a pile to step in: 01.08

28 January 2008

dear fat kid, letter 6, clipped.

..I've a talent for nothing if not latently endearing myself to others through self-deprecation, a quality you first brought to my attention. I, being a dude who deprecates about himself to himself as well as to others, hadn’t noticed how I was. Over-developed, you called it.

Not the easiest thing in the world to parse and comes to grips with: your strongest and only truly comfortable social mode is the one where you take every reasonable opportunity to make fun of yourself. Only then are you really cooking; it’s your whole act. I had to sit on that knowledge for a few days, squirming, trying to think of new ways to be, and also hedging, reluctant to admit fully the truth of what you said. And you’d explained the problem to me gently, with pictures, through metaphor. You know how a dumb, muscley frat boy will shave his head clean, you asked me, so that all you see when you look at him is this bare head and these way-oversized biceps, and it all looks alike, so that the visual takeaway is three big biceps wearing a t-shirt? —Yeah, you could do that; don’t.

You were right, it’s a small way to live. But I moved back to the island, where my audience was an unchanging mob of linguistic literalists: two parents who were alternately confused and depressed by anything I said, some grizzled old men, some smelly hippy transplants who lived on smelly communes, some kids who’d never left and ended up meth-using fuckwits; a steady trickle of grandmas. There, sarcasm was a treacherous way to communicate. Self-deprecation receded into the private background, becoming only the occasional, nighttime pillow-murmur, after my having thought about tomorrow, wondering if it would be distinguishable in any way from days past, and being unable to construct a reason why it would. Jesus, I’m a piece of work. I’ve developed other traits I like better, now, but none of them are especially public. You won’t hear me say my best traits are private, even though that may be true; I don’t want to think of myself as the guy who keeps his best traits at the bottom of an empty well in his basement. Am I depressed about this state of things, of myself? Only in practice. In theory, I’ve had this opportunity to develop a considerable interior life, a life of hypotheses and observations. The geography of this theoretical life—wherein I awake in the dank, boxy interior of the basement, and walk out, a hundred yards in any of three directions from the house, and am surrounded by the greener, wider interior of nature—is its central feature; it’s a geography in which the silence contemplation requires is rarely further off than a stone’s throw.

This was the theory. The practical me enjoyed thinking about the theoretical/contemplative me, but had a shiny black absence of follow-through. An odd feature of my life—and, since I feel I’m growing out of it, one that seems particular to age, to my early twenties—was how the act of thinking about something that had an intellectual angle had its own satisfaction. I’d wonder if I should go for a walk, and I’d picture a route for it, this long walk I’d take with note cards in my pocket, on which to jot sentences whenever I heard an owl coo advice or saw a frog inflate, and wouldn’t that be relaxing, intellectually refreshing. It’s so nice to have nature right there, out your door. Then, before putting on my boots, I’d stop by the outside basement steps for a cigarette, and when I was done I’d feel mentally sharp, comparatively; and I’d never make it on the walk. Is that sequence particular to youth, to spry neurons, to not yet being sick of yourself? Can’t say for sure. Perhaps now I am sick of myself, and can’t extricate any true perspective. Or perhaps I’m only getting better at recognizing a brief burst of attention for what it is: now, instead of the basement steps it’s your porch, and now I know that by the time I finish the smoke, go back in and sit down on the couch with my shoes, any vector of attention will have bent off into the ether, just like that; now, I can’t get by on thinking about the thinking I’d do on a walk. Now I take the walk.

17 January 2008

gotten OVER it? probably never will, not really.

and he just stood there, saber out. breathing at me. like i'm supposed to give some thoughtful fucking reaction to that. luke, i am your father. and then he just stops. that's the entire motherfucking speech. what in the goddam hell does he want me to say to that? it's your duty to have a fucking follow up, in that situation, right? luke, i am your father...let's go grab a goddam sandwich. i'm buying. anything. fucking something. and he gets off so fucking easy, i can't see his face, his eyes--he doesn't have to do shit. he could be about to doze off, for all anyone can fucking tell. only at the very end did i get close enough to smell his shitty breath, but i wish i never did. that smell stuck to me; the memory of it is hell. like a dead cat covered in shit. fuck. FUCK.

11 January 2008

she never lets me win at thumb-wrestling and i don't mind.

i love her on the inside

i love to glimpse her outsides

a million miles are her eyes

simple proteins; peptides.

her voice immeasurable, strong

near her lips my own belong

a giant gift, how her heart longs

her left thumb; king kong.