AUTHOR.CALHO: If I didn't write it, I would be hitch hiking cross country to Maine and then Alaska in that order. While taking frequent breaks to spread leaflets. And sit in diners. And write on things because I wasn't at a computer. I may still do that in a few years. Writing this also helps me forget about and better understand the limitations of being human, and keeps me busy enough to allow me no free time to burn the world down.
THEMATIC.ABOUT : Collapse often. The things that hold people together and hold them apart and scatter brains. The things that make thoughts go boom. The things that ooh and aah and [expletive deleted]. Sometimes poking around the margins where responsibility ends and the only one to look to is the Original Equipment Manufacturer and say "but, I already pressed 9 for more options and the menus are exactly the same. Can you just replace it?" The answer will be: "please hold." Sometimes hanging out in dark corners. Sometimes following the train tracks. Looking for ways out and ways in and all the while sharing the things seen and heard and done and drawn and written and scorched and healed and teased and caged and dreamed along the way.
10/11/22
Good Evening Hon'
9/10/21
Dear (_____)
With A Passion
I refuse to die. I think about death just about every day. Who doesn't. Yes that is a statement. I refuse to die. SHOW ME ALL OF MY LABELS. I will show you a complete set. A complete-ish set? I miss my friends. Am I alone. I am alone. I am l onea. O, am I lone. A olo nei.
Destrega. I have dreams about the end of the world. They are fun. Are you?
Dogfights are luscious.
I dreamt about trees falling and bears coming out of the woods across creek where I used to live in southern Maryland and the spider monster came down out of the bear tree limbs in the middle of winter and before the bears could get to the fawns grazing on what grasses were left behind in a mild thaw before the permafrost killed everything the tree sized monsters began swooping down to harvest the bears.
Their force began tipping the old and dead trees over, held up by ivy.
The entire thing began collapsing.
Have you ever heard the sound
of a tree hitting the ground
that was as large as you
can run?
The shadows were enormous. I ran fast. As fast as I could... the entire dream collapsed. The ground collapsed with the bass of the shear air the trunks displaced as they fell. The spiders were squashed. The bears became pelts and powdered glistening bone, when I had time to glance back at the pink mist.
I lived. The animals died. I panted. I watched
more trees fall with thick and thicker trunks, torn asunder like toothpicks before the clouds.
The troposphere. The fucking fickle thin layer of air that had just a little too much sun. God, some single batch would probably kill me so I dont have to know
what's coming next.
That Instant
a customer speaks to you with words they would not use if they met you ninety five feet away and you know it for a fact because you stood up from the cash register and they realized (very quickly) that you were very able to drag and throw them through the sliding door toward the wrong end of pelletized glass over a difference of two dollars.
I've been away for a very long time.
I am still human. I don't know how to phrase it exavtly. i am sad. I am still me.
10/26/19
That Instant
10/21/19
That Instant
10/19/19
Dear (_____)
I've been pretty high functioning for a while. I know I'll never be cured. There is no cure. I remember you. I remember everything you took from me. You took a person I wanted to marry from me the same way you took me from someone I wanted to marry more than a decade later. It's unreal being on the other side of you and the heartache. Feeling like there is nothing I can do to stop you. More than a decade ago, you snatched the first person that loved me away from me because I didn't know what you are. A decade of growth later. More than. I have changed and can see you for what you are. I can see your tendrils and suction cups, your butterfly wings that look like fungus and friendly moss, your horned growths and twigs and flowers and sun beam colors. I can see your off seasonal artisanal aromas and hellishly intriguing recipes for what they are. Your get togethers and time cheaters and machinery and armors plated with reactive impenetrable metal scales. I can see you and you've taken someone from me.
We are even.
We are square.
You took some of my friends, both of my uncles and a few aunts, my father's actual father that I never got to meet, my grandmother's husband, cousins, untold family members I'll never know, both of my parents by proxy, my childhood, myself away from my first real love, and my second real love away from me.
Fuck you.
I would say "never again", but the devils greatest feat was convincing the world it didn't exist.
You do.
Sincerely,
Hobbes
That Instant
That Instant
That Instant
10/1/19
Where the Time Went V
Banished from the lands. I almost said unfortunately. Fortune has little to do with what a person decides to do with their present. Fortune has everything to do with what and who you are up until "now", but maybe fifty percent to do with after. Fortune has fifty percent or less to do with what happens to you after you realize what the system is and what you're in for and who you are and where you've been with an open eye. Of course, you've still got to get "lucky" in part for good things to happen to you, but you also have to be prepared to act.
Banished and returned out of sympathy for their survival, them having flailed in the vacuum of space and been over matched by the very things they spat in my face they could handle on their own so often and myself being fed incomplete information (what I call lies and they call "telling the full truth when they're ready"). So now we are trapped into providing shelter for the wayward addict and trying to lay down ground rules in their defiance and abuse of kindness. Few things feel more alone than living with someone who is not prepared or capable yet of living outside of their own interests, whatever those interests may be.
