When The Dust Settles

I traipsed out into the street still intoxicated by the previous night’s activities, a vast amount of relaxation in ways I hadn't really experienced in a long time, in the midst of a social and professional lull. I stood on the sidewalk, breathing in the cold Friday morning air to clear my head of the blur of lights and laughter and lust that still rung in my head and prepared for the ‘walk of shame’ home. The grey San Francisco sky should have been my omen or perhaps it should have been in the heaviness in my steps. The air was still and yet hung heavily unsettled as I approached my car at the top of the steep hill above Dolores Park.

The shards of glass glistened in the midday sun, as the harsh light of day seared reality into my mind in the moments that drew me closer to the mess before me. I picked up one piece and two pieces and a couple more before I realized they were not illusionary but rather the very real, fractured pieces of what was once my rear driver’s side window. The blurred veil that obscured my vision immediately lifted and revealed to me my violated vehicle: my car had been broken-into. I swept the perimeter of the car, squeamish at seeing yet more shards in the interior of the vehicle upon the freshly vacuumed carpet and rear seats within, and as I realized from a quick inspection that the car itself was fine, my rapid breathing quickened to a halt and my heart immediately sank. The backpack. With my laptop. And my Wacom tablet. And my work, my endless hours of work. And my personal files. My tears, blood, sweat. My thousands of miles, and dreamless hours of sleep. The backpack. Gone.

The next moment I found myself at Mike’s door, with no recollection of even running back down the hill from the car, and upon being received with a quickly fading smile, he realized something was very wrong. The words that came from me were quick, muddled, confused and horrified at describing what I saw and how I felt. And yet I couldn't feel a thing. I've lost many battles (too many I feel) but I've never really been a victim. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m never really safe, that no one ever really is in this world. I subscribe to the naive sentiment of good's victory over evil. Or, maybe I always used to. I feel like I always needed to in order to keep sane or calm or together, but that antiquated illusion exponentially unraveled, oddly enough, every time I feel my luck changing for the better.

He ushered me back to the vehicle armed with a pair of utility gloves and began work on cleaning up the mess the violators had left behind. And as I sorted my emotions and organized the millions of thoughts in my head to the best of my ability, I noticed him there, on his knees in the middle of the street, retrieving the glass effortlessly from the cold pavement beneath. He picked up the pieces and responded to my coldness with a weary smile of unassuming resolve and reassurance that everything will be ok. And suddenly it was. And it took away all the sadness in the world.

***

My room seemed smaller. And my hometown seemed colder. Though no snow blanketed the brown, dead earth as it had profusely many winters past, I felt the chill of bitter winter slice effortlessly through each layer of clothing I shielded myself with. Quite possibly suffering the greatest holiday depression in all my life, it wasn't terribly difficult for something as inane as the unappealing State College weather or the seemingly claustrophobic world of my old bedroom to worsen my despair. As I lay on my bed, gazing out into the grey sky in the empty quiet house days before Christmas, I heard the creak of floorboards approach, and then the quiet, gentle graze of fur beneath my hand.

I glanced down and ran my finger across the cold, wet black snout of my middle-aged beagle-lab Baxter, a being of incredible empathy and unyielding loyalty. Though confined [but content] within the safe walls of the house I sat in for most of his life, his beady brown eyes shown in them the wisdom of ages, and all the secrets, sins and sorrows whispered to him on the coldest of days and the darkest of nights, knowing they’d be locked away forever and never repeated. He curled up to my right and pressed his plump little body against mine, first sitting and then resting his heavy head upon the soft carpet at my side. As he slipped away into a shallow, dreamless sleep, he offered an unwavering open ear to all and any I had to say, because I believe he came to me knowing I needed to get some things off my chest. I ran my fingers through his coarse, golden fur and told him the stories of near and far, of lonely nights and meals in solitude, unfulfilled potential, of far away friends and the coldness of waking up with no one to say good morning to. And through this, I lay my demons in the void of his psyche and buried the shadows in the glow of Christmas’ tinsel and twilight. I lay with him with no reservation or doubt, seeking to share in his quiet, undisturbed rest, awash in security and blanketed away from the evil world. And yet the world’s pull loomed stronger with every vanishing reminder that I was in it as I began to slip into unconsciousness. In a stolen moment as he awoke and felt my head rest upon him, his beady eyes fell on me and his quiet glimpse reminded [as always it does], ‘I understand.’

