the lost and found

There is a peculiar kind of love I have for Christmas. A kind of unconditional, peculiar love not applicable to my parents nor of or for the usual benign gift-wrapped associations of which accompanies the holiday. It blooms from my belief of it’s being the only time of year reprieve from moral abjection is granted to the City of Angels. Los fucking Angeles.

Among the fertile, fecundate shit, piss and squalor on the gray city sidewalks, the laughter of children is the sole constituent that could resuscitate the earth’s earnest, human altruism. At the least, be the foremost leap towards it’s ideology. Pershing Square at Christmas time must be the expectant epicenter because it is the only place within Downtown L.A. safe enough for a congregation of cheerful children.

By children, I refer not only to the short, pedantic, underdeveloped, revokees of roller-coaster access, chilli-drens, but also their taller, geriatric, intellectually regressive, one-night-standing-around-without-a-clue, a-dull-ts. Young, old, and in-betweens will find no segregation of brand-name decades there because there, and only there, we are all the children of our epoch. Malice is granted no quarter and offered no solace there. Of course, house-rules always answer to chance. Fortunately, the worst thing that can happen here would a few bruised cheeks of asses. The ice should help! Maybe a sprained ankle if you forgot to pack sensibility in your lunch.

No one was capable of disappointment, depression, or discontent. Supervised liberty. Like that time you didn’t make a big thing of telling your parents of the first friend you’d made at school, or the night you couldn’t sleep because of a scary movie you were told not to watch but did anyway because it was your first co-ed sleepover, or the way you were rude to some kid you liked being around for inexplicable reasons but later realized the kid was your first playground crush. -Every kid was rich with wonder and uncertainty. A magic trick I don’t know the trick to! Every person, essentially kids, on that ice rink reached into their private accounts. And hidden in the safety deposit box of a soul was that shiny, tiny bit of visceral vigor of youth they’d presumed washed away with the deluge of adulthood.

There on that frosted Los Angeles ice-rink, nestles the fleeting innocence of which we were all once wealthy with. Pershing Square, the lost and found.

Vater O! Vater

It was the chore itself of having to live with him that dejected me. Or rather, having to acknowledge his existence as a father figure. Only illustrations of the valiance in his youth embroidered as stories into my mind by my mother. That drawing itself may have been a premeditated aggrandizement because I saw no resemblance between the picture and the man. Fathers. It wasn’t as though he were scurrilous or mentally bedeviling during my nascence, he simply had no ballot in the matter. However, the symbolism of his being was indispensable to my own fruition.

It’s a befuddling effort to embrace the long lost father theory (rather, a cliché) that our regressive pop-culture had imbued into our minimum-wage consciences. To apply anything less than an immaculate, spiritual pregnancy to a fathers role was trite to the point of atrociousness. Nonetheless, the emancipation from fathers, just as well mothers for that matter, had always been the resolve of our mandatory youth, and taking with you the modifications they’ve bequeathed into your days of development despite delinquencies. A father could be there and not be there. The attendance of flesh merited much less than the attendance of meaning.

Only when one becomes free of that patriarchal despotism could one learn to appreciate ones own life and tip them 15%.

I did not feel the least bit bereaved at his passing. I wasn’t despondent nor somber. Deflected the phosphorescent blue blasts of melancholy and found the imagination and courage to accept his affect on me. Peace comes from being, not having as Miller said. And his unorthodox portraiture will live on inside me with a four star Yelp review.

“He was more to be envied than pitied, for his sleep was not a lull or an interval but sleep itself which is the deep and hence sleeping ever deepening , deeper and deeper in sleep sleeping, the sleep of the deep in deepest sleep, at the nethermost depth full slept, the deepest and sleepest sleep of sleep’s sweet sleep. He was asleep. He is asleep. He will be asleep. Sleep. Sleep. Father, sleep, I beg you, for we who are awake are boiling in horror.”

-Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller

poetry

I have never liked poetry.

period.

Don’t misunderstand.

intro to alexandrian condor

The reason Coral meant something, the only reason, was because she wasn’t supposed to be real. She was the modern embodiment of the poetry in prose that was so very absent today. It was strange. She was the last guiding light of art in the universe. And I couldn’t touch her for an atrocious reason. It’s brilliant. She was the light I always wrote alongside my words that contradicted and condescended the darkness I saw constantly and consistently. She was not supposed to exist. She wasn’t supposed to be real magic. “She” means I’m real too, and I never wanted that. Coral was fact, rationalism, logic, art, thought, ideas, presumptions; eclipsed into a straight line, and extended just outside of my arms reach. As all dreams should. Otherwise, what the fuck else was heaven supposed to mean.

Commitments

The thing about commitment is that a commitment is a commitment. It does not have an expiration date. Brushing your teeth every morning with your wife or husband for 30 years is a commitment. People who avoid a big commitment are the only ones who know how big a thing a commitment really is.

