calm

like a bomb.

i am painting today. i have been for several weeks now. i will take
pics and post them at some point. for now, though, the process is a
personal one, and too mundane to speak of.

i feel calm today. the furious voices that drive me are resting.

what's that Duran Duran song? i don't cry for yesterday/ there's an
ordinary world/ somehow i have to find.

indeed.

i think that's all i've got today. no distress to propel the words.
just a slight current of ordinary air through the doorway of my mind.

ghost

soft serve

each day is a carefully folded oragami that i continually undo through
the course of hours, searching for the message inscribed within. a
little treasure every day, it would seem. sometimes i think i can fold
it back up again, to see where i started, but it's an excercise in
futility. i cannot hope to replicate what the larger voices have
crafted.

day by day. step by step. note by note. i do believe, one day, i'll
catch on to the tune.

ghost

the state we're in

"you're like the freddy mercury of lesbians."-j.t.

"it's because you're asian."-huggy bear
"i get that a lot."-the asian

"there will be no dream house for you."-boren
"sounds like both my marriages."-ghost
"jeez, tip."-t.r.
"i'm just saying, i've heard this story before."-ghost
"way to destroy the mood, dude."-t.f.

"tiny fridge isn't getting built if you're sitting there with your
head down, begging me to drop red paint in your ear."-ghost
"my arms and legs feel like they're filled with pudding."-boren

"i marked you absent. where have you been?"-ghost
"i had to pay the water bill."-a.g.
"d*mn good excuse. i'll let it slide"-ghost

"i'm carrying colby's baby for like two years now. i'm not getting any
bigger, but i feel a kick every now and then."-jeran
"that's kinda like when i eat mexican food."-ghost
"my butt burns when i eat mexican food."-jeran

"peppermints are the reason God created taste buds."-d.d.

"are you really making that big crappy piece of cheese?"-j.h.
"yes i am. are you really making that crappy wright brothers airplane?
what about that big moose head you started and abandoned sitting over
there taking up space? do we need to talk about that?-n.w.
"what about your donkey you had me rip the legs off of so tip wouldn't
make you finish it?"-j.h.
::pause::
"something you wanna confess, noah?"-ghost
"i really hate you, jacob."-n.w.

in perfectly quiet room: "a dude's balls are weird."-dani

"what is that?"-n.w.
"dr. pepper 10."-ghost
"those are gross."-g.t.
"they grow on you after a while. like a fungus."-ghost
"no, they taste like hooker spit."g.t.

ghost

look

look: i wander where trees hug the sky with bare branches.
listen: winds speak many names, in tones too ancient to comprehend.
speak:whatever words you may have, time will always have his say.

ghost

that one question

"what is that you want?" she asks, her eyes green and dancing.

and i want to beat my chest and declare with all my might. i want to
be unpoetic and graceless and impossible, rawboned and alive with the
thrum of stubborn, stupid strength, arrogant and cocksure and good,
despite a roughscuffed heart of gold that yearns for home. i want to
love whole and pure and hopeless. i want words that might catch in my
throat to flow warm and willing from knowing fingertips. i want to
face each day with a rogue's twistlipped lightning smile and a child's
wholehearted sunlit laugh. and i want you to look at me, and see me,
to really see me, to see eyes always, always burning fire under glass,
brighter by the weight of worlds on my shoulders. i want you to see my
dreams between my lashes, iridescent and blinking slow by dawn's first
light.

that's what i want. but...

"i don't know," i answer, looking away.

because i don't know how to put that into words.

ghost

of losing the battle

i am losing.

i am still fighting, still holding the line, but it feels, especially
lately, that i am slowly being pushed back. i don't give anything, but
an inch is taken here, a couple more there. the latest battle is being
waged on the financial front, and i am losing inch by inch, day by
day. my spartan existence is forced to even further barrenness, to the
point my life now reflects the vast emptiness of the west texas spaces
i grew up in.

sometimes i have good days. others, the weight is almost too much. i
imagine that no matter how well i do with my life, i am being built up
only to be torn down again. i recently told a beautiful young woman
that i could not be the "he" she is looking for. time, money, and
geography played the part of spoilers here, though in their defense,
they never lie. the entire episode made me consider the state of
things, the state of me. and it occurred to me that i really don't
have anything to offer a woman. sure, i am a true friend, a stalwart
protector, a loyal man full of love and desire, but i seem to belong
to the minority of those who work in fields they love despite the pay.
oh, i know there are those "out there" who live like i do, working
jobs, not because of money, but because of a deeper spiritual reward.
i know there are those who care as little for the ideas of 401ks and
403bs and retirement plans as i do, who believe that love and laughter
is all you really need. i hold nothing against those who believe
otherwise, who work strictly for the money. in fact, i admire them.
it would be so much easier to consider leaving this place, this job i
love so much if i thought that way.

sometimes i feel as if i am wasting my life when it comes right down
to the nails of it. but what else is there but to keep on? everyday i
try to start fresh and do my best to do what i am able, and to do what
is right. i will not let my enemy win. i will survive the
circumstances i have been given. i do not imagine others have an
easier time than i do. that is a fallacy of only being able to see
things through my own eyes. i keep on because i can do nothing else.
nothing else but see each day through.

i do not know what the future holds, but i can hope. that will hold me
for today, and that is all i need of it. tomorrow i will think of
tomorrow. and if it shall be that i am alone on tomorrow's road too,
so be it.

ghost

am i evil?

a conversation about hair stylists led to this exchange.

"i'm beyond needing a hair stylist. i've ascended. or receded if i'm
being honest," i said.

