« November 2005 | Main | January 2006 »

December 20, 2005

clarifications

ok. so a certain someone was concerned today, after reading the work of mostly fiction this morning, that perhaps i had at some point tried crank. not so concerned about my desire to kill someone with a pesto-laden plastic spatula, soil myself, or drool. she was concerned that maybe i had done crank. now granted, because fact gave rise to that piece of fiction, some clarification might be in order.

1. the Whistler exists. he was there at the coffeeshop saturday morning, though i was able to mostly ignore him, since i wasn't making sandwiches. furthermore, everything i said about him is true, except that, to the best of my knowledge, he has only told amber about one restraining order a woman had placed against him.

interestingly, as i sat at the bar last night trying to figure out how to write myself into a home for the mentally ill, the Whistler strolls in. i had never seen him there at night. as soon as he came through the door, the story began to come out, and i was banging away at the keyboard.

of course, he comes and sits right next to me. i nodded at him, and turned my ipod up. my laptop's screen was perpendicular to his line of sight, but, without saying anything, he leaned over to look at the screen. freak. i don't think there was anything there yet for him to put together. i also don't really care.

to continue...

2. amber is indeed from minnesota. she is indeed odd, but in mostly interesting and not off-putting ways.

3. amber does harbor a deep and abiding love for me, but it is so deeply hidden that it doesn't actually exist.

4. i have never been in the trunk of a car.

5. i have never tried crank. i can't even recall what it's active ingredients are, or how it's ingested. i think it's a powder.

6. if i did want to try crank, i have no doubt i could buy it from some 15 year-old westlake kid, who might indeed play lacrosse.

7. this bakery is really extremely good. their cinnamon buns are incredible.

8. i have never actually listened to tuvan throat singer music. i would also never willingly listen to conservative talk radio, even to save the lives of myself and my family.

9. there is a syrup flavor called "orgeat." apparently it's made from almonds, sugar and rose water or orange-flower water. a bottle of orgeat would not be my weapon of choice to kill someone in a coffeeshop with, though. my top methods would include: drowning someone in the crock pot of tomato-basil bisque; dragging someone to the espresso machine, jamming the steaming wand into an orifice, and turning it on full blast; asphyxiating them with the tapioca pearls for the damned, damned bubble tea; or a simple blow to the head with the decaf coffee urn.

10. the bit about screaming "i'm intangible" was actually lifted from a story written by, i believe, gary hatch, in our eighth-grade english class. to avoid plagiarism, i will be changing "intangible" to "impermeable." not as good, but i'm a straight-up guy, and i don't want to share any royalties.

11. i can, in fact, whistle along with anything coltrane plays. but i don't.

12. the person that thinks i might have actually tried crank is, in fact, a blonde.

13. there was a "law and order: svu" marathon on usa network sunday. i only watched a couple of episodes as i moaned quietly to myself after a particularly hideous 18 mile run. i had hot chocolate, not quik, and a freebird's monster burrito, not tacos.

14. ADA cabot was such a hard-ass because i rebuffed her advances. ADA novak changed her hair color because i withheld sexual activity until she did. i did not mention these things in the piece, but they do need to be brought to light.

15. it is actually my roommate that regularly crashes on the couch, watches law and order: svu all day, but refuses to pay for cable. when i threaten to have it disconnected, she shrugs and says, "that's ok, i don't pay for it anyway."

16. i have held myself out in public, but no one was looking at the time.

17. if katherine hepburn came to me, i would stop whatever i was doing, including drooling and faking catatonia. she was the shit.

the rest of the story is mostly true.

