Tag Archives: memories

. Wrinkles

Its all sort of a game, really, when I think about it. Everyone you meet leaves some sort of imprint on you psychologically. Maybe a wrinkle in your brain from knowledge gained, a wrinkle of your forehead from induced stress, or a wrinkle in time from the frenzy of intimate encounters moving so quickly.
All impressions last forever whether negative or positive they help shape who you are right now. Every one. Ever since you were a child.
I imagine that my subconscious is like clay and there is thousands of fingerprints all over from these encounters molding me into me. Maybe one side has a huge dent from some sort of trauma. And maybe one side has a burn mark from being used or abandoned. But its all part of me now.

I wonder who’s soul has my fingerprints? Who’s soul has a imprint of my fist in its surface? Who have I burnt? Maybe there is imprints of my palm on a few where I tried my hardest to smooth out the dents that someone else left?

I wonder who I’ve influenced and who has turned their past negative encounters with me into something positive?

Its a game you play throughout life whether you like it or not. Like a walking jigsaw puzzle disassembled, looking to see if we fit in others lives. Hoping pieces of us stay. Hoping to find places to hide pieces of us.

Usually nothing fits and we never see them again. Or we try to force it for a few days or weeks and inevitably fall free.
But sometimes they pick up our clay and leave fingerprints and palm marks where they tried to sooth our damage.

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.Scars

Everyone I love has scars.
If you dont remember the last time you had a bruise or a cut then I feel sorry for you.
If you don’t fall at least once a week doing something stupid then something is wrong.
I pity anyone who has an office 10 floors above the city.
I pity anyone who has never literally spent thier last dollar.
I pity anyone who has never ran from a security guard on foot.
And anyone whos never driven home at 3 a.m. with a busted lip, torn shirt and a stupid smirk on thier face.

We are getting older and we still have no idea what we’re doing and I love that. We dont know what we want, where to get it or who to even share it with. We hang out with the wrong crowd on the wrong side of town in the wrong frame of mind. The fences we jump are getting taller and taller and the nights are always longer than the days.

Thats who we are. We are nobodies and thats a wonderful feeling sometimes. We have bad brains and even worse credit scores. We have scars. We are down and out, down for anything, up to no good and our bad habits are the best memories.

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.Dad

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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. Fireflies

Pulses of anxiety run up my legs and rush up my spine towards my brain the way squirrels climb up bird feeders out back. They collect tiny peices of my mind and run away out into the yard. Every morning I am confronted with the awareness that there are despicable things waiting, and every morning I wake up with less and less of the pieces required to place logic and reasoning in between me and the fear. The Earth feels entirely hollow beneath my feet and inclined to crack and give way at any moment. I’ve spent the better part of 20 years stuck in that tiny bit of helplessness you feel when you go to pay at a restaurant and suddenly discover your wallet missing. 
Vertigo is my consort.
What a repugnant companion.
What an uncharming life.

I lay in my bed and listen to the overwhelming silence and try frantically to discover any type of distraction. I begin to focus on the sound of my cat patting around a small insect – Indifferent to its demise.  It reminds me of being a child in Jersey and all the times I used to bring jars of fireflies in from the field. My mother would smile. Even fully aware that I was destroying all these undeserving little things, she didnt say a word. Innocence is so endearing even though it can mean the destruction of another. A child kills something and we feel empathy, an adult kills something and we feel rage and sickness. It becomes forgivable when we know not our trail of ruined things or countless inflictions. That’s the basis of a lot of poisonous relationships in our lives. Its also the basis of a blissful, childlike existence.

My mother crept into my room each morning and threw away my jar of dead things and smiled. As if I was a cat who dragged a lifeless mouse in as a deplorable gift. To give thanks. She understood that its better to pick the mangled rodent up with a glove and a trash bin than to tamper with that type of innocence and instill the kind of messes within a child that no disinfectant can clean. Thats what we do when we are young – our selfishness and innocence is the most admirable and preposessing thing, even through the complete destruction of all else. 

My only goal in life is to never stop being capable of this. Everything else can drop dead behind me and I’ll hardly notice. I’d like to playfully rip the world apart limb from limb between my claws like an insect and then move on to another without any recollection.

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