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| Friday, October 27th, 2006 | | 2:06 pm |
I really did find something to say finally, it'll come up this weekend. Two people may care? | | Monday, October 9th, 2006 | | 10:50 pm |
I'm not dead, am thinking of something good to say. Should be within the next couple of days. | | Thursday, September 7th, 2006 | | 12:11 am |
The prositutes -- are beautiful in Berlin.
You'll see them standing on seveal rows of streets in the city, dressed in sleek white jackets, waists wrapped in tight girdles.
Most nights they'll be upon sidewalks along the cafes, and they may smile or say hello as you pass, or they might be busy with a group of men-
-men on restless business, as eager tourists, or just in loneliness.
In the past few months I have heard it said, respectively, that life is a crisis, and a carnival.
If any place could be said to be the same way, this is it.
And if it could be said that living here is a glimpse of a real world;
I've seen some of it in its messy, spilled paint scuff marked dirty lonely candy tapped carnival and crisis-ness.
If the things I write in these past pages have a pattern of glibness, pessimism- that's entirely a coincidence. I realize I am lucky, and I know that it is much easier to sit at a computer in a comfortable room and write on a world little known to me- than it is to actually play in the carnival, to try to solve the crisis.
I just ask that you bare with me. I could use these pages to tell you about the dumb little things that happen to me during days, but that's boring shit, to tell you the truth.
So here in a city built upon a swamp with 3.7 million struggling people- you'll see both a gaudy flash of the carnival and an ugly glint of the crisis. It's been said Berlin has a youth culture- and you'll see it in the groups of young men and women in funny hats with tiny dogs floating down corners and across streets and drinking beer, wine, and old dreams of the great women and men in the many many books I'm sure they've read.
And they'll yawn with the mouth that always spouts best and most beautiful intentions for the world, cover the mouth with the hand that's produced the many many works of art I'm sure they've erected.
And they'll sit back in a wicker chair with the prostitutes standing on the sidewalk beyond selling sticky candy in this, most outrageous carnival.
And the young eyes of these people- in the morning they'll roll over and past the faces of the many many men and women I'm sure are struggling and tired in a city called Berlin.
A woman plays accordian above a tiny cup on the bridge beneath the train station every morning and every day- that glass is always empty, and I've passed back and back at different times to try to see some change in the cup.
Berlin was split by a thick wall for many years, if you'll remember.
I ate lunch with the woman I'm living with, a woman who willed to spend every year of her life in East Berlin.
I swallow. "May I, may I ask-- what you thought, when the wall came down?"
She takes a gentle sip of wine, says, "I want it BACK."
If you thought walls in people's hearts and minds in a city, any city, could come down with a wish, that a cold crisis could end in a perfect warm melt- I wouldn't know what to say to you.
So I write this to you in hopes you take both sides of the thing to mind.
A city called Berlin with a bear for a mascot, the Berliner Bear watching us with one eye glaring out messy and black, the other glinting with a swirling Ferris Wheel within.
| | Sunday, September 3rd, 2006 | | 1:32 am |
I'm gonna update tomorrow, so be happy Vickie. | | Saturday, July 22nd, 2006 | | 9:38 pm |
I'll try to make updates more frequent. Had lots of time to think here in Austria. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing will be for you to judge-- based on what I've written. It's become more and more apparent to me the importance in deciding what reason you see when you peek out into the universe and exhale a simple "Why?" I always knew that was a big question, but for some reason I always assumed I would overcome this dilemna of living and dying, that I would somehow escape the planet. I couldn't understand people who fretted about philosophy, but now strange questions about evil and where a god is have scrabbled up my back. Two sides to this. To be sure, in this world people live and fight and die dirty. I pass a man on a corner in the city. He is slumped against a wall, moaning and speaking in a strange way so that no one can understand him. He doesn't seem to have much control over his body because his tounge slurps thickly around his mouth, slurring his words, and his hands and arms are jacking all over the place. He moans to the people passing by, we think he's asking for help but can't understand what he's saying. I see the shaking outstretched hand and decide to fill it with some money. Things become clearer then. "Vielen Dank!" he cries. ("Thank you very much!") This ugly money, and the chief goal of this generation to stay, as a friend once put it, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor. That's the ugly darkness. But then today I lay in a field under a sky blue-turning-purple with families on nice blankets. I stayed there for an hour, and I watched an ant struggle along the thick hairs of my arm. And I thought of some things. Scientists haven't been able to find anything that resembles a brain within the tiny head of an ant, and yet here they have swept across the world in their awesome hills and colonies. Made me think of something else. I haven't become a religious fanatic or emo geek or anything of the sort. But, as I said before, I see two sides now. How can love be an adaption? What was it an adaption to? Creatures have and will always fuck fine without it. And how can the magic of an animal that empathasizes, sympathizes, figures, feels, fails, and forgives be tucked up in the comfortable idea of a strange monkey with a mutation? What's the genetic code for building hope and faith? Scientists say that humans either 1. evolved in Africa and then spread around the globe, or 2. they evolved separately in a number of places. In the case of #1, how did we get from Africa to everywhere? To tiny islands, across huge oceans, such an epic journey it sweeps past my mind's ability to comprehend. Did they all have great big boats hundreds of thousands of years ago? In the case of #2, we're to believe that creatures in isolation across the planet evolved to have the same exact capabilities for thought, for love, and so on. Both sides strange. Not sure what to think, but I had a nice idea. The men and women who do not receive what they deserve on this earth must in the end have all their doubts and questions snuffed out by a miraculous pair of hands, like one pinches a candle. Isn't it pretty to think of them in a place, as my friend once wrote- in a place I call this wide wide Heaven, which is about flathead nails and the soft down of new leaves, wild roller coaster rides and escaped marbles that fall then hang then take you somewhere you could never have imagined in your small-heaven dreams. I wish you all a long and happy life. | | Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 | | 12:45 pm |
Yesterday I found myself on a path in a twilight wood. In the gathering darkness, I could still make out the shapes of some sort of creatures scrabbling along the gravel path beside my feet.
