It didn't work anymore. Fewer things did.
It was really a parking lot, with a wood privacy fence surrounding it, wood picnic tables, umbrellas.
Eleanor was standing on a bench near the door, guarding mainly against any and all who would pass by without petting her, or rubbing her belly. Few passed her without paying the toll fee of affection. Despite a bath the day before, and an abnormal amount of time under a cheap version of the dog hair removal tool as seen on television, wisps of white fur drifted in the slight eddies of air, shifting, hovering, slipping around each other and the hands that scuffed her ears and patted her coat.
Very, very occasionally, a girl would pass, only looking down long enough to make note of the dog's existence, as if it were a curious piece of discarded clothing, or a crack in the sidewalk.
These girls were completely unattractive and unworthy.
The iPad sat before him. He had read an article in the New York Times about some fashion designer, about whom, and about a topic, he could not care less.
He had checked sports scores, and was completely surprised that the Milwaukee Brewers still existed. Clearly, he had not been keeping up with baseball.
What he did not do with the iPad was write a novel. Or a short story. Or a blog post. Or a haiku about anything, even his dwindling supply of comfortably wearable underwear.
He had also not met his other agenda.
He woke up late on the Sunday, which seemed justifiable because it was Sunday, though, in reality, it was no different than any of the other days of the week on which he slept late and awoke, still unemployed, still unmotivated to exercise, laying feet away from the keyboard that was serving as a home for the same pair of shorts and the same t-shirt that he wore every morning to walk Neko down the street to the field where he could, or felt he could, let her poop without having to pick it up.
After that walk in the red shorts and black t-shirt, he returned, made three eggs, sunny-side up, a piece of toast smeared with raspberry preserves, only because he was out of the preferred strawberry preserves.
He watched the end of a Bond movie, one of the newer ones with the guy that had people split, but that he personally felt might be even better than Sean Connery, though he was very careful about whom he shared that with. He played the action hero with gravitas, the suave player without camp, and the loner with something that Gabriel knew well.
And then... Lost in Translation. Again. And the day was over. He wanted a drink. He wanted to not be alone. But being alone, he wanted to acknowledge that, almost embrace it.
So, there they were, at the bar, in the sun that only warmed a little in November, with no words left behind, with the attention of strangers that passed as soon as they came, with beer that only made it hurt a little less and a little more.
None of it worked. Little did, anymore. He hugged Eleanor close, and they left.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Sunday, October 14, 2012
just another story
she's there, in her red plaid flannel shirt, in front of the dueling elephants, an arm lifting from in front of her face and flaring upwards, a human projection of the trumpeting elephant that is clearly winning the fight.
in the next picture, the museum is still sharp and crisp around her, but she's blurred slightly, half doubled-over with laughter.
then she's fierce, all toothy snarl and shortened arms ending in claws, the skeleton of the tyrannosaurus rex looming over her.
somewhere, near the museum's door, I'm mimicking homo technologus. i'm sitting on a bench, listening to a meeting hundreds of miles away, with the increasing confirmation of my suspicions that losing an hour and a half of my vacation was completely pointless, keeping me from making it to the planetarium across the grounds that I'd always wanted to see.
it's also killing my phone. I check the charge periodically. 15%. 12%. 6%. the odds of reconnecting with my friends is draining away.
but, to be honest, they already had.
I don't know how far back to go in telling the story, in doing the analysis. maybe it was the comment she made 103 stories above Chicago, in front of an educational display that described the world expo, and "it's giant ferris wheel." that error, that confusion of the possessive and a state of things frustrated me.
moments before that, hours before that, we were fine. for most of the days before that, for a year before that, we were, most of the time, fine, or better. and, for a brief while during that year, we were closer than fine.
the times that weren't fine had become less and less a matter of wanting to get back to the past. they, also, were the result of the confusion of the possessive and the state of things.
it feels like fewer and fewer things are mine, as if my slow plummet towards the ground has accelerated, pulled by gravity, pushed by my own actions. the friction is building. it strips away the people around me. it rips identity from me. it shreds hope and its images of happier futures. the heat builds in me, frustration at my inability to stop, anger always roiling just under my skin.
we cannot and should not be together, her and I. but we were, once, and she was mine - she held a meaning that no one else could hold, and that no one else would know. where there is and will be no relationship, there is still the link of history and care, that I clutch close as I fall. it's some comfort - if not a lasting one, then maybe one of the last ones.
losing that completely, losing her completely, is what I fear. I've lost it too many times before, and I know I'll eventually lose it here. I'll become just another story in her life, because time and love necessitate it. I've faded in too many memories, been a short chapter or minor footnote too many times before, and every time I move so easily out of someone's present and into someone's past, it's as though I cease to exist for them.
