Keep your sun-drenched days and well-oiled bodies.
When the wind rips limbs off trees.
Pushes cars across the highway.
Topples small buildings.
When the air is soft. warm. heavy. moist.
When wind can kill.
My body becomes slick, ripe, and tender.
My every breath charged with electricity.
When every breath holds bits of lightening and promises of chaos.
When the sky darkens. the clouds hang low. heavy. full,
with potential destruction.
and the possibility…
of
annihilation.
I wait,
breathless,
for the howl,
the scream,
the cry.
The hoursminutesmoments before the storm.
Meteorological foreplay.
Keep your sun-drenched days.
Screw your rainbows.
Fuck your flowery words. your soft music. your tender touch.
I wait for the storm.
Note: Please check out Nick Brandt’s photos. They are some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.
There are certain bands, certain music that is meant to be listened to in a car, windows open, flying down the road.
I’m starting to come out of a depression that has lasted months. Driving is one of the things I do to fix things. When I don’t know what to do, when I don’t know how I feel or how to name the thing I’m feeling, I run.
I’m a runner from way back. There was never an actual event I could pinpoint and say “I’m running away because…” Mostly I was running in search of. In search of some way to handle feeling…anything. It’s what I do when I don’t know what to do. It’s what I did when I didn’t know what to do.
The first time I ran away from home I was 5 and didn’t make it past the kitchen. I was lured back by the promise of stuffed cabbage.
When I was 7 I made it to the corner, where I stood flummoxed. I had no plan that addressed going off the block.
By 9 I made it to Dunkin Donuts, a mile away, across a four lane highway
At 11 I’d traded room & board for a job on a ranch 100 miles upstate. I got caught 30 miles away on the ticket line at Grand Central Station.
When I was 15, I found a partner in crime. We’d made it 100 miles on our way to California before we got caught at Fort Dix, NJ and dragged home.
Shortly after that, just as people stopped coming after me when I ran away, I learned to drive. To drive fast. To drive fast, to drive all night, to crank the music, so loud it would blast the voices out of my head, take me to Empty, or Fill me Up — whatever was needed at the moment.
The drugs and the drink worked too.
Until they didn’t.
That instinct has never gone away; the urge to run, flee, get free, get far away from anything familiar or anyone who could possibly know me or love me, keep moving, you can’t hit a moving target. I’ve just learned to channel it a little better, recognize it when it calls.
Today I drive. I drive and listen to god. Or I drive and write, scribbling notes in a pad with my right hand while my left hand steers. And still, sometimes, I drive. fast. with the music cranked up, so loud it blasts the voices out of my head, taking me to Empty or Filling me Up. Whichever I need at the moment.
I’m listening to Eddie Money and rocketed back to an awkward adolescence on Long Island, desperate for a way out. I hear his saxophones and then it’s Eddie and Cruisers and there is a way out, I can still fade into the Dark Side if I drive fast enough, if the music is loud enough.
Thanks to the “economic downturn” I now only work 4 days a week, and consequently, I make less money. Even before the New Job Math, a few people had left, a few had been let go and like everywhere else, job duties are being absorbed willy-nilly and everyone is expected to do anything to keep the company afloat. The corporate party line on the 4 day work week is a quid pro quo. Less Work = Less Money.
The reality, however, is that a “career” is essentially about fitting an infinite amount of work into a finite amount of days, and now my particular finite is infinitesimally smaller, aka More Work/Fewer Hours = Less Money. Sometimes, like, today, it’s stressful. I get a little snippy, I frown at people, I close my door and try to remember that everyone that’s annoying me has had their days & salaries cut as well. They also do not have enough time in the day to fix what’s wrong with the economy.
I was pretty thrilled when I heard we were cutting down to 4 days. I made a list on an orange 1×3″ post-it of what I’d do with my free time & I stuck it on the front page of my date book (Yes, an actual old-school date book. I’m a compulsive list maker and more than a little obsessed with post-its & office supplies.) This was a short simple list. It says: take more pictures. read. refinish furniture. write. That’s it. The point is when it was announced we were cutting our hours & our salaries, what I heard was “more free time/less money”. Read the rest of this entry »
Y sin vicios.Ninguno? Ni siquiera una? That’s a tough one.
translation: “Room in apartment for super clean responsible person that works. Good hygiene habits, and no vices. Now available.” from the series, “For Rent”
