It was night and snowflakes hit the windshield. John felt for the wipers, but his hand accidently turned on the brights.
Three hours earlier, John had been fired from his post at Dartmouth. "Unethical behavior," is what the chancellor said.
"Fuck you," John thought.
“That’s making it worse.” Rebecca rubbed sleep out of her eyes and sat up. "Turn off the wipers," she said as she looked at the trees they passed, noticed them all turning white.
“It’s getting hard to drive in this stuff,” John said.
“Hey, I need to pee,” she said.
"Why didn't you go back there?" John said just before he lifted his foot off the gas and tapped the brakes.
“What was it?” Rebecca asked.
“I saw something.” John sped up this time, ignoring the snow.
"Slow down," Rebecca said. More snow seemed to cover the road.
John dug into his pocket for the lighter. He took the joint out and sniffed it. "Here we go," he said. He lit it and took a drag. “Whose woods are these?” he said. “I’d like to know.”
“What?” Rebecca turned to look at the baby who was sleeping.
John didn’t answer but kept pushing the gas. He could see how the trees and the headlights made a tunnel, and he could taste the beer on his breath. It was an old taste, like a dirty sock. It wasn't fresh, it wasn't raw.
“Be careful,” she said. “Will you please be careful?”
“What?” He rolled down the window and the wind blew in hard as he flicked the joint. Red cinders became fireflies that flew into the backseat. The baby cried.
Rebecca turned around to check the baby and turned to John. “Asshole,” she said.
John looked at her and thought of something good to say but couldn’t. Instead, he had wondered how long they would last without chains.
Bang. A loud noise.
"What the," John mumbled as he turned his head back toward the road. He had already missed it with his eyes, but his car hit it. He slowed and then stopped in the middle of the road. Suddenly, the night was quiet.
“I think I hit something,” he said. He put the car into reverse.
“What are you doing?” Rebecca locked the doors.
“I want to know what we hit.” He turned the steering wheel to the right and braked, but it was too late. The back tires slid off the road. He shifted and pumped the gas.
“Come on,” he said. The wheels just spun.
“What did we hit? What did we hit?”
“Shut it, will you? Will you just?” John cut the ignition but left the lights on.
Rebecca was quiet now and staring ahead into the woods on the other side of the road. The trees, with snow tracing the labyrinthine branches, looked like great white hands reaching toward them, for them.
“It's scary.” She turned back to look at the baby who saw hands, too. “I love you,” she said to the baby. “I love you.”
The man got out, left the door open, and the door ajar alarm was ringing. It rang loud into the night and then a dog barked. The man looked down at the wheels in the mud puddle and then looked up. He could see the moon, the snow looked like little white parachutes invading from the sky. He glanced across the road and thought he saw a shadow move across a tree trunk. He walked back and leaned inside the car.
“Did you see that?” he said.
“What?” she said. “I really need to go.”
“Then go,” he said. “Just go.”
He moved toward the woods to find something, anything to help get them out. John noticed Rebecca open the door and sit next to the car. He looked into the darkness and the dog barked again. The dog was somewhere inside it, John thought. The dog was deep within the woods, his bark echoed between the trees, but also above it. John looked back and saw Rebecca climbing into the car. He could see a stream flowing toward him, downhill, and then collecting in a little puddle just before the woods began.
John looked down and found one good branch. He bent over to drag it back but slipped and fell. He pushed himself up and dragged the branch back to the car. He came to the back left tire and crouched down in front of it, he pushed the wood under the car, he stomped it in place. He stood up and again, the dog, it howled into the night, into these woods.
“Whose woods are fucking these?” he said. He wiped the sweat off his face, but his hands were muddy.
The dog barked, squealed, and there was panting, John thought, then quiet.
John opened the trunk. He reached inside and found a rag to wipe away the the dirt, but his fingers remained black. He looked at the backs of his hands, his fingers spread in the dim light. They looked like they’d been dipped in ink. Then he noticed Rebecca through the back window - what was she doing? He watched as she leaned up from her seat, her body was twisted and her shirt pulled up, the skin white, her black hair made her head and neck invisible, her face just a smooth mask, her torso a ghostly fog over the baby. She was squeezing her breast for milk.
John got inside the car but didn’t start it. He listened to the snow and realized it made a sound, ever so slight.
“It’s so quiet,” he said. “It’s like an endless army of tiny white ants, this snow.” He turned the key and the car awoke. He drove over the branch and back on the road but braked. He had stopped the car so that they all sat there, again as still as robots, motionless and staring ahead into the road. John squeezed the steering wheel. It felt leathery and tough.
“What are we doing,” Rebecca said. “Let's just go.”
“I hit something,” John said. “I know I did.” He stepped outside the car and moved back into the night.
Rebecca locked the doors and crossed her arms. She listened to the softness of the snow, the eerie quiet, and then looked outside her window, into a blackness that seemed would never fade to light.
“It’s darkest just before the dawn,” she thought. Then she saw a shadow move between some trees.
“Where are you, John?” she said. She could see her breath. She looked back at the baby. He was sleeping. Finally the man returned and knocked on the glass.
She opened the door. “What was it?” she said.
“It was dead,” he said. John slid into the car.
“What was dead?” She felt warm, his warmth, his hot breath on her face.
He started the car.“The rabbit,” he said.
Later, they would find the motel and Rebecca would curl into John, and they’d lie together till dawn, her dreaming of them all dancing on the road with the trees, the shadows, and the white hands stretched out and leading her, and him dreaming of the rabbit, shivering in the cold, shaking snowflakes from his winter coat, wondering where to search for food, walking, hopping, running, into the night, then disappearing into the darkness. And the baby, the baby would wake them with cries, his cries for milk.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Friday, June 24, 2011
My Pal Jim
"Something terrible has happened."
I don't normally come to Sally's on Tuesdays, but yesterday was Memorial Day, and Sally celebrated it by going to the cemetery to pray for her dead husband, Bob. He got ambushed in Iraq before I met her, and now she's my neighbor friend, on this quiet little street close to Midtown, and today I needed to talk to her about Jim, this guy I knew from AA, years ago.
