Tag Archives: longing

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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. Ive 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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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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I knew she was alive and breathing all along. Theres been so many nights when the city dove into complete silence, and I could remember hearing the sound of her chest heaving. So charmingly distinguished from the terrible moan of a million other things that were lost to this sluggish, repetitive town. A place that’s certainly inept towards any type of sensitivity of the human spirit. Most of the year I’m susceptible to a certain diminishment of my vitality. But I knew she was there…  

She is Serendipity and I’ve leared to tell her apart from all other enertias – gravity pales in her comparison to her draw. Even her very likliness can lift the skies and force an entire ocean through the keyhole of my bedroom door.

I awake to pleasant shivers as she traces my cheekbone with the tip of her finger each morning. The way the sun from the window across the room silhouettes her body is more irresistible than any piece of lace she could possibly be draped in.

If only I could translate in succinct verse all of the things she’s showed me. The sophistication of a quiet winter evening sitting alone under the quivering leaves of an old oak. I collected a million different shades of blue and green from her eyes and I would use these fascinating hues to paint my own grayed world for weeks at a time.   I feel the air pass through our twisted limbs with complex softness. Like a crazed feline – too curious to just let each us be and yet much too empathetic to destroy us.  Slowly, her gentle breath on my shoulder begins to distinguish me apart from all the pitiful bodies lining trite American homes and interstates.

When we walk down rainy avenues, I hold her hand like a child holds onto a small balloon. My reaction to feeling that she was much lighter than air and if I should ever loosen my grip, she might drift away into the clouds above and her eyes would color the darkened atmosphere with those intricate blues and greens. So I took small pieces of string and began to sew small pieces of my own life to her, to keep from dancing away into the air – So that my world could retain these wonderful new tones. Past memories and dusty old literature from my bookshelf were sewn to her along with a few love letters written from foxhole of a uselessly romantic young man. Pieces of me strung to her soft skin, to keep her from dismantling in the wind like a dandelion. So that, should she ever get carried away, she would take me along for the ride.

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I sat on my back porch this morning and watched as the blackening clouds above began to create a tempestuous atmosphere – scattering my notebooks around on the table. I saw two small butterflies mating in the midst of all this dismay and watched as they were thrown about in violent wind gusts and torrential rain. Torn apart, then hurtling towards each other again in order to finish despite every type of disorder imaginable. Gripping onto one another regardless of the fact that neither creature could provide any reasonable argument of what is it they expect to accomplish through all this insanity.  Driven solely by subconscious requirements, and a complete disregard of any reasonable voice within telling them to go home alone where it is safe.

I snickered to myself, because I as watched these frail insects endanger themselves and each other repeatedly, I was aware that it was merely due to some type of instinctual desire. Nothing more than sex and survival. A mindless act embedded deep within their DNA.
However, if I was ever asked to give the definition of “love” in humans,  I would describe this very scenario before me.

Love is very capable of becoming a type of institutionalized abandonment of all rational thought.
It is the wings that continually push us towards each other, unaware of the pitch black around us ripping us apart.
Love is collecting every type of type of madness and yet smiling each morning – the way the mentally ill stare off in the corners of dirty asylums, oblivious to anything else.

And sex and survival are merely just an excuse.

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I had a dream about an old man. He was sitting on a chair across from me with his head tilted backwards, and every odd minute, his head swung forward as if he kept nodding off but then sporadically remembered I was there.

“Are you feeling ok?” He muttered in a thick spanish accent.

“I dont know. I feel ok. I just dont feel quite right”

The old man sat forwards and started empying things from the pockets of his faded yellow shorts. Apologies, allowences, a few outdated birthday cards, some soccer games he couldnt attend…. He fumbled around a bit and handed me a VHS tape. I stared at it and tried hard to remember why it had any significance.  It didnt seem familiar at all, and yet there was a crushing feeling in my chest at the sight of it.

“Whats wrong?” He asked.

“I dont think I like this movie anymore.  But thank you.” 

“How’s mom?”

“Shes good. I miss her every day more and more and yet I see her all the time. I stopped looking her in the eyes years ago, Im too afraid. I think there is something wrong with me. Maybe you were right?”

He dug into his pockets again and gave me a wrinkled manilla envelope. Inside was a small, folded picture of himself as a young man standing on the deck of a boat. He was staring outwards over the water with a pensive expression but he had the warning signs of a smile that was just about to crack though on his face. I can only imagine this photo was taken the very second he realized there was a camera next to him. He had my very eyes. No, I had his eyes.

The crushing feeling came back.

“I didnt mean those things, you know.” He told me. “….An earthquake deep under the ocean still causes disaster on land even when its thousands of miles away. Im sorry that my own tremors shook you.”

