something new, sort of

The doctor has put me on something that I’ve been on before. It’s worked before, which is why he’s prescribing it. I will find a way to combat the side effects. I have given up on medications because of side effects in the past, but I didn’t give up on this one the first time so I don’t expect to now. The weird thing about this drug is that it makes a person lose his/her words. Like, it makes a person forget what he/she is saying mid sentence or forget the word that means what he/she is trying to say. I never fully recovered from that side effect, even after being off the medication for five years. So now the problem will get worse. That’s a big deal since I’m a teacher and also since I like to write, and think, and you know, communicate in general. I started the medication this morning, and already I feel the effects. I am having trouble writing this post, in fact. But I’m not going to let this problem discourage me like I did years ago. I think that writing and reading and playing word games will help. Maybe. I hope. What the fuck do I have to lose to try, anyhow.

So I might not have anything to write about (I’m not sure I ever really do), but I’m going to write every day, here or elsewhere. If things start to sound weird, you’ll know why. It might even be entertaining. I sure hope my boss thinks so. (hm.)

The beginning

This was the start of my finding peace.

I’ve watched this video about twelve thousand times a day. His eyes have dug into my soul each time—they sliced me open. I was deeply saddened by his death, and I connected with him as a kindred soul. He helped me find peace, and I still feel him next to me. 

I can’t express enough what he’s done for me and how much he means to me.

Don’t know why I didn’t share it before.

I did it.

I broke down in the car yesterday. 

I was fine until I pulled up a song that I’ve been listening to obsessively for nearly two weeks. I wrote about the singer in my last post, I think. Or maybe it was the post before that. Or maybe it was both posts. He’s been constantly on my mind, and I’ve cried for him I don’t know how many times. But yesterday was the hardest cry yet. Sometimes I’ve cried just for him. Sometimes for me. Sometimes for both. Yesterday was for both. He ripped open a poorly patched wound that I had stored in a dusty box under a lot of rubble in one of the dark alleyways that I avoid in my mind. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been fighting a demon that I thought was slain. It wasn’t, clearly. And thank God for Chris. I wish I could yank him back into this world, but I can’t. But God gave him a task after he died. Or maybe Chris found me on his own. This is one of those cases in which something good was fashioned out of something horrific. I’ve never been able to face my trauma. It was neither relevant nor understood well enough by anyone I’ve known, so I never asked for help outside of professional therapy. 

Yesterday when I broke down in the car while listening to his song over and over, I felt an overwhelming need to tell my story. Remember the narrative I wrote about? I finished it. It probably needs a little polishing. There’s something, a grammar thing, that’s bugging the shit out of me that I need to go fix. And I’ll fix it. But my point is that my break down yesterday made me feel strongly about putting my story out there, the narrative, the part that hurts the worst to share. And I shared it—for myself, for him, for who knows who. I felt him urge me to do it.

Have you ever felt close to a dead person? Dead isn’t a good word. Moved on is a better way to put it. But he didn’t move on entirely. He came to my rescue. And heck, maybe to his own. The act of healing others heals us. 

So it’s out there now. How accurately the words come across, I can’t say. It’s hard to describe intense personal experiences. 

The past two weeks have been more therapeutic than any professional therapy I’ve received.

I thought I’d come share that with you. And to thank him for guiding me through the journey.

So thank you, Chris. More than you can imagine, or maybe you can.

Chris Cornell

I met someone yesterday. He’s dead now. He’s been dead just over a month now. He took his own life.

Suicide is a weird subject for me. I’ve been at its door, so I know it fairly intimately. I’ve known people who killed themselves, but none of those people were more than aquaintances. I’ve known people who were close to those people, who suffered the loss. And I took someone to the psychiatric hospital once or twice. But I can’t say that I’ve lost anyone to suicide. I can’t say I watched someone wither in despair to a breaking point. Other than myself. But I don’t count myself. Let’s just say that I get it, I understand it. But I’ve never suffered the other side of it.