Posted by Rob at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)

errr...

according to cnn today, "No bump for Bush despite Iraq speeches." this is based on a cnn/usa today gallup poll that found the president's approval rating stayed at 41%, with 56% disapproving of what he's doing.

the story also points out that these numbers were from a poll conducted before his sunday speech.

meanwhile, at msnbc, the headline is, "Support for Bush jumps." the story is actually out of the washington post.

yesterday, msnbc's headline was "Bush: Leaking was 'shameful.'" I assume he was speaking not of some urinary dysfunction, but of the the leaking of the facts about the government spying on u.s. citizens.

cnn, on the other hand, buried this absurd comment deeper in a story that was headlined "Bush: Secret wiretaps will continue," which i guess is still not exactly engineered to sound very good.

the only stability and consistency in our media cosmology came from fox, of course, which went with "Bush Addresses Patriot Act, NSA Spying."

with a media like this, it's no wonder no one really knows what the hell is going on...

Posted by Rob at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)

extemporaneous insanity

there have been times, plenty of them, when i've thought of going completely mad, just to try it out. this would not be such a novelty if i were not so much more sane than most people. sure, there's been the occasional violent outburst, some hallucinations (usually voluntarily induced), and the occasional blacking out to find myself in the trunk of a car with a dead animal. but these things, of course, are all part of growing up in one's thirties, in these times, bombarded as we are with thetan microwaves.

so, there i was, when opportunity struck. in the bar. at the bar. the bar in the coffeeshop. making sandwiches. there's this guy that delivers from a local pastry shop. the bakery's quite good, and the scones distract me, especially the chocolate chip ones, even though i know they're just made with bisquick and decent-quality chocolate chunks.

anyway, he comes in. the Whistler. i wonder if his mother is someone in a bonnet in a rocking chair, because he is the Whistler, and his mother would be, you know, his mother. i used to hate being shift manager on weekends, because it usually meant making sandwiches at the back bar, and that meant talking to the guy. he really liked talking to the girls, but he'd talk to me, too, because, i think, god hates me.

he'd bring the pastries in shortly before we opened in the morning. he'd get a decaf coffee, stroll languidly through the shop, peruse a paper he wouldn't pay for, then set up camp, often at the back bar. there, he'd bring up random, uninteresting bits of the day's unpaid-for news. he'd talk about how he was once an electrical engineer, but that now he liked delivering pastries. of course, i myself was an attorney working in a coffeeshop, but, of course, he was clearly insane.

he had often regaled amber, my odd minnesotan coworker, with tales of the several women who had restraining orders against him, as if the intervention of the justice system was an intrinsic and charming part of the romantic process. she often told me that he frightened her more than i did, which i took to mean "more than not at all," and which i understand to be her shy and awkward attestion of her love for me.

when the Whistler wasn't frightening the girls or boring me, he'd insist on whistling harmonies to every song we played. we'd try to confuse him. we played mars volta. obscure prince songs with lots of dissonance. tuvan throat singer music. static. conservative talk radio.

and still, he would whistle. at times, i would reach out, grab a bottle of the torani flavored syrup, usually "orgeat." amber would quietly and gently grab my wrist, and shake her head.

but on this one morning, i was still all jicked-up on the crank from the office party the night before, scored off of some 15 year-old lacrosse player from westlake high school, my proudly elitist alma mater. i understood that there were trade-offs for the intangibility the stuff offered me. there was the sweating, and the craving for fresh wombat, and the slight change in my level of patience. but still, the verve it offered me to proclaim in public spaces, "i'm intangible!" was worth the minor costs to me.

that morning, i was making the chicken-provolone sandwich, with the sun-dried tomatoes and a really good basil pesto. it's a very popular seller at the coffeeshop, though i can't help but think these days of the intricate and beautifully efficient machines in arkansas that suck in scores of live chickens and spit out boneless chicken breasts. it makes me want to be both chicken and machine.

i had plugged my iPod into the stereo system. it was coltrane going off on "naima." unwhistleable.

he was whistling. i remember looking up and smiling at him with an intense hatred, then things get kind of fuzzy. they said that the plastic spatula still had a well-sized dollop of the tasty basil pesto on it, and that the spatula with the well-sized dollop of the tasty basil pesto on it wasn't really sharp enough for what i apparently used it for, and it more ripped through the jugular and trachea than it cut through it. i do also have a vague memory of seeing the vivid green pesto and bright red arterial blood and thinking, "ahh, christmas!"

