The Lost Pedestrian

I seem to be having these sporadic missing time experiences. Perhaps it’s from sleep deprivatio. Or maybe brain degradation. Or possibly generalized atrophy disorder. One moment, I am walking south on Clark Street. The very same Clark Street I have walked along each and every day of my life. Maybe the only street I have ever walked on in my life. And I’m trying to make it to the bank, to the one bank with an ATM that dispenses cash without asking for anything in return. I hope that one day I can be like this ATM.

But that is a problem other than the one I am trying to describe. This walk on Clark Street to get cash,, for what I seem to have forgotten. I know I need it. I need some cash for something. And I hope I will find that something along my walk. But it was not very long before I had a realization that I was Clark Street without any sense of l how I got there. I must have been doing something earlier that led to this walk. I could not just have materialized here out of nowhere, I don’t think.

And was that you who was waving to me from your car and was it me who was waving back? Or was that somebody else? I was thinking such thoughts when I noticed I had strayed from my path, even though I was still on Clark Street. Was I walking north or south? How long had I been walking? Was I far from home? Which home? And which city is that home?

Eventually I found my bearings but they were not at the bank and they were not at home and they were not on Clark Street. They were somewhere in between, I guess, if there is such a pace. if there is such a place.

Is there a limit to gluttony?

I have not heard of any such limit.

I like to think I will never reach it.

I guess that might count as my aspiration for the day.

Each and every day, I want to unearth a mystery. Float over a hurdle. Do something fulfilling in some way. And when that does not happen, I sleep not a wink. I must answer to myself or else I will stumble

I’ve been reading through old journals hoping to excavate remnants of things that might latch on to remnants of other things. And I read page after page of this barely legible scribbling that is barely legible because at one time I did all of my writing on bumpy busses on bumpy roads. So it’s a real challenge to decipher it.

But then I had a realization. A realization that all of this scribbling was very easy to decipher because for years and years and years I was scribbling the same sentence over and over again. On different roads. On different busses and trains. With different writing utensils. Wearing different shirts. With different shoes. In different seasons. Using different words … all of them amounting to the same sentence.

“I wish I had more to say and more time to say it.”

The end.

I awakened from a movie dream, a dream about a movie I may have played a part in, or maybe I was only the audience.

People in the dream were turning into grotesque and violent ‘aliens’ (as, in aliens from the movie Aliens). They had tentacles and their tentacles would slide out and kill people.

Certain people would be taken away and then turned into these mutant creatures. The creatures were ruled by robots who would change into any form and the mutant humans and the robots would have sex, but mutant humans had no control and the sex would get so heated that the robots, in erotic human form, would begin to melt… like a dented car would look and the mutant humans turned into these grotesque, horrible monsters with huge skulls and stick figure bodies.

Such evil evil dreams back in 1996.

Seattle, WA

I must find out where Allen is. I am not able to accept his death. Being murdered–the violence of writing that word is too much to bear. Inconceivable.

Perhaps he overextended his innocence and the world crashed down upon him.

Perhaps he truly escaped from reality and eluded us all.

Wherever he is could be unthinkable and mortifying.

Or perhaps it was unthinkable and mortifying, but then it stopped.

And he is gone.

Some of us have a fear of empty white boxes.

Some of us have a fear of boxes that once were empty but now have been prefilled with all kinds of stuff. Appliances, old CDs, bad art from former friends, cables for electronics that were donated to the Salvation Army decades ago, mismatched gloves, mismatched socks, metadata, pens with no ink, pencils with no erasers, empty bottles of white out.

Some of us like to keep a gratitude journal.

Some of us prefer to wallow in hurt, embitterment and resentment.

Some of us see the expansiveness of the universe.

Some us see a world that once was expansive but is now closing in on us faster than we can ever imagine and fell helpless to slow it down to a reasonable pace.

Some of us are attuned to connections and interconnections.

Some of us live in a state of panic as we watch connections and interconnections float away, just out of grasp.

Some of us stare at fish.

Some of us are embarrassed to be caught staring by the fish we are staring at.

Some of us are people of action

Some of us are people who wait for action to come to us.

Some of us are convinced that waiting is an action in itself.

Some of us are tired of waiting, but do our best to ignore it, to brush it under the rug.

Some of us prefer to nap on a memory foam mattress

Some of us prefer to nap on the memoryless tile of the bathroom floor

Some of us wonder what this place is called… this place between napping and not napping. This place between foam and floor. This place between memory and non-memory.

Some of us believe that language is overrated.

Some of us cannot find the words to argue otherwise.

