Turtle Fur
6.03.2007
One Focus (fiction)
The book says that when you lay dying you will begin to lose contact with what's around you.
He lays in the field and feels the blades of grass on his fingertips. He dances his hands across the grass away and towards his body. A snow angel without the snow. The grass tickles and scratches at his ears and neck. He dreams of a face he's seen many times. It's not so much the why he's laying in this field, it's the how.
How you're dying doesn't matter. It could be cancer. Possibly, septic shock from a knfe or gunshot wound. Maybe even the result of massive internal injuries because you were hit by a bus. It doesn't matter why you're dying.
From his perspective, with no points of reference in the sky, it almost looks like the sun is travelling past motionless clouds. He picks out shapes. Shapes of animals, countries on a map, even the face of his 5th grade music teacher. Each time the sun is clear his eyes squint a little. They adjust just in time for another cloud to pass by and darken his view that much more. Each time the sun shines directly into his eyes he fights a little harder to keep them from squinting. Keep them focused.
It doesn't matter how hard you try to hold on. Your focus will slip. Edges will blur. Voices will travel to you like soundwaves in water. You begin to feel distant from everything around you. The face of your loved one, the sound of your television, the feel of the blanket on your skin, the taste of your last glass of wine. All of these things will fade. There is nothing you can do.
Fewer and fewer clouds travel across the sky. The wind teases the grass against his arms and legs. He feels it push urgently into his neck. He almost scratches at the irritation. Almost.
Despite our best efforts we will all lose our focus. It's inevitable. Trust me. We go to doctors, we eat healthy, we exercise, we drink one less can of soda a week. No matter what we do, we're simply delaying the inevitable. We all say it won't happen to us. - I'm too young. - I have 3 children. - My husband's on vacation. - I just got a promotion. - I haven't finished the newest season of TV shows. We all have our own dramas, our own excuses. Our own plea-bargains. But, in the end, none of this matters in the least. We are going to die.
The material of the mp3 player on his chest is cooling compared to the heat of the sun. He enjoys the way it feels to have the sweat glisten all over his body. It allows him to still feel the wind as it passes over and around him. Like the sigh of a lover on a hot night. The environment moves around him and he knows that he is in it, but not a part of it. He can't be. He is distant from it, and will always be.
So, it's not the why we die. It's really not the when. And it certainly isn't the where or the who (Most times there is no who. Even we don't matter when it finally happens). It most certainly is the how though. How we choose to let go of ourselves matters immensly. Will we lay there fighting to live and making asses of ourselves as others watch? Will we lay calmly in a bed and proudly claim that we are ready to die? Will we choose to go somewhere alone? These don't matter either. It's the how, those others pertain to the when and the why.
He hears the music on his headphones. It is loud enough for someone who is 3 feet away to be able to discern the familiar baselines and guitars of one of his favorite groups. He senses the rhythms in the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. The touch of the grass and the breathing wind are in time to the rising and falling melodies playing in his ears. Little by little the music loses it's importance. Loses it's power. He feels fewer and fewer blades of grass.
As you die, the book says, you will lose focus with your environment. You will slip away. What the book doesn't tell you is that you will focus on something. You will hold on. You will still attach yourself to something. What that one thing is of course depends on where you are, when it's happening, who is with you and all of that other unimportant stuff. It's all going to run through your mind. But, soon, sooner than you think, these matters will also fall away until you are focused on one thing.
He no longer feels the grass on his legs, or the wind on his arms, or the heat on his torso. He even barely registers the glare of the sun into his unflinching naked eyes. His music has long ago faded to the point of white noise. He feels only one thing. One little thing.
While you're dying something will catch your attention. It could be a dust-ball, a color in your sweater, a bump in your mattress, and spice in your holiday stuffing. This one detail, this one object, this one experience will become your world. It will pull all of your focus. Nothing will matter to you, not even the fact that you're dying. This is how you know it's the real thing. You're not going to be on TV in a few weeks talking about a bright light. You're not going to wake up in a hospital and thank god that you can see your family one more time. This is it. The moment of truth.
At the back of his neck he still feels a blade of grass. It pushes against his soft flesh and cuts into him like a knife. He knows there is no cut, but the intensity of this one blade of grass almost makes him believe he will need a band-aid. Everything else is gone from his mind. His mp3 player has run out of batteries. There are rainclouds forming overhead. The wind is picking up and the temperature is dropping. All of these things are not noticed. If you saw him in the field the conviction with which he was laying there would almost make you wonder if you weren't imagining the incoming storm.
