news, news. on and on

I needed some good news today so I opened up a fortune cookie that was sitting amongst my coffee stuff. It was probably about 3 months old and tasted pretty awful which was really disappointing. I opened up the paper slip and read "The stock market may be your ticket to success." Perfect.

I had spent most of the day trying to sketch ideas for the first few pages of the first issue of my first comic and I was not gaining much ground so I needed a tiny little pick-me-up from a magical cookie. I had been reading this blog I found called 3eanuts. They take the typical four panel comic by Charles Schultz and remove the final panel leaving the characters in their existential misery. "Despair pervades all" as they put it. I read all twelve pages that were posted because in this format I surprisingly identified even more closely with these poor souls. And that is quite a feat because Peanuts has been a driving force in my life for many, many years and to somehow give it a seemingly new life, well, the accomplishment cannot be understated. But anyway, I believe it put me in somewhat of a dour mood. The cookie's supposedly hopeful message merely joined the party.

Spring. Come. I have places to walk to and I want to be able to enjoy the journey a little more than I do right now.

brandon

memories an' shit

I love memorabilia as bookmarks. Right now my place in my copy of Sarah Vowell's essay collection "The Partly Cloudy Patriot" is being saved by my ticket to "An Evening With Garrison Keillor." In W.E.B. Du Bois' "The Souls of Black Folk" is a "World Famous Cable Car" ticket from my trip to San Francisco last summer. I always keep these little bits of ephemera but until very recently I have never figured out what to do with them beyond keeping them in small, decorative boxes. Of course my little boxes are full of things that won't fit in a book quite so snuggly, such as gift shop shot glasses, old t-shirts from parks I have camped in with my parents that are far too big (or too small), and a small chunk of the Blues Brother's vehicle, the Bluesmobile, that I accidentally broke off when my family was visiting Universal Studios many, many years ago.

Speaking of traveling, I have thought about writing a travel essay entitled something like "places I have pooped" because having IBS I have pooped more places than not. Any sort of environmental change engages my illness so needless to say when I travel I defecate. Well, it's an idea anyway. I have found it is always good to get all ideas out so they don't disappear. But perhaps it is best to not write down these ideas on a public blog. Oh well, I am not into editing these posts so it is going to remain. And I will be the one laughing all the way to the bank when the Travel Channel picks up my travel column that spun off of my essay and turns it into a hit T.V. series. So take that, sayers of nay.

a joke

I just heard this joke as the Ice Breaker on the podcast "Dinner Party Download" from NPR. This joke made me laugh louder than I have in quite some time. I frightened JennyAnyDots who sunk her claws into the bed and puffed her tail up. So here's the joke.

"So Jesus is walking around Heaven checking everybody out. Everyone is all blissed out with their harps and halos and such but there is this one fellow who is sitting all alone with his head in his hands and he is bawling his eyes out.

'Hey, hey there.' Jesus said to the guy. 'This is Heaven, you know. It's the place of perpetual joy and, well, you made it so we can't have you crying. Kills the vibe and such.'

'Oh, I didn't mean to cause any trouble. It's just that back on the earth I was a lowly carpenter and I had a son who was in the profession with me but when he was around 30-years-old he left telling me he had a mission to accomplish. So he went off into the wilderness and I never saw him again. I was really hoping I would be able to see my boy once I got here but I have looked everywhere and I haven't found him.'

Then Jesus exclaims, 'Father!'

And the man stands up and yells, 'PINOCCHIO!'"

Gets me every time.

wretching

I helped a friend move about a week ago and when we were finished her new roommate was in the living room sitting with her laptop. We came around to her side and she unpaused the episode of "Californication" she had been watching.

I thought about this today because I just spent two lovely days in Lincoln and the moment I began walking up my front steps I began to cry. I tingled all over and my heart began beating powerfully against whatever bone and cartilage is between it and the rest of the universe (and honestly that space seems so profoundly expansive most days but filled with nothing but air and grief). I walked all the way up to my apartment and I sobbingly fed my cat and put my coat on the rack and used the restroom and then I sat on what was once our bed and I wept bitterly for almost twenty minutes. I got up and paced up and down the hallway - into the kitchen, through the hallway, into the office, back through the hallway so on so forth for about half an hour. The whole time I cried so hard I was squealing and snorting. I screamed at God. "What the fuck am I supposed to do now? I can't be alone." So I texted a few friends I knew were there when I needed them but no one answered or they couldn't hang out just then. "Why the fuck should I be alone?
I've been alone before. I've been miserable before."

