This Planet of Ours

Will the Sun explode before the Moon crashes back into the Earth?

This is a question that concerns me. I have glanced back at the whole of humanity and with a blink I've looked at our present, which has summoned severe and drastic questions about our future. And about these futuristic questions I am compelled to wonder how this planet of ours will end. Will it end like a roller coaster or like a dying roller coaster-- mid-stream, with so many thrills and and lungs yet to be unsatisfied, just another orbit of blood-filled heads and regretfull ticket-purchasers... or in a moment of screams and chuckles and camera captures?

why do I ponder such awful dilemmas when the moments that matter are tears of dreams achieved and dreams missed? How many hopes have been born and died amongst pillow drool?

I do not think it is fair to claim for myself the rightful awareness of an amateur philosopher... although I have seen dirty fingernails. I've seen blown-out tires. I've seen worn-out mailboxes. I've seen the dimples of nervous women and the thigh-related wrinkles of lust. I've swam in toxic streams and crossed clean rivers. I'm a water bug on the currents of life. I'm an insect with a conscience. I'm a feather in the wind with a shadow and a past.

I have learned to conflate philosophy with wisdom. I'm a thinker and a fortune-cookie reader. Both are umbrellas that merely serve to help the smart among us keep their shoulders clean of pigeon shit.

Is there anything more metaphorical than bird shit from the sky? The answer is yes. Bird shit from the sky is merely an occurrence of nature, like pollen or mayflies or mardi gras or other forms of lust. It takes skill to speak in riddles but it takes balls to speak in truths.

Truth moment: I am flawed. Truth moment: my life is worth more than I can perceive. Truth moment: I have loved. Truth moment: I dream more of the happiness of others than I do of my own. Truth moment: We are all leaves and we all deserve our share of sunlight. Truth moment: I am chlorophyll.

This blog entry ends with the following thought: Life is a bad case of poison ivy on the skin of time. We itch for attention. We scratch for love. Our fingers seek both and often find neither...

The best among us are durable toothpicks. We are misdemeanors of time. We count clock-ticks and laugh while the rest hold their breath. Humans and reptiles are the original suckers...

Every man should have himself a pair of slippers. This is not young man's wisdom but I am happy to borrow it from prior generations, the comfort of having warm feet, the ease of stepping across a mop-hungry floor free from the anxiety-causing crumbs and morsels that stick to the bottom of an unprotected foot, the gentle defiance of gravity. Slippers; durable hugs for the foot. And why not? These peds work hard. They're life's tires.

Nothing quite as satisfying as homemade toast. Huff huff. That's right. Unlike the legions of Wonderbread lever-depressors I'm no ordinary toaster jockey. No, this night I browned up a few slices of homemade bread. Loaves made a week or so ago during a winter spell in which heavy snow traded shifts with tit-tightening air to conspire to keep us Northerners indoors. Yeast-risen breads made mostly out of curiosity but also out of a desire for delicious smells. "Baking is so hard," they always say. This turns out to be true -- there are many ways to screw it up. "You really have to measure just right!" Also true, but I've found measuring to be one of the easier aspects. Like any form of cooking, baking is about decision-making and timing. because of the tactile nature of baking I've discovered it to be an intuitive process. It is equal parts instinct and equal parts "just-fucking-do-it-already!" It's sticky and visceral and it smells like morning in Heaven. Advice: Listen to the dough; it will tell you when it's ready. It won't stick to the work surface or to your hands, but it will be elastic, springy, just slightly short of uncooperative. Proof under a moist towel, grease the pans with your fingers, forgive yourself your sins, use too much spice by a third. That's it. That's life. This night's slices browned just perfectly, warm and ready to accept a pad of cold butter followed by a coat of jar-clicking blackberry jam.

Bread bowls soon. And clam chowder. Chili too.

Moving on...

Oh women, you divine creatures you. So complicated and complex, beautiful and worthy. You puzzles, you roses, you ferns, you insufferable headaches!

