The Space You Left Behind

Lost.

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I like the fact that the most important places where I am welcome, are usually the places I am.

The Space You Left Behind

Does one ever think that when one approaches the front door to answer it, the casual ritual often prevents us from employing our critical thinking - measuring and inductive reasoning - which may have spared us a new experience and not have ever impacted our conscious subjectivity and embedded an apprehension, or a logic, or a system of your interpretation of that moment forward; and you wake up and decide things and going to be different. Remember, you have options; you have three doors to choose from and millions of pages to reference. You are what you know, that's what page I am on this evening. I am writing them as quickly as you try to figure out why the hell you are trying to figure out what the hell I am talking about you; you turn to face the same brick wall you built of systems and neurons - you flip the page over and it is blank; so you write... you write as a ritual - and you will not be anxious about the knock at your front because you don't want to answer it and your writing intensifies.

“Great to see you; you look spectacular.”
I didn’t tell her I had never jumped out of a plane before, or that I didn’t really think it was an activity that I had condemned long ago; in fact I had recently signed a petition to ban parachuting in our county, but I did look spectacular, so fatefully, I returned a smile and looked at her dizzy, unsuspecting gaze, her unawkwardness at my rigid side, she was breathing happily while the little propellor aircraft whipped us about
“What?” I knew she didn’t know that I had heard her.
I held my self perfectly still. I grimaced after a minute of this trying activity. The little plane shook and shivered. When she nodded at me I realized I could use this time to take the opportunity to stop this madness once and for all: My new life of urgent truth had to begin now! The little aircraft dipped frightfully through an air pocket and I began to get the heebie jeebies and slow quakes jolted my arteries. Meanwhile I realized I hadn’t many seconds to begin this new path in life, I had to plot my thesis after I jumped out of a plane, landed and recovered. My hand moved to my side pocket and I compulsively rechecked the presence of my ID and paperwork. The parachuting certificate I handed to the pilot was legitimate after all; the online class was quite expensive and I didn’t cheat. I just lied. Of course, last night at Trick’s Tavern, I realized that I would have told her anything. I needed someone to make me feel interesting, and I suppose that is why I tell so many stories to those I am sure I will never see again and I am beginning to think that is a dangerous self discovery.
To make matters worse, I was starting to be concerned about this and other self issued discoveries, and this was a rather bad time to start a rapid decline of self doubt.
“I heard you say you were adopted.”
“True, but please don’t forget what you don’t know.”
“I wish you didn’t listen so much.” Our conversation was confusing. I just started to talk about nothing.
“The sun isn’t going down any quicker. My sundown is high…. Have you ever heard of thought disorder?” I looked up at the ceiling of the airplane and recited the definition from Wikipedia, “ ‘In psychiatry, thought disorder or formal thought disorder is a term used to describe a pattern of disordered language use that is presumed to reflect disordered thinking. It is usually considered a symptom of psychotic mental illness although occasionally appears in other conditions. It is also known as knight's move thinking referring to the nonlinear way a knight moves in chess.’”
“What?”
The noise of the engine grew louder.
“I said the noise of the engine is getting loud.”
“Don’t worry, anyway.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“True.” She looked at me but I stared out the window at the gravity.
The pilot’s husky orders startled me but I stood up and waited.
The rollercoaster and the hash brownies experience was cupcake compared to what ever happened next. I have little but flashes of the freefall, I did everything wrong and the ride home was long and my whole heart ached in every part of my body.
When I woke up from my nap that evening, I called her and informed her that I couldn’t see her anymore and had to dedicate myself to a new religion - one that would make me a better self. Then I told her that she made me see that I was a liar and a thief and I thanked her and hung up the phone. Well, I actually didn’t totally hang it up on the cradle; it was crooked and I wonder if she heard me playing the blues on my harmonica for the next two hours. Nothing happened for awhile after that. I memorized the words to Ave Maria and took a shower with my cap on. I drank a beer and waltzed down the street to Mrs. Armstrong’s house, two blocks away.
My piano lesson was louder than ever before that Sunday morning; the expressive and impressive strokes brought my instructor’s maid to tears, I closed my eyes for minutes at a time, hoping to get the liquid to soothe my windburnt eyeballs, and I occasionally pause to flip my bangs off my eyelashes and as awkward as this was, I reminded myself to smile when my teacher would criticize my artistic profile and she would smile and nod at the keys as she told me to pick it up again; but I laid it down even more until my heartache broke and let the sunshine ease in, then I would totally stop and slam my fists down like a defeated classical pianist in a cartoon. Like Schroeder. I went to the window loudly when Ms. _________ had to pick up a long distance phone call, and her cat walked across the keys of the baby grand as traffic groaned down the slushy highway in front of her house. The cat was deaf, I thought while a tickle of a giggle hummed in my throat, and the damn thing had no talent. I wished that Ms. ______ would come back so that she was not speaking to her far-away friend about the crappy student playing crappy impromptu for no apparent reason. But the doorbell rang, the distorted volume of the cheap tone made me shove my hands in my pockets like a guilty thief, and the cat got away from the tune.
“Bobby, go home,” she cupped her hand and she spoke to the door at me, “Go home NOW.”
She reminded me of a dial tone.
I wonder who invented the dial tone. Did that same person name it? Was it named “Dial Tone”? I could probably Google it, but I knew myself too well. I did not care. All I cared about was the free association bullshit which prompted me to relate a tone to a human being.