We sat in Sally's little yellow kitchen. Sally is much older than me, maybe in her thirties. She is still pretty, pretty enough to have a man in her life and to keep making babies, but she doesn't see herself as a woman any more, and she has resigned herself to motherhood. Maybe she's still not over Bob. How could one ever be? One thing, she could care less for the guys who come knocking on her door. And as the days and years pass, the knocks are fewer and far between, it seems.
We sat at her little wooden table from where her three-year-old Charlie flings "flying mashed potatoes," "soaring carrots," and anything and everything onto the floor. He loves it, he smiles so wide. Charlie was now in the living room, sitting up straight three feet from the TV, mesmerized by a cartoon.
"Tell me. What's going on?" she said. "Is he some new love interest?"
I told her, how we always hung out together our first spring of sobriety till we both
relapsed that summer. Jim was tall, always wore blue jeans with dress shoes, buttoned-up shirts that were half-way unbuttoned so his soft tuft of black could peek out. He had blue eyes. And the big bushy eyebrows he got from his Latin mother. His glasses gave him a serious look, and he was an intense character when it came to the writers he loved. He could tell you everything about Rimbaud and Henry Miller. I loved that.
"We were the best of friends once," I said. "Simply platonic. But I don't know."
"So?"
I told her how in the meetings when he spoke, the people just seemed to listen closer, sit a little higher in their seats. I remember one time when he was the speaker and he was telling his story. He said he did a lot of bad things, you know, living in bad places and associating with the types of people that tend to live and do things in those places. Well, Jim said he did those same things. Then he started talking about how he stopped drinking one day and found God, religion, and how he was healed.
I rubbed my fingers on the white porcelain, I traced the handle of the coffee cup carefully, as softly as a new mother tracing the ribs of her newborn for the first time.
"I'm not much of a, you know, I call myself an atheist," I said. "But, Jim spoke the truth and I could see God in the front row smiling."
"Are you bipolar?" Sally asked. She wasn't being mean. It was just that I started a tradition of coming over to her place every Monday and spewing my shit, so to speak. I couldn't help but spew more.
"Rimbaud stopped writing when he was 21 and worked construction," I told Sally. I learned it from Jim. He lauded Rimbaud and his path to freedom.
I met Sally after she lost her husband. My dog, Kit, got loose and I found him sitting at her front door, like he was waiting to be let in. I knocked on her door to apologize, and she let me in and fed me cheese cake. I remember seeing her before walking the neighborhood usually just with her boy, but sometimes as a threesome, with her husband Bob. I never met Bob. That was on a Monday Kit got loose, just over a year ago. Sally and I, we've been friends ever since.
"Miller speaks the truth." Jim said once. "And look at the guy's watercolors." He had pulled a book out of his bag to show me, a book of Miller's drawings and such.
That first night we got drunk, well, the only night, he told me about this strip club on Northside Drive where there was this one skinny stripper who was in love with him. He had been wondering how she was doing. I was game, was sort of interested in what happened in such places. So Jim drove.
"You went where?" Sally said.
"We went to a strip club," I repeated. "You know, naked girls dancing, well, yeah naked." I was raised Lutheran and didn't really know much about those places, but once I got to AA I met many girls and during our girl talk I found out about some of their escapades, and let's just say, well, they had me interested in doing it too. Of course I never did. I was never comfortable with showing my body to anyone.
Anyway, Jim couldn't find the girl he wanted to see, but I discovered this girl Eve, and while Jim smoked and watched the other dancers, standing up between songs to drop dollar bills on the stage, between a girl's legs, under her gyrating shadow, this one stripper Eve asked me about Jim, was he my man, and wow, just a pal, and you're here, that's cool. She told me a lot about her life, the place was dead except for Jim and I, and I even recited a Robert Frost poem to her that carried her name. (I kept lots of poems in my pocket, all of them written in small, tiny letters, and on a folded-up piece of paper, as soft as cotton, and I would pull it out now and then when I need inspiration, when I was bored, when I needed an anchor, when I needed something real in a world so fucking apparently fake.) Well, the place got busier and she left the table to dance again. That's when I noticed Jim was gone to the restroom too long. I looked everywhere and finally walked outside to the car, and that's where I found him, in his beat-up yellow Maverick, the windows all fogged-up. Jim was wrapped up in the thick flesh of some girl, a big girl he had met inside. I noticed his glasses had got knocked off.
"Unbelievable," Sally said.
What I didn't tell Sally is when we climbed the fence to his apartment pool at 4am, later that night, we were still drunk, and we shed our clothes and dove in. "I have a thing for fat chicks," he told me while we floated there. It was like his confession, so I didn't say anything. I didn't care, I was basking in the nothingness of it all, reveling in my youth.
"I also have this other thing," he said.
"Oh," I said. "What do you mean?"
"I fuck prostitutes," he said. That's when I felt dead. That's when the end came for me. The next day he was back in a meeting, I stayed away.
Jim stayed sober after that, I thought. I didn't. Yesterday I found out from a friend.
"Jim died of AIDS yesterday," I told Sally.
"Oh my."
I don't normally come to Sally's on Tuesdays, but yesterday was Memorial Day, and Sally celebrated it by going to the cemetery to pray for her dead husband, Bob. He got ambushed in Iraq before I met her, and now she's my neighbor friend, on this quiet little street close to Midtown, and today I needed to talk to her about Jim, this guy I knew from AA, years ago.
We sat in Sally's little yellow kitchen. Sally is much older than me, maybe in her thirties. She is still pretty, pretty enough to have a man in her life and to keep making babies, but she doesn't see herself as a woman any more, and she has resigned herself to motherhood. Maybe she's still not over Bob. How could one ever be? One thing, she could care less for the guys who come knocking on her door. And as the days and years pass, the knocks are fewer and far between, it seems.
