Winter is coming and I hate winter. But I am coming around a little more to the idea of liking fall. For most of my life, I’ve been staunchly against fall, citing the fact that it is a sad harbinger of winter, and the end of summer, and the season where everything dies. But the past few years I’ve started to feel I’ve just been repeating what I’ve always said, instead of being honest about my changing views. Fall is kind of nice. I like wearing longer pants and hoodies. I like crunchy yellow leaves. So yeah, another example of allowing myself to evolve here. Granted not on any sort of major topic, but I wanted to make it public: sure, I like fall.
2.
Work is going terrific!!! I am back to working in Harrisburg and no longer doing my crazy commute. I work (approximately) 8am-4pm Monday-Friday. I’m having a blast! I’ll have a more detailed password-protected blog about it within the next week, but I wanted to give that quick update.
3.
My favorite painting of all time is John Sloan’s “Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street”. The reasons are many. First, Sloan is my favorite painter overall: his pioneering “ashcan” style–which denotes his muted color pallet, a brush technique that was representational but bordered on abstract, and choice of subject matter–speaks to me and to my view of the world. This painting in particular (which I’ve included below) hits me on a gut level. The titular streets are in the “tenderloin” district of New York City, which is another way of saying the poor or “slum” area. In this work, Sloan chooses to show us this area in broad daylight at a busy intersection. We are looking at a corner business that is perhaps of some disrepute–a brothel or perhaps a burlesque theater? There are some finely dressed folks around, but they are not the same kind you’d find down by Central Park. The focus of the scene is on a woman in distress; she is in nightclothes and carries a pail, is obviously upset. Most scholars of this painting suggest this woman is drunk and is emotional. The passersby–especially the two finely-clad young women nearby who could not be more different than the drunk woman–look on with judgement and perhaps even amusement, but no one in the scene seems to have empathy or concern for this woman.
There is a lot more that could be discussed about the painting. Sloan did not waste a centimeter of the canvas (a quick for instance–Sloan’s decision to place the drunk woman at the bottom of the canvas, rather than center her, leaving him space to paint lots of sky, whereas he could have provided more surrounding context of the city instead; an interesting topic of discussion, that one).
4.
I have made some mention on Facebook that I have begun running, and even signed up for my first 5k (this coming Saturday)! I’m super excited but also currently undergoing a substantial amount of worry as, just 3 days ago I did my longest outdoor run yet and have had some very minor signs of some stress fractures in my shins the past few nights. Now, these symptoms are very minor and it is 100% possible I am inventing them. Any way you slice it, I am running the 5K this Saturday and will keep training this week on elliptical machines to avoid high impact work, and should probably know after the 5k (because my body will tell me) if I have to take a break from running and maybe evaluate my running style, etc, moving forward. But I want to be a runner super bad so even if I have to take a significant break and make some adjustments, I’m on it. On a side note, the running has really been a key factor in helping me get close to my goal weight: before the weekend I was 144 (goal is 140)…the weekend saw a lot of eating so I’ll know where I’m at when the dust clears on Tuesday :)
5.
Police kill innocent black people with an alarming frequency. You don’t have to eat animals or their secretions in this day and age. America should be a country that welcomes immigrants. Respect women’s reproductive rights and the rights of their bodies. Resist any and all attempts to make our culture white, male-oriented–including the language you use. Climate change is real. There is no need to wear wool or leather in this day and age. Do whatever you want when The Star-Spangled Banner is playing, including eating food, walking to the bathroom, keeping your hat on (I mean really) or sitting or kneeling. Fund art programs, NPR, Meals on Wheels, and Planned Parenthood. Oh, and in Major League Baseball, the designated hitter rule continues to be an absolute scourge.
