Sometimes I wake up and it's hard to believe it's been four years since I made it clear of the 24 years that came before when it comes to my parents. When people ask about them, I'm still tempted to say they died. They are dead to me, but just because they're dead in my mind doesn't make them dead in real life, even though it would be great if they were. It's hard to believe I ever did love them. I suppose I once did. My mother anyway. Is it better to be feared or loved? They decided it was better to be feared. It is easy to receive gratitude for putting out a fire. I suppose it is easy to cling to those firemen and women rescuing you from that fire and believing you owe them a life debt. A water debt. A blood debt.
It is easy, until you find out, when the blinders come off, that they set that fire that took your body down to it's foundations. Then it's not so easy. When that sun dawns and the city you've been inhabiting in the dark comes into sharp relief and you realize you've been living downtown for 24 years and didn't know it and from the tallest skyscraper there you can't even see the city limits, you cry. And I did. For years. I wanted to jump back then. Break my heart on the pavement into beads of pomegranate flesh crushed. I didn't.
I walked. I ran. And then I walked some more when my lungs and legs quit. I camped. I broke into abandoned homes and raided food and threw it in my back pack and kept going. I slept on concrete and hid in basements when creatures roamed and cached weapons to defend myself. Taught myself how to use them, because the day you come face to face with the monsters will be the day you are least prepared to fight for your life and the blood in your veins and your heart beat. I walked for years until the buildings and bridges grew smaller. The shells of "civilization" as I knew it grew fewer and far between, and one day I was outside of it all, on a hill top looking back in and I could see the towers so tall back then. I could see the flag poles and radio towers atop the things so massive they crowded out the sky and blanked the stars at night with their ferocious brilliance.
And it's strange to be outside of it. Strange to feel myself breathing. There was a time, right after I took myself away from it all, that it felt odd not to be hurt. I felt like my skin didn't fit. My face didn't feel like my face. It was difficult to walk, like my legs forgot how to do it in this new frame unburdened. It felt strange to stand up straight. Strange to deal with my bosses because I was constantly afraid that they might hit me if I messed something up or forgot to do something or did what they wanted, but they changed their minds halfway and did not tell me. It never occurred to me that people are not supposed to be allowed to do that to other people. It never occurred to me that people are not naturally inclined to do that necessarily. It never occurred to me that there would and could be legal recourse for me if they did. Shedding the things, piece by piece, that I once thought to be absolute truths of power relationships and interchange with "authority".
It was a difficult transition and four years removed from it, it feels like a lifetime away. The longest four years of my short life. I've done so much living, it amazes me and I love it. I love being able to look forward without immediate apprehension. Some days I wake up and my first thought is "so this is what everyone else has been feeling like all this time." I wish that I did still retain the good memories from when I was little. I've spent so much of myself and so much time eradicating the bad ones, but you can't pick and choose when it comes to that. There are huge blank spaces in my memory now. Massive expanses that I should have some recall about, but I don't. Struggle with whether that's a good or bad thing comes up sometimes, but I'd rather recall nothing than wake up sweating at night.
A choice I decided to make. The most vivid memories still remain, both good and bad; the worst of the worst and the best of the best. Every time I speak to my siblings something new and minor comes to light for better and for worse and I forget all over again. Strike it from the library. Continue on my way. I feel like, really for the first time in a long time, like I'm going the right way and ... there's no price to put on peace. Peace at any cost. Call it selfish. Call it whatever you want to. There's beauty in grace and grace is not killing your parents to square your own books.
There's music stored up in there. I have about 120 tracks and sounds and machine sounds stocked up. I really do want to do it, I haven't made the time to learn. Really learn. I'm passion infused about it. I need it. I'm terrified of failure the same way I used to be years ago when I first decided to share and open myself up to criticism. Not just open myself up, but open myself up to criticism on something I thought I was pretty good at. Music is an entirely different bucket. I want to do it, I've taken the first steps, and now I just have to make one foot follow the other. Never did download that manual for the autoharp. It's not collecting dust though. Every few days, I drag it out from under my bed and lay it down and pluck it's strings and see what comes out of it, but I'm happy to be a dabbler. And unhappy to be just.