I don’t know why I swear at my computer to the extent that I do. I have a tendency to get impatient with how slow and uncooperative it can be, but I’m not really certain if yelling ‘come on, motherfucker!’ raises its processing speed or makes it any more productive. Maybe I am really telling myself to ‘come on, motherfucker!’ in the hopes that this will push me somewhere I would not go were I not there to yell at myself. I’m just relieved there are no children around. Not really relieved that I do not have children. Because not having children is one the biggest regrets of my life. I like to think I am not the kind of person who would call my children ‘motherfuckers.’ And if I did call them that, that they would have the sense to not take me seriously. If I could have had children who did not take me seriously, I could have been a truly great parent. I’m convinced of it. Maybe the world is a better place now that I have not had children, especially children who took me seriously. The thing is, I would have taken them seriously. I say this not as a speculation, but as a statement that is evidence-based. Based upon how seriously I take each being that dwells in my aquarium. If it wasn’t so late in my life, my caretaking of tropical fish could have been great preparation for caretaking of children. Except for the part about me forgetting to feed them. Except for the part about one of them dying every couple of months. That… I know I could not have handled that. I think about that a lot these days as I ponder getting a dog. Vacillating between a couple of challenges. It would not be good to have a dog that outlives me. And it would not be good to have a dog that I outlive. Stuck in this zone, between doglessness and childlessness. It’s not a place I would recommend.

This is too embarrassing to speak about, but speak about it I must. It’s too unfunny not to speak about it. So maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I won’t. There’s certainly no shame in that. Lots of shame everywhere else. When you wake up in the morning and realize you have gained shame from the previous day, and the day before that, and the weight of the shame leads you to hate yourself … I can’t think of any self-help books that would tell you that it is healthy to begin the day with a proper amount of self-hatred and shame. And I don’t think it would be healthy for me to write one.

Maybe I won’t

But actually, if I was able to write a book, period, even a self-help guide to manifesting shame … not that I nor anyone would or should write such a book … but writing a guide to shame and getting it edited, proofread and published … how could I or anyone feel shame about that? Maybe writing an entire guide to shame and publishing it and selling it … how could I or anyone not feel a sense of pride about that. Using the topic of shame as a vehicle for annihilating shame.

Sitting on the train next to a woman talking to herself (or so I thought). I was kind of tuning it out until she started repeating “This boat is so small and the sea is so wide.”

My first thought was that this was the truest thing I’ve heard all week.

And then I was truly astonished to find out that she was reading my mind, verbatim.

“How do you do that … the mind-reading thing? Did you always have this gift? I am truly astonished” I said.

She was born that way, she said, as was her mother, as was her mother’s mother, and mother’s mother’s mother, stretching through mothers of mothers all the way back to biblical times. All the way back to Jochebed, who was both the mother of Moses and wife of Amram who was also her nephew, although she may have been Amram’s father’s cousin according to the Latin manuscript, The Septuagint.

Regardless of whoever Jochebad was, I was so impressed with the telepathic gifts of this woman on the train.

Even when she said, “don’t be too impressed.” She went on to explain that her ability to read other people’s minds was limited to thoughts about large bodies of water.

I said I was still impressed because she could do something I was pretty certain I could not do.

She said, “don’t be so sure.”

That might be true, I thought, but how would I know?

And then I began to recall all of the moments throughout my life when I was trying to express something vital to someone who was not really listening. I just assumed their minds were preoccupied with thoughts of the sea. But I always dismissed that assumption because it’s wrong to assume anything about anyone. No matter how many times your assumptions turn out to be 100% accurate.

“Now you see what I’m talking about,” the woman said, as she stood up and stepped out of the train, which fortunately had come to a stop.

I should have taken it as a red flag during our conversation when we first met when you asked if i had written my eulogy for my very much still alive mother yet. I thought that was rather peculiar, but you thought it was rather peculiar that I had never even considered a eulogy for the living.

Maybe I should have responded with a witty comeback, such as “No, I have not written a eulogy for my mother, but I’ve written the eulogy for YOUR mother.”

Except …

A. I don’t do witty comebacks.

B. Why would I say something like that to anyone?

Which led to wonder if one could write eulogies for a living. I assume such people exist. I’m certain there must be a demand for them. Perhaps you might need a license to do this at the professional level, not just as a side hobby for friends. But while you’re working to obtain a license, there could be a way to practice. You could write a eulogy for a friend in exchange for them helping you move into your new apartment. Perhaps your friend might choose for you to write the eulogy written for them. Perhaps your friend might like some control over what people say at their memorial. Or your friend might prefer you to write a eulogy for whomever your friend is mourning. Or trying to mourn. Mourning when everyone is expecting you to mourn never feels quite natural. Do you know what I’m saying?