And then I remembered the show my friend's roommate was watching and I remembered how what happened in the couple minutes I stayed to watch struck me so deeply I could barely function the rest of the night. I drove from the house to an empty cathedral parking lot that was nearby and I wrote down every word from the scene I just saw because the whole thing was coursing through my mind very, very loudly. It is somewhat cheesy just reading it but I was in such a tender place it sliced through me with ease.

Here's the scene:
David Duchovney and his ex-wife were discussing "what went wrong" for them. He has a pretty quick answer. Seemed like a rehearsed answer.

"I would say we loved each other too much. And I think we made the mistake of getting it right the first time, and that put an insane amount of pressure on us to keep it going. And…we buckled. You know what I miss most about – well, aside from our daughter, of course. I miss your smell."

"That’s it?"

"When you left, I couldn’t wash the sheets because I didn’t want to lose that completely — you. And it fucked me up for a long time because I would wake up and I’d smell you and I’d think you were there. And that would — my heart would break all over again. I think that’s why I go in for the kiss all the time and then cry myself back to sleep."

I fled immediately after he said that. As I walked down the back few steps I cried uncontrollably conceding the horrible truth that David Duchovney had gotten it indisputably correct. I still haven't washed the sheets and I still haven't taken down the water color paintings from the kitchen. Or the pheasant feather she picked up and carried as we walked through Boyer Chute - the last thing we did as a real couple, together. I am so stuck. I am so bound. I feel no freedom and no peace.

on deaf ears

I discovered this amazing curriculum for teaching comic book writing. Drawing Words and Writing Pictures was conceptualized and written by the two series editors for Best American Comics, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. I really want to some day teach this at the downtown library possibly or at the amazing Kent Bellows Studio here in Omaha. I also stumbled across this amazing comic book store in Los Angeles called Meltdown where these four dudes, who work in "the industry" and have a successful movie discussion podcast called Down In Front, are doing this live DVD commentary on Raiders of the Lost Ark. Holy shit. No kidding, this is one of the best ideas I have ever heard.

I am trying to rack my brains on how to make something like this work in Omaha. We have the film community (speaking of which the Omaha Film Festival is happening as we speak), we have witty and gregarious folk who could easily do a credible and entertaining commentary, and we have people who would attend such a thing. Oh wait. That last one. There's the rub. Getting people to break their bar routine or attend something that isn't heralded as the chicest event since last year's fashion week is like pulling all their teeth out and then punching them in the face repeatedly while pressing both knees into their chest while they writhe on the ground, bloodied and without companions. Where are your accusers? Right here. This city has got a serious problem supporting the talent within its own blocks.

You can read my wrap up of the Encyclopedia Show for Omahype.com here and see that even something as brilliant as that is not worth most Omahans' time. Tragic. Simply another reason why Omaha sometimes makes one ponder the usefulness of one's efforts. It seems there has to be great amounts of spectacle and pomp to gather a crowd. I feel as though grassroots doesn't work quite as well here anymore. I want to be proven wrong. This year, or maybe this year and next year, will be the years of accomplishment and movement. ONWARD!

I can't reconcile these things

I needed some juice last night so naturally I stopped quickly at the grocery store while driving home. I have been mostly vegan-ish for nearly three-ish years now and during that time every grocery store I enter I immediately gravitate toward the organic/healthy/nutty aisle or aisles depending on how progressive said grocer is. This allows me to bypass all of the synthetic, all of the treated and all of the lesser (read: affordable) fare and feel good about myself or at least about the things that will soon be absorbed into the make up of my biology.

I stood before the cage-free eggs and tofurky deli slices contemplating if three dollars for juice is still worth it. In this section you get your full range of nutrients and you pay dearly for each and every one.

I had been craving some R.N. Knudsen apple or pomegranate cocktail but I was halted at the Odwalla/Naked case. There was among those usual brands a juice I knew from a previous time. Bolthouse Farms juice. I remembered when I had first come upon these Bolthouse Farms drinks. My college roommate "turned me on" to them because he was insanely, possibly artificially fit. (I never found real evidence to corroborate my hunches about how he attained such an inhumanly perfect set of abs). On one trip to the grocery store together around 2 possibly 3 a.m. he picked up this small, green plastic bottle that had an unappetizing mixture of baby poop and Missouri River in it. I asked him why he was examining something so indisputably putrid. He spun the bottle around and showed me the Nutrition Facts label and I had never seen so many items listed beneath the second bold line, you know, where the vitamins and other actually healthy components are listed. I also had never seen so many three-hundred percents and four-hundred percents concerning food contents.