His head kept rocking back and forth as if he was still on that boat. He would doze off and wake right back up to hand me different things. Things that I had tried to forget over time. Some were very bad things, and some were wonderful things that made the bad things not seem so bad.

“I’ve been having trouble sleeping, Christian” whispered the old man after a few minutes.

“But you look so tired. Im sorry I kept you so long.” I responded.

I didnt know what else to say. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing. I was afraid of everything. And the feeling in my chest was becoming increasingly unbearable . I wanted to cry but I knew I couldn’t until after he fell asleep. But the old mans head kept swaying back and forth.

Finally he spoke again…

“All the hurt that you carry with you causes collateral damage in others lives,  just like the quake sends violent tides towards the shore. And the closer people are to you, the more tremendous the damage you create without intention. I cant seem to get any rest. I had to come see you but I’m exhausted. ”

I stopped looking him in the eyes. I was too afraid.  The pressure in my chest was too much now. Everything I had was breaking through my ribcage.  I started to gasp for air and my hands grabbed hopelessly for anything to hold onto as suddenly massive, towering waves began to expel from my chest and devastate everything in sight apart from us two. My fists clenched tightly around on the manilla envelope.

I started to speak. But with what air? The entire world was now submerged under miles and miles of ocean that came rushing from through my chest.  No breath came in, nothing came seeping out. And yet my voice was clear. 

“Im sorry if my dreams have haunted you. Im sorry if I let you die long before your body did. Can I keep this picture?”

“Yes. You have my eyes, you know.”

“Thank you. Good night, Dad.”

And with that, his head tilted back.  The second his eyes closed, mine opened.

I climbed out of bed and began to get ready for the day.

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I dont fall in love with people. Not in the present tense, at least. I fall in love with absence – and the wonder and infinite possibilities that come with it. 

Theres hardly much passion left to the flesh. I lust after it, but I suppose that could be anyone. Thats too easy and its all been done a million times over.

You see, the outside world is terribly boring and it has its limits, but in my mind….

….. she goes on and on forever. 

When we meet, hardly anything goes right but at night alone, the Earth rattles when I close my eyes. So I’ve been awake for days. 

Months.

Years.

I don’t even remember.

I don’t even care.

I fall in love with memories of women long gone.  Memories that I’ve conveniently twisted to suit my needs.

Ideas, dreams, fantasies….these are my tempestuous lovers.

But they are all mine.

Perhaps because these things can be controlled and changed when I need them to change. They leave when I need them to be gone and when I’m desperate, they crawl out of the trees and tie ropes around my neck for me.

In my dreams, she can stay safe. She climbs into my chest and closes my torso like a child hiding in a cabinet from a monster.  She waits til the footsteps slowly fade away, and when its safe again,  she climbs out of my body and lays next to it but she never lets go. She holds me like a snail holds its shell.

But only in dreams – because there is no salvation to me in real life. I am not her shell, I am her anchor.

And I make her sick

She screams at the top of her lungs but I just don’t go away.

It’s 1:30pm

Im sitting on the floor spinning an old hair tie that she left here months ago between my fingers.

And im smiling. 

I’m smiling because shes gone, so I can finally fall in love with her again.

In dreams.

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She wears makeup like an old house wears bars and wooden boards covering its windows. And similarly,  these smashed-berry and ash colored adornments are applied by external means, because her hands no longer work in tandem with her mind. Her body no longer matches her internal intentions,  and even when she bleeds -and she does quite often – the crimson slips off and splashes away like water on oil and only serves to make all the messes that follow her like hungry dogs even more desirous. Thier mouths foam and thier teeth grit.

Houses dont close their own doors or stain red thier own carpets. These happenings are caused only by the most unfortunate inhabitants….

The car was silent and pitch black most of the ride home until a small flame suddenly splashed atop of her lighter just infront of a crooked cigarette. The amber glow lit up her face just enough to see that her eyeliner was running and smeared as if to show that just like a weathered old home, the boards covering those windows that alluded to her soul has been tampered with. As if someone had broken in and trespassed beyond her locks and rusty fences and warning signs and smashed her insides like disgraced fine china and smashed holes through all the walls, so that everything spilled out into everything else creating an indistinguishable mess. Now which body part shows tenderness? Could it be lips or fists? And what, now, is love without a pit of guilt in her stomach? And faith…is it the kind she prays with or the kind the world preys upon? And a voice inside her tells her that this whole place should be burnt to the ground.

…In the distance you could hear bad lucks stomach growl and it’s mouth water.

