area happens upon a red bicycle with a Poetry is Necessary sticker on it and no grips, please let me know.
We press on daily. |
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Post |
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| She says she doesn't actually owe me any money. I am resigned to accept non-payment. I resign. |
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| 01:06am 20/07/2007 |
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It is not Sunday.
I wake in a haze of sobriety. Lackluster dreams and last night's unforgiving sexual encounter lingering on and in all the left over skin of my body. It is nothing unusual. Eyelids slide up, receding away from the retina. Vision focuses. The dreary contrast of popcorn off white ceiling and dull grey walls. These walls reach just hard enough for grey so they will seem as if some life exists in them. There is the first shot of light through the mostly open blinds of my sliding glass door fondling the curvatures of my face.
It will be another hot day. |
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Post |
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| Just sometimes I still feel the need to vent. |
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| 09:48pm 12/07/2007 |
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At 5pm I sit in the tiled lobby of my new job, waiting along with my new colleagues to be ushered into the call center world once again. It is hard to contain the near crazy laughter bubbling within the core of me. I said I'd never work a call center again, but debt has proven me a liar. I try to console myself with the idea that it will likely only be a year that I need to work there, that the calls are all inbound and that it will make things better for me down the road. Well, down an American capitalist road at any rate.
Somewhere in the midst of this I become - I think understandably - depressed. The wages are nice, but there is no thought involved. Answer a call, say goodbye, move on. Relatively no thought belongs to a cubicle job. I feel my skin crawling as I sit in the training room listening to the trainer feed us the "culture" and history of our store. I listen to a diversity training video tell me not to profile people and am told within 5 minutes later of the profile of customer that comes into the store and how to best serve them. Upper class women (white, though they never say this) anywhere from 24-54. They probably make 78k a year. I seethe.
I have such anger these days I feel as though it has flatlined me. I wake up slovenly and uncommited to this life in general. School is wasting my time and my degree will ultimately get me nowhere. These jobs that pay enough but barely that I love, and these jobs that pay more than is necessary that I can't deal with. Life in America has taught me to adore excess, but I can't help loathing it. I try not to eat more than I need, take more than I need, or do anything to a point where it simply becomes wasteful. Not that I feel I'm perfect at this. But I see all the things we buy and do and say and just reel at how ridiculous and wasteful and self-centered it all is.
I see myself in Arizona and looking at my hands and the ground as their backdrop and feel myself slipping. I have friends that have simply left and gone other places and made lives for themselves, but I feel like this debt is a weight chaining me. I feel responsibility towards it. Though it is not all mine, the majority of it is. This debt keeps me here. Working so I can afford to aquire a new debt, a new chain.
I don't care about finishing school for the same reasons that I do. It's a waste of time, but it takes me outside of the system (though not far) for just a few more moments. I am not afraid of entering this reality of things, I've done it already for a long time, but I've experienced both sides and it no longer has any appeal. I will always be your white lower middle class boy making a pay check that has just enough digits to pay for a roof and inebriation. I'm not even really writing these days.
As I sat through orientation I considered the impact bankruptcy might have on me. I found myself considering whether years of bad credit has that significant an effect on the life I wish to lead. I am awake and feeling trapped and feeling here but gone. Here is something that has gone wrong, and I can't trace the line back to the source. I can't seem to find the reason why.
My tooth still hurts. |
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Read 3 - Post |
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| I have an American Western Literature final tomorrow morning. I don't know when. |
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| 08:55pm 06/05/2007 |
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I skipped out of the Slam Off early on Friday, due to drinking too long the night previous, and getting little to no sleep. Saw a few people. Heard a few poems.
Have one point of contention:
Can we stop saying things at poetry slams like "The points aren't the point?" Because they are. This is why people compete. Please, please for fucks sake stop trying to massage the ego of some new kid that is sad their poem didn't score so well and maybe their message didn't get across the way they wanted it to. Because if they're worried about that, then they should go to an open mic, or write a better slam piece, or perform better. This is why every year there is drama, because points are the point.
I am not a slam poet. I will never be a slam poet. But I do enjoy reading at slams on occasion. The explanation that I have given many people, and will stick with to this day, is that I enjoy the small amount of arrogance it affords me in forcing my words into the ears of 4 - 25 people in an audience. I do not perform my pieces. At least I try not to put any emphasis in the actions of my body, or inflections of voice (aside from where they are appropriate). I try not to over dramatize things. I am not a slam poet. But still. I understand the significance of points.
