Stay

He liked it to be new.
He liked to start over so it would be new again and he'd have a fresh start.
In the beginning anything is possible.
He liked to begin. He liked to be possible.

I don't remember what he did for a living but I remember he hated his jobs. I remember jokes about cubicles and mindless meetings where nothing was new and nothing was possible. He'd leave one company for another, doing whatever it is that he did. He was always looking. Interviewing. Resigning.

He was always looking for a new apartment. One closer to the city. One cheaper. On a quieter block. A new place. A fresh start.

He was always trading in his cars. Bigger. Better. A convertible. A classic.

He'd break up with her so they could begin again. But eventually it couldn't be new. Eventually, it was her again. And that wasn't anything's possible. Eventually she wasn't a beginning.
Inevitably, she was part of a pattern.

I kept in touch with her until she moved away, before email and texts and blogs and twitter, back in 1992 when it was like we were all Amish. He didn't like patterns. And then she was gone.

I think for a while some of us thought he was brave. Some of us thought it was brave to begin again.

But the eventual and inevitable made too many agains. He never gave things a chance to work. He never knew how a story could end.
He never got to the place where you know all the Words by heart,
And you're sitting shoulder to shoulder on the hood of somebody's car,
Sharing a bag of chips and watching the setting sun or a ball game.
In a breeze, in a whisper,
In the things that don't matter.
In the things that just are.
Like your oldest Levi's - faded, worn, and broken-in.

The real work is in the middle. The real work is in getting there.
The real work wasn't in buying the damn jeans. It was in keeping them all this time.
The time - that allowed those dungarees to become your favorites.

He never built any equity.
He was never vested.
And eventually, neither were we.


"Ridin' high, when I was king.
Played it hard and fast, 'cause I had everything."
-Beggin', by Madcon
.

Exit

Maybe it was nothing you said.
Maybe it was just something I heard.

Maybe it was something you didn't say that lingered in the darkness,
And that could be why I still sleep with a light on,
Looking for things that aren't there
Like little lawn donkeys that wander off and disappear somewhere deep into Staten Island.

Or maybe it was something you said
On the Turnpike, on time, in daylight.
But I don't want these to be the things I remember.
I know I don't want to be remembered that way.
I don't want to remember every dripping detail of your center or your scent.
So don't ask me if I knew it was your song.
Maybe that's something else you never said.

I'm stopped at the end of the exit ramp tonight,
Trying to get the right song and the write Words.
And I still don't know if you went left or right.
And I don't remember when we met.
I still don't wear a watch.
Was it something you said
way back when. When, back there,
as I listened to all the things I couldn't hear.
But I still get lost on the Turnpike
no matter what time it is.

Here in between the rain and the radio
I realize there was nothing you could have said.
There was nothing you could have made me remember.
I knew there was only one ending to my story.
There was only one thing to Be.
But the rent was late and the watch was broken.
It was nothing you said.
It was everything you didn't.
You slept through the best parts
and I don't set alarms.

Close your eyes when you're hiding in the dark
or the headlights will find you and give you away.
With out the drummer driving this song -
It's just something else
you never said
that I don't want to remember.

Intrepidly

It was during a drive to Mexico,
a long nighttime drive down Route 1
with the ocean beside us,
someplace in between San Diego and Rosarita
when he told.

We had the world to ourselves
deep into the horizon
as far as the eye could see.
I suppose he felt safe. I suppose he felt resigned.
He smiled as he told me, a brave smile. A clear voice.
He said that everyone would pass one day.
All of us.
The only difference was
he knew when.

And instead of placing fear or anger in that,
he let it comfort him,
like Bactine on your scraped knee when you're 9.

The sun was never brighter.
And that drive back up the coast wasn't nearly long enough.

We were at that age where it seemed unthinkable and far away and not possible. I don't know where he became brave, I don't know if the smile was forced for my swallowing. It was as if he'd made a simple decision some time on the Grapevine to find the power in a situation to which he was powerless.

I'm at the age now where it happens sometimes.
And I don't know many people who kept the ocean beside them.
I don't know many who found their center in the passing.
He knew much more than when.

He was Bactine and sunshine.