I really want to write one of those entries I write about just 4 or 5 random things that are on my mind. I’ve wanted to write an entry like that all day and yet, as I finally get the chance, I have sat down in front of the keyboard and have blanked on all the things I wanted to write about. I figured if I just started, stuff would start coming to me. Oh hey–it looks like Ed Kowalczyk is back as the lead singer of LIVE–that’s pretty extraordinary. I mean this was a band that was SERIOUSLY BROKEN UP. Like, much, much animosity. I would have ranked them very near the bottom on lists of bands that might get back together. But it’s excellent news. Whether you are into their music or not, if you see them live in concert it’s challenging not to admit they are one of the most electrifying acts out there. I never saw LIVE with Ed’s replacement–I bet he’s great, but like so many bands that replace the lead singer, it’s simply not the same band. I can’t wait to hear more about what’s going on in the LIVE camp.
Speaking of camp–have you ever gone camping? Karla, the boy, and I camped out in my dad’s back yard last summer, but aside from that, I’ve never really been camping, like in the woods. We were close to almost “getting into” camping last year, and then somehow it just faded from our view.
I need here to give a shout-out to Harrisburg’s gem of a book store, the Midtown Scholar. Although it is far from a secret, it also rarely gets the credit it deserves; this is a truly GREAT book store–as its name implies, it specializes in more academic or artistic fare, but it does have contemporary fiction, etc. The store is truly enormous; the basement just goes on and on. There is a quite good coffee shop, lots of places to sit, an outdoor balcony overlooking midtown Harrisburg, a huge collection of film, music and poetry books, tons of art monographs, and even a rare book room with books from as far back as the 17th century and a keen collection of art prints. I could literally spend days–and thousands of dollars–there. What perplexes me greatly is that somehow, I had never been there (and barely heard of it) before moving to Harrisburg; this despite the fact that it is about two blocks from the indie movie theater I used to frequent constantly when I lived in Carlisle. All I can say is, I’m tremendously happy to have found it now, and I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone from the area who hasn’t been there.
Speaking of art–I was in the Scholar for Small Business Saturday and found my first ever art book focusing on the Ashcan School of artists; over the past year it has become clear to me that this entire group of artists is really my true passion when it comes to painting (although I still have other loves, ie Rousseau, Vermeer, Eakins, etc). But the Ashcans and their use of color, broad brush strokes that approached but stopped short of impressionism, and their tendency to focus on urban scenes as a means to reveal human nature–really speak to my core. If you’ve never heard of them and have an interest in art, I can not recommend highly enough Googling the works of John Sloan, Robert Henri, William Glackens, George Luks, Everett Schinn, and George Bellows. I love Maurice Prendergast but it is often debated whether he qualifies as “Ashcan”.
Back in the old days of the Notes, I used to write a lot more about music, movies, and books, and I would every so often post updated lists of my absolute favorites of things. Not due to any pressing interest from the public, of course–mostly just because it’s fun for me, and also because having such a blog post can be quite handy during discussions online; I can just link someone to the entry to aid in a discussion of favorites.
Of course this is not to be confused with my annual “Favorite Music” list, where I detail my favorite music released in the previous calendar year; these lists detail my current all-time favorites, which are (like yours, of course) constantly changing.
Looking back at my entries, it appears as though I haven’t done a big posting of lists since 2012, so I’ll make this one fairly comprehensive. All of these lists have changed since 2012–some very little, some quite dramatically:
My top ten favorite poets
10. Jane Kenyon
9. Robert Creeley
8. William Carlos Williams
7. Sylvia Plath
6. Billy Collins
5. Denise Levertov
4. E.E. Cummings
3. Philip Levine
2. John Updike
1. Philip Larkin
My top 10 favorite film directors
10. Federico Fellini
9. Sidney Lumet
8. Alejandro Inarritu
7. Christopher Nolan
6. Paul Thomas Anderson
5. Alfonso Cuaron
4. Stanley Kubrick
3. Werner Herzog
2. Alfred Hitchcock
1. Terrence Malick
My top ten bands
10. This Will Destroy You
9. My Morning Jacket
8. Godspeed You! Black Emperor
7. Radiohead
6. Seven Mary Three
5. Hey Rosetta!
4. The National
3. Band of Horses
2. Modest Mouse
1. Arcade Fire
My top ten music solo artists
10. Tracy Chapman
9. Ray LaMontagne
8. Father John Misty
7. Leonard Cohen
6. Jim James
5. Nina Simone
4. Willis Earl Beal
3. Emily Wells
2. Paul Simon
1. Neil Young
My top ten favorite (non-documentary) movies
10. Citizen Kane
9. Night of the Hunter
8. Fitzcarraldo
7. Magnolia
6. The Trouble with Harry
5. Children of Men
4. Where the Wild Things Are
3. The Thin Red Line
2. I’m Still Here
1. The Tree of Life
My ten favorite novelists
10. Malcolm Lowry
9. John Steinbeck
8. Isaac Asimov
7. Ernest Hemingway
6. Oscar Wilde
5. Kurt Vonnegut
4. Mark Twain
3. David Mitchell
2. Don DeLillo
1. Dave Eggers
My top twenty favorite books (any genre, fiction or nonfiction)
20. “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole
19. “Slade House” by David Mitchell
18. “The Terror” by Dan Simmons
17. “You Shall Know Our Velocity” by Dave Eggers
16. “Point Omega” by Don DeLillo
15. “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell
14. “Fallen Founder” by Nancy Isenberg
13. “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde
12. “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding
11. “Under the Volcano” by Malcolm Lowry
10. “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” by Dave Eggers
9. “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway
8. “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut
7. “Dubliners” by James Joyce
6. “Letters From the Earth” by Mark Twain
5. “White Noise” by Don DeLillo
4. “Endurance” by Alfred Lansing
3. “Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?” by Dave Eggers
2. “Into the Wild” by John Krakauer
1. “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck
My top twenty favorite albums
20. “Funeral” by Arcade Fire
19. “Nobody Knows” by Willis Earl Beal
18. “High Violet” by The National
17. “The Battle of Los Angeles” by Rage Against the Machine
16. “Swamp Ophelia” by Indigo Girls
15. “Mirrorball” by Neil Young
14. “Dis/Location” by Seven Mary Three
13. “Abbey Road” by The Beatles
12. “Graceland” by Paul Simon
11. “Bitches Brew” by Miles Davis
10. “‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!” by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
9. “Kid A” by Radiohead
8. “Strangers to Ourselves” by Modest Mouse
7. “This Will Destroy You” by This Will Destroy You
6. “Time Out” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet
5. “Secret Samadhi” by LIVE
4. “Infinite Arms” by Band of Horses
3. “The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire
2. “RockCrown” by Seven Mary Three
1. “Into Your Lungs (and Around in Your Heart and On Through Your Blood)” by Hey Rosetta!
My top five composers
5. Philip Glass
4. Cliff Martinez
3. Hans Zimmer
2. Felix Mendelssohn
1. Carl Nielsen
My top ten painters
10. Edgar Degas
9. George Bellows
8. Mark Rothko
7. Johannes Vermeer
6. Mary Cassatt
5. Maurice Prendergast
4. Thomas Eakins
3. Henri Rousseau
2. Andrew Wyeth
1. John Sloan
I sure do like blue skies, clear wide-open blue skies and the wind on my face. Getting tan. Getting tan is like taking the outside world into yourself and then shooting it back out. And all those vitamins and good vibes. Also I like movies. I like watching movies in air conditioned rooms while sweat dries on my skin. I like rice with salt on it, and dogs who smile.
I’ve been watching a lot of cable news lately, but I don’t necessarily think it’s good for me. I’ve just become addicted to it, as I’ve been known to become addicted to just about anything from time to time. I suppose it must just be cable news’ turn. I mean, there is plenty that I like about it. It really does inform you, and depending on what you’re watching, you usually learn about stuff you might not otherwise be following, like that shit in Iraq. CNN is the way to go. Typically they’re gonna tell you about the stuff that’s important, not just the tabloid stuff. But regardless, most of it is rot. You’re better off reading newspapers. Please read newspapers. They need you, and it’s still the best thing going.