It's a silly concept, judging poetry. But this is the sport that we invest our time into. I keep waiting for the day to see poetry slams on ESPN5. Right after the Magic the Gathering Tournaments.
To those I didn't say hello to on Friday, hello. I have a tendency to be anti-social.
Here is the piece I read:
Margaret ate nothing but rose petals. We would walk through the park and as we came across bushes full of their green, thorned stems and red full heads, she would ask me to stop for a moment while she knelt down. She put her hands right in there. They came back bleeding and as we started walking again she would pluck each petal delicately before pushing it between her lips, chewing twenty five times for each petal before swallowing. She would smile a lot, and sometimes I could see the leafy bits left over between her teeth. As we held hands the blood from her cuts would slip down her fingers and cover my own. Eventually the blood would trickle from my fingertips onto the paved walk below us. I didn’t ask her at first why she ate rose petals, because I was afraid it might embarrass her or turn her away from me, and she was so beautiful I didn’t want to risk it. But one day, the blood soaking into the small crevices in my skin, I couldn’t take it anymore and I asked her why she ate rose petals.
To stop my shit from smelling, she replied.
Does that work? That can’t work.
Sure it does. She winked and placed another petal in her mouth.
I laughed a little and we kept walking, and the blood still soaked into my skin but somehow it seemed less important now.
But after a while I started noticing that the fragrance of roses trailed her everywhere. Once after a long day at work, she came over and the smell of roses came like a cloud from her body. She sighed and said how stressed she was as she let herself fall onto the couch in a loud, tired thump. After sex, as her sweat glistened down her body, the distinct odor of roses filled the room. I had to open a window to let it all out. Bees started to hover anxiously around the panes of my window at all hours of the day.
Finally her rose petal eating got to be too much. If she got too full from any one rose she would put the rest in plastic and fill up my fridge with slowly rotting red petals. She left thorns all over the place, and they got into my toes and into my socks and when I was at work I would be embarrassed when people plucked them from my shirt. I sat her down on the couch and tried to break up with her, her hand casually taking petals from a jar and eating them one by one as I stammered through my words. But I couldn’t do it. She was so beautiful the words just couldn’t get out, and I left to cool down at the bar.
When I got home, I went to the bathroom to piss and was hit with the full fragrance of roses as I opened the door. Sure enough, sitting in the midst of a murky cloud of yellow, and slowly dissolving paper was one long pile of shit. I pressed down the lever and walked back into the bedroom waking her up. When she opened her eyes she asked what was wrong and I told her to leave. As beautiful as she was, I couldn’t possibly date someone who’s shit doesn’t stink. |
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Read 5 - Post |
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| Things to remember tonight before the weary hand of soberness clears our memory |
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| 03:08am 04/05/2007 |
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(in order of occurrence)
Had some of the best tiramisu of my life.
Realized the futility in studying for an exam tomorrow (today really though, in 7 hours in fact, fuck)
Killed time with Disgaea.
Wrote a new poem experimenting with magical realism.
Won my first poetry slam (though I don't put much sway into this given that there were only 4 slammers - fucking slam, haha)
Watched a co-worker throw her panties at another co-worker singing Kareokee of "It's Not Unusual"
Saw a man, around the age of 85, limber his way slowly from the bathroom of the bar to his own decrepit booth, wearing a derby hat and a pager, dressed in all white (aside from the hat, which was tan) and meet what I can only assume was his wife, dressed in pin stripes, and of similar age, and in a black beret.
Probably put myself on the path of becoming too close to a co-worker.
Listened to a very drunk man (who had been dancing to kareokee all night) tell me how there is a big difference between THOSE WHO KNOW AND THOSE WHO THINK without clarifying said ambiguity and informing myself and cohorts that we ought to "take a physics class" and get back to him.
Wrote a blog in which I misspelled "kareokee" probably more times than i ought.
Went to sleep.
Good night. |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| 09:20am 16/04/2007 |
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Last night I:
Met a smart girl that didn't know who Noam Chomsky is.
Drank way too much in two hours.
Walked home from Casey Moores.
Took the dog on a walk to the park.
Threw up in said park.
Swayed home unsteadily.
(remembered dog) |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| This is not a post. |
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| 10:31pm 05/04/2007 |
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Over the past semester I haven't put much up here, mostly because my writing has all been sitting on my computer in large files or in the hands of professors or writing groups. If you're interested, I've written two stories (10 pages and 16 pages respectively) give me your email address and I will happily email you the files.