***

“Pick a card,” she mumbled rehearsedly, as if straining to recall these words from some other place in this world, somewhere she heard it with a passing, inattentive ear. At the tender age of somewhere-in-toddlerhood, her expertise in magic was clearly in question. With her chubby digits across the underside of a fanned deck she laid out before me, her eyes glistened with a sense of glee in hopes to the heavens I would play along in this endeavor.

I picked one [the third card in from the right] which prompted her lips to curl into a crooked little grin. And upon my quick glance at the card, she quickly retrieved it, sneaking a peek at it before slipping it back into the deck, convincing herself that the world had no eyes to witness her little white sin. Leafing through the deck with fervor, she triumphantly revealed my card to me, as I offered her my long-sought approval of her incredible magical powers.

My little cousin reveled in her sense of achievement at having seemingly deceived me, a minute simulation of the harsh cruel world beyond the walls that shielded us from the crisp Canadian winter. And her deception served to remind me of that harsh world and everything she had yet to discover about it. Still though, in her quiet reflection and in that important little game she initiated, I was also quickly reminded of the sweet fragile innocence still left in this world, the guarded joy in learning and playing and applying and trying. And in that quiet little deception, she obscured for me the darkness I made myself so accustomed to, stealing me away to the lost realization of the magic in blind, unfettered and innocent contentment. And I told my little cousin as I placed my heavy hands gently on her slumped shoulders, “Don’t grow up too fast, sweetheart. And thank you.”

***

Culture shock is what I call it; the faint sounds from distant rooms of laughter and celebration, the glow of lights and the immediacy of familiar conversation, the exchange of long yearned sentiments masked by inside jokes and the aroma of strong liquor adrift in the air. I fiddled with my camera incessantly in the hopes that maybe I can figure out how to use this complicated piece within the thirty seconds I had to document all of these wonderful sights I seem to have missed and taken for granted when they were always around me. And, as if rehearsed or previously arranged, a crowd gathered in the warm glow of the kitchen space I suddenly found myself ushered into, nestled deep in the suburbs of Frederick, Maryland.

“One of our friends has had a rough time,” Paul began, addressing the makeshift crowd upon which fell a sudden hush, an eerie silence unfamiliar to me since I landed in the east coast. And the subsequent events fell into such a deep blur. He approached me with a bound set of envelopes, and it was clear the events he was describing, and it was clear what he was giving me. And my heart was heavy; I suddenly held in my hand the tactile physical manifestation of angels on earth; the evidence that wherever on earth you decide to try and hide, or run to, or find what it is you feel you are searching for or have lost, there will always be someone watching you. And apparently, who wish to take care of you in your despair and demise.

All eyes befell me in my reaction to each piece I opened from the bound pile of cards and letters. I tried to meet each eye in my need to acknowledge every soul in the room, but it was hard to see through the tears that formed very freely, and very swiftly. There was some laughter and some words in the next moments, but mostly a feeling of expected emotional discomfort from everyone; but there was nothing I could do about the tears from reading these words of promise, hope, comfort, acknowledgement and reaffirmation from all of the closest people in my life. So many beautiful words, even from those very very far away [The Houston crew & the Conquest Tactics family]. This endeavor had been quite the production, and immediately restored my faith in the inherent goodness of humanity. And as I carefully began my circuit of hugs around the room, I was immediately concerned about my inability to wholly communicate my gratitude and respect in the scale that I wanted to, and could only hope that the tears were indication of how touched I felt from their efforts to rescue me from myself once again.

***

“We love your work,” he began, quickly amending, “but unfortunately, we can’t keep you.”