People talk behind people’s backs in A flat. If I didn’t speak to you condescendingly, it my give you the false impression of my having any respect for you. At least I care enough to talk about you.

Why, hello! I’m Mr. I-had-no-friends-growing-up-so-I-only-watched-t.v.-and-can-now-make-countless-pop-culture-references-that-makes-no-sense-to-anyone-else-but-me. You must be Ms. Commitment.

We need to arrive at a strange detente because we’re like two dogs circling each other at the park about to bite each others eyeballs out. Now, I say that with all the love in the world. Wait, didn’t I share half a pastrami sandwich with you in the back of the washroom at a truckstop in Bakersfield? No? Man, it would have been really funny if you said yes. Two answers and you pick the unfunny one. I’m being childish and not taking this seriously? Why do people say that with such pleasure? I have feelings, you know. Hold on, I gotta take a dump real quick.

Done. My large colon took your lunch from the lounge. I’m was in the bathroom negotiating it’s release.

Someone considered too nice, is considered a naïve idiot. Dostoyevsky said this. Voltaire said this in Candide. Demonstratus! (I wrote in Latin because I don’t hide how much of an ass I am when I’m writing). People call nice people, idiots, because they remind them so much of who they aren’t. Like a flu. And before they know it, that person has made them a better person. No, I don’t want to have sex right now, I’m in the middle of a dumb idea. Mel Gibson movies aren’t going to get me into the mood! Where’d you study?! Do I love you? I love parts of you, but we’re getting closer. I’m an idiot? I’m not disagreeing. But don’t blame me for being vulgar, and having naughty fantasies… blame my gender!

They’ll probably make a statue of you one day, but probably with your pants pulled down and a giant Kick Me sign taped onto your back. Hold on, I need to tell my editor something. “So the rabbit goes aroooound the tree in a loop, theeeeen it goes down the hole.” Okay, where was I? Again, two answers and you’re choosing to be dull. I’m being childish again?! Okay, okay. It’s bargaining if you want something isn’t it? It’s begging if you know you’ve nothing to sweeten the pot with. This kind of thinking killed our lord. At least once.

Life is scary, and dangerous and complicated and going down like a plane. Hope is for sissies. I’m going to ignore you now because you make me sad… you lesbian! Well, I know you’re bisexual, I was just rounding up, Ms. Commitment. Am I kidding, you ask? If I was kidding, I’d be dressed like you. Wait, are those… Givenchy’s? Nice. Did you know hallucinating is the way for the brain to work out a messed up problem…. and that your brain is bleeding. That’s what happens when a bus hits you, when I say bus, I mean a passive aggressive commitment keeper.

huzaaaaaaaahh

I’m sure the way I was maimed from childhood was no worse than your getting raped. My parents traveled a lot when I was growing up. They’d leave me with grandma. Oma, I called her. Dutch for grandmother. Too terrified to screw up when she was around. I couldn’t screw up because I was too scared to sleep in the yard or take a bath in ice. I kept calling her Oma because it would arise suspicion had I not. Plus she was still my grandma, and still Dutch. This story is true. Maybe not for me, but for someone it is.

 

What happened to you may have been horrendous, but you can’t base the rest of your life on it. You can base your moment on it, but that’s because that’s what life is. It’s a series of waiting rooms, and who we got stuck in a room with adds up to what our lives are. Now, you’ve found out you’re pregnant and want to keep a rape baby. Are you more or less “not okay” than you were 5 minutes ago? Probably not. If you want to talk to me, talk to me. Don’t quote me bumper stickers. The problems with exceptions to rules is the line drawing. It might make sense to the asshole that did this to you, but where do we draw the line? Which asses do we get to kill? Which asses get to keep on being asses? The nice thing about abortion debate is we can quibble over trimesters, but ultimately there’s a nice clean line; birth. Morally, there isn’t much difference. But practically, there’s a huge difference. I can’t have a normal conversation about dumb shit like our favorite music or t.v. shows, but this kind of conversation, I do best. And hate the most. With personal subjects, there aren’t any answers, only opinions. In the end, you don’t care about it, and I sure as hell don’t either.

 

People can do good things, but their instincts are crap. When we’re left with our own devices, we make dumb descisions. Either god doesn’t exist or he’s unimaginably cruel. Like, God doesn’t exist and he let you get raped and is letting you carry a rape baby. Maybe he’s testing you. What kind of grade does everyone else get? Do they get the same test? What you believe doesn’t make too much sense. If you believe in eternity, then life is irrelevant. If I don’t believe in eternity, then what I do to make this world a better place doesn’t matter either.

 

My beliefs lead to no ultimate consequence, and nothing matters because of it. Is it a comfort? Or does the moment mean much more to me than it does you? (that isn’t really my belief either. Then again, neither is the former, think about that.)

