trying to make sense of it all: failing

"how are you?" my mother asks last night on the phone.

her one and only brother passed away on the 6th of this month, and she and i have not spoken since. condolences, in this case, were done by e-mail, and on this call neither one mentioned his death. what does this all mean?

while in the mist of compiling my expenses from 2004, i came across the printout of a note that i wrote to a friend of mine. here "friend" is a term that i am using rather loosely, if not exaggeratedly. i know him, i have spoken with him, we have flirted, we have had light weight discussions, and we have done some serious work. i call him a friend because he ends being a wonderful teacher, not so much only in his discipline, but in the way he is. with him there is what i like to call affinity, that is, the feeling that one has in the presence of another that gives a sense of familiarity and awe.

not only my mother yesterday asked "how are you?" just minutes before my brother had asked "how are you?"

it is summer, it is hot, the draft in my office keeps me comfortable and hot, but not sweating. after sitting out of training for over two weeks, the prospects of some really good sweating are starting to seduce me. i like that feeling of my body when it is pushed to the limit, and knowing that i am pushing it at the edge.  most of the time, i am too much of a coward, and too frightened by pain, then i choose to stay within the comfort zone. am i starting to feel cold in the comfort of my pain avoidance? but i do not only tend to avoid pain, i am equally well versed in trying to avoid reality.

not only is there the question of how i am, there is the question of the stories that i write. "is it autobiographical?" they ask. they ask not just me, they ask any poor sucker who is into writing stories; the inquisitors range from nice neighbors to intelligent journalists.

on a good day, i forget and i lie. although on another good day, i would say that i am a moralist willing to dish out moral lessons to any ill advised person who asks me for advice, still i have not much of a relationship to truth. i write fiction. i write fiction, and i do not intend to deceive or create misleading impressions about who i am or may not be. perhaps i only lie in bed, and i sincerely do hope to one day, in all peace, die there in my sleep. before then i will keep on exploring the world of the relationships in my life.

the note that i wrote to that friend is dated from october of last year, and i have no clue as to whether i have mailed it or not. i suspect that i have not, if i did mail it, this man is so full of generosity and flaws that he will forgive me the intrusion of my emotional blabbing onto his life. to me the nature of true intimacy is forgiveness. intimacy is highly unrelated to something that everybody talks about and about which i have no clue: the truth.

"that my empty and meaningless life would touch yours, that, surprises me. that your being, that being who calls himself by an angel's name, touches this life of mine, is ecstasy."

now, how many men do you know who can deal with such prose? many, but few when it is addressed to them personally, and interpreted to be personal, like in "i want your soul and body and forget the poetry!" when such prose is not perceived as personal, it is assumed to be addressed to the intellect, and thus many can deal with such words in an abstract or figurative way. the very instant such prose is interpreted, some ugly little demon always wants to know what in this physical world i want from him. the only trouble is that those little demons inside one's head are just full of gibberish and fear. i want nothing, he knows.

psychology is that invention that claims to be the science of behavior and the mind. the popularization of psychology and its mélange with new age cacophonic esotericism always renders me rather skeptical in any conversation on the subject, even when those talking about it are otherwise knowledgeable people. with psychologist and psychiatrists i can talk and have constructive conversations, with lay para-psychologists, i have my troubles. when i myself start dabbling towards the latter, i get truly alarmed. the death of my uncle threw me right into the pits of my own psychology, and i was ready to do anything to just get it over with. i did anything. i went to the movies, i  had a few debates with friends, and a few good cries.

i start adding all of this up, nothing makes sense: i am one lucky person to be alive. that is how i am.

the circumstances are a mess, but since when have i had much concern for circumstances?

Technorati Tags: fluage

the unquiet mind...

shortly after my brother got diagnosed with manic depression, our mother sent me a book with this same title. i read it, and i was not much the wiser for it, or at least, i was too much of a pompous ass to admit to anything.

between a girl who died in infancy, and a bipolar boy, my parents were also blessed with a wayward child who refuses to grow up, me. how they deal with this, i take it to me none of my business. how i deal with my parents is however very much my own business.

recently, after i got some free tickets, i have finally  gone through the einstein exposition, and what surprised me the most is my own resistance to learn anything about einstein. the exposition is done in a way that sets up his life in the social, historical and cultural contexts of his time. taking a look at this especially after having been in berlin just a few days ago did not fail to make an impression. still, the whole cult around one man does bother me, i just wonder why.

