December 2005 Archives

Today, a federal holiday, and I out finding things I did not know existed. Could I fly on a cloud, ride on a magic carpet? Could I dance to the music of someone strange? Oh, you bet! I will drift to this slumberland, the one that makes the dreams all so real with crazy palpitations in my heart. If we were to make it happen, then this is the way. Oh, this is the way!

Tonight was the first night that I have ever gotten to play Santa. After the traditional soup and sandwich dinner at my brother's house, we put the kids to bed and I stayed awhile delaying a late-night, potentially futile, hunt for petroleum, as my car's gas light had just come on as I arrived in Durham County. He asked would I help and I said I would, so we went down the street to the Grandparent's house and into the garage to retrieve several boxes of Biddy Baby paraphernalia and the new gas-powered 4-wheeler for S. We brought them back to the house and took the baby doll furniture into the house for assembly to begin, and a spirit of Christmas that I haven't felt all season flooded through me. I realized that it really is for the kids, and that not having any kids actively present in my day-to-day life has kept the spirit partly at bay. Tonight it seemed so different, being back here in this town. Although it is strange to me now, there is still a homeyness to the place that is unmistakable. I can feel my pulse slow a bit when I cross into N.C., and even more when the Durham County line is crossed. While playing Santa tonight, I thought, "I can do this... I like doing this," and thus I put to rest some of the nagging doubts that I have had lately about my suitability and desire for fatherhood, marriage, settling etc. I can put those thoughts, fears, and worries away now - and it feels good to do so.

I hope you all have, had, and are having a Merry Christmas. I hope to see or talk to each of you very soon.

Finally knowing
that the abject pain
and the terrific struggle
are worth it.

And that it lies
in the tenderness of friendship,
the love that kisses a tear
from your cheek and
holds you till she knows you are better, stronger
than when she gathered you in her smooth, bare arms
to shield you from the world.

To know she would hold you forever,
if only you could hide the impertinent erection with a cushion.

Larry Levis is killing me tonight. He is reminding me that it is Christmas and that things are supposed to be good and that you will still be lonely at the end of the day no matter what you find beside you, that it is you that makes you lonely and that your habits will eventually catch up with you, and your tendencies too and that all those pictures in a box are gone, thoroughly gone, now. That time is passing you by and that tomorrow will create memories that you will want to recreate years from now, but tomorrow will seem like an excruciating day on the surface. He also teaches me that there is a love out there that will make it all make sense, and maybe she has already been, but maybe she hasn't. Maybe I have met her before, or just recently, or not yet at all. My job is to live, just simply live, and be good until the mystery reveals itself, possibly in a dream, possibly in a bar, possibly this time next year as the wind grows colder and my eyes begin to dry - when I can finally laugh at myself again.

The divorcee across the street has met a man on the internet and will soon take her son in the middle of the night to a foreign city where she will enroll him in a foreign school with foreign friends and her ex will know nothing of their whereabouts... his son, his ex wife - once the love of his life, and maybe still.

I started reading the Sunday New York Times again today. The day that I drove J and S down to Perry, GA so they could make their way further south to Tampa, and the day that I noticed for the first time that the cold snap and some negligence has all but taken the hanging plants in the Florida room.

Sitting here tonight in this house, waiting for a final TGIF. The work comes too slow and not at all and the best friends are in town and I am waiting for redemption. Have been waiting for redemtion for months. Have been waiting for clarity to prevade the universe, so we could all see each other as what we truly are. You as conflicted and broken as me, and we both so fucking hopeful, hopefully. I can tell that my friends will save me from myself, and rock and roll will save my soul from the world, and I will find my backbone is still in my back, and I will be loved because of the discovery.

I have lost my dream. You see I used to have it, but I have lost it now. I have discussed this with my therapist, he asks, "have you had any dreams lately?", and I say, "no I have lost them, I thought I had a dream a few days back, but it turned out to not be one. It turned out to just be Tuesday." He gets concerned at such talk and makes odd faces at me. Sometimes I try to fool myself into thinking I have a dream, but I realize such games are just games. I have lost my dream. Maybe I will get it back. Maybe tonight after dinner and reading in bed, I will drift off to sleep and I will awaken realizing I have gotten my dream back. I am a dreamer by nature, just one without a dream right now. If I could just remember where I put it. Please let me know if you see it around. Otherwise I will have to shop for another one. My therapist and I cannot rest until.