this would seem shocking and horribly violent to me, if i hadn't done it before. just think of how shocking sneezing would be if you didn't do it so darned often.

there was the tedious bit with the competency hearing. i am, in fact, obviously, entirely competent. but the day before the sandwich-making, i had treated myself to two quarts of quik chocolate milk, some tacos, and the law and order: svu marathon on a cable network, and it had really grounded me.

i remember bits of my time in law school, and the documentary is so enjoyable, and it's always on any of 23 different cable channels, and both of the assistant district attorneys they've had have been so beautiful and admirable, and so not like my mother or any of the girlfriends i've had who i can't seem to get in touch with anymore.

because i am competent, i did not go into the courtroom expecting to see assistant district attorney alexandra cabot. this is because even if i have certain feelings about the way my socks feel, i am nothing if not un-nondelusional. like anyone else, my grasp on reality informs me that ADA cabot is still in the witness protection program, and has been replaced by another very capable woman, ms. casey novak, with whom i have had an on-again, off-again relationship over the past five years.

so, clearly, i was going to be distraught when casey failed to appear to cut me a deal. i think this is going to be the final straw in our relationship, which has been marked by repeated infidelities on her part, mostly with bono, an irish singer and politician, and her unwillingness to pitch in for the cable at my apartment, where she regularly crashes on the couch to watch herself on the television.

i believe that the lucidity of my comments in the courtroom that day carried tremendous weight, impressing the judge, and endearing me to all involved. i know that my mother cried, even though she tried to hide it by calling me many vile names, and saying i was a "worthless abomination" that made her wish that god had not cursed her with functioning ovaries.

it is my further belief that the judge was intelligent enough to see, if not completely grasp the scope of, my level of enlightenment and psychological clarity. i recall her saying something about my commitment, which i believe was a question. having never had a fear of commitment, i offered my services, and was sent here, to this clean white summer home, to minister to the people i now find myself temporarily living among. however, i do not hold a doctorate degree in psychology, and while i have, at times, held myself out in public, i do not feel it is proper to falsely hold myself out in public as someone so credentialed.

the staff here have admitted, introduced, and treated me as another of the mental patients, in what can only be a clever ruse to promote the ability of the other patients to relate to me, so that i may better heal them. i do, though, tend to think that the electroshock therapy sessions and the late night visits to my room by a burly male nurse named johann are rather extreme efforts to maintain the charade.

nevertheless, over the past weeks and/or years here (in a fit of novelty and devil-may-care, i neglected to note what each tic-mark cut into my thigh with sporks stands for), i have decided to use the time to my own full benefit, as well, to do all the things that i had been curious about, but never felt the freedom or had the opportunity to do.

so, on march 2, a couple of years ago, fifteen years and seven days before my birth, i decided to stare at a piece of lint on the floor and do nothing but drool. there was a bit of risk in picking the object of my fixation, because lint is usually prone to the whimsy of air gusts and mops. but in this case, the bit of lint was actually a dust bunny that had agglomerated around a piece of half-gone hard candy that janet had spat at me before lunch one day. when i came out of a week or hour of well-deserved alone-time for my measured and dignified response to her act of self-expression, the candy was still in the corner, swept there by the lazy orderlies, and overlooked by my many peers who might have eaten it or shaved and worshipped it.

days and/or a year and 32 days passed, but i had a point, and a message of peace and perspective to convey, so i stuck with it. on march 9th, 2003, or thereabouts, i received a line, or rhombus, of visitors, none of which included dead or imaginary people whatsoever, as my doctors claimed, but most of which included everyone else.

my mother arrived, and poked at me with a pencil, muttering inanities. eventually, she got bored and left.

the human resources director from my state job, whom i had always believed was actually dead, came to explain to me the sacred mysteries of the family medical leave act. i wanted to cry at the beauties revealed to me then, but instead of tears, only saliva puddled in my lap.