She left for good the other day, but I saw her last night by the tree out back. Only it wasn’t her. Perhaps the frayed fabric between dreams and waking life had snapped and let one bleed into the other disgracefully. She was moving as if tangled in some sort of wind, but the air was absent of all currents and there was not a breath within miles. Not even mine. I walked over in silence to show her I hadnt moved a muscle since she left, that my heart had been collecting dust along side the broken furniture and useless, faded old books on the floor of the old house behind those eyes – Behind her eyelashes that resembled iron bars. But the second my fingers seemingly touched her face, I became unbearably confused and withdrew out of fear that I could be lost in that delirium forever, and she dismantled and reappeared elsewhere across the yard. 

I guess every ghost story begins with something lost. In fact, a very basic definition of a ghost could be the return of something that was supposed to be gone forever. So thats where ill re-start this story:

A body. Not the traditional cadaver, this one still had quite a number of breaths still in it. (Though I was trying my hardest to take those away) A body with its warm back pressed against the contrasting, cold dirt in this very yard. Under a different light, maybe our bodies resembled some type of resurrection ceremony,  only time and a little more illumination would prove something much more debauched.  The placement of our hands were contained solely to the vital organs and all my main arteries were, just below the skin, dressed up with her pretty little hands grasping and clawing at each of them. Warm violet blood made its anticipated escape from my chest and spilled back into the dust where we came from, If you believe those types of things.

Just as vandals on the streets not far from here mark buildings as thier own with aerosol cans only to be washed away by mid-day,  so have I tried desperately to claim the charming woodwork of her body as my own. To bend the bars covering her incredible eyes and build my miserable estate back there. To sweep the floors of years of forgotten, broken things and to stumble incidently upon my heart covered in dust and soot and place it next to hers, in the attic where I could finally put a bright candle and chase away the pitch black of an entire life. 

This is not a ghost story in sense of rattling chains or floating tea-pots. But, rather, a haunting of every conceivable sense. An immense teething sensation – a displeasure from deep in my gut that keeps me up at night, knowing that her endearing old house is now miles from my own and perhaps still in immediate danger of arson.  She was not the true ghost in this encounter, even as haunted as her old home had become over the years. She was the very impetus that brought forth the return of something inside me that had been laying seemingly dead and decayed for a lifetime. She was the poltergeist that startled me by rattling my heart and then dispersing into thin air leaving me terrified and alone….

and if only this haunting would never cease….

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I guess its like reading the lyrics of a song without ever hearing it. It usually creates a jarring, unkempt mess unsuitable for any ear or tongue.

But once you hear it, once you lay down in a dark room with it and focus on its nuances and all the tedium that went into creating what is laying there next to you, telling you about the scar on thier stomach or that time up in the Georgia mountains a few summers ago, its often hard to distinguish anything else from it ever again. And even if you do ever run into that jarring mess of words, sounds and actions again, maybe at a party or a bar downtown, its quite difficult to read what they are saying now without hearing that same melody and those alluring nuances. Even after a few years worth of other unsuitable, bland melodies.

And I guess that’s what I’d consider love.  Not that im anyone to even utter a word on the subject,  but there is quite a few brilliant, complex symphonies that play out in my head when I see her occasionally and one day, I’d like for someone to hear something unmistakable like that when I speak.

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Is longing only achievable with knowledge of a target for it? I wonder if a small bird kept in a childs room instinctively dreams of open skys even through its ignorance of them?
Yes. There must be something burried in the soul of all creatures which makes them feel unbearably culpable of thier disguarded fate, even when unaware of it. The same instinct that causes me to be crushed by the weight of places I’ll never go. The longing that makes my heart ache for passion and love, which I certainly know nothing of. Perhaps I’ve kept myself intentionally bereft all this for so many years that my daydreams have become deep-rooted and habitual. I wonder if maybe it is not a matter of instinct, but of compulsions born from continuously running from everything I secretly desire. Perhaps it is all my doing. Suppression is, after all, the main culprit behind all compulsions. So here is whats left; Twenty-nine years without fascinating journeys abroad or whirling, singular love stories. Twenty-nine years of self-inflicted disillusionment.

Outside my window, I can hear the rhythmic juxtaposition between the scraping sound of the wind against the top of the lake out back and the grinding of cars on the highway pavement about a half-mile down the road. Car alarms and birds chirp flirtingly back and forth to one another and burrow themselves into my subconscious – to be used in dreams at a later time. My desires and fears tangle into one another like the most insufferable fabric that separates life, awaiting just past my windowsill, and my all my years of abandoning it to pursue an existence compiled of nothing more than vivid daydreams with images taken from books I’ve read and pictures I’ve seen. Yes, even my fantasies are stolen.

