I am addicted to buying books, even though I only read about 10% of what I buy, even though I bought a book yesterday, even though I am seven months unemployed, still, I want to go today and buy William Trevor’s latest novel, of love and love lost, even though I may never read it.
staring
I find myself staring. A lot. I do not remember when any one stare starts. Of course, I’m not looking at any thing. And like the breath, I am somewhat startled, when I realize, become aware, that wherever I was, I am now back. The feeling is akin to putting on a heavy cape before heading out the door and back into the wilderness of winter.
No Clouds
Without the cover of a cloud bank, our city light escapes into the heavens. Tonight, a few stars notwithstanding, is as dark as I’ve ever experienced.
to break
I want to break myself. To be broken.
There is no other explanation for the path I have chosen.
Then, today, just minutes ago, I heard this:
“. . . one must totally die to find what love is.” (Krishnamurti)
And perhaps, or not, the life that wants to live, seeks to kill that which stands in the way. To kill every idea and thought that stands between life and love. This is the war that wages night and day within me.
An Odd Place
I feel again in an odd place. Neither here nor there. The feeling is of a valley, unable to see the ocean and starting to doubt whether it is there and even if it is, if it is worth the effort to climb the mountain. The idea, again, of eating moderately and working out crossed my mind. Like a meteor, for that is about how long the idea lasted. The thought of looking online for a job has crossed my mind too. And I find some ungodly internal resistance to even looking. And I wonder what kind of man I am, unemployed since March, who cannot find it within himself to support his family. I watched the movie Revolutionary Road last night. I identified with April more than any character in recent memory. Her lines were my thoughts, my life. The movie is, without a doubt, interminably sad. And many reviewers saw it that way. What I saw was incredible dialogue, executed brilliantly by the lead actors, and an honesty to desperation rarely seen in movies. The arguments, the fights, between husband and wife are reminiscent of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, but less theatrical.
Battle of Franklin
After spending the weekend showing my mother all the sites of this historic battle, one question reverberates in my mind: What is this?
A couple years ago, I found a civil war bullet in my front yard. To hold this single piece of lead is to be struck by it’s size and it’s weight. To think of being struck by this piece of lead moving at 1000 feet per second is sobering. To think of over 9000 men killed, wounded, within five hours, within two miles of where I live, is beyond my comprehension. And again, the question is there: What is this?
Leaves like Starfish
I walk outside into a light rain. Cool air. Leaves like starfish on my windshield. I drive down black rivers of streets. Heading to the bank to make a deposit. Then to the bookstore, to lose myself in an ocean of books, to breathe the printed page and feel the rough edges along my thumb. Her eyes were blue, wide, alive. Her lines graceful. Her smile natural. She is here. In every book. On every shelf.
I walk the aisles. Breathing life into my psyche with each row. Holding words, holding her. My mind full of brown hair, the grace of a few words. She was tea, clear, pure, healing. My cup warmed with her pour. I return to my car. To the cool air of autumn rain on a gray day. A few yellow leaves pasted on the wet pavement. Music carries me home, of iPod or imagination, I do not remember. What I heard became what I saw, what I held in my mind. She was there. More real than the conversation I knew would come over dinner. As sincere as the wine that would take me into night.
Raining
It is raining today and I have the undeniable desire to inhale the salt of my loins. Just to sit with the onanistic scent, as I did a long, long time ago. To let the fragrant sweetness, those alabaster pools of human mercury, of javelins come to rest, take me as I want to be taken, as one in the confessional feels helpless to stop the sin, as the flutterings of discovery suspends time, as the mind races to label what has no name. I want to rain upon my supine plains as the sky upon my yard, to saturate myself, blurring what is physical with what is mental with what is beyond both.