so now, every time she looks away, even though she knows i'm with her, every time I don't think she cares, even when she does, and every time a comment reminds me of the space between us, even though she never moves away, I feel that fear, that it's just more loss. that fear blinds me, and i believe in that moment that she's taking something away from me, compounding the growing loneliness.
and then, it's anger that I can't control the state of things, that the possession of a heart seems to be taken away.
so there, together, a quarter of a mile above the earth, i set fire to the morning, the weekend, the months, the year we had shared. with a few undeserved words, and days of not talking to her, I touched the torch to all I feared losing, and to myself, determined to burn it all to ash.
we would go longer than we ever had without talking, and without resolution. I would, finally, apologize. she would forgive me.
I don't yet know how charred her heart or our friendship are by the arson. but I look at the pictures of her being an elephant, at her laughing, at her smiling and laughing around the museum, and I wasn't there. or maybe, I was, in the background, sitting on a bench, an angry ghost, a remnant of a coming past, a fading story that eventually might not even be retold.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
in the next picture, the museum is still sharp and crisp around her, but she's blurred slightly, half doubled-over with laughter.
then she's fierce, all toothy snarl and shortened arms ending in claws, the skeleton of the tyrannosaurus rex looming over her.
somewhere, near the museum's door, I'm mimicking homo technologus. i'm sitting on a bench, listening to a meeting hundreds of miles away, with the increasing confirmation of my suspicions that losing an hour and a half of my vacation was completely pointless, keeping me from making it to the planetarium across the grounds that I'd always wanted to see.
it's also killing my phone. I check the charge periodically. 15%. 12%. 6%. the odds of reconnecting with my friends is draining away.
but, to be honest, they already had.
I don't know how far back to go in telling the story, in doing the analysis. maybe it was the comment she made 103 stories above Chicago, in front of an educational display that described the world expo, and "it's giant ferris wheel." that error, that confusion of the possessive and a state of things frustrated me.
moments before that, hours before that, we were fine. for most of the days before that, for a year before that, we were, most of the time, fine, or better. and, for a brief while during that year, we were closer than fine.
the times that weren't fine had become less and less a matter of wanting to get back to the past. they, also, were the result of the confusion of the possessive and the state of things.
it feels like fewer and fewer things are mine, as if my slow plummet towards the ground has accelerated, pulled by gravity, pushed by my own actions. the friction is building. it strips away the people around me. it rips identity from me. it shreds hope and its images of happier futures. the heat builds in me, frustration at my inability to stop, anger always roiling just under my skin.
we cannot and should not be together, her and I. but we were, once, and she was mine - she held a meaning that no one else could hold, and that no one else would know. where there is and will be no relationship, there is still the link of history and care, that I clutch close as I fall. it's some comfort - if not a lasting one, then maybe one of the last ones.
losing that completely, losing her completely, is what I fear. I've lost it too many times before, and I know I'll eventually lose it here. I'll become just another story in her life, because time and love necessitate it. I've faded in too many memories, been a short chapter or minor footnote too many times before, and every time I move so easily out of someone's present and into someone's past, it's as though I cease to exist for them.
so now, every time she looks away, even though she knows i'm with her, every time I don't think she cares, even when she does, and every time a comment reminds me of the space between us, even though she never moves away, I feel that fear, that it's just more loss. that fear blinds me, and i believe in that moment that she's taking something away from me, compounding the growing loneliness.
and then, it's anger that I can't control the state of things, that the possession of a heart seems to be taken away.
so there, together, a quarter of a mile above the earth, i set fire to the morning, the weekend, the months, the year we had shared. with a few undeserved words, and days of not talking to her, I touched the torch to all I feared losing, and to myself, determined to burn it all to ash.
we would go longer than we ever had without talking, and without resolution. I would, finally, apologize. she would forgive me.
I don't yet know how charred her heart or our friendship are by the arson. but I look at the pictures of her being an elephant, at her laughing, at her smiling and laughing around the museum, and I wasn't there. or maybe, I was, in the background, sitting on a bench, an angry ghost, a remnant of a coming past, a fading story that eventually might not even be retold.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Friday, October 5, 2012
the price of safety
There's a folder on the hard drive, static snapshots from the blog I once used to bleed myself. Lately, I've dived back into it, remembering something I once felt and put out for everyone to see.
I feel a little nostalgic, but more voyeuristic, looking back into what seems like someone else's life. I feel surprise at what I've forgotten, and I feel a little bit of regret and admiration at the force of the words.
