Recently in Summer In The City Category

I've spent several afternoons over the past months sitting here at my desk, at the end of a day. The light for most of the summer streamed through the windows that are straight ahead, and I battled that late afternoon light with baseball hats, pieces of cardboard taped to the window, my tennis racquet in its case, and odd body contortions.

The days are getting shorter and the light is not an issue any longer. Today it is making orange quavers full across the office and living room, and on the fireplace all the way over there. It gets me to thinking that I likely will not be here in this place next year, and in that I will not be here during this time, I will never see light quite like this again. I try to enjoy it for today. Try to take a picture, but although photos are really made of light, they never quite do it justice. The way in which you experience it in person cannot be captured. I am not sure whether that is good or bad. I would like to keep a little of this orange light today in a bottle to bring out and remember this place on days like this, in the early fall.

I am house hunting and will be gone within months if not sooner, and that new place will not sit on top of this hill just so, at just this angle, with those trees just there. Everything will be different, the light, my likely preoccupations, me in general.

I will have to see what the summer is like in this city from that place. Let this one be all those memories, mostly good. Remember this light; close eyes now.

Yesterday was the last for most MLB teams. Regular season is over, I've turned the air conditioner off. It's over.

I walk into therapy today hellbent on not crying like i have the last few weeks (Steve and I are set to discontinue our meetings next week so he can get on with taking care of his health issues and I can get along to whatever it is I will do next), so I don't. I tell him that am feeling more motivated, getting things done, not feeling like an impostor, not letting the women get me down. He says since I don't have much to talk about, maybe we should just let today be our last session. I agree, holding back tears. It just sneaks up on you.

Then I come home. Down the highway and the parkway, through the detour, and into my driveway. Coming up the steps and along the walk that borders the front corner of the house, right before the dogleg, hidden by those unruly shrubs, I find a man-sized pile of shit: first the smell, then the flies, then the visual. It's either from a man, a bear or a great dane, and I'm betting on a man. There aren't that many bear sightings in my neighborhood, and why would a dog find its way to that hidden spot when in my experience they would rather do it in grass where they can scratch? Dogs don't ever seem to have issues squatting and doing the deed right in front of god and the whole world.

The pile is right up close to the exterior wall of my house. Just where a man could've squatted and rested his back against the bricks, extending his legs out far enough so as not to get it on his trousers. I have shat in the outdoors before, just not on someone's sidewalk.

So if it is a man, I think, why would they do it there? Perhaps they are homeless and have nowhere to do it. Perhaps it's Leroy and he's mad at me for some reason.

I guess it doesn't really matter. It appears a man decided to come and shit on my sidewalk and now I have to fight the flies and the stench and go clean it up.

Those of you who know me will think me up all night on a drunken bender, but my life is filled with profound sadness this evening.

There's the one friend whose love of his life is leaving him, and another that just wishes that he had such a love of his life.

It's early and the morning birds are singing and my tongue is tired.

So long and not much noise here. My therapist may very well be dying of lung cancer. Not the type of lung cancer that builds and builds, but the little nefarious sonofabitch that gets right in there next to your aorta and tries to take it all out of you. The guy's skin is turning gray and his hair is already gray and I feel like it's any day now, and I ask why him and not me.

We've got two weeks left of this experiment that we started three years ago: three more weeks of therapy and then I got to do something else. He says he thinks it might be good to pursue a woman therapist since that's where my problems lie, with women, and that she may teach me how to trust the universal her.

We talk lots of how I am feeling. I guess that's what therapy is. We have been especially keying in on how I feel about the separation. He asks if I feel anger, and I guess I do. The adult part of me understands the state of things, the child feels abandoned - the worst and constant fear. I cannot talk to him about it until he tells me to talk to a third person in the room that is not him.

I tend to cry a lot during these recent sessions.

Beware the ides of July, the day before you leave for Chicago and the day where every minute will be twice as long as they were yesterday. And the day after... before the airport, every minute thrice as long as even today. Logarhythmic expansion.

And at work there's too much to be done. Self-imposed deadlines the I am trying to shirk. Trying to just cruise into it all, to not have an all-nighter like I seem to always have when getting ready to depart for a few days.