Don't buy a grown man a shirt, not unless he points at a shirt on a rack and says to you, "Buy me that shirt. That is a shirt I will wear in public. I will not be embarrassed in that shirt." Are you listening, Santa Claus? Do you hear me? How bout parents and grandparents? You paying attention? (Of course not, only a privileged few know about this blog) Santa could care less, but I know the DNA-mongers that are my relatives do give a couple of arctic shits about their gifts to me. So here goes: Christmas gifts consisting of sweaters and shirts always land squarely both in the I-love-you department but also in the Here-you-go-wear-an-ugly-piece-of-shit department. I unwrapped a nice purple shirt from the dad's favorite hunting store. Collar buttons, dual chest pockets (with buttons (and flaps)) aside, it's a nice shirt, but it looks like something a truck driver would wear to church. And it also looks like an errand, a mission of return upon which I will someday venture in the next 90 days. I will walk away with a flashlight, or some gloves, maybe some tackle. That would be cool.

I live in a building of many doors. There is a gate. Next to the gate is a bank of mailboxes, all neighbors, all strangers. Lucky for them I find a sense of serenity in shoveling snow. So on recent accumulations I've shoveled snow for them a few times lately. After clearing the communal walk it behooves me to also clear the several stairways and doorfronts, all the way up to the kickplate. I've earned a couple satisfying thanks but mostly I've been happy to just see nature beaten back for another cycle. I enjoy the rhythm of shoveling, the silence, the peace, the work of burning calories, just simply so that myself and my roommate and people I don't know can step comfortably on the last few paces home.

*smile*

Smile.

cold fingers, loud palms

Walked to a friend's holiday party tonight. Wore my black wingtips, the ones that click when walked in, but only in quiet rooms. I stepped carefully along the few patches where the recent weeks' ice had not yet been fully melted by the day's ingress of above-freezing air. One of the houses along the way had a tree displayed in the front window, a bushy pine covered entirely in blue christmas lights. On the outside of the building just below the second floor balcony hung a large wreath covered entirely in orange christmas lights. The rest of the house was dark, at rest. It sat serenely among the rest of the homes on the block. It sat without burden.

Friends and new friends gathered to clink the rims of red and green plastic cups. The apartment was right proper. Pictures in the right place, beds and bathrooms free of blemishes and not a single unreplaced light bulb to be accounted for. Cider, then beer. And laughs and smiles, and the usual eyes about strangers. Meeting and being met. Some women, available or maybe not, some definitely not. Thoughts of hope and frustration, want, wanting and being wanted, sin and decency... all hung about the place like moistened spider webs in a cave.

Perilous is the mind of the self-reflective man. Oh to be stupid and unaware. How eagerly do I strive to achieve the bliss such attributes endow. Genuine ignorance is genuine mercy. I strive to be present. I live with one foot in the past and one foot in the future and I am completely lost. I am not me. I have never met myself, nor have I ever been introduced to anyone as a whole person. I am a dog hair stuck in the bristles of time.

The fire burns.

In short order I will wake up entangled in my blankets. Soft morning light will permeate the room while I savor the sweetness of morning-- the relaxed muscles, the warm feet, the disobedient eyelids. I will force myself into my chair before the computer. Then I will read news websites and various liberal blogs while pondering whether or not to jerk off. I will decide not to. I will urinate and shower and then brush my teeth. At some point while putting my contacts in (a task at which I am not yet qualified to call myself an expert) I will swear silently at the saline solution.

A dead turkey will be warming to room temperature on the counter. This animal my roommate will soon violate in ways antithetical to the order of the Universe, but these violations will be delicious. It's proteins and sinews will be ingested with pleasure, first by gnashing teeth, then by insatiable acid-filled stomachs. We will be careful not to cross the line between respectful and worshipful. Worshiping your meat is gauche. Respecting it is right.

Grateful.