Today was the day I decided to change my life. I also changed my phone number, got a PO Box, a puppy, and a laptop. I almost added a handgun to that list, but after dry-heaving in the alley next to Paul’s Pawn on 12th and Hell Street, I delayed that purchase for my next life change. I chucked my old cell phone in a dumpster, I admired the lack of contacts I didn’t have on my new one, and I slung my leather laptop case over my shoulder, gave a nice little blind kid two dollars, and strolled through the east side with my new dog in a cage on a Ryder I had bought from a teenager who seemed to be a legitimate salesperson.

Today was the day my life decided to change me.

January 2008 by wch

Setting Benchmarks

Today is the first day of the rest of your series of other first days of your life. You always can be uncertain whether or not you have this particular day to begin again. You always may be certain that you will always be uncertain. You start planning immediately; you have an unmeasured time allotted for this interpretation of the state of your fixation. You sit in front of whatever clever type of technology or paper or sticky-note system which provides you with the encouragement to begin your plan. But after a few scribbles and a change in barometric pressure, you decide that you have accomplished a decent amount of planning, just by the act of starting to think about planning. Then you walk into your backyard to see if there is enough gas in the lawn mower to do a few rows, and your phone rings.
Hello?
The silence on the other end of your line is intolerable, so you utter a short sequence of charming un-thank yous and you realize that you have to call your friend in Chicago who is sick and could be dying; meanwhile your guitar looks like it needs to be played. You cant figure out a chord, so you pick up the remote but nothing is on except your loves favorite show, which you cant watch be cause this is the first day of the rest of your year, and so you think about ordering a pizza but your debit card is downstairs and the cat just puked and the ice has already melted in your class.
Hello?
You walk around in circles until you decide its not worth it and maybe the tag phrase should be today is the last day of your life but that seems psychologically unhealthy and you need to sleep it off.
Any challenges you open your sleepy eyes to are self-imposed. For instance, you must own your own mind. You cant always control it, but you have got to own it. You have to obey or disobey its compulsions, and you have to accept its troubles and randomizations. You cant organize it, but you can know the danger of its capacity to scramble and ramble. You can tell yourself many things you want to believe, but unless you compromise with it, your intentions wont be articulated as obligations. You have to be consistent, impressionistic, reasonable, adjustable, and playful. No one can think for oneself without wandering about some madness, and at times madness may be the purpose, the map, the ambiguity that makes all challenges the exact electricity which makes your minds universe.
So! Before you retrace your steps, either find the nearest exit or forgive yourself for thinking that you are completely capable of withstanding any retrospection. We all have a certain level of faith and love for ourselves, but we hesitate to remember (time after time) that our minds love is unrequited at times.
I found myself today. I found myself yesterday. Dont worry about how or where or why. You need to worry about yourself. I am in good standing with myself. I dont know how you see me, but I need you to look at yourself instead of me. I am lost and found, and the circle will never be unbroken.
Ask yourself questions; but believe nothing you say is universal truth. Again, I dont know how you see me, I only see what I ask of you to see me as, and I ask you to see me without judgment, without pity, without expectations; I will in turn see you just as I see myself. I will see a conjunction of suggestion, a highway overlooking the inexactness which I gander and gather, and I will speak no evil, see no evil, nor hear no evil. I will tell myself to have an open mind, an unspoken heart, and a thousand broken souls unnerving me at every moment I let myself go. I will obey and deceive while I coincide and conflict. I will not hurt you any more or less unless I am hurting. But, thats me. I will listen, confide, retreat, capture, release, stalk, haunt, freak, steal, believe, deny, accuse, refuse, abuse, lose, win, practice, preach, reach, storm, mourn, shock, fall, get up, fall again, risk, gamble, promise, forget, relive, regret, write, ask, answer, explain, walk away, run away, stumble back, call, hang up, create, criticize, speculate, spit it out, move, stay, fear, hope, play, work, tumble, crumble, relive, revive, listen, whisper, break, shake, ache, take, fake, love, shove, test, quiz, examine, graduate, imitate, cringe, cry, die, believe, remind, reconsider, reconsider, reconsider, reconsider, prove, contend, mend, bend, reason, rationalize, agonize, plead, please, smile, agree, follow, lead, rock, roll, and rest. I will be on my own side of my mind, the inside of whats truly only mine, and I will have to be patient until you find me there: for you and I will celebrate your own story.

