The Perspective

to be clear, I didn't deserve it

not self-deprecating or lacking esteem - simply, it's impossible to deserve it

so I don't pretend that I do

I'm just grateful that I live here now

with her

--

there's a small part of me that wants a statement that I was right

it was a good idea

and not just right but more correct than I've ever been about anything

she did, however, suggest the perfect name

so there's that

--

I can't describe it

it's completely unbelievable

fantastical

from nothing

Here, I'm a toe-dipper

I don't have the abandon, or the confidence, or the ignorance, or the surrender, or the purity of will to just do this

However, in my stubbornness I do want it to be known, barely visibly, that I can

-

It has me digging up albums

For November, specifically

Thinking about what may make another round of memory

-

Serenity

No way out - and that's ok

I'm in

-

You can't just throw the pizza pocket in the old microwave and hope for the best

No

It seems like a few people are missing

Wherever I left them they aren’t there anymore

Where did they go?

Hidden in the cracks, shipped across the sea

Or maybe just crumbled into dust

Back in tiny specks on my countertop, clandestine, watching

Unable to remind me of what their faces once looked like

-

I’m not just missing the old people

I’m missing the new ones too

The ones that don’t exist yet

I keep forgetting

“Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes”

What a lovely phrase

What an ugly image

The outward unchecked spread of human filth, the dirty upon the dirty upon the dirty

The surrounding creep of the broken, the damaged, the useless, the junk, the garbage and the decay

Wretch

A wretched man in a mess of a place

No quick fix, no upward movement

No outward look

Everything exhausts upon a glance

I guess you can rest

Not in satisfaction but in fatigue

Everything draws the energy out from you

Forcing you to fall ever farther into ruin

Tired of fighting the world

Tired of struggling against the wind that gnaws at you through broken windows

Nothing can lift you

Deadweight

If God is real he made you this way

If He is dead you made this yourself

Both are awful and you’d rather not know

Looking at heaven gives you a sick and heavy feeling

Green with nausea and envy

Green dreams of laying down and the earth slowly swallowing you

Grass making something of the digestion of flies and maggots on your flesh and skin

The weighted blanket of time

The sun cracks through the splitting walls

A butterfly alights on the tip of your sun-bleached skull, unknowingly

Oh God, I’m drawn to awkward prayer

Clumsy words I stutter and mutter

How can I be graceful scattering ash and laying about bricks

Am I allowed to be broken by this

It’s a different loss, grieving not only for what was lost but what never came to be

I’m grieving for your absence my whole life as much as your absence now, if not more

I wonder what God meant to you

Was God there for you, did you abandon them, did they abandon you?

Your lonely aunts, looking from a distance, may have had two things you didn’t, each other, and God

I hurt for my mother, your sister

I hurt for my uncle, your brother

I hurt for the wall never broken 

I hurt for the house never built

I hurt for myself

I hold moments in my memory, precious few, I hold them dear

And I know, from the shadow of lost days and the fragments of sparse letters, what I have lost

A ray of light in the dark

Tired of the trip

Tired of sobriety and anxiety

Tired like a car, low on air

Tired like a scar, tenderness forever there

Tired of being tired, tired like a loop begetting itself

Tired like a generation before, re upon re

Tired of the beginning, middle, and end

Tired of trying and tired of not

David laid alone as grey dawn opened over the horizon. It would have been nicer if the dawn had been accompanied by the usual colour, but light was welcome nonetheless. On this day everything hurt, his body racked with a deep and persistent soreness, a stretch and pull of muscles that twisted them molecule by molecule into an uncomfortable state of tightness. His bones pushed out against them, an internal tug of war that was sensible as tension. He dreamt of a massage, of warm oiled hands working loose every tight sinew hog-tying his skeleton into more of an oversized cardigan of flesh. He knew that feeling and ached at the lack of it, a pressure on the mind built from the strained senses of the body. A loose body is a loose mind and vis a versa. Everything was a pin prick, prompting a little flinch. Even the fleeting flick of the prick of a pin could spin the spindles of muscle around spine into wilder and tighter winding vines.

—

Jane looked out the window without looking. The thought of David’s words earlier was a persistent distraction. There were other distractions in her mind too, but right now they just couldn’t get any traction. As her father would have said, it was “top of the pile” right now. There was something to her brother’s tone that signified that this was important. He had the quivering energy of someone who was laying down their hand and finally seeing whether the bet would pay off.

Jane sat on a wooden chair that had been owned by her mother’s family. It had a curved top with rounded edges, and a wood finish that had been so rubbed by the unwashed hands of generations of children that the varnish had acquired a dark and almost sticky softness. It was best not to think about that, and like almost everything around her, she didn’t. A blue teapot, opened mail, a dirty plate, and a hairpin completed the collection of naturally collecting human flotsam atop the kitchen table. Her husband, Aaron, already had the teapot when she met him, 13 years in the past. She thought it was adorable that a “broke student” had such a nice teapot. That was what she remembered every time she saw it: that one time when she thought it was adorable that he owned this thing.