It's a struggle now, trying to come back to writing, maybe like an athlete that left the game, and waited too long to realize what he had. It's so hard to be open to the words, to catch and be carried on the flow, to be swept without effort or struggle towards something beautiful. It's hard to believe the courage, or foolhardiness, that I once had, to write so honestly and completely.
I'm so afraid that it's gone. For most of my life, writing and music, and love, were all that hope was to me. Love has been... well, love. Mistakes and misconceptions and misses.
But writing and music... They've been the means to the moments when I was the most alive, the most myself, the most meaningful.
They were hope. But they are also the objects of my greatest failures - my failures to try, to put in the work, to rebel and be who I was meant to be.
As much as writing was also a passion and potential unrealized, music was always a path for me that was even more clearly marked. My first memories are of music. When I first reunited with my father, at 29, his first real question was, "Are you a musician?" In the 25 years since he had last laid eyes on me, he would linger over the concerts aired on Austin City Limits, believing that's how he would see me again, first, and maybe at all.
I had, in my voice and writing, a sword and shield. The desire to use it to make a difference, to bring a few minutes of feeling at a time to people, burned in me. And admittedly, to be known and loved and remembered, to not be left behind by time and the constant turnovers of lives, was an imperative to me. It was maybe even a point of desperation.
But the path away from what I knew and what was approved was scary. Exposure and the chance to fail were considerable monsters for a kid that desperately wanted approval, but got jeers and beat-downs. Showing everyone who I really was and could be could solve everything for me, but the risk of feeling even more alone in failure and ridicule and the loss of the identity I secretly clung to was too great.
So, when I was told, "No," there was safety. There was safety in letting fear keep me from opening myself by opening my voice.
In the end, it hasn't been parents or bullies that have kept me from singing. It's been me. It's been cowardice, and laziness, and resignation.
A few years ago, a friend got me on stage to sing, and in the years since, I've done more. Played open mics, been asked to sing with other people, been in a couple of promising, but short-lived bands, even sang the national anthem before a crowd of almost 20,000.
But I've rarely done my best. Some fear, some restraint, has usually still gripped me. And more importantly, I haven't put in the work on my own. do work best singing with others. But I also feel a resignation, a fear, or knowledge, that maybe, like that athlete trying to recapture what once was, I waited too long and have lost what could have been.
My roommate watches talent competition shows - X-Factor, America's Got Talent, The Voice. I've been pulled in. I've still got the ear, I hear the missed notes, and the notes skillfully maneuvered, or the barest, most beautiful changes in pitch negotiated with skill and passion. I see and hear the fear that will spell doom.
And, even in the most upbeat of songs, I'm sad, and lost. I see my once-maybe futures 20 years past, from my spot on the couch. I feel the tightness in my throat, from emotion, but also from disuse and misuse. I feel the weakening gravity of the keyboard, quiet and covered in clothes. I sit in the living room, watching live reruns of my old dreams, safe, but learning to have faith in danger.
I feel a little nostalgic, but more voyeuristic, looking back into what seems like someone else's life. I feel surprise at what I've forgotten, and I feel a little bit of regret and admiration at the force of the words.
It's a struggle now, trying to come back to writing, maybe like an athlete that left the game, and waited too long to realize what he had. It's so hard to be open to the words, to catch and be carried on the flow, to be swept without effort or struggle towards something beautiful. It's hard to believe the courage, or foolhardiness, that I once had, to write so honestly and completely.
I'm so afraid that it's gone. For most of my life, writing and music, and love, were all that hope was to me. Love has been... well, love. Mistakes and misconceptions and misses.
But writing and music... They've been the means to the moments when I was the most alive, the most myself, the most meaningful.
They were hope. But they are also the objects of my greatest failures - my failures to try, to put in the work, to rebel and be who I was meant to be.
As much as writing was also a passion and potential unrealized, music was always a path for me that was even more clearly marked. My first memories are of music. When I first reunited with my father, at 29, his first real question was, "Are you a musician?" In the 25 years since he had last laid eyes on me, he would linger over the concerts aired on Austin City Limits, believing that's how he would see me again, first, and maybe at all.
I had, in my voice and writing, a sword and shield. The desire to use it to make a difference, to bring a few minutes of feeling at a time to people, burned in me. And admittedly, to be known and loved and remembered, to not be left behind by time and the constant turnovers of lives, was an imperative to me. It was maybe even a point of desperation.
But the path away from what I knew and what was approved was scary. Exposure and the chance to fail were considerable monsters for a kid that desperately wanted approval, but got jeers and beat-downs. Showing everyone who I really was and could be could solve everything for me, but the risk of feeling even more alone in failure and ridicule and the loss of the identity I secretly clung to was too great.