I’ve recently come across two different poems about turtles that really floored me. It makes sense that turtles would make such rich poetic subjects: ugly, slow, and capable of withdrawing entirely into themselves. They’re just begging for the poetic treatment. The first is “Turtle” by Kay Ryan. Watch her read it here, and the text of the poem is here. The other is “To a Box Turtle” by John Updike. Watch me read it to you! Right here:
To a Box Turtle
by John Updike
Size of a small skull, and like a skull segmented,
of pentagons healed and varnished to form a dome,
you almost went unnoticed in the meadow,
among its tall grasses and serrated strawberry leaves
your mottle of amber and umber effective camouflage.
You were making your way through grave distances,
your forefeet just barely extended and as dainty as dried
coelacanth fins, as miniature sea-fans, your black nails
decadent like a Chinese empress’s, and your head
a triangular snake-head, eyes ringed with dull gold.
I pick you up. Your imperious head withdraws.
Your bottom plate, hinged once, presents a No
with its courteous waxed surface, a marquetry
of inlaid squares, fine-grained and tinted
tobacco-brown and the yellow of a pipe smoker’s teeth.
What are you thinking, thus sealed inside yourself?
My hand must have a Smell, a killer’s warmth.
It holds you upside down, aloft, undignified,
your leathery person amazed in the floating dark.
How much pure fear can your wrinkled brain contain?
I put you down. Your tentative, stalk-bending walk
resumes. The manifold jewel of you melts into grass.
Power mowers have been cruel to your race, and creatures
less ornate and unlikely have long gone extinct;
but nature’s tumults pool to form a giant peace.
You may have noticed, on various and sundry platforms of social media, that I am losing weight (again!). There will, of course, be a larger blog entry devoted to the subject once I hit a certain milestone, but I wanted to stop officially ignoring it on the blog. So yes, I am once again losing weight. If you’re a long-time reader, you may recall we’ve been down this road once before. I’ll stop short of saying I’m a chronic “weight bouncer”—I’ve only done the up and down once, now going on twice—and I do think I’m going to be able to maintain it this time, seeing as how I actually do enjoy the “lifestyle” one must switch to in order to stop gaining the weight back. I don’t want to go into too much detail, as the first of the “milestone” blogs on the topic should be coming soon. But if you’ve noticed that I’m a little more energetic, happy as an idiot, and generally manic lately—this is the main cause.
I don’t like, any more than you do, the way that things in our culture seem to have gotten so divisive. Everything appears to be very “black and white” or “us vs. them”…either you agree with me, or I hate you. All issues divided into two sides—usually liberal and conservative—so that most critical thought is now not required; you just have to know what team you’re on. I don’t like it any more than you do.
But there seems to be, to most people, a thought that this is a terrible deviation from some Golden Era of American discourse. That, not long ago now, everyone just kind of got along and accepted divergent opinions and engaged in a spirited and lively debate of the issues, before saying, ah, forget it! and heading out back for a barbeque. This fever dream is made possible by the fact that nobody actually knows anything about our own history, and is cursed with the widely-held human belief that all things have just recently been much better than they are now.
Things have, of course, never been like that. We’ve always been a country at one-another’s throats. That’s because the issues that we disagree about are pretty fucking important and are not trifles. If the biggest debate in America was chocolate vs. vanilla, I’d say some of us might be overreacting, but we debate about matters of deepest morality, life and death, and core philosophy. If you’re not passionate about these things, get out of the ring.