I will ascend the steps to the kitchen with thoughts of pyrex and precision. My challenge will be to concoct two dishes: mashed potatoes with parmasean and mozzarella and sausage/chestnut dressing made with sourdough bread. Both recipes call for measuring but I plan to rely on instinct and odor.

When squeezed, soft notes of pain course through my left thumb. This is from this night's task of peeling roasted chestnuts. They are defiant little creatures, their oaky flesh protected by two layers of casing. Tonight I learned, however, that, like women, with the right coercion they yield. Tomorrow they will be rough chopped and added to the dressing recipe I plan on attempting. Like Frankenstein of lore I hope this mish-mash of parts is more than its sum. I will cheer and cackle if it rises from the table and delights tomorrow's guests.

The other dish, mashed potatoes, is pure home-cooking, a recipe I learned straight from space. Teevee taught me this one. Digital satellite TV to be exact. It starts with potatoes and ends with love, heaping scoops of saturated and mono-unsaturated forms of love. Salt and cream and butter. Enough to make the heart pump harder than it should... Yum.

Eventually family will arrive and the smiles will be similar to the many and many that have showed up on their doorsteps over the years. They will have concoctions of their own, some to be chilled and some to be warmed, but all to be eaten-- sent down the gullet on one-way missions of digestion and affection.

Not all of the family will be there, of course. This Earth is too big and complicated to allow us all the same bit of square footage on one particular day. Older brother is fertilizing his soul with wife and child in Berlin. Younger brother will be forty-five minutes away but farther distant than anyone I know. A rift exists and I struggle to reach across my half of it, but I do, and I will, because I love him. Dad is in northern Wisconsin with his buddies hunting deer and telling stories and nursing hangovers. For the last twenty-eight years he has had thanksgiving with them, those hard-working hillbilly warriors. Twenty-nine years ago he was here in Illinois during a similar November week while his then wife squeezed out his second child... Me. Apparently I slid out quick and easy; he came back from a pee break and had new mouth to feed. Fancy that.

And tomorrow for the first time my front door will be knocked upon (well, actually, either my cellphone or my roommate's cellphone will be rung when the family finally finds parking and needs to be let in through the front gate) and my Thanksgiving cherry will be popped in delicious fashion. I will host well. Food will be warm, forks will be sterile and family will be family.

The fire burns.

Make my day, Shoes!

Late last week, Wednesday it was, while driving from the Salvation Army thrift store in Lakeview to the Village Discount Outlet thrift store in Roscoe Village it occurred to me the absurdity of the task to which I had embarked upon. I was costume shopping, gathering the components of an alternate me. I was intent. I had a design in mind, one of manly kind.

At the first place I spent a good eight minutes pondering the purchase of a woman's belt. It had a large buckle made of silver (shiny metal, not real silver, of course) and those turquoise rocks that are smooth and glossy, whatever those are called. It was $4.50. Pricey. It was just about what I wanted for my costume, considering that it was a belt with a buckle that was large. I passed, figuring I had time to explore other sources, and besides, I was really there to find a pair of boots. That's when I noticed a sign pointing me upstairs. TOYS, KITCHEN, SHOES, MISC.

Stairs hurt just slightly these days (minor softball injury, but that's beside the point)

The upstairs was a flea market of hope and dashed hope. As I moseyed along the aisles, hoping I might find a shelf or case stocked with donated belt buckles or that I might find the best cowboy boot section in the city I glanced down the dishware aisle and saw stacks of plates and dishes and cups. Tucked amongst each tower of plates grew a peculiar weed-- scratched and discarded serving utensils, spatulas and slotted spoons, grill forks and pie servers, potato mashers and kiwi cutters. Something about the stacks of plates gave me pause. In a moment of impromptu archeology I had a vision of a history of meals eaten and served, macaroni and hot dogs pecked at by hungry three-year olds, chicken breasts hacked asunder by dull but determined butter knives, tears and wine spilled over tablecloths, candle shadows and dimmed chandeliers, witness-bearing dining gear to heartfelt graces and heartfelt dining room table sex, Thanksgiving scoops of homemade cranberry sauce, sticky Easter saucers of sugar birds, grandmothers imploring to eat more, have more. Just another slice. Grandmothers like mine, women forged and wired in an era in which food was love. (Although it's good that that era will never die)

"Dude, it's just a bunch of used plates and forks. Relax."

