Every morning I wake up, grab the paper from the porch, and head into the kitchen to see how many ants have moved in over night. I kill hundreds each day it seems. I remember how thrilling it once was to drop an ant into one of the many spider webs in the big, bulbous shrub in Grandma’s back yard. My heart would always stop when the spider darted out to make the kill. I was always amazed at how the spiders seemed to figure out the game after an ant or two, and would become hesitant to trust the “hand of man.” I always had respect for spiders. Respect born of fear and awe. Ants are cool in their own way, but only as a collective, each individual ant merely a cell in the great ant body. I kill these little fuckers every morning without a hint of remorse. My father called tonight and offered to buy me a plane ticket to make my trip next week a little easier. He insisted and I relented, but with genuine appreciation. I’m as broke as I’ve ever been, with no prospects on the horizon. I must not let my brother hold me down this time home. This pattern that leads me in stupid circles first established itself during those utterly forgotten days of childhood. Forgotten in terms of specific memories of events, but all too alive in the very way I approach the world day in and day out. Somehow, some way, even the ant killings are wrapped up in this forgotten pattern that keeps driving me out to the middle of nowhere like a man gunned down on his horse, not alive enough to do a damned thing about it.
Archive for June, 2004
About an hour and a half ago the phone rang and it was someone from the hospital asking if I’d come in to work the night shift. Of course I said no, but nonetheless I was filled with dread for a while afterwards. When things are shitty I always think to myself, “So, it’s all come to this”, as if to remind myself that every decision I’ve ever made has been only good enough to land me here, alone in some godforsaken state cringing over every godforsaken thought that passes through my addled head. Of course I know I’ve been through this kind of funk many times and rebounded eventually, but in the meantime I can do little more than stretch my breath into a sigh. My attention span has been reconfigured by excessive cathode radiation, each thought beyond a sentence or two is quickly muffled by a desire to reach for the remote one more time. So much for setting the world on fire. It’s so discouraging to realize beyond any doubt that I’m failing in all the ways I ever feared to fail. Aside from my girl–and that’s a big aside–I haven’t got a thing going for me right now. This is such bullshit. I am writing the way I’m living. Skating along on the surface, making just enough contact to give the appearance of a human being. I’m just struggling to get anywhere, nowhere… ah fuck. I wonder who the musical guest on Leno is tonight…
Do you remember a time that smelled like sand and lake water, when the sight of a young girl in a bathing suit made everyone of your nerve endings swell and pulse with a feverish intensity. Did you ever get the chance to feel her cool, goosebumped skin just after she toweled off from a swim? Maybe you remember later, when you were a teenager, hanging out at your friend’s pool, that time she showed up, the one you wanted more than anything you ever wanted in the whole world. Remember how you felt when you first noticed the way she looked at your best friend, that lusty gaze that just wrung you out on the inside. But you kept laughing anyway, kept horsing around with her in the pool even though you felt like drowning. There’s something about the smell of summertime and water that brings a strange sense of longing to the surface, not a hollow pang like regret, but a swollen ache that feels like it could burst right through your skin.
That’s how I felt just a moment ago, as I walked past a bunch of kids giggling and splashing around the pool next door. Now, just a few minutes later, it’s raining cats and dogs and the severe weather warning sirens are going off at the park. I ran out to close the screen window in the van, but it started coming down too hard. Back to me and all my strange tendencies and crazy, spinning thoughts and downright failures. I just don’t seem to want to dive in these days, yet I’m sick of standing here at the edge looking down.