Thou shalt move on with thy life

When they arrived I was still stuffing things into one last box. I taped it shut quick and gave it the most appropriate label, “Oh shit”, before pushing it into line with the others. And after four and a half hours my boxes were stacked again and my furniture lay upended every which way in this new space. Rather than the usual “rental flat white”, these walls explode with color. The kitchen counters are granite. Visions of fancy moulding and fine wood floors dance through my head. I attempt to foresee my possessions, exploded from their boxes, and wonder how well my taste will inhabit this space. And then the tiny bit of fear starts telling me that it’s too good for me. I’ll loose it and fuck it up. Fears from the outside world crowd in like bad weather hanging in the window.

I head back over to the old place. From the world where I can find nothing I go to the place where there is nothing, save for a few bits of paper on the floor, a discarded extension chord, some piles of dust, old rugs, a filthy dish rack, some debris of personal use, cleaning supplies and rooms with piles of mouse poop in the corners. I am so angry at this apartment. I’m angry at the way it wasn’t anything like the unit I was shown. I’m angry at how very dirty it was as I moved in and how very broken were the appliances. Back here by the Popeye’s and Dunkin Donuts drive throughs I was an accidental tenant in a place doomed for neglect. And I’m supposed to clean? I could take a shit in the middle of the living room and leave this place better than what I found. I determine to not lift a finger!

I wander around the rooms, trash bag in hand and sad in heart. I pick up the paper, then the extension chord, come to something the movers accidentally left in the closet (fuckers!), and then I enter the bathroom. Looking into the sink at the tidal rings left by poorly draining pipes, I see her. A middle aged woman with poor knees and armed only with a bucket and a mop will be dispatched to face this apartment. The people who ignored my pleas for help with the mice, the people I’m so angry with for stealing from me or sassing at me, those men will not come in here to face this. It will be just her, alone, coming in to wash the rooms of any leftover memories. I can see her already, tired and already beyond shock at the things folks leave behind. I grab my broom, some cleanser and start.

And so this is it, I lose time in the scrubbing, spraying and sweeping. This is a mitzvah to the many soups, mousses and tortes created in this kitchen and the art career resuscitated in that bedroom become work studio. A reminder that this was the next, best, biggest step when I first filled these rooms lives in every sweeping of dust and decision to not leave a piece of trash behind.

When it’s over, tired buttocks parked on the windowsill, I sit shiva. The last words out of my mouth when I left to follow the moving truck were “this place just could have been so much better”. I figured that I had come into this place with high hopes for a basis to live differently, maybe better. I saw myself as a person with visions dashed. But perhaps simply I expected a quicker fix than what I found. I thought my plans were being rudely thwarted by the rodents. But they were just trying to move me on and fixing takes more steps than just the first one. The decision to move to higher, better ground which swept me in here has also, really, been the gust that blew me out. I came in here to live on my own simply to make a beginning at my own creativity and independence again. And now the beginning is over. That’s all. And this next phase shall end, too, in its’ own time.

In the end I leave behind the roach spray and boric acid. I leave the bag of mouse poison and the glue traps. I leave a spray bottle of glass cleaner and a roll of paper towels. I leave the toilet scrubber and plunger. I leave half a roll of TP. Then, I leave some foreign coins at the spot from which my golden dollar collection was stolen and I leave the piles of mouse poop at the margins of every room, for every loving birth is accompanied by a little slap of reality.

Moving toward empty

This place is getting that funny echo, the echo of empty. And with all the boxes piled up a march from one room to another that used to take seconds is a minutes long hopscotch and sidle around boxes and deconstructed furniture. There is but one untouched island left in this whole place. My writing desk.

Here I sit, wondering how in hell I'm going to pack that there lamp. The pull chord on the blinders bats in the wind. I keep turning my head... was that a mouse? no, silly.

The more I look around & pack up the more I realize that I had absolutely no intention of leaving this place. I got furniture and bought all the stuff for all the right spots and just figured it would stay right there. This was a cozy spot in a good location at the right price. Mine all mine. I think it was after I got the fancy new dresser and nice bookshelves that the mice started showing up.

And now? This stuff may fit into the new rental. But my dresser might only look good in the kitchen. My bookshelves may frame the new living room like an unsightly mistake. Crown moulding and Ikea? That could be a bad taste in the mouth. And this time I'm not so willing to go shopping and make it all work.

Ok, that's a lie.

And goofy things go through my head. Don't forget that bell. Where did my Garuda statuette go? Dang, shower curtains. Why do I have all this product in my bathroom?

Daily I bequeath upon the clientele of the alley some crazy, barely used item. A printer. A Microwave. A coffee maker. Some makeup, shampoo and a mirror (oh and a conditioner that, it turns out, is really only good for African hair). It disappears, off into someone else's home to be part of someone else's life. If they're savvy, on Saturday there will be a rug out there for the taking along with a halogen lamp that, while it functions, is wobbly on its feet. What else? what else? Onward toward empty.

Rise up

I wish I could stay down here.