I bent closer to see, holding my trembling breath. They were so tiny I was sure one faint wind would send them all flying.
And what I found were dozens of tiny frogs hopping across the path in the dusk. I´m not sure what toward though.
People say to keep your chin up, but I don´t think there´s anything wrong with looking down at the ground once in a while.
Sometimes you´re able to get down into the places where life really happens, where all the things you can´t explain or describe live.
How did they all know which path to cross? I thought a frog was just a frog.
And at the zoo, the families on the ground all stand and stare at the families swinging in the trees.
I stand beside a couple murmuring to each other in German, and I gaze up into the trees where the orangutuans weave their ways through the ropes and branches. They cast us a curious look over their shoulder, mutter a monkey question to one another- "Just who are they? And what are they doing there?"
I´m not sure if this has been said before, but I´ll say now it because I´m sure it´s true.
Zoos go both ways.
| | Saturday, June 17th, 2006 | | 2:23 pm |
Okay, first epiphany.
Before, a thought very similar to this would pop into my head- "Not everyone succeeds."
Before that thought would have really bothered me, but today I realized something. When I have a thought like that, does logic then dictate that it is necessary for me to "give up," or spend many hours ruminating over my worthiness of and chances for success?
Likewise, if my German is poor right now, does that mean I am worthless and my German will always be this way? I don´t think it has to be true.
This sort of thing must be obvious to most people, but I´m sure you can imagine what a novel idea it was for me.
| | Friday, June 16th, 2006 | | 4:36 pm |
Will update more in depth very soon.
Had several epiphanies since last spoke.
| | Sunday, May 28th, 2006 | | 4:05 am |
The spider has always been there outside my window, but this is the first time I've seen it eat. I can't believe it got a fly. On Friday, a man squats over a little paper cup in the darkness outside Burger King. "Have some money?" I peer into the cup before I realize he's asking us a question. "Sorry, I just got a credit card." "Oh, that's fine! Get me somethin' to eat?" I pause and consider for a moment. "What do you want?"
"Whopper! With everythin'!"
Alright, I can do that.
"Don't leave!" I stare at him over my shoulder, narrowing my eyes so he'll know I mean business.
Inside the restaurant, a massive line squeezes a bloated course through a gauntlet of metal railings.
This is a test, I think. I gotta get him his Whopper, I can't forget. Don't forget.
The cashier blinks her eyes sleepily. "Yeah man."
"Hello," I say. "I would like a Big Kid's Meal please." I take a breath, then gasp.
"Ah, and a Whopper!" I almost forgot.
I take the food and head outside back into the gloom.
A mob of drunk kids is fumbling around, and the blue and red lights of a cop car wash over us all.
Where's my guy?
There he is.
"Here!" I say breathlessly.
His eyes widen, and the red and blue lights flash over the smile on his face. "That's how you get your blessings, guy."
My sister is obsessed with feeding birds.
She will run home, her hair flying behind her. And she will come back with a packet of cheese crackers in her hands.
I watch her throw the crackers at the birds, and her eyes crinkle with a smile, but I also see that she has dark circles under them. I dunno why I notice that, but I do, and it bothers me.
She's throwing cracker after cracker, and as I watch her I think of that song in Mary Poppins where the bird woman in the square of the cathedral asks the children to "feed the birds."
I think it's a song about charity and the powerful ability of young people to redeem us.
The birds in our backyard are fat because Kylee keeps running for those crackers, and I hope they stay that way. I don't want them to leave.
It's about 5am now, almost sunrise. During the night, a bunch of tiny flies landed in the spider's web.