We sat at her little wooden table from where her three-year-old Charlie flings "flying mashed potatoes," "soaring carrots," and anything and everything onto the floor. He loves it, he smiles so wide. Charlie was now in the living room, sitting up straight three feet from the TV, mesmerized by a cartoon.
"Tell me. What's going on?" she said. "Is he some new love interest?"
I told her, how we always hung out together our first spring of sobriety till we both
relapsed that summer. Jim was tall, always wore blue jeans with dress shoes, buttoned-up shirts that were half-way unbuttoned so his soft tuft of black could peek out. He had blue eyes. And the big bushy eyebrows he got from his Latin mother. His glasses gave him a serious look, and he was an intense character when it came to the writers he loved. He could tell you everything about Rimbaud and Henry Miller. I loved that.
"We were the best of friends once," I said. "Simply platonic. But I don't know."
"So?"
I told her how in the meetings when he spoke, the people just seemed to listen closer, sit a little higher in their seats. I remember one time when he was the speaker and he was telling his story. He said he did a lot of bad things, you know, living in bad places and associating with the types of people that tend to live and do things in those places. Well, Jim said he did those same things. Then he started talking about how he stopped drinking one day and found God, religion, and how he was healed.
I rubbed my fingers on the white porcelain, I traced the handle of the coffee cup carefully, as softly as a new mother tracing the ribs of her newborn for the first time.
"I'm not much of a, you know, I call myself an atheist," I said. "But, Jim spoke the truth and I could see God in the front row smiling."
"Are you bipolar?" Sally asked. She wasn't being mean. It was just that I started a tradition of coming over to her place every Monday and spewing my shit, so to speak. I couldn't help but spew more.
"Rimbaud stopped writing when he was 21 and worked construction," I told Sally. I learned it from Jim. He lauded Rimbaud and his path to freedom.
I met Sally after she lost her husband. My dog, Kit, got loose and I found him sitting at her front door, like he was waiting to be let in. I knocked on her door to apologize, and she let me in and fed me cheese cake. I remember seeing her before walking the neighborhood usually just with her boy, but sometimes as a threesome, with her husband Bob. I never met Bob. That was on a Monday Kit got loose, just over a year ago. Sally and I, we've been friends ever since.
"Miller speaks the truth." Jim said once. "And look at the guy's watercolors." He had pulled a book out of his bag to show me, a book of Miller's drawings and such.
That first night we got drunk, well, the only night, he told me about this strip club on Northside Drive where there was this one skinny stripper who was in love with him. He had been wondering how she was doing. I was game, was sort of interested in what happened in such places. So Jim drove.
"You went where?" Sally said.
"We went to a strip club," I repeated. "You know, naked girls dancing, well, yeah naked." I was raised Lutheran and didn't really know much about those places, but once I got to AA I met many girls and during our girl talk I found out about some of their escapades, and let's just say, well, they had me interested in doing it too. Of course I never did. I was never comfortable with showing my body to anyone.
Anyway, Jim couldn't find the girl he wanted to see, but I discovered this girl Eve, and while Jim smoked and watched the other dancers, standing up between songs to drop dollar bills on the stage, between a girl's legs, under her gyrating shadow, this one stripper Eve asked me about Jim, was he my man, and wow, just a pal, and you're here, that's cool. She told me a lot about her life, the place was dead except for Jim and I, and I even recited a Robert Frost poem to her that carried her name. (I kept lots of poems in my pocket, all of them written in small, tiny letters, and on a folded-up piece of paper, as soft as cotton, and I would pull it out now and then when I need inspiration, when I was bored, when I needed an anchor, when I needed something real in a world so fucking apparently fake.) Well, the place got busier and she left the table to dance again. That's when I noticed Jim was gone to the restroom too long. I looked everywhere and finally walked outside to the car, and that's where I found him, in his beat-up yellow Maverick, the windows all fogged-up. Jim was wrapped up in the thick flesh of some girl, a big girl he had met inside. I noticed his glasses had got knocked off.
"Unbelievable," Sally said.
What I didn't tell Sally is when we climbed the fence to his apartment pool at 4am, later that night, we were still drunk, and we shed our clothes and dove in. "I have a thing for fat chicks," he told me while we floated there. It was like his confession, so I didn't say anything. I didn't care, I was basking in the nothingness of it all, reveling in my youth.
"I also have this other thing," he said.
"Oh," I said. "What do you mean?"
"I fuck prostitutes," he said. That's when I felt dead. That's when the end came for me. The next day he was back in a meeting, I stayed away.
Jim stayed sober after that, I thought. I didn't. Yesterday I found out from a friend.
"Jim died of AIDS yesterday," I told Sally.
"Oh my."
Orgasm Guaranteed
I read the news today, oh boy. I saw
One of bin Laden's men, he's a man
Many might say an animal, instead of skin he is
Wearing white, he's got a black beard in place of fur
And I think the guy looks like John Lennon,
A Beatles love makin' child-looking mo-fo, if you only asked me
Wire frames, long nose, and the keening eyes of a focused mo-fo.
Give Peace a Chance, I think.
This man, the Taliban-man, is back in Pakistan,
Fresh off the front in Afghanistan,
This man is now looking for a job
So what happens when he gets home, what does he see?
His wife is making dresses.
She's making them for all to see.
She's making them for Allah.
He sees the patterns his wife weaves and finds out these threads
Will dangle down the thighs of hot chicks
In Melbourne. Some skinny bitches will strut the stuff they create
It's enough to make them rich, she's raking in more dough than the
Naan-slinging man down the street.
So now the Taliban-man is helping his wife thread beads onto strings.
Give Beads a Chance, I think.
"I don't sit with these women," he says.
"These girls bring me work, I don't care.
I have no feelings. They come and go,
They take what we do to fashion shows. Who cares?"
I am the Walrus. I am the Walrus. I am the Walrus in a war of cornflakes and corporations and egotistical ecclesiastical events like evolutionary new world ordinations of the damned, damned, damned
World.
