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.
.

Meant to Matter

We would argue the relevance of Hannah Ardent. Actually, he would argue the relevance. I would argue the necessity of it in his Intro to Philos class, and his inability to teach it.

That class began with 47 students. There were 8 of us left by the final. He said, that was "par for his course.'

He would talk in circles about something historic. We would wait for the connection that never came. He would assign texts and we would buy them and read them. Then he would give us a test: not on the historic circular speeches, and not on the texts assigned. The test would be on a philosopher we hadn’t discussed. When this was pointed out, he’d simply say, “I can’t teach philosophy on a timeline.” Delete the last three Words, and you get to the truth.

He was the kind of professor that made you hate a major you loved. He’d sour your taste for something you had craved. You left that class emptier, having lost something you didn’t think anyone could take away.

He had a little silver ponytail, and the obligatory round framed glasses and corduroy blazer. On our first date he told me he had me all figured out. He was smug as he told a sharpened tale of how I must have married young and was now divorced at 27, and on my own for the first time. It went on from there and included wealthy suburban parents that coddled me. When I told him I’d never been married, left home at 17, mother was an alcoholic, father was a cheating sociopath, and that I grew up dirt poor in a small apartment in Brooklyn, he actually said, “Are you sure?” Because, you know, he couldn’t actually be wrong, could he?

He called me “sweet meat” and insinuated that I didn’t deserve the grade he was giving me. I pointed out that was more of an insult to him that it was to me.


She was a photographer. We worked at the same offbeat professional photo lab for about 8 months. We’d meet in the dark room and make out. She couldn’t wait to introduce me to her parents and her sister, who seemed to disbelieve everything. She had been hurt by an ex who scared me. She ended it when she decided I wasn’t going to fall in love with her. And she was right. But I liked her a lot. Much more than she realized, and I still carry it: a respect that I don’t offer easily. I’m sure it would surprise her how often I think of her, how fondly I remember. She taught me a certain sensitivity. She read The Growing Tree to me. And the last time we spoke she said she was tired.


He was younger than I was, and I was pretty young. He worked in a bookstore and listened to Depeche Mode. He was thoughtful, and gentle, and new. Our friends didn’t mesh, our futures didn’t align. I was always honest about what I was feeling. He got in too deep, and I will always respect him for that. He refused to know it wasn’t going to work until it didn’t. I hate that he remembers the break up, not the experience, first and foremost. But you can’t win them all. I wish there’d been a better way, to have known him for that month without hurting him for longer.


There is always a better way.

And every one was meant to matter.
.