Dreamings

I am on an island or a coastline. The sand is bright and there is light everywhere. There is a war going on. Is it world war 2? . I am a soldier. We aren’t fighting, but camping out. Guarding the beach. There is an encampment on one side of beach and a small hut on the other. The coastline is white and clean and sparkling. The colors contrast with a brilliance that hurts my eyes. I feel like I belong. I love it here.

Everyday at a certain time–we’ll say 4pm–a few of the soldiers guarding the island volunteer to venture down to the hut. They sit there until 3 missle/rockets come from somewhere just out of sight. A ship? A submarine? The rockets appear from the sky.

The missiles will only come at 4pm. They will be strike the hut, killing everyone inside.

We sit there because we are following an agreement. Tradition. Each day, a few more people wander down to the hut. Their faces aren’t remorseful, or sad, or pained. They are without expression, shuffling towards doom.

I’ve come to love the island and the beach. i love protecting it. It reminds me of home and contentment more than anywhere else ever has. I’m warm and comfortable and tingling and what’s more, I’m devoid of any guilt for feeling this way.

It finally comes my time to fulfill my obligation; I must go down to the hut at 4pm.

Inside the hut there is a sandy floor and a white ceiling fan swinging lazily above me. The walls are made of cork, brown and bare. A water cooler stands at one side. Out in front of the hut are bright, aluminum bleachers, the kind you see at little league baseball games.

There are about 10 people on those silver benches, relaxing on their elbows, chatting. Some are typing on laptops. Not everyone from the island has come down to be sacrificed, but there are many.

I can’t make myself sit in the front row. I hang out on the back seat and loiter on the sides of the bleachers. I look at my shoes and kick the drfitwood, avoiding, waiting. I give a look towards the shack up the beach. My friends are there and they don’t know why I’ve decided to stroll down to the hut. They can’t understand why I’d give my life for a place that I’ve just discovered. They are waving their arms, urging me to turn back, to come away from the bleachers.

I know the islanders sitting on the aluminum benches. They are people from my own life. A presence hangs on them and projects outwards. They are the elite. They sneer and scowl at me, doubting that I will sit with them. They don’t feel like I’ve been on the island long enough to deserve to be sacrificed. They themselves don’t want to be sacrificed either, but they cannot shake their obligation, so they treat it as a priviledge. A privilledge to be held over everyone.

I look at my watch and it is 3:55. I am overwhelmed , my head is screaming and twisting inside. I start backing away from the bleachers. I sit 10 feet away from the shack in the hot sand. The water rushes over my toes. I move to 50 feet away. Eventually I begin to walk back to the shack, my head is down, I am a coward.

Suddenly, my grandfather comes running towards me. He is healthy, he is bouncing and cheerful. He is sprinting down the beach, negotiating the deep, wet sand, trying to get to the hut before 4:00. I stop him briefly and just stare at him. I gaze at him and he meets my eyes with his own. He doesn’t say a word, and I don’t want to spoil the moment by talking. Neither of us makes a sound for a minute that seems to stretch out much longer than it is.

Suddenly, the rockets begin to fire from across the way. I can see one rocket hit the chest of someone sitting on those bleachers. It explodes into a fireball. He is knocked backwards, out of his seat. The second rocket hits the hut straight on and engulfs the entire party in fire. I whip my head around to see if I can glimpse the source of the rockets and notice the last one has been fired except it’s bending slightly funny. It’s coming directly towards me and my grandfather. Except, now this person is not my grandfather, he is an older man, with gray hair, but he isn’t related to me. I flinch at the sight of the missile and the man who just was my grandfather leaps in the path of missile. It hits him 5 feet from where I’m standing.

There is no explosion. There is no fire. The missile is like a spear. For some reason it doesn’t ignite. Sand and smoke are everywhere. And that’s all I can see for a time.

Running down the beach from the shack I see my old rowing coach. He is a huge, slightly pudgy man. He is Canadian. I don’t recall him being a particularly good coach, but, I made my first national team with him, so he must have been doing something right. He is wearing a white t-shirt with jeans and some odd looking sandals.