I'm having the after lunch cigarette and reading my book about the 60s around-the-world sailing race, when he walked up, looking like he had taken a hammer rather than a toothbrush to his teeth.

"What's that book about?"

I show him the cover, A Voyage for Madmen.

"Ah... vo...age...for...madame... What's it about?"

"About these Europeans who raced each other in a solo non-stop sailing race around the world in the 1960s."

"Sailing?"

"Yeah, with boats that have sails on them?"

"Oh yeah, that reminds me of... what's his name?... You know who I am talking about... What's his name?"

"I don't know."

"You know!... What's his name?.... It's uh... It's uh... Oh, that's right... Columbus!"

"Well he was an explorer and sailor. Not really in a race around the world. But I see what you are saying."

"Yeah, Columbus. Just like him. Have you ever raced an ostrich?"

"An ostrich? No."

"What about an elephant?"

"No not an elephant either."

"A horse?"

"I've ridden horses before, but not in a race."

"I've raced all three."

"Really!?!?!?"

Yesterday I heard a co-worker that sits near me, who I don't really know, was speaking frankly with someone on the phone. From the best I can tell the person on the other end asked one of those simple questions like, "So, how are things going?" I guess we most of the time fall into the pleasantries of saying, "Things are going fine," but that's not where Peter went:

Well, Katie and I are getting a divorce, and my brother calls everyday and he's losing his mind. Says he needs to check into a psychiatric ward. Wants to know what I think, but won't tell me what all is going on.

Outside the morning birds are singing:

Doo ree doo, doo ree doo, ree doo, ree doo, doo, doo, ree, ree, ree.

Not trailing off in a doppler way, but in a song of their own. I should not be up this late. Should be asleep. Faced too much art market, divorce market, break-up market, make-up market. Too old to spend this time in bars. In bars, as most of us, looking for connection, love, acceptance, novelty.

I start with birds. I end with me. Women can do anything that the boys can do. Insulate me from this world. Show me your paintings. Let's love one another in a melting igloo, or at least, let's love each other.

My therapist has not called me back. It's not that I need it. It's like a friend said, "you go to it because you like it more than you need it." I agreed at the time, but I cannot underestimate the benefit of a weekly unloading of all of the "snakes in my head." There's always a peaceful serene feeling when leaving, even when I am leaving in tears.

He hasn't called though, and I am worried. I guess you may thing that's selfish. He was diagnosed with lung cancer a couple of years back. Has been receiving aggressive therapy, and generally seems to be doing okay. I guess it wouldn't be right for him to let on otherwise. I just don't know.

I went so far today as to search the obituaries on the newspaper web site to see if there was any news there. I was glad to find none. Even given my problematic relationship with God, I have spent time praying for him on my nightly rituals recently.

Today I daydreamed as I was driving home, dog-tired, what I would feel like if I found out he was no longer with us (can't even say the words). I started to weep in the car. Like I had lost a friend. I pay to go see this person once a week and he knows more about what goes on in my head that anyone else in the world (including myself), I know nothing of him except I think he has grand kids, and a daughter, possibly a wife, and this growth in his lungs of which I am not sure the state. Yet, I am crying like my best friend is gone.

Leroy came by today. He fixed the flat on his bike so he's back rolling rather than walking, although he still hasn't started to put on weight. I gave him a handful of change because he said he was hungry. He's always hungry. I guess that's the nature of living like he does.

We also finally interviewed the woman from Houston today, and when Kristie wrote, "Do we love her?," I responded, " I believe we do." That might mean some relief at the job if it all works out. I just don't know how long it takes to get someone to Atlanta from Houston. How long does it take to pick up your life? She's younger, less encumbered.

And the wart that's been gone from my left upper arm for several years now is coming back. WIth the workplace stress, and some of the issues going on in friends' lives, it very well may be a worry wart. I am chock full of the old "imposter syndrome" lately. Feeling that I haven't paid my dues, nor do I have the skills and training, to be where I am. It just feels like I work hard and a lot, but I don't feel like I accomplish much. I am not sure how to measure success as a manager. I talk a lot to people. Make long-term plans. I seem to stay bogged down in the day-to-day grind. The list gets longer. Never shorter. Maybe if we can get the Houston girl, since I hunted her down, that will be some small victory and will put things into place for better progress.