Otherwise, maybe something new soon? The semester is winding down after all. |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| Nietzsche Face Punch |
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| 02:01am 23/02/2007 |
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At work, in the back with the spiritual section we have this zen garden set up. It's just a box full of sand resting on top of four wooden legs with a couple of rocks in it. Mostly people set their kids in front of it while they browse the latest from Starhawk or look for some used Sylvia Browne book. Occasionally, people get creative and write things in it. Sometimes it's something uplifting like "Have Faith" or a smiley face with the two rocks as eyes. Just as often it is "FUCK YOU" or "SUCK MY DICK". I guess either set of sand figures has the same effect on me. It is the temporary musings of someone passing thinking they can make permanence from sand. More easily than the message is created it is erased, gone with the slight brush of a hand. This is the idea behind Zen I suppose, that things go as quickly as they come, and to flow with it. I have never really researched Zen and have no plan to, but I suppose I support it if that's the idea. If it's not, I will at least continue to approve of the idea of accepting the coming and passing of things.
Anyway, all of that is mostly irrelevant.
A few nights ago I was working my hour at the back information desk. Since it was the last hour of the night, a part of my job is to ensure that people know we're closing up, gather books that have been largely misplaced into the wrong sections, and in general tidy up. I was killing time waiting for the hour to go by, so I just shelved one book at a time, walking slowly, and asking people if they needed help finding things that I otherwise simply wouldn't have cared about. As I was walking I noticed a card sitting in the Zen garden. I peeked at it and the inked scrawl inside stated "If you picked this up, it belongs to you!" Underlined and everything. As I hadn't actually picked anything up at that point, I let it go. There were something around ten people in that segregated area along with me, so I gave them the opportunity to see it and take it. But no one did.
So at the end of the night I took it and looked through the rest of the card. You've already read the first line of it.
"It is a Random Act of Kindness for you!!! :) Hi, My pastor has asked the church members to commit "Random Acts of Kindness." If we all do 10 that will add up to 50,000 acts! This is my 3rd one. I've left a gift certificate at Whole Foods & put one on a windshield at Fry's. It's so fun. Thanks for receiving :)" After that it was signed with the first name of the person who left it.
Oh, and then despite the fact that there was a signed name after the message, the TO: / FROM: on the gift certificate was listed as:
TO: You
FROM: Jesus
So now we're set up a bit more. I read this, allowing the words to soak in somewhat, but mostly I found myself frustrated. This sort of act (the act itself was a five dollar gift certificate to a restaurant) seems to be exactly the kind of lucrative "we help through buying you" kind of mentality that is wrong with the world. Acts of kindness should not be taken poll of. If they are random, they happen simply because this is what you want to be doing, not because you need to do ten of them reach a specific goal. Where does the random even fit into this? How does the face of anonymity feed hope into a world that needs it? Is a mother still a mother if she sends a child letters of love but never chooses to see them? Don't get me wrong, I didn't see this card and wish desperately for this person to come and nurture me. The point is that by creating a situation in which you leave it to the hands of "fate" to deliver your kindness, you have in all actuality wiped your own hands from the act entirely. Why leave a gift certificate for food in a bookstore where everyone that walks in can afford there own food anyway? Why not leave it in an alley? Or give it to a child that seems malnourished?
There are other issues with the concept as well. What happens when 50,000 acts are completed? Mission over? Do all the suffering people in the world at that point sigh as their shoulders finally feel a little less burdened by random five dollar gift certificates they never saw? Does leaving these small gifts better a person, or encourage them to continue this sort of behavior past the initial ten? I have my doubts. It seems more like a scheme to feel better about oneself by subconsciously knowing that you have done something. Not knowing the actual outcomes acts as an even more brilliant idea for it, because it allows the giver to imagine any number of wonderful schemes. "Why, I bet whoever used that card just happened to be there at the same time as President Bush and why he must have taken that person up on his golden jet and they flew off into the sunset."
There are many things in my life I will never be satisfied with. Organized religion, politics, both of these will always be in that list. I just don't see the point in not owning up to simply wanting to gratify yourself by helping others. If that small obstacle was overcome, if we could all start swallowing pride and stop pretending altruism is really possible, we could start doing more for one another and not feel so secretly guilty about it.
I think there are more things I want to say about this, but I am tired, and it is nearing three a.m. I leave you with the connotations that this persons acronym present. R.A.K. Sound it out, think of torture. Think of the accumulation of points too, if you want to be fair. But make sure to think of it both ways. Yin and Yang.
