that was the latest jeff shyman story title.
the craigslist ride picked me up in an 80s rattletrap volvo, midtwenties and about what you'd expect someone who ended their post with "thanks for using rideshare!" would look. the only thing coming out of those pores being idealism. he had some interesting jobs, helping with a movie on the oregon trail, camping out in eastern washington state with a bunch of covered wagons and people dressed up prairie style. then another one in the swamps outside of m?, filming some kids monster flick. and then some ecoterrorism flick where he bought grey, tissue thin tshirts off of traveling kids for 300 bucks and then got to watch the expressions on hollywood's finest when they had to put them on unwashed so they could go out and get paid to look like they were dumpsterdiving. sigh. i rattled away about this and that until i discovered i was raving about radioactive frogs and recounting my entire family history and decided to take a nap. the rest of the ride was quiet and peaceable listening to ira glass shows and npr streaming from his ipod, coming through speakers that were installed back when they could feel cocky that they had just left 8 tracks behind.
he dropped me off at an exit that i recognized from a few years previous, for some reason i always ended up stopping there, the first time being back when i had no electric or water and it was grey and silent at my house and i just got into my truck and drove, ended the night in tennessee sleeping next to bobby's rumbling snore, anchoring us to the bed. in the morning when we awoke the first little flecks of white were fluttering around like moths, and we leaned against the pillows and watched them gather and come down faster through her wall size windows, a moving painting on a floor to ceiling screen while we reclined in the warm yellow light of her bedroom. when i got back to nola i realized noone had even noticed i was ever gone. much of the first year felt that way, as if i wasn't there, a grey ghost in her own right, haunting the rooms and barely registering heat.
there was steady traffic and many people stopped, however none of them were really literate. waving a sign that said chattanooga/knoxville, and noone seemed to be going anywhere remotely near. finally a trucker pulled over, i passed a man who had just pulled up to speak to me to get to him, thinking i had a long haul, his passenger cab was open but when i got there he looked at me like i was crazy and told me it was a company truck in a shocked indignant voice like i had just asked him if i could date his teenage daughter. this sort of thing went on til the sun was beginning to set, so i caught a ride with a man going to just the other side of birmingham, cigarrello clamped in his teeth, old school r n b playing on the radio. he dropped me off at a nasty industrial nowhereland, where i soon got picked up by a construction worker who dropped me off at the "good" exit, directly across from some cops fucking with a homebum. needless to say after about two minutes a copper pulled up and got out, still wearing tar colored shades even though the sun had set,flesh all pink and white just like their moniker. after running my name and grilling me for a bit, he told me to get in the back and started driving. right as it became fully night he dropped me off at a rest stop, with one car in the parking lot. things were not looking up, and i had for once decided not to bring my sleeping bag. i sat on a park bench in the tiny bit of light right next to the bathroom doors and began trying to convince every person walking out the doors to just at least get me out of that spot. after about ten can't do's my saving grace came along in the form of a trucker who owned his own rig driving right through knoxville. Thank you big mack!
we spoke of hunting bigfoot, aliens, divorce, his son's video game addiction, usual trucker fare. then he was talking about his sons skills and how he worried that he wasn't learning much from just playing video games, but then decided it would be alright because the army had all these people who needed to operate drones, and he heard it paid pretty well. it's always strange when you are sitting right next to someone and everything seems so tangible and normal and then you realize that they aren't sitting next to you at all, that they are on the other side of an impassable chasm, or just in another world entirely. i guess meaning well just really doesn't mean shit. and it really Is those kids, so utterly divorced from any sense of reality, pressing buttons, getting thrills of satisfaction at the explosions on the screen, who are perfectly self trained to commit mass murder and just look at it the same as they would the saturday morning cartoons. or do they still have those?
god i haven't even got to the family yet. tomorrow.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Saturday, February 6, 2010
12.12.09
Some days it seems like everything is coming together and others like it's all falling apart. Today was an amalgamation of both, tho after the final parody of my water jug overturning on it's own in the bathroom it seems to wish to strain towards the latter. When i was opening the lock to my gate the chain fell heavily and the links swung to their own accord as they do every time and i was struck by the weight of all i've accumulated and the chaos within which it lies. I've somehow collected tis giant jumbled mass of things and called it my life. Encased it in a jewelbox owned by people who had nothing to do with me or my understanding stolen by theives cavorting upon a disaster and sold in the black market of our government. And I am supposed to figure out how to rationalize being here and as my gentrification seeps into the neighborhood the mold crawls into my lungs and who knows how either will work out.
Spent today driving around with 4 buckets of precariously placed toxic oil sludge in the back of my truck i scooped out yesterday from adam's pit after skinning an owl.