The spider appears now, and slowly, it glides from fly to fly, gently pulling the creatures into its mouth.
Nothing makes it more clear to me that life is a weird ass miracle.
Behind the web, the sun rises and the spider returns to its dark hole in my wall.
| | Friday, May 19th, 2006 | | 4:31 am |
So, this is troubling. I'm often not sure if I have the right picture of things. I think that feeling is something I have to accept. It's becoming clearer to me that reality is a subjective experience. How could it be otherwise? How else could our lives differ so much depending on where and when we're born? There are people I know tucked so securely into their warm path in the universe, bursting full steam ahead. But in other parts, millions are stuck. Do I keep on my path, just keep busting ahead? It's hard, I'm the kind of person that takes everything I see to heart, and what I hear on the news and glimpse on the streets is just so strange. Do things seem that way to anyone else? Are we born into a situation, and then given a certain amount of talent and potential by God with which we can use to change that situation? Is that what free will is? But what if there are limits to that potential, what if there is only so much you can change that situation? I'm never going to play for the NBA. Some people don't escape the slums. Hundreds of millions don't. Does everyone come to this dilemma? Does the dilemma end when I find my greater purpose, or put my faith to some higher power? Or, maybe the picture becomes clearer when I have children of my own to watch over, when I'm living and breathing for little helpless human beings. These days, I think of life as just everyone trying their best everyday. And I realize that to a large extent we are responsible for our own happiness. What do we do when our idea of success doesn't necessarily involve an accomplishment that is seen by all the people we used to hate in high school? At the end of this train of thought and worry, I realized I've been agonizing over things that I can't do a damn thing to change. | | Thursday, May 11th, 2006 | | 10:15 pm |
I figure life is too short not to ask people questions.
So, I turn to the guy behind me in line at Burger King and say, " I like your jacket. Where did you get it?"
"M-my mom got it for me," he said. "From Kohl's."
I can't believe this kid. Smothering my stupid smirk, I say, "Oh really? Yeah, I buy my clothes from Kohl's too."
That's actually true.
He studies my face. "Yeah, I miss my mom," he says.
I can't believe this kid. I turn away and try to not to laugh.
"Sorry," he says. "I have autism. But I'm pretty high functioning. I'm almost as good as Rainman."
Instantly, my smile fades.
I stare at him. "What is it like?" I ask.
He thinks for a moment. "It's pretty cool. Tell me when you were born, and I'll tell you what day it was on. I know because I like to memorize calendars."
I tell him, and he thinks for a moment before responding. "You were born on a Tuesday."
He's right.
My friends and I invite him to sit down with us. I try not to ask him too many questions. But I figure life is too short, and this is some sort of atonement for my smugness before.
"What interests you?" I ask.
"Background music," he says very methodically. "For example, the music that's playing now? It's from this station called XM. It's from a satellite. It's based out of Charolette, North Carolina."
"What do you think is beautiful?"
"Ceiling fans. I think when I was a baby, I would watch them spinning above my head. I know every type of ceiling fan."
His mother gave him autism and ceiling fans.
I scan the news.
According to Newsweek magazine, David Garcia is 15. He is one of the "new faces of HIV." His mother gave it to him when he was born. David likes to play soccer, he's in the Boy Scouts, and he has a girlfriend.
"I was afraid I'd lose her when I told her," he says. "But what a person has doesn't change who he is."
In Pennsylvania, a six year old girl who escaped a house fire early Tuesday died after running back inside to find her mother, authorities said.
She didn't know that her mother was already out and safe.
Authorities found the body of little Da-Onah Watts under a bed on the second floor.
Neighbor Evelyn Brubacher said Da-Onah was a sweet, well-behaved girl, and she and her mother were very close.
"Her mother watched her," Brubacher said. "A lot of kids in this alley, they just run and run. Not that one."
I guess her mother had tried to give her safety.
Now, somebody is telling me about water births.
"You can have a baby in a bathtub?" I don't understand it. I look it up online.
Why doesn't the baby drown?
A child does not drown during a water birth because the child is already immersed in water while in the womb, my computer tells me.
The child's lungs remain collapsed and no water can enter. Once the child reaches the surface and its face reaches the air, it takes its first breath and life on earth begins.
I shake because that is one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.
Think back to the time when you were lucky enough to slip into the water and float there. Slowly, you were raised to the surface, took your first breath and watched the light beaming down through the slits of that fan spinning above you.
I'm quick to complain, I think of all that I've let slip away in my life and I grit my teeth. Think of everything that's been taken from you.