And shit, that's full circle zen right there. I think I've got this figured out. |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| no title like a title |
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| 12:00am 17/02/2007 |
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This is the piece I read tonight at Terran's slam.
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Francine called again today. At least, that’s my name for her. She tricks me, keeps our relationship spicy by calling at different times throughout the morning, afternoon, and evening. I never know when she’s going to call so when I answer and she says “Hello Mr. Gray, I wanted to talk to you about the money you owe” I feel the shakes vibrating down my body knowing that she’s gotten the best of me once again.
Francine’s got this cool smoky voice, one you can suck down your throat and into your lungs letting it invade every cell of your broke body. When she says words like “money” I feel the hair tingle on the back of my neck and I want to weep at her feet, begging for forgiveness. “You’re four payments behind Mr. Gray, you’re racking up quite a debt.”
“I know” thinking of myself on a rack before her, her sultry words slipping torturously into my ears. “But you don’t understand” and she never does. We always have this play of words. She gets straight to the point, demanding answers now and I side step hesitantly. “I can’t help it” I say “it was a girl.” Always a girl. It’s Francine now, and really she’s not to blame, she’s just doing her job, but it was a girl before as well. One of those, fall in love and fall apart, leaving yourself with no job and only a sliver of plastic to help you get by month to month kind of girls. The kind you fuck mistaking it for something real and by the end of it finding yourself fucked instead.
“Francine, baby” I croon, thinking familiarity is the way to her heart. “You know I want to pay, but this 7.50 an hour job just isn’t letting me. You wouldn’t want me on the streets now would you? I’ve got college papers to write, books to read, I’m going to be famous one day and then you’ll get your money. Promise.”
Francine pretends like she doesn’t even know me. “Mr. Gray, we can help you through this. If you just give me a check number now we’ll take a minimal payment and you can make up the rest in small increments over the next few months.” She’s always offering to help, and I think this is why at times I really think I’m falling for her. She’s got that hot/cold kind of attitude slipping her voice softly over your skin one moment and threatening to sue you the next.
But the problem is, I’m just not man enough to give Francine what she needs. In no uncertain way I tell her “Baby I’ve got nothing. Not a dime to my name. We can bargain all night but neither of us are ever going to get what we want.” I hang up the phone as the last wispy strand of her voice filters through the wires and into the space of my home. At night I dream of Francine, bodiless but voluptuous, and wonder if I will be fool enough to answer the phone again. |
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Read 2 - Post |
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| the earth is no place for casual walking. |
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| 12:39am 11/02/2007 |
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i ended up too drunk tonight, but strangely too sober allowing myself to notice all the things going on.
i watch you thinking yes i broke up with you but not able to ignore all of our friends you made or kept out of the arrangement.
no manner of staying or going back to you is going to change things. no crawling on my knees is going to make me happier with who or what you are but it doesn't change the loneliness that wracks this shivering infested body.
i don't write poems of myself because more often than not they are too melodramatic to be worth paying attention to. instead i shape stories around those i've never met but know are around. knowing that there gossamer troubles are more important than my own.
i find myself afraid of my lacks of conviction. i wake up wondering where we're going, what differences are to be made, where the imagination is that ought to be creeping up this capable spine.
i am egotistal and fault worthy. i am snide and self inflicting. for all the positive ways in which i build myself i hate myself for twice as many. i am an a-typical intellectual bully. in the morning, waking, as i will myself to open these eyes i think of ways to stay asleep hoping my dog won't get too excited at my movement, his nails clacking against the tile floors won't offset my slumber.
at times i think of you in my arms or out of them but there when i wake up and miss that comfort.
it is a hard line following, that of both trying to be and to avoid being alone. |
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| Hello's and Farewell's |
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| 09:32pm 22/01/2007 |
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I didn't go last year, and I was hesitant about this year when I realized that it was a three day event. But after looking at the line up, I'm there.
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Read 1 - Post |
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| The Whites of their Eyes. |
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| 01:18am 22/01/2007 |
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Today in my desert it rained sleet. From miles above the immediate vicinity of my head, semi-solid liquids descended and collected into hesitant droplets in my hand before melting and creating shallow lakes in my palm. I felt the numbing begin and spread from my palm and slowly creep outward, threatening my fingers and my wrists, moving further up my arms making the hair on them rise in uneasy excitement. I dumped my hand quickly of its contents, spilling this icy water blend onto the sidewalk below, causing the cement to take on that oily slippery feeling that only sleet and exxon tankers allow for. I lifted my feet, careful not to drag them along the ground and accidently deposit myself onto the wet firmament as well, and made my way back into the great indoors. Outside the sleet weighed down the frawns of palm trees; the trees themselves taking a downcast, depressed look. Almost as if they were reaching to burrow themselves beneath the dirt, to wait this one out. From behind the safety of a counter I watched the sleet fall silently down and tried not to think of certain things, but of course this never really works.