The rain is pecking away at the floors and ceiling, chinese water torture for the house, tearing at it's mental foundations. It was so cold today. Thought i could handle it but it just got darker and pissed down more. Spent tis morning transferring freezing cold water from one drum to another, hands steeped in warm dishwater, bird bathoing over the oven with a washcloth and bowl, running through the rain on errands, driving through it in a goosechase for beignets, caulking the window, squinting to ge the mirror picture i made right. Felt good to create something. Put buckets under the rain in my room. Put up blankets in teh open doors. Forgot a thousand details upon which i spent hours trying to figure out. Rain, rain, go away. come again some other day, preferrably one where i have a working roof. It just won't stop.
Went to a play (socially concious, a little weird, at times, hilarious) and then saw a burlesque troupe perform disney parodies. It just somehow struck me as wrong, these happy chicks parodying something they don't really get at all. they were not particularly funny, crude at times, pretty , smart, just somehow didn't really make me laugh so much. They sang a song "i ho" to the snow white tune and all i could think was how none of them probably ever had in thier life and they had no idea what they were talking about. Burlesque is such a.. sort of disney weekend excursion into the sex industry. If not done with art and grace, it can get pretty tacky. i thought of the sad voluptuous painted birds outside the hotels on tulane at 9 in the morning in the tenuous rain.
Spent today driving around with 4 buckets of precariously placed toxic oil sludge in the back of my truck i scooped out yesterday from adam's pit after skinning an owl.
The rain is pecking away at the floors and ceiling, chinese water torture for the house, tearing at it's mental foundations. It was so cold today. Thought i could handle it but it just got darker and pissed down more. Spent tis morning transferring freezing cold water from one drum to another, hands steeped in warm dishwater, bird bathoing over the oven with a washcloth and bowl, running through the rain on errands, driving through it in a goosechase for beignets, caulking the window, squinting to ge the mirror picture i made right. Felt good to create something. Put buckets under the rain in my room. Put up blankets in teh open doors. Forgot a thousand details upon which i spent hours trying to figure out. Rain, rain, go away. come again some other day, preferrably one where i have a working roof. It just won't stop.
Went to a play (socially concious, a little weird, at times, hilarious) and then saw a burlesque troupe perform disney parodies. It just somehow struck me as wrong, these happy chicks parodying something they don't really get at all. they were not particularly funny, crude at times, pretty , smart, just somehow didn't really make me laugh so much. They sang a song "i ho" to the snow white tune and all i could think was how none of them probably ever had in thier life and they had no idea what they were talking about. Burlesque is such a.. sort of disney weekend excursion into the sex industry. If not done with art and grace, it can get pretty tacky. i thought of the sad voluptuous painted birds outside the hotels on tulane at 9 in the morning in the tenuous rain.
10.13.09
Had to kill a creature today. duke purring like a revved motor toying with a ground squirrel in the living room, casually swatting at it but mostly just watching. I picked him up to giv eit a chance of escape ( to go to their garden, who's side am I on?) but all it did was slowly try to drag itself by it's front paws, back legs dangling uselessly behind it as if he's snapped it's lower spine. I dropped duke again, hoping the threat of me being there would make him kill it faster, but he just batted it lightly and continued his mad rumble. The squirrel was making little gasping hissing noises, I went to the kitchen and got their biggest knife and squatted beside it, I wanted it to calm before i killed it and I waited above it and begged it to quiet as it rolled and brandished it's paws and looked at me wildeyed and continued it's panicked anguished breath.I waited until it was slightly more still and whispered apology and hope fro release as the knife slid fast and easy through teh fur and i felt the tiny ligament crunch of it severing the neck spine. Red blood welled up around the blade and i rushed to the kitchen to clean it as duke proceeded to fast begin cracking and popping the little bones with his teeth. I felt horrible and guilty even thoufgh it seemed like it was in so much pain. It si the strangest thing to feel life and seconds later nothing but the physicality of blood and fur and bone. We are so incredibly fucking ephemeral, just as much a piece of meat as the butcher shop, It was the starngest sensation. I just wanted it to die without fear and beyond pain but there was no hope for it. Who knows if it was less frightening to have a strange object coming at you than teeth. Or if it would rather have had those extra seconds of life regardless of the pain. Or minutes. Or hour. I just don't know but made the decision for it anyway. The veins are beginning to pop and show on the back of my hand. Who knows. It was just the certainty that a) it would die and b) Duke would torture it for as long as he could. Cats are such deceptive demons, humans are such pathetic gods.
10.6.09
Woke up yesterday to the sound of voices hushed trying not to wake me. For some reason I was reminded of Hamilton, sharp air in the morning, frost on the windows, rolling hills blowing in clear air.
Security and peace. So many frozen moments of purity. Ice on the branches sleeving them with flawless crystal tasting slightly of iron when you lick it. Silence, and how each sound cuts through it clearly, which is why you are hushed in speaking. Not wanting to break into the day all at once. The revered cathedral of dawn.