Where's the Eggman? Woo-hoo. Where is the Eggman? Woo-hoo. Where is the pretty little policeman in this world, Mr. Egg, Egg, Egg
The man who shot bin Laden, the SEAL who fired the fatal shot, said that after he shot the dude in the forehead,
He heard the woman in front of him moan, she let out a long moan like a cat in heat on a hot wet night.
"So then I shot him again," he said. "I shot him in the chest. I watched him fall on the bed & I watched the blood drip from his eye. It dripped onto the white he was wearing and onto the bed, turned the sheets red. I shot him again.
It was orgasmic," he said. "Live free or die."
Koo-koo-ka-choo. Woo-hoo.
The shooter said to all who'd listen that "We are all babies, man, just babies on the battlefields. Our bodies, ourselves, our lives,
We throw our babies onto the battlefield everyday. We are there, ready to die, any time."
Live free or die.
Koo-koo-ka-choo. Woo-hoo.
One of bin Laden's men, he's a man
Many might say an animal, instead of skin he is
Wearing white, he's got a black beard in place of fur
And I think the guy looks like John Lennon,
A Beatles love makin' child-looking mo-fo, if you only asked me
Wire frames, long nose, and the keening eyes of a focused mo-fo.
Give Peace a Chance, I think.
This man, the Taliban-man, is back in Pakistan,
Fresh off the front in Afghanistan,
This man is now looking for a job
So what happens when he gets home, what does he see?
His wife is making dresses.
She's making them for all to see.
She's making them for Allah.
He sees the patterns his wife weaves and finds out these threads
Will dangle down the thighs of hot chicks
In Melbourne. Some skinny bitches will strut the stuff they create
It's enough to make them rich, she's raking in more dough than the
Naan-slinging man down the street.
So now the Taliban-man is helping his wife thread beads onto strings.
Give Beads a Chance, I think.
"I don't sit with these women," he says.
"These girls bring me work, I don't care.
I have no feelings. They come and go,
They take what we do to fashion shows. Who cares?"
I am the Walrus. I am the Walrus. I am the Walrus in a war of cornflakes and corporations and egotistical ecclesiastical events like evolutionary new world ordinations of the damned, damned, damned
World.
Where's the Eggman? Woo-hoo. Where is the Eggman? Woo-hoo. Where is the pretty little policeman in this world, Mr. Egg, Egg, Egg
The man who shot bin Laden, the SEAL who fired the fatal shot, said that after he shot the dude in the forehead,
He heard the woman in front of him moan, she let out a long moan like a cat in heat on a hot wet night.
"So then I shot him again," he said. "I shot him in the chest. I watched him fall on the bed & I watched the blood drip from his eye. It dripped onto the white he was wearing and onto the bed, turned the sheets red. I shot him again.
It was orgasmic," he said. "Live free or die."
Koo-koo-ka-choo. Woo-hoo.
The shooter said to all who'd listen that "We are all babies, man, just babies on the battlefields. Our bodies, ourselves, our lives,
We throw our babies onto the battlefield everyday. We are there, ready to die, any time."
Live free or die.
Koo-koo-ka-choo. Woo-hoo.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
nothing important to say
I was going home.
Yesterday I taught a lesson about earthquake awareness but most of the students wanted to sleep. So today I taught about St. Patrick's Day. The students were in a lighter mood. But many were still sleeping in class and I still (jokingly) yelled at them to wake up or come to the hospital with me (haha). But in the third class there was a girl with sad eyes and I just let her sleep. I found out later she is perhaps the top high school handball player in Japan. And she found out yesterday the tournament in Iwate was cancelled. Many of her competitors were lost in the quake, Watanabe-sensei said.
An issue came up yesterday of a Facebook "friend" scamming people to donate to the earthquake to his personal paypal account. A "real" friend confronted him on Facebook. They asked who he was, why he was "friending" everybody asking for money. At least 7 of my real friends had friended him. I heard he might be an actual living person in Nagoya, but he eventually disappeared from Facebook.
I walked to the train station from school. It was a sunny day. I felt good. Spring was near, it seemed. I looked around me. There was the 3-storey Ferarri dealership. The cars in red, black, and yellow stared out of the windows from the top floors like cats do. I saw another yellow Ferrari on the road and wondered how well they would float. Then a group of university students stood outside of their building, maybe 50 of them. I thought it was an earthquake drill but they were all laughing. They wore dark clothes with striped knee-high socks, had white highlights in their black hair, bright red on their lips. Men in business suits staggered by me smoking cigarettes. An old man with a dirty baseball cap stood motionless on the sidewalk. He was looking through the glass into the ground floor museum of the Mazak (tool maker) building. He was staring at some contraption of a car. It was a museum piece and full of stainless steel but still had rubber wheels. The man didn't move. I walked around him.
While on the train I read about the 3rd blast at the plant. I thought how stupid it is that the situation seems to be getting worse.
The Prime Minister now says to stay inside if you're within 30 km, but just the other day they were saying it was safe. But then I thought how many times does a magnitude 9.0 strike a nuclear plant followed by a tsunami chaser?
The radiation is getting higher. The wind is blowing westward at 11 km/hr. Tokyo is way far south but today recorded readings much higher than normal. I keep watching the news but it doesn't get any better. I also heard it takes three years to cool those rods. Was that a mistake? Did the newscaster mean three hours, three days, three months? But that's only if they're completely covered with water. And now they aren't. It's called a meltdown. There are probably 75 million pairs of lungs between me the radiation. So I'm not running until someone else does.
When I got home I turned on NHK World English and watched a geophysist try to explain the earthquake. He said he couldn't rule out a major quake still hitting Tokyo. But there is no telling when. The emergency emails were sent out yesterday predicting a huge quake. But it has been over 24 hours and still no major (after) quake.
