On this day: 12/7/2015

Every so often, I’ll dip back into my Morning Pages to find an entry from this day in my history, and reproduce it here. On this particular day, I was flying from Chicago to Florida. Flying is often where I get most of my good writing done, because it offers so few distractions, comparativley. This entry directly sparked my poem “We All”.

Leaving today for Tampa, visiting V’s Mom and Charles there this week. It will be nice to get the hell out of Chicago for a few days of sun and beach. I’m going to do my best to enjoy the trip and not get pulled back into Chicago bullshit for a few days, at least.

Another rejection letter. This time from the SIXFOLD contest, in which a poem is rated against six others, through three rounds of voting by other poets. My “Leatherbacks” didn’t make it past Round 1, earning a score of 3.6 out of 6. Oh well…keep trying. [“The Leatherbacks” later titled “Prey” would eventually be published in Pest Control Issue 2, March 2021]

redemption

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<——— Oliver Minnall, 2001

Thinking about Brian Kennelly today, as I was telling V about my Navy days. I haven’t thought about him in years—an outrageous character—who roomed with Vincent Mak in “A” School. Mak would become one of my closest friends on the Vinson. Then there’s Oliver Minnall, Mark Howard, Lloyd Colgin, all ghosts from my past. Names with nothing else attached to them. How insane is that? I spent over a year with these guys, hanging out every day. We watched the towers fall together in real time on 9/11, and now all I retain is a faint recollection of their names. Some, not even that much: the hulking MM mechanic with the square, bald head, who I shared a bathroom with, who I was slightly terrified of, who drove me to downtown Charleston one night to party, where we got completely hammered on $5 Long Island Iced Teas, and on the way home I thought I was certainly going to piss myself, and he got into the bathroom first, and Minnall [my roommate] was playing Dreamcast—or whatever game system was en vogue at the time—at 2 in the morning. Or the 1980s movie marathon that I held in our room one weekend, people popping in and out at all times of the day. Jesus. It was another lifetime. Playing sand volleyball on a Sunday afternoon, going to the beach when I was in Prototype—which beach? I know it had a name—drunk on Smirnoff Ice and boogie boarding, and the strap of the thing getting caught between my thighs somehow as a fucking riptide pulled me out to sea, towards the pier. I surely thought I would die that day. Or the other time at the beach, covering myself in Coppertone Classic—essentially COOKING OIL—and falling asleep in the sun, getting burned so badly that my entire forehead erupted into a billion blisters and I looked like Freddy Krueger for two weeks. Or that blonde instructor at Prototype [Timothy Croak, RIP 8/29/2024] who was so goddamn cocky and hated everything and all of us and was the meanest 2nd Class Petty Officer I ever met in the six years I served.

How is it possible that all that exists in this INSTANT?

Staggering to think about, really. Everything goes. Nothing lasts—and we all act as if it really will last forever. Like we have an eternity to do the things we want, like we have all the money to do everything we want. Life is a short bus. Suddenly, all the stress about giving up a full-time job to explore yoga teacher training seems TRIVIAL. But isn’t everything trivial, extended out to a long enough timeline? The older I get, the more convinced I become that trying to make a thing last is the definition of futility, Nothing lasts. That is the only truth I know. Every day we wake up, we are infinitely different than we were the previous day. It’s impossible to remain the same, day in and day out. We are trapped inside these humyn bodies—which is such a relief, because at least we have that as an anchor point—the same face staring back at us from the looking glass each morning; something recognizable. I could wake up tomorrow an accountant living in a remote yurt in Mongolia, and the only thing that would surprise me is if I no longer recognized the face in the mirror.

This hippy, sitting kitty-corner from me has been in his stocking-feet since he sat down; plane still attached to the jetway, baggage still being tossed into the compartment below—stocking-footed. I have to laugh. It’s only a two-hour flight, brah.

Why am I terrified to write what is actually concerning me? You know why. People read over shoulders, that is why. I am a bad person, aren’t I?

No, I am not. This is life.

We all make mistakes, we all make friends, we all make a mess. We all clean it up. We all write. We all swipe left. We all pick our noses when nobody’s looking. We all cry. We all avoid those we don’t want to see. We all seek out those we want. We all drink scotch before noon. We all see our therapists daily. We all take our medicine. We all experience turbulence. We all get cancer. We all kill sheep ritualistically on the Autumnal Equinox. We all stab one another in dark alleyways for 20 cents and a bus pass.

We all sit in crowded airplanes in our stocking feet. We all sing. We all laugh. We all shoot heroin. We all soil ourselves. We’ve all been to Lisbon. We’ve all been to Reykjavik. We’ve all been to the laundromat. We’ve all run a marathon. We all are made of comets. We all are bloodsacks. We all speak to aliens. We all believe in Santa. We all turn our TV on, watch it for hours, and never learn a goddamn thing. We all cook eggs. We all cheat. We all lie. We all roast in the flames of a fire we all built. We all store our dryer lint in a sandwich baggie by the DVDs, so we can use it for kindling to start that fire. We all drink an entire bottle of bourbon by that fire when we should be at home with hubby. We all pet someone else’s kitty behind the ears. We all brag about it later to our friends, or anyone who’ll listen. We all glisten. We all glow. We all shine. We all swim. We all drown.

We all

〰️

We all 〰️

We all believe the Olmecs were the best. We all burn at the stake. We all set the stakes too high. We all play ping pong with the neighbor boy. We all flunk algebra. We all write “poetry” when we’ve had a little too much to drink. We all eat far too much cheese. We all chew our food with our mouths hanging open. We all wish we were cabana boys. We all love fado. We all love Larry David. We all love Donald Trump. We all are gay. We all are Muslim. We all are salmon. We all are Kodiak bears. We all play the bass fiddle in folk-rock bands. We all read magazines when we wait in the lobby for our turn in the dentist’s chair. we all drive Vespas from the café to the lycée with our teeth chattering in the cold. We all watch our friendships die. We all watch our friends die. We all play the radio a little too loudly for our own good.