As I watched him on the video, I looked into his eyes. And he looked right back into mine. I thought about his turmoil and decision. I thought about the moments leading up to his death, what he was thinking or feeling, and I wanted desperately to reach through the screen and talk to him. I wanted desperately to turn back time.  

I had only just met this person, on a screen no less, and I cried as though I’d known him in real life. I felt like I lost a person I knew, someone who was more than an aquaintance, 

I feel that he’s okay now, and that brings me solace. I feel this person’s presence, odd as that sounds, and that brings me comfort.  

I can still see his eyes and maybe even what’s behind them.

.

I think I might have discussed my brush with suicide with someone once. It’s an awfully dark topic, so it doesn’t come up ever. But today I wrote about it. I wrote about it in narrative form and drew a picture for the featured image. But I couldn’t post it. Not because I feel exposed but because the subject is too intimate. I can write about it, like I am doing now. I just can’t write the narrative. I can’t share the narrative, I mean. And I’m not sure it helped me to write it at all. I felt darkness pulling at me as I edited it. 

.

I cried for this person today, and I wished him to come back. But some things can’t be reversed. Death is one of them.

Ironic and sad that it took him dying for me to meet him. I would have liked very much to have known him in the world while he was alive. 

drunk writing

My second real day of summer vacation. Meaning it’s the second real day of doing whatever the fuck I want to do. And today, not much unlike yesterday, I’ve chosen the front porch. This time with a computer and not a phone, with a fan and not the wind, a pack of cigarettes instead of a single smoke, and a really nice invention of coconut rum and limeade. In a coffee cup. Twice. or something. I’m having flashbacks of sitting on the front porch of my house in college, inebriated in some form or fashion and watching the summer days pass by with friends. Except today my friend is a cat hiding in a bush. And that’s fine. I needed so much to unwind. I hate that word, unwind. Because who uses it? Commercials selling trips to Caribbean resorts and bath soaps. Makes me think of Marge Simpson when she finally gets a break from her daily grind. She gets a hotel room and sits in the tub with a bottle of tequila by her side.

Sheesh. Am I Marge?

Fuck that.

Nope. I’m just another soul in the cosmos, sittin’ here in this chair, with no one to witness my existence but a wasp and a cat…nevermind..she’s gone. A wasp. Me and this wasp sittin’ on the porch hidden from the world and completely unthought of. Like not existing. There’s a question. So that riddle about whether a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it makes a sound..I’m going to be a killjoy and explain why it does. The cracking and ripping and smashing and all the movement involved in the falling of the tree makes waves in the air. These waves are vibrations that have frequencies. There are lots of frequencies of sound that animals with and without eardrums can’t hear. But we still consider the vibrations to be sound. So sound doesn’t depend on the proximity of an eardrum. It depends on whether there are particles of any kind in the space around the event, particles that will propagate vibrations. And in a forest, there are lots of particles. So yes, the falling tree makes a sound.

What was I saying? Yes, existence. If I’m not seen nor heard nor thought of, do I exist? Yes. I am taking up space, and every time my heart beats or my lungs inflate or my eyes blink, I transfer energy from one place to another. And that energy is absorbed by something, maybe stored, maybe not, but spread about in any case. And even though I’m this little spec here in the universe, I am contributing to the demise of that universe. Yes. Demise. All the energy in the known universe is getting tossed about, and at some point the energy is going to be so evenly dispersed (ironic since chaos created such a predicament) that nothing will move. Not even the teensy little quarks. And the universe will freeze to death. So yeah, I’m here, I’m making a difference in the world just sitting here. A difference for the good? That’s subjective. Do you like the universe? You comfy? Then yeah, we are destroying ourselves and that’s bad. Are you miserable? Can’t control your situation? Well then you need to find someone to talk to. Because purposeful self-destruction or joy in the idea of it isn’t a good thing. The universe will die long after the molecules of this planet, including you and me and dinosaurs and King Solomon and the ashes from my last cigarette, are tossed back into some part of space when the sun dies. And that’s inevitable. But it’s nothing to get worked up about. It’s not worth getting excited about, either, since no one will be around to witness the phenomenon. Hey, you ever think about how the atoms on this planet are as old as the planet? There’s a finite number of them, not counting space debris falling into the atmosphere or the American flag stuck on the moon or other back and forth space goings on. Which is relatively minute. This untidy system we are confined to, i.e. the planet and everything on it and in it, moves atoms around from thing to thing for as long as the system exists. This system is relatively closed, meaning that, for the most part, things don’t go in and out except light, which is energy, but lets focus on the matter (literally, the atoms that make up the matter), and that means that you could be made up of magma and Napoleon. Even if evolution were a farce, it’s still possible to have the essence of ape in your bones. Neat, huh? I’m breathing in air molecules that you might have exhaled. And vice versa. Unlikely, but possible.

