Twin Shadows, One Body

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I just finished reading the New York Times magazine article and my God, does this dope fiend, drug addicted post addict sound like me. My life has taken a strange trajectory over the years, from a long arch upwards, reaching the starry heights, its apogee and then sailing down, falling like a meteor into the atmosphere.

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I didn't marry the Brown World, it somehow attached to me. I didn't know that I was putting everything on the line when I began my long and arduous journey through the forest of alcoholism, I just did it. I just went ahead and fell in love with a brutal lover. This coke smoking, heroin shooting addict did the same, but he brings out some interesting similarities in his conclusion.

"Even with the trope of reporting, my addiction narrative arrives at some very common lessons. To much of a bad thing is bad. If you don't sleep and eat but drink and drug instead, you will lose jobs, spouses and dignity.... Once I stopped doing narcotics and alcohol, I landed good jobs, remarried, had a baby, and of course, learned to love myself."

That's a lot to lose and an unclear path to lose it in.

"Junkies and drunks frequently end up putting a megaphone to their own pratfalls in the form of memoir because they need to believe that all of the time they spent with their lips wrapped around glass, whether it was a bottle of vodka or a crack pipe, actually meant something. That impulse suggests that I don't regret the past - it brought me here to this nice, happy place - but I'd also like to squeeze something more from it. And so I have."

Form of memoir, huh? My past has brought me here to this happy place also. But the forest is in fact thinning for me. I can feel it. I no longer drink every single day. I no longer carry bottles of hooch wherever I go. I no longer need to be drunk twenty four seven. My brain longs for a break from the Brown World. I love going in after a long absence, but I don't need to stay in it.

I've paid the price of admission, and have been through the roller coaster ride. Now it's over and it's time for me to move on. I'm not perfect after this, and my life will not be the same, just different. Possibly different and alien to most, but who said that we have to live the same exact lives to be normal? I know I should want what everyone else wants of me, but what if I don't? What if I want in total, that which I desire? Does that make me bad? Different? Wrong?

I'll never say goodbye completely to the Brown World. But I'll not live in it any longer either. As I told a close friend, this is my time for redemption. I've already been through the long and painful period of atonement. I feel sorry about my past now. I feel sorry about those that I caused pain to. I feel sorry for being the misbegotten bastard that I was. I'm sorry. But there comes a point where sorry just doesn't cut it. It does not heal the wounds that you've inflicted on others. And be that as it may, then that's all I can give. What doesn't work now can't be made to work. All I can do for them now is move on.

And I've done that. I've forged new friendships, new love interests, new desires and goals. I've come through the fires of my own making, the fierce hurt that homelessness is, that privation is, that penniless is. I've done all that. And honestly, I am made better, more humble for the experience. I don't have scars, I have welts, which will heal in time and what will be left will be the new metal out of the furnace. The dross skimmed off leaving the pure metal, the pure soul, which will be left to cool and harden.

The hot steam is still rising off my form and I am ready. The course now is that of buying back that which was lost, but I play no fool to life. These things don't come along overnight. There will not be some sudden change, but rather a slow metamorphosis. An achingly slow period where I will feel and follow different courses and avenues.

Honestly, I am a changed man from the one before. My new friends in my new world can't tell, some of my old friends of the past probably won't even speak to me. Only a few can point to things that are radically different in me, maybe they can't even. Maybe all of this change is internal, leaving no massive outward change, such as wings spouting from my back, or a tortoise shell covering over me. Maybe all of my changes are indeed inside. Lord knows I don't have the outward wife/home/job/things that I once had. Maybe its so internal, like my organs have moving considerably. My brain moving to my ass. My liver into my skull, my heart down to my groin. That would be radical and yet not noticeable by anyone other than me. What about that?

Change is constant.

We are all growing and evolving as time brings us all to an eventual end. That's the finish of all of this experiment isn't it. We are just a kiddie chemistry set, with father time being the one causing tiny chemical reaction after chemical reaction until all of the resources are used up. Then we are wrapped up and put away, forever untouched in an attic somewhere, finished. Burried.

Ooops. I'm getting morbid again. I guess in the face of a death I'm taking stock in my life.

I just want to live this one the best that I can.

I think I am.

Hobobob

The Wastrel's Dice

Vacation.

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I wake up and go about my business getting ready for the morning. This is the last workday before the Labor Day Weekend. Three days of hearty weekend warriors preparing to go out and party the end of Summer away. The libraries will be closed for those three days, and so will my job. Everyone and everything will be on vacation come tomorrow.

What does 'vacation' mean to a person where every day could be considered a vacation? Not much. The days pass away like an oil slick across rocks. It could be worse: I could have no conception of the passing of time. Having already SCHNAPPED. Sitting and lying around like Yoda.

I've never told you about yoda. An obvious Skel that wears layer upon layer of filthy, black clothing, frayed slacks, torn pockets off his coat. He is a walking cold mess. He lies on the concrete sidewalk in front of an expensive furniture store, using it as a headrest on a bed. There is a rawness about him, a contained fury that is hidden beneath the grime on his face. He never speaks, never approaches anyone for money. He holds no cup, neither is one nearby. But he has money. People stick twenties in his pockets and under his hands as he sleeps. Some bring Happy Meals for the nearby McDonalds or a cup of coffee in the morning. He is out here no matter the weather. Rain, snow, sleet, he is impervious to the elements. We call him Yoda because of his skill in survival, of making it look effortless. He has no equal in New York. He is indeed the Jedi Master.

But I wonder, what is Yoda, the Jedi Master's view of vacation? Is the word completely meaningless to him? Is he even aware of the passage of time? I've been out in the streets for two years now, and I know there are many of you that are quick to say that because I'm a Shelt, or Shelter dweller, that I'm now no longer on the streets. I say, I'm still homeless. The only difference between a streeter and a shelt is that I'm no longer exposed to the elements. And that I have a bed somewhere. Two big pluses for survival, if you ask me.

Well, going back to where I was, I've been out in the streets for two years, and time seems to slip past me. Am I learning from one of the best of them? Am I learning Yoda's lesson? If it wasn't for my Job on Mondays, I would forget what day of the week it was. Sometimes I do even still, catching on at the last moment as to what I should be doing and where. Even when it comes to the SHOUT OUT. Sometimes I go through the motions as if Saturday is a weekday, and find that I have to head out to the SHOUT OUT before I fuck up.

I spent the day as if I was on vacation. I didn't do any of my work. I slacked off on IM all day.

Then I found out that a close poet family that I know lost a husband/father.

Very sad. Death is like that. It's very sad. Mourning is the worse, and I know the incredible pain that they are going though. Although I have not lost parents, I have lost close friends and relatives. Death does not pass by easy. Someone, somewhere is feeling pain. And close friends of mine are now doing just that. I feel deeply for them, and if I was a god fearing man, I would pray for them. They will be making arrangements soon, and I will prepare to go to the funeral. This too will be painful.

Suddenly all of my issues seem small and paltry. I seem small and paltry. Life is so precious that it makes no sense how the things in it can take such precedence. Little things can be blown so far out of proportion that they seem insurmountable. Here I am, bitching about not having a home, not having a meaningful life. So how would all of this really go over if I didn't have a life? OR if someone that I loved expired?

My post seems all but stupid now doesn't it?
As stupid as my day.
As stupid as the Labor Day Weekend being a vacation for me.

All so stupid.

Hobobob