 

I don’t care about the answers to your questions, but I’ll give them. But I would much rather ask why you’re asking questions. Because the answers you’re looking for, will never change. They will never be definite. But your motives for wanting to ask certain questions, tells me everything. The story about my grandma was true. It wasn’t my grandma, but it was true. It was my dad. But that really doesn’t mean anything. I’m who I am because of it. Without having to base the rest of my life according to the moments I was in the room with him.

 

I know my answers aren’t what you’re looking for. But you know how I would answer. Knew I would answer. And socially, I’m required to say something to help you. Except I can’t. No one can. We’ll drag out your story, tell ourselves it’ll help you heal and then feel good about ourselves. But in the end, all we’ve really done is make a girl cry. Today will never suck anymore than it did yesterday.

 

Doing things; changes things. Not doing things; leaves things exactly the way they are. Time changes nothing. We’re all base animals that crawl along the earth, and sometimes, just sometimes, we aspire to do something that is less than pure evil, and extrapolate to all of humanity. We need reasons, everything has reasons, and the one thing our reasons have in common, are that they’re stupid. All the time. Well, most of all the time.

Just a fucking room.

I can’t give up this room. It may mean nothing to you, but it’s more than just a fucking room to me. The apartment is under my name. The gas bill is under my name. The electricity bill is under my name. Location, city, neighborhood; I worked my fucking ass off to find this apartment. I sacrificed a fucking lot to get this apartment, lost a lot of fucking things (not superficialities) to get this room. Including my goddamn mind. I’ve almost lost my life trying to keep the place. My room is still just a goddamn room to you all. It IS NOT just a fucking room to me. It is a symbol. It has been leased to me under a new life. A life after the desolate one ravaged and pillaged the soul I had. That is why I have two names. I have died once before, and this apartment, this room, is that life’s epitaph. It is not just a room.

 

They’ve promised my room away to some person I’ve never met before, (we’ll shed some light on this person in a moment), what little soul I had left, I laugh condescendingly, but was a drop in the bucket to their laugh. Let me give you a tour of the boat. The Ship! There is a room downstairs, the only room downstairs, the hazing room. We judge and size the new roommates down here, and it is a place where the newcomers move into. They prove themselves here. We discover how narrow their souls are, and we have discovered plenty o’narrow ones, and are okay with letting them stay here. That’s the kind of place we are, everyone deserved a chance. It is not just a room.

 

There are three rooms upstairs. J has a room upstairs. J‘s name has been added on the lease, next to mine, and R‘s. R drifted away into oblivion, lost at sea, mourned his own existence in the process. I, myself, was apart of the original crew. Plank Ownership, is what they call it, and I have never once exercised my right as owner. Never. Not fucking once.

 

M moved in after R‘s replacement moved in, and bunked together. The captain’s room. I never had a desire to be in the captain’s room. The largest room. Still don’t. It isn’t just a room. It simply isn’t my room. Then the replacement moved away, leaving M in there, and out of simplicity’s sake, she was allowed to keep it. I can’t speak for the other members of the ship, but I didn’t consider that room as just a room. I liked M, she needed a place to go, I was in the position to help her, the jigsaw pieces fell into place. Exuding cordial hospitality, was an understatement in how she was welcomed.

 

Then there was my room. Not just a fucking room. This was mine. My space. My face. My castle tower. My dungeon. My escape. My resolve. My room. My fucking room. I am sitting in the living room writing this, because I am, now, living there. T was moving out, and I teetered from moving onto the streets, New fucking York, and staying. Of mutiny, as mutinies go, the newest member, in the captain’s quarters, had promised an upstairs room away. Not my room. Not my fucking room, I begged and pleaded. A scornful gale of ferocious gall battered me, telling me my begging and pleading (be mindful of my having being whimsical the entire time) was manipulative. NO QUARTER for ye who holds plank ownership! Thy doth do drugs and listen to the same three songs anyway! But I rebut, I haven’t been able to afford any drugs! But mine medication doth none of thine concern! My room. My fucking room, had been deemed just a fucking room to them.

 

It mattered naught who took ownership of my room. The only, the only, time I had asked for anything of the crew, was shot down in a mammoth hail of cannon-fire. I was ordered (via text) to strip my life and badges off the walls. My walls. Ingrateful scaliwags! I shouted inside my mind. But I had no strength to shout it aloud. I never do. I had spent the last month living off bananas, always fucking bananas, to work my ass off to find a new living, to stay out of New fucking York, my ass was worked off of it. Again Contemporary jazz bands! Kicked out of my own band! The gales of Santa Ana were quite rough that evening, so rough, my vestigial snakeskin balls had to take cover. My room had become just a room, and the beast rests in the lobby of purgatory. A petition was signed! They shout. I chose never to register as a voter, was never overbearing enough, gall was too much work, not like a kitten, not how I was raised, and my father’s funeral occupied my plans of the weekend, but I voted not to go to that either. Spare my snakeskin bits. They chant, it’s just a fucking room!

Life is a series of fucking rooms. Who you get stuck in those rooms with add up to who you are.