This is a distraction

I had a whole bunch of stuff written here and it disappeared when a bumped a stupid key trying to put some pointless post-it notes back on the printer after they fell down.

I was talking about how I am trying not to annoy people in the little things. About how it's dark outside today, the tops of the trees blowing, the air cold enough to feel like air again. It looks like it's going to rain any second but it probably won't. Or it will.

I want to go for a walk, but I wore the wrong shoes and I also want to take a nap just as badly.

Twenty-five more minutes.

Talk to me. Tell me things in little sentences.

Write back to me, you jerk. I'm sorry I broke your heart all those years ago. You wanted a van and ten kids. I didn't want to think about someone else. I wasn't ready. I am now. I am putting myself on this limb, ready to change, for you to catch me. I am letting go of what I held on to for so long. Don't let me fall into nothing. I have been there for too long before.

My iPod just died. I was listening to Owen Ashworth again.

(The post-its just fell, but I shall learn from my mistake and not attempt to replace them.)

I had a dream the other night that I adopted a Japanese orphan baby. We were refugees, running through things. I woke up crying. Not because I was scared, but because when I woke up, I didn't have the baby anymore.

These things happen when you get older. They happen even when you don't expect them to. When you tell yourself you don't want things.

I want. Oh, I want.

My old roommate is engaged to some guy she's been dating for 3 or 4 weeks. Apparently they just know. I went with her yesterday, to look for engagement settings for the diamond she inherited from her mother, who got it from her mother-in-law. She found the perfect ring. Because that's more important than the perfect man.

I don't want a perfect man. I want mine with holes. I want cracks and scars in him, to make him interesting, to run my tongue along the edges. I want him here, is all. Here and willing to want someone else with holes and scars. Lick my edges.

Had bad sushi for lunch yesterday. I am over it, the whole sushi thing. Too many episodes with dubious avocado and unfresh eel. Was up at 2 am puking it all out.

I can hold so many other things in. But avocado escapes me.

And I have new work to do. I don't want to do it.

I want to go sleepwalking.

Today I got up On Time

First day in a week or something, I can't remember. Been falling asleep so late I can't get up in the mornings.

I got up. I had breakfast. I never have breakfast. Sleep is always worth more than food. At least, in the mornings.

Can't sleep lately, have a hard time with it. Acting asleep is no big deal, but it's always one of those tortured half-sleep things. Paranoia with sharing a room, I guess. And the one night this week I do actually fall completely asleep, my sister informs me that I sleeptalk. Excellent. Like I need my dreams advertised to the family when I have no idea I'm doing it.

Which equals more paranoia, which equals less sleep, which equals more irritation at little things, little people.

I am writing this because I was meant to be writing to a friend's email, and my gmail has gone nuts on me and keeps trying to refresh in the middle of things and I kept losing everything I was typing. I hate computers as much as I love them sometimes.

Today, I have decided to listen to whatever's on my iPod nano in alphabetical order by song title. I don't know why, I was just obsessing that way. Right now, it's playing "London Still" by the Waifs, which Adam sent to me. I like this song, it fits in little spaces today. (Apparently little is the word of the day.)

Wonder if you can pick up my
Accent on the phone
When I call across the country
When I call across the world
I...see you in my kitchen
I can picture you now
As you toast to your small town
When you drink the happy hour
I’m in London still
I’m in London still
I'm in London still

I took the tube over to Camden
To wander around
I bought some funky records
With that old Motown sound
And I miss you like my left arm
That's been lost in a war
Today I dream of home and not of London anymore
I'm in London still
I'm in London still
Yeah I'm in London still

You know it’s okay
I’m kinda happy here for now
I...think I've finally grown up
And got myself a lover now
And if I ever come home
And I, I think I will
I hope you're gonna wanna hang at my place on Sunday still
Oh yeah I hope you will
Cause I'm in London still

You know we got it sorted, yeah
We really got it down
To a fine art on Sunday
In a sleepy Sunday town
I wonder what I'm missing
I think of songs I've never heard
I'm dreaming of your voices
And I'm dreaming of your herb
I'm in London still
I'm in London still
I'm in London still

Oh I'm in London still
la-la-la-la-la London still
I'm in London

He misses me like the left arm he never had. A phantom third nipple? How would that hurt? It's what I feel like I should be. In his world, I want to be a tiny thing, I want to be...whatever that word that starts with an "a" is that means an organ that's not necessary for survival, like an appendix or a tailbone.