Anyway, when you asked why I had not yet written the eulogy for my mother, I did think it was peculiar, but I also thought that maybe it was peculiar that the thought never even entered my head. Like, my head is too caught up in. the narrow little world it has inhabited to think of much else other than myself and my own survival. and about all of the point B’s I am trying to reach from point A and how I will get there. there are so many choices for how one can move from one point to another, it’s a wonder one can move at all.

when have I ever lied to you? or shall I ask when have I ever not lied to you? I have been lying to you for so long and so pervasively, that even the most startling rays of truth would feel like lies. damn lies. lies that deserve to be damned. eternal damnation.

why do I lie to you? to keep the fantasy alive. to keep it buoyant and floating on air. Or bobbing with the current of the sea. the fantasy has to stay alive or else one of us or possibly both of us will cease to exist in material form. To prolong the reality from setting in and destroying everything we have pretended to build for as long as humanly possible. Because if you abandon the fantasy, you abandon me and the one truth I am aware of is that abandonment is not very appealing to either of us. So why should we put ourselves through the ordeal of abandoning the fantasy that is us? It just doesn’t seem worth it.

The best lies are the ones that are so prolonged, they leave precious little time for even a momentary moment of truth, if there is such a thing.

I am playing with words instead of getting to the heart of the matter which is to tell you that I have been lying to you for at least 3 months. Not only that, but leading you on with more and more lies to protect you and shield you from the hurt I anticipate you will feel the very moment I shed light on the truth I have been hiding for well over 3 months. Why am I doing this? Why can’t I stop? What kind of person does this kind of thing and does not stop? You would probably not want to meet that kind of person.

We have such precious little time to meet anyone and here you have invested a large percentile of the precious little time we have left, invested it in exactly the wrong person. this wrong person who has taken away so much of your life, for what exactly?

Perhaps it’s best not to know, Why even ask?

I wish I could be good at things.

A lot of people I know are really good at things.

And there are lots of things they are good at.

Some are good. Some are really good.

I wish I could do something, even one of those things.

But I’m just not very good.

I would not even know how to begin.

I guess I could take a class or lessons.

It wouldn’t even have to be specific. It could be something like “Intro to Goodness Skills.” A survey class aimed at people who have not yet learned anything to be good at.

Some might say I am a good person, although I might not necessarily agree, or I would ask them if they could define their terms.

I guess we could all use some help. Even those who are the most good.

But then again, you could be the most good person on the planet, and still not be good at anything.

I realize that starting from ground zero will be a real challenge.

I’d have to be good at decision making in order to make a decision on what I should aim to be good at.

I guess this means if I were to take that Intro class, my final project would be an analysis of good decision makers, how they came to be good at that. If good decision making was something you inherit, genetically, or something you are trained for behaviorally.

But still that wouldn’t be enough. It would take much than a final project term paper in an Intro class to even begin to get good at something. Even if I got an A.

i was sitting at my computer. it may have been deep within my cubicle at work. it may have been on your balcony overlooking the calm turquoise sea. I was trying to meet a pressing deadline and as the moments passed and the clock was running out, I felt increasing panic over the deadline I was about to miss. And I began to consider the possible consequences of this failed assignment.

Which is when you appeared, serving a platter of assorted cheeses (gouda, white cheddar, swiss, brie, goat, havarti) and crackers (Wheat thins, saltines, Ritz, Triscuit, Goldfish, matzoh). I was so happy to see them and to see you. I could not decide which I was most happy to see. So I said, ‘thank you, but i’m not really in the mood.’ And you said, ‘mood for what?’ And I said, ‘you know, i’m not really sure.’ You walked away. And I found myself staring at the computer again, wondering why and how I managed to do the opposite of expressing the happiness I felt when you appeared. It’s no wonder you stopped being visible.

I returned to working at the computer which was now situated in an alley, in between a few dumpsters. Maybe this is what happens to people who miss deadlines and cannot adequately express themselves. But somehow I felt at peace. It was so quiet here in this alley, except for the low drone of a passing plane, and 1 or 2 birds chirping from somewhere. From where, I wasn’t sure, because there were no trees in sight. And I thought about birds and planes and I started to type a list of all of the creatures and objects I could think of that had wings.

I continued adding to this list for what seemed like many hours, until dusk settled in and the moon began to rise. I started to feel a bit more at peace about my work situation, knowing that my managers, the people who manage me, might accept my list as the completion of the project. And I had not missed the deadline after all. And I started to think it might be OK to die here, at this place, in this moment.