So said the voice in my head that keeps me from going insane. I relaxed.

I bought the ugliest shirt that I could find that fit me. And I bought a "Captain Jack Sparrow" hat. At the last minute I grabbed a set of two-pound dumbbells. They were for my mom, for her to use for her daily exercises since she and I have talked about how some light weights might help her recovery. There is so much one can do with simple dumbbells, I always tell her. Although truly they were essentially just another gesture, a heartfelt effort to help a helpless soul. Through no fault of her own she would most certainly ignore the gesture. That's just the way things are.

I'm ok with that. Why hurry to worry?

At the next store I found what I was looking for. The shoes were in the basement. Even though it was a different thrift store company it had the same odor of disinfectant and infectant. "Wash your hands when you get home," is the common thrift store shopper's advice. Good advice, indeed, although it's probably just as applicable to any day of existence in which a person touches something other than his own teeth and nipples.

In that basement I wandered along the shoes and boots, discarded carcasses of former feet. Just as I was about to give up hope I spotted a pair of caramel colored cowboy boots. They were mangy and marked, but most importantly they were men's. And they were my size.

Stepping into them I found myself two inches taller. So long had I longed to see the world from the eyes of my 6'4" brethren and now here I was, in the basement of a thrift store soaring above the racks at the women of miscellaneous origin and their children of American origin and their sad search for winter clothes.

I was tall and proud and wearing man-heels. They were perfect.

That's when I noticed a pair of Steve Madden's. They were a handsome, casual leather shoe of slight use with no outstanding blemishes. Turning them over the soles presented a story of limited wear and tear. "Sure, I can buy Halloween gear at a thrift store... but can I buy regular street wear? Can I wear some other man's shoes?" I wondered. I'll wear thrift store t-shirts, but shoes? Can I wear the shoes of some sad man who gave up on shoes? Hell no. I make good money. I already have good shoes. I took a breath of that basement, of the shoes and vcr tapes and embarrassing ties that should never have been made and I realized that my dilemma was one not likely shared by the average thrift store shopper. I gave in to the curiosity and I tried them on and they fit like a designer oven mitt. Not too tight, not too loose, and they would would protect me from temperatures up to 700 degrees. They looked right fucking proper under my jeans. And they were $4.

So I bought them, and they look great. I will wear them often and I will carve new memories into their soles, and I will soak their material with foot sweat, with the odor of me.

The cowboy boots were fantastic, by the way. But I had to go somewhere else for the buckle and the western shirt and the cowboy hat. The antennae I made myself... the story will continue... someday...

Man Seeks...

I'm in the process of writing a profile for a popular online dating service. No, it isn't a rehash of all the depressing shit you are likely to read in recent entries of this blog. Most of that is crud, grime, waste: scrapings from the greasetrap of my mind that have been deposited here like unwanted sweat. No, this profile is sweet, honest and hardened, it's an off-frame snapshot, a mystery confessional, a pixeled introduction of a pixeled boy to pixeled girls whose pixels might live within ten miles of me. Nearby girls who might be lucky enough to get to know me.

I've put in a bit of time writing it, stringing together words that are intended to intrigue and attract browsers. I'm not going to lie and pretend it has all poured out of me. This isn't mere poetry of the soul. It is poetry of the future, poetry of promise, poetry of hope. And so I deliberate, reveal, delete, rewrite, charm, ponder, smile and welcome. I enjoy the process of designing my billboard.

I'm completely revamping my approach from the last time I attempted such online hijinks. Back then I was younger and slightly dumber. I suppose you could say I was successful. Dated a few girls, found a delightful complex mermaid to explore, enjoyed the enjoyment of each other, shelved a lot of great memories, but our roads diverged and life went on, the forest of intrigue separated our ferns.