The walk back to a makeshift workstation unintended for me in a new office that would not see me work in it from here on forward in the company’s future was a test of true self control. I felt it in my throat, this need to cough out the words I felt I had to say, my stomach churned at the thought of ‘what happens next’ and my footsteps felt heavy and glued to the carpeted earth below. I sat back down for a few moments, carefully inspecting my new, yet smaller and less epic laptop computer that sat in replacement of that which had been taken in the burglary, and ran my finger across the obsidian sheen of the replacement Wacom tablet on which my new dreams would be henceforth woven and thought to myself, ‘I can’t do this’ knowing the people around me didn't want me there, feeling their glares of sympathy and unacknowledged by their needs to remain unaffected by what we all knew: I was being let go. I whispered to my boss and quickly informed him through choked words and bloodshot eyes that I was going to do the remainder of the work from home that day and forced an awkward, exhausted smile. And I made my quick exit.

My first step out into loud screaming world of downtown San Francisco was deafening. Suddenly my focus was everywhere and nowhere at once and in the moment forgot which direction I was to take my next step. Strangers knew something was wrong with me, and sat uncomfortably on the Muni in my presence as I stared blankly through them, up at the ceiling, outside into the seemingly inappropriately sunny world from the train-car I found myself in. I didn't know what to feel or how to feel, and so decided to feel nothing in the moment, an at once brilliantly wonderful and cursedly horrid reaction to bad things, an unintended result in the aftermath of the burglary the month before.

My eyes befell a man on the other side of the train car, shamelessly unaware of passengers to his side but for good reason as he was completely consumed by the activity he was engaged in. His fingers gripped the pencil tightly armed with the conviction of a man with a mission and fervor for what he was trying to communicate. The lead glided across the paper with purpose, transferring his unabashed imagination to the pad upon his lap, his eyes fixed militantly to the image that he was creating. Unfettered by a trained artistic eye clearly evident in his seemingly juvenile quality of line, unburdened by critique he undoubtedly encounters and unhurried by the premise of business from the bustle of the financial district sights we sped quickly past just beyond the glass window, the man transposed pure passion and unbridled angst into the artwork that formed on his paper. I forgot myself and the heaviness of my new backpack, full of the things that used to sit comfortably on my desk. In that moment, I wanted to know what it was like to be like him. I wanted to be him again.

***

Here I stood, the reluctant king of a blue world that would not have me, perched in the cold sterile suite of a lonesome hotel above the rooftops of the financial district, downtown San Francisco. Soothing tones of Brett Dennen’s ‘Desert Sunrise’ resonate in the dark morning air from the cell phone that sat nestled in the ruffled sheets of the bed behind me. A soft haze keeps the vividness of reality and consequence at arm’s length and the sickly-sweet traces of the cabernets of several yesterdays faintly line my lips. Blankets lay in disarray on the corner of the bed as sex and sweat still hung in the air, each a meager attempt at a fleeting happiness to mask the cold of the world beyond the glass I pressed myself to: people chasing faceless dreams, swimming in laughless crowds. And the air inside sits cold, soothing, quiet and resolute.

And I wonder: am I better person than I was when I made these hard choices? Am I more comfortable with myself or where I am now than ever before? Am I more valuable to the world so far away from the comfort of everything I've ever known? I am a product of my own decisions, but I grow tired of living through life struggling and settling for the ‘just ok’s and ‘pretty good’s. I seek to live in peace, waiting for the moment when I won’t feel so violated by the world I am so desperate to feel a part of hoping for the allegorical rain to come and wash it all away, of a healing thunderstorm that may never come.

And I think to myself ultimately at the end of the day, when the dust settles, I will always have my heroes. Those who emerge at the end of all things to remind you why you’re here and why you’re trying so damn hard to be the person you aspire to and to be in a place in this world where you feel you need to be. And that they will always be there to catch you when you fall, a reality I hope never to be in danger of being comfortable with, for maybe I can be my own true hero for once in my life and in my wildest dreams, perhaps someone else’s-

-on this epic adventure... for once not always be in such need

of rescue…

Current Music: The Beautiful Girls, La Mar (The Ocean)

Earth-Shattering Revelation #28: You'll always have your heroes.

The End of the Year-Long Road

I guess just too many clichéd motifs seek to describe the ups and downs of life. Roller-coasters, mirrors, glasses full and empty. Quiet rooms, crowded city streets, solitude and solace. All things you begin to consider when the best conversations you have on a normal basis are those with yourself. Or the worst, I’m not sure.



