Here we are lying in bed on a cold dreary afternoon in a bungalow somewhere near south side of St. Louis, recovering from a voluminous brunch at the Southwest Diner.
I had the Medio breakfast.
You had the grande.
It was quite something, although I may be alone in that opinion.
The coffee was exceptional.
I dreamt that Laurie Anderson was singing one of my songs (entitled “63”). She sounded surprisingly bad at it, while I was expecting the song was perfect for her. At one point, she seemed to be mocking the lyrics. And I thought, “how disappointing.” Perhaps the dream reflected my own disappointment when I looked at a few pieces of my writing from last year … writing that I thought might have potential to transform into something else. But the writing was so flat and monotonous. I had higher hopes that are now dashed.
Perhaps my writing has become a good practice for typing. Nothing more. Nothing less. And if I could not type, I could not work. And if I cannot work, destitution awaits. If destitution awaits, I should not fear it, but embrace it. And then politely walk away.
12 seconds, I am guessing that this is the amount of time I have spent today thinking of someone other than myself. Or myself in relation to you. But always back to me. With no variation.
This amounts to 86,388 seconds of me thinking solely of me (or me in relation to you) each day.
Yet, I cannot find 1 out of those 86,388 seconds that was inspired, inspiring, productive, fruitful, thoughtful, creative, fulfilling.
Just about all of those seconds were quite forgettable, or at least non-memorable. The one thing I do remember doing quite a bit of, a large proportion of … summoning. Waiting for you to call. Waiting for an encouraging word, waiting for you to think of me as often and as closely and as longingly as I think of you. The you those 86,388 seconds accumulate to imagine.
But imagining you is a poor substitute for summoning you, which I seem incapable of doing. So instead there is waiting.
Each time they call, I convince myself beforehand that this will be The Call. This will be The Call where they tell me that they think we should end it. Whatever it is. The thing that needs an ending. I am almost certain of it.
And each time they call, I am shocked. Utterly shocked when what I expect them to say is not said. That the ending I expect is not how the call ends. I’m not sure how I would describe how the call ends, except that it lacks an ending.
But it could happen the next time. At least, I was given the chance to live to see a next time.
“Hi, how are you doing?,” she said as she passed me on the sidewalk. “Great!,” I said. And then she said, “I’m back!.” “Great!,” I said, even though I did not know where she was back from because I had never seen her before in my life. And then she was gone.
How long does it take to redeem yourself from transgressions of sensitivity and tact? I fear I have crossed the line again with this new person in my life. I thought we were doing so well until she told me we were not.
Which made me feel sad and self-conscious. And when I am sad and self-conscious, I behave like a sad and self-conscious person. And then I am not fun to be around. Not very smart or witty or entertaining. Not on top of things at all. Rather, at the bottom. Why would anyone be interested in being with someone like that?
So how does one get back to the top? How does one prove they can be the person they would like the other person to see them as? The true me. The me that doesn’t feel self-conscious. The me that doesn’t feel like it has to prove anything. The me that does not try to win anyone over.
Because I think the only way to win someone over is to stop trying to win them over. Just be.
Why does that feel impossible?
Today I caught under a deluge. I’m referring to rain.
But then there’s that other deluge I am caught under.
One deluge ended.
The other did not.
The deluge was so intense, driving through it with the visibility of a car in a carwash. I’m referring to the rain.
The non-rain deluge was even heavier and I was almost crushed under its weight, especially as it pressed against my heart. It nearly did me in.,
It might still do me in.
Hi. I just called to say ‘hello.’ You know I think of you all of the time. And even if I had more time, I would most likely not stop thinking of you. There isn’t a moment that goes by these days without your shadow behind me, your halo hovering above me. But no amount of shadows or halos will be enough to fill this hole, this gaping hole where your presence once dwelled.
But no matter how much I think of you has no correlation or influence upon whether or not you are even thinking of me at all. And if you are, perhaps the equivalent of a Facebook ‘like.’ And not much more than that. I hate to think about it. Why can’t you just be here? It doesn’t seem fair.