It's cold today and the newscaster said it's going to snow up north. They got two grills now at this one shelter and plenty of fish to eat. But outside there were some grandparents walking around looking for the grandchildren. And there was a little girl walking around looking for her doll. She said her father got washed to the sea. Government officials talked about building up Japan (again).
But what about finding people first? I wish there was something I could do besides watch the news. Cause there's just too much information right now. I've got nothing important to say, except that I'm home. And my family is safe. Thank God.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
the indians did it: my love affair with fire
The Indians did it. And I think they were the only ones. Up until the Euro's came & invaded. The Indians lost (yeah) but they passed down something a little bit more sinister to their conquerors & to the rest of the world.
...
This morning on the bus ride to work, I had a revelation: I've been at it for 20 years. I remember we were all sitting in that Waffle House in Covington, small-town Georgia, the four of us laughing & talking. We were young & in love with life. Rod had always preferred cloves. His father had been a drama professor at our University, but passed away when Rod was just a kid. I always imagined his dad smoking a pipe while reading, a glass of scotch on the side table & a fuzzy cat on his lap. Emily was half-Japanese & the Japanese love to smoke it up, but she didn't. It was Kathi that was the maniac. She'd fill up the aluminum ashtray time & again & the waitress would change it. Often. And there I was, an innocent kid thrown into a lion's den. So I started puffing.
...
I can look at my astrological chart & tell you why I smoke. I have Mars in Libra (a writer's, drinker's, socializer's paradise) & for the last twenty years (up until this past December), my progressed Ascendant was in Pisces (a dreamer's, escapist's, drug addict's paradise). You can call me a dreamer & I can say that I'm a writer & all my favorite writers smoke(d), maybe. I imagine they did. But I want to stop using excuses, like astrology (you probably know nothing about it & don't care), or writing (cause I'm sure there are many writers out there smoke-free), or socializing (cause smokers usually have to stand on balconies outside of parties, not in them). I want to get to the truth.
...
Some say that people who smoke want to control fire. It goes back to the times when fire was necessary, you needed it for stuff - like starting fires. And if you had a little fire, you had a lot of power. You could cook stuff up & people would be warm & they'd warm up to you. Maybe they'd sneak into your cave late at night, just to get closer to you & your fire.
Some say that people who smoke do so cause they like to watch the smoke rise up from their nostrils, much like a dragon would do. And dragons also have power. I think if I were a dragon, I'd have ultimate power.
But some people say that those who smoke are just like the common drug addict. You know that guy/gal? The one hiding in the corner, the one who will do absolutely anything to feel pleasure rather than pain, even if pleasure means you have to suffer later. I wonder if I'm one of those people. All I know is that I've quit many times but then I start up again. Cause it's really so easy to quit smoking, so easy to stop. It's just the starting up again that's the curse.
Here in Japan, people smoke a lot & I've always admired it. I can ride the bullet train with an Asahi in one hand & a cigarette in the other. I can go to most Makudo's (McDonald's) & smoke away after my two cheeseburgers, coke & fries. I can't smoke on the streets near the main stations however, or I gotta pay ¥2000 (20 bucks). (I heard that if I feign 'ignorant foreigner' I don't have to pay.) So sometimes I can't smoke outside, but what I can do is slip inside those smoker's booths & they are in all the finest places. The shiny new airport, of course. The shopping malls. The department stores. Even the hospitals & those smoking booths are always packed with people, some with tubes coming out of their bodies, all of them smoking away. You can find a smoking buddy anywhere in Japan, don't worry. If you smoke, come on over & at ¥300 ($3) a pop, you can do two packs in a day. It's really that great !!
...
I don't know why I'm writing this shit about cigarettes. I guess I'm just tired of smoking. Yet I'm a realist sometimes, even though I'm mostly a dreamer. I know that the next time I pass a konbini (convenience store), I'm probably going to buy some Mild Seven 6's, the soft pack. But the dreamer in me is hoping that one day I'll pass by the konbini & go straight home, or go to the gym instead, & lift heavy weights over my head (not making out with white sticks), somehow forgetting I was ever a smoker. Cause I think I've wasted a lot of time & money trying to control fire & I've waisted a lot future heartbeats watching that dragonsmoke rise rise rise.
...
There was that one time I quit after I met Michelle in the Philippines. She wasn't a smoker & hardly ever a drinker. I was planning to meet her out in LA for Thanksgiving, to visit her US extended family for the first time, so a month before that I decided to wear 'the patch.' That seemed to work. But still I'd often take the patch off to light up. And that felt really weird. Smokers out there, you ever done that ?? And there were those vivid dreams that scared me shitless. I lived them the week after I eventually took the patch off & didn't buy smokes, to wait the addiction out. And you know what? It worked for over two years till that night at the bowling alley in Kingsville, Texas.
My unit was drunk, as usual. My fellow Navy reservists & I were on a weekend trip to Bumblefuck, Texas. I don't really remember what I learned. We were there to spend government money is all. And drink. It's a sailor tradition. Well, I had also quit drinking for about a year before I joined, but yeah I gave in.
We were in a 'dry town' but you could bring alcohol anywhere. You just couldn't buy it. (That day we went to a restaurant & MN3 Burrud brought in a blender. They let us stay with all our rowdiness but once Burrud started humping the table, this old cowboy stood up from his table where he was sitting with his wife & asked us to leave, politely.) Anyway, that day & night, with all the beers & blended cocktails, my willpower weakened, my senses heightened - I think it was Seaman Brown from Oklahoma that I bummed the first one off of - It's all just a hazy memory, beer, balls, lanes, pins & then that first puff. I was hooked again. I puffed away for nine more years up until just over a year ago, when I read that book.
It was the same book that got celebrity actors to quit. I don't really care for actors cause I think most of them are full of BS. I met enough of them in LA. Directors are cool. Writers are boring. Musicians are the best. Actors suck ass. (Sorry any actor friends out there reading this, I'm messing with you; you other actors, get lost). Yeah, so this guy Allen Carr got me to quit.
