Electrical Storm

Dangerous Beauty
photo by hugsRgood.

I was thinking of Rachel the other night, and that time we lived Eau Claire, Wisconsin. We were out for a walk when a lightning storm blew into town. Lightning bolts cracked only a few blocks away from us. I wanted to turn back to the house, but she wanted to walk straight into the storm. On her face, I could see excitement and fearlessness. In an open flat field, walking towards an iron train bridge, the rational side of me told her this was nuts. She said not everything is rational. I made her come home. She hated me for it, and I think I fell in her estimation that day. I wonder now what we would have found in the storm. What was it that I was too timid to experience? Something makes me think of how women have this spiritual connection to nature, and how she knew something I did not, and it was beyond explanation. I now wish I had had the courage to follow her down into the field towards the railroad bridge, into a ring of lightning strikes, like Orpheus and Eurydice walking down into the realm of the dead. What would we have found in the middle of the storm? I probably would have just been electrocuted. Maybe that was her intention all along.

Treading Water

I thought I would be able to handle growing old because my memories of childhood would always be there, and every detail could be recalled to take me back to the exact moment. But all of that was a lie; it was a hell of a long time ago, and the details grow fuzzy until they eventually disappear. I wonder if science will find a way to help me replay the exact events, along with the sounds and smells. I have faith that every detail is filed away somewhere deep in my brain, and that those buried events determine how I behave (or misbehave) today. If I could only tap into it. If I could only break free of my ignorance, ignore the distraction of my surroundings so that I could sharpen these sentiments of the past, skipping school, stumbling drunk down suburban streets on my first few cans of beer, hot humid days on the lake, treading water around the raft where my friend’s sister floated, golden, languid, unreachable. What did she say? Did I hold her hand when we climbed out of the water? Or is she still floating out on the raft somewhere in my brain, and I am treading water in endless circles around her?

Deathbed Lists

I’m reading a book called “Second Innocence”, that helps us regain that sense of wonder and joy that we experienced as a child. One passage describes how, when people get diagnosed with an illness, they think of all the things they wished they had done. If I was sitting in a hospital bed tomorrow and reflecting on the life I wished I had led, what would my answers be to these questions?

What do you regret not doing because of fear?
Having a wife and two kids. I’m afraid of losing my freedom to do what I want. If I had a wife and two kids, my response would have been to stay single, explore writing, and live in a condo in downtown Minneapolis.

What do you wish you had put more time and energy into?
My relationships with friends, family, and significant others.

What do you wish you had put a lot less time and energy into?
Work. I throw all of my energy and focus into work, and I know when I retire or quit, it’s like, “What was it all for?”

What was always on your someday list that you now wish you had done?
Learning to play guitar or piano. Joining a writers group at the Loft. Going camping and fishing. Buying a boat and a motorcycle. Own a small tea shop.

As you think about your daily experience of life, what qualities do you wish there were more of and what qualities do you wish there were less of (more time for self, more community, more kindness. . .)?
More quiet time, more calm, more laughter, more energy, more reading. Less chores, less worrying, less self-criticism, less tv.

What is your deepest regret in terms of the type of person you never became (a kind person, a generous person, a courageous person…)?
A self-confident person, a self-disciplined person, a more honest person (in terms of I say and do what people want from me, rather than what I really feel).

If I had more time or energy, I would love to learn to . . .
play guitar or piano, other languages, cooking and baking, lucid dreaming, meditation.

A Thousand Monkeys

An infinite number of monkeys...,
Photo by olivander.

He lives alone, in a familiar filth that he wraps around himself like an old blanket for comfort. He dodges sleep throughout the night, until the brain breaks free of its moorings. The room fills with strangers, after-bar deviants, Bukowski bred and mulled in cheap red wine. The sloppy kiss of a butcher girl, the sullen slut, the prostitute drunk on bourbon, stumbling through Jackson Square, skipping on stars, throwing bottle caps at the boys tap dancing in their sneakers for money across the broken cobblestones of the river walk. The late night started to take its toll and he yawned until nearly passing out, and slipped into a ditch of dreamless sleep. He woke up in a cold library at three am, books jeering from their shelves. Seated at the long oak tables of the reference section, a thousand monkeys crouched over typewriters, tapping at the keys. The floor was littered with tomorrow’s books. The room stank. He picked up a few of the pages, scraped away the monkey shit, and began reading. It went something like this . . .

The Only Thing that is Real

Fishy Corona,
Photo by olivander.

The act of writing is the beginning; it does not matter if the writing is good. You first write from the heart, and then edit with the brain. You write without rereading, you write without thinking of the fantasy of your team of editors, your publicist, the public readings, the interviews attempting to pierce the veil of your brilliance. Forget the invitations to read at colleges and the likelihood that these very words will be the ones to seduce some young college thing into bed with you. None of that matters, none of that is real. The only thing that is real is this moment, this sublime isolation in which you can uncover emotions you didn’t know you had, recreate a sensation from the past with just the right words, then twist the truth into a shape perhaps more real than the one you had to begin with.

World Stage

Dylan
photo by mr_la_rue.

I have visions of my neighbors busting down the door and bashing my head in with baseball bats because I laugh too loudly while watching documentaries with the headphones on. The last one was “No Direction Home”, about Bob Dylan. Was it supposed to be funny? I hope so. Afterwards I go into the den and strum my guitar and do my best impression of a folk singer. What wonderful concerts I performed to an audience of books and lamps.

Why does Bob Dylan get press conferences about his opinions when he is only in the public forum because he knows how to strum a guitar, and some would day, sing? Why not invite the anonymous history major to share his message to mobilize a generation? But I cannot deny that Bob’s lyrics of the past flashed like lightning and blinded me. I almost prefer to hear someone else cover his songs, like an old gospel singer, because Bob sounds like he is parodying himself. I cannot hear the lyrics because Bob is in the way.

Come Forward

powerball
photo by rwhite..

She left without so much as a word. He tore apart the kitchen looking for a note—isn’t that where women always left their notes in the movies—and then went to the bedroom to collapse in exhaustion and found the note, resting on his pillow. All that the note said was “I’m leaving you.” No shit, he thought. But why? Sure, in no way could someone say this was marital bliss, but we had our good times, didn’t we? You liked when I made fun of actors during movies, or at least you laughed. Some of the time. I know you hated how my spoon scraped the cereal bowl, and how I couldn’t stay on a television channel for more than five minutes, and how I had to buy a Powerball ticket every weekend. You always thought that was my ticket for escape. It was, baby, but not from you. It was our ticket out of this neighborhood with its crack house and thumper cars. It was our ticket out of our jobs, so I could go into the Garage and tell the foreman to go fuck himself, and so you could tell the school that you were done dishing food onto the plates of all those thankless delinquents.

That’s when he realized: the last Powerball ticket was not on the nightstand, where he usually kept them.

Later that evening he heard on the news that the winning ticket had been sold from his home town, from the convenience store that he always bought his ticket from, but the winner had not yet come forward.