I don't want him to need me anymore. It's how I fall out of love. When I don't love being needed anymore, because that's what I fall in love with in the first place...the things that need me. Being needed makes me feel bigger, better than I am. I am the saviour, the anchor, the hand up in the dark. I make them brighter, clean them up a bit? It gets that way at first. They need me to feel good about themselves. I am a champion ego-fondler.

Because I see everyone as better than me.

That's why I let them love me, I guess. Why I love them back. If they love me, such an impossible, flattering thing, the least I can do is be what they need, love them back. My love is a thank you, it's an obligation.

I always get tired of my obligations. If you know me, you know this. My playlist is shot-riddled with songs he has sent me, beating guilt into my ears for keeping him like this, for staying when I'm screaming at myself to go.

I don't want to hurt him. The hurt is inevitable, and I delay. I was - still am - always crap at finishing things. Rilke once said:

It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything.

And I love beginnings. I am always beginning, I'm good at it. The finish is what I dread, what I avoid, what I never get around to. I wonder if I love beginnings because they're violent. I wonder if, really, I'm just an angry, bitter person after all.

What kind of sicko pulls guys in and holds them there for 6 months just to let go and drift away? What kind of perversion am I, being everything they need, an ideal, never really there and then gone? Do I kill the rest of the women after me with the things I say I am?

I can be the warm thing you lay on in the dark. But...and I told him this in the first poem I ever wrote for him, before we were a we...

custodian

we've peered
through each other's
windows.

candlelit matching.
the same

trinkets of
self-absolution

adorn both mantlepieces.
the kitchens stew

meals
for one -

not us.

we cook for people
who aren't home.
we interact through
invisibility -

wonder why
nothing pauses, looks
back,
focuses on us.

us: the benevolent

presence,
nightbreaths,
but not anything

they can cling to.
our relationships:

janitorial.

we maintain,
upkeep,
locking doors as

we leave in grey hours so

morning can find
us
asleep, behind other

walls.

It's 3 am, love. And I am slipping out from underneath the covers.

I am listening to Keith Jarrett as I type this

Another corner, another box for me on the edge of things. I was tired of editing it all, of not being able to post, of posting when I didn't give a shit and then having it come around to bite me in the ass while I was sitting unaware a week later...when I was back to giving a shit.

I should stop swearing. It's not ladylike, and it's allegedly going to be another piece of the puzzle of the picture of my own bobsled to hell.

"Hell" doesn't count if you're talking about the place, anyway.

I love that Keith grunts or cries out while he plays. Maybe it's someone in the audience, but I like it better if I think that it's Keith. I owe Hippie Craque for sending it my way. It's the perfect music, really. Something I needed. Something that I can write to.


It was short today, quiet. I was unreciprocal. My significan other'd stayed up late for me, wanted to chat. I didn't. I haven't all week. But I do anyway, because I don't want to hurt him.

I am back to the same familiar place. Holding hands because it's familiar, not because it's comfortable. Because he wants to, not because I am actively participating. I am back to thinking I am doing him a favour by staying, by not saying how I feel, by putting myself in the silences and hoping that he'll notice and leave before I have to say anything.

It gets to a point, you know, where you realize that you love someone wholly, completely, inexcplicably profoundly as a friend. And the more and longer you keep them as a lover, the longer you keep them, the easier it is to see what they really mean to you.

He was the right thing - once. Was the one. Once. Now he's not, he or I have done some sort of moving on, and it feel different. It doesn't feel right anymore. I have carried on this lie long enough, and I should leave now, before I get there and have to leave after everything more.

The vagueness is intentional. I am only as clear as I can make myself understand. It has to be abstract.

Because I can't just look at the thing in my hands and say, honestly, I am bored and I do not want him anymore. I am over him and I am trying to untie and let go, without him noticing that I'm leaving, because I am tired of feeling nothing just to make him feel good. But I don't want him to feel bad.

Enough. I cannot do this today.

I am the truth of what I feel. To myself. In my dark corners.

Everywhere else, it's a fake feeling. And the faces you see aren't me. No one sees this face. No one's been here enough to peel back the layers and understand.

