Cursed

     No one knew when he stopped loving the old white-haired woman, but everyone knew she deserved better.  All she ever wanted was to be loved and to tirelessly serve those who loved her and those she loved.  He, however, with determination and condescension, isolated her from her past and present and devalued her worth.  He alienated and damaged her relationships and offered nothing in return but empty psalms and irrelevant proverbs. He never offered any apology because he was never sorry and used wicked truth as his justification. His children fled and left her at his mercy, which was worse than damnation.

     She cried at night in her sleep because he was there and she cried in the day because he was gone. Thin phone calls to small neighbors and shallow children gave her exaggerated hope and let her deny the destruction of the fairy-tale of her life. Sometimes she prayed frail petitions to God, asking for explanations and comfort. She would pretend that He heard her and she would sing her hymns by rote and mumble the empty promises, refusing to see that her God was going to let her rot, letting her feel the slow dismantling of her nerves, her thoughts, her dreams, her faith, her hope. Jesus loves me, this I know.


     She clung to her mantra that she still loved the old man who did not love her.  But in the grey mornings when he lectured her from The Book and in the greyer evenings when he ignored her in his dozy readings, she knew that she did not. Those flitting acknowledgements terrified her as she stuffed them away. She knew that if she cracked that door open, the sunlight of honesty would flood in and she would disappear.

     She never believed that this would be her life.  She wanted him to save her, but he fancied himself in love with another. Another he wanted at the old woman's expense.  He would not even extend her the courtesy of deceit.  The weight pushed through her shoulders like a horse-collar. Like a whore-caller. The old woman became just another rag that he dragged around behind him, scraped and wounded, but too afraid and too sad and too predisposed to let go.  She had the despairing resolve and tenacity of the Dust Bowl share-cropper in her spirit, but it was not enough to pull her out of her sorrow and loneliness.  It was only sufficient to keep her from surrendering when she was given opportunities in alien blue hospital rooms.

     And he will not let up, even in face of the decades she gave him. Soon she will stop going out. She will just lie there in bed. Her face will start to set. Her hands will start to fold.  And one day the dry fig of her heart will stop its beating.

Thanks to the imagery of The Curse by Josh Ritter (Check out my audio clip to see his video).

Tomorrow

She appeared to not notice me. She appeared to not notice anything.  Her beauty enfolded me, but only as long as I could see her.  When I looked away or closed my eyes, she ceased to exist and I was not able to picture her.  Even after spending thirteen exhausting and desperate days and nights with her, I could not keep her in my memory if she moved from my line of sight. Maybe it was because I did not know her name. Or maybe because I did not want to know her name.  Either way she was transient and evasive.

She was pale and thin in the gray, dusty light of evening… an unsubstantial vapor leaning on the crumbling stucco wall, smoking another one of those harsh locally-rolled cigarettes with decided disinterest.  I stayed slumped on the frayed striped futon, trying to remember words and sentences through the lingering fog of the afternoon’s repeated hits of her pungent hashish from Kandahar and mainlining black tar I had picked up from the sordid alleys in the same city. It was how and where we had first met. We had spoken little, revealed less, and and without any planning or sense of direction had made our way to the forgotten northern reaches of Mali. Now without any preface, through her nearly inaudible exhalation, her voice reached out languidly across the hot dusty room.

"You know no one cares or even knows how much time and energy you are wasting trying to appear normal, don't you?"

Her gauzy hooded robe only accentuated her frail nakedness beneath. I tried to burn her image into my head, but her words pushed it away, forcing me to find a thread of coherency.  Lightly irritated that she was deflecting my desire for her with philosophical boredom, I pushed my bare feet along the wooden floor to sit up a little.

“That’s not exactly how Camus put it. You are making him sound stupid and melodramatic. He was not.  He was resigned and disgusted by the absurdity of everything.”

The cigarette dangled lightly from her tinted sienna lips and she took a leisurely drag with only the slightest curl of her mouth and again spoke through the smoke.

“I’m just saying you didn’t trek all the way to Kandahar to score a few bundles of smack.  You could’ve done that ten minutes from wherever it is you said you were from.  You obviously want someone to notice you or miss you, or feel sorry for you. Its not working... no one gives a shit so you hook up with me hoping I can fix you.”

I stood and reached for the indigo linen shirt on the back of the cane chair and slipped it on with out buttoning it.  The effort and the airless heat made me sweat unnaturally. My eyes burned into my head and I wanted to vomit. I felt thin and dry in spite of the sweat and I was suddenly aware of my dirt-baked thirst. 

She guessed what I wanted and nodded at the clay jar on the table.  “Tea.”

I took it and drank two or three swallows. “Piss”, I corrected her.

I slumped back onto the futon and pulled a cigarette from my shirt pocket.  She stayed leaning on the wall, again appearing not to notice me.  The dark shadows of the oppressive Essakane night began to shroud her and the whiteness of her pale skin glowed milky gray. She spoke again, flatly and ambivalently.  "You won't ever be happy trying to find happiness and you won't live...really live...if you keep running all over looking for meaning to your life."