Worded You

I came to care about the shudder of winter
and the little portraits I’d compose
of faces past and turmoils evened.
I came to understand the differences between the agings.
There is the immediate.
There is the momentary.
And in the end there is the knowing.

I never painted your portrait.
I never knew your moments
and I never understood what failed to shudder in your winter.

If this were fiction, right here is where I’d say: He’d look back on that storm for decades to follow with a sense of connection to the woman who cared.

But this isn’t fiction. And I didn't.

This is the reverence. And now I do.

It’s the shudder in the winter in the portrait of the window where I came to care.
I came to care.
But when I left,
When I stopped coming,
You stopped looking through that window.

I came to care about the shudder of your windows and the portrait of your winter.
But I never Worded you.

And for that,
I will always be sorry.

Bay Parkway

The truth is subjective and tainted.
She said things she can never take back. Thoughtless things, that won the battles over the years and cost her the war in the end.

She was always an angry liar. Perhaps she was so busy maintaining the lies that she forgot to remember the handful of good things I used to embrace. When you're alone in the remembering you tend to question, and let go.

The truth is I knew her in a way and a place, in a glimpse and a rarity, on a day that will never dawn again. I saw her with eyes that were innocent and trusting.
And never again. And not.

The truth is dark and difficult which is why we left it in Brooklyn a million years ago.
The Christmas cards, the convertible, and the old black and white TV in the bedroom. It was an episode of The Wonder Years that never aired.

The truth is that I've been moving away for a very long time. And it's too late to reverse that.
I ran faster in the hating. I forgot which way points east.


"We're just a million little gods causing rainstorms
Turning every good thing to rust."
- Arcade Fire
.

Straw

We were a table of 15 or so, after hours. After working. We were a large group around nine at night ordering dinner and drinks.

He was tall and handsome with sweetness in his eyes and I remember watching while we all ordered. He wrote nothing down. He just listened. And I remember watching, because back then I was a photographer, and time revealed that he had gotten every order right.

The parking situation in Fort Lee was rough but I drove a Hyundai at the time and I could squeeze into those tight spots. Everyone at the salon would go to that restaurant after work, after hours, on Fridays. And I would squeeze into those tight spots, and I could see, and he would take me out for weird diner dinners and get mad if the waiter asked for my number. In a way, the diners could see too. I think everyone could tell, if they looked. I think it was there.

We'd walk to CVS from his studio apartment because once you had a parking spot you didn't want to move. He loved my shoes. He had beautiful thick dark curly hair and a pretty face, and he told me that story about pack animals that everyone who attended West Point tells. And when I made my "I'm not a pack animal" speech he was as impressed as I had been when he remembered 15 dinner orders. He was impressed and I believe he knew what I saw in his beautiful eyes but he would not speak it. Not even in a tight spot. And I kept his secrets, even the ones he didn't give me.

He surrendered the seeing because he had people that expected things from him. It was as if you could feel how torn he was. It was hard to be used but I figured it out. He was being counselled by the busy bodies at the most fabulous trendy 3 hour wait for a table restaurant and I was being offered dating advice from the very fucked up beautiful people of the design team at the most happening salon. All he could do was memorize. And there wasn't anything I could do except be the photographer and warn the reactionaries to chill.

And that's the thing about being the photographer: you have to see. I was so busy seeing that I couldn't hear the trains or the anorexics and I didn't tell anyone my boyfriend was gay. I just drank a lot of free cappuccinos and shopped at Udelco in Nyack.

I bumped into him years later and he took me for lunch. I was no longer working at the most fabulous salon and he was no longer waiting happening tables without paper and pen. The poor thing actually introduced his boyfriend to me as his roommate. I'm not sure which one of us was more annoyed. But his eyes were still so beautiful. And I could feel him struggling. I could feel the pressure and the expectations, and the years of his parents not being photographers.

I wish he had let me be his friend. I wish he had let me know him. The most he let me do was to accept his apology. He apologized with his mouth and his eyes. He offered no explanation or excuse. He just was what he was. And for that one brief moment in the sun that nobody memorized or photographed, he was straw.

Acquiescence

I am through with the ghost of you.
I am through with the things that came in daylight
and the things you never said.
I am through with the part of me that never forgave you.