It had been a rough Saturday night & I woke up & saw that book sitting on top of the book shelf, hiding under boxes of Marlboros & lighters, ashes from incense darkening its white cover. It had been there for three months, but that morning I decided to open it. It was called the Easy Way to Quit Smoking, by A. Carr. Kintaro had given it to me cause I wanted it & he said he even read some of it, but he stopped so he could keep smoking away. Well, I sat down & read the entire book in one day, over 200 pages.
I stopped. I quit & I gave the glorious book back to Kintaro. I couldn't believe it. Somehow something clicked in my brain & I became a new man. I could breathe again. After a week I could smell ramen from miles away. After a month I would walk up stairs two-, three-at-a-time & for the first time I could squat more than what I weighed. Suddenly I stopped wanting to stay in bed when I woke up. I started cycling over 100km a week. I lost 33 pounds in four months & felt super good. This guy Mr. Carr was a definite miracle worker. Well, up until last April, when I eventually gave in (I'm a drug addict, remember?).
It was hanami (cherry blossom viewing) that came around & I started drinking & eventually someone gave me a smoke when I asked, cause hey, people like me & smokers like to give me their fire. And I've been puffing away since then, making deadlines to quit (but never meeting them): Independence Day (Jul 4); my birthday (Oct 31); Thanksgiving (Nov 26); Christmas (Dec 25); New Year's (Jan 1) etc etc.
So I asked Kintaro for the book back but he had already given it away.
So, that's where I'm at today. But I'm not alone. SpaceMan is right there with me. We've often sat at his apartment & talked it over, over whisky & smokes. He's quit many times & started again too. We talk about the the dangers of both: EtOH & nicotine. How the two are tied together like star-crossed lovers, one always in search of the other. They're almost like Eros & Psyche, or Romeo & Juliet. Adam & Eve. And yeah The Serpent & Eve.
There was that one year I smoked but didn't drink. That sucked. Romeo was without his Juliet.
Do cigarettes serve any purpose other than making me look cool to some people, & uncool to others? Are they Dr Kevorkian's in rolling papers, dooming those of us hellbent on self-destruction? Does alcohol just do nothing more than to numb my brain & tell me that cigarettes do make me look cool & no, I definitely look cool in everything I do. I think I hate them both.
But I tell you what - I'm really in love with cigarettes. I must be. Cause they are with me wherever I go & whatever I do. I spend a crap load of money on them every year, more than I spend on clothes & girlfriends. I love them cause whenever I'm lonely, they're there. And whenever I need to concentrate, they help my brain cells fire away. They intoxicate me & soothe my drug-addicted soul. Like my friend said after she lit up for the first time after trying to quit: "sin never tasted so good." And I love them (I must) cause whenever I wake up I want to give them my lips & they are usually on my go-out-the-door-checklist: "keys, wallet, iPhone, headphones, smokes."
...
Like I said, I don't know if I'm going to walk into that konbini or just walk on by the next time, cause remember? I'm a realist & a dreamer. So right now I'll dream of walking on by & dream of taking deep breaths of fresh air. And I dream it might be today, tomorrow, or the next that I don't light that smoke again. But the reality is this: the choice is mine.
...
Wow, I just got a craving for a hot waffle. I can see the yellow slice of butter melting. And I can see the maple syrup dripping from the sides & running onto the plate. It's there, that waffle. I can almost taste it.
I wonder who invented the waffle. Did the Indians do that too?
...
This morning on the bus ride to work, I had a revelation: I've been at it for 20 years. I remember we were all sitting in that Waffle House in Covington, small-town Georgia, the four of us laughing & talking. We were young & in love with life. Rod had always preferred cloves. His father had been a drama professor at our University, but passed away when Rod was just a kid. I always imagined his dad smoking a pipe while reading, a glass of scotch on the side table & a fuzzy cat on his lap. Emily was half-Japanese & the Japanese love to smoke it up, but she didn't. It was Kathi that was the maniac. She'd fill up the aluminum ashtray time & again & the waitress would change it. Often. And there I was, an innocent kid thrown into a lion's den. So I started puffing.
...
I can look at my astrological chart & tell you why I smoke. I have Mars in Libra (a writer's, drinker's, socializer's paradise) & for the last twenty years (up until this past December), my progressed Ascendant was in Pisces (a dreamer's, escapist's, drug addict's paradise). You can call me a dreamer & I can say that I'm a writer & all my favorite writers smoke(d), maybe. I imagine they did. But I want to stop using excuses, like astrology (you probably know nothing about it & don't care), or writing (cause I'm sure there are many writers out there smoke-free), or socializing (cause smokers usually have to stand on balconies outside of parties, not in them). I want to get to the truth.
...
Some say that people who smoke want to control fire. It goes back to the times when fire was necessary, you needed it for stuff - like starting fires. And if you had a little fire, you had a lot of power. You could cook stuff up & people would be warm & they'd warm up to you. Maybe they'd sneak into your cave late at night, just to get closer to you & your fire.
Some say that people who smoke do so cause they like to watch the smoke rise up from their nostrils, much like a dragon would do. And dragons also have power. I think if I were a dragon, I'd have ultimate power.
But some people say that those who smoke are just like the common drug addict. You know that guy/gal? The one hiding in the corner, the one who will do absolutely anything to feel pleasure rather than pain, even if pleasure means you have to suffer later. I wonder if I'm one of those people. All I know is that I've quit many times but then I start up again. Cause it's really so easy to quit smoking, so easy to stop. It's just the starting up again that's the curse.
Here in Japan, people smoke a lot & I've always admired it. I can ride the bullet train with an Asahi in one hand & a cigarette in the other. I can go to most Makudo's (McDonald's) & smoke away after my two cheeseburgers, coke & fries. I can't smoke on the streets near the main stations however, or I gotta pay ¥2000 (20 bucks). (I heard that if I feign 'ignorant foreigner' I don't have to pay.) So sometimes I can't smoke outside, but what I can do is slip inside those smoker's booths & they are in all the finest places. The shiny new airport, of course. The shopping malls. The department stores. Even the hospitals & those smoking booths are always packed with people, some with tubes coming out of their bodies, all of them smoking away. You can find a smoking buddy anywhere in Japan, don't worry. If you smoke, come on over & at ¥300 ($3) a pop, you can do two packs in a day. It's really that great !!
