Tag Archives: loneliness

. Mange

They are the two most relatable and utterly contagious human afflictions: love and hatred. And passion is the the most ironic impetus behind both, which quite often causes these two emotions to be synonymous. It’s why we keep coming back to the ones that hurt us the most. Its criminals always return to the scene of the crime. Why the feeder rat runs over to sniff the snake.
I woke up outside and searched desperately in hopes that last night was a dream. But, scratches, bruises, bite marks…..These are all binding contracts that can not be refuted. I caught a glimpse of myself in an old dirty mirror and noticed my eyes resembled an old, worn photograph from the 1800s. The meloncholly it brought numbed me a little, just enough to go back to sleep for another hour or so. The animals sleep outside…..

She keeps me here because the thinks I’m good for her. As if I am the one that’s gonna save her, and that makes me the worst type of hero. The ones that lead you out to the fires under the guise of an innocent and loyal companion who doesn’t know better. I am the canine that destroys all her favorite things and she keeps letting sleep in her bed because I am warm at night. I am the wolf she mistakes for her shepard. And that alone must be enough because there’s nothing else. No comfort, No compassion. Just bent fences and torn dresses. Picked locks and talking our way out of handcuffs. Hours later, applying them myself.
Hours later talking myself into leaving.
Hours later waking up outside.
We are all the most terrible when we are alone. We are all the most unforgivable when the doors are locked. I’ve seen it all and talked them into most of it. Because I’m terribly afraid to admit that love and hatred are the same thing. It’s why I choke her when I kiss her. Comfort is the warm room where the greatest obscenities occur. It’s the parasite in my chest and the dreams tearing me limb from limb at night. It’s why I refuse to take you home, because I still haven’t found one. It’s why I sleep outside with the other animals.

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.X

Once you begin to feel enthralled and passionate without the need of any type of reciprocating entity or conveniently placed body, the entire population is at your mercy.

“Love” is such an odd endeavor that you learn just as much about when its absent as you do when you’re in its grasp, and the very moment you start to feel those same sensations without any type of target for them,  it becomes no longer a game of ‘who will make me feel that way?’ but instead ‘who will I share this with?’ and you will immediately notice a phenomenal increase in the quality of your enviroment, and particularly your company.

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.Cassadega

When I was young, my father would take us to the dock overlooking the Gulf near our house and let us run around while he stared off into the dark blue. I never knew why until now. Looking out across the lake in Cassadega, I had this overwhelming urge to rattle the earth enough to make waves in the murky water. Thats what it was all about for him. Waves. Watching the ocean topple over itself in sheer chaos and then calmly withdraw itself exposing hundreds of feet of clear, smooth sand that it was hiding underneath for only a few seconds until the choas comes hurling itself towards the shore again. Theres nothing more important than that because thats how life works. It comes in waves.
    I learned from watching him stare off at the sea as a little boy that there are two types of men; ones who only see the water crash and break over itself while hurling towards the shoreline, and ones who only watch it cower in on itself and withdraw back from where it came.  Those who can do both must be something more than human. If you are stranded out there, floating at the top of the ocean, being pelted by waves, you don’t think about the bottom. You cant fathom that there is a blissful silence beneath you when you are so overwhelmed by the choas surrounding you at the top. What kind of a man can furiously tread water with the understanding that everything is OK because underneath is the most pleasant calm imaginable? That would be an ideal way to look at life, though seemingly impossible.
   I know that what I see, and what I need to learn to see are entirely different. But I have been learning to be grateful for the times when I notice the empty shore between waves. Even though its brief. The more you learn to pay attention, the longer it seemingly takes for the world to fill back up with dark water again. Thats how you start. Only seconds at a time, and then soon, it will take a minute or two. And thats just enough for a couple deep breaths of fresh air in order to make it just a little easier next time you go under. I have friends right now that are being pelted by tumultuous waves, but there will be a break again soon i assure you. Its corny but that’s how life works. You’ll be able to get a couple good breaths in. Goodnight.

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.Dog Ears

People like me dont hold themselves upright. We curl in on ourselves like the edges of an old book left in an antique shop. I recognize the sound of dear old friends, and I can hear the sound of pretty young girls laughing and reciting poetry in the back yard of a friend’s house. I know what that sound is, I remember it, but all I do is tremble from behind the window. I look out across the dark yard and hear the most gentle voices. I imagine that I could sit outside and watch thier lips flash different shades of amber, gold, black and yellow and then to black again in the light of the fire pit, but I feel my heart pressing up against my upper chest and all I do is shiver. Perhaps I should call an ambulance.
There’s an overwhelming ferocity to life and I wish only to experience it from behind windows…. Windows of a friends house and windows of lonesome hotel rooms. I lean against the wall and I imagine looking out an old antique storefront on a brick avenue where my edges can curl in and give me some type of value. Give me anything at all.
I like to think that everyone feels this way, but there is this joyful lot that I watch running up and down the brick sidewalks. They are the type that ride in airplanes and visit thier family in the mountains each winter. I recognize the sound of those people from my shop window. They go on business trips and they don’t shiver like I do when they stay up late watching movies with pretty women.
I pull out my phone to check the time and realize that its glow makes it possible to catch my own reflection against the window pane. I’m starting to look more and more like my mother, which is beautiful but it doesn’t feel right because I know that having these similarities on my own face would be doing her a great disservice since, even though my years are much fewer than hers, the unbearable weariness of my life has taken its toll and would certainly accelerate her aging – and that I could not bare. It makes life much too heavy and I curl in on myself.