As you focus on that one thing a thought will fill your head. "Is that the last bite of stuffing I'll ever have?" "Is this material the last thing I'm ever going to feel?" At this moment you won't care about charitable donations, how many times you've masterbated, that candybar you stole when you were 11, or the fight you had with your sister. None of it will matter. All you'll care about is the beauty of the last moment. That last thing. The beauty of dust, the beauty of taste, the amazing quality of how material feels on naked flesh. At that one moment all you will think of is how it may have been mundane before, but now it's the most breathtaking thing in the world. And by then it will be too late. You'll pass by it so fast if you had a memory you would barely remember it. But of course at this point it's too late. You're already gone.
He lays in the field and feels the blade of grass on his neck. All he can think about is how amazing grass is. The way it looks right after it's cut. That ripped and shredded look. And how, if you go back 4-5 days later you cannot find any evidence of how it's been cut. The grass still grows. He thinks about the lines along a blade of grass. The different shades of green that dance across its flesh. He thinks about how it feels to curl your toes in a lawn that hasn't been cut in weeks. The spongy forgiving quality of a field is better than any mattress he's ever laid upon. His mind flashes the images of summers in the park. The way grass is smooth in one direction and almost sticky in the other, he can almost sense it between his fingers. Almost.
Then it starts raining.
5.27.2007
Regret
Check the mail.
Check the messages.
Go to the bathroom while thinking of what to plan dinner.
Every night it's the same thing. You come home and collect your mail and lay it out in three piles. Bills, junk, personal. These piles have there own places reflecting their importance. Bulk goes above the kitchen garbage. Bills go beside the phone. Personal messages are left on the coffee table to be perused at a later time when the feeling of work slides off your back.
Coming home from work you aren't sure if you want to be in your apartment. It still reminds you of that night. The phone still seems like a hundred pound weight. If you touched it right now you'd be able to see the finger mark in the dust.
Going to the fridge you open it to see last night's take away Italian and a collection of expired condiments. You aren't sure what you're looking for, but as you close the door you know it wasn't in there.
People talk about comfort food and it makes you laugh. Any thought of food and you gag. What food would be able to stay down when your gut feels like this? In the trash is a week's worth of leftovers that were hardly touched when they were new. But of course one has to keep up appearances and you don't want people knowing something's wrong.
Miss Dunsmoore across the hallway watches you like a hawk. She seems to note every item going in or out of your place. It's the way she looks at you as you throw your tissue papers covered in evidence of self-satisfaction that makes you hope it's all in your head.
For dinner tonight you've chosen a simple pasta dinner that should only take 5 minutes to heat up. You know it will have no taste and you know it will make you wish you'd bought something else.
But it's your own fault. You bring this on yourself. It's your choice.
After dinner, which you leave untouched on the table for your maid to clean in the morning you make your way to the sofa to watch TV. Anything to make yourself feel normal. But of course it doesn't work. Unpaid bills sitting by the phone remind you that your cable was cut years ago. The static fills the apartment but you still feel the emptiness.
______________________________________________
A puzzle has many pieces, but he just looks for the one. It exists in every problem and every solution. It is that moment when you know it all fits. That piece that tells you you are on the right path.
At the kitchen table he studies the box's picture of Los Angeles's skyline. There is a piece that fits it all together. He knows that if he can find that piece the whole puzzle will come together.
In the dark he searches with his fingers hoping to find the piece that slides into the last remaining spot.
_______________________________________________
Looking out the window the view is disgusting.
Two junkies search garbage for a scrap to eat.
A drug deal goes down with ease in front of the hotel.
A block later the police station slides through my view.
In ten minutes I'll be looking at parking lots and wishing I had the money to shop at those stores.
In twenty I'll be undressing the passenger across from me and imagining all sorts of dirty deeds.
In thirty I'll be ready to scream in frustration at the fact that the woman beside me smells like stale cigarettes and body odor.
In thirty-one I'll be off the train and cursing the slow-walking morons in front of me as I race for a bus that's already leaving the station.
In thirty-two I'll stand and look at high school students and think of my time and situation and wonder what it's all for.
__________________________________
Where do we go when we think these thoughts?
We look at others and automatically want to rip their throats out.
