Rot & Blather
This is the part I've never been good at …
The groveling. The crawling over glass shards to return to the feet of something I thought was well behind me ... Unless it is a person standing directly in front of me — in which I can hollow myself out for, dedicate my every touch and movement to tribute a pleasure — what’s behind me is just that. Behind me.
Do I have fashionable nostalgia glasses? Yes. Do I obsess with the idea of paths diverted and paths not taken? Like most humans; also yes. Does that seed it planted still rot and feed my undergrowth? Yes.
Lately, however, this pot of feelings and love I have has been boiling over. So I'm here. Once again dancing in the dark -- or the scorching light, because this browser window doesn't have a functional dark mode -- trying not to spill my brain while I spill everything else.
Confounding and compounding, it all seems to be coming to the tip of the sword simultaneously. So stark the sharpness, and so deep the cut, I sought salvation in a meeting recently. Desperate, to not completely unravel, and so weak that I needed to rely on others to keep my yarn from tumbling through my living room and spooling out over the balcony's edge.
One torturous thing about moving my desk back into the living room is that I now have a clear and uninterrupted view of a vast, often gradient, sky. And it lingers there, sitting lofted above the world that stirs, and bites, and claws, and moves along the ground below. Foreboding, it puts on a glorious show and my eyes swell with tears just wondering how I wound up in this position.
I'd normally add the word "again" to the end of that sentence, but somehow this all feels so drastically different. The echoes of these walls mock and mimic.
There's this draft ... this break-up letter I kept starting, scrapping, then starting all over again from blank. I wanted to leave — or, I thought I did. Everything got so messy, and I became unable to clean it up. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, I just kept the disaster from destroying us and never managed to mop it all. By the time a weighty pendulum swung back around, all of the matter had soaked into the foundation. It was ruined. And I'll never forgive myself for thinking that packing up and changing houses would fix the leak.
I have tried, and failed, to break up with this city. Any city. Particularly this one. Yet lately it feels like it might be the only tendrils holding me together. The noise. The clutter. The sadness.
And that fucking sky...
Then, there's the me issue. Creatively, just a molding thing. A rotting trunk that's sprouting just enough forageable goods to keep people from noticing the massive carcass that isn't decomposing fast enough. With my love, perfunctory. My desires, mutated. And my list of reasons to do anything down to just a sole name; mine.
There is this battle going on inside my head, and inside my heart, in which the highs are beyond what I'm used to -- leaving me to misconstrue or warp the actual emotions partaking in the moment -- and the lows? Well, they are scaring me.
I just kept re-writing this break-up letter. But who was it for? Did I want to end things with this city? That's what I was beginning to think. Perhaps, I just wanted everything to end. The whole dire, cyclical beast. I had cups to fill. And that was plenty to keep me focused. Parts of me here, and parts there. Just fill them up as much as you can and hope it's enough.
It wasn't.
Sitting here tonight, after a weekend that included both the lowest and the highest I've felt in many years, I notice that I have no cups. Care and love, and attention, and hope. It all feels like I'm carrying water from the bar to the table with my bare hands. Only to get to the table and realize there is a trail of wet behind me and an empty booth in front of me.
Everything sitting inside of me right now at this very minute is just mine now. Every thought. Every voice. Every reason. Every want. Every fear. Every word. It just has to be there now. Here. Now. This cauldron of bubbling liquid and frog's feet in my stomach.
To the friends who didn't ask if, but rather where and when; thank you.
Finally getting to meet a close coworker and share our bond in person, the music, the vibes, and even seeing one of my favorite new-but-old friends, was all a delight. And it couldn't have come at a more crucial time.
I will hold on to those laughs, cheers, and casually deep and connective conversations during police traffic stops, for a long while.
On top of all of that settling into the cracks of my chipped and scratched vessel, there's Solo...
Seemingly out of nowhere, I was given a perspective on my own world, on me, that I was so unfamiliar with that I had to fight my way through understanding it.
The kindness. The space. The love. It all came so rapidly at me and I wasn't standing on flat feet. Let alone, knew anything like that could arrive. It is a great thing, to feel heard. Even better to feel understood. Something I would rely on more if our lives were in different places. More specifically; the same place. For now, I remain thankful. Desperately trying to return the favor. I appreciate that -- even though we are two planets on different orbits -- we can come together when able and show each other something that I believe we both need. And deserve.
An older version of me -- embarrassingly, not that long ago -- would argue to the ends of the Earth the concept of "to deserve." Strange as it may seem, I've been given a fresh set of variables to pour over. And the outcome is that I think I'm starting to gather a -- albeit brief -- list of things I deserve.
I could talk all night about it. Things dying. Things growing. And this confused little boy standing in the middle of it all just wasting his time trying to put a feeling he could easily keep, into someone else.
For my sake, the goal is to invent, investigate, or become intimate with whatever course of action sees me aiming all of that inward.
I want a clean kitchen.
I want the bed to be made.
I want to eat a nice home-cooked meal.
I want ... to feel loved and cared for.
That I'll never let you go kind of cared for.
That I’ve got you kind of cared for.
Yet, I also see people melting on the sidewalks.
People washing down all of their fears.
and exhaling all that ails them.
and I want that too...