Still, rarely have you gotten a worthless gift.
| | Saturday, May 6th, 2006 | | 10:53 pm |
Wrote this story for class. Mishmash of a couple entries. The girl in the pretty skirt is kneeling alone in a corner of the preschool room. Her head is bent in concentration over a line of dolls lined up neatly in a row, each in a various state of undress. She moves down the row, carefully combing each of the dolls’ hair and mumbling something incomprehensible in the ear of each. She reminds me of my little sister. I’m peering at her from behind the nearby dollhouse. It smells like wood and plastic back here. I’m trying to be discreet like my professor ordered. "I want you to observe how young children do gender," she had intoned. "See how boys learn to be boys and girls learn to be girls. The same stuff that’s been going on for millions of years." I move from behind the dollhouse, hunching because I think it will somehow make me seem more discreet. The kids are all laughing and screaming on the other side of the room. I tiptoe towards them, but stop when I feel something sticky underfoot. I look down and there’s this big, stale apple juice spill with lots of graham cracker crumbs stuck to it. Before I can let out a moan of disgust, the door opens and a young boy walks into the room. "David!" the girl in the pretty skirt cries. She was the first to notice him. The rest of the children turn too, and smile. The teacher takes the boy up in his arms. "Welcome back from vacation, David!" He guides the children over to the calendar and begins to talk to them about nature. He points to a date two weeks in the future and says that’s when the next solar eclipse will occur. I only half hear him because I’m staring at the lunch box David is holding in his lap. It reminds me of my lunch box, and I wonder if he has ham sandwiches like my mom would always make for me. David and the girl in the pretty skirt are sitting next to each other. They must be friends because they’re sitting real close and the boy whispers something in the girl’s ear. She laughs, and I get this pang in my stomach. I’m watching them, and then I look outside at the rooftops and the clouds floating above and for some reason I think about the sun exploding. There are many beautiful children born, and being born, and that will be born and then the sun will explode. I don’t know why I thought about that. I decide to go then, closing the door silently behind me. No one notices me leaving. I walk down a long empty hallway. There’s this buzzing in my ears, and my face feels hot. I think it’s from all the stress. It started when my mom called this morning. "What were you thinking about the summer, Joe?" My mother’s voice is always soft on the phone. If you were to talk to her, you would think you were sitting right next to her on our plump red couch. "Dunno," I mumbled. "I gotta study German. Best place to learn it is in Germany." There was a pause, and I imagined she was choosing her words carefully. "… I can understand that. When were you thinking of leaving?" "June," I said. "I gotta go, Mom. I gotta learn it. I need to be there as long as possible." Another long pause. "Can you come home for a little bit?" "No, I gotta go. Time for me to grow up." "Joe, it’s your last summer with us. Your sister and I miss you so much. You go to school a few towns away, but we never see you." I didn’t say anything, so she continued. "Your sister’s having trouble in school, Joe. They don’t know what’s wrong with her. I think she misses you. I think she needs a decent man in her life to show her there are still good people in the world." I stopped walking and put the cell phone closer to my ear. "Kylee’s having problems? In the fifth grade?" "Yes. Can you pick her up from school today, Joe? Can you get there on the el? Think of the look on her face when you show up! Do it once before you go?" I thought for a moment, running over my class schedule in my head. "Yeah, I can pick her up. Haha, I bet she’ll be surprised." "Thank you Joe. You remember where it is, right?" “Got it. Bye.” “Bye Joe.” And then she kept talking like moms always do. "Can you leave a little later? You don't need to leave in June. Please, give me two more weeks of you." So now I don’t know what to do. I check my watch and put my notebook away in the backpack, briefly scanning over the observation notes I have written. My nose twitches at the thought of my professor. She is an ugly, smoky woman. I sat in her office yesterday, trying to hold my breath. I winced as a cloud of smoke rose before me, and after it had dissipated her face appeared in the gloom. She had sunken eyes and yellow skin, and on her desk beside her books and papers sat a large ashtray filled with cigar butts. There were no photographs on her desk. In class Professor Mandara always had this strange habit of turning to face us, one hand on her hip. With her other hand she would bring the marker to her mouth and puff on it, sort of like she was sucking up ideas and energy from the class through a straw. She would pull them in, digest them, and belch them back out. "Children’s minds are amazing," she croaked as we sat there in her office. "It’s beautiful how simple it all is." I was really just hoping she’d answer my question about the assignment. But I said, "Have you ever had one, Professor Mandara?" She let out a sound, almost like a hiss. "No." There was a pause in which she spun her cigar thoughtfully between her fingers. "The other day I was walking downtown past the Water Tower. You know how they have those green chairs there, where everyone can sit? Well I was walking and I noticed there were all these mothers sitting in the chairs with their babies. They were all smiling and whispering things into the faces of the babies. And I remember thinking how it all seemed so perfect. The transfer of language. It was like the wisdom of the universe at work. So efficient and simple." I sat for