Crouched down, fingers fumble through the dirt for roots on renegade blades of grass and the few remaining dandelions. I'm safe. I'm down here almost on all four, near the bees that buzz for some late season sweet, near the calls of birds burrowing for worms, near the crackle of new fallen leaves that I don't clear away. No, those are good, I leave them. Behind the tall bank of zinnias and marigolds I am hidden, like a wild animal watching from cover.

Up there, upright on two legs, are people looking to interrupt me and take a bite out of my day. They want to talk about something I'm sure I don't care about. They come at me with need in their eyes. Would I like to go out? for coffee maybe? sometime? no.

Up there is a world of worry where I have to go home to the dark forrest of moving boxes I now inhabit. Up there is fatigue. Up there is that funny nausea I woke up with and don't really care to think about. Up there my headache returns. Up is responsibility and I just don't feel like going there.

So I stay down, pulling out the stray runners of wild strawberry, tugging at the grass, feeling the leaves and touching the petals, sniffing the sweet musk of dirt and eavesdropping on the birds until Glory comes walking over in a costume the color of marigolds. Rise up. Rise up.

Charlie's gone

I found out today. I guess at first I didn't believe it... didn't believe that you were gone. Your eyes would never eagerly listen again as I took my turn to share in the noon meeting. I'd never again get to glance over and see what new tattoo was on your arm. gone. Silly thoughts that rush through my head without shame. You were a big guy, beefy and strong. Everything about you said "life". Did you make sure the sidewalk was empty, first, so no one would be hurt? did you go face first or fall backward out that window?

When realization settled in the first thing I did was hit something. How could you be so bloody selfish? I can think, off the top of my head, of a dozen people who would have been happy to pick up the other end of a call for help. We are people that will miss you. Why didn't you say something? Did you think of us at all? What was it tipped you over the edge? Did you forget your medication? What made you reach out into the thin air for a solution rather than toward us? How could you have done this? Did you change your mind after it was too late and gravity was already doing its work? What were you thinking?

I can't easily share this with anyone. My mother who has been present for so many moments where her experience is the only thing I could trust with my pain... I can't tell. I can't say it in certain circles because they will immediately insist you have gone to an eternal hell. Judging by actions I'd say you were already there. They like to do that though, those believer types, as if to distance themselves from the experience. It's just another way to say "that won't happen to me." But it might. None of us knows.

Now i feel angry with myself. Maybe you just didn't know. Maybe we didn't make ourselves obvious enough? Did we reach out enough? I think of all the times I've considered ending my life in a fit of depression and how I've worried people. But the thing is, I reached out. I picked up the phone. I realized that "I didn't get what I wanted" would make a bloody stupid epitaph. I stayed on this side of the sill.

But that doesn't make me any less sad... or mad.

Why... WHY??

Did it work? Are you free from torture in the afterlife or did the voices follow you there? Or is that lot just tossed to those of us you left behind?

Where we are all going.

Where are the real people? It’s like asking which raindrop is real, the one I see caught in the light as it hits the puddle or the one on my back I barely detect.

It’s some Friday night event at a salon in a neighborhood where women maybe even my same age are dressed with a sophistication that makes me look like a teenager walking past. On one corner sits expensive clothing boutiques. On another is a clinic for plastic surgery. I would have walked clean past my destination but for the crowd inside. Stepping past the door, the first thing that hits me is that smell… that fake floralish herbaly chemical smell that salons sometimes have. It fits as there are fake people with pencil thin legs and perfect clothes all holding cups of cheap wine. My first urge is to sneeze.

I bail. Take a breather and walk around the block. Less than a ten-minute walk away sits a display of another sort of folk. They’re rough and unpolished. They lift their shirts. They drop their drawers. Drool flows between gapped teeth as a mouth is overstuffed with canned peas. One plays hooligan for the camera while in the background his friends are fucking in the shower. You could say this was the rough, vice ridden side of humanity all neatly tucked between the covers of a book. You could say this was an authentic, unpolished look at people. Do I really wish to believe that, too? Is that anymore real? Is the awkward cavorting of a fat man and an Asian girl trying to fuck and go to the bathroom at the same time more real than the activity I confine to a bed with one man I care about?

I read a story once about a tribe of aboriginals in central Australia who called themselves the “real people”. They let themselves die off because they felt there was no place left for them in this world. But, I’m real. I’m real by my own lights as I lack surgical modification and nail polish. But what about that dyed hair and those shaved armpits? I look at the tiny specks of silver at my hairline. In less than 24 hours they will be gone again, for a time, really. I pull my phone out and check the time. 7:29. Give it one more shot.

To the model flaunting fashion on her fine body at the salon, she is real. I find someone to talk with about movies. Perhaps because my conversation leaves her out, one of the models singles me out for attention. I must look at her dress! She cannot wear underwear or it would ruin the line! I tell her to wear a g-string and turn back to my conversation. She comes back wearing some beaded affair (which really is cute) and grabs my scarf to get my attention. The scarf is blue and fuzzy – I tell her it’s genuine hide of cookie monster. I gotta wonder what exactly they’re paying her for. Does she really think I’d put on an outfit like that? Is it any wonder men get confused every which way by the signals women project? Whoever is picking her outfits can’t seem to find a skirt short enough! I had a doll when I was little whose hair could be pulled out of a hole in her head to make it longer (“Chrissy”). I imagine this model going into her changing room and someone yanks at her ankles, causing more leg to extend from a plastic vortex where the rest of us women have hips. Either that or her vagina is in her armpits and that’s why I can’t see it despite all that is revealed by this cute little denim affair she spins around in, to finish the evening.