I look down, searching for the wise man, searching for remains. Pawing through the sand like a bloodhound, I find an old pair of pruning shears. They are ashen, smooth, about 3 feet long, and smell like gunpowder. The rubber grips are missing. It is solidly metal. Something lets me know that this is the old man’s skeleton. These are his remains. This industrial looking, slightly wet, pair of gardening shears.

I look up and my coach is standing next to me. By this time, a crowd has formed around me. My coach angrily shoos everyone a step back, and without a word, collapses me into his arms. My face flattens against his slightly doughy shoulder and I feel the cotton of the t-shirt and smell the detergent. I am shaking, still holding the oversized pair of scissors. I begin to cry. I sob uncontrollably. And wake up.

My pillow is wet and my eyes are full of water. I don’t know where I am and my alarm clock stares at my face,

cold and incandescent. I realize my room, my fan on the floor, the clothes in my closet, my bed.

I immediately wish I was back on the island.

Nothing more than

I blow through the wind  and it, in turn, blows through my hair and the sun colors my cheeks as I ride down the gentle slope. No helmet on my head, sandals on my feet, and headphones in my ears, I’m reckless and terribly free. It is Thursday evening-time and soon it will be dinner. Time for stir-fry with soy sauce or mac and cheese or perhaps a bowl of cereal.

This Thursday, for some reason that I can’t quite place, the one-way street invites me to cruise against its grain. I never do this and I get annoyed when I see others do it. It’s silly and dangerous and cyclists are technically supposed to follow the rules of the road, but today I can’t feel my ordinary indignation rise up outta my gut. It’s usually quite prominent, but not today.

I’m even trying out riding with no hands, a trick I could never master when younger, but something I’m beginning to relish doing. I never thought of myself as old until I began to realize I’ll never have the same sort of wondered amazement that I once had about the world. About buying a new t-shirt, about going to a bar, about ordering a drink at that bar. About kissing a girl. The uncomfortable excitement, the nervous thrill, the chatter inside your head. Terrible and full of memories. It’s what you reminisce about with friends and write about on facebook and blog about in diaries. That awful giddy newness.  In most cases, that stuff is normal now. It’s routine. I figure, those things are old and so am I, so I’ll ride down a one-way street with no hands.

Bulletproof…I wish I was, comes on and I lean back. The light momentarily blinds me and I’m full of it. Self-pity, doubt, frustration, loneliness. Call it what you want. It’s a sluggish, breathtaking feeling. My chest is reluctant to move when I breathe.  The pea soup of rejection. It’s wonderful and I try and enjoy it.  At least it’s a new feeling.  There is a purpose for it, a reason.

The sun, for once, does not attempt to lift my gaze or hog the attention for itself. Rather, the Philadephia haze, the mug, it accentuates the feeling, It personifies it. I can roll it around on my tongue, swallow it, and bring it back up if I need another taste.

I’m past attempting to figure out what went wrong, what I did, and how I got in so deep (which, is really only the kiddie pool). Perhaps it’s because I sometimes talk and write and think like this.

I know there are more important things, but I don’t find anything else as compelling right now. Just letting this sink in is enough, for now. Perhaps that’s why I feel so oddly content while feeling so weighted.

It’s been so long since I’ve felt this way, and suddenly, I am young again.

A blast from the past. Part 1. Monday Oct 31, 2005.

The first in a series of posts. I used to have a few webjournals back in the day. I love re-reading what I wrote (despite the awkward phrasing and subpar grammar). I often don’t think I’ve grown at all since I graduated, since I moved to Philly. Maybe I should reevaluate that sentiment. Or, perhaps I’ve just buried all these feelings, way way down.

Rose Parade

What seems really fun and exciting to most people just isnt fun for me. Why cant I enjoy myself? When everyone wants to go out and drink I always steer the conversation back to rowing. I really cant stand going out to dinner. Its not that fun. The food is good, but you have to pay for it and you have to endure the possibility that the underpaid cook spit in your bowl of soup which is also dirty because the horribly underpaid dishwasher just rinsed it a little and stuck it back on the shelf. I think of every potentially bad thing before it happens. I fantasize about erging while Im out to dinner with someone. Ive probably done it to everyone reading this blog cause Ive been out to dinner with almost everyone that subscribes. I fantasize about my heart rate being at 160 for an hour. I dream of pain.