a moment and wondered if, in those moments when I was new to the world, my mother whispered softly in my ear, and expressed all her deepest, most secret hopes for me. Slowly, I said, "I remember reading an article about how in Muslim countries, words from the Quran are whispered into the ears of every newborn child, in the hopes that he or she’ll live a good life." She grimaced and belched out more smoke. "That’s nonsense." There was another pause, so I shifted to the assignment at hand. "Anyway, so I was wondering, if for the observation assignment, if I could go to my sister’s class?" She shook her head abruptly. "Absolutely not. Totally unprofessional. You’re not a true scientist." She thought for another moment, let out a cough, and added in a particularly bitter tone, "You live close enough to home that you could visit your sister’s school? Can’t depend on them forever. You should have gone far away." I checked the time again. I had almost reached the el stop. The last time I was home was spring break. My mother was very kind to me. Her eyes fell upon my jeans, which were falling off of my butt. "You’ve lost so much weight," she murmured. When you talk to my mom, her eyes narrow and focus in on you. Especially when you’re standing very close. "You're trying to change yourself so much," my mom frowned. "I don't get it." I climb the steps to the el platform. Nobody is moving here- a crushed fast food cup skitters past a woman’s shoe, the fastest moving thing around. The train arrives, we all get on. The other day I was talking to this woman. She has big-rimmed cat glasses. We were just finishing up when she suddenly asked, "What do you believe in, Joe?" I sat and stared at her lamp. "I dunno. The things I see people do for each other." Her glasses glinted as she stood up and opened the door for me. She nodded. "Joe, tell yourself that the universe will take care of you. See you next week." I'm at my stop now. I get off the train and walk the couple of blocks to the elementary school. My watch says I have a half hour before the kids are let out, so I sit on the curb and think. Soon I can hear shouts and laughs behind me. I jump up and watch these kids pass by. I try calling my sister’s Hello Kitty cell phone. “Hello?” “Kylee, find me, I’m standing over by the bicycle rack.” “Oh really?!” My sister emerged from the crowd and came running over. She likes to attach little toys to her backpack, and the toys all bobbed frantically as she raced over. She gave me a big hug. “Hi Joe!” “Hey. Ready to go home?” “Yeah! But do you wanna go to McDonald’s first?” “Sure.” She started telling me all about her day. “Hey,” I said. She stopped and looked up at me. “I had a dream about you and mom. You wanna hear it?” She arched her eyebrows and nodded. "In the dream, I was walking in a stadium. I think it might have been Wrigley. And everybody there was watching the giant screens over centerfield, and I turned to look, and I saw someone’s death being played, over and over again, on those big screens.” Kylee’s eyes grew big. “Oh! Who was it? How do they die?” “It was me,” I said. “And I think it was a shark. Anyway, so I’m walking and watching the screen, and I’m also watching the crowd’s reaction. Nobody’s doing anything! It makes me so mad. They just keep talking and laughing. Ok, and then, you’re gonna love this-” “What?! Oh no!” “I bump into the mascot, some kind of bear. And the bear takes one look at me, and he points with his big furry paws.” Kylee nodded. “But see, I look where he’s pointing, and there you and Mom are. I run up the row toward you guys and see that you’re both crying. And you, you were crying so hard you had spilt your nacho chips and they were lying in your lap. And you know how sometimes when you cry, you get those little wet strings of hair that come into your mouth? Well you had those too.” She didn’t say anything. Her eyes were really wide now, frightened. And I saw she had dark circles under them, that’s what bothered me the most. I looked at her. And I thought, every few years there are kids leaving home, and eclipses. I can wait a few more weeks. It’s funny, but my mom wrote me a note after spring break. It didn’t sound like her. "Tom, The only advice I would give you is to focus on those things that you can control or have an impact on, otherwise, there is not much point in being concerned about them. Focus on what's important now, and take the time to appreciate all the good things in your life. I know this can be especially hard when we are so busy being busy, but that "attitude of gratitude" is the best way to invite universal intelligence to bring more good things our way. Love, Mom " And I swear that this really happened. Before my dad died, I went with him to Yellowstone Park. We were driving out of the main gates and I looked out the window and saw the perfect mountains that something had made. And sitting beneath them against a picket fence was a big brown bear. I'd never seen a bear sitting before. | | Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 | | 3:05 pm |
The sun comes in through the window and it just lights up this little girl’s rainbow dress.
I’m sitting in a safe corner of the room, kind of behind the dollhouse.
“I want you to observe how young children do gender,” my professor had intoned.
She would always rip into the board with her permanent marker, and I watched her dark, curly hair thrashing behind her as she etched jagged black letters onto the white.
Adult letters, sharp and dark and serious.
In this room, though, I stare at crumb boats floating in shimmering yellow apple juice spills, and the beautiful mouths from which their voyages began are shouting and laughing over by the window.
The door opens, a young boy walks into the light.
From the window, the class turns to face him, short kid, taller kid, shorter kid, then teacher, and it’s a mountain range of smiling faces against the sunset.
“David!”