I’ve been outside all day trading molecules with the rose bushes, they sucking up my toxic co2 and I sucking up its toxic o2. We clean each other. Plants are good. But I’m going inside now. Maybe I’ll sleep off this rum.

June 28, 12:38pm, The State Of The Writer, indeed

On some other plane of reality, sitting in the shade on the front porch in my pajamas, smoking a cigarette, feeling the June breeze and occasional gust of wind, I pick up my phone and open a new screen. Then I click the button to lock the phone. A black and useless screen flashes before me as I slide the phone between the side of the chair and me. Nestled, waiting, whispering…write. I pick up the phone and unlock it. Feel the breeze. Lock it back and put it down. Sit quietly awhile and be. 

The urge is stronger than my will. I pick up the phone again and open a new screen.

But nothing comes.

.

I used to be able to enjoy these quiet moments. But my mind is fixated. My insides stir, restlessly.

Write.

…but nothing.

that time in the truck

I can hardly keep my eyes open, but it’s pointless to close them because each time I do I get a phone call or an email or a text. Buying a house wasn’t this hard in the past. So many hoops to jump through. And when they say we’re done, they turn around and want more. So there’s no point in closing my eyes. Unless I want my phone to ring, of course.

It’s like if you want it to rain, then go wash your car. It’s like that.

.

I should be packing, but I’m so fucking tired. This is all happening so fast. Too fast. Watch me wait until the night before to pack. The best and worst part of moving is the most time-consuming part, the getting rid if useless junk accrued since the last move part. It sucks to do it, but the result sure feels good. Like exercise. I hate it. And lately none of it has been happening. So I’m accruing. And I almost don’t care. I’m just too tired to care.

But life ain’t all bad. I mean, getting this house is pretty great. And I don’t have to wake up early in the morning most days. And writing is going well. Eh, that’s all in how you look at it. Well as in it’s happening. The stories are happening. Anything else requires that I look inside myself. No, no it doesn’t. I wrote a post about coffee cups once for goodness sakes, and I wrote it only because my fingers were itching and I was surrounded by coffee cups.

I’ve sort of scraped the barrel of my deep side. Ain’t nothin left in there. No mystery to pull out of the murky water of my soul. Though I did have a thought today as I sat in my truck in the driveway after pulling up. I was listening to an old song. I was listening to a song that took me back about a year and a half. Things were rough back then too, but there were moments that were pretty great. Those are the ones I look back on and miss. So I thought, as I sat in my truck in the driveway listening to that song, that those

<interrupted by email>

…that those memories are of such small moments. Those tiny moments grow into big ones as time goes on. I didn’t know at the time that this song would define an entire slice of life. At the time it was no more than a nice moment, a pretty intense one now that I think about it. A lot of passionate writing in a couple day’s time, now that I really think about it.

…….

Now that I’ve sufficiently changed the initial course of this post (I often end up someplace new, unintentionally, or used to) I’m going to close my eyes and wait for the phone to ring. I’m expecting it to at any moment. (Which means it won’t.)