My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Tattoo by Colt, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo, number seventy-seven, is from an Aimee Mann song, Little Bombs, which is off of one of my top ten favorite records, The Forgotten Arm.

As I’ve mentioned around the blog, I died once, in some violently bright trauma room, but it didn’t stick. المراهنات It was spectacularly dramatic though, my heart quit its post, a team of doctors and nurses beating the Hell out of me, trying to wake me up before all the beating in the world wouldn’t matter. My girlfriend, Sara, crying. Sara telling me not to go. It was like a movie. Had it stuck, it would have been quite something, a big, theatrical death, but it didn’t, and here we are, almost a decade later. I don’t think most death is all big and flashy, it’s slow and subtle and certain.

One of my favorite writers, K.J. Bishop, has this total badass character, Gwynn. Gwynn lives by his own set of morals, he kills for cash, he kills for justice, sometimes he just kills because it’s his whim and it feels like proper etiquette to do so. He drinks hard, enjoys all manner of narcotics. He dresses impeccably, plays the piano for eccentric old ladies at swanky parties. He has fallen in love, HARD. Though Gwynn could die pretty much every day, in some grand fashion, some way that he would personally find spectacular, he doesn’t. His hold on life in the midst of combat borders on preternatural. He takes kill-or-be-killed to a form of high-art. He is death in the theater of killing. Unfortunately, even though your profession is snatching life from others, and you do it well enough to see your gorgeous, flowing black hair go gray, you’re going to have to retire. It comes time to hang up your weapons and just be. In a later short-short story, She Mirrors, we see Gwynn as an old man. His recreational narcotics are replaced by medicines for his creaky joints, aches and pains that are the cost one pays for pushing a body past its limits over the course of a career that isn’t usually lengthy. His doctor has vehemently warned him against alcohol and cigarettes. His great love is now just a memory. He’s not dying as a mercenary in some great war, he’s not dying by sword or gun. He’s dying the slow death inflicted by time. He doesn’t go quietly, at the story’s end he’s off toward one more adventure, an adventure that might not go the way he wants, that might be the last his body allows, but to Gwynn, it’s the possibilities that are exhilarating.

She Mirrors is such an honest story, it resonates with me, and scares me, scares me because it’s so true. Our stories aren’t guaranteed to end how we want, or even with a quick bang. مواقع كازينو  Time is what kills us, usually slowly, softly, over minutes, hours, years. The story shows how we’re all fighting against a force that we can rail at, furiously, and still, we will not win. She Mirrors brings to mind my favorite line from William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. I know the words by memory, “…Christ was not crucified: He was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels.”  We’re all worn away by those clicking little wheels, the clock makes us all equals, we all get too little from time. Our clocks stop and we end. Gwynn, Christ, me, nobody gets out of it, time quitting our company.

Life just kind of empties out, less a deluge than a drought, those words resonate too, those words have been important to me ever since the first time I heard Aimee sing them. I got the words permanently etched into my leg because the idea that time is slowly, but inexorably, wearing me away drives me. It could have happened way back in that trauma room, it could happen tomorrow, but probably, it’ll happen years from now, tediously and maddeningly. Still, one way or another, or another, it will happen, which is why I have bouncers carry me up two flights of stairs at the goth club, or fly to Boston during a blizzard, my antiquated breathing machine powered by an equally unsophisticated battery, with the woman I love just to see Aimee Mann play. It’s why when Sara asked, “So, would you ever go swimming?” I said, without a blink, “Yeah!” I’m terrified of being in anything larger than a bathtub, but she only got, “Yeah!” The reality that that slow drought will come is why I once told a woman I love her more than air, why I asked if she’d wake up with me tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. It didn’t go how I wanted, but I did risk it. مراهنات المباريات I’ll risk simple failure, I’ll risk my life, anything, because at the end of my drought, when time has shoved me toward death’s enfolding kiss, I don’t want to feel like I let time wear me away without fighting with everything in me to experience everything I want. I can’t not fight.

The tattoo reminds me that my life is emptying out, and I can’t just sit back and watch it go.