So I waxed nostalgic to the point of exhaustion and while still in this state of mind I glanced upon something that swelled my heart three-hundred percent. And it broke me utterly. Granola. Bear Naked brand granola cereal. I had bought some the last time Melissa and I went to Ohio and my parents' lake house in Indiana. I ate it as a snack the eleven hour trip home. For months after Melissa and I talked and laughed and felt good about how that was one of, if not the most pleasant trip we had ever taken together. This granola symbolized for me everything good and perfect about Melissa’s gift-likeness to me and our marriage to each other. I nearly fell on the floor.

This was an involuntary association and it should have been a rapturous one but even this random granola treat grabbed me by my unusually stretchy cheeks and shook me vigorously as it recounted details of what had been lost, what has left me and what will probably never be again.

I didn't ask to be reminded of all this. I am no glutton for punishment. I have felt more than my fair share of pain. Like I said, this glimpse at the minute losses I am suffering was strictly involuntary and quite unwelcome as it interrupted an otherwise pleasant evening.

These are the things that tell me I have not attained resolution and I have not "gotten over" her. Even at my most focused times of resolute "I'm moving on" mindfulness some lightening always strikes my brain and reminds me I cannot forget. Or perhaps that I can't not remember. This is the madness that breaks my heart because if this continues for the rest of my life I will never have a healthy relationship again. I fear I will wake up in the middle of the night craving Melissa and I will see my new lover next to me and I will feel even more despair than I do now. I fear this is a possibility because these unsought recollections have not remotely lessened. I know it has only been four months but how fucking long does it take? I hate being a slave to Melissa or the memory of our happiness. I hate it so, so much. Am I so weak that I cannot achieve peace and freedom? Is that even correct to say? Is it achievable or is it granted? If it is granted then how should I ask for it? I want peace. I want freedom. I want peace.

absence and fondness

This has astounding purpose. There is a reason for this as opposed to other ways to communicate as opposed to other ways to process as opposed to other ways to fulfill a need as opposed to other ways to survive something heinously unrecognizable as surmountable. This is necessary.

Onward, certainly. Because this is about me but in being so it most assuredly is about infinitely more or at least contains that inexhaustible nature and its characters and narrative in an infinitesimal corner of the internet. All that to say, there is a lot going on here and pretty much no one notices which is almost beside the point.

As much as I wanted this to exist less as a working out of things and more of a way to showcase projects I am working on it has evolved into a public display of my eagerness to know myself and be known and the journey.

This is the dynamic human spirit, no?

onward

In order to start channeling this blog in a more positive direction and to be more consistent with my proclamations of being more concerned about others than myself I want to make everyone aware of this cause Change.org is pushing:

With the phenomenal support of 107,053 people from 163 countries -- the most popular campaign ever launched on Change.org -- a tiny group of lesbian activists in South Africa just scored a major victory, taking "corrective rape" from an unspoken epidemic to a national discussion. Now we need your signature to reach 150,000 and crank up the heat on the South African government.

Reblogged from Supergrrrl

This petition is incredibly close to meeting the aforementioned goal of 150,000 signatures. This is grievous and I hadn't heard a thing about it until today. Pass this new knowledge along to anyone you can.

on loving love (love love love love love love love)

I was deadly serious when I had previously mentioned with great conviction I was no longer going to write about Melissa, our division or anything pertaining to those things. That declaration seemed like a fine idea and a terrific way to move on. It wasn't a bad idea but it certainly wasn't a good way to move on in any respect. Despair set in even more vehemently after deciding to "be over her." Voluntary repression hardly ever engenders relief. Any therapist worth their salt will tell you that.

My apartment, which I often still refer to as "our" apartment, is full to bursting with relics of our truest love. There is scarcely an item in this place that does not have Melissa's literal and phantasmic fingerprints layered upon them. I put on a bandanna yesterday and it smelled just like her. It smelled the way she smelled when we crawled in the grass next to the pond at my school when we had known each other only a matter of hours. And it smelled the way she smelled when she came over after Thanksgiving to gather her belongings from our bedroom. Needless to say, I donned the bandanna and cried into the linguini I made to eat alone. JennyAnyDots, our cat, ran under the table to hide because I began to stumble from sobbing so vigorously.