I wrote an email to Emily yesterday saying I was sorry. It doesnt make up for what a jerk I was, but at least its something. Being alone makes me realize how much I need to acknowledge my mistakes and not gloss over them. I have a very selective memory.

Sex isnt all that special. Intercourse isnt that bad, but all the bullshit is. Its not worth it to me. Honestly, I can see myself not having sex again for a really long time. I just wont put any effort into it. I’d go as far as to say that if a naked Swedish model entered my studio apartment right now and professed her epic desire to be with me over and over on my memory foam mattress on the floor in the corner, I might consider the proposition for a moment (to make it seem like Im thinking hard about it so she wont be so mad), turn back to my computer and keep typing my xanga. Actually, Id probably get her a ski parka and boxers cause its cold outside, offer her some pumpkin granola from whole foods, and then continue typing.

Remember when you were younger and you would curse and yell at your parents for some restriction they put on you, like, your curfew? You would swear at them and say you hated them. They’d say that you’ll feel differently when you were older. Eventually you’d realize your error and that you really did love them all along despite your sworn hatred. At the time though you knew that you hated them and nothing was going to change that. Its kinda like that with me and sex. Sex isnt that great and I dont really want to have it. I dont see my thought process changing anytime soon either.

Where did this come from? It hasnt always been this way. As far as I can tell it started this summer. At the SRC or in physics class or on my ride down the state I decided that sex itself wasnt worth going out and trying for , whereas before, consistent sex would reassure me I was consistently attractive. The situps were paying off.

Sex let me know I looked decent enough. It reassured me no one noticed my stutter (or they ignored it and didnt care). Sex would make me feel special again and again.

However, as a result, I wouldnt give a damn about the girl after we fucked. Her usefulness had ended. I wanted to please her and be a good lover. But I knew I was nothing special, better than average probably, but nothing to write your mother about (Im just typing stream of consciousness here so if you see something that doesnt quite fit-for instance, writing home to your mother about good sex-just go with it)

I suppose this isnt any different than lots of insecure teenagers and quarter-lifers. I wasnt unique. But isn’t it the way I view it now abnormal? I have virtually no desire to flirt. I know sex wont make me happy and validated. It wont make me feel any better about myself than I already do. Big build up. Huge let down. I’ll lose sleep. I’ll probably drink too much and be unable to practice the next morning. Its not worth it.

And more importantly, I know I’ll probably end up hurting the girl. I wont be able to spend enough time with her cause I’ll being rowing. Not that I dont want to be social (well, maybe, we’ll get into this topic in a later blog), but I dont want to go out when I have things to do. There are always things (read:ergs) to do. Am I using rowing to hide from everything else?

I wont want to call her for fear that she’ll guilt me into going out with her. I dont want to see her get involved with me, when I know that deep down, Im fine on my own, without her. Brittany and I used to have fights over the summer and then used to play the “who would call who first” game. I never called first. I was ok. She would give in and call. I respect her for that. She was the bigger person and knew that our dissagreement needed to be talked about. Melissa used to never let me leave the room when we were arguing. She knew I would go and probably have no inclination to go back and resolve anything. In short, I could live with being an asshole. I could live with being callous. No one should put up with that. No one should be emotionally invested enough to be hurt with that shit. Not having sex means I cant do it to them anymore.

Ive been writing a lot of ranting negative entries lately. Entries that arent punctuated by much humor or relief. Im not funny when Im alone.

Sadly, this recently happened.

Being up on my current events helps me with the ladies.

Unrequited?

Just to add to the confusion surrounding the job, school, the year off, feeling unmotivated, is finding that I actually like someone. That part is great. It’s been so long since I’ve really felt like investing myself with someone that I barely know. I’ve had lots of opportunities, but nothing really felt on. She has my sense of humor, my slightly disaffected perspective, a similar taste in music, a proclivity for riding bikes and chatting on gmail. This one does.

And, of course, I don’t know if she reciprocates my affections. I’m so good at being cool and uncaring towards women that I’m not really interested in, and so bad at not coming too strong to women that I actually like.