These words are an exorcism. I distill myself in poetry until you have me complete and enigmatic enough that I no longer need to be here. And when that is done, like Sylvia, like Emily, I will run to the quick and eager dark. Heed the call of some need to discover if I can still be, without all the masks and the voices.

I wrote that once, elsewhere. Elsewhen, even.

But I am back to a place where it fits. I am back inside, cowering. I crave this shell, the hidden places for things where I am...just am. Where I can feel and say what it feels like, can look like it feels like, and no one has names or faces or knows enough to point and judge me.

No one even knows I'm here.

About It...

My intangibility. The way I hung - just so - behind such real doors. Like some born-again god, I was his omnipresence. Everywhere without consequence - an inability to measure the real stature of his devotion. I was idea. Accommodating. I hung behind doors, so well...suited...for his purpose. I could be inanimate. I could be. You were. Who doesn't pick their dreams at night?

He spoke more. He poured himself into the cup beyond ears. I was his backdoor escape. I was host to verbal soirees sans repercussions. My rhythm, basslines, the perfect seat for the shredding amped high-voltage rock plane he feared unleashing on you. You were a groupie for his emotions. I was the band. The crack habit. The toilet bowl, stained fingers, needles in the dark, forged prescriptions, his trips, his highs, his genius. I amplified his energy. You channeled it. I hit him in the face. He liked it. He hit you in the face.

I was the one to come. I was through the looking-glass. A tawdry, elusive, seductive reflection of what he showed himself. I was an obsession merely because I was a possibility untamed. I was his hunger. He ate you.

You were a ship that passed in the night. I sunk you behind the horizon at sunset in the rushing waves of all that he'd have me believe. Blissful in the ignorant wash of opaque tides. If the long boy with the endless piebald side had been a woman, had not wanted to devour - I would have been his. I only thought he was spending all his time in Booya Moon, Lisey.

We laughed at the gimmicks any group of friends would have heckled. Never about intentions, about things inherently you. Only the farce of action, of life's bloopers. It was to commune a sense of endearment, not a ridiculing or stoning. I was, occasionally, one of the guys. Always have been.

Have you never made plans late at night to chase after the impulsive? Of course there were plans. Cloud-castles. It was always a good dream.

I couldn't see anything. I was blind, groping for the way he reached at me in the dark. I propped my blindness on the truth of the way he was so willing to hold me. Will you really decry, and fault me, for my faith? It was a devotion. Who doesn't love the things they repose on in the dark?

I did not imagine you. Period. I scrawled dark mental lines over you any time he presented you to me. You were selfish, desperate, friendless, pathetic, gnawing at the legs of the only thing I could stand on. I hated you for it. I pitied you and the holes you dug for yourself. The holes you crouched and whined in. I blew energy into expending you. I simply did not allow you to exist in the places I did. For 6 months. It's a hard habit to break... I will admit, it itches and irks me to have you here. This is my world. In this one, I was here first - and in my absences I still garner the sense of you supplanting me. But these are my own selfish demons. They will be burned, purged. Until them, we are opposing forces, and I have not the current means of laying claim to my territory. My days, my life, my emotions, my words, my friendships are imbedded in these halls you romp through now. Surely you can sympathize with the way this grates me. Can understand the reasons I avoid you. You are taking a whole of the only half I have.

For now, that is enough to say.

I was not naivety. It was wool-covered. It was a heedless sabotage. It was betrayal. I adamantly refuse to blame myself. All I did was love. He misused it.

Have you never asked him? Has he never told you of the way he crawled, begging? Of his grandiose promises of your immediate, impending dismissal? Of the hours he sobbed on the phone while I set my jaw, stoic, resolute, hammering the blame into him; setting the responsibility, the wrong of it squarely on his shoulders? Of how he disgusted me and how I told him he was an even bigger fool to trash two relationships?

Did he tell you I told him that if he was with you, he was never with me? That my time with him was nothing. And that I didn't him to make a mockery of my 6 months by wasting them and not allowing them to make a difference, to turn a new leaf? To tell you everything and to be a better man?

...No, he didn't. A coward, he shrank in his skin. Told you I was the compulsive liar. Urged you to dismiss me the way he did. I loathed him. I was furious. And finally, I realized I never really loved him. I loved that he loved me. I loved the way he needed me.