"ascended works. it sounds like a superpower," kris replied.

which reminded me, one of my students has a recurring theme in his
drawings. he has made me a super villain in his pictorial narrative
known through out the land as The Bald. i'm a villain so evil that in
his last drawing depicting the ultimate showdown of good versus evil,
i am fighting the combined might of the good army led by satan, darth
vader, and hitler riding a pegasus. my super power? the sun glinting
off my shiny dome forms a death ray that destroys the army of good,
incinerates vader and the devil, and unhorses hitler.

these students do keep me laughing.

ghost

purgatory

last night i did something i have not done in in a very long time. no,
i'm not talking about sex, though i suppose with that opening sentence
i very well could be. no. last night, i sat down and began working on
a project. and i literally lost myself in the work. i spent about five
hours working, not thinking about anything other than the work.
usually monday and tuesday nights are my own little purgatory as i
wait for wednesdays and the chance to spend some time with my little
ones again. when i came out of my creative haze and realized so much
time had passed, i kinda smiled. i can't remember the last time i was
able to escape my own head for a while.

i suppose "not thinking about anything other than the work" is a bit
of a lie. i'm sure i was thinking. the mind never truly shuts down,
you are never truly just reacting by instinct except when you're
fighting for your life. but, i couldn't tell you what i was thinking
of or just where my mind was wandering. i do remember vaguely
considering the words, "let go." at least that's what i was
considering when i stopped working.

let go, and what's left?

if everything is left, that's heaven.
if something is left, that's purgatory.
if nothing is left, that is hell.

sometimes i dream of these places. sometimes they are technicolor
cartoon dreams. "let go," makes me think of meister eckart from the
movie, jacob's ladder. interesting movie, in that he was in purgatory
the whole time. i've felt like that this world is actually my
purgatory from time to time. i cannot remember when i might have died
though. i mean, sure, there have been plenty of close calls, but,
"they've come to snuff the rooster, but he ain't gonna die."

grin.

ghost

pick five

i was talking to an old friend of mine last night, someone i had not
spoken to in a handful of years, chatting about things old friends
chat about. nothing too serious. nothing too heavy. the conversation
ranged from those dumb dr. pepper 10 commercials to the spiritual
implications of the last episode of lost. somewhere in the soup we
delved into one of those questions that go, "if you were stranded on a
desert island, and had advanced warning, what five (blank)s would you
bring?" i spend a lot of time alone. i write. i read. i watch t.v. if
not, CDs are in constant rotation. that is my island. i am often
stranded in my head. despite that, i still found this a difficult
question to answer.

one of my friend's top pick for the category of tv shows was the
simpsons. forest gump and when harry met sally for movies. for music,
she chose john lennon's imagine and beethoven's ninth symphony. books
was an easier question for me as i am interested in story. she chose
kurt vonnegut's stuff. i chose glen cook. for food i'd have to say KFC
is in my top five. i do love those 11 secret herbs and spices.

i could not narrow most categories down. i figure if the situation
ever arises, i'd grab whatever was closest. i'd grab them and make the
best of those split second decisions. and the things left behind, i
suppose i'd try not to think of them.

and it hit me why she had such an easy time choosing. she has no
memory. she forgets things almost as soon as they happen. she will
remember with some reminding things we did as kids, but she just never
thinks of it otherwise. she reminds me a lot of my ex wife in that
regard, which is maybe why amy was able to just walk away. perhaps
that is why she believes, as she told me recently, that i was no help
to her with the kids or the upkeep of the house when we were married.

i remember everything. i remember small facial expressions and the
exact sound of laughter. that's probably why i could not choose a top
five in most categories. i carry memories around with me like they are
people i love. i mourn them when the dream that created them dies.

ghost

new

the new year starts. let me mark it along the lines of the special
kind of hope it invokes. what i write today is to bring a sort of
light to those who have been particularly beaten down this last year.
we look forward. we look back. happy new year.

i think perhaps i was as close to beaten this last year as i ever have
been, and yes, that comparison includes 2009 which i rank among the
worst years of my life. at times i have been incredibly lonely, more
lonely than i thought possible to endure. but i have endured and that
loneliness is farther between episodes. and i am, in spirit anyway,
unbroken.

and i see now that i still had stuff even when i felt there was
nothing left. i've still got my pride. i've still got myself. i still
have my life, and i still have my love. i have another day. i don't
know that i'm stronger, but i feel a sense of wisdom now that i did
not have before.

here's the thing, i think. besides the end of the world, nothing is
the end of the world. sometimes getting knocked around a bit is the
only way to keep us grounded. even if you give up or quit on life,
life goes on. even after complete failure, you still have another day
to wake up to. it may take a little doing, but guess what, you can try
again. or try something different. you're not dead, though you might
feel like it. you might even wish you were.

what's that famous saying? "where there's life, there's hope." i don't
envy those who go through life never knowing defeat, never fighting as
hard as they can possibly fight and yet still lose. i have. i've
fought tooth and nail and still lost big.

but...

i think it's changed me from what i was. now i enjoy the small
moments, the every day moments, more than anything. even average air
is like that of mountain peaks to those who have come from the pit.

ghost

laying in bed, thinking

back in this city of hollow stones i've spent countless hours
visualizing. it's as far distant as my night thoughts that writhe
toward dreamscapes denied me by the stubborn absence of Sleep.

pyramids and hollow shrines. all tombstones, all relics of forgotten
glory. all homes to ghosts.

this valley of forgotten kings has long since succumbed to the endless
blasting of desert storms, buried deeply now beneath an ocean of sand.
still the Lost City's blind gods watch over the emptied spaces with
emotion akin to jealously.

here past and future will never part company, forever fused in stasis.

ghost