I rolled over and looked out the window and thought This Is What I Want. To feel clean and calm in the morning. Whispering to my kid to get ready for school. Cooking pancakes and thinking about what to make for dinner. The day falling steadily and simply as droplets off a branch. Sound of my kid's music through their doors. Having enough faith to hold it all together. No wonder mom went to church. You have to beleive so hard in this world. People hold religion above them like umbrellas in a shitstorm. Having faith that it will not stop, they squeeze the handles tighter. Holding my mother's hand, feeling the hard bare pew beneath and looking at the patterns of wood more than the preacher, surrounded by wood. slices of forest striated as if caught between microscope panes. looking at the veins in the wood, in my mother's hand, exploring it as a terrain, skin dipping between knuckles, soft and thin, blue blood pumping through, rhythmic thumb sliding over my impossibly chidlike hand.
Wood, light, tiny script, rock hard velvet pillows, echoing sound, space, tuning in and out to track how far it is to the body and the blood and then cookies afterward.
Security and peace. So many frozen moments of purity. Ice on the branches sleeving them with flawless crystal tasting slightly of iron when you lick it. Silence, and how each sound cuts through it clearly, which is why you are hushed in speaking. Not wanting to break into the day all at once. The revered cathedral of dawn.
I rolled over and looked out the window and thought This Is What I Want. To feel clean and calm in the morning. Whispering to my kid to get ready for school. Cooking pancakes and thinking about what to make for dinner. The day falling steadily and simply as droplets off a branch. Sound of my kid's music through their doors. Having enough faith to hold it all together. No wonder mom went to church. You have to beleive so hard in this world. People hold religion above them like umbrellas in a shitstorm. Having faith that it will not stop, they squeeze the handles tighter. Holding my mother's hand, feeling the hard bare pew beneath and looking at the patterns of wood more than the preacher, surrounded by wood. slices of forest striated as if caught between microscope panes. looking at the veins in the wood, in my mother's hand, exploring it as a terrain, skin dipping between knuckles, soft and thin, blue blood pumping through, rhythmic thumb sliding over my impossibly chidlike hand.
Wood, light, tiny script, rock hard velvet pillows, echoing sound, space, tuning in and out to track how far it is to the body and the blood and then cookies afterward.
meteorite
2.1
This year it has been
7 so far
5 girls, in periphery.
Something pretty big is under the house
Makes clunking noises.
(this is literally, it's under my bedroom, a cat maybe)?
I went out to remember the dead.
Found nothing but drinks that dulled
Flatscreen TV's
Flatscreen faces
People quietly flatlining their minds
waiting for it to end.
I drift away from the fishes cast in amber
from the eagles nesting next to the river
Where we were stopped in traffic.
We are linked by insanity,
By grief, by loss, by laughing
to salve the wounds
the ever bleeding side
of life we are cast into
molded by
separated from others more and more,
each time another drops off
crumbles and narrows the path
till the iron structure shows through
Dull
Heavy
Utilitarian in purpose and design
As our friends' colors shred away.
we look across
heavy lidded
Heart moltened and solidified
charred and blackened and dense
drawn dark and inward
at having passed thorugh so many stars.
It will never end.
Not until we are all dust,
scattered, bled together
as we do
in life.
We drink to thin our blood
constrict our cells in laughter
reweave time
to our better liking
wash and wash and wash
our tears and blood away
till our hollowed past
blows through us from the inside
so many emptied rooms
wind through chambers once tapestried
with the livid veins
Of those we loved.
This year it has been
7 so far
5 girls, in periphery.
Something pretty big is under the house
Makes clunking noises.
(this is literally, it's under my bedroom, a cat maybe)?
I went out to remember the dead.
Found nothing but drinks that dulled
Flatscreen TV's
Flatscreen faces
People quietly flatlining their minds
waiting for it to end.
I drift away from the fishes cast in amber
from the eagles nesting next to the river
Where we were stopped in traffic.
We are linked by insanity,
By grief, by loss, by laughing
to salve the wounds
the ever bleeding side
of life we are cast into
molded by
separated from others more and more,
each time another drops off
crumbles and narrows the path
till the iron structure shows through
Dull
Heavy
Utilitarian in purpose and design
As our friends' colors shred away.
we look across
heavy lidded
Heart moltened and solidified
charred and blackened and dense
drawn dark and inward
at having passed thorugh so many stars.
It will never end.
Not until we are all dust,
scattered, bled together
as we do
in life.
We drink to thin our blood
constrict our cells in laughter
reweave time
to our better liking
wash and wash and wash
our tears and blood away
till our hollowed past
blows through us from the inside
so many emptied rooms
wind through chambers once tapestried
with the livid veins
Of those we loved.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
2.08
what can i give up
and what can i hold on to?
the lead wings
singing songs of old times.
breathing dust in my face
and pretending it's life
and what can i hold on to?
the lead wings
singing songs of old times.
breathing dust in my face
and pretending it's life
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