Beats, notes, and rhythms in my head and the struggle, I know, will be exhausting. It's a problem of effort and I know that's a me problem, not an environment problem. I've had some trouble with scheduling. Trying to keep yourself out of trouble by sleeping on a max schedule will only drive you so far. Eventually you have to step out of safety if you want to accomplish anything. No one ever won a football game by kneeling down in the first quarter. Crunch time is never convenient and I can't imagine the force of the crush that will drive me to try and I don't want to experience it. I'll get on it someday. To do lists grow long like finger nails. Eventually you have to cut it down or at least paint them.
On another note, you know it's summer when the girls are out in flip flops and the guys are losing their shirts. That's the usual metric. Everyone is out in their Ed Hardy tees and old men are jogging, red skinned, down the middle of side streets and kids are pushing their strollers and little carnivals with tractor trailer ferris wheels start popping up. You know it's summer when you can't get a spot to fish on the river shore if you show up any later than noon on a Tuesday. Opening your car door is like opening an oven door and you sweat from the effort of fixing yourself a bowl of cereal for breakfast. You know it's summer when you head down to the basketball court and you'd rather stand than sit when you're not playing because the asphalt is just that hot.
The real tell about summer, though, is when the ladies start to come out doors in shorts and Ugg boots. I have no idea when that nonsense caught on. What I do know is that every year it happens. Inevitably. It makes no sense. I am a huge fan of form following function, but there is no function to it! None whatsoever! I am taking a stand against it. I was walking down to the gas station in the middle of the day and a nub wearing Uggs and a jean jacket strolled by on the other side of the street and I tried to contain it, but I couldn't. I guffawed for a second, choked, and then laughed at the top of my lungs. It's okay though. She's doing her and I'm going to do me. No big deal.
Still though, come on! Really? Watching it from the corner of my eye all I could think about was gross, stanky, lady feet. I don't care how pretty your face is, guy or girl, but if your feet stank something awful or are horribly deformed or even noticeably deformed, that's a deal breaker. Call me shallow. I don't mind, but there has to be limits. Still chuckling while I walked into the gas station I was at a loss as to what planet that was considered attractive.
I'm not the style police. 90% of what I wear serves a function and a purpose and if that purpose or function requires something off putting or ugly, hey... go f#$% yourself. Form will always follow function for me. If I happen to net up some good form along the way it's just the bonus. I love summer. I love the absurdity of it all. I got into a long back and forth with a girl friend about style. Sometimes I do make style considerations when it comes to choosing the best function/form ratio. She was dressed to the nines and I asked her why she would put herself into such nice clothes. Turned out she just wanted to dress up on a Friday. I scratched my beard. She elaborated. "Sometimes I'm just in the mood to feel a little different."
I got it, then. When function governs there's less room for expression. Everything can't be mechanical the way I want it to be or would like it to be. Input equals output not always and it shouldn't always be. Reproduction being what it is and kind of necessary. Hard wiring. And there I go, back to the mechanical. I can't help it. She had a point though. After the conversation I felt myself starting to want to be a slacks and button up guy. She explained that even though she was dressed to the teeth with shiny earrings, they were still her play clothes because if anything bad happened to them, they're not her actual dress clothes. I might try to wear button up shirts more often. Without buttoning them. To pull that off I'll probably need pants without latex paint all over them. That takes money. Maybe not. I love function.
I'll have quiet dreams about wearing dumb slacks and ripping the crotch out of them doing what I do. In the meantime, I'll just do me and wear what I want. I guess, in very short retrospect, I respect that Ugg jean jacket girl. If I see her again I'm still going to laugh. The same way people probably laugh at me strolling down the main drag in clothes with no form, scratching their heads like "did you look at a mirror before you left your house or did you grab the first four garments you could find on your floor and jump out of your door to conquer the world?"
And that's how you know it's Summer.
Kisses. Later on, kids.
///Ladytron - "
Soft Power" ...daylight is the enemy... I love the night. Everything smells wet and good at night. I want to sleep by the river again and talk to the fish while the fire goes out.