"My throat is trying to be sore. I'm thinking about what I'm not saying that maybe I should or what I may have said but shouldn't."
-numinous

It all comes down to winter.
And everything I didn't know.
I've spent too long in what went wrong.
I'd almost forgotten what didn't.

I used to wish I'd known you before I loved you. I used to wish there had been some warning.
But had I known, had I been warned, I would never have lain beside you. And I would have missed those moments I'm missing now.

It all comes down to winter.
And the cold of you, and the snow.

I created the sanctity of explanation
willing away the blindness and the mistakes.
I was reduced to the final moment
when the lesson was clear and the hurting began.
In hindsight I recalled the feeling
of how it all went wrong
instead of that first feeling
of how it could have gone anywhere.

And then that song plays on the radio.
That song that takes me right back to that place
Lying beside you.

It all came down to winter
and I'm through.

I am through reliving the mornings that followed.
I just want to remember the things we said in the dark.

"And the sound we make together
Is the music to the story in your eyes."
- Moody Blues

.

Thanks, Katie

Three Dames With A Clue interviewed me.
It's posted as an Authentic Expression on their site.

I'm pretty tickled. It's an honor to be included on a cool site like that.
Thanks, Ladies.

Everything is Possible

"Today is pregnant."
- cosRobPerkins

I pulled over at the county airport and sat in my car watching little planes take off on little journeys.

Sometimes when you're looking at the newly broken glass thinking about things you don't normally think about, the way suddenly becomes clear.

I remember driving south on Route 1 down the coast of California until we ran out of cash. We drank wine and slept on the beach. We cleaned somebody's house for gas money.
I remember waking up one morning with an idea and walking into the admissions office at a college.
I remember being in the Dallas Fort Worth airport on a hold over and just walking out those glass doors into the daylight. Missing my connection. Not going home. Having no idea what I was doing or where I was going.

Today is pregnant with possibility.

We're only limited by our own self imposed life condoms and dream abortions. Little planes and little journeys are always within reach.

"Standing in the sun with a popsicle
Everything is possible
With alot of luck and a pretty face
And some time to waste.
Leave without a trace."
-Soul Asylum
.

Something Sacred

"I’m not the light outside of the window
I’m not a damsel in distress.
I’m not the gold at the end of the rainbow
And I am not a lost princess.
Are you my love, my landlord, my lawyer?
Are you the one I build my world around?
Or are we wrapped in black paranoia
Ready to attack and take each other down."
- Second Person



We search for answers in the fringe.
In the parts that don't make any sense,
the moments that follow the events that change everything forever.
Like a secondary virus, that attaches and leeches off the damage from the first.
That's where we look for reasons.
That's where we ask the big questions.

He went alone. He believed in aftermath but he never made excuses. I remember the way he could stand up and take it no matter how bad it got. But I remember how he didn't fit in, and how sensitive he was. He'd say things with such meaning, but only in whisper. Only in the quiet. He knew most people around us didn't want to hear.

He went alone. Probably because he knew he wouldn't be returning. He warned me he'd do this one day. But he didn't say when or where. He didn't explain. I think he understood that it would be more significant for us to wonder why than to know.

He went alone, and that was the last we knew. He just disappeared. He started again someplace. The bus rolled back into town and he wasn't on it. Everyone was surprised except me. As sad as I was I cheered inside. He started over. And I believe he's someplace good and he isn't alone anymore.

I believe in self inflicted excommunication. I believe in profiles and bios. I believe we write our own story. I believe we can invent our selves and our lives. I believe in range erase and starting from scratch.


The answers aren't sacred.
The questions are.


.

Never Mind

By the time you love me I'll be long gone.

There's some serious soul searching to do and I'm pseudo semi seriously invincible.

Admit it. This is all too familiar. You know it on a dark level, in a secret place. Everything I said rings true in some way. The things I said when you didn't love me don't matter. It's only in hindsight that you squint and duck.

This is all too you. The real you, the buried you. The earth of you. It's you in the middle of the night, in the middle of your madness and genius and ache. It's the you I saw, even when you wouldn't let me. It's the you I remember.

You weren't made of gold. But I could see you glimmer.
It's in the way you sigh when you suddenly see.

It's your best stuff and you know it. It's the work you do when you aren't on the clock.
Like the things you write in your head while you're driving all alone in the rain.