If I deny these things I am doing myself a grave injustice and I am lying to Melissa. In truth, I do not want her to think I am doing well. I am not. I do not want her to think that everything is copacetic and I will endure. Because most of the time I am not sure I will. I want to fully know what has been lost here and I want Melissa to know the same and be able to grieve it. By pretending I am healing, stable and sane I rob her of the chance to feel sad about what is taking place. That seems dangerous to me because it could shrink her heart. I believe in her heart and the immense possibilities of it. I love her dearly and to deprive her this opportunity to grow as a human with the mighty capacity to feel deep loss and love and fully understand these things no matter how much of it comes out in pain is not a loving thing for me to do. And I desperately love love. Nothing gives me more anguish than when I see love being put aside or disrespected. By myself especially because then I have to deal with the fact of my hypocrisy which is always bound to appear but is always so terrifying to face.

"Don't beat yourself up"

I have heard this from a great number of my friends in the past few months. Usually it is followed by some form of an encouragement telling me I should focus on myself or get to know who I truly am.

I have always been introspective to a fault. I have always been well aware of my blunders and even more aware of my achievements. I know my limits, my destructive tendencies and the extent of my abilities and traits at least in relation to the people I measure these things against. I am brutally self aware and have been so as long as I can remember.

I know what part my actions have played in my misery. And I am dreadfully remorseful for these things. I am not beating myself up. I am taking responsibility and attempting to amend what my foolishness has broken. For my part I apologize.

As far as what is left now that my marriage is dissolving I am attempting to sit in the middle of the floor of my bedroom and pull all the pieces toward me and then chase other things. The way I saw it I didn't need any of the other shit because I had someone to live for. Perhaps the Christian perspective (which is the one I wholeheartedly attempt to ascribe to) would tell me I should have lived for Christ and all these things would be added unto me. Perhaps but it was my solemn act of worship to God for what was given to me in a loving, beautiful, intelligent woman. And I truly thought that nothing but death would separate us. I was content. I was alive. But it's going to be a smooth death and my heart has a million miles to go.

"We are the sun, we are the sun, we are the sun, we are the sun" goddammit

because of my friend's phone call

What the hell is happening to our humanity? I am and always will be entirely convinced a crucial aspect of what makes us alive is our living in communion with others like us and unlike us and the ability to act in a manner that is more supportive and useful to the group than to the individual even if that community consists of only two people (even especially if the community is two people). That differential is what sets us apart from a stone that has no relationship to the craggy hillside it finds itself on other than the fact that they both exist in the same general space. But they can do nothing for one another. The stone cannot decide to humble itself and not roll down into the grassy knoll where it will surely be more cushioned and possibly more safe from corrosive elements but instead remain with the craggy, windy, practically barren hilltop because this stone adds a beauty and uniqueness to something otherwise incomplete without its presence. This will not happen. Perhaps an earthquake (or as I heard on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me this morning: a dreaded hurriquake) could shift the stone to a new location but this sadness would not be so severe because this is the way of things. Anyway, none of that would be sad at all. Stones and hills don't feel. And that is it exactly.

We do feel and we have a choice to live to create unity and share and cooperate and refuse to participate in anything or with anyone desiring division and selfishness and exclusion and destruction. Remain angry so you do not inadvertently allow evil but stay in love so you may intentionally create life and bring what is separate together.

unavoidable obviousness

I finally saw 127 Hours tonight. Good God that movie was relentlessly enthralling. My wonderful friend, Rachel, joined me. Immediately, once the movie ended, I turned to her and told her I have not felt such a affinity for other movie viewers I have been in a theater with in a very, very long time.

Terrific feeling. Terrific to feel at all. I must admit my time in Ohio was not the most sensational as far as being emotional tactile. My family and friends did a mighty job attempting to draw me out and provide me with a great deal of experiences to help me cope, grieve and progress. But, and this is no fault of theirs, all this effort was sadly not a suitable rival for the unparalleled numbness the unavoidable obviousness of the void my lover's absence created. I certainly collected memories I will cherish for eternity on end but my hopeful intent of relaxing away my anxieties and coming to grips with some internal demons was not realized. I did return with an incredibly valuable revelation, however. I understand more fully and unmistakably that Omaha is my home. I came out here to build one and now I see that I accomplished just that. At this point it looks and feels a far cry from what I thought I set out to establish but it is here and it is sound.

