It's always too late.

True Stories From The Life Of Me

So the other night I went to a friend’s house for a house party.  He was frying food all night.  He had fried pickles, fried okra, fried french.  When I came home, I smelled like fried.

I still smelled like fried the next day.  Since it was morning, I took my jacket off of the coat rack and I placed it outside onto the fire escape.  It was stinky and I wanted to blow off all of the stink.

Later, I was going out.  I prepared myself.  I took my coat in from the fire escape and put it on the couch.  I did my things.  I was about to leave when I remembered I needed my pocket note book.  It was in my jacket pocket.

My notebook was very, very cold.  I did not know what to do.  Then I did.  10 seconds later, I opened the microwave and my notebook was warm.  I put it in my back pocket and left my apartment.

I’m sitting here trying to write a poem at 4:23 am.  Not doing a very good job.  I’m trying to get out how I feel today.  Maybe the problem is that I’m not really sure of the feeling I have.

You meet a lot of people in a big city like this.  Most of them are interesting, at least as long as you don’t speak to them for longer than it takes to say “I’m Jon.  What was your name again?”  After that, it tends to go downhill.  After a lot of disappointments, you get kind of cynical about the whole meeting people thing.  What will they care if you walk away?

Today I sat leaning over the counter at the bookstore I work at, drawing monkeys with six legs and prehensile ears, and I was wondering about all of the ex-girlfriends I have.  There aren’t too many.  I don’t often get myself into relationships.  They’re too complicated, and if I don’t see any potential at all I make damned sure the thing won’t even start.  But it happens.  You end up with someone. You spend a lot of time with a person.  You get to know them, learn to appreciate their flaws, and put them on a sort of pedestal in your heart, because even though they have their little things, things that give you pause when you think of them while brushing your teeth, or cracking eggs into a frying pan,  even after you think about these things, you still appreciate the person that carries these quirks.  Because God knows you have your own.  You don’t feel like having sex, you don’t see the point.  You take things too seriously, and you don’t take them seriously at all.  But you tell them you love them.  You wake up next to them on countless nights.  And for those days you squander happily with them, you don’t want to imagine a day when all of that might be over.

But some days, when you’re drawing too-many-limbed primates in your workplace, you start to think of those people that came and went.  Those people that said words like, “forever.”  Am I the only person that knows this kind of thing won’t ever last forever?  You’re lucky if it lasts the week.  People talk about trust, about being honest with one another.  But one thing I’ve learned is that one should be honest with themselves.  A certain glance in the right light from a potential mate who isn’t you, and your chicken is choked.  It may be self-righteous but, I swear, I think I’m the only person who could ever live up to my standards regarding that.  Maybe I am cynical.  But please, show me the person who isn’t human enough to stray, and I’ll show you how to dive off of a twenty-three story building and land on your feet.  I’ve drawn the shades of my heart for this sort of thing, and I drew them a long time ago.

Am I the only person though, that can look back, and wonder what these people are up to now?  They all go away and do a new sort of squandering.  Paper chases.  Picking up on the next thing to comes along and sticking with it.  Or whatever path you helped them stumble onto, they torch under the moon and run off with some wolf that licks its own asshole.  But the biggest part of it all is that they forget about you.  They forget all about you.  They can’t remember nights in the car in a parking lot, where you actually gave them some of the real things you have to give.  They wander off and get married.  They have children, and there you are, trying to sober up at 28 years old, and you’re wondering how in God’s name can people be so forgetful?  How can you not wonder about these things?

But I don’t really care about ex-girlfriends.  In my eyes, they’ve all died in fiery car wrecks, broken legs and all.  They bled out and I got the phone call late in the night, and I never have to think about them again.  I don’t want them anymore.  Not in the slightest.  I just think about the fact that people don’t think at all.

The problem with intellectualizing idiotic human behavior is that the exercise becomes less cathartic and more numbing as you progress in your analysis.

It’s a shame that beautiful women find something interesting in me and the only thing I have to offer is the shadow.  There is a lot in me that doesn’t come out, and I can’t honestly say that I’ll let what’s making that shadow be seen anytime soon.  It ain’t worth it, my babies.  Without fail, I start to feel the urge to show someone the idol beneath the sun, and someone else will present a knickknack.  Their attention shifts, and by the time they look back at me, I’ve put my hands back into my pockets.  “What was I saying?  Oh, nothing.”

I’m just tired of the whole chase.  You learn to become interested and you can learn to give up.  Maybe I’m lonely.  Maybe I am.  And maybe that loneliness is a stark reminder that being lonely is the one thing you can be sure of, when pretty much everything else is smoke.

Diogenes was asked,

“What is the difference between life and death?

“No difference.”

“Well then, why do you remain in this life?”

“Because there is no difference.”

Kafka's "A Message From The Emperor"

The Emperor—so they say—has sent a message, directly from his death bed, to you alone, his pathetic subject, a tiny shadow which has taken refuge at the furthest distance from the imperial sun. He ordered the herald to kneel down beside his bed and whispered the message in his ear. He thought it was so important that he had the herald speak it back to him. He confirmed the accuracy of verbal message by nodding his head. And in front of the entire crowd of those witnessing his death—all the obstructing walls have been broken down, and all the great ones of his empire are standing in a circle on the broad and high soaring flights of stairs—in front of all of them he dispatched his herald. The messenger started off at once, a powerful, tireless man. Sticking one arm out and then another, he makes his way through the crowd. If he runs into resistance, he points to his breast where there is a sign of the sun. So he moves forwards easily, unlike anyone else. But the crowd is so huge; its dwelling places are infinite. If there were an open field, how he would fly along, and soon you would hear the marvellous pounding of his fist on your door. But instead of that, how futile are all his efforts. He is still forcing his way through the private rooms of the innermost palace. Never will he win his way through. And if he did manage that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to fight his way down the steps, and, if he managed to do that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to stride through the courtyards, and after the courtyards through the second palace encircling the first, and, then again, through stairs and courtyards, and then, once again, a palace, and so on for thousands of years. And if he finally burst through the outermost door—but that can never, never happen—the royal capital city, the centre of the world, is still there in front of him, piled high and full of sediment. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not someone with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window and dream of that message when evening comes.

Secrecy and Friendship

mills:

“I am walking with Elvar D. in the Reykjavik cemetery; he stops at a grave [where] barely a year ago his friend was buried; he starts reminiscing aloud about him: his private life was marked by some secret, probably a sexual one. ‘Because secrets excite such irritated curiosity, my wife, my daughters, the people around me, all insisted I tell them about it. To such an extent that my relations with my wife have been bad ever since. I couldn’t forgive her aggressive curiosity, and she couldn’t forgive my silence, which to her was evidence of how little I trusted her.’ He smiled, and then: ‘I divulged nothing,’ he said. ‘Because I had nothing to divulge. I had forbidden myself to want to know my friend’s secrets, and I didn’t know them.’ I listened to him with fascination: since childhood I had heard it said that a friend is the person with whom you share your secrets and who even has the right, in the name of friendship, to insist on knowing them. For my Icelander, friendship is something else: it is standing guard at the door behind which your friend keeps his private life hidden; it is being the person who never opens that door; who allows no one else to open it.”

-Milan Kundera, in Testaments Betrayed.

my life is ripping itself apart

fortunately I know one of the main causes

unfortunately, it’s got many mouths

and they’re everywhere

just waiting to be opened