It’s always a sublime feeling, that little touch of destiny though. A calm before the storm or after the storm [a calm nonetheless] a time when we feel we are doing exactly what we were put on earth to do, despite everything we’ve done and everything that’s happened to us, the sins we’ve committed over the tears we’ve cried in the loneliest of loneness, the accomplishments we’ve labored for and the people who hurt, or were hurt by, us. All these things bring us to this moment.

People come and go, visit, stay, leave. Time stands still, flies right by to leave us in nothing but ourselves. But then there was a phonecall, and a smile. And then suddenly there were people who’s hands I needed to shake. And the subway’s earthy breeze flowing into the city, sky high.

And then a breath of fresh air, final, longing and blissfull.

I got a job. And nothing was in vain.

Current Music: Andy Davis
Earth Shattering Revelation #27: Hardship begets Greatness. Everything in its own place, in its own time...

The Matching China of a Broken Empire

You can’t see the Pacific Ocean out the front bay window today. The thick daily fog pulled into the peninsula racing like molasses to once again stay ahead of the sun. An eerie quiet blankets this uncommonly cold Memorial Day, strangely absent are the aromas of sweet barbecue hanging heavily in the warm summer air. And as pangs of nostalgia threatened to ruin that calm, I peacefully trudged into the cool kitchen to prepare what would be my lunch. Upon opening the cupboard, my eyes fell upon the fleeting mess of colors and styles of the mismatched dishes haphazardly stacked there. And I grimaced. Gone is the excitement of having the same amber cups lined neatly in a row, replaced instead by the varying levels and sizes of glass used by strangers. The shiny mocha of plates chosen as a set separated by the white and weathered brass lining of china that belonged to other houses, other people, other lives. The silverware, half of which lost their luster, overflowed, almost a calculated hint at how many have used them in households before. And despite having fallen into the most fortunate makeshift living situation here, I couldn’t help but long for the control and comfort that living alone had once offered, back when things were stable, back when questions had answers.

And now those same questions rung unanswered once again, bombarding an otherwise undisturbed mind, the unrelenting pains of settling into the new and different slowly dissipating into fond memories of amber yesterdays. And despite this underlying cloud of doubt, I feel that glimpses of bright tomorrows run rampant with the energetic residents of the San Francisco Bay Area. There’s a collective sentiment of hope and optimism here I haven’t honestly felt since graduation day.

Lingering thoughts: Why does it matter what I’m doing or how I’m doing things…why do friends in more fortunate situations feel the liberty to offer criticism of what I’m doing, disguised as unsolicited advice? The fact that I cannot cater to them or do things their way…or even help them the way they want me to. I need help and I need luck. I can’t be there for everyone else right now, because I’m barely even there for me. I have a deep profound respect for those individuals who do not settle for a lesser happiness. And I know people cower for fear of falling, of losing, of sadness. And then there are those who blindly throw themselves into situations expecting their luck to change their cards. I don’t believe in second chances, but rather that life is taken in a sequence of steps. And here I’m thrown into a happy medium, but maybe this time instead of saying “ I know this will be good” I say, “ok, this MIGHT be good,” and that way things end up might not tug at your heart so much. But won’t know until I try.

Cant stop smiling, because something big is coming, and I feel a belonging to ground me. Waiting for the day the plates in the cupboard would match again, and as this momentary bout of materialism wanes, I sit upon the gates to the pacific, finally awash in the glory of the golden mid-afternoon sun.

Current Music: Gabe Bondoc, "Falling for You" Cover

Earth-Shattering Revelation #27: Waiting, wishing, hoping, praying…falling. THAT is the true cost of living.

Destiny Roads

Here’s how it went down. Words can’t express it all. But I needed this journey to live here too. [By the way, that thing that I vowed would never happen to me, happened to me again. I will never be an advocate for not trusting your friends, but I can’t help but feel, those closest to me will inevitably hurt me, sometime down the road. And I don’t think that will ever be okay, but is the way of the world.]

