Diary entry, April 26, 2014

In the year (fill in) nothing happened.  There is a sad story to tell her that has no significance whatsoever.

Eventually we will all have the same problems.

Who would have thought that yogurt with prune would be so delicious?  Or banana Weetabix.  Well, actually that sounded pretty good from the start.  Weird, but good.

In the red straw network there is:

*no hope

*no telling

*no entrance

*no exit

*no talking

*no timeline

*no travelling

*no sharing

*no laughing

*no smoking

*no milk with cereal

Thank you for respecting the rules.  Carry on with your business.

But your legs get a little bit heavier.  And the strings get a little bit longer.  And the knots feel a little bit tighter.  And the joke gets a little bit harder.

A harsh beautiful place, this memory horizon.  If you squint your eyes you can see the moon.

There isn’t much I can see anymore. 

I am losing.  You don’t just suddenly stop losing.  You think about why you’re losing, you despair that you are losing, you blame the universe for losing, you write self-pitying poems about losing, you come up with reasons why losing is not really losing, you give yourself pep talks about losing, you brainstorm how to stop losing, you develop five-point plans to halt the losing, you wonder if we are all really losing, you become heavy and tired with losing, you think maybe if I get a haircut I won’t keep losing, and then you find that after all of this you are still losing.  And not only are you still losing, but you are now losing by so much that winning becomes unrealistic, so you start coming up with easier goals, like “accepting,” or “taking small steps” or “adapting.”  But in the end you will just be losing again.

This is when you stop and realize that you never actually believed.  Why?  Was it a man in a mask and bad makeup who took that away?  A woman with witchy hair and a purple mantle?  A balding man with a soft voice in a basement room?  Or was it just the old run-of-the-mill no one ever gave a crap about you or let you believe, so you never learned how to?  Did you have to come up with some fantastical story to make the humdrum, boring, heard-it-a-million-times annihilation of the self story more palatable?  Would that make losing better, somehow?  If someone breathed in your ear that you were born of the dirt and will blow into dust?  Does that make it more romantic, more tragic, more ACCEPTABLE?

I don’t think so.  It just makes you an even bigger loser, because you can’t even lose with your integrity intact.  Of course, if you had any integrity you probably wouldn’t be a loser.  If you had even the tiniest sense of self you might have whispered back, but I will fall from the sky and detonate like an atomic bomb right in front of you.

But we are not winners.  We are mantras.  We are encouraging words sent to each other in emails that we won’t really mean.  We are inspirational quotes on posters with rays of light piercing clouds while beautiful people look on.  We are the two-sentence explanation that solves what ails the protagonist.  We are the ones who know, not so deep down inside, that next year will be no different from the last.  We are the dozens of therapists who ran out of therapeutic techniques to lay siege against our fortress of failure.  We are winning at losing and you will never stop us.

Diary entry, July 2, 1998

Just around the corner,

you can be singing,

staring at the clouds forming,

or at the ants running.

            And then you will see nothing else.

            You will wonder why you never saw it

            coming.

Diary entry, March 25, 1988

I let my mom read some of my poems, and she didn’t really get them.  She said she could see talent, but she admits she likes those poems that are real obvious in meaning more than the abstract stuff, which I tend not to get into.  She didn’t like some of my word choices.  

The Hole in the Sky

Diary entry, 1993

“This is where Mommy and Auntie grew up,” Joan tells the kid.  He is obviously unimpressed, but he’s only 4 years old.

“Was this neighbourhood always so ugly?” I ask Joan.  “Wasn’t that hill bigger?”

Ryan laughs.  “It’s funny how much bigger and better everything seems in our memories.”

“They cut down all of the trees,” I inform him.  “And the siding is hideous.”

He nods.  After a while, Joan says, “We have to get back before 2:00 so that I can make the turkey in time.”

The trip back to the childhood home is over, but it has lasted long enough.  I would rather remember how cool the cement felt on my feet on early summer mornings than any of this. 

Gone Off and Lonesome

I have been pining for you, old friend

I have been searching my organs for

clues of your existence

I have been listening to the buzz of

the lamps, my friend

I have been understanding that we

are all without evidence

Because you are the intervening cause

you are where I buried my investments

I have been searching the heat registers for you

only to find cotton balls that missed the garbage

can

I have stood on my toes and screamed

through my stomach

I have flown off the linoleum by the force

of my breath

I plead to the cobwebs for you to listen

I wake up with charlie horses at 3 am

When I lost my travel book centuries ago

burned the ancient forest where

you were my favorite tree

You are the reality I cannot close in on

what flew through my hair that I

mistook for permanency

I would like a chance to hold you, old friend

I would like to touch your materialness

But I beat against the kitchen table instead

keeping time with rhythmic

loneliness

1994

The pen bothered me. So I asked him about it.  “Where’d you get this pen again?”  It was fat and full of multi-colored ink cartridges.

The strange animal character on the screen jumped over a crumpled brick wall with an appropriate bo-ing sound.  “I found it,” he answered.

“Oh.  Okay.”  I walked into the hallway.  But I wanted to know more, so I asked, “Where?”

 “School, I think,” he shouted from the other room.

“Okay.”  But I still didn’t remember.  I knew I remembered at one time—and that was the worst part.