August 2007 Archives

You don't realize when your neighbors are gone. Not in a city like this. You've never met them, but one day their car is not parallel parked across the street and you missed the end of the month move-out. Were they really there for a year or had they made different arrangements with the landlord? We all pray to a landlord here.

The tall girl I took for an actress because she lived next door to the playwright is gone now. I don't really know how gone she is, or where. I never knew her. I know I saw her sitting out on the patio one night with said playwright until they went in and for once she did not shut the blinds and I saw them in an awkward one night embrace. He has to be her senior by 10 years I would say.

She always was up and out before me, leaving for work in her pickup truck and a semi-pants-suit, which belied my illusion of her being an actress, and an actress only.

I have been here for over 3 years now. Longer than I have lived anywhere other than my parents house. I don't want to leave, but what I fear more is that if I do, the neighborhood will not miss me.

There's evil little spiders about tonight and the girl want the other boy, the movie star, to come and kiss and play games and then move on. We are trying to save our friends from destruction of themselves, and possibly others. Don't play Jesus, you will surely be disappointed with the results.

On the outskirts of town the Marxist are meeting and the thought of the meeting makes me feel a bit out of sorts. What secret upheavals are being planned. They don't show this part in the movie.

They also don't show the part where the brother of the protagonist makes a face, says something funny, asks where that one went, and why it didn't all work out in the end, and the protagonist says, "It got too hot, the summer, it was too hot, our brains started to boil in our head, we ate chemicals and didn't know it, there's nothing really to explain it all, we don't live in this different time and space and place, we don't live her on this farm, and this family. We live in the city and things are difficult."

And the brother says, "Oh, now I see. I didn't know."

It's been a week now since the news came down that one of my colleagues at the paper, Diane, had died of bile duct cancer. She found out about 3 weeks prior and it was too late. Single and 42, she was in the process of trying to adopt a child from China, and had a self-help book for women dealing with stalkers coming out soon. I can't say that I knew her incredibly well, yet I found myself incredibly moved, disturbed, distraught over the news. Although it sounds a bit cliche, I guess events do come around with some frequency that throw you on your head, with sorrow, doubt, confusion, analysis etc. Viewing my life through the lens of what I now know about Diane's, and her early demise, has led to some severe existential dilemmas that cut across all parts of my life: work, romance, happiness and it's pursuit, the future, the past...

But a week that began with such bad news could surely not continue in such a way. This was also the week that Barry Bonds would tie Hank Aaron's home run record, A-Rod would hit his 500th home run, and in the waning hours of the week that began for me last Monday, Tom Glavine would get his 300th career win.

It was also the week that I would spend every night trying to finish the never-ending freelance project that seems to grow every time I touch it. It was a week without therapy, a week on new medication, and a week that I ended in Chattanooga where I finally saw Rock City, hated my way through the Incline Railroad again, and got my beard trimmed at the minor league baseball game, during the 6th inning, right before the hometown team lost and we would receive Sara Lee 100% Honey Wheat bread loaves while exiting the stadium.