Adz, Blur and Om

"Things are not always what they seem, nor are they otherwise."

-Well-known Zen Adage

The heat is palpable. You can see it throbbing the air, waves of distortion rising up in tandem on the horizon, the edge of every vista like bubbles of boiling batter, are we in an oven? 

Walking inside, into the slough of AC. Soothe is the word. It wetlicks my skin, like a balm I guess. 

What is a balm?

A weird old word.

Where does that leave us then? Finger wading stacks upon stacks in the office. An avalanche of rejection.  A glare on the wallclock’s number 3.  Maybe it doesn’t say three…  I am thinking about your cheek.  A kiss on that tender blush. Like an apple.  The fleshy lines of your arms…

Where does that leave us then?  Not where but when.  A long time from when we started. 

I did not walk here all the way from the airport to listen to myself talking.
I came here to watch you.
I came here to watch you all.
To see you listening.
Listening to me talk.
Talk without thinking…

Parking lot snowbank remnants beneath the springtime stars, “it's open mic night muthafuckas!”

Remember? 
 

No, you weren’t there.  Maybe even I wasn’t there.  My head was elsewhere. Yes certainly.  Was I walking home? Dusty boys playing by the side of the road. I check online. Weather in GoogleMaps is always fixed. Is that old home still there?  Where was it exactly?  Streetview.  I was leaving work. What was that job?  Did I drive or take the train?  A plane, a boat? 

I seem to recall
air fanned by a flock of hands,
the cats flanks flecked with burrs,
veiled windows, lit by sunset, or streetlights…
the smell of wood floors and coffee grounds,
the smell of lost causes, the taste of boredom
your Jacobean mouth…

Remember? 

Am I my own vision?  Yes most certainly, but how am I stretched beyond it? 

And what is it beyond my own vision?  Heat, for sure, the lines all rubbing together but beyond that, what name this stage, this set, a wind from other oceans we hadn’t known, the codenames of lost continents. 

What is this place called?  Not where but when.  The camera clicks, flash a light.  What do I see?  When did we enter?  Let's give it a name to say when it starts.  How should we stay? The points aren’t fixed.  

Like a starlit lake in the midst of San Francisco.  Midst or mist?  
The moon was late tonight.
Tonight I touched the dry warm skin 
of the building
because the night is the cure
the cure is the beginning

 Let me through.

The streetlight glare on the digitalclock number 3.  

Everywhere blurry hot and halogen.

My ideas no longer ideas
just two fine French doors you live inside
like I live inside this promise
like we live inside dreams
the best dreams where you did not yet exist
Yet not where but when
when inside I knew 
knew you in the universe
the universe would create you eventually
and the universe would continue to burn,
A dream fire fueled by a heart’s promise.


Or youth.

I was the lithe flower then and now I am the fat fruit. I am ready for a fall.  I am ready to fall apart.  I am ready for the seed somewhere within me to spring.

Dread Pirate Masq'dm'n

I find it curiously fascinating how the older I get the narratives I construct to make sense of my life more and more tend to mirror the processes I use to construct a story. Or, in this case, a blog. I've been sitting on pieces of this puzzle for weeks now, trying to make sense of the shadow ambiguities of my topic, and then last night at 3AM a voicemail is left that puts the whole puzzle together. It is finished. It starts:

This is the worst part. No one ever tells me why.
They just stop answering my calls. Or
they stop answering my calls. Or
they stop y'know returning my messages
Or, or whatever and they don't say
"Listen, um, this isn't going to work out
because of ____ this," or
"Listen, you're just too
revolting---
---ly ugly,"
or something! I mean
just fucking tell me SOMETHING, you know?
God Dammit! Pisses me off. [sigh]
I mean, I would like to know what I did wrong.
That way I can not do it later
or I can say, "Listen
I'm sorry. Can I have another-
can I get a do-over?"

And if you buy into the notion I've been feeding you (and myself) for years that I am a victim, then you'll think that soundbyte was meant to encapsulate my own predicament, but right now it's not.

I used to believe that everyone leaves. I would brace myself for it early. In the midst of a kiss, mid-coitus, driving to her house on a cold day in February and I would prepare to be left. Everyone leaves so why spend time working on strategies to stay, t'would be wasteful spending. Why not instead bulwark the heart, I started to believe, which has damned up the walls of empathy in me, flooding all subsequent relationships with an ironic backfill; most people stay. I am the one who leaves.

There weren't so many ways for those girls to contact me as I have at my disposal now. They used to ignore my calls and texts. Now I find myself the bastard who ignores calls, texts, letters, emails, wallposts...

How is it that I have gradually become the villain? The villain who is so ultra-deluded that he thinks himself still a victim on the defensive, when in fact he has repeatedly, in the intervening years, offended and hurt lonely open hearts, much like his own before it was callous and starved insensate...

I couldn't find a way to say any of this. Then, suddenly, I found a way to say it. On Valentine's Day. Perhaps that was the ultimate trigger. The Greeting-Card Holiday prompts self-analysis revealing the reviled depths to which I alone have stooped, ruining any chances I've had at love and blaming everyone but the real culprit. Hey Cupid, draw back your bow, and thanks for putting all these thoughts so poignantly together for me today. I'll probably forget it all again in another week. Unfortunately, Valentine's Day is only once a year. (Never thought I'd ever say that!)