In an almost identical manner to the way Aron Ralston gingerly/greedily sucked water from his nalgene while he was lodged in the crevice with his boulder I am lapping up the times I am sharing with my friends. They are affording me such life giving moments that feel so perpetually sustaining. When I leave their presence I no longer feel so parched or chapped. When I depart I know I can last until the next time I get a chance to take in great gulps or even shallow slurps of this incredible cloud of friends I have been granted. Luckily I have more than a 150 ml supply of friendship beverage unlike Mr. Franco/Ralston.

re:

"I never went back... The longer I was away, the less I wanted to return and see how small the place must have grown, how sparse the stars, how perfectly ordinary the tract houses, how trim that mysterious house, the jungle of a yard. And even if I managed to come at just the right time of year, and the neighbor's pear tree still stood, and I managed to find a late-season pear in an early snow - would the voices of my friends come wandering down the dark road, calling my name as I bent down to claim it?" - Elizabeth Gonzales (from Half Beat from The Greensboro Review)

I certainly reconnected but I cannot say for sure it made much difference. I think what I know now is that I do not care to waste time re-ing anything. Reconnecting, remembering, rehashing, redoing. Except for reconciling. If it is broken then there is true necessity for healing, redemption, reconstitution. But otherwise forward motion is all that counts. Recognizing the state of these relationships with my family and oldest friends (and newest friends that feel old) and taking them into new realms and to new heights of honesty and integrity and intensity and fruitfulness.

I have felt what I feared I would feel returning to Cincinnati. Every time I have pulled into the neighborhood of my adolescence I have felt the same thing I felt in high school. There is a pull and a voice telling me to leave. "You should not be here. There is nothing ultimately good for you here and you cannot grow. Leave not as an escape but as actual movement. To stay is to stagnate and you must go on." I believe that voice because the longer I am here the more I feel as though my passions are evaporating and my heart is regressing.

Not that it is bad for me to be here for short stints nor that my parents have not attempted to build a home that would foster an environment of great and mighty achievement for us four boys. For this moment, however, when I am most confused, lonely and in need of solidarity encompassing me the unsettled commotion this place offers is unmooring in ways I don't need right now. But steps had to be taken over these last few days and difficult things needed to be said and heard. This winter has been my time to live uncomfortably because for the time being there is no consistent comfort for me.

I am very unsure of what is reliable right now and what will not crumble under my weight when I try to use it to support myself. It seems most everything is slipping away extraordinarily quickly, especially my trust in constants and anything or anyone who claims to be thus. I am more skeptical than ever and therefore even more alone because I don't trust myself to any greater extent than anything or anyone else. Perhaps I am about to embark on a stage of life involving imminent commitment issues. This has never been the case for me since everyone I have tried to commit to has abandoned me when I asked something of them that seemed reasonable to me at the time and as I consider each circumstance now, still rings very justified and menial in certain respects. I was never the one who had to be convinced commitment and persistence were possible and positive. There have only been three people I have sustained what in my young life could be considered long term relationships and none of them stuck around when I had wishes of my own that would cost them something that I always assumed was slight compared to what I thought they should be willing to offer in a relationship such as ours. Anyway, I am having a hard time seeing myself as lovely or lovable and this trip has not done much to quell these feelings. I hoped it would. On some level. I just feel more motivated to "go out and get mine" but this is mostly spurred on by anger and self inflicted indignity. I want to conquer my corner of the world but only to make noise and be noticed and that is never satisfying. If I am truly honest with myself I actually just want it all to come to me. I was talking with my youngest brother, Jarrod, and I realized I have never been pursued by anyone. No one has ever taken such an interest in me without my initiation that they began doing things to secure my affection. I have done that for multiple people abundant amounts of times to no avail. I am alone and I am partnerless. I am learning to wait without expectation or bated breath. I am learning to breathe and exhale prayers. I will be heard and I will be found.

At the end of nothing

It has come to my attention that I was never loved. There was scarcely a mite of care to muster during the last days of a one-sided, fruitless and aside from just getting two people on to another portion of their life, utterly pointless relationship.

At this moment I am not devastated by that thought. It is more freeing than it previously was. For my part, I did everything I could to care for the crippled horse of our relationship while it was simultaneously being shot in the head and kicked in the throat.

I have hope that I am not unlovable. I still sense a great deal of love within me that is more than pleased to be bestowed upon another. The fact of this spark not being snuffed out and merely flickering even when being huffed and puffed upon mercilessly gives me great hope that I will be able to find myself at some point loved in return as well. I will fully believe it when I see it but I have faith in its existence.