I thought about writing her today,  but my body would certainly cripple and my fingers would snap in all cardinal directions. This is one of the many inconveniences Ive collected through life. How could I write her as such a tangled, broken mess? And what, anyway, would I ask of her? ‘I cant have you back, but please dont go away?’ The foolishness bubbles up beneath my skin and I may as well just smash my face endlessly against the blank page in front of me and have whoever finds me – snapped and splattered – mail it to her, still dripping dark red with my insecurities.

The inconveniences I’ve collected through life drape fittingly about my limbs.
I wear a hideous fabric that only she would adore.

I rummaged through my head for memories to live in.
     It was 5am the other night that I found her standing at my door. Im still not entirely sure how she got here. A strong current must have ripped her from her life and the undertow must have dragged her towards me, down to the bottom of the world where I make my home.
       I watched as she took a drag of her cigarette. The dull light from its end revealed her eyeliner, diluted and pooling grey beneath her eyes. I wished she wouldnt cry but it makes my heart ache for her. The only thing more lovely than her misery was her happiness and I felt greedy for wanting it all. It was her curse that she would have such a wonderful glow, even under duress.  The whole ‘rest-of-the-world’ surrounding her was pitch black and meaningless to me. Im amazed that shes here. Im amazed at her tangled, wet blonde hair and I’m amazed at the new cuts on her hands.  We sat on the dock over the lake and talked about the futility of modern romance, the deaths of our fathers and the dismantling of whats left of our sanity. 

These are the memories that allow me to live here alone. 29 years of nothing else suits me just fine. These daydreams – and my garment of inconveniences draped over me to keep me warm.

She spoke about a crooked, old, wooden house in the dark that visits her at night. A reacurring dream she had or, perhaps its a coping mechanism that allows her to participate in this world, but as she rests her head at night, she wakes up frantic in that terrible place.
The house represents a rusty safety-deposit box in the back of her mind and its inhabitants were thousands of traumas and tragities she suffered through life pieced together to compose scowling, putrid creatures that live in the attic and, at night, slither thier raw bodies down the steps to tangle themselves in her blonde hair.

I feel as if that is where I first met her, in the den of that creeking, old house.
That den was the eye of a great storm that streched the expanse of her entire life. We lived there – so temporarily – among the dusty books on the shelves, and we traded them as if what we couldn’t express through tongues or our bodies pressed against one another could be effectively spoken through those pieces of literature. But I knew I had to leave soon. I did not belong in her dreams no more than she belonged in the home I’ve made for myself at the bottom of the world.

That is the curse of a disobedient mind like mine. The drive that constantly lures me to her – To a life I know nothing of and a love that finds me unsuitable. Is the same drive that pulls me away, trembling and guilt-ridden. What was I doing in that old house? How did I find the key? What brought me to that den burried deep in her mind? Did I come there to dangle the illusion of safety in front of her?

I am irrefutably driven by the bleakness of this life and cannot help but to call out to her, endlessly, from below. From the bottom of the world where I made my home. I sing to her like a caged bird in a small childs room and what could I bother to expect?  Of course I could not expect her to stand outside of this terrible cage of mine and be content. And what would happen if she awakes in that forsaken old house at night?  My arms would fall short desperately reaching out to her through my rusted bars.
They would cripple and my fingers would snap trying to hold her and keep her safe.

29 years of disguarded fates and barren fields. 29 years of waiting in that den holding an old skeleton key and calling out to something I instinctively know awaits, yet am still unable to bare. Something that I somehow know of, but still couldn’t possibly fathom.

I threw the blank paper away and went back to the windowsill.

I still sing to her from my cage. Even through my ignorance.

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I felt a rapid presence inside me.
Dire one – winged hummingbirds dreaming of thier nectar. 
They all cry out  “I am what’s lovely about you!”
Indeed, the parts of me still alive with passion. The parts that know not of all my shortcomings. And they flap about on cold tile floors with sturdy dreams and certain prevail in thier bellies. 
With thier eyes focused on the tall blossoms. Nothing is ever so clear.  Nothing glints so blindingly. 
No gold, No silver, No sunbeams bouncing off the sea.
They are parts of me consumed with deep hunger and naivety is the glands watering thier mouths. 
The birds cry out from the cold floor.
But I mustn’t feed them, nor lift them to their nectar for they are what’s lovely about me. They are my passion! Thier hunger is my muse, you see!

 

But, years go by and thier calls go quiet and they lay still.

 

How selfish am I to be such a masochist! To suffer my physical body to such proportions merely in order to feel so alive internally. How naive am I! For now I see the two go hand-in-hand and here I sit with neither.

 

Just dead hummingbirds and dried, crumbled old flowers.

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