What are you going to do to make yourself feel real?

Then sometimes the stories tell themselves much faster than you can possibly imagine which is where the story begins. The story begins somewhere near the middle because something's got to be happening in order for a story to come in context of the conversation; what I mean is that I think you must have some reason to tell a story - a tale - an anecdote, unless you just are plain bored anyway, but my story starts because the time has come when I realized I had one to tell. Yeah, of course I have had many, just like we all have our stories, but this was one that made it even worthwhile to write.
Fact is that I love to write but not much inspires me these days to do the actual deed, I write in my notebook and it never seems to get typed therefore it is never really out there, except in a song or twenty, but any how, I would like to explain things in a way that aren't too abstract, so please stop if you get lost in my balderdash, if you can.
But you can't, so joke's on you, I spose.

Shakespeare in my lap under my bluish lighted lamp, I was on Act Two of The Tempest, trying to not only just read Shakespeare, but tying to enjoy it. This was a ritual of mine - one of many - I had these rituals that I practiced because I philosophized (being the philosopher who I was) that this was the delivery which would demand my sense of learning to enjoy the elements of existence which would make me virtuous, a sultan, a reason for all to see that I have an itinerary, and most of all a method.

I have a ritual. I was three days a college graduate, after five and a half years of university life, two majors and two minors (balance is important to me), I am able to write in present tense, say that I have been rigidly educated, and have my whole life ahead of me.
So, I write this as I say to you and the world, I am a philosopher. I make this decision because I strode off into the world just like that, the intentionally, and my screen door slammed shut, or whacked itself hard and the cat meowed and I headed up toward the outside off near campus in my new Converse, staring down at the un-kept sidewalk, grateful that that type of maintenance didn't bother me. I didn't look up and the sidewalk grooves moved beneath me at exceedingly faster lines of distance, which made me realize the physics of it all - but of course, as a philosopher, it may have mattered more or less, but that made me clearly apathetic philosopher, one who hasn't determined their actual "category" or "trade" or whatever; all I knew is that I wanted to study Ritual.
What in the hell does that mean?
I lifted my head as I approached Tennessee Street and some kids in a four door navy Taurus waved and yelled my name. I waved back, and couldn't figure out who they were. I am not foreshadowing here so don't get any ideas. Let me do the thinking. I have been practicing.
The coffee shop steps had been freshly painted and I had to go in there
"Why you look so down?' peaches asked
"Not"
"No serious-like - you're always lookin' at the ground."
"I-" I looked at the ceiling and laughed at the irony of the situation "Look at the ceiling, Peaches, the disgust, the mold, the cigarette-"
She made an indistinct snort and said, "People are talking, you know, you just have to look at more than them nice converse and sidewalks and cats and stuff. It's a shame we never see your eyes."
"Where's my coffee?" I knew I didn't order any.
"Do you just want some "grounds"", she laughed as she swayed away to some older chap, who looked like my Modern Lit professor.
"And what is a Ritual, anyway?"
The humming of the ceiling fans and the odor of the coffee and the ambience of the conversation found myself out the door and back up the hill, using my eyesight properly, staring ahead, then at the cloudless sky.
How dull, thought I.
How dull is this?