So without further ado I am altering the direction I have been recently taking this blog. I don't give a rat's ass about discussing Melissa any longer. Writing about her has run its course for me and I am extremely weary of it. I have more vital concerns to attend to and I refuse to chase a friendship that would clearly end up no different than the marriage only to a lesser and more stupid extent. I have joy and dreams to strive for. I have traveling and writing and living and loving and praying to get on with. I devote myself and my public writings to this end. This weekend in Lincoln was a beautiful foundation for a life much more well lived.

A single man

I know this doesn't mean a thing in a reasonable or practical sense but the .25 inch space where my left ring finger attaches to the rest of my hand that used to be occupied by a simple white gold band has been sensing a phantom ring for the past few days. The ring was a reminder of enduring commitment, unflagging devotion, and care above all else for another. It seems its absence makes just as much noise.

To an extent, this is how I know (or hope I know) I am proceeding in correct a manner as possible: clarifying joy? I state that questioningly because I am not certain that is truly the right way to describe what I am feeling. I am certainly joyful in moments of clarity when it seems that I have a handle on the meaning of the past and the present is not a burden and the future is of course unknown but not frightening. Sadly these moments are few and far between but I find they always arrive when I deliberately make a decision. When I do not merely allow things to happen to me. Whenever I do that I get smashed by a bulldozer or lose my keys or get denied a job interview. But when I truly and fully stand up for myself and do the things I know I must to see that not-so-frightening future come to pass I feel the fleeting joy. It comes and it goes but I swear it is keeping me alive or at least letting me know I actually am alive. Feeling pain after pain does not feel much like living so when a small streak of light makes it through the blinds it can fill up a whole room. And I have a lot of empty rooms these days.

I made up my mind not to alter my tone when writing on this. This is basically my diary and I believe only two or three people read this sporadically. So who do I think I am impressing anyway? This is the way I write when it just flows out and I am going to celebrate that as opposed to apologizing for it. I need to celebrate myself a little more anyway since it is ridiculous to me now to think that someone else would want to.

you can take my body, put it in a boat. light it on fire, send it out to sea

I discovered, or rather had unveiled to me, today something that would have been extremely helpful to know much earlier in my life. I am very high strung and uptight. At least as far as questions about my intellect go and my emotional stability. I mean take this blog for instance. This is where I unload my most emotional thoughts and where I try my darnedest to be taken seriously and be seen as mentally capable of high achievement. So with that consideration, look at how formal I write on here. Even that last sentence. High falutin.

Maybe I don't know how to take it easy. I assume a lot of my friends would tell a different story because I have been told I have a pretty joyful disposition. But I need to relax. I cried in the shower today and all my muscles wretched. I felt as though I was transforming into the Hulk if he ever got the weepies. My skin feels so tight and I feel trapped by it. I feel enclosed on all sides by something so restrictive it begins to seem sinister in those times when I really need to have thrown off everything that hampers.

Bah, see! That was such an uppity sentence. And now I am getting worked up about not being able to calm down. What a cycle I am caught in. I need to eat a clementine, read my book and wait for my friend, Tim, to whisk me away to the home he is dog sitting in.

look for the ancient paths and walk in them

I found this poem in a post I wrote nearly three years ago as I was leaving my former employer, FedEx Kinko's now FedEx Office. In the original post I remarked immediately after that I wrote it completely off the cuff and that even though it was intended to be a eulogy to my old occupation it was still strikingly sad. I agree. I also think that it doesn't make much sense but I really, really like it. I relate to it now some how.



a reprimand

what comes of a position of internal
rearing
and a nature not tended to
initially
and quite nearly eternally?
what comes is a disrespect for the self-
ish things that always engenders the tension of living
for others and with yourself.
a disrespect from all
sides
and withering from the same
and whispering and hoots and calls
because you're distracted
not interested
in purposelessness

I want you to know, you are the sleep that sleeps between my toes

Tonight was the first time in a very long time that I was angry in public. Perhaps no one noticed. (Except probably Rachel, to whom I once again could not apologize enough). I didn't beat anyone up, damage any property, or scream in a pissed off manner. But I felt furious. I felt enraged. It was insatiable.