...
I don't know why I'm writing this shit about cigarettes. I guess I'm just tired of smoking. Yet I'm a realist sometimes, even though I'm mostly a dreamer. I know that the next time I pass a konbini (convenience store), I'm probably going to buy some Mild Seven 6's, the soft pack. But the dreamer in me is hoping that one day I'll pass by the konbini & go straight home, or go to the gym instead, & lift heavy weights over my head (not making out with white sticks), somehow forgetting I was ever a smoker. Cause I think I've wasted a lot of time & money trying to control fire & I've waisted a lot future heartbeats watching that dragonsmoke rise rise rise.
...
There was that one time I quit after I met Michelle in the Philippines. She wasn't a smoker & hardly ever a drinker. I was planning to meet her out in LA for Thanksgiving, to visit her US extended family for the first time, so a month before that I decided to wear 'the patch.' That seemed to work. But still I'd often take the patch off to light up. And that felt really weird. Smokers out there, you ever done that ?? And there were those vivid dreams that scared me shitless. I lived them the week after I eventually took the patch off & didn't buy smokes, to wait the addiction out. And you know what? It worked for over two years till that night at the bowling alley in Kingsville, Texas.
My unit was drunk, as usual. My fellow Navy reservists & I were on a weekend trip to Bumblefuck, Texas. I don't really remember what I learned. We were there to spend government money is all. And drink. It's a sailor tradition. Well, I had also quit drinking for about a year before I joined, but yeah I gave in.
We were in a 'dry town' but you could bring alcohol anywhere. You just couldn't buy it. (That day we went to a restaurant & MN3 Burrud brought in a blender. They let us stay with all our rowdiness but once Burrud started humping the table, this old cowboy stood up from his table where he was sitting with his wife & asked us to leave, politely.) Anyway, that day & night, with all the beers & blended cocktails, my willpower weakened, my senses heightened - I think it was Seaman Brown from Oklahoma that I bummed the first one off of - It's all just a hazy memory, beer, balls, lanes, pins & then that first puff. I was hooked again. I puffed away for nine more years up until just over a year ago, when I read that book.
It was the same book that got celebrity actors to quit. I don't really care for actors cause I think most of them are full of BS. I met enough of them in LA. Directors are cool. Writers are boring. Musicians are the best. Actors suck ass. (Sorry any actor friends out there reading this, I'm messing with you; you other actors, get lost). Yeah, so this guy Allen Carr got me to quit.
It had been a rough Saturday night & I woke up & saw that book sitting on top of the book shelf, hiding under boxes of Marlboros & lighters, ashes from incense darkening its white cover. It had been there for three months, but that morning I decided to open it. It was called the Easy Way to Quit Smoking, by A. Carr. Kintaro had given it to me cause I wanted it & he said he even read some of it, but he stopped so he could keep smoking away. Well, I sat down & read the entire book in one day, over 200 pages.
I stopped. I quit & I gave the glorious book back to Kintaro. I couldn't believe it. Somehow something clicked in my brain & I became a new man. I could breathe again. After a week I could smell ramen from miles away. After a month I would walk up stairs two-, three-at-a-time & for the first time I could squat more than what I weighed. Suddenly I stopped wanting to stay in bed when I woke up. I started cycling over 100km a week. I lost 33 pounds in four months & felt super good. This guy Mr. Carr was a definite miracle worker. Well, up until last April, when I eventually gave in (I'm a drug addict, remember?).
It was hanami (cherry blossom viewing) that came around & I started drinking & eventually someone gave me a smoke when I asked, cause hey, people like me & smokers like to give me their fire. And I've been puffing away since then, making deadlines to quit (but never meeting them): Independence Day (Jul 4); my birthday (Oct 31); Thanksgiving (Nov 26); Christmas (Dec 25); New Year's (Jan 1) etc etc.
So I asked Kintaro for the book back but he had already given it away.
So, that's where I'm at today. But I'm not alone. SpaceMan is right there with me. We've often sat at his apartment & talked it over, over whisky & smokes. He's quit many times & started again too. We talk about the the dangers of both: EtOH & nicotine. How the two are tied together like star-crossed lovers, one always in search of the other. They're almost like Eros & Psyche, or Romeo & Juliet. Adam & Eve. And yeah The Serpent & Eve.
There was that one year I smoked but didn't drink. That sucked. Romeo was without his Juliet.
Do cigarettes serve any purpose other than making me look cool to some people, & uncool to others? Are they Dr Kevorkian's in rolling papers, dooming those of us hellbent on self-destruction? Does alcohol just do nothing more than to numb my brain & tell me that cigarettes do make me look cool & no, I definitely look cool in everything I do. I think I hate them both.
But I tell you what - I'm really in love with cigarettes. I must be. Cause they are with me wherever I go & whatever I do. I spend a crap load of money on them every year, more than I spend on clothes & girlfriends. I love them cause whenever I'm lonely, they're there. And whenever I need to concentrate, they help my brain cells fire away. They intoxicate me & soothe my drug-addicted soul. Like my friend said after she lit up for the first time after trying to quit: "sin never tasted so good." And I love them (I must) cause whenever I wake up I want to give them my lips & they are usually on my go-out-the-door-checklist: "keys, wallet, iPhone, headphones, smokes."
...
Like I said, I don't know if I'm going to walk into that konbini or just walk on by the next time, cause remember? I'm a realist & a dreamer. So right now I'll dream of walking on by & dream of taking deep breaths of fresh air. And I dream it might be today, tomorrow, or the next that I don't light that smoke again. But the reality is this: the choice is mine.
...