You were always misfired. The right Word, the wrong moment. The right road, the wrong way.

And this is what they mean when they say
never mind.
.

The Road

It's 4AM and he's saying where can we go from here, and I'm saying where can we get something to eat. He's saying try to be serious, and I'm saying this isn't the way.

I'm saying I think I can build something real. I'm saying I don't know how to get there. He's saying I think there's a vaccine for that.

It was a line or a moment. Either way it was then and temporary. Passed. And in time it was nothing more than a story I'd tell over and over, with tequila and squinting, in local dives with stand still faces. In time what I said wasn't as relative as the Words I'd remember. In time, this would become the road.

And I remember his saying over and over that eventually we will all find our own way.
And I remember knowing that it finds us.

Travel advisory prevents departures and he's saying maybe we were meant to stay. I'm saying we should fight harder to go. And I'm telling him for once I am sure this is the way.

He's saying this is the road that lead me astray. And I'm saying,
all roads,
my love,
go there.

I'm saying I can hear the voices in your head that turn down the blankets and put a mint on the pillow inviting you to surrender and lay down. He's saying lay down. He's saying surrender. And I'm saying there's more to say.

It went up and down like headlights in the rearview going over speed bumps, and he's saying maybe he should slow down. And I'm saying I can't be your quota cop. You go as fast as you need to go.

He's saying this road has no outlet. He's saying this road only goes one way and there is no detour. He's saying you look like an angel in the fading. And I'm saying I know: The devil told me.

He's saying things like when and once and I'm saying pull over. I will walk this alone.



-The photo is by Richard Bray, who gave me his permission to post it here with my Words.

Intermission with LD

While watching Disturbia:

LD – Where do I know that guy from?

Me – That’s David Morse. You know him from St Elsewhere.

LD – Is that the guy from the Greatest American Hero?

Me – No. That was the guy from Carrie. [William Katt]

LD – Oh. OK. Then, is he the guy from The Kristy McNichol show?

Me – Family. No. [Gary Frank]

LD – The Paper Chase?

Me – No. Wait, which one? The movie or the TV show?

LD – He was in one of them?

Me – No, he wasn’t in either.

LD - Then why the hell are you asking me that?

Me – Sorry.

LD – I’m pretty sure he was the one in the movie.

Me – No, in the movie that’s Timothy Bottoms - The Last Picture Show. Dirt.

LD – So he was in the TV show then.

Me – No! [James Stephens]

LD – I’m pretty sure he was a doctor in something.

Me – He was! You’re right! That’s what I said first! You know him from St. Elsewhere!

LD – Wait, what was the one with the rats?

Me - Oh yeah. Willard.

LD – Is that this guy?

Me – No. that was Bruce Davison. And we had this conversation when you saw him on the L Word.

LD – That’s right! And I determined that all these guys are the same guy!!

Me – They really aren’t. Look, this is the guy from Twelve Monkeys. And he plays the dick cop on House.

LD, looking at the movie again, – 16 Blocks?

Me – Yes! Yes, he was the dick cop in 16 Blocks, too!

LD – Ah, OK! I got it now. The guy from Equus!

Me – What?! No! Not even close. [Peter Firth]

LD – Yes-close! Equus-guy looks just like the rest of these guys if they are in fact plural.

Me – Alright, he looks like them a little, but he’s English.

LD – So? That means he can’t look like any body?

Me – Forget it. Just watch the movie.

LD, after short pause, - I have a thing for Shia. Was he in Empire Records?

The Wrinkle

I remember watching him iron his shirts. I remember thinking it was a waste of time. They were polyester blend wash and wear, and if he wanted to be that precise he could have just had them pressed at the cleaners. He worked on them every week on a certain day that he designated as ironing day. He couldn't come out with us to grab a beer because it was ironing day. I remember that.

And I remember watching.

I had decided it was some kind of exercise, some kind of effort he made, some kind of physical manifestation for things that were going on cerebrally. Spiritually. Every wrinkle represented a failure. And he could erase them if he tried hard enough.

He was someone haunted. Someone who missed out on many things but made time to iron. He was someone that couldn't resist a certain temptation. He had an idea in his head, in image of what the whole thing should be. He had the whole thing in mind.