Getting into the shower tonight I had a flash of junior high. The humidity and temperature the last few days has been mild. Today's temperature was too, but the moisture built up throughout the day and made it so that the temperature clung to you, inside and out. Impossible to not immediately sweat while outside, shivering inside in the conditioned air. Getting into the shower with a chill and feeling the contrast of the hot water and cold skin took me back to when I was a child, showering at night in preparation for school the next day. I could smell the hallways, feel the fear of girls, the rubbery smell of the wrestling mat, the taste of trough water during football practice. It's an emotion that is discomforting and nostalgic at the same time.

Sometimes I forget what those days were like. I think my life to be so complicated now in comparison. During the flashback, I was reminded of the complex internal and external negotiations that made up everyday school life. The fear of girls mixed with the hormonal longing for them. The lack of any experience to that point that would allow me to navigate through those rough waters. The chuckle that Coach Webb got when I called my lower body garment "breeches." Now I realize that the joke was largely on him. He was a gym teacher after all. I wonder what became of him. Probably 30 years old at the time. Younger than I am now by 4 years. If that was 1988, he would be 50 or so now. Does he still torment his players? Does he have players? Did he know that I skateboarded 10 hours a week despite his prohibition of such things? We were never state champions. Never even close. Beat Lowes Grove once on a day when I got to play defense as well.

Did he and Ferko realize that I would still laugh at the embarrassment they inflicted upon me while reenacting me getting plowed over on kick return during the previous weeks game? An even that was played out three times: once on the field when it happened, once when we had to watch the video of the game (yes, we had video of junior high football games), and the third time when the coached did their little act, full with description of the large grass stain left on my ass from the contact and subsequent contact with the field. I tell the story to get a laugh, but that it stuck with me for so long is not purely because of its humor potential. It's not even that funny of a story. It's how you tell it.

I had to work today. The normal Sunday guy couldn't be there so I was covering the desk today. In on the bike by 9 a.m., leaving around 5 p.m.. Bicycling in after taking last week off from the bike commute even though the weather was much more welcoming to such a thing. Lungs still straining on the hills and the constant replay of, "I must quit smoking! I must quit smoking!," only to arrive at the office and realize I did not have any cigarettes, all of them having been consumed last nigh - birthday party, beers, pizza, back home, conversation, cigarettes and cigarettes and cigarettes. I had to launch a search for nicotine in downtown on a Sunday morning. Amazing how addiction works. How easily your mind can change with absolutely no conscious effort.

The excursion took me by Sean, who I just met today. Fresh out of 7 months lock up at Fulton County Jail where, apparently, he awaited trial, failing to make bail, until the identity theft charges were finally dropped. That was his story. It all started with him helping to fix a guys car. There was a check that bounced, and then the trouble came. That was about as much as he wanted to tell. He had come back to God in jail as many inmates do, or so we are told. He had been praying a lot lately, explaining that 7 months is just long enough for you to lose all of the life you had before you went in.

He told me that $33 could change his life. It would get him a state ID card that would allow him to get out of the bad shelter and into the Salvation Army shelter where they would help him get a job, and would let him work in the thrift store until he found solid employment. The usual Korean market was closed, but he took me to another store that he walked past earlier that he knew was open. He waited outside. I bought the Winstons with a twenty dollar bill and gave him the $15 change. I tried to shake his hand, which he grabbed and used to hug me. He told me that he had prayed about this and talked to a preacher friend. The friend had told him to go today somewhere where there was people and that the Lord would provide. He told me no one had stopped until me, that I was the answer to his prayers. The weight of that I would rather not think too much about.

It's hard for me to imagine that $33 could change someones life, much less $15, but it seemed like he thought it meant that his whole life would be different in just a matter of days. He told me I would not see him on that corner again. I told him I better not. I try not to think too much of what the real story might be. I would prefer to believe his story, to believe that the hug was sincere, to believe that God was watching over him. I am trying to live outside the cynicism that has characterized much of my adult life these days, to live in the world as I would like for it to be, even if the evidence and accumulated facts seem to point to something different.