katherine hepburn came, and tried to hoist me over her shoulder, declaring that we were going out to play a brisk game of golf. apparently though, in my hours at this odd hotel, i had gained several hundred pounds, and even her amazonian frame suffered under the strain. even as she grunted obscenties, i drooled on her shoulder and back, and stared at my holy dustbunny. eventually, she left.

several days later, i became terribly dehydrated from all the drooling, and while i had been able to hold back on excrementalizing, urinationalizing was something that i had little control over, and the damp gown had caused some nasty sores on my ass.

that aspect of this statement/experiment led to another. a week or so later, i waited until 2:43, the critical point of crisis in the daily showing of "the love boat." i had eaten nothing but eggs and pudding for several days, and had denied myself the release of, well, release. just as charo began to tear up, my own flood of emotion seeped over the edge of my chair and across the floor.

once again, my efforts were applauded, literally by my new friends, and then symbolically by the doctors and orderlies. i must say, however, that it seems horrifically elitist and unfair for the intellects of the psychiatric world to withhold the wonder of padded walls. while the vast majority of this planet's population sleep on small bits of padding set on the floor, in rooms where the sexual habits of their neighbors are oppressively, deliciously accessible, i was treated to the novelty of sleeping on the walls and ceilings of my temporary home within the home. so restful was this new reality, that i believe i may have slept for several days and or years, as the doctors, on my emergence from slumber, were no longer tadpoles, but beautiful princesses.

clearly, all involved in this place were enlightened enough to understand that these experiments tested the boundaries of human freedom. none of the supervisors in my previous careers would have understood the way drooling for two weeks affirmed their own humanity, as well as my own. and even i had never considered the potential of liberating myself from the tyranny of my own bowels, and their totalitarian restriction on the natural flow of life through my body.

still, i tire of this existence. one can only sleep on the ceiling so much, and drool, and soil oneself so much for the sheer novelty of it all. what good is freedom if it is held to oneself?

yesterday, in an attempt to spread the freedom i have discovered, i liberated one of my peers from the oppression of his nose, using the rook from my friend john's chess set. it took a good fifteen minutes, but fortunately, the orderlies gave us the time in the television viewing room to finish our cooperative effort before they broke the door down. i will eventually educate them in basic logical function, so that they will understand that a door is locked precisely so it cannot be opened, and therefore does not need to be opened.

i am tired. i am in the sleepy room again. some time back, i loaned johann my pen by inserting it into his temporal lobe. rudely, he did not return it. afterwards, the staff challenged my creative writing ability by giving me a bit of dull yellow crayon with which to continue to chronicle my time here. the crayon does dull from time to time, and i cannot sharpen it with my teeth, since using my teeth to sharpen the doorknob did not work out so well a few decades ago last week. but i shall persevere, and one day, i will be able to give back to my friends here the story of my own experience as their peer, friend, and saviour, in a radio play starring katherine hepburn.

Posted by Rob at 01:13 AM | Comments (3)

December 19, 2005

ok, it's not the holidays that suck...

ok, steph's comment was on target in a lot of ways. my post about christmas needs some clarification.

to be more accurate, i shouldn't confuse how i feel around the holidays with how i feel about the holidays.

feeling depressed or lonely is not the fault of the holidays, or the commercialization, any more than it's the fault of the people who might seem to have the things in life someone might feel he or she lacks. actually, it's because christmas and the holidays are a special time that people end up feeling so bad. if christmas or new year's eve or chanukkah were somewhere in there with mother's day and flag day, i think we'd all be just fine.

you know i don't call myself a christian, because i feel i lack the commitment of complete faith. but i agree that christmas is about the birth of Christ, and that's the central point. we're in a country where 80% of the populations at least counts themselves as christians, but really, a lot of those folks, and people like me, and some people who think they're aetheists (i've found most are more accurately agnostic, which makes a huge difference), are sort of along for the sleigh ride.