The division seems more pronounced now that we’re on the internet all the time. The biggest factor that plays into that is that we routinely interact with many people who we would previously not have been interacting with. Before the internet, we just naturally and gradually gravitated to people of like-mind. Now, we, in small ways, interact with dozens of people “on the other side” daily, which can cause little internet skirmishes which then, in turn, feel larger and more intense than real-world interactions, because we can’t gauge how the other is talking, as well as these skirmishes taking place in front of our 300 or so “friends” and remaining to view long after the words have been said.
The ease with which these divisive interactions can occur has given rise to something even worse than the “cultural division” itself: the everything is hunky-dorey crowd. This “crowd” includes just about everybody. We’re all so tired of having these online skirmishes with people with opposing views, almost nobody engages the argument anymore. Nobody wants to appear “divisive”. Everyone wants to make sure they are “accepting of other people’s views”.
The bottom line I’m trying to get to is this: I keep an open mind about things like calamari, the official naming of snow storms, and the future of the designated hitter in professional baseball. But I’m an adult now, and I’ve thought a lot about my core beliefs, and I don’t have an open mind about abortion, gay rights, gun control, or even—yes, even the existence of a higher power. I know what I think about these things. Not only that, but having an open mind about these things would make me a man of feeble constitution.
If you know me (and I think you do) you know that, obviously, I am a man with a ton of opinions. Well, one of those opinions is that these things that pop up on social media as “photo challenges” are some of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. If you’re not familiar with them: they propose to be “30 day photo challenges” that list a thing you’re supposed to take a picture of once a day for thirty days. First off, if you need a “challenge” to take interesting pictures of the world around you, you’re not interesting. Period. Secondly, the items in these challenges are never even remotely challenging or creative. It’s like, “Day 1: Selfie. Day 2: Food. Day 3: Car”. Really? You spent time creating this, anonymous internet user? How dreadful.
So, I thought I’d make an interesting one! Some things here are interpretable, whch, again, makes it interesting. For instance, “Birth” wouldn’t necessarily be looking for a picture of something being born. You decide what it means. If anyone actually wants to give this a spin, let me know, I’ll put it into a dedicated blog entry so it’s easier to reference.
Actually Interesting Photo Challenge
Day 1: An animal that you want to take home
Day 2: Gum
Day 3: Something Upside-Down
Day 4: Paint
Day 5: How you’d like to be perceived
Day 6: How you feel inside
Day 7: Something you hate
Day 8: Birth
Day 9: A chair
Day 10: The passage of time
Day 11: Something you love but can’t have
Day 12: Space, area, void
Day 13: Underneath
Day 14: Scar
Day 15: Home
Day 16: Your bathtub.
Day 17: Work
Day 18: The ground
Day 19: The sky
Day 20: Between the ground and the sky
Day 21: What you believe
Day 22: Utensils
Day 23: Lights
Day 24: Transportation
Day 25: Idealized
Day 26: Action!
Day 27: Water
Day 28: Unattainable
Day 29: Before you were born
Day 30: Celebrate
Life, and all that stuff, is sometimes too interesting to bear. What I mean is, it can be very cyclical, or circular, or appear to be laden with damned meaning. See, I’m a man who doesn’t believe in much. I mean, I believe in science, and form and order amidst the chaos, but not in any Fate or creator or grand design. Just rules and laws that govern the movements and the heat of things, basically. So when life seems to have plans, folks like me sit up and take notice. Not because it’s changing the way I think—I have thrown away my open mind—but because coincidence or happenstance on any large sort of scale is just so unlikely.
Take, for instance, a story from my life. When I first got sober, I was 25 years old. This was a little over eleven years ago. I went to live with my mother and her husband in a small town in New Jersey. This was the first time I’d lived anywhere outside of Central Pennsylvania. This small town in New Jersey was relatively close to Philadelphia…maybe an hour, I think? At any rate, it was certainly the closest I’d ever lived to a big city.