Ultimately it makes things different, less stressful, and less complicated. Talking to girls is easier now, and I don't have to deal with junior high school football coaches any longer. I do what I want and feel mostly good about it. The nostalgic simplicity that I imbue my memories of childhood with seem false. On the bike ride home I did not regard those children leaving the basketball game with the jealousy that I normally do. I wouldn't want to go do it all again. I am fine where I am.

The days are getting shorter, and as this one came to an end, there was the threat of thunderstorm that ultimately never came.

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.

It's the summer of the wine cooler, of hiding something in a way that someone specific will find it, and the summer of keeping a secret that you will carry to your grave. It's the summer of the dead wrestler and his dead family, and the summer that you stopped watching wrestling, and that we finally lost the rest of our childlike innocence, and that we found other childlike innocence, and the summer that we stopped and started talking, and that the heat rose from the street and straight up my trousers and took us all a little closer to the stars when it was night, and the clouds when it was day. It's the summer of the homeless woman on a pre-paid roundtrip to Chicago, and the summer in which the Cubs may make it to the post-season, and the summer of baseball in general, and the summer in which I will gain and lose 20 pounds. It's the summer in which the dreams will not stop, painting dreams, and fluorescent light tube dreams, and dreams of a conspiracy of women, and of multi-million dollar contracts. It's the summer of the hyphen, and the end of history. It's the summer of rapture, and rapturous living, and dangerous life, and winning when you didn't even try. It's the summer of saying goodbye. It's the summer of the witness, and death penalty, and heart sinking, and rising, and sinking, and rising. It's the summer of cordial women, and turning Muslim, and wanting more, and being Zen, and indie rock, and Canada. It's the summer that Rick Bass began, the summer of the run-on sentence, the summer that makes no more sense than last season, the summer in which this city will eat your little cooked body, the summer when your body was cooked. It's the summer of ladies in 70's hair styles, and the summer of shave pubis, the summer of clutter, and repetition, and repetition, and saying the same thing over, but refusing to live it over, and over, and over, and refusing to live it. It's the summer of living, forgetting that thoraxic schism,and it's the summer of walking away, eating this city, and never looking back.

So this is the real summer in this city. There is not the solitude that allows for the solitude. That allows for introspection every night. There's the crazy summerness of the Southern existence, like Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Conner, and other crazy heat-stricken ladies with various talents.

I have spent the night praying to clothing and the lack of and the way that clothing makes certain things and can ruin others. This is the nature of the city. Nothing is laid bare, nothing is truthful on the surface. Everything takes an extra level of interpretation.

In Summer, in this place, things turn rotten. Corpses rise from the depths of bodies of water and surface and create a narrative that will change this city a little for a few moments.

Desire overcomes us boys in the city at this time of the year, and we know not where to aim our compasses. There's nothing that pulls completely. There's just the Summer. There's just the crazy lumpy ladies. There's just desire. And it burns hotter than summer. It burns hotter than expectation. It gets under your skin and we'll take your mind away from all that you need to get done in this pre-Independence Day heat.

Play a Sousa tune and light a Roman candle. Tonight is lonely and secure and will come to be a good memory for me if I allow myself to wait.

It's 1 AM and I have now been awake for 39 hours straight for a reason that involves zip codes and home sale prices and that's about all that is worth mentioning. What I have is not exactly synesthesia, but I do have an acutely aware sense of smell, especially of those things that are on the not so pleasing end of the sensory scale. I keep smelling bad flatulence, cat piss, rotting corpses...

I am starting to think of this like some of my friends think of detox diets, lemonade fasts, confession, etc. It's been years since I last stayed up all night, and that time it was writing and recording a bad song. This time it was a bad map. But I do feel like I a resetting my clock. Tonight was one of my most relaxed in recent memory. I felt like most of the synapses were firing properly, so I went to see a baseball game. The boys of summer in this here town put up numbers that would have won all of their recent scoreless games.

I stepped into a pile of melting summer bubble gum today that is still collecting gravel on my out-of-season boots.

I should learn how to dress better for this weather.

The words "I love you" can save a life.

I will sleep like a baby tonight.

Today was one of those go to the Korean market and get a ham sandwich and eat at your desk type days at work.