My last real memory of snow is that of leaving it. Nearly eleven years ago on a particularly dismal, March, Ohio day, my mother and I packed the last of our things into a U-Haul truck, getting ready to leave for Arizona. I hadn't packed much, not my television or half of my clothes. Just the comic books I had collected over the years, video games that I once thought were vitally important, and the few meager CD's that I thought displayed my life so well. My mother didn't pack much either, just some clothes and old movies, photographs and and a few choice items of furniture. A man whom I had never met before, Jim, helped us gather our things and place them into the truck. I knew we were moving there to live with Jim, that he had three daughters whom I had never met either, but I didn't know anything about him. He was so different looking from my father, a little portly to how thin and rigid my father was. His hair in an unkempt tangle of curls, a half full beard sliding down his face, while my father was quickly showing signs of male pattern baldness. He was quiet and solemn to my father's tendency to scream and yell, to force any issue.
I didn't do much of the loading or unloading that day. Instead I sat in the backyard, while my dog lept rabbit-like in the snow, making large holes with his small body. We weren't packing my dog, and I wondered at the easy ignorance of watching someone disappear without realizing it was happening. I cried, thinking of the dog and the friends that I was leaving. Thinking of the small life that I had built up for myself at fifteen, one that at the time I believed to be everything there could be. When they were done packing my mother gently ushered me inside and to the car and I watched the garage door close one last time. As we pulled out of the neighborhood we passed my father on his way in, blowing his horn in long, wearied successions, as if the bleating of his chevrolet would somehow find its way into our hearts and make us stay. We found the freeway though, and started driving Southwest.
I rested my cheek against the cold pane of glass as we drove through Ohio. I watched the trees in a daze, focusing more on the reality of the frost biting my face than the scenery moving more quickly than I could comprehend. As we drove, my mother and I in her car, while Jim drove the U-Haul, my mother and Jim communicated with each other via walkie talkie. My mother and I led the pack, she occasionally giving Jim a heads up to look out his window at something particularly interesting. Now and then Jim offered up a joke of some sort, attempting to somehow lighten the mood, to begin what he hoped would be some sort of bond with me. Later I would regret not taking the offer of that bond up sooner, but at the time I instead decided to pretend as though I was reading. Replying with "sure" and "okay" when they weren't appropriate responses. Most of the time I watched the side mirror, watching the objects we passed grow further and further away.
When we made it into New Mexico the glass against my cheek was hot and I could no longer leave it there for fear of burning myself. The pine trees had been replaced with uninviting cacti, and the rolling snow bound hills replaced with flat dirt that stretched for miles until bunching up into mountains higher than I had ever been before. I rolled down the window to the protest of my mother's concern for wasting A/C and let the warm wind blast my dangling fingers against the side of the door frame. It took us three days and nights to reach Arizona. What we pulled into at the time felt like a sprawling metropolis in comparison to the two horse town I had left behind. Eventually I learned the exageration my small brain had placed upon itself, but at the moment I felt as if I had finally joined the modern world. I was nervous but excited, the snow and my father and Ohio a distant memory of some other life for some other fifteen year old boy.
With the exception of winter capped mountains from a far distance, I have not seen snow since that March day. Today as the sleet threatened to bring the mid-west, or whatever part of the country Ohio really is, to my doorstep, I thought about these things, and in particular that cold glass pane against my cheek as we drove away. Once I am finished with college my plan has been to move to Alaska for at least a year. I am in no way ready for that sort of climate change, but it is something I feel is necessary if I am to move to Portland eventually, or any cold place. As it stands the snow serves only to remind me of a life I've already left behind, and it is something that I need to stand for something I have made my own. There is a beauty in snow that is undeniable, one that more talented people than myself have already spoken many things of. In the crisp purity of its descent, and the transcendental way in which it melts before having truly been known. It is hard and cruel, but sturdy and supportive. And in this, I feel as though everyone can learn something. |
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| Take heed, or speed. |
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| 12:31am 21/01/2007 |
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Diplomas.