but that doesn't mean the season is meaningless for us. even for me, and for others, i suspect, who aren't "true" or avowed christians, there's something undeniably sacred about this time of year, and it's set apart. maybe it's because the images and sentiment are inescapable - everyone is doing it. the commercialization even plays a role in that. the world, in a way, changes, and who doesn't, in some way, want to participate in that? the rhetoric and in many cases, the reality, is positive, if only for a little while, and there's a lot of fun to be had.

even the timing is significant. in winter, at the end of the year, time slows in some way, regardless of what the malls look like.

and more than in any other holiday, or any other season, it's a time for people to be together, almost regardless of their faith. it all lends itself to reflection and assessment. and that's when things are missed.

what do people miss? even for a devout christian, who puts their faith in god, and gives their troubles up to god, love and family and companionship in this world are still things that people universally strive for.

one group of my friends are blessed with the ability to go be with their families on the holidays. for as many, though, it's an impossibility because of their jobs or finances. and in some cases, there's no family there to go to.

and then, of course, there's love and companionship, or rather, the lack thereof. i think that's one of the biggest sources of holiday depression.

yes, people need to appreciate and make the best of what they have, but it's a lot to expect them to not think about what might be missing in their lives, and even of their own faults and shortcomings that might make things the way they are.

for me, i've written so much about my place in the world, and my feelings about it - so much, in fact, that i'm often fairly disgusted and want to delete the entire blog. but whatever i feel i miss in my life, this is the time of year when i miss it most, because it is christmas, and it is new year's eve, and i have those memories of what those holidays used to bring with them.

i do also have great memories of the holidays - i don't forget those. and i do try, and i will make more. i talk a lot about hope, and even faith, here. my hope is heavily landmarked with memories of the future - kissing the girl at midnight, meeting a new family, maybe making one.

yeah, feeling a bit lonely right now. got a good wave of it this afternoon. but that's not all there'll be this year. i get along much better with my family now, as long as we pretend the current presidential administration doesn't exist for a few hours. for the first time in a few years, kanton and his family will be around, and i'll go hang with them a bit. i'll probably spend a little time with friends who can't make it home, and i'm supposed to go to dinner with a couple of friends who have no people at all. there's a lot of fellowship and understanding in that.

those will all be this year's good christmas memories. and actually, that you love and care enough whack me upsidethehead makes me feel pretty good, too.

Posted by Rob at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2005

brokeback mountain

ok, i got to go to a sneak of brokeback mountain last night, and that there gay cowboy movie was one of the best films i've seen. i need some time to digest and put it in a historical perspective, but it might be one of the best ever. it's certainly one of the best, most compelling love stories ever.

and, while i've never seen this dude heath ledger act before, he was incredible as ennis del mar. he's got to be looked at for an oscar. i mean, holy crap.

the cinematography, not surprisingly for an ang lee movie, was incredible. the landscapes lend themselves to that, but shots of a bus station, of dusty alleyways, a shot of ennis' wife, alma, sitting in her kitchen with dingy yellow walls behind her, waiting for her husband to come home from his affair, were as completely mesmerizing as paintings by some of the masters.

it was such a well-balanced movie, too. lots of artsy movies, particularly ones about love, tend to be a bit overwrought and seek their realism and emotional impact through imposing the most depressing situations possible. but ang lee made this much more realistic and much more emotional, and not so much, umm... ang-st ridden. get it? ang lee? ang-st? never mind. point still stands.

the wyoming landscape was a huge character in the movie, as well. it wasn't just there for composition and picture-postcard wowness. it had its own emotional energy. i hated that my stepfather would love and appreciate that so much, as well as the lifestyle of these cowboys, but would miss it because he wouldn't be able to get over the fact that the lovers happen to be homosexual.

and it was just that - it wasn't so much a gay love story as just a
powerful love story that anyone should be able to appreciate. sure,
even my gay and lesbian friends enjoy calling it "the gay cowboy movie," because, let's face it, that's funny, particularly given the
south park reference to independent films being all about "gay cowboys
eating pudding." there was no pudding in this movie that i saw. but while the homosexual nature of the relationship made it an "impossible" one for the characters, it could just have easily been a racial difference, a cultural or religious difference. hell, it could easily have been the montagues and capulets.

it takes some incredibly compelling and honest storytelling and acting
and direction to make that impression, to make the love story overwhelm the prejudices and lack of understanding that exist to some degree in almost everyone. i can't think of any other film that has done it, and i can't imagine it being done this well.