We’re both too sarcastic to give any indication either way (though I keep dropping major hints: i.e. “you do a better job batting your eyes and begging for help while you have pink eye than most people do when healthy” (wow, what a terrible line, yes she has pink eye, yes this is a parentheses inside a parentheses).

Being rejected sucks. Not knowing if you’re currently getting rejected sucks even more.

Keep a Steel Helmet Handy

Soon I will clean up my desk and clean my office of all these papers I’ve generated. The account analysis statements, the deposition folders, the status reports and memorandums. The email marked as privileged under an attorney-client agreement but mistakenly produced to us and then requested in numerous official looking letters of correspondence to be returned to the opposing counsel. So much hand-wringing and pontificating and soul-searching and stern words over a copy of a Mid-March, in like a lamb- springtime email.   That email, and the documents written about that email will all go in the same trash heap. The one piece of scrap paper one which I wrote the phone number of the corner CVS will go in the same pile as the 800 pages of legal brief that I worked on high above the twinkling lights of the city at 11:00 pm a few days before Christmas 2007.

The building owners claim this heap will be sorted by various belts and conveyors and automations and electronics, resulting in a recycles pile and a “wet” pile. I have no contrary facts to throw in their smirking faces, no documents stating otherwise, still, what he says to me seems highly unlikely. Maybe it’s because he wears a mustache.

If there really is a recycled pile, I may even use the very same paper fibers 20 years from now in a letter, or in my printer as I print directions to an aunt’s house, or in a draft of my will.

The wet pile will go to Fresh Kills or some island off of South Carolina or perhaps much closer, pumped into the Delaware, or the Chesapeake. The same Chesapeake out of which truckloads of Tilapia and Cod are extracted. Extracted and shipped to the Rittenhouse Square farmers market that I will visit later today.

It’s so cyclical it eats at me. Results are suddenly hard to define, and even harder to attain. At what point do you stop dreaming about the things you might do, and change, and experience, and make better? I sometimes wonder if I’m getting close to that, or if those dreams were an illusion to begin with. If they were indeed a mirage, I should be happy I solved that mystery, I pieced together that puzzle. I cracked that code.

I can’t quite figure if thoughts like these are uplifting or melancholy. Perhaps they are both, or neither. Perhaps they just are.

The last 11 months I’ve worked on one case, one effort, everyday. Today it settles. I suppose that’s a good thing, it’s what’s good for the firm, it’s what’s good for the attorneys here. It’s what everyone’s been hoping for, been asking for. Financial restitution for the class members and money for our time. Teaching the bad guys a lesson. Making them pay for the money they stole, laundered, and then invested in other stealings, launderings. Like mortgages.

It is a good thing, but I don’t feel completely good about it. These decisions are made, and no one asks my permission. No one asks me if I’m ready for it to be done. No one asks if I can deal with moving on to something else. And, to be honest (that’s a funny expression, why would I not be?), I don’t know if I ever will.

Will I someday wake up and realize that this too shall pass? That whatever seemed immutable and frozen and pure will someday be sullied and torn down and devalued.

These thoughts pass through my mind as I sit here at my desk with a view. Empty coffee paper cups, long forgotten stacks of paper, a now canceled schedule on my whiteboard surround and close in on me. Once, these all held such promise and stress and urgency. The summer sun encroaches into my office-as it has with such frequency of late-bounces off my computer screen, dimming it slightly, and I squint to see the pixels.

I think of nature and iodine-tinged water and streams you have to cross by jumping from rock to rock and making fires and reading by those fires.

I think of what it might feel like to be in love

I think about rowing and how I came across the country without any other mind but to row fast. It was so important to me. I’ amazed I ever felt that way. It was silly.

And I wonder if it will ever happen again.

Saturday Night

The fan blows quietly. The light outside is fading and everything appears to be glowing. I can never get used to summer’s here. The light lingers for so long, until 9pm or later. It waits around, like an unwanted party guest. It disrupts my sense of place, my rhythm. I am lulled into thinking I have enough time (“there will be time enough for a hundred indecisions”). I have enough time to read my book, to market, to buy beer, to write, to read some more, to play piano. I’ll have enough time to go to the corner farmer’s market and grab big, fresh ears of white corn.

