Unsent Letter, #1

You make me uncomfortable.

You know it.

You met me at a party where I was happy drunk and dancing, somehow sitting on the couch next to the keg; you soberly confided that you have leukemia, and only a handful of days were left.

If there is any reason in my ardor, it lies in the idea that you might actually perish beside me in bed, too sick to fight. I’ve assumed that you are cowardly, a condition created by your philosophy degree. Openly jaded, antisocial, you hated being at there, not knowing us drunk and happy dancers. Not being able to dance. Pragmatist.

But oh you are sweet. You and those noises you make just before you cum, I have never heard anything half as honest. Like watching some one have their heart broken, gasping sobs, like sleep talking or intervalled airport greetings.

I want you to love me like you love the girls in New York City, who are independent, small and devious. My body doesn’t know how to be small and devious, but it tries to slide up next to yours like it has always been so. It wonders if you can tell how small and devious it is pretending to be, if, when your hands fall across my stomach, they are worried by the secrets I have to hide.

I want you to watch me when I sleep, to admire my fingers silently wrapped around yours, to touch my feet gently, so that I do not mind. To kiss my back and sigh. Pieces have always made me uncomfortable.

Neither of us knows why you called me after that party, I still don’t remember giving you my number. Introduced yourself as Dust, childish and rude; Daniel. I invited you to another party, and neither of us knows why you went. I wanted to be embarrassed by your small stature and wounded posture, but you held out your arms, and the strange new way you smelled forced me to forgive you for coming. Later that night there was a fight, some one was stabbed, and we were kicked out.

You carried my beer, walked my bike, and covered me while I peed on someone’s stoop. Asking if I was alright, telling me about knife fights in Philly and The City, even in Arizona. Cave Creek, Arizona. I knew a man from Cave Creek who asked me to marry him. He had a three legged dog,he needed to take care of me. You remind me of him.

If when we have Indian food at my favorite place, the same place he proposed to me at, you decide you want to marry me, I will play along for a while. We will talk about getting a dog, sleep through the rain, sculpt autonomously with recycled junk, and take a tango class.

But you’ll want to go to The City, because you are in love with that small woman on your phone.
I’ll let you go too.

Telling myself that your white blood cells had dropped, the cancer took you from that studio apartment in your sleep. And then I’ll write about it.

In Response to a Carson McCullers Excerpt.

Excerpt -
"The time has come to speak about love. For Miss Amelia loved Cousin Lymon. So much was clear to everyone. They lived in the same house together and were never seen apart. Therefore, according to Mrs. MacPhail, a warty-nosed old busybody who is continually moving her sticks of furniture from one part of the front room to another; according to her and to certain others, these two were living in sin. If they were related, they were only a cross between first and second cousins, and even that could in no way be proved. Now, of course, Miss Amelia was a powerful blunderbuss of a person, more than six feet tall -- and Cousin Lymon a weakly little hunchback reaching only to her waist. But so much the better for Mrs. Stumpy MacPhail and her cronies, for they and their kind glory in conjunctions which are ill-matched and pitiful. So let them be. The good people thought that if those two had found some satisfaction of the flesh between themselves, then it was a matter concerning them and God alone. All sensible people agreed in their opinion about this conjecture -- and their answer was a plain, flat top. What sort of thing, then, was this love?First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons -- but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world -- a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring -- this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as dearly as anyone else -- but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being be loved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain." - Carson McCullers, Ballad of the Sad Cafe (25)


Response -

If you think it’s a bunch of bullshit when Carson McCullers declared that the heart is a lonely hunter, it is only because you are that greasy headed heavy handed beloved of all the world. Their hands lay on your shoulders like dusted bricks fallen from the ruins of a mausoleum. Temples built in front of you, stopping the motion of the city for the miles you can see as you topple over the rooftops of each one, by one.

We run to place our trembling limbs below your stride when you walk away from us, protecting you from the cold concrete of the side walk, the wounded belly of the earth. You skirt forward like a dog with its tail between its legs, confused and teeth bared snarling and drooling, mad dog. There is no vacant doorway for you to collapse at, no sleek alleyways that love cannot find.

Crashing thunderous waves of feet, hands, knees and lips parade through these streets calling your name, an inaudible name, a constant ring you’ve known from the womb and are now numb to.

Georgia

That night we slept on the screened porch

stained couch bed

and skins melted together.

We rolled away from each other

naked bookends of night

curled in to crescents

cicadas sing

and peach pit morning

comes.

Edit!

Hokay,
So themed blog? Not working out so well. I am no journalist. However, I am trying to write more.
So from here on out, I will narcissistically post all of my writing. Even if it is the shittiest shit there ever was, just so that I'm not hording in my journal. I won't write if I'm hording.

Feel free to comment, and tell me when things are horrible. I probably already know that they are so. Or feel free to tell me when you like something, because I probably think it is horrible.
Brutally honest, please.
Feel free to never read anything I post, if it so pleases you. After all, I am posting on behalf of myself.

Here we go!

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?