Always the diplomas. The words in slightly raised black inked text on paper. Enclosed in glass like a memorial. We hereby present this certificate of long work and long suffering and sex you never got to have because Mrs. Jones was bleeding in the E.R. and you just couldn’t call Peggy in time and all the shows you never got to see because those fucking parents left the oven on and by the time they realized it the child already had third degree burns who didn’t survive anyway but hey I mean you figured out how to use the Demerol to one Hugh Traverse. The diplomas all over the walls, jumping out at my patients telling them how smart I am, how well studied I am. I can name you fifty drugs to solve one problem but you’ll always ask for the most addiction causing one. You’ll want the one that makes you forget your limbs are attached to your body and you’ll ask to for the ones that five years from now you’ll buy from school kids in gas station alleyways.
The diplomas tell you I’m better than you but until now I’ve never left the hospital. You have drama and life stories and I have drama but it is not mine. It is still Mrs. Jones after the bullet passed barely beneath her heart, and it is Ben before the burns got so bad that he no longer saw the point of it all. He was five and I would have felt the same. His parents cried in the waiting room outside and I comforted them. The child left in bed the oven on too long with too much inside and the explosion must have felt like Ben’s closest concept of hell but I stood there and I consoled them. I told them that their son was dead and that I was sorry, that we would do whatever we could to support their negligence. I should have taken a job with CPS. I should have spent more of my time learning how to incarcerate these fucks. But the diplomas don’t afford anything else.
I finally have my practice and my small town and all my dreams I ever wanted. Sherry comes by twice a week to ask for a checkup and she’s always fine just nervous and I tell her as much. She eyes my regrettably youthful face and always asks if she can look at my diplomas that much closer, searching for hope or trust beneath the reflective glass. She runs her perfectly normal fingers through her stress induced thinning hair and doesn’t understand what’s wrong with herself. I fold my hands over my lap sitting in my chair and tell her she should see a therapist. There is no physical problem with her, just that perhaps she worries too much. She stops mid-sentence whatever illness she believes she has and goes quiet. Always goes quiet. She stares at herself staring into the diplomas and suddenly fuck you Dr. Traverse you don’t know shit about me you don’t know what I’ve been through I don’t need a god damned psychiatrist what I fucking need is something to make me be able to sleep at night what I fucking need is for you to stop telling me I’m not sick fuck you.
For a moment. Slight, and short, and against everything I swore for, I think about prescribing her what she wants. I think about upping the dosage, knowing she’ll go well beyond that and I think about the repercussions that it will bring about. In my head I watch the police knocking on the door to the office, asking Jessica if I’m in. Her gum pops louder than any gun firing and she waves them towards the back. At the end of this she will be out of a job but there will still be a paycheck for those final hours. It is all that matters in this place. A S.W.A.T. member thrusts open the door of my office and I sit there, decked out in some Joker like makeup, laughing uncontrollably while clutching Sherry’s obituary. I guess she wasn’t feeling so well after all officers. hahahahhaha. There is the final sound of metal clicking against metal and the are pushing me into the back of a squad car. I know there is blue and red circling, flashing above me, but I cannot find it. I simply watch the short buildings roll by and listen to the static of the police radio.
Instead, I strongly tell Sherry that I believe a psychiatrist is the best way for her to feel better, and am in no way attempting to diminish the apparent suffering that she is undergoing. Sherry cries a bit, and I put my hand on her shoulder reassuringly until she shudders away from it. She is a drug problem in incubation. She is a victim of a small town wishing she had a way to feel like something larger. She would fuck herself into a more cultured world if she had a real way to get there. Sex here means you will stay on the farm, stay in the store, stay in the fifteen mile radius that this town allows. Sherry knows there are drugs but stealing is beneath her and so she cries and pulls her hair out, attempting to get somewhere else through sheer willpower.
When she leaves I think of all the rest of my patients. Ted and his constant asthma, Joyce and her obesity. All of them staring at these diplomas looking for the intelligence hidden behind the words searching for the worldly awareness that twelve years of school and residency afford. We shuffle around one another’s problems. The men and women of this small town hoping to find escape through my nimble fingers but really I am just one of them. And had I been able to fuck my way out of medical school. Had I been able to sleep through it in a drug induced coma maybe I would have found salvation too. When Michael shows up and asks what he can do for his constant insomnia I slip and say try some soma. Try lots of soma. Call me when you wake up, if you ever do. |
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