My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

I think if things don’t change, I’m going to become a Catholic nun. I’m going to break a gender-wall that has stood for far too long. I’m going to gay marry God, giving up my life of sin. I’ll wear my habit, and look totally hot, and live to love and serve the Lord. I’ve seen the movie, Doubt, and listened to Tori Amos’ cover of Like a Prayer enough to feel this calling.

A fellow can only fuck up so many times before he realizes that he should take a different road. For me, that road leads straight to the Catholic Church, and the life of a cloistered nun.

They wake to the sounds of alarms, sirens, tires screeching on pavement. The world outside is burning. Trees, houses, it’s all on fire. People screaming, their sorrow floating in through open windows. She’s holding him in bed, lying on ruffled purple sheets under a dark-blue blanket. It was cold out, freezing, until everything turned to flames. They fell asleep happy, all safe and together.

She’s crying now, hot tears running down her face, onto his. He says her name, this name he loves so much, a name attached to soft brown eyes, long curly brown hair against soft pale skin, but she doesn’t answer. Again and again he says it, but she’s no words, just tears. He’d give anything to hear her voice, something beautiful amidst the screaming, and the sirens, and the dying, but her voice isn’t there. There’s a flash bright as day, the room gets very hot, the air very thin, she turns to flame and ash, right fuckin’ there, right in his arms. Their bed, covered in tears, and sweat, and ash, and she’s gone. She’s so totally fucking gone. His skin, burned where he held her.

He tells himself it’s all a bad dream, that he just has to wake up and she’ll be lying next to him. He’ll kiss her softly, run the tips of his long fingers down her cheek. It’ll be cold outside, exactly like it was when he fell asleep with her in his arms. She’ll feel so good, so warm, she’ll feel like a shot of heroin. He’ll hold her close, tell her how much he loves her. He’ll take off her clothes, sink into her until all the fear that covers him falls away.

He hears a song in his head, soft and melancholy. One day she’ll go, I told you so…

He can’t wake up, and the world outside just keeps burning.

This just seems right to post.

I feel like this Nirvana song, like a stain.

The song goes…

Well, he never bleeds, and he never fucks, and he never leaves ’cause he’s got bad luck.

Well, he never reads, and he never draws, and he never sleeps ’cause he’s got bad luck, yeah…

I’m a stain…

I’m in that sort of rut, but I don’t blame luck, I just blame myself. The really fucked up part is that I can’t write about any of it, which goes against my entire philosophy of transparency. I can’t even write it as thinly veiled fiction, as I do so often. I have these things going on that I absolutely cannot put to words, but since they’re all that’s in my head, I can’t seem to write anything else. I’m frustrated, and exhausted, and I just want to feel something good again. I don’t want to feel like I’m a stain…

I’ve been pretty stuck in my writing. Nothing in my head seems worth the letters, and the words, and the sentences. It’s been this way for a solid while now, and I can’t seem to dig out of it. I love the craft, I love using it to create, I just don’t see anything worth creating.

So, if I don’t have any writing ideas just now, maybe you folks do. What would you like to see me write? Give me ideas, ask for anything. Give me suggestions, crazy topics, don’t be shy. I’ve asked this before, and it definitely helped then.

Just leave your ideas in my blog comments, please don’t leave Facebook comments or tweets.

Almost daily sometimes, I hear that I’m brave, or an inspiration. “Inspirational” is subjective, I can’t really argue with how I affect people. If something I write stirs something good, I’ll take it. If me riding around town with a little plastic tube in my throat helps someone do something they’re afraid of, great. I can’t tell people how to feel.

The thing is though, I’m not brave. I’m just not. I’m full of fear, and flaws, and damage. I fuck up all the time. I’m scared of being lonely, and scared that anyone I get close to will leave me because they might not like what I am, so I often push them away first. I’ve been known to enjoy liquor way too much when I get too uneasy. Two summers ago, I was doing fuckin’ vodka shots for brunch. I don’t do that stuff now, but I did, and it wasn’t brave. I have to get a fresh tube in my throat every five weeks, and the way I handle it is knowing that I’ll get amazing drugs for the procedure. Drugs to make me sleep through the hard part, and drugs to kill the pain and the nervous when I wake up. That’s definitely not brave. Nothing about this paragraph is brave.

I don’t see myself as brave, I’m just as fucked up and screwed up as anybody.

So, last night I went to open mic at a cafe in Tampa, Sacred Grounds. I met someone there on Saturday, Danielle, and we’ve been talking since. She really likes my writing for some reason, and asked if she could be my reader at open mic. So, we went and she read three of my flash pieces, Waking up someone who isn’t me, Driving in the dark, and Asleep soon.

So, I’m not a big fan of Christmas much anymore. It’s just gotten to be very lonely, and stressful, and full of unmet expectations. I suppose I’m getting old and bitter, or perhaps I just don’t carry around the right people in my backpack. I don’t know.