We all buy houses we can’t possibly afford. We all run up our credit card debt. We all have a 401k. We all get two weeks for vacation. We all sip mimosas on the beach in Cancún as the sun rises. We all black out. We all forget who we are. We all forget who we were. We all forget whomever we were supposed to be. We all regret. We all paint in the style of the modern man. We all get accepted to the Ivy League. We all make six figures. We all winter in Istanbul. We all watch airplanes fall from the sky. We all fly with the angels. We all smoke too much. We all have an app for that. We all Just Do It. We all Enjoy Responsibly. We all refresh our Facebook feeds. We all swim with sharks. We all hunt giraffes. We all know how to sling a sledgehammer. We all have a Hall of Champions. We all have won a Grammy. We all belong in Cooperstown. We all died on the Titanic. We all would love a Toblerone, if you’re offering. We all play Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah” on repeat and cry ourselves to sleep. We all take hemlock when the time comes. We all write our memoirs prematurely. We all snuggle under the covers as we watch our lives slip away. We all hike the AT. We all re-enact the Battle of Bull Run. We all break down screaming on the floors of airports. We all blow our brains out on live TV. We all grunt. We all moan. We all laugh until our sides hurt. We all sing XMas Carols. We all have favorites. We all have enemies. We all have a hard time with it. We all hope for the best. We all prepare for the worst. We all wish we had more time.

We don’t.

On this day: 11/20/2015

Every so often, I’ll dip back into my Morning Pages to find an entry from this day in history, and reproduce it here. On this particular day, 11/20/2015, I was drinking copious amounts of dark rum and listening to Tom Waits albums, while typing whatever came into my head. Here is that transcript.

A screaming skeleton of a squirrel squirms down a stick of nasty branches that, once upon a July, some summers ago, resembled an Ash Tree; an Ash Tray, today. Getting deeper, getting loster, lostest, flawstest, flautist. Sing! You scorpion, serenade me or shut your face and BEGONE! Do Not Feed the animals after Midnight. Not under any circumstances. Nor shall ye allow them to graze upon these pastures, unsupervised, lest they needs be shot betwixt the eyes. Cry yourself to an early grave, sob yourself into oblivion.

Scroll away, scroll away on that fucking device. Watch your life slip away. Why am I sitting at this godforsaken typewriter when I could be watching the TV set? Can’t I be the Cabana Boy? The Handsome Handyman? Write, you brute, or the whips are coming out for the Cabana Boys. It’s time time time. Time to go back again into the brass cage. You sickly little worm, you sicken me with your sticky green slime. Your snail trail smelling to high heaven. Is this #Real life? #IsThisRealLife? What? WHUT? Just put the fucking phone down, will you? You could write 10,000 words of nonsense each day if you can only put that fucking phone down. Flush it down.

“All the donuts have names like prostitutes”. I would give my left nut to write a line like that. GAWD. Where is that barefoot balladeer, with a voice like Sam Cooke, trimming his sails in a world sans snark? And how are you supposed to get your writing done when this dog needs pets? Stop opening drawers, stop scrolling, stop running, running, always running. Sit your ass in that chair and put your goddamn phone away. Why waste your time? None of this is going anywhere. Please, please, by all means, check to see if you collected any likes, loves, hearts, hugs, comments, favorites, kisses, emojis, thumbs-down, “WTF?”s in the past five minutes. We will wait…Ha! One like, indeed! Score!

Lets freshen that up for you “while you wait”. We will freshen you up in a real jamboree jiffee. Woman Pushing Scotch in Stroller: Google it. Why do you think you were not born to be tamed, like the screaming squirrel in the stick tree? And what is this nasty white shit I see drifting down past the windows? It had better be something that is delivering me a hot pizza or a winning Mega-Million ticket, or else it is entirely unwelcome round these parts.

In a world sans sadness, sans snark, sans sharks, sans Smack—wasn’t that a cereal? Smacks? Jelly Smacks? Honey Smacks? Nine times out of ten, dimes out of yen, slimes out of MEN, chimes out of pen, crimes out of Glenn?

There is something foul and fluffy floating down from clopping clueless clouds, clobbering clammy clapless clots clubbing their way to Clubanistan. Back to the brass cage, you little stinking shit-heeled Cabana Boy, you slippery shit, you. Where is my whiskey goddamn you?

Where is my lantern? Lantern? What is this? 1946? A lantern, for Pete’s sake? Who is Pete? Sipping, slipping, snipping sage cervesas, certainly, senselessly. Some screaming is certainly coming from down the hallway. I’m not sure how much screeching should be expectorated on such an occasion. You can’t hide from the screaming skeletal squirrel as he inches down the branches.

Whose panini is this, over here? Crushed and dismantled, with plenty of garlic and crickets added to the thing, thus ruining it, in flavor at least. It does, at minimum, bear a slight visual resemblance to a sammich. The american cheese slices pressed between rye crusts doesn’t CHALLENGE the PALLETTE. This is not the greatest sandwich ever. One star. *. If I could give it Zero stars, I would. After all, I mean, who leaves a whole, fresh panini unwrapped, still steaming, on a park bench anyway? And who wants to take my sheep for a spin in the pastures? I can pay $5.00 for the day of work. That amounts to $0.42 per hour of good, h’old fashioned walkin and workin, before he is whisked away to his pretty brass cage, where his scotch stroller sleeps soundly, folded up in the corner, collecting cobwebs, collating cumberbunds, correcting cokeheads, captured, crusted. No editing required or desired.