"Every year, exactly this time of year." Well every since and before. The tension of the holiday season is already cinching. Where will you go? Who will you see? Who can you adopt for family? It does make me anxious. Is alone okay? OF COURSE! Why all caps? Am I crazy? Did you hear that? We've talked it over several dozen times and dozens of those more through the years. Yes, of course it is okay. No, you are not crazy.
"Pitter patter, my little heart." It races from time to time. Little panic attacks. Solitary is the frontier and solitary it will be. That's where you work best. You'll still meet people and see families and couples and the like. It is certainly less than the usual or equal. Do not believe that holidays with yourself are anything less than their holidays. They would be miserable in your concept of a holiday and you would be severely uncomfortable in theirs. It's okay to peek between the slats from time to time. That is universal. Their anxieties are the same as yours with different window dressing and frames. Rest assured, they feel something too and that is fine.
Nine eleven, however many years out, has changed a lot. The rage of being denied enlistment has faded. It only took ... four ... seven ... shut up! Far enough away to laugh about how I thought that idea could work. Thinking back to the earliest years, it is funny to think that I thought I might've been able to make it by as a kept man. Good god, I would've been far too bored. Seven plus years separated from the bid to enlist, it has been reaffirmed one hundred times over that I would have gone insane trying to make a career out of it. As a way to form a base and small nest egg, sure it could've worked, but my lack of mental stability would have failed spectacularly. Maybe not the first year, maybe not the second year; the chances would have increased exponentially from day .0001.
I'm completely over the war on terror. There are so many things that have come to light in the intervening time domestically that are so incredibly glaring and depressing. So many more pressing internal wars that reached cease fires and truces without any actual resolution that are winnable & endable. The fact that they still exist isn't the surprising thing. It is. Cultural change moves at a glacial pace. As interconnectivity and access to information grows and shortens in its difficulty, the pace feels slower and slower because you can give a person a library of five books and a library of five thousand and it won't change how fast or slowly they choose to read.
Thinking about that day, I remember the anniversary that I couldn't remember for two years (was it three?) until I finally got it right. Being in relationships is hard. Do you remember the day you asked me if we were dating? Kind of. Is that today? I don't remember the exact day, but I do remember being nervous as all hell and wondering about it for weeks and if I asked you and you said no would I ask you again or storm out or wait a few weeks and ask you again. The day that you gave me a lollipop or the day of the formal dance? Laughing thinking about it now. I still cannot remember which day it was, but I know that it is a day to remember. Wherever you are, I am glad that you know that you are loved and I am glad that you are with someone who is a part of you. The years we spent were not for nothing. The futures opened. The years to come are their own.
Solitary progressions. Nine eleven is also walking beside a cemetery. A museum of displays and marble hand rails and floor tiles laced in sterling grout. Rose and magenta tinted chrome and glass. The past brought to life for a single day. Compressed, labeled, and plaqued. The westerly wing of the grand mezzanine of leTauran Atu Gothans, a 78 acre compound. I don't visit there often. About once a year, I try to look at the exhibits again. Sometimes the maintenance men are about and they'll open up a case to let me get a close look at the taxidermy. It is pretty amazing the way hairs are placed and tacked together to form entire swatches of skin that can stretch over the plaster molds. The lighting isn't always great, but sometimes the exhibits are moved around to different enclosures to light them better.
I'm nowhere near a writing rut. I can't stop doing it inside my head. I have to take the time to do it outside of my head. Part of how I've adjusted to protect myself from myself has been finding other things to do. "If you can just stay distracted long enough!" Out of focus. I've been trying to do a lot in the physical world, however. Trying to adjust to the modern world of smarter smart phones. Trying to adjust to larger work loads and responsibility. Trying to see the world with a larger lens.
Trying to see more possibilities and potential without getting swallowed whole in their ocean.
For some years, I mourned.
Part of me still does.
The deaths I died.
The deaths of possibilities. So close to another and another friends birthdays and the lives that faded and blew out like candle wicks. The scent of the smoke still fresh and undeniable and intoxicating in their aroma. When does smell memory fade?
9,238 cigarettes before you lose your sense of smell, chief. Oh. Thank you, statistician?
I know I haven't been keeping track of holidays or birthdays. I keep telling myself: "we're just going to backtrack and bang them all out at once and get caught up to the now, piece of cake!" That philosophy has fallen completely flat. Of course I am beating myself up over it. It is important. Without consistent data points we cannot know where we are. Holidays are perfect times for evaluation. How the hell old am I anyway? I need to take care of the backlog or at least try to ... at least let go of it. That time cannot be restored.
Projecting a life span of 75 years with maximum outcomes: you live .205 years each day of your life if every birthday is a new beginning and a new iteration of yourself and you will only live a maximum of 75 years in each iteration.