Back then I was foolish, this time I'm a bit less, just a bit. I'm fueled by hope and naiveté-- a condition I don't ever expect to completely shake.

It's been too long without: too long without eyes made across a room, without knowing smiles, seeking fingers, eager embraces, weekday fits of desire, weekend marathons of the same that are never long enough. Too long without an exploring partner, a motivator, a challenger-in-chief, a bed-warmer, a leg-locker, a mind that enchants, a body I can have, another's rhythm, a selfish thought who craves me. A complex woman in whom to be lost, and hopefully to be found.

I am a healed heart. A deserving, insistent soul. I am ready to love. I have love to give.

It is about wanted sweat.

words, wanting, waiting

Hello you. I'm somewhat drunk but not so horribly that I'm unable to string two or three words together. Guess you could say I'm just having thoughts of a particular girl in a particular place in a particular time, thoughts of someone who can't hide from me and who I could never hide from, a girl with piercing, getting vision, eyes that penetrate and read, ears that perk to the proper wavelengths, a nose that senses the smell-worthy impulses of a fool, a set of hands that seek the poetry of fingertips, a heart paved with yellow brick, a girl who is right now mummified under white sheets of comfort, soft fabrics that drape to the shape pulled just to her nape, who breathes soft ribbons of air into and out of her lungs, who will wake up with crusty-cornered eyes, who will wake to the vanishing broth of depleted dreams, and who will struggle with the weight of her mightiness, unsure how to wield it, unsure how to hold it in poise, how to pose against the noise, how to grip the hammer and spark the anvil, she knows how to scream at the clouds but she cannot clear them from her search for constellations and comets; she shouts true and honest and with just the right amount of silence, and for this she is rewarded with times and finds of pleasings seams, shapes from the heavens that trickle softly down over the skin, moisturizes the soul. She is a beast and a bastion, and she knows only the notion of being good-willed, good-hearted, hard-won, iron-wrought, slip-fingered, furrowed meanderings of a peaceful soul in a world of soup and lava.

Messy Hickeys

Silly shitty poetry writers and garagebound songsmiths write too often of the moon and her phases. It's been spoken of as if she was a watchface that requires pondering. Rubbernecking the heavens leaves only messy hickeys. They write of broken hearts and escaped loves when they should be writing about spider thoughts and the threads of sinew that hold together a slice of pastrami. Why pastrami? Because it's there! They wail about war and injustice when the actualities of existence are sidewalk cracks and offered elbows, broken shards of glass and the dying sum of old sun-powered calculators, band-aid residue and dryer lint, shipwreck survivors and easygone newspaper ink. Power, money, women; what king or pharoah wasn't lustful? Or entitled? And which of them grasped at their golden threads at the moment of death? When a crude peasant's crude spear rightfully pierced a gilded artery and delivered the exclamation point such an absurd life needed in order to die proper. And didn't that peasant smile at the sight of the steaming blood just like his own? Isn't life just about having a soft pillow to place behind one's back, whether after a hard day of slaving or long day of pharoahing? People write of what shakes their windows. They either peer through them into the outside and imagine the ingress the shadows are intent on making or they gather piles of piss and mercy that must be withheld by the silicone sheets that glow yellow against the evening's sleepy eyes. Menu's are browsed with determination and vigor, as they should be, because food is often the best part of a person's day. I've posited that the most common story ever told is that of wasted potential, but I'd put forth that such a notion is rivaled by the universality of a good meal. We are fish. When we eat we are happiest. We are lizards. When we do not understand we fear. We are apes. When necessary, often when not, we beat our chest. We are humans. When we love we forgive. When we understand we stop hating. We care and we create. And we wallow in our own greatness. As we should. For who else is there to pat us on the back?

Wood burns.

"... it burns because it's wood."

That's a line from the song House Fire by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yelstin. Their songs are pretty and digestible, like edible flowers.

I am witness to fire. I'll never understand why it was set.