March 29th, 2010, Day 1: The Weight of the World
Hit me today that I will be stepping a few paces out of my comfort zone…and that there’s a chance I will never see some of these people again. But I felt that I was finally done in Houston. Although I hadn’t taken enough pictures of the city or seen enough friends to wave goodbye to or cry enough tears and make enough to do lists, I knew in my heart that I will never take enough pictures or see enough friends or cry enough tears or run out of things to put on that list. So I leave, being done, undone.

I fulfilled a couple of kept promises, unveiled surreal revelations, delayed goodbyes, a rough patch or five, and a surprisingly sublime emotional release as we leave Houston before dinnertime/Houston evening rush hour. Andrea, who hopped onto navigate/drive with me literally at the last minute was a godsend through the desert that lay ahead and the new life at the end of it. We drove through the dry heat of west Texas following the sunset into rolling plains and desert rock. Took a 5-hour energy drink extra strength and found refuge in its placebo. There’s nothing out here but washed out dreams, struggling, vanishing waterways and a gentle rolling of brush-covered hills sweeping across an arid void to the left and right of Interstate 10. Watched The Office into the night and stopped at Fort Stockton, a ramshackle old settlement close to the edge of the Lonestar State. Entering borderlands of Texas, New Mexico, at the edge of the old world.

March 30th 2010, Day2: The Edge of the World
Hit El Paso, a land of clashing and complimentary cultures of three old civilizations mashed together into a corporate, capital economic existence. A short stay here yielded some final Texan memorabilia (A “cowboy hat” of sorts that I always wanted since my first day in Texas and a deck of “Alamo” cards.) We swept through the rough and tumble sweep of New Mexican desert, pockmarked with billboards along dusty terrain, a fake row of storefronts disguising a rest stop and a set of old railroad tracks that stretched what seemed the length of New Mexico’s stake of Interstate 10.

The road curved around a hilly plain and we came across some mesas in the far distance but not until Arizona did we finally find the sweeping majesty promised us by countless calendars, Wikipedia entries and old westerns. Mountains surrounded a dry desert with alien looking brush and a lone road that divided the land. I can’t explain in words how small I felt in such a massive and beautiful, untouched terrain. It was like I was given a reminder of at once how much I don’t matter, and then just how much everything I did could possibly change the world. The California desert was like a descent into a dream. The daylight yielded to narrow mountain passes that told me I was moving into a valley system not unlike Pennsylvania’s, a poetic likeness to a home familiar to me. And as we reached Los Angeles, the brilliant lights and abundant traffic even at ungodly hours told me: don’t live here.

March 31st 2010, Day3: The New World
Sean gave us a fantastic stay in Los Angeles for a night, after a horrible time trying to park the U-haul and tow dolly rig on a narrow backstreet in the LA suburb. My first meal in California was a fantastic beef tip thing from IHOP, and soon after a quick goodbye began our trek through the San Joaquin valley of California, through more mountain passes and a stretch of valley plains before hitting the hills just before San Jose and South Bay.

It began to rain as dusk hit and the grand landscapes quickly gave way to a cornucopia of suburban artifacts like Walgreens, stretches of green grass and palm trees, grid patterns of city streets and finally, route 101 that ushered us into Daly City, California. The rain was pouring as I called the new roommates down to aid me in getting a quick cliffnotes version of parking such a huge vehicular setup on the narrow high hill upon which our house resides, a sweeping overlook of some of the southernmost hills of the San Francisco Peninsula. They came out, met me one by one and proved to me that this move will yield some good, solid friendships. After some trouble moving the vehicle, and getting upstairs to get a lay of the land so to speak, Andrea and I sat down with new people, drank through the night at the local Dubliner (in San Francisco proper) with the help of several shots from a generous foreign bartender, and end up tricked up at a new friend’s house drawing sharpie doodles on a new friend, listening to some live music and passing out on what was my first night in the new City, my home. And I could not have asked for a better welcome.

There’s also this new thing… where I can’t stop smiling, even when I think about the people I won’t see every day anymore. Even though it makes me sad that I won’t. But I look around and see that the dream that drives me is very much alive here…and I can’t help but keep smiling. And I think to myself, finally, I deserve that.