If you're still in the mindset of "I am a fuck up, I can't do this" and won't even honest to yourself try, you're going to miss it. Four months long attempts at trying to wake them up to that simplicity. Trying to be the best person I could be toward the person I loved. Maximum effort. Whether I wanted to or not, whether I was upset or not, whether it would cost me or not. We had a conversation the other evening about what love is. Is it an emotion? A feeling? A pile of chemicals? An exchange of ideas, ideals, memories, and hopes? Is it that metaphorical eternal flame of the soul and yadda yadda that keeps everything and everyone connected and relationships blossom where the connections happen to be stronger instead of weaker? She sort of fumbled around for some time, at points fading into and out of the "a person can fall into and out of love conundrum so it can only be, but so much of this or that and" basically a word salad of chopped up experiences, tossed with a little salt and vinegarette and served halting.
Love at its core is sacrifice. Love is willfully putting yourself second for the betterment of someone else. Love is not whispering "I would die for you" while your heads lay on the same pillow and your faces are six inches away from each other. Every time someone tells me they would die for me I tell them to live for me.
I'm not looking for apologies anymore. Whatever form they come in, apologies, an acknowledgement that you did something that did not account for that action's, that decision's, that event's happening's impact on my life, or you did and chose to disregard it, or you did and it did not weigh out to enough to sway you, but you cared enough to inform me and help me better understand where I fall in your calculus and explore the otherverses of paths so that we can figure out whether we should or should not cross paths in the future, if it can be avoided.
I am looking for changes in behavior. Whatever forms the apologies take, if you find yourself offering apologies and sacrifices to the same You, it is vainity at its root. Isn't it? As long as you can forgive you, everything should be good with the person you are bowing your head for the knife for. As long as you're in the loop, you are your own executioner. And yes, you will die in dramatic fashion. The applause will rain. Everyone will believe something was accomplished in the display. The executioner will go to their home, once the crowd applause fade, and there's some sort of proclamation about sins and wrongs and the pigeons and crows will come to peck up the bits of food the audience left in the courtyard. The morticians will get to work and the janitors too. The executioner's phone will buzz a "hey, are you up? Let's hang out" the following night. You'll do your make up, cross legged on the floor, and say to yourself you must go meet so-and-so because...
Apologies and "sorry" are not worthless. They carry some merit on their own, though tacit.
You'll befriend fall guys and walking excuses and you'll apologize later. Beheading yourself used to mean something. It used to be painful. Cognitive dissonance is something for therapy couches, though. Why respect the opinions of people that have spent their lives studying people, just like you. With enough repetitions, a person can become anything they want to be.
///Fatboy Slim - "The State We're In" ~
8/30/19
Where the Time Went IV (the message)
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
Chris
8/26/19
That Instant
8/23/19
Where The Time Went III
...the line should've been drawn a long time ago. I have to become comfortable with notion that my partner will be homeless outright. I've been there. I don't want to do it to someone else. The truth is I'm not doing it to them. They are doing it to themselves.
Is there more I could've done? Sure. Is there more I could've done without killing myself? No. Clarity. Clarity. Clarity. Can't hit he. Can't hit he can't hit. He can't hit. He can't hit. He. Clarity. Clarity. Clarity. Vocal cord rehearsals to explain to her that everything has been askew for almost two years because of her addictions. The motorbike in the backyard still collects rust because of her addictions. The home mortgage fund is short $4000 over two years because of her addictions.
Rehearsing answers to her inevitable retorts and fits of anger.
Rehearse.
Rehearse.
Rehearse.
And know it. Know it like the creases on the back of your hands because they will always be tested. When your support is the rock at the bottom, don't flinch. If it means cutting that base out, try to even though you are crying tears of blood behind stony eyes.
///I miss being able to listen to music without submitting to a five hour long rant about songs we've already listened to the last time hammers fell. Her addiction took even that away from me and she still does not see what it's cost beyond a dollar sign.
8/2/19
Life With Alcoholism
If you say no: they'll just go out anyway, be angry with you all night because "we never go anywhere", probably spend far too much money, call you to pick them up, be further upset with you for not trusting them and for "always being tired", and be irritated that "we never spend time together", be angry with you for "judging" wanting to have a good time.
If you say yes: wherever you go they won't want to leave after an hour, pressure you to drink more than you want (if you decide to drink at all), convince you to spend too much money or spend it themselves, try to get you to bring something back to the house for later (but really that night), go out again anyway if you do get home early, make you feel miserable for going cautiously/reluctantly, be upset with you for thinking about how you'll feel tomorrow, be annoyed with you the entire outing for thinking about the chores & things you still need to do at home.
7/12/19
That Instant
10/17/18
Dear (_____)
Dear piercing hip pain,
We've ruled out kidney stones, appendicitis, burst and displaced disks in the spine, and abdominal tears. Could you please just tell me what you are? Is that so difficult? This whole shell game of taped up notes is getting awfully passive aggressive and I can't keep guessing what's wrong every day and adjusting my work schedule on the fly. I have to work! I am needed! There are deadlines to meet. So what is it today? Who exactly are you that I'm sharing my body with? No one even told me you signed a lease. Tendon inflammation? Lack of rest? Too much stretching? Low pressure swelling? Tiny chunk of bone?! Cartiledge tear?!?! A welcome to old age and the gift is "this is the rest of your life til you die"?!?!?! Stop me if I guess your name!
Sincerely,
Occasionally Bed Ridden at 33