“What’s with all the Camus?” I felt edges of irritation drifting around the back of my neck, but I was feeling too ill and too untethered in the stifling heat to gather enough tendrils of emotion to actually feel angry.  “I need to go outside. It’s too fucking hot in here.”

I stood again, unstable and tentative.  I shuffled past her to the door. Waves of nausea pressed me into the frame.  The unnatural sweat began showing through my shirt. “The only thing Camus ever said that ever made any sense to me was when he said that suicide is the only question worth thinking about.” My voice sounded brittle and far away in my ears. My eyes closed, causing me to lean more heavily on the door frame. “Deciding whether or not to off myself right here and right now might be fun, but I can't. Just need my shit so I can stop feeling so sick.”

She slid up to me, resting her hands on my chest. Her hands were cool and dry. “No”, she whispered.  “No more today. You are feeling sick.  Don't be mad at me. We can go out where it is cool and smoke this and forget Camus. You will feel better.”

She kissed me on my mouth and lead me down the clay stairs and into the cooling desert sand.  We sat and smoked like she said, my head in her lap. I stared at the desert sky and saw the crescent moon and saw the rivers of stars and saw the melting meteors and saw the infinite darkness. But I saw no tomorrow.

Bedtime Story

The man sat perfectly straight and still with his hands folded neatly in his lap.  It was not a natural pose, nor was it especially comfortable, but his gaze was serene and unfocused, and he did not appear to have any desire to change his position.  It was almost as if he were waiting for some yet undefined event to unfold before him and envelop him.

            His eyes were tired and dull.  His hands were aged but not worn. His clothes, faded, broken blue jeans and a stained long-sleeve t-shirt were out of place and reminded him that he did not belong here and that he had travelled a great distance and with great care to be precisely here.  The tiredness in his eyes was seeping into the rest of his body causing his shoulders to slightly slump forward.

            He slowly unclasped his hands and pushed his headphones deeper into his ears and turned the volume up a little more.  Then, reaching into his jeans pocket he pulled out his cell phone to check the time. It was nothing more than act of habit. There was no signal out here and he was so many time zones away from the place that used to be home that the time was inconsequential.  He merely noted that nearly twenty minutes had elapsed since he had last checked and he was mildly interested that it had in fact seemed like hours.

            He stared at the alien lighting of the phone for another few seconds then pushed it back into his pocket.  The movement caused cool sand to trickle into his shoes and down the back of his jeans.  His mind lazily rested on the sensation and he vaguely considered how this sand differed from the sands he had experienced on nearly-forgotten beaches.  This desert sand was wind-worn, not water-worn, and it carried a life-draining dryness that was subtle and dangerous.

            The tishoumaren rhythms circled into his ears and around his head so that the voices seemed to be coming from above him. He looked up and fixed upon the large African moon sweeping to the west of where he sat and he felt the icy sensation of the impossibly bright clusters of desert stars wheeling and blurring beyond his periphery.  He felt light and disconnected and momentarily felt that it was the earth, his patch of sand that was spinning and swirling under the fixed glow of the moon.

            He was utterly alone and infinitely small and he hated and dreaded the sensations. He only managed it because of the drugs and chemicals flooding his brain and bloodstream.  If he was going to have to be alone, at least he could distort it and warp it into a floating surreal fog that would let him re-create his reality into something warm and heroic.

            He reached up and ran his hands through his hair…dirty and sweaty…pushing it off his forehead and behind his ears, careful not to dislodge his headphones. More sand ran into his shoes and jeans so they now felt heavy and dense and he drifted along the feelings of immobility, sensing the fear and the comfort and the sinking tiredness. Habitually, he reach for his phone again, his movements slow and exaggerated and sensitive.  His knuckles rasping on the stitched denim of his pocket, the adjusting of his position putting him a little deeper in the sand…little things that somehow seemed significant to him.  He did not notice the time, but instead scrolled to his text messages and re-read the only remaining entry, sent from his youngest brother a few minutes ago or last week… or longer. He couldn’t remember and didn’t care to.

            “Mom thinks you’re suicidal…I said you liked pussy too much.”

            Should always listen to your mother. The thought struck the man funny and he smiled tightly and imperceptibly into the lunar-lit desert.  With an effort he reached into the ragged backpack beside him and dully re-examined its contents, assuring himself that he had gotten rid of anything that could possibly identify him.  He had dropped his keys into an open latrine in the dirty ghetto just outside of Bamako.  He had burned all the contents of his wallet in the burning barrel two nights ago listening to itinerant guitar and njarka players near Timbuktu.  He had torn off all the labels from his prescription bottles on the jeep ride to the fringes of this section of the desert.

            An impossibly large desert.  And impossibly anonymous.  This desert showed you precisely how small and insignificant you were and it did not care whether you stayed or not.  You were nothing to this desert.  The man was comforted by its empty indifference.  He shook the contents of one of the bottles into his hand and washed the pills down with a long pull from the dirty plastic bottle in his pack. It was not water and he grimaced with weary satisfaction.  He leaned back into the sand and tried to look at the sky, but it was circling too quickly for him to focus and he was so tired. He wanted to sleep.