Distance

Fact is that I love to write but not much inspires me these days to do the actual deed, I write in my notebook and it never seems to get typed therefore it is never really out there, except in a song or twenty, but any how, I would like to explain things in a way that aren’t too abstract, so please stop if you get lost in my balderdash, if you can.

But you can’t, so joke’s on you, I spose.

Shakespeare in my lap under my bluish lighted lamp, I was on Act Two of The Tempest, trying to not only just read Shakespeare, but tying to enjoy it. This was a ritual of mine – one of many – I had these rituals that I practiced because I philosophized (being the philosopher who I was) that this was the delivery which would demand my sense of learning to enjoy the elements of existence which would make me virtuous, a sultan, a reason for all to see that I have an itinerary, and most of all a method.

So, I write this as I say to you and the world, I am a philosopher. I make this decision because I strode off into the world just like that, the intentionally, and my screen door slammed shut, or whacked itself hard and the cat meowed and I headed up toward the outside off near campus in my new Converse, staring down at the un-kept sidewalk, grateful that that type of maintenance didn’t bother me. I didn’t look up and the sidewalk grooves moved beneath me at exceedingly faster lines of distance, which made me realize the physics of it all – but of course, as a philosopher, it may have mattered more or less, but that made me clearly apathetic philosopher, one who hasn’t determined their actual “category” or “trade” or whatever; all I knew is that I wanted to study Ritual.

What in the hell does that mean?

I lifted my head as I approached Tennessee Street and some kids in a four door navy Taurus waved and yelled my name. I waved back, and couldn’t figure out who they were. I am not foreshadowing here so don’t get any ideas. Let me do the thinking. I have been practicing.

The coffee shop steps had been freshly painted and I had to go in there

“Why you look so down?’ peaches asked

“Not”

“No serious-like – you’re always lookin' at the ground.”

“I-“ I looked at the ceiling and laughed at the irony of the situation “Look at the ceiling, Peaches, the disgust, the mold, the cigarette-“

She made an indistinct snort and said, “People are talking, you know, you just have to look at more than them nice converse and sidewalks and cats and stuff. It’s a shame we never see your eyes.”

“Where’s my coffee?” I knew I didn’t order any.

“Do you just want some “grounds””, she laughed as she swayed away to some older chap, who looked like my Modern Lit professor.

“And what is a Ritual, anyway?”

The humming of the ceiling fans and the odor of the coffee and the ambience of the conversation found myself out the door and back up the hill, using my eyesight properly, staring ahead, then at the cloudless sky.

How dull, thought I.

How dull is this?

Rebounding

Same Story Again

Suddenly, I came out of the stupor and you gave me a blank look and told me that I listen to what you had to say and I should listen well. Next, I looked at your forehead and stammered. You looked at me tolerantly and clapped your hands in front of my eyes. You did this in several sessions of rhythmic outbursts, of these I lost count after three, thinking that I was going to break up with you; I didn't care if we we're dating anymore, or that we never did - I had to break up with you.

"You have a bee in your mouth," you told me.

I grinned at the prospect of being a bee and stinging her on her boob while she was on a date with someone fancy and she cries like a wuss.

The sound of the glass breaking would have scared even you.

Febuary 2, 2008

Suddenly the truth of the matter was the simplicity of the suddenness I sought to seize.

I thought about calling you, then I decided to water the plants. I noted that I would have to let the dogs out soon enough, but right now my priority was that I endulged a session of self-identificating, and subsequently maintained some aspect of photosynthesis.

I thought about calling you. I went back and forth with many items untoched on my To Not Do list, and I plunged into a guilty reasoning and borderline panic. As a result of writing it down in a manner which by no means eased my sense of autodestructionary mental esteem, I found that maybe you might find yourself online, wondering if I have updated this page recently, and then you would affectionately realize that you were not mad at me, I felt bad anyway, so reading this may be just about the best means of communication I had to offer this Sunday evening.

I thought about calling you.

I still may. You never know.

February 1111, 2008

Audacity? part ii

Dear Interested Reality Show Representative:

I am happy to hear from you - but what exactly is an "audition"? Is that when your doctor checks your hearing; estimates the frequency or levels, the results of 130 decibals every other night for three hours or so and the effects on your long term hearing?

Or is it a synonym for the act of auditing... or the state of being audited?