So, I’m at this bar, a beer bar, with an outdoor stage for shitty local bands, stand-up comedians… Tonight, it’s stand-up comedians. Not my style. I don’t care if the beer’s from Ireland, brewed by faerie magic, you still have to drink two, three, five, just to feel anything. I want some clear liquid in a tiny glass that takes two seconds to drink and two more seconds to make my face feel warm and fuzzy. Drinks like that burn your throat, but that’s part of their magic, the whole pain heightens pleasure, I like girls who pull my hair while we kiss, thing. At any rate, yeah, beer bars, not my style. Neither is watching stand-up comedy, but I’m there doing that too. It’s kind of a downer evening, just a few evenings before Christmas. I’m at this beer bar, I’m stone sober, I’m bored, and I’m cold. Like I said, outdoor stage, late December. Even Florida gets bitter-cold a few times a year. One of the previously mentioned stand-ups is actually funny, but he’s the headliner, he’s up last. This leaves a solid hour of jokes about what is apparently the wannabe comics’ go-to topic, Hilarity Without End, Amen, the vagina. I’ve never heard the word so many times during what felt like an eternity, vagina as the Holy Grail of punch-lines. I guess if you’re 27, and you’re only with a woman, say, whenever an Olympics rolls around, you get a bang out of at least talking about it. I’m bored. Though, I’m less cold by the forty-seventh vagina joke, my brother brings me a heating-pad. Yes, I’m a giant sissy about being cold, and I really don’t care about looking cool at a beer bar. Warmer or not, I still want to go home, but I don’t.

After the headliner gives us a generous reprieve from the Vagina Monologues, the show’s over, everybody’s straggling toward their cars or cabs, or better bars. I’m just kind of sitting in my chair, staring up at the night sky, wanting to see stars rather than clouds, thinking about a girl. I haven’t seen her in a really long time, but she’s always in my head, permanently etched into my memory, a tattoo behind my eyes, a sometimes torture that I wouldn’t trade for anything. I’m thinking about how I wish she were next to me, that we were about to drive home together. I want to be going home together, crawling into our cozy warm bed, kissing and talking and kissing in the dark before we fall asleep, the unspoken promise of deeper intimacy in the morning, the sacrament we’d share, her skin against mine. I’m thinking about the way she used to look at me, all these years later nobody has ever looked at me like her. She saw past all my outward flaws, saw me the way only God sees me, into my soul. She saw the real me, the melancholy, happy, scared, brave, dark, light me, and in her eyes all I saw was love, love as simple and beautiful as summer sun shining through green tree leaves. I’m thinking about just wanting to have those eyes in my life again, if for only one night, one hour, ten minutes. Anything.

I close my eyes, head tilted toward the gray night sky. Cold air stings my face, cold air that scoffs at the heat draped across my chest. I focus on the heat, it reminds me of that girl, I see her, the tattoo only I can see. My sometimes torture that I wouldn’t trade for anything, she’s vivid and bright and so right there. I get this stupid feeling that if I just open my eyes and look next to me, she’ll be there. I don’t look, I know she won’t be there. I know and I’m scared, the lack of her scares me.

I open my eyes, the clouds shuffled off like so many drunks. I see stars, I know that they’ll be here long after I blink out and disappear.

Kind eyes, midnight eyes meeting my melancholy green.

A conversation in glances, in magnetic looks, learning each other without words.

Her eyes are beautiful and warm and so right now, seeing the me that I am, laid bare, the me without masks, without the choice of presentation. Soothing stormy eyes, calm in a tempest eyes, seeing the me that maybe only God sees.

Soft finger-tips brush my cheek, my chin, my lips.

Then a fleeting kiss.

A fleeting kiss.

A fleeting kiss.

A flash of perfect moments kept in existence with imperfect words.

Lovers not to be, want to be, maybe.

Who knows?

I don’t know.

He drank her in like liquid fire, the sight of her, the feel of her skin.

He drank breathlessly, slowly, knowing all the nexts.

She’ll stay until she goes.

He’ll burn and burn until time turns him to ash.

And he slept and dreamed bad dreams, and no one ended as they wished. They just ended.

Most don’t know this, it’s not like it’s taught in primary school, in places of higher education. It really isn’t taught anywhere. We who know, know, and we pass it on, to children, sometimes to a lover. I guess that’s why I’m here, leaving this note on a park bench, written on some bar napkin I got at last call just a few hours ago. I loved someone, still do, always.