But I should not complain. My house is not on fire. My city is not on fire. My air conditioning works. The streets are not flooding. The heat is semi-tolerable. I am gainfully employed. Why doesn’t any of that distract me from these thoughts of you.
If I keep typing, perhaps I can will you into existence. I can summon you with each vowel and consonant. I am trying. Perhaps I am trying too hard. Maybe that’s how I got into trouble in the first place.
such a fool I was
such a foolishy foolish fool
I often wonder just how many minutes I have not spent as a fool
Or The Fool
A fool such as I
Even now, as I imagine someone reading these words, I feel particularly foolish
And it’s not anything I can explain
It’s not anything I even feel like explaining
It just is
That’s how it just is
It’s not as if I can’t help it. Whatever ‘it’ is. I’ve never been particularly helpful to ‘it’
It doesn’t think it matters. But I tell it it matters. It matters a lot. To me it matters a great deal. I try to tell it to it al. of the time. But it seems like it never listens.
It has grown tiresome to me.
My therapist is curious to know why I never know what to say in therapy, except to say that I don’t know what to say. She doesn’t seem to think it is a problem. Or doesn’t seem to understand why I would say it is a problem. So maybe it isn’t such a problem. There are so many other problems, some of which exist, some of which do not.
These are the final days before I hopefully reach immunity from covid. And of course I thought I’d pay homage to it by having yet one final psychosomatic (hopefully) bout of the virus. My throat hurts. I have waves, dense thick, unwieldy, inconvenient waves of utter fatigue. Hopefully this will be the end of it. And I am so grateful to have survived. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it. The post-survival part of life.
It really has been a spiritual vacuum, especially these past few months where I am so trapped in my own head, that I often forget to gaze out the window, the physical and metaphorical window. At dusk, I saw the sun pouring down over a rooftop across the street in a warm orange’ish glow. It was a nice reminder that there is a sky and a universe. They still exist. They have not forgotten how to exist. They have no need for an existence therapist. An Existologist.
I, on the other hand, would prefer to be an existologist, rather than a librarian. Maybe it’s not too late. It feels like I am almost too late for everything.
Time was running out of us. Or as one of us said, there was no time to lose.
We were trying to beat the traffic. We could feel it coming for us. The traffic.
I said what’s the hurry? And everyone else said have you looked at the clock lately? I said “clocks don’t tell the whole story.”
The story that began the day an angry god condemned us to wander the sky for 40 days and 40 nights.
What could we have done to deserve this?
Someone said, it wasn’t a matter of what we did. It was a matter of how we did it.
If only we could have done it differently. Whatever it was.
You never write to me anymore.
I write to you all of the time. But I forget to type it out. And then I forget to send you what I forget to type.
That sounds complicated.
It is SO complicated. I wouldn’t even know where to start.
Who says you have to start anywhere?
I don’t know. But somebody said it.
Whoever it was probably didn’t know what they were talking about. I say that with all due respect.
With all due respect. Isn’t everyone due respect in some form or another.
I would hope so.
I will cling to that hope.
Like you have never clung before.
if only I could
feel something, I might know I
am not dead inside
Have you ever fallen in love with a licensed social worker who you then tried to impress and eventually win over by helping her diagnose and then treat her most difficult clients?
If so, how did that work for you?
If not, what steps could you have taken that would lead to that outcome with the next licensed social worker who captures your infatuation?
Or what would have happened if this licensed social worker happened to be your therapist? Would that put a damper on your passions? Or would that only amplify them to such a degree that you had no choice, but to confess and open yourself up for censure and possible abandonment?
I am not sure why I am thinking about these questions since they clearly have nothing to do with anything in my life. I don’t even know any licensed social workers.
Things I have forgotten ..
How to write
When to write
Who to write to
Where I fit in, in the larger scheme of things
What the larger scheme of things appears to be
How to jump into things without fear of the consequences of my decisions
What color eyes she has
Why I can’t sleep
How much sleep I am not getting
The last time I had an erotic dream
The first thing we said to each other
A/nd what we said after that
If it will stop raining
How to stop time
If I can replenish the years I have lost
What would happen if I can’t
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The Lost Pedestrian 