So, when I was told, "No," there was safety. There was safety in letting fear keep me from opening myself by opening my voice.
In the end, it hasn't been parents or bullies that have kept me from singing. It's been me. It's been cowardice, and laziness, and resignation.
A few years ago, a friend got me on stage to sing, and in the years since, I've done more. Played open mics, been asked to sing with other people, been in a couple of promising, but short-lived bands, even sang the national anthem before a crowd of almost 20,000.
But I've rarely done my best. Some fear, some restraint, has usually still gripped me. And more importantly, I haven't put in the work on my own. do work best singing with others. But I also feel a resignation, a fear, or knowledge, that maybe, like that athlete trying to recapture what once was, I waited too long and have lost what could have been.
My roommate watches talent competition shows - X-Factor, America's Got Talent, The Voice. I've been pulled in. I've still got the ear, I hear the missed notes, and the notes skillfully maneuvered, or the barest, most beautiful changes in pitch negotiated with skill and passion. I see and hear the fear that will spell doom.
And, even in the most upbeat of songs, I'm sad, and lost. I see my once-maybe futures 20 years past, from my spot on the couch. I feel the tightness in my throat, from emotion, but also from disuse and misuse. I feel the weakening gravity of the keyboard, quiet and covered in clothes. I sit in the living room, watching live reruns of my old dreams, safe, but learning to have faith in danger.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
where immovable law meets unstoppable ignorance
The City of Belfast has put down Lennox, a dog for being a "possibly pitbull type," despite worldwide protest, despite North Ireland's First Minister asking the Lord Mayor of Belfast why the order should be exercised if there was an alternative, and despite offers by well-known and credible dog behaviorists Cesar Millan and Victoria Stilwell to take the dog in.
Lennox arguably didn't need a behaviorist, though - there were no complaints against him, and no documented history of behavioral issues beyond a claim by a government expert that it was one of the "most unpredictable and dangerous" dogs he had run across.
Maybe that's true. Maybe it's a government defending the enforcement of an absolutist law banning the ownership of "dangerous breeds". But we do know that seven year-old Lennox was only taken from its owners for no reason other than his breed, which the government later "confirmed" by measuring his nose and the length of his legs.
I hate making very tenuous comparisons, but:
These sound all too familiar. At the risk of being overly histrionic, let's say some of the things that list, in whole, or in parts, cannot help but cry out in our heads. Racism. Racial profiling. Nazi Germany. Guantanamo. Apartheid. One drop of blood. McCarthyism. Arizona. "You don't look like you belong in this neighborhood." Black kids in hoodies. Suspension of habeas corpus. "Driving while black." Any number of more politically divisive issues - the war in Iraq, the outlawing of guns.
To be fair, a lot of what is evoked is in our past, if not very distantly. Some are the acts of rogue individuals, or discrete (arguably rogue) states, and not our broader governments and institutions. Some are politically divisive. But this is a supposedly enlightened government in a first-world country. This is an absolute law based on absolute ignorance and fear, passed by that government.
If we can do this here, then where else? With what other living beings? What have been violated are not laws about dogs, but are fundamental tenets of good sense and good government and good lawmaking, and most importantly, compassion and morality, that are at stake.
Guarding public safety is government in one of its proper roles, but it's been exercised here without any regard for personal rights, reason, or compassion, without regard for the shame in our human history, or the consequences to which we may doom ourselves by its repetition.
It feels silly in the face of this tragedy to quote a television show, but the quote has stuck in my head as a guiding principle for 25 years: "there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions."
I don't know if I see Captain Picard with a pit bull, but I know he wouldn't have upheld the "Dangerous Dog Act", and that Lennox would not have died on his watch.
RIP, Lennox. Hopefully, you and what we as a society did today won't be forgotten. They can blow out a candle, but they can't blow out a fire.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Lennox arguably didn't need a behaviorist, though - there were no complaints against him, and no documented history of behavioral issues beyond a claim by a government expert that it was one of the "most unpredictable and dangerous" dogs he had run across.
Maybe that's true. Maybe it's a government defending the enforcement of an absolutist law banning the ownership of "dangerous breeds". But we do know that seven year-old Lennox was only taken from its owners for no reason other than his breed, which the government later "confirmed" by measuring his nose and the length of his legs.