Can you imagine if every raindrop had an ego? What a mess. But we are that mess - all so different it’s exhausting to truly judge. All pressed together closely on a late bus northward by the relentless storm, we are young girl who talks too loudly, gay man in hot clothes, older woman who really just wants to tuck her nose into her book of stories, black woman and her little boy who crawls and wriggles in his seat just trying to see past all the rain. Just trying to see where we are all going.

looking for Eve

It started with just looking for a map – some reference of ‘just there’ that I thought I’d neatly sneak into a painting. Draw a map and a red dot marks the spot. This should be easy, right? I could act on the assurance that my forebears came from some tucked away village of the Rhine valley from which they were simply uprooted by wars of the modern era.

Wrong. It was not war that drove Martin (the great great) from France during the early part of the 19th century at all, but famine. And he was not of some local line of tribal blood long descended from the Celts later mixed with Romans and then Germans, but more likely the offshoot of an import from Bohemia or Austria after the area had been decimated by the 30 years war. France had helped the Bohemians in their rebellion against the Holy Roman Empire and invited these people into the new chunk of under populated land it had bought as part of the victory. It was a special area, given to periods of hyper-vigilant governing and social tolerance. For the next couple centuries it was a cross roads where people of different backgrounds and religions mixed and blended in a brew warmed by wealth and wine.

Until it was not. It became unimportant when sea trade in the Mediterranean became easy and peaceful. It became riddled with famine when the population began to explode.

So Martin the great great, he left. Family legend has him hiding in a load of hay until he got to the coast to board a boat. He arrived on our labor-hungry shores and changed his name for one that meant “courage” in his native tongue to, well, “meek”, spelled backwards. The only “from” address he had would suffer in translation to subsequent generations. I look at the map and realize… OHHHH! I was told “Wittenberg” but it’s really “Wissenbourg”. Maybe he didn’t especially wish to be connected with something back there? Perhaps circumstances forced him to exact a geographic cure unto his ailing life circumstances?

I assumed he spoke German, but it was more likely some mushy Alemanic dialect. And in his blood lay seeds from someplace further east. I’m voting for Bohemia. Perhaps this is why Czech people still look at me and scratch their heads. Those cheekbones! Surely I am Czech! Why no, I tell them, I am Alsatian. Little did I know that I may as well have told them that I was sired by a pot of gumbo.

The map of who I am, the map of where I thought my roots were, shifts each time I try to follow the trail. I look for a pinpoint but never manage to find one. Eastern France leads to eastern Europe leads back over the Urals in to central Asia. Through ice ages and long gone land bridges it finally comes to rest in Africa, maybe. I hunt through time looking for the garden of a furthest-back self

Sometimes I still just feel like an ape whose hands have been put on backwards. Something in my hippocampus feels fingers gliding across keyboard and thinks… what the fuck is that?

don't like being no grim reaper

I knew, at a distance, that some little beastie had just stepped onto a trap in my house. Sure enough, there it was when I got home. The side of the glue trap was covered with chew marks, as if it thought the usual mechanism of perforating walls and gaining access to food would somehow save its life. Although, perhaps it didn’t realize that its life was ending on this strange morass which seemed to have encumbered its paws. It might have found this simply strangely annoying until I came home and found it.

I picked up the trap, looked it in its beady little eyes and began to deliver the usual lecture about marching through my kitchen uninvited. I couldn’t help but notice, though, the fine detail of its whiskers and paws. In another circumstance, we could have been friends. In another time it could have been a pet to whom I’d feed nuggets and I’d be an owner upon which she’d climb.

I notice a puddle come out from underneath it. This animal is so afraid that it has urinated. I talk to it calmly as I get the plastic bag ready but it doesn’t go to its end stoically. It writhes and squeaks, complains and claws at the air all the way into the freezer. It wants to live even if it doesn’t so much understand what its life is for.

Something bigger could come along and make much the same decision about me. In fact, I think some such thing does. It’s perhaps a corporation or a government tapping my funds and shaping my habits. It sends me off to my life squealing with complaint. Surely I was meant for more than paying bills! Surely this mouse was meant for more than just scurry scurry. I was meant for more than being the hangman of rodents. I can’t do this anymore. Each mouse I dispatch gnaws a little more at me. This one makes two mice in one day, five since last Tuesday. I caught them all alive. I looked at all of them in the eyes, determined their lives to mean less and put them to the kindest end that I know how. I hate this job. I can’t live here anymore.

“In the case of an emergency, the walkway will light up to show the nearest exit.” I heard that line time and again, sometimes through half sleep, as I made my time zone tour this summer. I see that lighted pathway now. Soul emergency! Time to make an exit!