another time, another year

It wasn't all for naught!
Because I can make these mistakes alone
But you know we can make them better
Stay with me, eat crow with me
Sometimes the moon's hues resemble
Your skin's tone, and I think maybe
It's your face up there, and perhaps
we're not so bad off after all.

Because it is the last day of the year
I'm writing a list of everything I love
And it grows long because there's no sense
in harboring contempt- we do what we have to
I'm accustomed to this cycling up and down
the dirtiest streets looking for a way to turn
the tables (and me) to face the wall.

I wanted to tell you, after dinner over wine,
Or on your doorstep smoking cigarettes,
when your hair stuck to your sweat-
soaked face, which complimented the lines
that have grown around your eyes.
I wanted to tell you in the park where
the dogs were swimming, and then at
The river when we just stood there thinking,
"More time."

I would have said that of the last 365 days,
360.5 weren't ever this fine.

she said, she said. (not suitable for children)

"He forgot we were supposed to go out for lunch," I said. "Why would I expect him to call on Christmas?"

"I think that's what started it," she replied. Sincere enough.

So is it? Did I make him feel like a failure by setting up a lunch for which odds were, he would fail to show up?  That's how it breaks us. I wondered what would happen when he realized he forgot about it, which he only realized because I told him.

That was Monday. By Thursday, Christmas Eve morning he checked himself into the hospital because he was depressed and thought he might kill himself. He told them that much. He didn't tell them that on top of the bottle of vodka he finished, he'd started in on the Cymbalta. They didn't account for that when they gave him something for the DT's that caused a reaction that made him confused and unrestrainable, except by the sedatives that made him unable to breathe on his own. That's as much of the story as I know thus far, because that's where he lies as of today.

The other reason I haven't been writing. I have the material. I'm spilling over with it for chrissake. I just don't want to be mistaken for crazy by strangers, when even today I'm processing the fuck out of everything, and I'm still getting out of bed every damn day regardless of how many times I come up short in the end. Today I just got up much later than usual. Tomorrow, I won't.

I wonder sometimes in this life how much of it we create, and how much is created for us. And how late in the day one must stay in their pajamas to feel better about all of it.  I say this now, while I'm still in them. Later on, I'll have the right clothes on and these words won't come, which is good, because this sort of thing has to pass, or it becomes all consuming.

absence makes the heart grow (longer).

It's been a year since I've been in love. It's been a year since it left, and I think I've missed having someplace to put mine more than I've missed its recipient. That's not to say he hadn't earned it. Christmas went by blissfully enough, full of as much cheer as we could muster. It just didn't carry over.

I've had a lot to say about love as of late, perhaps because when you have it, it seems far less valuable than when you don't, and maybe I'm guilty of taking it for granted. So I'll refer to a post I made a year ago, a couple of weeks before Christmas.

"If I could change the way I remember things, like if I remembered more birthdays and fewer heartbreaks, something truly good could probably happen. It almost is, except that it's tricky and I'm stuck right now in the very middle of the deciding moment that makes or breaks the momentum that's been gaining on me, which has the potential to propel me far enough over the edge that I can't see anything behind me. I'd like that.

Fingers crossed, it's not broken. I'm still not broken. Fuck you memory."

That said, I'm going to lunch with my father today. It took months of therapy, but I'm going to take him as he is, and try to keep loving him even though he sometimes can't remember the next day that we even talked. I guess I still possess enough hope that a little bit of it will get through, which is to say I'm lucky at this moment to be brimming over because there's so much more to be wasted.

As for that other guy, he can keep what I gave him. After the initial rise and fall, I thought I'd like to take it back. Instead I've just found that love's the sort of thing that the more you prune and trim it, the faster it flowers and grows. Even now, when he comes around, I still have enough to keep me from forgetting the times that were better, even if we can't have them like that anymore. Even if we sometimes still consider having them again, but don't. Just now, I'm reminded of a time when not wanting love was more important than having it, and yes, even that has its place.

Even so, it's a sunny winter morning, and I'd like to be sitting on the receiving end of any such feeling. Better yet, I'd like to be sharing it. A little give and take would do a shit-ton of good these days.

whatever keeps you up at night.

 The only things worth doing are probably the things that set you so free that you feel trapped by them. As if you're going to pale and wither if you don't do them, and you lose sleep, and you forget to eat, and you start to feel as if you're at the bottom of well where the light comes down and shines on the ground right next to you, but never sheds its grace on your face. Like you can't quite put your hands on it.

Those are the things I want to do the most. I haven't been, you know. Not as much.

The holidays are never a good time to endeavor to do such things, but for me this year, they are. I played some music last night, or maybe I only butchered some songs. I'd like to think that I played them well, but I could always use practice, and they could always be better. People seemed happy. Some were dancing, some were smiling, but the truth of the matter is that I didn't care either way. I just wanted to be doing it, and talent be damned, I was enjoying the moment for what it made me feel. Like I'm not slowly dying (as we all are), but rather slowly living up to my life's potential, whether or not it stops short of great.

My posts have been sparse, I know. It might be best to keep it simple, because even though we're all slowly dying, I need to live a little more slowly so that the meaning doesn't lose its appeal. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm taking my time, letting the words come where they may and when they're warranted. The same as I practice a song before I go stand and sing it in front of anyone, I need to practice writing what I mean before I shove it under anyone's nose to be read.

It's been a while since I've felt good about anything I've written. It finally happened this week when after some friends took me out for breakfast, I wrote them a "thank you" card. Right now, I'm writing a letter to a friend, because it seems like a good way to keep it going. 



"One more tired thing/the gray moon on the rise/when your want from the day/makes you to curse in your sleep at night"

and if we fail to see the good...

"Love, it turns out, is as undemocratic as money, so it accumulates around people who have plenty of it already: the sane, the healthy, the lovable."  — Nick Hornby (How to Be Good)

I think I'll be just fine, regardless.

I only quote books I've read. Sometimes I fold the pages over like a triangle to keep track of the places where something's struck me in the gut. This book wasn't the best book I've ever read, but none of them probably are. But I noticed that there were good parts, and I kept going.  I'm glad that I do that, but still wonder now and then whether I've spent too much time on a book, and whether I'm really loving it enough. Sometimes I have to love the bad ones more so that I know I've given it my best or that I didn't give up for the wrong reasons.

I just finished Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger, and had I not made it through one or three so so stories, I wouldn't have read Teddy, the last and best story. That one earned a couple of paper triangles, and I'm even considering underlining some lines just in case I forget what I thought was important at the time.

The nice thing about reading is that you can learn without getting hurt or hurting anyone else. Even so, there's something to be said about living. I have a lot of practice, and with any luck all of these little paper triangles will amount to something I'll feel in the end was worthwhile. Underline.