The teacher takes the boy up in his arms and he holds him so softly. A loving, safe man holding his kids here.
I’m watching them, and then I look outside at the rooftops and a couple whispy clouds and for some reason I think about the sun exploding.
There are many beautiful children born, and being born, and will be born and the sun will explode.
I don’t know why I thought about that.
For now they say there’s going to be a solar eclipse in a couple weeks.
I leave the room and walk down a long empty hallway. There’s this ringing in my ears, and I remember a conversation I had with my mother.
I’m getting ready to leave home.
I gotta go, I say.
I'm leaving in June, I have to, I gotta learn German. Time for me go grow up.
My mother's voice comes over the line, low and moaning, and already I feel my heart growing dark.
Can you leave a little later, she asks. Please Tom. You don't need to leave in June.
Please, can I have two more weeks of you..
Another child leaves home, suns are eclipsed, and bang!
Then the dark.
| | Sunday, April 16th, 2006 | | 7:41 pm |
I'm walking in a field. Before I was in a forest I'm sure, on some sort of path and it was lined with safe bushes. I peered into the bushes and I saw thorns where I had pricked myself before. I leaned into smell plants with similar scents, and flowers like faces that I had seen before. My path was lined, and it was familiar. I loved it. But it ended and I'm in this field. It's beautiful but windy, the wind just sweeps that grass like a big all-knowing broom. People are sending each other letters all over this field, and they're just riding on the wind. A long time ago a friend wrote a letter to me. I think this is the time to write her back.
"Dear Mary,
How are you?
I can begin to breathe again, and I hope that the air is filling your lungs, and that it's sweet.
I'm taking what they call 'baby steps.'
I hope these steps bring me closer to something, and I hope you'll take some of them with me.
Love, Tom"
People join you in this field, but they jump away and go rolling down some side hill.
"Bye!" they cry, and their skirts go flying behind them.
Careless people come and sweep you up in their rolling wagons.
Out the window I see crowds standing silently, stunned by the human dramas they are witnessing.
I see other crowds flying kites and laughing, and I jump out to join them.
At the end of a kite I find another note.
"Yes Tom... I will see you soon I hope.
Do let me know what has been going on.
Life is so busy and things are hour to hour these days.
-Whit"
I keep walking and come across a group of men and women dressed in purple. They are marching proudly, and they raise diplomas high, diplomas that say "Northwestern."
I don't see myself in them, or don't feel a part of them.
One of them slips me a note as he marches past.
"Tom,
The only advice I would give you is to focus on those things that you can control or have an impact on, otherwise, there is not much point in being concerned about them.
Focus on what's important now, and take the time to appreciate all the good things in your life.
I know this can be especially hard when we are so busy being busy, but that "attitude of gratitude" is the best way to invite universal intelligence to bring more good things our way.
Love, Dad "
The sun is setting in the field, and I realize ok, I can be thankful for what's happened, because it is a smart sun.
| | Monday, April 10th, 2006 | | 12:55 am |
A recently released study questions the power of prayer. Researchers directed people to pray for patients who were having open heart surgery. I'm not sure how this played out exactly. Did the researchers call everyone into the waiting room, instruct them to have a seat and pray for the man or woman undergoing surgery in a nearby operating room? Did they sit there, straining and praying, wiping sweaty palms on jeans, peering up blankly into the lights? I can picture myself in that experiment. I'd be wearing a billowing green gown in the operating room, and this room would have a large window that I would be leaning my face against intently. The doctors, assembled around the operating table behind me, would ask quite gravely, "Are you ready, Tom? Ready for us to start?" "Just a sec," I would mumble. Squinting through the glass, looking into the waiting room on the other side of the window. Who would be out there praying for me? Would it be the ones I loved, friends and family? Or would the waiting room be filled with strangers for some experiment. The study found that prayer had no positive impact on the patient's outcome, and in some cases even worsened the outcome because the patient had false hopes because he or she believed that the prayer would save them. What a crummy study. Can you be saved by a stranger's prayer? These things happen in life that just suck all of our prayers in. I just read this article about the 9-11 trial, for example. On that day, our eyes and words were consumed by that building, you couldn't stop yourself from mumbling a prayer. On that day, prayers were divided between those watching strangers who murmured, " Oh please let this be a dream, please let them all be okay" and the wicked, who breathed, " Oh please let those buildings fall." A woman named Susan lost her husband that day, a man named Vamsi. The woman's brother left on a business trip, and when he returned he found his sister had hung herself from an exercise machine in her house.
He fought back his anguish Thursday as he read to the jury his sister's suicide note.
"I am sorry I am hurting you," she had written. "I loved Vamsi too much."
Were people saved that day? Or were wicked prayers answered?
Yesterday I tiptoed through the Museum of Contemporary Museum, and there's this mysterious exhibit tucked into a side room.