I hate making very tenuous comparisons, but:
- Passing laws to pre-judge a being based on its race;
Accepting the physical characteristics of an individual as evidence that the individual is an "undesirable" addressed by that law; - Taking a dog from- if his "family" is not legally accepted - then his owners, and holding him in an undisclosed location without allowing his family/owners to visit (from my understanding, given various articles);
- Declaring it in the public interest to end a life when other options that are credible, would protect public safety, cost nothing, and that show compassion are available; and
- Ignoring the desires of its electorate and the world community.
These sound all too familiar. At the risk of being overly histrionic, let's say some of the things that list, in whole, or in parts, cannot help but cry out in our heads. Racism. Racial profiling. Nazi Germany. Guantanamo. Apartheid. One drop of blood. McCarthyism. Arizona. "You don't look like you belong in this neighborhood." Black kids in hoodies. Suspension of habeas corpus. "Driving while black." Any number of more politically divisive issues - the war in Iraq, the outlawing of guns.
To be fair, a lot of what is evoked is in our past, if not very distantly. Some are the acts of rogue individuals, or discrete (arguably rogue) states, and not our broader governments and institutions. Some are politically divisive. But this is a supposedly enlightened government in a first-world country. This is an absolute law based on absolute ignorance and fear, passed by that government.
If we can do this here, then where else? With what other living beings? What have been violated are not laws about dogs, but are fundamental tenets of good sense and good government and good lawmaking, and most importantly, compassion and morality, that are at stake.
Guarding public safety is government in one of its proper roles, but it's been exercised here without any regard for personal rights, reason, or compassion, without regard for the shame in our human history, or the consequences to which we may doom ourselves by its repetition.
It feels silly in the face of this tragedy to quote a television show, but the quote has stuck in my head as a guiding principle for 25 years: "there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions."
I don't know if I see Captain Picard with a pit bull, but I know he wouldn't have upheld the "Dangerous Dog Act", and that Lennox would not have died on his watch.
RIP, Lennox. Hopefully, you and what we as a society did today won't be forgotten. They can blow out a candle, but they can't blow out a fire.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
bored on the fourth of july
i'm trying to write again, and also going through the process of digging out things that were on my old blog, that were read mainly by a very different cast of characters than i have in my life now. so, it's new to them... so, this, from 2005.
---------
when they light up our town, i just think,
'what a waste of gunpowder and sky.'
- aimee mann
my fourth was spent... independently. it began well, dovetailing without sleep into the previous day's night, leora and eric and i in the warm water of the pool at my apartment, drinking cold beer, talking quietly.
they left at four in the morning, and i slept, slept, and slept until about noon. i was still sore from saturday's run, which had taken me far past the red line, past the maximum of six or eight miles i had run in the past several months, all the way to 14.
i made some oatmeal, and watched t.v., into the night. my roommate came and went. i didn't make calls i should have made. didn't go to any of the two or three parties i had been invited to, didn't go to meet amelia and her brother, didn't take up another possible option.
i ate a can of black beans, which was somehow appropriate while watching napoleon dynamite. at about 9:30, i heard muffled thumps from outside. i put on shoes and ipod and wandered out, walking up congress to amy's.
i walked north past families, couples, walked under faces and eyes turned up and to the west, where color erupted over the treetops.
it is hard for me, sometimes, to separate energy from mood, from reality. i didn't want to be alone, but i couldn't seem to generate the motivation and effort to join in, to interact. i felt a sense of loss, missing the color and noise, maybe because some part of me doesn't want the smoke and silence that intervenes between the bursts. maybe i've too often felt the thrill of the party or evening or of love, even, end, leaving regret hanging in the air like the sharp incense of cordite.
i stopped, away from the crowds, and finally turned to watch. the new coldplay album that i still haven't gotten enough of was playing,
and all you ever wanted was love,
but you never looked hard enough.
it's never gonna give itself up.
all you ever wanted to be,
living in perfect symmetry -
nothing is as down or as up.
i stood, and the world was only light and music. i thought of my friends out there, watching, taking joy in the moment, in each explosion of color, globes of purple, sparklers, rockets streaming skyward, exploding in colors that went from gold to red.
part of me missed them, wished i was seeing it with them, but part of me knew i had made a choice - how disconnected am i? how much do i disconnect myself? am i a hypocrite to feel lonely, when sometimes i choose to be alone?
the show hit its climax, and then ended, leaving ghosts floating over the city.
i walked to amy's. the people there make it hard to be antisocial. the crowds hadn't reached that far up the street from the river yet, and i spent a good 15 minutes there, my only real human contact of the day. i bought a new flavor for the first time in over 15 years of going to amy's. the girl slapped a sticker on my shirt.
the crowds began to approach from the south, streaming up the sidewalk, began to line up. i said goodbye, put my headphones back in, and walked home.
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