I suppose I am an antiquity with an aesthetic charm but not much else. An old book bought solely for a coffee table, only to be touched during a spring cleaning. The young girls would enter the shop on that brick avenue and notice me, but if they were ever to pick me off the shelf, all my bindings and glue would betray me and come loose and I would certainly fall apart into a useless pile of curled loose-leafs. They would laugh at my faded pages. I recognize the sound of that distinct laughter. Its not like the laughter I hear from out in the yard around the fire pit. Its not a lightened laughter that lifts the spirits, its a laughter weighted with humiliation which presses down on my back and makes me curl inward. I can almost hear it now. God forbid women who laugh like this take old antique books like me home for thier shelves or thier coffe tables. I can not endure that type of laughter anymore. I much prefer the silence of my quiet old shop where I lay untouched.

I could start every conversation with women by first explaining how terrified I am, but my posture already does this for me. I stay up watching old foreign films with pretty women and I wonder if should call an ambulance. I don’t feel right and I cant stop trembling.

I wish it was early morning because my shop on that brick avenue would be closed and that’s the only time that I feel brave – times when I know they can look in through the window with thier friends and whisper that I’m charming, but they could never reach out and spill all of my blank, curled pages onto the dirty shop floor.

But women luckily dont take antiques such as me home any more. We have no purpose. You cant take ancient objects like me up to the mountains to visit your family each winter or stay up late with me watching foreign movies. There are no business trips or romantic getaways when you live your life as an outdated, soiled piece of literature in an old shop window that fate has written with no intention or purpose. No plot line and no heros or damsels to be rescued. Just a beginning and an end.
Life like mine is pieced together so gently that if I even moved a muscle, each day of my entire life would fall apart onto the dirty shop floor to be trampled by the whole world as they walk by looking for a more valuable item to take home. And then I watch from my window as they walk back down the the brick avenue towards better things.
Towards the mountains in the winter. Towards warm fires in an old friends back yard. Romantic getaways and business trips.
And I sit on a dusty shelf in the window and wait for morning when the shop closes its doors so I can finally feel brave.

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. Ribbons

After the rain, the streets are impossibly smooth here as if they were composed of silk and not crumbled brick. They twist haphazardly throughout this city like ribbons strewn about, like they were dropped from the sky and left here by some lazy god.  In my own town I feel alone, but out here these ribbons drape around my body like lovers limbs.

I’ll never sleep alone out here, but in my own home, not a single tongue has ever took the shape of my name. Not a single arm has ever formed the curve of my shoulders. If I had touched you the way I touch these old brick roads, I would have never had to visit this place.

But its probably far too late. I dont know. My mind doesnt think clearly these days. I have an empty bottle and a birthday card with my name spelled wrong.
I have expletives and hard words in my memory and a couple of songs that make me feel as if the future is bright, man.

I have everything I could possibly need and I dont want a single bit of it. I come out here because not a god damn thing in this city belongs to me and nothings more romantic than that. Everyone here moves without my legs and they build without my arms. They all kiss without my lips and the ladies wear the most beautiful sundresses. They capture my heart and keep moving. The sort of girls who get a little too tipsy on the first date and kiss you in mid sentence and then walk away due to embarrassment which is the most annoying and sexy thing a woman can do.
Here in this place, the mouths all chatter and I walk closely enough to hear voices, but far enough to not make out the words like the humming of hymns outside of cathedrals.  It all sounds so gorgeous out of context,  but to take part would rob it of all its beauty due to the simple fact that the truth that lies behind any noun is hardly as fantastic as the surface.  Like bright green, landscaped graveyards with marble and ivory placed perfectly makes us forget the rot placed below.

Logic always crumbles under the weight of obsession. This place bore through me and took place of all rational thought. It’s ribbons began to fray and tie themselves in knots around my extremities.  So how could I expect any type of reprieve from coming home when I can no longer even hear their whimpers for my return? No, I couldn’t be gone long enough.

The rest of the world is consistently in frantics. Trampling each other due to some sort of instinctual pull that has always eluded me. Pushing themselves further upstream and straight into the jaws of awaiting bears. The humor of one species deep rooted instinct driving it to become nothing more than plaque on the teeth of another. So, I stopped swiming and I keep floating away out to sea, here in the middle of nowhere, to this strange town. At first, I am enveloped in the deepest black, but every morning at dawn, when the rest of the world sits chewed in the stomachs behind the mouths of bears, the sun from above the surface turns my town into the most astonishing blue hue just like the sea and, similarly, I float slowly to the bottom of it with ribbons tied around my neck and wrists and legs.

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