Wow, I just got a craving for a hot waffle. I can see the yellow slice of butter melting. And I can see the maple syrup dripping from the sides & running onto the plate. It's there, that waffle. I can almost taste it.
I wonder who invented the waffle. Did the Indians do that too?
Thursday, December 24, 2009
i am dead
I am dead,
cause everywhere around me
I see pictures of
you. I was
good. I was good. Then
you came back
into my life & I
started dying right after
you left me
again. I was
good. I was
good,
I said.
I quit those things
you hated
about me. I left
that place that
you hated
to be.
I got somewhere
new.
I got somewhere
new.
I lost
40-fucking-lbs
thinking of you & I
got someplace new, just
to be so lost again now
thinking of you.
So
I go
to my door to get
inside
my silvery green leather
(it smells
so new),
slip my head inside
my golden knit
cap &
I pull on
my white Chuckie
T's.
They are so so white & that's
gonna change
- gotta be - &
I leave
the smoke of my place &
I drop this
lighter that makes music &
I cross the threshhold
& breathe for
the first time
today,
in peace.
There.
That lady I passed, she had a smile on her face.
Who was she thinking about, that lady? Secretly
I wish it was me.
Finally, there's no
you.
I cross over &
watch briefly
these ramen goers leaning over
steam &
slurping away.
I don't know where I'm going
but I see a red-painted door. There,
the grocery store &
donuts & cakes. No,
no
not them today. But fried chicken,
maybe.
So many good things that are
bad
for
you are really cheap
today. It's a Xmas sale but
I don't know
what I want. So I'm just gonna
feel this
avocado.
This guy's ready
& so is this one too but
no not you.
Maybe
in a few days,
baby.
There's that chicken I was
maybe looking for. But
I have some
at home &
I wanna
cook that up like
I used
to do
for you,
wrap it up, like
you used
to do to
me,
but with soft skin &
no,
not with this bag of lettuce
in my hand.
I think
I'm gonna squeeze
a slice of this fat
tomato
in, too.
That should be good,
& that California red over there.
Soon I'll be jumping on the grape train,
drinking & then
thinking of
you,
till the end of time.
(But suddenly now wishing of
drinking
to this new
you
sometime.)
I walk outside.
You know the music in my
head
makes me scared - like
Yusef once said - & now
Liam says how many special people change &
how many lives get rearranged, where were
you -
yeah where were
you
baby -
where were you when we were getting high?
(But then
you,
so where are
you
now?
Cause
these Neptunian colors
paint pictures in my mind &
the music we dance to
plays on until
time
stops.
You
should
know.)
So then this other you just slipped into the sunshine & gardens over there & out through the doors of
my head.
(I feel alive
cause I'm thinking of
you.)
I must've stopped being dead. Or maybe
(I'm lost
somewhere in Heaven.)
cause everywhere around me
I see pictures of
you. I was
good. I was good. Then
you came back
into my life & I
started dying right after
you left me
again. I was
good. I was
good,
I said.
I quit those things
you hated
about me. I left
that place that
you hated
to be.
I got somewhere
new.
I got somewhere
new.
I lost
40-fucking-lbs
thinking of you & I
got someplace new, just
to be so lost again now
thinking of you.
So
I go
to my door to get
inside
my silvery green leather
(it smells
so new),
slip my head inside
my golden knit
cap &
I pull on
my white Chuckie
T's.
They are so so white & that's
gonna change
- gotta be - &
I leave
the smoke of my place &
I drop this
lighter that makes music &
I cross the threshhold
& breathe for
the first time
today,
in peace.
There.
That lady I passed, she had a smile on her face.
Who was she thinking about, that lady? Secretly
I wish it was me.
Finally, there's no
you.
I cross over &
watch briefly
these ramen goers leaning over
steam &
slurping away.
I don't know where I'm going
but I see a red-painted door. There,
the grocery store &
donuts & cakes. No,
no
not them today. But fried chicken,
maybe.
So many good things that are
bad
for
you are really cheap
today. It's a Xmas sale but
I don't know
what I want. So I'm just gonna
feel this
avocado.
This guy's ready
& so is this one too but
no not you.
Maybe
in a few days,
baby.
There's that chicken I was
maybe looking for. But
I have some
at home &
I wanna
cook that up like
I used
to do
for you,
wrap it up, like
you used
to do to
me,
but with soft skin &
no,
not with this bag of lettuce
in my hand.
I think
I'm gonna squeeze
a slice of this fat
tomato
in, too.
That should be good,
& that California red over there.
Soon I'll be jumping on the grape train,
drinking & then
thinking of
you,
till the end of time.
(But suddenly now wishing of
drinking
to this new
you
sometime.)
I walk outside.
You know the music in my
head
makes me scared - like
Yusef once said - & now
Liam says how many special people change &
how many lives get rearranged, where were
you -
yeah where were
you
baby -
where were you when we were getting high?
(But then
you,
so where are
you
now?
Cause
these Neptunian colors
paint pictures in my mind &
the music we dance to
plays on until
time
stops.
You
should
know.)
So then this other you just slipped into the sunshine & gardens over there & out through the doors of
my head.
(I feel alive
cause I'm thinking of
you.)
I must've stopped being dead. Or maybe
(I'm lost
somewhere in Heaven.)
Monday, December 7, 2009
why i like flowers
They last only a little while, coming in spring, but dying soon after. So they come back again & life feels clean. (Smells good, too.)
They come in many colors & they make girls happy. (I hope so.)
And they have exotic names that I can't remember. But their scent lingers with me sweetly, long into the night, long into this cold winter.
They are the greatest thing.
(I feel like a bee right now, ready to go home & make honey.)
Flowers, that's what they are.
They come in many colors & they make girls happy. (I hope so.)
And they have exotic names that I can't remember. But their scent lingers with me sweetly, long into the night, long into this cold winter.
They are the greatest thing.
(I feel like a bee right now, ready to go home & make honey.)
Flowers, that's what they are.
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