I love to travel. I know that most of us walk around filling out online profiles and questionnaires saying that we love to travel, and I really love the image I get when I think of a map of Portland alone with all of the people here who love to travel. I mean, who doesn't love to travel; some of life's most exciting moments and adventures come from fresh places and people who don't know us, new cultures, foods, sights, and activities. Even the challenges that arise when we travel are sure to be the greatest parts of our journey.
So why aren't we all wandering around like a breed of perma-vagrants? Today was nice, and I know I wasn't the only one dreaming of the beaches in Southern California, if not those of Australia and Greece.
What is it makes us so static? Is it the need to be secure? Do we all believe that if we were to up-and-go that we would soon find ourselves with out ways to provide for ourselves? Is it the fallacy of money fueling travel? Haven't we all heard stories of friends of friends who were sitting on the docks of main land Hawaii some early Wednesday morning, and how that friend was offered a job on some crazy Asian man's boat? Don't you remember the part where they learned how to sail and ended up sailing all the way to Cape Town, South Africa.
Let us paint a picture, shall we, of the best place we could be in to travel.
We have no credit card bills, no lease (or at least one that we can break gracefully), all of our limbs and we are in good health. We do not have any kids or pets, significant others, or dependant family members. We are not allergic to much, we are literate and perhaps we speak a little (french/spanish/german/italian/swahili/etc.).
What now?
We could sell our house if we needed to, or our car for that matter. We can quit our jobs, store our stuff with friends or family if not give it all away. We have two feet, one thumb, a creative mind and a real live beating heart that loves the sunshine.
Why are we still here?
We all know that what we call the 'world', our daily lives of grocery lists, morning vitamins, traffic, and urban bike rides, is not actually the world. The world is so much larger than what we think is important, than ourselves. How can we be satisfied with this small view of the Pacific Northwest?
What is it that keeps you here, or there, where ever it is that you live from day to day. What keeps you moving, if you are one of the few who live on the run; tell us your secret!

Customized Advice Column

Yesterday, while taking a break from 'working' at home, my father was testing himself with a New York Times crossword puzzle.
"How do you spell Guillotine?" he asks me; and I have no real clue. At best, I know it has two 'l's in it. He presses on and ask me how to spell nuance, cosmopolitan, and eunuch. I vaguely recall my parents fighting my 3rd grade teacher to let me in to 4th grade, despite my incapacity to spell; and now, I'm an English major. Go figure, right?
It doesn't seem right. I know that none of us were made for specific career pathways, but I can't help but be constantly negating the ones I meditate upon. I started off school as a Philosophy major, then I moved to Arizona to be an Environmental Science major, and I was about to declare a focus in Marine Biology, when I decided that science wasn't really my thing at all, so I would study Adventure Education, or Experiential Education, but actually I wanted to be a Psychology major. I thought I was going to minor in Photography, French, and Theater. I moved away from a town and a school that I loved to be an English major, and now I'm not so sure about that either.
People have told me, time and again, that it doesn't really matter what you major in, its the BA or BS that matter, regardless of the details. These letters would keep doors open for me, provide me with a future, or something else of that degree of bullshit. Any way, it is important for me to go to school, and I won't know that until I'm done with it, and no one who is done with it can really tell me why its so fucking important to them, to me, or to any one else.
The economy sucks, I've been un-employed for three months, taking out loans to pay for rent, dumpstering and stealing food to eat; as a student, I can't get food stamps until I have a job. What a mess. The jobs that I really want (that at least .5 million other Portlanders want as well) want to hire folks that have a BA in Education or a BS in Environmental Science. I want to work outside, with kids, and I have tons of experience working with kids, and teaching people about the ecology of the northwest, but I don't and I will not have those degrees.
So now what? Should I change my major because right now, right in the midst of early spring sunshine, when I am still young and healthy, I want to work outside, I want to sweat and run around, and play with little kids, and be curious with them and learn with them? What if I don't want to do that in two years? What if I get into a horrible car accident and I'm paralyzed and I can't do that any more?
Once I am done with school, what do I want to do? I want to travel, as cheaply as possible. Who said anything about working, careers, or settling down. Gag me. I want to live a crazy life, I want to work all sorts of odd jobs, I want to milk cows in New Zealand, mop floors in Ireland, and teach English in a million Asian countries.

So, what I'm really getting at here, is why are you studying what you are? Why did you major in what you did? Are you satisfied? Would you change anything? Does it matter? What about the debt part, is it worth it?

Against my better charactor and judgement, my narcissistic self really wanted to start a blog. So the rest of me gave in. Its called F.A.Q.; the irony being that I didn't actually know what that meant until about a week ago (thank you, Alexbeck). I thought it meant fact answer question or something like that. In case you don't know, it means Frequently Asked Questions. So, this blog, and you, will hopefully fill me in on everything it is I wanted to know; give me all your answers.
I have always taken comfort in the experienced wisdom of others, what better knowledge is there than personal experience, after all? So, if you have a moment, let me know what it is, that you think.

Thanks.