Current Music: Leona Lewis, "Happy"

Earth-Shattering Revelation #26: I live in San Francisco. The End. [But just the beginning]

Exit Wounds

And this is how it all ends for this reluctant and anxious Filipino cowboy. It is a crisp morning air that flows into the room from the rest of the world today, a flow of air that tells me the room is emptier and emptier with each passing moment. A box here, some junk there, and a consistent movement of stuff into Tito Edwin’s garage in Pearland. Each moment gets me excited to go do the “last” this and the “last” that just to prove that my time here was lasting, epic, real…valuable. And not just to me, but to the people I’ve met, have become close with, slept with, eaten meals and drank with. Laughed with.



But plans have been made about that dream thing I set out to reach three years ago and though fragments of it have come here and there in Houston, it will ultimately carry me out of here, because as I’ve faced the reality of it, that dream doesn’t live here. You'd think I’d have stopped making stupid or impulsive decisions like this years into my last big stupid impulsive decision, but I have to believe I can still make a life for myself, doing what I was put on earth to do and being accepted for it....just like the amazing people I surround myself with and admire. Hell, I’ve never been to San Francisco. So I don’t expect those who closely follow my life, if in the realest of realities there were any souls who did, to understand or support what I have set out to do once again, to reach the other side. In fact, I don’t believe anyone does, even when their words say otherwise and that is not what is most important to me. These relationships are what are most important to me. These beautiful lies they fill the air with in my final moments as a Texan is all a result of them needing me to feel comfortable with what results from my impulsiveness or stupidity. And I am ok with that, because I am not interested in proving them wrong, and am only interested in knowing that they are my friends, I love them and I need them.

The best friends are the ones you come across and teach you the substantial profound things about life…how to live in this world…how to laugh yourself silly…how to indulge in caring about something like your work or your loved ones or falling in love…the ones that throw parties for you when you leave because they want to celebrate this relationship they have with you and to remind you that they won’t forget you, knowing you’ll never forget them.
I’m finally done crying I think [even about that]…but maybe one last tear for leaving all of this to go do what I need to do and release them all from the responsibility of telling me everything’s going to be ok.

Thanks for having me, Houston. I really enjoyed life here.

Current Song: Joni Mitchell, “Case of You”

Earth-Shattering Revelation #25: “"There are two mistakes one can make along the road... not going all the way, and not starting."

Older, Farther Away

The sun filtered its rays through the blinds and onto the spread of the sheet before me as they did yesterday and the day before that, unfettered and bright and harsh. I sat up in bed, apprehensive and unnerved struggling to shut my eyes and strangely determined to keep them that way for what I could only describe as a substantial amount of time. Alert and steady, my eyes shot a glance at the cell phone appropriately positioned on the bedside table which read ‘7:30am’ matter-of-factly and intimidating. The steady whir of the fan above served to remind me just how far I am from home, where I would expect the cold fingers of autumn to creep slowly and steadily in through struggling cracks and crevices in old windowsills of my past, instead feeling the scorch of summer pervade what was once the familiar, sweeping rush of seasonal transition through the months of fall.

The echoes of people’s voices still filled the corridors of my mind; the seemingly endless rain of best friends during a lengthy stay in Pennsylvania (a joy that I cannot appreciate and much less describe the appreciation for to them), the laughter of my kid cousins in Toronto during an unexpected trip to visit my aged grandmother, a drunken, stupid fight I started in Port Arthur (to which I’m probably not welcomed back) after an amazing weekend, endless drunk dials from those voices in my past who just refuse to stay there. A lot has been happening that has given me the treasured opportunities to experience what it was once like to be free of worry again and to be with people who not only understood what it was like to completely unravel in life’s challenging fray, but yet, wanted to understand. And some opportunities to destroy all that also. There is this unfair balance between applauding my developing independence from these life factors and wallowing from the loneliness that stems from it. I find myself longing for the old feelings of listening to friends who are just as unsure of tomorrow as I am but ultimately for the feeling of wanting to share in that experience. I am far too far from home and running out of ways and reasons to escape back to it. For the most part here in Houston, everyone revels in the illusion that everything’s figured out in what to do, what’s going to happen to them, when to do things. Who to be with. And the biggest mask I wear serves to show everyone that maybe so do I and that maybe I’m not in trouble…only to find myself withdrawing into the shadows again when it comes time to answer the really tough questions, to bear the mantle of being comfortable with who I really am and to answer for it. I gather that I am finally beginning to realize one of my deepest most profound of concerns is that there are certain people who are really beginning to understand who I am [who I’m supposed to be], who may really begin to know me [really know me]. People are calling me out on flaws I use as reasons not to be around others, and yet there are those who I am sadly losing in the grand scheme perhaps once and for all, slipping through my fingers as similar have done in life and just as easily, frightening me beyond reason, all without the guiding hand of control or intent. There was this little trick many of us used back in our developmental stages of life, when we lacked reason or logic, when we would shut out the world by burying our face in our hands because if we can’t see the world, there’s no way the world can see us. I guess a big part of who I am wants to be that child again.