But like the line goes, it burns because it's wood.

I, Refuse

I dreamt last night that my alarm clock was green, not that the thing itself was green, but rather that it had green digits: bright, glowing green digits. And a squawk like an extinct bird. That's all I remember from the dream. It was a clock from bizarro world, a clock conjured by my unconscious to confuse and distort me and make me question upon which side of the quilt do I reside. For in reality my actual alarm clock is red and it sounds like a mother hen cooing in the dew of morning.

Why such a detail has velcro and others do not baffles me. Certainly there was more to the dream than a slightly different alarm clock. Could my mind be so simple as to struggle at night with such frivolity? In slumber do I not find myself engaged in grander designs? Flying unassisted, perhaps? Slaying dragons? Rubbing elbows with aliens at debaucherous galactic balls? Showering under waves of liquid silver? Defending my peoples from an invasion of paddle-wielding midgets with quick reflexes? Lust-filled dalliances with Renaissance babes who take thirty minutes to get undressed but are worth it? Inventing new gadgets for grateful lazy people? Being taken hostage by Leprechauns who are tired of being mistaken for the Keebler Elves but sound so cute when they talk they have a hard time being taken seriously by the authorities? Rescuing the princess? Fedora shopping? Volcano humping? Being on the set of the original Star Wars and being the guy who gets to remove the electrical tape from Princess Lea’s nipples? Breaking up a clown fight and going home smeared with blood and pie? Living in a world where mailmen bring donuts to your house instead of mail and are called donutmen?

For some reason I struggle to bring dreams across the threshold; just a few make it through. It’s too much contraband to sneak past the guards at the gatehouse; meaty trolls in sweat-marked uniforms who decide what you may or may not bring with you, casting confiscated figments behind them into a writhing landfill of dreams and nightmares, an impossible pile of odorous images, melting colors, flickering faces, unsought tears, reversing thoughts and unique notions, a pile that could never be inventoried or accounted for and is at turns too bright or too dark to look upon-- ever evaporating, decomposing, returning to the ether, but living nonetheless. Characters dig for the bottom of the pile and escap down ancient rabbit holes, tunnels that lead back to the place where people and aliens have orgies and donuts after a good day of dragon-slaying.

Tonight I will dream and tomorrow I will wake. The dream in between will teach me not to look at the horizon. There is nothing for me there.

Good thing I won’t remember.

From the Random Quote Machine (RQM):

"What's the matter? Do you have something in your eye?"

"No, but I have something in my diaper."

Hilarious.

I love my nephews.

(Well, technically, my cousin's kid, but he calls me Uncle, which makes him my nephew, right?)

(And don't give me that shit about how if it isn't obvious what someone is to you then they are a "cousin"-- second cousin, third cousin once removed, fourth cousin twice baked, fifth cousin don't give him sugar, blah blah blah. If he's three and I'm twenty-eight and good friends with his dad and his dad's brother (MY cousins), then I'm one of his uncles. Sure, make a list of his uncles and I won't be at the top but I certainly don't belong on his list of cousins. So I'm an uncle. Problem solved.)

(Oh, and FYI, he's apparently grasped the idea of peeing in a toilet but the pooping in a toilet thing has thrown him for a loop. Being that he is three, it's important to clarify why he hasn't joined us porcelain sitters. His grandma reports that while he's cool with urinating he struggles with the notion of poo because he feels that he's losing something important to him, that he's losing pieces of himself. This is why he was distressed by his full diaper, and why I noticed his reddened eyes, prompting my question about their condition. Even at his young age he's acquired a fear of losing parts of his body, which is a good thing. It'll keep his fingers out of light sockets, away from stuck gumball machines and off of railroad tracks. Retaining body parts is important for survival and breeding, especially with how picky women can be, and the child clearly has strong instincts. By next December I'm sure he'll be corn-squirting and wiping like the rest of us.)

(Fuck, did I just I write an entire post about my infant nephew's excretory system?)

Jesus.