147 days have passed since your birthday. You are experiencing the rise of a new adult form convulsing through its last growth bursts. You will not die soon. 200+ days until you return. This is a strange time for you. Adolescence continues to shed. Try. The carapace will split and you will free yourself for the wind. The new skin will harden in the Winter.
Nine eleven is a quarter post of sorts. So many things changed and so many things continue to. Resolved to death, yes. Resolved to its exact date, no. In meta-jail, I have been granted so many larger and larger play grounds and exercise areas. I've been granted larger and larger libraries and degrees to work and play on while I spend my time in solitary. The clock is ticking on the next ring of the compound gates to open and I have to be patient while the paperwork runs through the levels of the office's in/out boxes and gets stamped and I have to go in for interviews and hearings and have good composure and appear civilized and remorseful and hopeful and aware and reticent and reflective and playful, but not too much, and deprecating and confident and ... all at once. I don't have to do any of that. I have to wait. I don't know how far out the compound goes, but I heard there is another gate over them hills once they fix to open this one.
As the years tick on, I learn how to be more like you and I learn what the differences actually are between us. I know we are not the same. Far from it. It is incredibly reassuring, as we walk, to understand better what those differences are.
The mission: to leave a map for the next person that is at all like me. "It's a great big universe!"
What helps get me through is knowing that I wasn't rejected as much as cast away. There wasn't a fault as much as a rift in the known firm of space and time. Blame dark matter. "The stories you told were awful." I hope that the maps will be artful. You can only live but for so long with someone who is prone to spontaneous combustion before it changes from an endearing parlor trick to a recurring crisis.
Heave away!
Having an extra $200 shouldn't be life changing at age thirty two. Something's not right.
Are all of your goals set so low that... ...no. Maybe? Crossroads. Is that all you wanted to accomplish? Well, yeah. For now. It's pretty neat. Hmm. Hmm, what? It's fine. The door's over there if you need it. I'm just saying-. Don't let it goose you on the way out!
There is a lot of work still to be done and I am avoiding it. Part of the reason why is because there are too many things I want to do at once and part of it is because I can only live for 12 to 16 hours a day without ending up cycling into spirals that will carry me up or down and anything that forces a deviation from that norm starts the engines that link and power chain reactions that will go in either direction and it is absolutely exhausting walking the rope and having to face constant failures because time ran out or constant failures because time drew on toward infinity.
I don't know what normal is to you.
I don't know what normal means to you.
Will I ever be?
Nowadays nine one one is a thermometer. The potentials continue to cool while the core continues to spin and move plates and generate its own magnetic field. September, we dive through the thin layer of atmosphere and sweep and zip between billows of thunder heads, citywide lightning bolts and liquid metal rain drops against windscreens to land with the grace of a butterfly on the escarpment of a phase three elemental cave patio. Grab our groceries, suit up, and walk inside to one atmosphere, proper oxygen mix that will not explode granted a match and cigarette, and turn on the satellite linked tele.
As the Septembers progress, I learn better what coming home means and what it means to me. The distances will continue to grow and I will continue to fail at assimilating to common society, but in the meantime, I will explore more areas of the compound I was locked in when life began inside a cell. It is a reminder that I am many years behind in my development and there isn't a time machine yet that will bridge that gap.
If this is the beginning of the solo-journey, I know I've spoken enough about being at one with the concept that life will be singular for the seeable future because I cannot ...... remembering the last time I was loved ..... laughing out loud. Seven years and counting. It really is dumb to expect to feel that again. Think about it! Let's say, one hundred experiences per day. Five of them new. Hell, one of them new. That's 365 times your age. No weight toward slate and how blank you were when you were young. Now, to get an idea of the potential, multiply that by the people you've met that you can remember all the way to your earliest memory, just faces, not names. You've met way more people than you can remember so it's still a gross underestimate. If you spent the rest of your life meeting one new person a week your chances of recreating that chemistry are pretty much a lottery ticket. Or you can recreate it. The only person that will know is you. That is kind of nice. Or you can find something new.
The other thing is I really have no idea how to look. I have some idea of how others look. I have no idea how to look. "So put yourself out there!" Okay. Sure. That's the other odd thing: we have no idea if someone is looking. Would it change anything if we did? Probably not. Secrets make terrible stories.
I think I would like to live with someone else. Another human. That day is not now, not six months from now, not 24, not 36, not four years, not four years and 14 days from now. Nothing is wrong with me.
We're never alone.
It has a dual purpose. In part to map and in part to guide and in part to track. More of an organic willtuary. A way to know that you have indeed pinched yourself and you are not dreaming.
///Marnie Stern - "
Proof of Life"
Bonus Track
///Imogen Heap - "
Daylight Robbery"
