a wolfs towel
i see my headless trunk,
cold and weary,
an ill expanse of years
without play,
through the hot brume of an
aging mirror.
rusty tissue and sinew droop
over rigid organs
that frame my damp form.
but I hold
a wolfs towel.
forgotten.
hardwearing stones
tear the fear from my hide
peeling away my hesitation,
divulging
a fetching fellow.
i, anima.
an accident in appropriation.
a restless binary
reared by lightning rods.
a basement boy in august.
an uneasy parade of
antediluvian distresses
wearing a veil, not a mask.
keepdancing, he says
no one says i love you to baristas
the bar tender gets the cheers
of drunks
of degenerates
of people running from their past
the waiter gets the tips
for knowing the wine list
for peppering your salad
for keeping your water full
but no one
no one says i love you to baristas
the barista deals with addicts all day
from every walk of life
men in suits, moms with strollers
boys in tight pants, and girls with books
the barista keeps the oil flowing
caffeine to keep the spirit going
yet no one
no one says i love you to baristas
baristas are colorful people
from every walk of life
yet no one knows our names
but we know your drink
and make it to perfection
but when you see us on the streets
you turn your head away
ashamed
because you want to say i love you
to a stranger who makes
ne plus ultra dans une tasse
but then you'd be admitting you love us
more than you love your job
more than you love your children
more than you love your bike
more than you love your stories
so you tip a piece of silver
a contrite way of saying
i love you
"Untitled" a fictional story.
"I don't need a bag" but he robotically places the brown paper bag inside the black plastic. My request echoes in my head as I stare at my late night purchase. I'm not sure if it is the language barrier, the heat, or the hour that stopped the balding man from even acknowledging my presence. Most likely a combination of the three. Something about the emptiness behind his eyes didn't match with the blue tooth headset stapled to the side of his head. I exhale, attempting to let the mild frustration melt off me like the sweat on my neck. But like the sweat, the frustration clings to my subconscious, aided by humidity, and continues to irritate me as I walk out, bags in hand.
I feel like the inconspicuousness of my parcel was lost on anyone who might pass by me. I hate black plastic. It screams. A white plastic bag could contain any number of items. Acceptable purchases are placed in white. The virgin box of cookies, clothed in white, paraded for the entire neighborhood to see. But black is the color of sordid investments. Black plastic is neither discreet nor ostentatious. The black sack hanging at my side oozes of squalid hobbies shamefully acted out behind closed doors. My purchase is only as obscene as the imagination of the other allows.
The walk from store to home is short; A nice walk in Spring, miserable in Summer, invigorating in Fall, and an unmanageable in Winter. The trail takes me past two 24 hour laundromat occupied by hispanic women and children, K's an underground dive, a mattress store that never has anyone in it, a mixture of ethnic restaurants, and several beaten down apartment buildings. It's an old neighborhood, a conveniently forgotten one. As the roaming tamale vender says "Gentrificación no aquí en mi casa". I approach my building. It's residences are almost all asleep. The light of a forgotten lamp, a television projects a dance of colors onto a curtain, and the ever present hum of old air conditioning units; signs of life in an quiet building.
My keys sit firmly in my right pant pocket. I reach in with my free hand and grab the warn leather strap attached to the key ring. On the ring are five keys; the front door, apartment, post office box, storage space, and a safety deposit box located downtown. I am proud of my efficiency with keys, and when I reach for them, a small grin of trivial satisfaction emerges. The simplicity of my pockets contents are known and celebrated only by me, and is something that does not need to be known by others. To them, it might just seem like I'm proud of monotony.
The sound of heals reverberating off the brick and tile seem to be following me as I enter the building. The rhythm of the walk paints a picture in my mind of the owner these shoes. I imagine they are yellow, mostly because I see a lot of women wearing yellow. If Dorothy had been wearing sapphire slippers instead would she have gotten home. I doubt it, and remember that in the novel, Dorothy has slippers made of silver, which I remember enjoying as a child. Does the owner of these shoes have any opinion of the works of Mr. L. Frank Baum? I doubt she would even be able to make to correlation. To busy finding dresses to go with the yellow shoes.
"What do you mean you don't like sleeping" is often the reaction I get from people when I tell them that sleep has never been something I desire. I know many people who's favorite thing to do in the world is sleep. To many people sleep is an escape from the difficulties of life. Their troubles can only follow them into the world of slumber via dreams. And when these people awake they are relaxed and rejuvenated from a fulfilling nights sleep. So when I tell someone with a great sleep habit, that I do not have a good sleep habit, they often look at me like I'm not right.