You walk inside, and it's very white, and in the center of the room a sculpture of a small boy is kneeling before a white wall, head bowed in prayer.
As you enter, his back is turned toward you. I tiptoed around this silent praying boy until I was able to see him from the front.
The boy had the face of Hitler, calmly meditating and praying on the white wall before him.
At the park last night there were these bright yellow shovels lying in the sandbox, I think they had been left there by some kids who were playing there earlier.
I kneeled down in the sand and looked around, struck by the wild twisting shadows cast by the swings and the trees, and I realized wicked prayers are being muttered under breath everywhere, at all times, even at the edge of this little park.
These kids with the three yellow shovels may have prayed for a sandcastle, but something stronger and evil had been answered.
All were scooped up by a bulldozer, swept away, leaving just those shovels like grave markers.
This is why I'll keep praying for everyone having surgery, and the kids I see playing in sandboxes.
| | Saturday, March 25th, 2006 | | 12:55 am |
My mother was very kind to me over break.
Her eyes fell upon my jeans, which were falling off of my ass.
"You lost a lot of weight," she murmured, and when I talk to her close in the sunlight the blue eyes she gave me sparkle and narrow to slits, like a worried reptile.
I showed her the glasses I got- they're blue because I have this idea in my mind that blue is a redemptive color, do you agree at all?
When I put them on my face it's like blue upon blue, I like it.
"You're trying to change yourself so much," my mom frowned, and the slits crumpled into sad pancakes in her eyes. "I don't get it."
She brought my sister and I to a shop where you get to create your own Teddy Bear.
They had all sorts of cute bears, and a special edition Cookie Monster.
I took one look at that blue thing and ooh, I mean I just had to make one.
I stood in line with the kids, waiting to create a new blue monster.
A shy man was operating the stuffing machine. "Pick out a heart," he said. "You get to pick out a heart and th-then you give it a kiss and make a wish. Then I'll put it inside your monster."
I looked in the cup filled with small plastic hearts and I picked up a strong red heart, made a wish, gave it a kiss, and threw it into the fluff.
His hands trembled as he sewed the monster up with swoops of his needle, shaking hands pushing the silver through the blue.
What happens is, you take the things that are bothering you, you give them a big kiss, and you send them somewhere.
It was St. Patrick's Day. I was walking downtown and ooh, I thought about what it would be like to jump into the Chicago River, thick and green and fluffy foam.
Do you give yourself a kiss and tuck yourself into the fluff, say goodnight?
I'm always looking for little corners of life to snuggle myself into. I'm always scoping out paths, trying to see to their end.
Does this path end with me being unhappy, or alone?
I shouldn't do it, but I don't think I'm alone in that.
What we do is, is we try to find someplace safe. We're all looking down paths, and we hope we find them lined with good, loyal friends, and beautiful people to love and babies and safety. Paths that mean never being alone, especially at the end.
I had always pictured myself running down a path lined with fluffy cotton. I was stupid, I thought I could change my shape like the sunflowers following the sun.
I thought I could avoid people. I thought hard work was something for my father and my grandfather.
But something called me back. What happened was, a woman in a purple beret came into the dining hall one evening, maybe she was a professor.
She had a huge, expressive mouth dangling at the very end of a droopy face and on that particular night she used it to frown at me and my loud friend.
And the next morning I swear I saw this.
Walking down the street, I saw something white and fluffy lying beneath a parked car.
It was a big white cat that had been run over, and it stared at me, from the end of its path.
A car horn honked, and I looked up and saw the woman with the purple beret.
She thought I was about to pull out, and she wanted my parking space.
I looked at her and shook my head. She gazed back at me and that huge frown, ugh, and the cat.
After she drove off, I was able to see down the path I had been taking myself for the past several weeks.
Down this path, I saw a disappointed man always following cotton fluff and sunflowers, and a sad mother with pancakes in her eyes.
I bought the glasses, and I'm trying to choose a bluer path. | | Saturday, March 18th, 2006 | | 4:38 pm |
To my friend Vickie.
It's the poem I told you about.
Remember that night we went to Navy Pier and we rode the Ferris Wheel and we were the only ones on it? The only ones.
And the way the John Hancock just ripped the sky and opened up a halo of light over the city and the wind blasted us in the face and there was an apartment on the thirtieth floor that we could finally see ourselves living in.
When we were at the bus stop, I went behind the tent where you guys were standing and I stared at the Navy Pier lamps twinkling.
And a snowflake fell into my eye and it made long sad smears out of all the lights, and in them I dunno I thought of people who leave your life but leave those streaks in your eyes.
So, here's the poem.
To nights when the city opens up to us.