Eleven years may not seem like that long ago, but I was inhabiting a very different world back then, and I was also a very different version of me. I drove a 1983 Ford Escort, named Earl Grey. This car was a bona fide piece of shit, and it broke down with an alarming regularity (chronic fuel pump issues). I had no cell phone. No GPS. When I wanted to go somewhere I’d never been, I printed out MapQuest directions and read them as I drove. If I needed to call someone, I found a payphone and retrieved my list of phone numbers, hand-written on a sheet of paper inside my wallet. It was interesting. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I drank a lot of Red Bull and wrote poetry almost every waking moment and listened to Pearl Jam like it was my job.
I had a very close friend who I’d been through the addiction wringer with. She had a similar problem as I did, and we’d gone to the same rehab, and really just been to Hell and back together. She had landed in a Recovery House in Harrisburg, PA. After the tumult of the end of our addictions, we now felt very far apart. Recovery Houses don’t allow you much leeway with visitors and phone calls. Remember, this is also before everyone was texting and Facebooking (it’s even before MySpace). I missed her very much.
She did manage to e-mail on occasion, and, ill-advisedly, we planned for her to sneak out one night. We would meet in Philadelphia. We were going to walk South Street.
I drove old rickety Earl Grey the hour to South Street, paging through my MapQuest directions. I drove right past South Street at one point and just decided to park as soon as I could. I found a spot and hopped out of my car. As I walked away, I realized I might later have no idea where I had parked. I got back into the car and grabbed my journal, the sacred notebook where I wrote all my poetry. I looked around for a landmark and wrote it down, and put the journal in my backpack.
I met up with her and it was glorious. I treasured being in her company, if only for a night. I don’t remember what we did on South Street. I don’t remember what we did at all. But it stands as one of the more significant nights of my life, on my long road to becoming the current version of me.
A week or so ago, I decided to go back through some of my old journals and see if I had missed anything of value, any pieces of writing I could turn into something good. I never did get around to it, but I threw the two oldest ones into my backpack, planning to look at them the next time I came to rest in some park. I promptly forgot about it.
This evening, I was riding my bike through what is now one of my favorite sections of Old City (technically, the neighborhood known as Society Hill). I love this section for it’s old houses, churches with expansive, historic graveyards, and shade-dappled side alleys. I came to one of the more significant landmarks to me, the house that Thaddeus Kosciuszko lived in when he lived in Philadelphia. Kosciuszko is my favorite revolutionary. I feel deeply connected to him across the vast gulf of time. The version of me from eleven years ago wasn’t yet even interested in history. He would have had zero interest in this Polish freedom fighter’s house. But I certainly do now.
I recalled, tonight, how the last time I was in the house, the park ranger had told me the woman who owned it and rented it to Kosciuszko was buried in the cemetery across the street. I have spent some time in that cemetery before (American painter Charles Wilson Peale is buried there, and so is George Dallas, who was Vice President under James K. Polk), but I thought I’d wander through again and look for her grave.
It didn’t take me long in there before I had to face the fact that I couldn’t remember her name, and my iPhone’s power was getting too low to make Googling a wise choice, so I decided to leave and ride my bike elsewhere. But as I stepped onto the sidewalk, the shade of sense memory hit me. I’d been here many times these past six months, but perhaps never at this time of evening, in this kind of mid-summer air. Suddenly I wondered it I’d been here before, long before.
I sat my backpack on the ground an hurriedly opened it, finding the oldest journal. I looked at many pages before I found it, scrawled in my own unmistakable hand:
4th St., across from St. Peters Church
I craned my neck at the cemetery gate above me, and sure enough: St. Peters.
Sure, maybe no big deal. So what, this is where I parked that night? If I moved to the city, it stands to reason I would pass by the place I parked that night, eleven years ago.