"It's just what you do; you get up, live out your day, at the end you sleep, and then repeat it the next day". This came from a friend of mine who recently sat down with me and discussed why my sleep habits are not in sync with the rest of humanity. I told her that when I was little I slept like other normal children. My parents would see me rubbing my ears and knew that I was getting tired. Though as I grew up, my desire to sleep lessened. The more aware I became of my reality, the less I wanted to be away from it.
And that's where my problem stems from; my continued desire to stay connected to my personal awareness. Sleep for me is almost scary at times. My eyes become heavy, my brain slows to the point where my thoughts are almost incoherent. It is that moment where your consciousness is taken from you for a brief moment and then next thing you realize several hours have passed, you are in a different position then you were when you were last wake, and if you've dreamt, then your mind is filled with bizarre imagery that have only slight connections to the reality you are now a part of.
To me, I equate the moment before sleep to sinking into dark water. I'm not saying that when I fall asleep it feels like I'm drowning (as a former life guard, I know that drowning is a very violent ordeal). I say this because when you sleep, you give yourself over to sleep. Sleep, like the water in this example, overwhelms your mind and body and takes you away. It almost reminds me of descriptions of alien abductions. People experiencing lost time, not understanding where the last few hours had gone. A complete lack of awareness to their reality. Also, alien abductions are also something I fear.
Now you may be thinking, Kellen, you have to sleep, it's part of life. I do sleep; it's just something I mostly struggle with. When I do give myself over to it, I sleep deeply, and wake up fine. Though more often than not I would rather be doing something creative. Night is my time for writing, reading, making music, etc. And when I do eventually lay my head down, my mind likes to wander. It does what it has been designed to do for millions of years. I attempt to solve personal problems, I create stories in my head, I speak narratives of my life to myself to assess where I am (for more on how I think see my series "Ruminating on my Ruminations"). As anyone who has ever shared a bed, a hotel room, or a tent with me will tell you, I don't fall asleep easily because my mind just will not let go. Though when my mind eventually succumbs to the magic of the sandman and I do nod off I've never been someone who struggles to reenter the world of the living.
That term 'the world of the living' connects to another big fear of mine. My desire to hold onto my awareness of my reality is not just a fear of sleep; it's also a fear of death. I feel I understood death at a very young age. And not because I had a friend or family member die. I was a kid who asked a lot of questions. How does this work? Why does this happen? And when you're a kid who asks a lot of questions, eventually the subject of death comes up. Why do we have to die? What happens to us when we die? My parents, being good Christians, hold me about God and the idea of Heaven. I don't want to say that I was a skeptic as a child, but the idea of our lives ending and continuing in a divine reality, or worse, the one filled with misery and pain, has always been something I have struggled to understand and accept. Lucky, I've got some time to figure out what I believe.
In the mean time, I must spend my days working, writing, performing, pursuing the opposite sex so I can copulate with them to create tiny copies of me to continue my linage of DNA, and eating. And between all of this, I will have to sleep. I must do this in order to survive. "Regular sleep is essential for your survival. Without sleep, you will get sick, and die" she told me, trying to snap some sense into me like I was a junkie. Ironically, earlier she had said "sleep is my drug. I'm an addict".
Sleep for her is just as important as awareness is to me. And as we spoke I began to understand that the longer I had these unhealthy sleep habits the worse my connection to my awareness would be. "You're not 18, or 21, or even 24 anymore. The older you get, the worse it'll be". If I continued to avoid sleep, maybe I'd begin to lose touch with the world when I was awake?
Which makes me remember back to when my grandfather Robert was still alive. I can recall once staying up late with my family, and he would stay awake longer than anyone else. Then sometime in the early, early morning, you'd smell coffee going, and by the time you'd wake up, he'd have a full breakfast ready, read the entire paper, and have started his day off long ago. I asked my father about this, and he told me that my grandfather just was like that. He'd go to bed late and wake up at 4 am and start his day. My grandfather was a product of the great depression, the dust bowl, and years of service to his country in the air force. He was a man of habit, and somewhere along the his life he'd chosen to work hard, and thus sacrifice "healthy" sleep habits.
This anecdote doesn't justify my habits. All it does it make me feel like there's at lease some reason I don't sleep well. Be it genetic, fear based, or just a desire to do things other than dream. For now, when I look at my bed, and think about what it means to me, I attempt to stay positive. Because if my bed only represents a negative space then how will I ever be able to develop positive relations to it?
At then end of our conversation my friend asked me what I was going to do?
"I'll sleep when I'm dead."
So that didn't happen. But it would have been really cool if I had said that, right?