Posted by Rob at 12:11 PM | Comments (2)

December 14, 2005

ghosts of christmas past and present

fgm: i'm sorry about this. i've been trying to write, and it's what came out. i don't want you to feel bad. the past is the past. what i feel today is not on who you are today. i know that, and i hope you understand that, too. i would have come to feel like this eventually, anyway, and it will change if and when.. you know, lightning and all...

for close to fifteen years, without variation or fail, my parents and i would load up and visit my grandparents in dallas at thanksgiving and christmas. we would return to austin, and driving down the expressway, we could see the giant christmas tree in zilker park, strands of newly lit lights sweeping down from one of the city's moonlight towers.

it was another one of the stops or trips my family never made. it was like the mysterious inner space caverns just outside of austin, that tempted me with an endless stream of billboards advertising zero-gravity rooms and sabre-toothed tigers. i never understood how we could possibly not go, how anyone at any age could resist the lure of zero-gravity rooms and prehistoric beasts. maybe even prehistoric beasts in zero-gravity rooms.

no, i still haven't been, though i consider every time i drive back from dallas. the nike outlet store in hillsboro, the czech stop in west for kolaches, but the inner space caverns, no. i think i know that it's too late, that i'll just be disappointed by ragged, animatronic mastodons and spinning chambers with disorienting interior design and the comingled odors of vomit and cheap industrial cleaner.

then there was the mysterious crop of fighter planes and missiles peaking over the trees just off of the mopac expressway. for a good deal of my life, i was firmly committed to being a fighter pilot, earning an engineering degree, then getting into the astronaut program. this was a plan that eminently pleased my parents, far more than the plans that followed the disappointment of becoming more nearsighted than a fighter pilot should be: automotive designer; professional cyclist (before lance made it cool); journalist. yet, they would never make the quick stop to let me clamber around on the decommissioned jets that i could name and tell the history and specifications of.

there was six flags. astroworld. but i understood that those trips would require more money, time and effort. but airplanes and the christmas tree in zilker park seemed easy enough.

i finally went once, in college. then, again, a time later, with my girlfriend at the time, and some of our friends. i don't remember what year it was, or who was there. i remember standing with her and everyone else at the giant yule log. at the time, no one was supposed to know about what was happening between us. so we stood close, but not too close. people sang, santa held audience, my friends and i drank cheap powdered hot chocolate from styrofoam cups, and it all seemed sort of hollow, because in another few days, i knew she would be leaving, going home to her hometown, her family, and the boyfriend everyone knew about.

i know there are other factors that make me feel the way i do about this time of year. growing up, the slightest scent of the holiday season caused the dreaded resurrection and around-the-clock playing of the barbara streisand christmas album, first on 8-track, then on a cassette tape that would not die the way my genesis and prince tapes seemed to. finally, of course, the album was played enough that, like repeating "bloody mary" in front of a mirror enough times, the music was reincarnated in the eternal, indestructible, and evilly pure digital format of the compact disc, where it joined forces with the richard clayderman christmas album to make christmas a fearsome and loathsome thing for me.

as i entered my late teens, i also noted the trend of people lightening up on being careless or numb or outright assholes for a day or two, if that, only to immediately pick up where they left off as soon as they slept off the turkey and eggnog and began hitting the after-christmas sales. nothing ensures having the spirit of christmas all year long like a guy in a bright red sweater with reindeer on it, flipping you off on the highway.

but as i became an adult, i learned something else that made christmas unwelcome and not a little bitter. the trips to dallas stopped when my grandfather died, and we moved my grandmother to austin. then, a few years later, she grew weaker, and died. increasingly, my friends were people i went to college with, who went home for christmas, leaving me to spend awkward and strained time with my parents. and eventually, goodbyes at the airport became another christmas tradition for a few years.