            Not yet.  Not just yet.  Soon.  He knew that he was probably good enough for sleep, but he was careful and sadness was starting to worm its way in and he was afraid of its distraction.  The wind picked up and far off the man could see and smell the rising wall of dust and sand piling high into the air.  In the moonlight it was only perceptible as a slightly grayer ruffle spread on the western horizon.  Soon it would turn the moon itself into a muted dark orange blob and then it would be on top of him.  But not yet.  He still had the time he needed.  The time he wanted.

            He sat for a while longer, deliberately thinking of nothing, until the rising breezes carried lightly stinging flecks of sand.  With a great exertion of will, the man sat up enough to open his pack and get the orange bottle of pills and the dirty plastic bottle. He swallowed most of them and waited. The music above his head spilled over him and into him, pressing him back into the sand. After a while…short or long, he did not know… weariness and weakness began to overpower him, so with the last draining sips of warm bitter vodka, he swallowed his 198^th, 199^th and 200^th vicodin and lay down at last to sleep.  Good night moon… 

Anonymous God

            I’m not sure who he is anymore.  Someone just described him as my father resting in his armchair in the light of a late night lamp glow, waiting for me to stumble home from the night’s blurry party and giving me a place to call home. I hope he is like that.  It makes him feel a little more personable than the distant being I see him as now… occasionally passing a disinterested eye over my life, but too remote and disconnected to even flip me an apathetic shrug.  I don’t question his goodness or his greatness.  I’m just skeptical of his infiniteness actually mustering any concern over my day to day pettiness.  If he has the skill set to be the architect of eternity, I’m pretty sure he’s not going to get agitated over my irregular church attendance or the lack of Jesus tunes in my music libraries.

            However he turns out to be, I’m certain I will never find an accurate picture of him in a church or any other “fellowship of believers”.  I read about him in his book.  But he spends more time telling me what he is not than what he is.  He says he is love, but he seems capable of kicking some serious ass when someone pisses him off.  I don’t doubt that he is love.  I’m just not sure what he means by it, and it makes me a little uneasy.  I can’t figure out how to respond to that or what he expects me to do, if anything.

            I recently admitted that I have not been able to overcome the ennui of my own spiritual disorganization.  I know I need to do something about it, but it’s much easier to simply accept the reality of God and not have to expend the energy to maintain a close relationship with him.  I read about Jesus and he strikes me as a guy that would be really hard to be friends with.  His constant uncanny insight and disturbing questions would make me edgy and itchy.  Probably how Iscariot was feeling right before his colossal fuck-up.

            Anyway, I believe in God and Jesus and the Spirit and the Word, but I’m not sure I’m ready to take high-fives from the Buddy Christ of modern Christianity.  And I don’t think I’m going to the lake of fire for seeing him as a bit aloof and bored with humanity.  I like him that way, because I’m not going to delude myself into thinking that if I can just muster up a “come-to-Jesus” epiphany that I will rise on the wings of eagles and my life will be magically happy, holy and healed.  If I understand that “Jesus don’t want me for a sunbeam, ‘cause sunbeams are not made like me”, then I stand a better chance of making the real life decisions that might get me to where I need to be with myself and my anonymous God…

           

Pipe Dream

I need an idea to love. I need a character I can relate to.  I need a story to motivate me.  It does not even have to be a new story; I’ll settle for a tired re-hash and flatter myself that I can repackage it, disguise it, make it feel fresh.  My muse is fucking with me. But that’s not entirely true.   My non-existent muse is just fucking me. Hard.  I need an open Cuban bar with cigars and mojitos and the Buena Vista Social Club. I need to pretend that I am quietly observant and tangibly sophisticated.  I want to be sitting at the bar outdoors on an evening of tropical heat with light breezes and subtle trickles of sweat.  I want to be tanned and tired from the sun and the water.  I want to be intoxicated enough to feel happy and charming, but not loud or laughing… just smiling and conversational and filled with good ideas for the next several chapters of my book.

            I want to know the bartender and feel, rather than see, my lover sleepily dancing behind me, lost in her own world that is entirely enveloped by my world so she sees no one but me.  I want her to dance all night while we drink well and steady with me sitting and talking casually to strangers until we are tired enough to sleep after holding hands and kissing. I want to sleep on clean white linen sheets and a light blanket to ward off the delicious chill from the slow fan pushing the night breezes off the gulf.  I want to be slightly awakened by moonlight and see its path spreading over the water before slipping back into sleep.

            I want to wake up with the sun on my face through flimsy curtains and shower quickly and get to my table to write while it is still cool before the heat makes me distracted and thirsty for cold beer.  I want to write while the girl still sleeps on the linen sheets. I want to write in a clean, simple room with tall ceilings and paned windows.  I want to be lost in my work, writing good true paragraphs and not seeing that she has awakened quietly and is just watching me and not saying anything to disturb me because she sees that I am writing so well and quickly.

            I want to finish one more sentence before seeing her rise for her bath knowing that I can write for one more hour if I choose and know that it will still be early in the day and that when she is finished bathing, I will be finished writing and we can have breakfast together and eat slowly to enjoy the food and the time together.  I think I could write a book like that.