I met for the first time today with who will most likely become my new therapist. She was wonderful. Mainly because, and this is no indictment of my friends and how they have lovingly treated me, I felt listened to thoroughly for the first time since everything has occured. Her eyes were so compassionate and her remorse was so evident. I wept for an hour and a half in her office recalling the most excruciating few months I have ever and hopefully will ever endure. I had a morning full of hope. I spoke with my mother and father and they are such loving champions of my dreams. They make it seem as though I really can accomplish those things I always hoped I was intelligent and tenacious enough to acheive.

And that is all very well and very good but like I said in an earlier post, Melissa is not replaceable. Least of which by my parents. I want a peer to be not merely a friend and not merely a lover. I want what I was duped into believing was right in front of me for three and a half years. I want validation for existing from one person who is able to appreciate me. Not only able, because there are plenty of people who have the ability to appreciate someone else, but who desires to appreciate me. Who dreams of ways to make that happen. Who plans each day a new way to show me I matter and their life would be nothing but a gaping throat of darkness without me. I want what I thought I had. Someone who thinks romantically about me without it being a pain to them to do so. I want to be their joy. I really want Melissa to stop being my joy but I had to love both of us and therefore I truly loved her as myself and now that she wants to severe our promise I cannot help but feel the gouges and broken bones and gasping arteries that have been sheared apart.

The only thing I want from her is to do this next step together, compassionately and with full respect for both of our thoughts on every aspect of it. It has become her doing this thing TO me and that was never what I wanted. Even at my lowest when I told her I did not want to stay married to her I never meant I wanted either of us to rend our marriage and in doing so make a mockery of it. It meant everything to me and I am so sorrowful to see it get trampled upon.

two months

The closer I get to Melissa as a friend the more I see her as only such. This is a good thing. The closer I get to Melissa as a friend the more hopeless I feel. It is a charade. Just over two months ago we could sit in the same room and smile about the same things and then lay in each other's arms and again smile at the same things. In an instant that vanished. Truly an instant. There were excruciatingly painful issues at play but there was still companionship and loyalty and, I thought, love.

I just don't want to be so fucking sad anymore.

I am well aware that I will move on someday and this death will get harder then easier then harder and so on. But Melissa is not replaceable. And contrary to what she may believe neither am I. I am not so easily forgotten and I matter a lot more than I am being shown I do.

I have a lot of work to do and even more that I hope to accomplish in the semi-long run.

Three members of my ex-family moved to Spain a couple days ago. I cried for the distance and I cried because I have been ostracized for nothing I had done. They call me family but I do not feel it. All dynamics have changed and I am reeling from the daily shock that practically nothing I cared for is around anymore. In only two fucking months.

revel

I asked Jenny if I told her I love her enough. She jumped down off my desk, stretched out on the floor lifting her rump as high in the air as she could without lifting her chin and chest but a few fractions of an inch from the hardwood floor. Like a flawless transition from yoga pose to pose she straightened out and looked me straight in the face with her large, uncommonly gorgeous green eyes. At first she just yawned, licked her upper lip and finally said, "meow." For Jenny Any Dots is my adoring cat. Yet I still think I want a dog. I must really have it bad.

Remember what I said about the universe shitting on my face? Well, it has struck again. My already, sadly abused vehicle was smashed into by a medium sized bulldozer. Yes, a bulldozer. And I left the second pair of gloves I have lost in two weeks at the movie theater. In the first case I was just trying to do my civic duty and dispose of my live Christmas tree responsibly and in the second I was merely trying to stay comfortable during an intriguing movie. I have experienced enforce two old adages: No good deed goes unpunished and there is no comfort for the miserable. Or something to that effect. Luckily at the Christmas tree recycling/disposal spot I was with two incredibly calming and edifying new friends who helped me remain composed as I surveyed the damage and came to the conclusion that I truly am the protaganist in the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man. I am Job. Nothing gold can stay and apparently no gloved hand shall remain as such.

It is truly and despicably unfair that I have no one to hold me when I could not possibly need to be held throughout the night more. That is probably the hardest idea to bear. When I am most in need of being loved without regard I am being shown that I am unlovely and a fool to believe in love that doesn't regard any obstacle worth regarding. And this is stealing my happiness. For the first time in my life I had an occupation I actually loved and now I take absolutely no joy in it. It is not only that but I feel as though every moment of everyday is all but fruitless. I am utterly dry and if Jesus commanded me to produce him an apple I don't believe I could and he might as well demand that I shrivel and die. Perhaps that is precisely what has taken place. I don't believe in that kind of vengeful God but sometimes personal doctrines change with new revelations.