so, for years now, when the season rolls in like a fast-intruding cold front that cuts the temperature in half, i find it a little funny to scowl at decorations. i honestly cringe with annoyance and some embarassment on humanity's behalf at mechanically-animated mock deer heads that sing christmas carols, the cutesy advertisements, and all of that.

i'm even annoyed at the annual surge of stories about "the holiday blues." how stupid and sad and pathetic is that? to be haunted by the ghosts of lonely christmases past and present, and to fear the ghosts of untold christmases future.

10 shopping days left until christmas. 10 days, each of which i am increasingly stupid and sad and pathetic and a little angry, because the songs are grating, and the sentiments are hollow, and for some reason, no other day is lonelier than christmas.

Posted by Rob at 11:14 PM | Comments (1)

December 13, 2005

stand by

ok, i just want anyone left to know this is not abandoned. doing some catching up, reorganizing, reprioritizing.

stand by.

Posted by Rob at 11:39 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2005

anger

I said, anger
will make you sick, child,
oh Jesus,
anger
destroys your soul...

marvin gaye

i'm sorry, father marvin. you were wise in your way, and i know you're right. but sometimes, anger is all we have. and this is the song in my heart...

i said anger,
is what i need
to survive.
anger
to keep what's left of me alive.

anger
it's what i have -
it's mine.
anger,
when being good can't hold the line.

anger
it's what i know,
what i've learned, in the end.
anger,
and it's about time, my friends.

i said anger,
turn the failures
into rage.
anger,
can help me get out of this cage.

anger,
it's just for me,
not for you.
anger,
cause i don't do the things you do.

and anger,
the things i'll do
in my rage,
anger
will make me finally turn a page.


more and more, i try, i fail, and anger is left. hope and logic periodically, and increasingly, fail to be convincing, to be worthy of faith. but there's always the anger left.

when i play basketball, when i run, i want to hurt. i want to beat myself, hurt myself, because i hate what i've become, and i want to destroy myself as some act of repentance. i want my lungs to fail me, to suffocate the person i see in the mirror. i want my heart to explode, i want pain to cut me, to bleed my heart of the weakness.

on some days, i run with hope, but on many days, i run from anger, and i push myself harder, faster. i am no masochist - i deserve to suffer for my failures, for my weakness, but i'd rather inflict it by my own will.

i run another half marathon sunday, in dallas. i want to enjoy it. i want to perform well. but tonight, i am reminded anew of failure and weakness, and the dwindling of moments, and i am angry. all night long, the mantra was, "run angry. run angry. run angry. run angry."

sunday won't be here soon enough.

Posted by Rob at 03:18 AM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2005

the elongated moment

in the days of pure film - images captured on frames of celluloid moving fast enough to try to smoothly capture the passage of time - slow-motion was a crude tool, restricted to a change from normal speed to a slower speed, the transition often jarring.

digital editing has given us a new state of beauty in the elongation of the moment. time stretches differently now in the digital format than it ever did in its analog counterpart.

tonight, i walked out of the coffeeshop. lots of beer, wine, a scotch and water, not necessarily in that order. there's hope, something on the horizon, but in the haze, perhaps in my growing disbelief in the fairy tales, I couldn't see that, couldn't rely on it, and i despaired, again.

i swung the door open, held it for someone walking in, i slid past, into the coolness of texas november, looked up, and a couple stood there, the man's back to me, the woman before him, facing almost to me, but just a bit off. the beat of time began slowing, a smooth arc, to one elongated and quiet moment in which she held her hand so gently to his face, and i could just see the look in her eyes.

in a split second i looked away, and continued moving past them, but between the trick of alcohol and the afterimage, my mind stood still, captured, watching what passed in that close space between them, seeing and somewhere remembering the way she looked at him.

i hope he saw what i saw.

Posted by Rob at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)