But the whole thing can be taken down swiftly without warning. One lost piece of mail. One dove in the engine. One missed step. One act of an unseen God.

One wrinkle.

I guess some things are just too irresistible
Like puppies.
And heroine.

Vicissitude

Most people who knew me,
don't now.

"I like a view, but I like to sit with my back turned to it."
- Gertrude Stein

I used to work with a guy named Glyn who became mysteriously ill. We disagreed on everything and argued about nothing at all. And then one day he wasn't there. And nobody knew why. Word trickled in over the months to follow that he was sick. No one seemed to know anything more.

Everything. Nothing. Nobody. Anything.
In that order.

I think through those intense work related fights he saw a side of me clearly, isolated and displayed. I think he knew a part of me no one knew. Not then. Not now.

He was a distraction. It was the kind of simplicity that we all swallow daily, the kind of thing we all forget and lose even while regurgitating it constantly. Somehow in the emotional vertigo of the time I never slowed down and stood up long enough to miss him. And then one day it was over.

Silly significant exchanges regarding credits and debits and products returned remain in my mind twenty years later. Had he not fallen ill, had he not disappeared, I don't know if I'd remember him at all. Somehow that makes it worse.

When people talk about regret, I think about things like this.
People like Glyn.
People who were moments.
And people who weren't.

We only get so many chances to connect. I hate feeling like I missed so many of them.

Whiskey, Guns, & Ammo

"You can tell alot about a person by how they hold their hands up [at gun point.]"
- Peter Berg

Some things aren't negotiable.

And some times it takes an extreme act to force people to come face to face with what matters.

There's a history not everyone knows and a bottom line that's denied. We did what we did with good intention. We thought we were doing something nice. We had no idea we weren't among friends. We won't make that error again.

Hours and tearings have taken their toll. It wasn't the first time but it will be the last.
And we'd rather lose than win like they have. It won't matter any more, and it won't hurt any less.

Put the gun down.

Gracility

I remember the way he spoke about his father. I remember because I understood. I remember understanding. He'd use Words like absent and temper. And I knew those Words. 

He told me that the funeral wasn't easy, having to accept condolences from people that didn't understand the little hell. He told me he took a long walk around the cemetery, reading names and dates and feeling like a ghost. He told me he walked home.

He told me later that he was late with his rent, and his hours had been cut, and he had to sell his car. He told me that he didn't understand why it hadn't all hit him yet. Time would have a way of catching up. He wondered if maybe he was walking faster, or if maybe the world had slowed down.

But I think the things we say hang in the air around us like that sometimes. At least until they fall back to Earth to hit us, like he said. 

He'll tell you he's fine if you ask. He'll smile and sell it like a weird late night television commercial. And then he'll sort of tune you out, nodding politely as if to say, "I really just can't watch your bad movie right now." 

The hardest things to fix are the things that aren't broken. 

We went out for our annual new year drink last month. It used to be dirty martinis for two. He had a Pellegrino. And he told me he was moving.

The things they argued about for years like haircuts and hobbies seemed so meaningless at the time. But I notice now that he's cut his hair. And he hasn't drawn anything in months. 

It alarms me how the dead have a way of taking us with them.

"It doesn't feel real until you tell your parents."

Tal Shafik

Mickey Rourke

I love you, Mickey.
XOXOXOXO

Continuum

"It's not the ups and downs that make life difficult,
it's the jerks."

- Charles Chaplin






Night came through the door pretty fast, shaking off snow and cold and leaving it with me in my home. This is where I live.
This is how.

I like the drive in the darkness. I don’t want to see with someone else’s light. I don’t want to see the houses and roadways bared and x-rayed. I want to see them at Night, in moonlight, in the passing headlights and the glow of the snow and porch lanterns. This is the way. That’s my light. That is how I want to see.
This is how.

I need time in an unparalleled way. I need to move things at a certain pace. Eyes adjusting to the sun that shines on everyone else. Let me sink into the cold the Night brought.
I want to make this part clear: Night was invited.

You have nothing on me.
.

In the Quiet

I saw this on Postsecret.com today and it hit me hard. So I decided to share it here, and share some photos since I can't find it in me to share any Words right now.














Namaste.
.