We think that it would be better to put them out of their misery than to try to deal with them for one more day.
We pleasure ourselves alone in our beds at night.
We use computers to communicate.
We watch as the man in front of us drops his keys. We all watch as he steps off of the elevator, and we all blame other people for keeping quiet.
We watch sex films filtered through a third source downloaded from a mirror site passed to us on a DVD burned by a friend.
We listen to music created behind doors, sold by corporate shills, and downloaded on torrents seeded by millions of strangers.
We pass each other on the street and rarely share a glance of acknowledgement.
We look at ourselves and think we're better?
We look at others and hope we're different?
We look at others and know we're worse.
__________________________________________
You have your rituals. You have your way of doing things. I'm not saying you don't.
But the next time you feel the pulse under your thumbs, it's time to release your hold and allow life to flourish.
4.28.2007
100 Questions (who will read it all?)
4.26.2007
That Bitch Ho Russell Simmons Should Shut the Fuck Up
4.20.2007
Soundtrack for my Life
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie(I'm betting this will make little to no sense, but what the hell--it kills some time)
Opening Credits:
"Cafe Style" - TO-KA Project
Waking Up:
"Rock & Roll Suicide" - Seu Jorge
First day at High School:
"Like an Outlaw (for you)" - Social Distortion
Falling in Love:
"What's Love (愛是個什麼東西)" - David Tao
Fight Song:
"Bulls On Parade" - Rage Against the Machine
Breaking Up Song:
"Say My Name" - Wes Cunningham
Prom Song:
"Kamikaze" - PJ Harvey
Life:
"Moon River" - Lisa Ono
Mental Breakdown:
"Preacher Man" - Doc L. Junior
Driving:
"Dream On" - The Chemical Brothers
Flashback:
"Tension Head" - Queens of the Stone Age
Getting Back Together:
"Coming Down Gently" - Morcheeba
Wedding:
"Pose" - Justin Timberlake
Birth of Child:
"Moondrops" - Plastic Avengers
Final Battle:
"Silent Radar" - The Watchmen
Death Scene:
"Don't Know Why" - Swollen Members
Funeral Song:
"We Rule the School" - Belle & Sebastian
End Credits:
"Drop The World" - NOFX
need you dream you find you taste you use you scar you fuck you break you
I had always read artists like Henry Rollins and Trent Reznor talk about the way it feels to come down off of a tour. They talked about the way days stretched in front of them and the overwhelming feeling like they cannot keep still. I'd always seen it as a Romanticization of the exhiliration of being on the road. I had always thought that the return home must be a welcome respite from the chaos and demands of touring.
Touring artists talk about the depression and malaise that sets in and I would wonder why this is. Now, after my year in school I have to say that I can sympathize with them.
I just finished a sprint through my first year in the Education program at the U of C. You can tell by the fact that my first post on this blog was in September, and now it's April and this is my second post, that I have had next to know time to sit down and write anything for a long time. My novel hasn't gained a single word since last August, my textbook hasn't gained a chapter since August. Hell, some of my friends on email haven't heard from me since August. The first semester was tolerably busy, but this past semester was insane. I haven't even had time to write daily letters to my wife who is in Taiwan right now. By the time my days ended I would be so tired that at times it was next to impossible to keep my eyes open when I was driving home from my practicum.
Every day was filled with marking, readings, research, writing, more marking, making lesson plans, reflection, journalling for class, more marking, teaching, more reflection, more readings, more marking, early classes, late nights, power drinks and large coffees.
I kept at a sprint with next to no sleep each night for at least the past month and a half. I even had a couple nights of 1-2 hours of sleep because of school work and stress.
But, now that's all done. I'm finished. No exams, no papers, nothing. I sit at home and I pace. I walk to check the mail 3-4 times before the mailman gets here. I look at my car and think I should go for a drive, but even that is just killing time for no reason. I read books, but I don't have the drive to keep going. I look at my upcoming work schedule and count down the time until it is time to get into my car and go to co-op to put crap on shelves.
I now can understand what it feels like for these artists. It's such a shock to the system. There is no cooldown period. It's just GOGO GOGOGOGOGO stop. There is a huge void of inactivity inside that is swallowing my drive. I will find it again, I'm sure, but for now I move through my days in cage of inactivity. I need something to do. Sudoku and crossword puzzles aren't gonna do it for me.
erase me