"Barely optimistic like I'm only one run up /
Smith and Wesson in a vessel--that's a gunship"
---Greek Proverb
This is a hectic account of perhaps nothing that occurred to me--to my insides--on April 3rd 2012. Sometimes it's too hard to approach the subject head on. It's like a bus hitting a deer. The deer's dead. The impact was large. The bus is damaged maybe but it keeps going. Can we reflect on that singular moment; the deer crouched beforehand on the shoulder, its eyes darting, it ventures across the road in an angular path, thinking in its deer way of fresh green shoots; bus approaching; a whiff of cement all-around; deer frozen; adaptive failure; "adaptive management," lingered a term on the lips of some academics around the nation, on their minds, even in this instance; woodsheds; fragmentation of habitat and skein; and the impact---the deer dead, the bus stops, the children not-even-shrieking thinking ??? (besides “!!!” and “[toys]”).
Rivalries dashed to smithereens. Sardines, maybe, (obviously) studies suggest, shouldn't be eaten so much. Leave some fish for the (other) fish to eat.
Others obviously. Others, is what it’s all about. (Sort of.)
Sort of not really, kind of okay, doing fine thanks how are you, just another day, another peg, another Whiteboard Calendar Day X’ed out like my old girlfriend Jess did, before telling her parents about it, who were to their credit horrified. She quit doing that but never quit worrying—and by God, it will take her to the top. You’ll never find a peaceful man there in the upper echelons, I swear. You’ll never find a peaceful woman
This is a hectic account of nothing in particular that didn't happen. A gross man in Bangladesh offered up a sordid account of his status as a man in the world in 2012, even in April, maybe monsoon season. "This is not what he said," he said. "I'm thinking now. I'm fat, unlike many of my countrymen, and the goddam sea---it just keeps rising. Change? I think so--and no thank you. Climate? Change? I don't know what carbon dioxide is. I couldn't be asked to understand it. It isn't visceral or real to me. All I know is a flame gets brighter and hotter when I blow on it. This gas that makes me live makes the flame dance, but not too much. That makes the dance end. Not too hot, not too cold. Also maybe medium isn't okay, but who's pinching your shayna punim now? Is there a significant Jewish population in Bangladesh?"
Academic queries drop like tears from his eyes; an irate pirate cutting onions on a gunship. Facing a court martial (& impartial, God knows) in an unknown country that couldn’t possible let this piracy happen without some ulterior motive. (Seriously.) Throughout history pirates have never been a huge problem in highly trafficked, well-defended shipping routes, like the Gulf of Aden, one of the busiest in the world. We’re using it as a pretext for more military presence in the area. At least that’s my assertion. (Compare historical pirates in remote, poorly defended backwaters, like in the Caribbean or Barbary (Tunisia)).
That aside (“to the left, to the left / all your things in the box to the left”) there are as usual more questions than answers but such is life. God has the answers. People have the questions. So excuse me while I'm walking around all: "???" I'm a human after all, with a child inside, let's please assassinate the concept of an "inner child" while indeed reveling--nay, worshipping?--the idea that we are still obviously products of those eager young children we see on the streets & buses everyday, (we were them, I’m saying) brimming with subjectivity & boredom & hunger & inquisitions & curiosity & questions questions questions. A need to run around, be embodied animals, maybe run into each other--little kids need a few scrapes now and then--throw objects, chase skirts, don skirts, talk about skirts, look up skirts, prevent people from looking up skirts, giggle, be ashamed, be made to feel guilty, be made to feel free--what a concept--made to feel alive. The last is not necessary for little children are nothing if not alive and being alive is being unafraid of constant questions & wonder & a lack of anchored rules about how to act.
Be made, or make yourself.
So much for avoiding head-on: girls I've dated have routinely said I act like a child, "You're such a little boy," to which I respond about how not all of me is little, even so showing that childlike grossness & wonder for bodies & sizes & situations that are strange, strange, normal. Strange--the new normal--the new word for what? These words don't make sense & never have. Normative tingles of strange headiness. Those are really my lips? I thought just a few hours ago looking in the mirror. Maybe I should meditate more. I don't mainly because I fear it.
(Elaborate? No thanks, except: the dream of carrying an awful mat, beholding strangers bodies (excitement, disgust, embarrassment), being TOO aware of my own, & my breathing. As it is I’m happy when I can carry on WITHOUT thinking about respiration.)
Confessions, confessions again. Still somewhere a Catholic youth. Made to feel guilty--and I bought it. Maybe it'd have happened anyway; probably, though that's impossible to say.
A gulf of impossibility when confronting the counterfactual---is anybody else confounded by this problem?
People everyday & of every color & intellect say things like, "If I only…" "I wish I could have" "What if" etc. Each day, I too. I want to rewind, rewind, rewind. Will I ever reach a sandbar where I can say: I have used my day as well as possible, urgently living and unafraid and lacking regret completely.
I know that I hope so.
What would I dream about then? Dreams would be sugar candies & flying without the continual current fear--when flight comes to me in slumbered fancies--of falling, not flapping my arms right, not being able to overcome some physical limitation… but all my limitations now are mental, it seems, all mental, mental. I can do things with my body. This is of course good—I am not disabled, I am not injured, etc. (Pause to be thankful. I don't care who you are--it's important.)
Outside the sun shines nicely & warmly like a stranger’s backpack warning you about his political preferences. Does this please? Don't wait.
I live in China. Don't belong here. Fine with me: I've never felt I belong. Any place.
Outside sun & a man driving a forklift back & forth. A massage parlor with a gregarious limpid sultry TV screen of hands kneading a back, or impeccable feet. It took me nearly a year to actually pay attention to this site and realize what it was--previously I had thought it was a TV with sports on, a sport I couldn't really make out since it was so far away, & I thought the establishment was a sportsbar. But I never connected the dots--if I had (oh great fallacy, hello) I would have said: "I am going to go there."
Funny how something so familiar, glanced at daily, was never really CONSIDERED fully, I did not GLEAN WHAT IT WAS. And then one moment I looked more carefully. AHA. With exclamation. I thought. A massage parlor. Later I went there after drinking and asked if they gave "full body massages." They could tell what I was; I left with a business card and met some New Zealand girls at a bar. This was a Thursday in maybe February.
Now it’s a Tuesday definitely in newborn April and I’m not doing the work that I have told myself I would. Except this.