Do they beat the drum to get you back home or do they beat it to keep you away

I have spent the last two and a half months crying instead of sleeping. Drinking coffee to gain the energy to smile. Spending time with people only because to be alone is to be engulfed in flames.

When we were eating some sort of enchiladas on Pier 30-something right next to the water I should have thrown myself over the edge and ended your misery and put out my impending fire.

I refuse to be someone else's experimental life experience. I will be cherished.

Now I am Everything

I meditated at work today and carried a gem stone around with me in my pocket. I don't know what good or otherwise it did or what power it has other than what God has imbued it with. And with saying that I say this: "I acknowledge I am a mystic." And I need a mystic lover. Someone who can leave the ground. Someone who can look down and not be afraid. Although I say that as I hold rocks in my pocket keeping me very close to the Earth.

This was once written on parchment and tacked to our wall:

"Anyone who believes what he sees is a mystic. In the dark move slowly." - tuomas anhava

I am not sure if that is actually his last name or if that is actually two fractions of different quotes or what but those phrases have stuck with me in a penetrating sort of way that practically nothing else ever has. This was the sort of thing she surrounded our life with. And I was/am grateful.

There was a time songs were written for me and flowers were put in my hair and my feet were massaged. Now I am everything you could never want and in some ways detest. I am very nearly the same person I was and I still have excitement about her future even though I may find the curtain coming sharply down on top of my head as soon as the inevitable legal proceedings take their course.

I never thought I would say this but I deserve someone much, much better. I deserve it.

planning to fail is obviously not failing to plan

I wish it wasn't cold because the field across the street looks very inviting in the late morning sunshine.

I used to walk to this part of town from the northern side of midtown all the time. I did it bymyself. I would nearly always offer an invitation to melissa to join me and also try very hard to make it convenient for her but I believe there were really only a few times I made the really beautiful walk with my partner. I wish I had had a dog during those times to walk with me and I know that sounds much worse than I mean it but much like my adoring cat, Jenny Any Dots, a dog loves her kind friend without reservation and with foolish abandon. There is a journal drawn by Nikki McClure called "Things to Make and Do." It has divisions based on different verbs such as dream, create, hope, and the like. On the first page of the plan section she wrote "Make a mistake." I pondered that for an exceedingly long time before I began to understand the nature of regret and failure in light of that phrase. Especially being under the heading of "plan." To be sure I never, ever planned for my life to end up how it is now. The most intriguing aspect of the last five years of my life is that for the first time when something catastrophic (or nearly so in some cases) has happened to me I can't trace events back to one or several dimwitted decisions I made. I am out of control and I washed up on what appears to be a God-forsaken bank that is more stone than sand and there is no place to lay my head and rest.


Certainly no one is an island but I feel as though I have been stranded on one wishing rather to actually be one than on one. For what can an island be but and island and therefore has supreme ability to be content. But what of the lonely inhabitant who has no claims and has no identity? What of him? What of me?

That's why

Sometimes I have tiny fantasies that people are sending each other links to my blog saying, "hey, you should check this site out. It's just a dude whose wife recently ditched him and he just talks about pain and shit and it's really depressing but in like a Woody Allen Manhattan sort of way. You know tragic but hilarious." I also fantasize that my parents read my blog and know that I use foul language: the unacknowledged moral crime in my family. Every one of us has a dirty mouth(except my father who is thoroughly pure) but since my mother is mostly blissfully and willfully ignorant of this we never mention it and we all tame our tongues around her. She inquired one time about something my brother wrote on the internet where he said fuck several times or something equally shameful. "Do you use language like that?" My youngest brother had recently visited me in Omaha so our colorful conversations were fresh in my mind. "Well, I'll put it like this, when I get together with my brothers we all tend to get rather salty." This brother I get salty with is now engaged to be married to a lovely girl with her masters. He is 21. Mazel Tov.

Anyway, I need to find new contexts for my pain. Or at least for the painer. I, the painee, need to submit her to a series of experimental reconceptualizations wherein she will take on the form of just any one of the people I know who does not cause me pain. She is living her life and her new context for me is one of bemused disinterest with a tinge of sentiment that I can only assume causes her guilt and is therefore rejected outright and quickly. Of course now I am just speculating and it is not fair to paint her in such a light. But even if I do move on to someone who will actually love me and appreciate me and see me as not an obstacle but a conduit to more fuller living I will never be able to remove the deep, deep grooves of scars that did not have to exist at all and were once freckles of joy.

This makes me feel better.