Very sincerely,
Tom
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
| | Friday, March 3rd, 2006 | | 12:14 am |
In this dream, I am walking in a stadium. I think the stadium might be Wrigley, and it is filled with talking, laughing people. Everybody is watching the giant screens over centerfield, and I turn to look, too. And in this dream, someone's death is being played, over and over again, on these giant screens. If you really want to know- it's my death. (Eaten by a shark? It gets hazy.) I keep walking past the rows of people, watching them watching those screens. But I can't tell the reaction, things are shooming by too fast, mouths moving, as usual people are looking in a thousand different directions, seeing so many different things. Still laughing and talking I guess. I brush by some kind of mascot, I think it's a bear or something. The bear looks at me and gestures with its big furry paws. I follow his point, and I find them. My mother and sister are sitting in this stadium, and they saw the screens. Their heads are bowed, tears falling down their faces. I run up the row toward them and this feeling in my stomach that socks me through the dream. I stare at them, and everyone keeps shoom shooming around us. "Mom. Kylee." My sister's crying little face, holding nachos in her hands. And sometimes when she cries the water makes little strings of her hair, and one of them is leading right into her mouth. Another day and I'm talking to a friend with wire-rim glasses like a cat. "What do you believe in, Tom?" I sit, think, and stare at her lamp. "The things I see people do for each other." She sits and her glasses glint as she thinks. And she nods. "Tom, tell yourself that the universe will take care of you." And I swear that this really happened. I went with my dad to Yellowstone Park a couple years ago. We were driving out of the main gates and I looked out the window and saw the perfect mountains that something had made. And sitting beneath them against a picket fence was a big brown bear. I'd never seen a bear sitting before. | | Monday, February 20th, 2006 | | 11:36 pm |
Who are the happiest in the world?
Who are the deepest into life?
My baffled friend and I sit, and try to think of how that could possibly be measured.
Would you send out a survey to everyone? Say, scale of 1 to 10?
How would everyone rate themselves? How about yourself?
Would the Happiest even see the need in sending back a silly survey?
And could they tell you what to do?
How many happy people in this city?
Above and beyond a sweep of Drive, this city, this beautiful City by the Lake.
A man creaks and cricks his way up an aisle on a speeding train, singing a little song.
"Jesus on the main line... call Him and tell Him what you want. Jesus on the main line...oh call Him up and tell Him what you want."
All the times I have ridden the el at night and felt a warm glow pulsing out from the endless avenues.
Out and out, those streets of original sin. And at the end and along the sides all laid out like perfect boxes, the hearts and minds of everyone who has ever called Chicago home.
The happiest things I see in the city are those two red lights that pump and pulse atop the John Hancock Tower.
Two happy lights, at the end of two Main Lines, at the end of all the roads that everyone ever drives in this city.
Two happy lights atop a building perched just beyond the careless curve of the Drive.
| | Friday, February 3rd, 2006 | | 1:13 pm |
Today my soup swam into focus for me.
"Oh soup," I said. "Soup, is there a soulmate out there for each and every one of us?"
I saw into the soup, thought it seemed like sick yellow fear. And the eggs of the egg drop spun with my spoon, and I saw it.
"What is it?" my friend asks.
At that moment, in my soup, I had seen everything I was ever afraid of.
Fear was in my soup-reflection, on my lips.
On my lips everytime I told myself that this was the best life was going to get. That no one would ever understand the stupid things I said. That I had never had an origninal thought. That it wasn't worth it.
Everytime my hair would not go a certain way and I would pound on the mirror and curse this kid.
This kid... this stupid kid who would play the piano and stare at shoes and worried everytime he felt his penis get stiff.
And would hope so hard.
Why did I ever say those things?
It is worth it. I know it, because life shows it to you in those moments when your head is buzzing and you gasp and you say, "Why was I so afraid? Shit."
People always say it's important to love yourself.
And we can smile and nod and say, "Yeah, yeah, you're right... That's great."
But how do you go about doing that exactly?
I can't tell you, but I saw the importance of it today when I was looking for a package deep down to give to myself, but felt my fingers scrabbling along the sides of an empty mail bin. And I saw how big a part fear was of me.
"Window number six is open," a woman says gently.
I'm standing in the post office.
This woman, this postal worker who helps me mail my hopeful letters to New York.
I imagine that every time anyone has ever told themselves "I hate you", somewhere an empty envelope has been stuffed, sent, and sealed away.
I want to join the woman behind the counter, find all the lost letters, put them in the right place, and then get to the business of sorting everyone else's letters.
And just maybe I'll see "SOULMATE" stamped on one.
A postal employee in California went on a rampage this week, killing several of her colleagues.
Think she was afraid.
I can picture it... standing there, so much fucking mail, everyone's letters. Fuck.
Time to fight, stop being afraid, she thinks.
A sleeping postman sits across from me on the train and the yellow lights slide by his face.
Has someone ever said that a city is ruled by fear?
I can picture that guy Machiavelli preaching it.
But I don't think it has to be true.
So, here's to going postal. |
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