It’s so hard, trying so hard to be worthy and deserving of something, and I may leave here with nothing but that lesson, learned.

I can’t sleep anymore. It physically hurts to go to bed sometimes. It reminds of me of an episode of this show, where the lead character is imbued with the ability to read people’s minds, but as the power develops, she can’t shut it off. Just the endless banter of voices and thoughts and feelings flooding her mind at every moment all at once. A din. When I turn off the lights, and pull up the covers and close my eyes, the voices just start arguing. How many things I forgot to do. Where I went wrong in the week’s failures. Why I said this to that person and how I can fix the things I did that certain weekend.

I sat awake once. For a long time. And just started crying.

I work through the night to convince myself I am more productive than those who choose to rest and sleep in the quiet city around me, and I attempt to sleep throughout the day to shut out the unheard sounds of voices and typing and street noises beyond these walls. I can’t leave my room. I feel I’ve grown accustomed to the confine of these walls, and if I’m not cocooned inside, then it’s a step back in every aspect because I am not at my desk, searching, waiting, wishing, learning, emailing, paying bills, paying attention to a world that just isn’t paying attention to me, in hopes that maybe for just a second, it will. All of this productive ‘work’ really to disguise that I’m still not comfortable being me. And being here. And that is tough to say. And that’s why I have to leave.

I spend a long time in the shower when I’m not in my bed struggling with sleep problems, staring blankly into the tiles before me, hoping to the heavens that the scalding water will wash away my sins, my worries and my horrible karmic curse. For a time, and in the current present, I have replaced the ample promises of beer with the flow of cheap wine, almost exclusively. All of this was for the achievement of once familiar purities of graduation’s promises; to the simple awards of having left home to gain a newfound sense of self in the open horizons of the unfamiliar world. I look back to the beginnings upon the small triumphs that brought about happiness: my lone weekend trips to Galveston beach armed with a cooler of meat, my “portable” grill and a good book, stopping by the pool hall around the corner to play off the stresses of a retail day, decorating the tree and making the star that fit atop, my visits to the driving range to develop a golf swing that never really developed. Creating elaborate and intentionally fanciful meals [just to say that I did it] on the cold winter nights and setting the table for two [just to say that I did it] when my only company was the television’s banter. I miss the awkward comfort of being alone or doing alone things while not being so very self-aware.

I left home where I felt that comfort and safety and love, chased something that really wasn’t there to begin with, and am going to run away again with the kind of fear and hope you shoot for in the darkest of rooms, waiting and watching for a way out. And my “go” flag is all I’m waiting for. The little white flag in my inbox that will let me know when to shut this chapter and relatively dark time in my life, and to finally open up again to the adventure that may await, and finally give me the permission to feel this kind of loneliness for a good reason: experience. Just thinking again, to pack it all up and do it all over. Just the way I did it before, and yet again, somewhere far, further, farthest away. And it’s all been a dream to be here.

And the biggest fear, in the end of all things, in the midst of present expectations and worries and in the terrifying but important retrospect is that as I have in the past, and to a place very far from home, I’m again chasing just that. A dream.

Current Song: Andy Davis "Please Turn Red"

Earth-Shattering Revelation #24: Sometimes, it really is just time to go and leave it all behind, just like it left you.

Bottom of the Barrel

I am officially broke. I do not know how to pay for the next bill. Something as simple as lunch will take a few minutes to decide on whether its more economical to "skip."

Soon after that, depression.

This might be tough. Might.