I am working on the zip code delineated home sales data map and apparently the data is not mean prices, but median prices, and you cannot do an accurate weighted average of median data. I had to google the difference because I could not quite extract that one from the catacombs of my brain. I used to be a designer, now I am becoming, reluctantly, something else.

So I go to the Korean market and feel that the humidity is down so the low nineties don't feel like they will later on this Summer. Outside the market there are two semi-homeless white guys talking about what to buy and they decide upon an Icehouse and a pack of Rave cigarettes. I know the Icehouse trick from baseball games, as cheap as the other beers but with more kick, but you will find it kicking you in the head in the morning, but I figure living in this moment is probably what these guys want. It's probably what I would want if I were in their shoes as well.

So I find myself in line behind the one of them sent to procure the goods in the market, and upon hearing his total, he begins digging vigorously in his sock, partially removing his shoe, and produces several singles and probably three dollars in coins. I wondered how he was able to walk. I wondered was this one of the safe ways of the street. Then I wondered if it were a best practice, why would they not just take your shoes and socks and look for the money after kicking your ass out on the street, or down in the parking lot under the bridge at night.

I guess my homeless guy, the one I paid my alms to on Fridays, has been killed or arrested or found another stomping ground. He never made it to this Summer with me.

It's hard for me to imagine whether I would prefer Summer or Winter if I were living on the streets here. If you were lucky, in Winter, you would find enough cover to make you warm on most nights. In Summer, sometimes, you cannot take off enough to make you cool though. I don't really know. At least you can sleep in heat, but if freezing you are wired.

I am not too sure about this city today. I am not too sure about my job today. On the other hand, I feel pretty good about me. I have found myself, however, starting to wonder what those first few days of the real Fall, when you can put on a sweater, will feel like. I need to get these thoughts out of my head, lest I be miserable for months to come. It hasn't even really heated up in this city.

Today there was three homeless folks that I saw, met, and felt sorry for. I could not give the money because it was not Friday, which is my alms day. I gave a cigarette today, and a light, and realized that I need to stop smoking, except I do not want to think myself better than that.

It is the beginning of summer in this crowded and cluttered city. In this city in which you cannot even pick your nose in peace on the way home because there are eyes from every angle always watching you.

There is a Miller Light bottle cap in my pocket because I didn't know where to put it. It is a badge of shame or honor depending on the crowd the you inhabit when you confess. I am so tired of confessions. I just want the truth to be real, to be something that we can all touch. My body is all swollen with the mess. The heat gets in my head. My body feels old.

To day was the longest day of the year. There was a party to go to at a recording studio. I thought of Gatsby. You should always have a party on this day of the year. I just wish we were all in linen and hats and that Dorothy Parker was telling jokes in corner.

I listened to This American Life today and the episode was about camp. Summer camps, places we made friends and lovers, maybe even got married, cried and wiped each other's tears away. Places we were away from mom and dad in which for a brief period we could truly be confessional. There was so much innocence in those summers, in those bonds. Some of us (I am speaking of myself now), pissed that all away. To be so afraid of what it is that you are is to be in prison. I would love to hug each and all of the kids there again. The blonde twins, and the brunette that I kissed, without tongue, behind the boathouse, and the boys, Charlie, David, Ian.

I guess when I was a kid they were summer. They were something beautiful. Playboy magazines hidden under the spring bed frame. Flashlight pointing on glossy breast after lights out. "Coming of age" is what the critics call it.

There was swimming and canoeing and late night clandestine excursions.

Now I live in a city. There are kids everywhere but I know nothing of there lives. I retire into permanent bachelorhood.

There is so much summer here. Lovely summer. The AC prices are escalating, but the girls are all wearing strappy versions of less. Their shoulders are devine. Their tan lines do dirty talk. They bring back memories of camp, and places by the pool, and places by the pool even more recently.

Summer is desire. Summer is all that we ever wanted when we were kids, and maybe it could just be enough for our little, withered adult hearts.

Montana owns Winter. If you cannot deal with it you need to find other environs. Georgia owns Summer. I prefer colder weather, but this weather is me, it is in my bones like nothing else. I will not be leaving this town.