I did not cry. I always cry, but I did not cry. Not when I found out, and not when he was sobbing in my ear, trying to rationalize his reasons for what he did and why we could still work.

My love cut its losses. My heart withdrew. My obsession, my addiction, my habit of him did not. After the murderous end of our emotional affair, we were pared down to a drug habit. An addiction. We were users and there was no rehab. Weak, wretched, drained... cold turkey, the only option, wasn't feasible on our state of dependency. I tried to substitute other drugs. Never got the same high; I did the drug he wanted to. It didn't last. You were his coffee and cigarettes. We dealt eightballs in the back alleys of our days. Cut lines together when no one could see us. It was miserable, selfish, but it was compulsory. We cut our lines in silence. We cut our lines alone. They just happened to be the same lines.

I forgave him for being himself, not for what he did. But forgiving him for being himself was something I had been doing since it started. Forgiveness was nothing new. It was what let us work.

He never censored himself after that. He always told me what happened with him. I slid myself, intrigued, into his shoes. I said whatever I needed to, to get him to say what he wanted. I didn't trust him. I never trusted him after his initial treason. I still don't trust him. But I know him. And I stayed very good at letting him trust me. You see, I've always listened. And I've told him the answers to things he'd ask me to listen to. They weren't - aren't - always my answers. But they were answers. You learn a lot about someone when you let them talk, only pausing to hear you agree with them. I wasn't lying to him because I wanted him back, or because I was trying to perjure him. I only lied to him because I was curious about what he said when I did. He fascinated me. And I realized he didn't love me. He loved his idea of me, just as I loved the fact that he loved me. We had always been so accommodating that way.

I still didn't think of you. Not in the sense of "the other woman." You were just the half of him that didn't particularly interest me. Your story - the two of you - fascinated me, but I only studied his half. I talked to him because for some reason I felt compelled to mentally log and calculate and observe him. His personality. His state of self, if you will. Conversation ended in January when I hit a plateau in my findings. The proverbial bedrock. It had been a fascinating study, but every researcher comes to a point where they can dig no further. I was done with him. Adequately and completely detached. On bad terms, but detached. A month later, I called for a follow-up. No new developments confirmed my diagnosis. I ran a test or two. Readings were the same. Progress was as anticipated. I watched him leave once more - at least from this book, this thesis. I end it with a sense of completion. A sigh of relief that finally it is done.

He is as he is as he is.

Finally, I have solid proof of that. He is done. He is nothing to me. He is a finished piece, another novel. A thing to be shelved. Dusted off occasionally, but put in a place to be forgotten.

Just because I learned from my experience with him, it doesn't mean he taught me anything.

I have a new profession, a new life, anyhow.

another character sketch

Raed had recently lost his only son. Crushed by the unweight of such a tremendous release, Raed was not him. Unlike him, Raed expanded in emptiness, was made of it. Like a sponge, he was completely holed. And Raed's hole seemed boundless; it surrounded him in a hollow presence that was nearly tangible.

In contrast to him, initially you are disheveled by the enormity of Raed; your instinct saying to give him a wide berth. When people pass him on the sidewalk, though the sidewalk is wide and few are traversing it (and though Raed likes to stay close to the buildings, the walls, finding comfort on the edges of things,) they will step into the gutter, or the street. Already Raed had stopped noticing this. Perhaps he never noticed it.

Have you ever noticed how the emptiness of people is often the only thing that keeps them from falling apart? Raed wore buttons: dark shirts with buttons, and a large navy blue coat with more buttons. The smallest of points can still hold things together. The reprimanding 10 am glare off the cement and the buildings rendered his coat unnecessary, but Raed was used to wearing it; had once been used to walking to work in the dark and the damp of the day. That had changed. His long navy coat, that looked like wool but probably wasn't, had not changed. How could you not cling to familiarity in the places where it doesn't burn you?

A big man, Raed still was not as big as the berth–unscrupulously gifted from the rest of us beyond him–would lead you to believe. Big is the wrong word. Raed was broad; his chest and shoulders, his hands, his feet. In high school (in his other life) they called him The Wall. It fit him. Raed was a vast and stubborn bastion of impassibility. What he was, he was. What he felt, he was. What he thought, he was. And he was unchangeable; always convinced of the right, the truth in his ways of thinking.