I meant to tell her this secret I know, meant to tell her everything in my head. I wanted to tell our relationship with nature, how our connections to one another affect nature, shape the natural world. It’s old magic, as old as the sun. It’s not complicated, it’s easy to understand, easy as breathing. It’s… I’ll just get to it. The emotions we feel toward each other, between each other, they create things, physical things. Waterfalls are manifestations of collected sorrow. Volcanos are manifestations of collected rage. These are just the big, flashy examples, it’s the little things that really wind me up . Things like, fireflies come about when lovers kiss that very first time. Things like, rainbows show up when babies are conceived. Things like, orchids grow when mothers pass out of this world. Nothing we feel is a waste, everything we feel is an act of creation.

I’m looking at a crow right now, perched a few benches down. She could be my crow. See, crows come into being when one gets left by a true, complete, know it in one’s bones, kind of love. The kind of love I felt just at the sound of her voice, the girl who left, who flew away. The crow is the loneliness I feel at night, in the dark. The empty part in my heart that’ll never be filled again, because such love is absolutely unique, can’t be created the same. The crow is the aimlessness I feel, stumbling in and out of bars, looking for fixes that won’t fix anything.

Anyway, this napkin’s all covered up with the words I spilled onto it, words for her that will probably end up nowhere. I’ll just leave them for the wind, or the crows.

So, today I woke up and gave myself a bath in the backyard, spending an extra hour just licking the back of my neck. God, the ecstasy. Then, I took my usual six-hour nap under the big shady tree. This might seem lazy, but licking the back of one’s neck for an hour is kind of exhausting, and I’ll be honest, since being honest is what I’ve been hired to do, a little orgasmic. All a fellow wants to do is nap.

There’s this other cat, Tom, he’s such a douche. He lives in a tree behind my house. Literally, in the tree. I have to give him credit, living in a tree’s pretty intense, but I think it’s more that he’s socially awkward rather than enlightened. He’s always talking about the time he lit out, he’s always saying things like “lit out,” about the time he lit out on some river-raft with this black cat, Jim. It’s like, “Tom, nobody cares that the river was powerful slow, or how the nights were powerful dark. You’re a pretentious douche.” Nobody says this to his face, of course, but we think it. I sleep under his tree is why I mention him, he always gets me after naps, telling his adventures.

Anyway, more tomorrow about tomorrow.

Do you know he’d stay, do you know it deep-down, in that same place you know the sky is blue only to fade to black? Do you know he’d stay until the end of his everything? He’d stay perpetually wanting, he’d stay until he quit breathing, if you asked. Did you see that in his face, in his eyes, did you feel it in his touch? بلاك جاك 21 Do you know these things?

He’s enthralled to you, you hold every key to his every lock. Your smile. soft and bright as full moonlight. Your warm eyes, the color of fall leaves. He knows your face so well, loves you so well, he could sketch every inch with his eyes closed. 1xbet موقع It’s almost too much beauty, more than he can hold inside him sometimes, almost too overwhelming, when things are quiet, when he’s alone, He knows you’re more like a star fallen from the sky than just some anybody. He knows there’s no one who can fill his dull world with so much radiance. He knows you’re the only you.

He’s laid next to you at night, woken from bad dreams, feeling you there slowed his racing heart, made his head a safe place. You never heard it, you looked too peaceful nudge back to conciousness. but he’d tell you things.  Angel, I love you, I can’t explain how much, I just love you with everything in me. I don’t want to be anywhere else right now, you’re where I want to be, always, since the day we met. I don’t ever want you to go. He’d feel so much, say so much, all while you slept. 1xbet عربي

He loves you for all your beauty, for the peace you give him when you’re close, but not just those reasons. Something intrinsic draws him in, there’s something intangible that he sees in your eyes that binds him and ties him to you so tightly. Sometimes his wrists bleed, bound by invisible strands. The pain makes no nevermind to him. He’d cut himself a thousand times for you. He’d bleed out for you.

He’s never told you these things, but do you know them anyway, in ways unspoken?

You’re asleep now, but you’ll be awake soon, somewhere else and not with him.

I’m just a zombie, living but not. I’m emotionless motion, lifeless life. Going and going nowhere.