I got a pack of hooks from my uncle when he was in town right before he had to ship back to Fort Bragg, NC and he told be I would catch the largest fish in the pond down the road if I would just fish with these hooks, that I would not even need bait and that the fish would come out simply laying on the the hook, not really hooked by it, and that the fish would talk and tell stories, and I could tell my friends all of the stories that the fish told me, and that I would be much more popular, because I got these hooks and would catch this fish. His one warning was that I must throw the fish back once I have caught it and he has told me the story, otherwise bad luck would come to me and mom and dad, and that our fields would burn, and the sky would fall all over daddy's land. I reckon I will send that fish back quickly after he tells me the little story. I reckon I want peace upon the land here, and I will throw it back. I imagine he may have more than one story to tell, and I've got a big bag of hooks.

I scream Antigone to the dark sad night,
or is it agony, or is it uplift,
I can give you all of that.

I can make a sweet dream
out of the outside of your hand,
you were making sweet stuff
out of the bad stuff all along.

Your face in a dream
the last few nights.

I don't care where your loins have been.

A beautiful jaw,
a beautiful face,
your strange absence in this place.

A vacancy in my heart,
my head,
that has no substitute.

It's brunch,
simply brunch,
and I'm buying?

There's a grade school game called 'Telephone' or something like that in which one person whispers into the ear of the next person, and that person into the next and on down the line of 20 or so people, until the last person is reached, and the original message which was something like, "Joe likes pizza" ends up being morphed into something more like "Joe licks panties." Lately I feel that some people in my life have been playing that sort of game with some of the details of my life. They start with a small detail that comes up in a passing conversation, and it ends up being blown all out of proportion until I am having sex with the Queen of England or something like that. It seems as if it is a little way for fans of "General Hospital" to bring a little of that drama into their own lives. People, stop it! I want you as my friends, and I value as just that, but supposing you know what in the hell is going on in my life when you haven't been privy to the information is just wrong. I have been really down as you all know lately, and the last thing I need to feel as if some people I hold dear to my heart are spinning yarns behind my back. I need your support and will gladly give mine if/when you need it. I try to be here for all of my friends. Please try to do the same for me. Don't kick me while I am down. I have never met Queen Elizabeth, much less do I know her intimately, but I do like pizza... and I try not to lick panties... at least not too often.

Talking to S tonight, she finally got the final sign off. She got the "thanks for the 5 years but it is over for good now." I guess I know how that feels, and I conveyed that to her. She said that she understood there were lessons lying beneath but that she really couldn't think about that right now, that the hurt was too much. I told her the lessons would come, and that she need not understand them now, nor could she really even begin.

"By and by," I say, and she understands. She asks what I am doing for the Saturday night, and I say I thought I might spend some time working things out; a little time howling at the moon. She tells me I sound like a big old bear when I do that. We stand in the front yard looking at the first few stars that have appeared on this clear evening. "By and by," I think, and I wonder what it really means. She tells me she felt love once, but it was some two or three years back and that is all gone now. Tomorrow they are calling for rain and I know it will. The clouds can be sensed in the clarity of the stars tonight. If the earth will be destroyed by fire the next time, I don't want any part of it. A flood would be much nicer, could wash all of the scum off the street like in "Taxi Driver." I think I still love her, know what that is to feel it like I do in my heart, or something like that. She questions, writes me off. I can tell in her eyes it hasn't been the same for some time now. I guess she's been leaving since the first day she really came. What's this love that I try to define? She thinks she knows and I do to, and one of us feels it and the other doesn't, but I don't know if we could even begin to wrap words around it, if words are even possible. I push down two keys on the piano, two write beside each other - a black and a white. I start the serenade that she got used to, and the one before her, and the one before her, and I play and sing about babies going away, and while I am singing I think of the flood that is coming and about the great big boat. I think of cutting my toenails, and of how many like me will be allowed on the cruise. I think of the cloven-hoofed and dream myself with wings. I could fly off and bring back the first signs of foliage. I could dream of a three month flood. I could think of what life would be without love. I can still feel the phantom in my heart. Two by two they go, and me and something, and the animals I will come to name in time. And it has just started raining and I think, "male and female, but what about the hermaphrodites like me?"