then it was that this morning on waking up there are some left over memories of having dreamt and that Mick Jagger, somedody's whose name i do know, but for whom i would not go out of the way to meet since i would not even recognize the "rolling stones" sounds even if they rolled me over at night, and as a male he is too scrawny looking for my tastes to say nothing that he and i might just as well be of different and incompatible species. waking up from a dream in that he and i were sharing a room and leading a workshop together was bizarre. more bizarre was how exicited i ended up being about the whole thing in the dream that had me sleep right through the whole thing. so while sleeping i dream about sleeping through an opportunity that others would have paid with their souls and fortune to have. that is indeed the nature of my identity; most of the time we do not give a swithering farthing about a whole lot of nothing. clearly i have given up on dream interpretation long ago, but have kept a certain knack for off the wall interpretations.

then i turn the page, and face my very own drama, and find myself intimately involved with a comedy. i know that i have no aspirations at being a playwright, but why would that surprise me? my whole life is one big stage of tragic-comedies on a low budget production, it bores me on occasions, entertains me on others, and above all, it is all so damned personal.


the poet wakes up from this deluge of feelings, irrationales, and  emotions, and i find myself thinking of one of my muses, and then i find myself ready to give up all ties to that muse, like you give up the memory of that piece of bread that saved you from starvation way back when, before you could even form memories. the poet contradicts, the poet generates conflict, and the poet dances with life on a tight rope spanning hight above any reality ever conceived.

"perhaps it is a little injury reminding me of the very fragility of all life, perhaps it is my repressed desire for you, the man, the one that i find ugly, and while ugly, i find the man attractive, perhaps it is that i do not have a clue as to what i am doing. perhaps it is that i feel totally paralyzed and abandoned.
the little girl is that image that keeps recurring and disrupting any intentions that i have managed to formulate. it is a scene that neither goya or picasso had ever the need to represent, it is not pretty, it is not esthetic, it is not real. the little girl wants strong arms to protect her, kind ears to listen, she wants to know, and she is fully exposed, alone, always alone in the wind."

the phone rang, and my faithful friend is on the other side while i am in the middle of my drama. he asks how i am doing, and i start crying and exploring the verbal field for an explanation in my hurricane of humanity. i thought that i had started karate because i had no clue on how to hit, and now i start to suspect that what was there all along is the need to know how to hit. much frustration is repressed, there is much need to punch out  something, or somebody, in some sense of another. the need is called the need for assertion. finally there is some answer to that question that has eluded me all along, the question of what to say, and what to keep your mouth shut about. still, i doubt that i have cracked that one question of what to share and what not to share. while he and i are talking, that thought from the events of last week crosses my mind, i dismiss going into the details, i mentioning the event itself. full disclosure seems pathetic at this point, i have bigger fish to fry, or so it seems. while on the phone i am cradled within safe arms, i repeat my sincere apology for being a total mess and one big heap of lamentations for the time being,  my friend reassures me again and again. he opens that door of wonders, possibility, and he reminds me of my dreams.

take a few quantum leaps in logic, amalgamate it all with a good pinch of unrestrained fuzziness, and i find myself back on track.

"don't leave me now! "i tell my muse, i implore him... and then i look at him and i know that i have already left.

Technorati Tags: fluage

july 6, montreal; july 7, london

wednesday started with a phone call from my brother to tell me that our uncle passed away on tuesday in montreal, canada. this uncle is our mother's youngest and only brother, he was six years older than i and we grew up in the same household. i have not seen or spoken with him for over twenty years, he is survived by three children whom i have never met.

either there is something that i do not want to know, or the death of a family member whom had somehow already been dead for many years, leaves me perturbed. indeed very perturbed, it left me.

the day would not be over until other bad news had arrived. but then to say that something is bad news, is to make a judgment about the news. more accurate would be to say that some facts got my attention, and that this awareness did not leave me feeling any comfort or peace.

wednesday concluded on a good note, with dinner with a dear friend of mine. i walked home from her house through the city in this rather cool summer night, and i was happy that i could do that and just concentrate on my walking, just feeling my feet hit the floor.

this morning it was my cousin that on IM tells me something about seeing what has happened in london; then i quickly pulled up my shrook, and saw the blogs and rss news feeds just explode with the news of the explosions. eventually i got to the bbc and the guardian sites. i wish i had been there, and it is not the first time that i wish i had been dead. by the time i tried to reach one of my cousins in london, the mobile networks had gone out, or were switched to emergency communications only. there was nothing that i could do other than wait for my cousins to give some signs of life.

ah... that i am not much into a blogging mood these days. there is much to tell, but i am a story writer, not a news reporter

Technorati Tags: abuse, cyborg, death, explosions, family, fluage, london, myth, terror