But the way that it came to me out of the blue, the way I had that journal on me, which was extraordinarily unlikely, the way I’d never noticed before that this was the place. It has been long ago enough now that it’s starting to feel like deep past; I felt my younger self there. I felt her younger self there. I saw me getting out of my Escort, completely oblivious to Thad Kosciuszko’s house a half block away, not caring, not caring, not caring. And life is crammed full of these bizarre cycles, these glances-back, these cosmic happenstances. Like combination locks clicking into place. But then the lock, it just keeps on spinning.
I sure do like blue skies, clear wide-open blue skies and the wind on my face. Getting tan. Getting tan is like taking the outside world into yourself and then shooting it back out. And all those vitamins and good vibes. Also I like movies. I like watching movies in air conditioned rooms while sweat dries on my skin. I like rice with salt on it, and dogs who smile.
Where did you go, the you that was there before? The you that I tried so hard to be like? You’ve settled in now, haven’t you? Settled in for weekdays, Pampers, “the grind”. You’ve all-but disappeared into it. And that’s fine. So have I, in my own way. I look at the cubicle-dwellers, the 9-to-5ers, the mortgagers with judgment. I judge them for a life spent in the cattle chute, but I’m the same, in my own way. I wake up to an alarm five days a week, dash my utility bills off monthly in tidy little envelopes, take extra long showers and even bubble baths to de-stress from the rigors of a world I can’t even begin to understand. I’m in the grind, too, in my own version of a cattle chute. You were beautiful once, even more than you are now, supple like sand underfoot right after the wave withdraws, and I’ve never been a model but I had that nice little six-pack of abs and that 90s-era skater hair. Who could forget the smell of your own hair in my face, your feet akimbo in the air. We must have been dank and gorgeous like John Sloan’s Wet Night on the Bowery, everything akimbo in the air and musty and frivolous. But who could look back and want that time again? There was so much pain and we didn’t know a damn thing. Who wants to not know a damn thing? But then we wake up in this world, in this present-tense, and wonder where our beauty escaped to. How did it siphon off? We’re always so safe here, so comfortable. When was the last time you felt real danger? It is important to feel real danger. What proof have you that you are alive? What new horizon can you actually imagine, aside from the top of your stairs, or the local pizza parlor? Dammit we were gorgeous but now it’s just about not forgetting umbrellas and digging out of debt. Who ever heard of digging out of debt? Does the field mouse understand what an interest rate is? How about the barn owl, how much does it know about 401(k)’s? What in the world is going on here? What does any of this have to do with living? Remember once, you and I were racing each other back and forth through my parents’ front yard–I guess it would have been my front yard, then, too. And it kept bothering me when you would beat me because I was young and an idiot and full of the uncertainty of a scared animal. I hated that you beat me again and again but I tried not to show it. Then we laid in the grass and kissed deeply and for a long time, everything about our bodies sweet like warm milk just out of a cow’s insides. Then we laid there and looked into the blazing-bright sky and, as young people are known to do, talked about the clouds, and what they looked like, and what held them there. And then I asked you, Am I the funniest person you know? I needed you to say yes to that, without any pause, but you didn’t say yes, you were honest, and it killed me inside. Oh to be that young when such a small thing mattered so much. Who wouldn’t love to hear, nowadays, near the midpoint of things, that you were the third funniest person you had ever met. What a compliment that seems now! These bits of personal fire are rare now, rare like two sweet bodies laying in the country grass, rare like paid-off debt. Down the chute, down the chute, we all just keep going down the chute. And what can we do? Try and hop off? What are the options? Become a vagabond, wander the cities and towns, begging for whatever work there is and move on, like Richard Kimble searching for that one-armed man? Or move to some commune–assuming they still exist–and paint or grow potatoes but also share your washcloth and help raise other peoples’ bratty kids? No thanks. The cattle chute’s the only way to go and still have your own place to poop every day, and there are so few comforts in this animal life as it is, you’ve got to keep the ones you’re able to find. So slide, slide, slide we will. But damn if one doesn’t miss the days before you knew you were on the cattle chute, the days with your hair in my face, where did you go, where have you been?
Notes From the Fire 