Seems the chickens are finally coming home to roost. The long-dark night of the soul is finally at it's darkest and the cold soul-searing breath of death seems almost imminent.
"This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do. So what if a bunch of men talk in loud voices and drink the night? " OTR, Part 1, Chapter 10, page 68.
Supposed to do? What are we supposed to do? I am alive in exile, alone in the crowd of the late afternoon laundromat. My clothes are in the final spin, the final spin.
Walking alone is sometimes what I've perferred, but not any more. As comfortable as I am with myself, I yearn for the presence of the other, the one I've forsaken. She's the one I've loved, and yet have forsaken. Thinking backwards, I craved freedom. I searched for the moment of release and the chance to be liberated from this soul-less situation I've made for myself.
But now here I am on the brink of release, about to be set free after my 22 year sentence, and what do I want?
I want to make peace. I want to revel in the past but dance hysterically into the future with the woman I love with all my might. What has changed? Not a lot, but everything at the same time. I want to live and eventually die in the arms of that woman I really do love.
My best intentions are what have gotten me here, those notions of doing what I think I'm supposed to do. Hell, my best intentions are the ones that continually get me in trouble. Frankly, I'm tired of being in charge. I've done and seen all those things (well, most of them) that we want our children to never even consider. I've been obnoxious. I've been unconscious. I've been so weird it would have killed a norrmal man. I've been all kinds of things that are hard to spell.
Right now, baby, I'm done. The old hymn isn't "I surrender 10%". No, sweetie, I surrender all.
My friend, the Presbyterian monk/pig, wanders with his rucksack into the fiction and fables of a life loved and remembered, and here I sit waiting for the dryer to scream at me to take my bloody clothes out and fold them. A quiet life is good but a sad life ain't nothing but sad.
2 comments:
Hard and lonely, middle of the night words seems rapped into your typewriter in the neon lit hotel room of endured endings. What are words against the November wind of grief rattling the window? Just leaves. Just old brown leaves from the summer that was once.
Savor the mountains, Leo. They nurtured Moses and Jesus and all the prophets.
And thank G-d for friends who provide you with a roof in the mountains.
School's back in session.
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