They have a palpable, earthy aroma, like freshly cut grass. The husks are rough, almost like sharkskin. I’ll pop them in the oven for ten minutes at 350 and peel back the strings. What was once a dry, earthy smell is now sweet, almost overly sweet, like butterscotch, or molasses. I’ll bite into the corn and get the strands between my teeth and remember I have to go to the dentist. I’ll suddenly look down at my watch, and see that it’s 7:45.

I can’t understand how it got so late. I glance out the big floor to ceiling windows and see the light, still strong, but fading. It’s impossible to me. I can’t get used to it. In San Diego, it would reliably get dark, every evening, at 7:00. Winter, Summer, everything in between. 7:00 was the midnight to the light’s cinderella.

But not anymore.

I’ve failed to make a go of those things on my list. I regret I let another day slip by without living up to the promises I made to myself the night before.

With the overhead lamps off, the only light that seeps into the apartment creeps through the windows. Everything glows. The closed computer, the off-white couch, the chinese lampshades. I can’t tell if the outside is making them glow, or if they’ve suddenly become incandescent. Their glow almost hurts my eyes, it is if everything is covered with a white flour. The luminescence informs me I’ve missed my shot for today. Perhaps another one will come tomorrow.

On one of our many training rides. The roomie, E. (we’ll call him E. with a h/t to thealmostrightword.net for coining this particular way of preserving anonymity) notes that he’s been lacking a little motivation lately. None of the things he used to enjoy really excite him anymore. Good beer, making homecooked meals from whole ingredients, writing for the ‘zine, reading. They haven’t held that same satisfaction for him for quite a while. Quietly, I believe this began when we visited his parents. His dad is a handyman, a man’s man, a do-it-yourself, never ask anyone for anything-man. E., on the other hand, went to college. He likes books, music, old records and record players, Joy Division, Brit Pop. His dad is probably more of a Bon Jovi guy.

He is ashamed for enjoying the abstract, for reveling in the intellectual, the less-than-real. This saps his motivation a bit.

But, I also suspect he’s feeling unmotivated for some of the same reasons I am.

We are both listmakers. We both have things to check off the lists. Our pencils are at the ready to scribble  these goals outside and inside the stenciled lines of the notepad (those boundaries will not contain us!).

But we’re having a difficult time deciding on what to jot down. What do we need to be working on. Free from misery, we are miserable. Alone with our thoughts, we can’t think.

To be excited for something, to be happy about something again. I can’t recall how that felt, but I can recall how it feels to be motivated towards something. I can’t tell if we’re finally seeing the big picture, and the little things are being washed away, or if we’re simply making the world more complicated than it needs to be.

At last, after all these years, we’ve gotten hold of a map. Even better, we finally have the time to sit and look it over. Problem is, we can’t decide where we want to go. Or even if anyplace is worth going.

These thoughts don’t sit so well. The light fades. The glowing objects around me begin to fade. The shadows deepen and are filled with impenetrable brown and black and shadow. Broken conversations and dank cigarette smoke float from the patio below me. They mix and make me slightly queasy. A tingle washes over me. I realize that I’m not sure if it actually gets any better than this.

Promises will be made once again tonight. Time is running out.

From the end of section one of Out Stealing Horses.

“Suddenly I remember a dream I had last night. That is strange, it was not there when I woke up, but now it is perfectly clear. I was in a bedroom with my first wife, it was not our bedroom, we we were in out thirties, I am sure of that, my body felt that way. We had just made love, I had performed as well as I could, which was usually more than good enough, as least I thought so. She lay in bed and I stood by the chest where I could see my whole body in the mirror except for my head, and I looked good in the dream, better than I really did. She too, really beautiful, almost unfamiliar in fact, and not quite like the woman I had just made love to. She looked at me the only way I had feared and said:

‘You’re only one of many, of course.’ She sat up, naked and heavy in the way I knew, and she filled me with disgust right up into my throat and at the same time with terror, and I shouted.

‘Not in my life, I’m not,’ and then I started to weep, for I had known that this day would come, and I realized that what I was most afraid of in thie world was to be the man in Magritte’s painting who looking at himself in the mirror sees only the back of his own head, again and again.