Aside from not liking the season in general, I don’t tend to like Christmas music. It’s all either saccharine sweet, or just plain weird. Like, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. How fuckin’ creepy is that? I do, however, love Aimee Mann, so I had to have her Christmas CD, One More Drifter in the Snow. She sings a bunch of the more low-key traditional Christmas songs, but then there’s one song on the CD that really stands out, Calling On Mary. I’d never heard it before, it’s very sad, and beautifully written. It’s about taking happiness for granted, and ending up fucked up and alone at Christmas. It’s so real, and so beautiful. This is because it’s an original song, co-written by Aimee herself. Which explains why it’s so gorgeous, and dark, and perfect. There’s one line in particular, kind of a warning against guaranteed misery, that really caught me.

‘Cause comfort’s not possible when you look past the joy to the end…

Tattoo by Colt, hardcore badass at Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

That really is true, it’s impossible to feel any sort of peace, or contentment, or happiness, when you’re thinking fifteen steps into the future, never living right now. Lying in bed with someone you love, only thinking about the fact that they’ll be gone far too soon, that you probably won’t see them for awhile, all that thinking ruins the beauty of right now. Still, it’s very difficult, at least for me, not to think that way. It’s difficult when absolutely beautiful moments are drowned out by so much loneliness, and uneasiness, and melancholy. It’s hard to focus on the beauty of right now knowing that everything for miles ahead is just fucking bad. It’s hard not to look past the joy to the end, I don’t think I’m very good at it, but I try. I do try.

So, this tattoo actually came from a piece of writing from a very bizarre tv mini-series, The Prisoner. Normally, at least to me, tv writing isn’t particularly sharp. I don’t remember any one line from Lost, or Battlestar Galactica. Okay, I actually remember lots of lines from South Park, but I don’t think I want, “I like dancin’, and ponies, and getting my snootch pounded on Friday nights,” tattooed on me. Nothing I’d ever heard on tv had ever affected me enough to want to carry it around on my skin forever, until I heard Ian McKellen say so plainly, “Love is a torment, or it is not love.”

Tattoo by Colt, resident badass at Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

Love is a torment, love is the most difficult easy thing in the world. Being in love with someone means caring for them so deeply, you’ll do anything to make them smile, keep them safe. If that particular person isn’t around for awhile, you miss them, their absence is palpable. The absence becomes something weighty, a painful heaviness in the chest. When you love someone, you don’t want to be apart. You want to fall asleep holding that person close, you want to kiss them slow, and their face is the first thing you want to see when you wake in the morning. Without that closeness, and that kiss, and that face next to yours, bathed in soft morning sunlight, it’s almost difficult to breathe sometimes, difficult to think. Loving someone so completely, you don’t ever want to lose that person, the thought of being apart forever gets to be terrifying. That’s the cost of feeling something so spectacular, the pain of distance, the fear of loss.

So yes, love is a torment, or it is not love.

So, I went to see Up in the Air three times in the theater, and I’ll probably go for a fourth. Aside from firing people for a living, the film’s main character also does motivational speaking gigs. He talks about how we all carry a backpack, we fill it with keepsakes, gadgets, furniture, cars, houses, friends, acquaintances, family, lovers, secrets, compromises, responsibility. We jam so much into that backpack that we can’t move, we’re completely weighed down. The idea is that all that weight, even relationships, it all equates to a lack of freedom and ultimately, death.

Much of me agrees with that philosophy. I have so much “stuff,” but it’s just stuff, it doesn’t make me feel happy, or loved. Aside from my computer, I often think about throwing everything on a fire just to watch it burn. Stuff is often just a fix, something to stop up a hole where the rain gets in. Back in 2005, I accumulated a collection of anime DVDs that screamed, “OH MY GOD, I’M LONELY, AND I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO LIFE!” Letting go of stuff can be freeing, gives a clean slate to focus on what really matters. People.

In my backpack, people, and all the accompanying emotional baggage, this isn’t inherently bad. I don’t want to be some lonely fucker, wandering around with an empty backpack. I don’t think relationships are inherently a lack of freedom. I mean, to me, being in love with someone who loves me the same way, that’s freedom. It’s the best feeling in the world, better than vodka and morphine combined. To me, all that matters is feeling genuinely connected to even just one person. I’m not afraid of commitments, or responsibility, that sort of weight doesn’t scare me. Loneliness scares me. I don’t want my backpack to be bereft of relationships, even if relationships can be difficult and painful. The hard part is really deciding how many people to carry around in that backpack. Some relationships aren’t worth the effort, some relationships are eventually detrimental. It’s difficult knowing who to keep, and who to toss. It’s difficult wanting someone to keep you, and knowing they might not.

Sometimes all he sees is her, all warm brown eyes, curly brown hair.

She’s behind his eyes when he closes them to fall asleep at night, she’s in his head when he wakes in the morning. موقع روليت

He sees her in little things, beautiful things. لعبة قمار اون لاين She’s sun shining through bright green tree leaves, she’s a pretty teal butterfly fluttering nowhere in particular.

He sees her when the sky shifts from pure blue to black infinity. She’s so right there, in the silvery full moon, in the brightest stars. bet 365

This woman, so dear to him, he sees her in raindrops bouncing off a city sidewalk. Drops splitting into drops, splitting into drops, tiny spheres of water with rainbows inside. She’s with him, even when she’s not.

Sometimes all he sees is her.