Elegy of the Comfort Zone

Two days ago on the second anniversary of my arrival in Houston on the very same day... I lost my job.

I don't really know what to do.

Except for to follow some words one of my best friends uttered as he sat facing the deep blue seemingly limitless stretch of Atlantic glistening beneath the pale full moon tonight on a 1500 mile long conversation with me...

"Chase the dream. Hardship begets greatness."

Therein lies my compass.

In the Morning

There was this promise that was made
[the quiet talking-to-yourself-out-loud kind]
That no more sad words were to be said in this journal
[like absolutely none]
That we'd try not to have to cling to memories to alleviate
the loneliness
and guilt
and longing
and jealousy
and regret

But I found the last sad song to sing
[you know the words to this one]
Its in the [he]art. See I get lost in it
[and sometimes I'm convinced I let myself]

To put pencil to paper and let it glide across
as if guided by an unseen presence
Hours will go by before I force myself
to have to breath and stop [think about]

creating.

I consider myself lucky in doing what i love doing
and do it every day [every day]

Do what I do without worry or wanting
without goal or grief
restraint or relevance

to what is happening
how I'm feeling
or those out there enveloped
in their own lives and experiences

And in the midst of all this created happiness...
the deepest longing
[the thing we all seek but are always to stupid to admit we need]
is just one [ONE just one] person to share it all with

Someone who will care not only in this moment
but the next one too
[and if you're lucky at least maybe the moment after that]

What a beautiful thing it is to know
In the final moments of consciousness
on any given day [night] chock full of
happiness
regret
fear
longing
obligation
restraint
frustration
bliss
peace [and all the other residents
in the spectrum of human emotion
we are all guilty of mouthing off about
but don't have a terribly firm understanding of]

that you'd have that person
whose eyes you can look into and get lost in
before you slip away...

...and that they will be there
right beside you in the morning

to bring it all back again

Liar

I saw a man today walking along the sidewalk path just in front of the car. His clothes were worn and his posture sullen indicating the shear weight burdening him from his backpack slung across his left shoulder. His jacket told stories of the harsh weather of days past, of the empty bottles that slept at his side and in his company during cold rainy nights and the driest of days in the sweltering summer. Beneath which hid what was once seemingly a white shirt, a red circle lazily screened across its chest with bluish green spokes emanating from a central point, an indiscernible insignia. He wore the brim of his hat high along the crown of his forehead, revealing an unyielding determination in his line of sight. And though he walked steadily and solidly, the holes in his olive brown shoes exhibited his tired, unwashed feet beyond the thin fabric and incompletely tied laces strewn about and swinging forward and back with each stride.

And yet he walked. His eyes were so very forward, squinting as if to see that all his work was not in vain, that his destination lay just beyond the next horizon. There were no distractions, just a perseverance to arrive at his destination. Southbound. The sun had started to his left and will inevitably end at his right as he continues on, nothing on earth to him save for what covered him at the moment, the handful of belongings in his sack and the stories playing constantly in his head, as vivid as his spirit would permit. He had no friends to keep tabs on. No one in sight to care about, to be hurt by, to abandon. And with no one to abandon him but the setting sun. But he kept on without apprehension, reserve or hesitation. He knows a very different kind of peace.

And in the moment, I wanted to be him.

***

I don't have many hopes. I have fewer wishes. I don't have a dream.

I harbor no jealousies and entertain no false assumptions. I am a good person. I am a worthy friend. I am sinless. I find loss to be a source of strength, not weakness. I don't remember every little thing. I forgive easily and feel that this is a just existence. I am comfortable in my own skin and am easy in the company of others. I do no judge those around me. I do not filter my thoughts, and I keep my emotions hidden beyond the sight of those closest to me. I am always on time and can be depended on for anything. I do not fear failure. Home is just another place to me. I know all the answers to my deepest questions and light shines on every corner of my mind. And above all…in the surreal aftermath of reaching my quarter century, I can attempt to say that I know exactly what I am doing, where I am going and who I am. But that is the biggest lie of all.

I’m still that nerdy, insecure, fat kid seeking desperately for his rightful place in the big picture.

But I am waiting patiently for the last sad song to sing.