Or maybe the state of one's audacity?

But! I digress...

Thank you for the note! I am pleased to please you! And pleased to meet you! (I am on vacation and as my occupational hazards deny me time to write to random cool people - I teach high school English - who may fascinate me by some subjective means or another and make a long, shockingly introspective day just a bit better by being a part of it).

Anyway.

Please do buzz me so that I can figure out how to audition and/or captivate the uncaptivated...

Here are my stats:

Wendy Clark (Hudson)

email: wclarkhudson@yahoo.com

www.tequilamockingbirdmusic.com

(Don't you realize how much I could barrage you with my introspective torment with the audacity of that unsolicited query?)

Take care, now. you hear?

you here?

What's -your- story?

_______________________________________________________

Then I imagined a stereotypical scenario:

After blinking involuntarily for the creeping recognition of the totally obvious, the most simplistic answers begin to noticeably affect our effect.

This was the same lack of coping skills.

Fall: (noun) to pass from one condition to another.

“Tempting,” I said.

Things were starting to be looking up, that is, when they weren't looking down.

Sadly, the most unimportant events usually crept into my prominent speculations when ever my current situations(s) demanded my excruciating attention. Important events called for one's absolute focus, and fortunately, I enjoyed a scale of mental substance consisting of vairous intense predicaments as well as an grounded awareness of my presence and depth of my semi-chaotic habitat.

I walked that evening; I walked slowly and caught my breathe on that dusty trail - which I had jogged happily so many times past - and I stumbled through the muggy air where you had once been.

The forecast was awful.
But it could not have been any better.

The consequences of asking a blank sheet of paper to write itself.....

"Why do you ask so many rhetorical questions?"

The drive home from anyplace you go is going to be an unnerving string of fragmented images, sounds, smells, etcetera, but all you can do is drive, you have to get to your next destination; we all have to get somewhere, eh?

The object of the game is to outwit everyone else, or maybe to out-think them, surpass them in the good looks or "I know how to dress" or something or other, after all, you HAVE to be good at something, don't you? Or will you fall through the cracks?

The more you stay, the farther you go away any love looks you in the eyes and you don't wait for the words you want to hear so much these days; you're friends find misery and become a bore, of course, you ponder if this boredom is really just a manifestation of your own loneliness.

Ah, looking back, we had dreams, big huge quivering coolness in our attitudes; smarter, luckier, more destined for greatness than all those random bodies rolling over the earth, heads down, miserable because they were blending in with the entire puzzle, those pieces of people.

"Deal me in," I say before I think about the consequences.

Lost.

What you see is who you are.

What you see is who you are and that should set you free.

What you see is what you know.

What you are is what you know.

What you know is you know what.

This rare evening I invite you to forget that what you see is who you are
and invite you to distinguish your sight and be blind for the sake of
just me
inviting you
for kicks
and kicks we will have

because I am trying to find the harm in forgetting that what you see is what you get
and I want to quit believing that seeing is believing
and closing your eyes
doesn't mean I am closing what I see
and what I mean isn't who I may be

man, it is such a trip
that if you say to yourself
and forget to think about yourself
and remember why to laugh at yourself
like a complicated boob

You may start to believe that clarity
And see how many ways you can believe to see

I have to continue, because it is necessary:
What you see is who you are.
And it's better to know what is causing the drama than to wonder.
It is that simple. It is that complicated.

I tried to blend in more than I had ever tried to not be uneasy in the bloody jaws of uneasiness when Ellen, Stephanie, JE, Tara and some other stupid first grader first pointed out that I was not invited to step up in the tight circle and smile and brag about my new sundress. One of the lovely popular tall betches stooped down and said with a gag, "What do think YOU are doing here?"

I imagine I moved as fast as I could imagine so that they would forget that I ever existed. I still see myself there, though. What you see is who you are unless what you see is not.

So how do you finish an anecdote? How do you say instead, "I wish you could see me like I see you," and let yourself be invited to see whatever you want and be who the hell you are, and teach yourself to see.

This is not an exit.

Thu

Jul

2008

Ritual?

Hey visitor!

The Space You Left Behind

The Space You Left Behind

Setting Benchmarks

Distance

Rebounding

Audacity? part ii

The consequences of asking a blank sheet of paper to write itself.....

Rusty Clark 1993-2008 RIP