“You wouldn’t tell her, even if you thought it would help.” What?

—

David hated it, but he was shaking with emotion. He broke into a quick silence and stayed in it, having too much energy to walk normally and trying his best to do it anyway. He hated that his sister could make him feel this way. He knew she didn’t mean to, and really that made it worse. If she meant to, he could feel better about his anger. He could feel powerful about it, and righteous. The was she didn’t even try, and could make him so angry and hurt and alone, and alone in feeling it because it was between them. No one else could understand, she was the only other possible person who could. And she didn’t.

—

“He hates me. Or, he hates that he’s not me. He hates how I am, who I am. He’s resentful, or jealous. He doesn’t like how I treated him. I hurt him. I know how, and I don’t want to bear thinking about it. I lived only for myself. I thought I was helping him, really I was full of myself for even thinking I should have thought for him. Taken care of him in ways that convenience him. Ways that broke him down because they were built upon the way that I thought of him, and signalled the way I saw him - weaker than me. Discouraged, needing my encouragement. Lonely, needing me to include him in things with my friends. My friends. I treated them like mine. I treated everything like mine. I treated everyone like mine. It’s so hard, we were so close. We understood each other so well, we spoke a language no one else spoke. We were there for each other when we each had no one else. And we had so much together. I did him wrong when I left him behind. He was too hurt when I went to leave. When Aaron came between us, when I left with him. When I went away, he was hurt, but he was most hurt by how I changed, how willing I was to leave it behind. How easy it was for Aaron to turn me against him. How far my journey into darkness would lead me away from him. That must be it. That must be it. Is that it?”

Jane was talking to herself.

—

Aaron thought that Jane never got her own power. Like, she knew it, but not really? She hadn’t taken it to heart, and not holding it within she was always looking for a fight, always holding steady, fists ready behind an ever-friendly exterior that asked for kind vibes only. She was so nervous and never got that either. Like, she used her past self as the standard bearer for anxiety and that was a very broken measuring stick, so her barometer was never calibrated for society at large. Or enough ever to really understand her dark depths.

Aaron admitted it, yes, he hated David. Hated him being around, hated him taking up Jane. Hated him for the natural and endless rapport he got from Jane, a painfully in-his-face reminder that there was a level of connection with her that he was never allowed to reach. He felt love from Jane, he had to believe that, but from her he was flooded with that ever-friendliness and cloying sweetness that insisted on itself, as if verbal conviction could be a substitute for genuine sentiment. She loved him, but there was so much she never said. Maybe what he really hated about David was something he saw missing from Jane. Maybe David was something he wanted rid of, for fear of how he was a bad sign of things to come.

“Stop”

“Alright. I’m sorry, I -“

“No. Stop. Listen. You’re not really. You’re not even here - you’re just disappearing, and I just can’t take it anymore.”

“I wish I could be diff-“

“Stop. Ok, please, listen, I care about you but you are just so self-absorbed and every time you go to talk about something that you’ve done wrong, you disappear into yourself. And when you do that, you’re not taking responsibility for yourself, you’re looking for something inside yourself to blame. I want to make this as clear as possible - you’re loosing your marbles. There’s a rip in your bag, and they are falling out and spilling on the floor. You’re chasing them around the floor, and when you catch one, you’re studying it, criticizing it, looking for flaws like ‘well this marble has a defect, it was made wrong at the factory, I have such shitty marbles and that’s why they keep falling out of the bag.’ You’re just going to keep losing marbles, because you’re not doing the hard work - fix the bag. And own the fact that your marbles are all over the floor, and if anyone around you has tripped and slipped because of your fallen marbles, understand that they don’t want to hear about the damn marble and what was wrong with it, they want to know if you care that your marble hurt them. Tell them, honestly, that you’re sorry that your marbles hurt them. Warn them that some of your marbles are still on the floor, and tell them that you hope that with your help they can avoid stepping on them when they’re around you, which is what you want because you love them and care about having them in your life.”

“But I... well, ok. Ok.”

“Yeah, ok? Good! Yes, ok is right. Thank you, you could have chased a marble again, and that’s not it, but I’m not trying to tell you what’s wrong with your marbles, I’m trying to tell you how to work on this. It’s all about you, and what you can do. This is power, and you can do it. And one more thing, because I love you and I know you - don’t think about this. Only enough to do it. Just enough, which is barely at all. You get it, you got it, you go. If you lose it, you come back and get it again. That’s why it’s here. Ok?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Calm death, hold me

Take me gently please

I plea on this cold night

Softly let me freeze

Winters come and winters go

So many I have seen

Small town in Ontario

So quiet and serene

Washed up on a cold wet floor

The sullen shore of the old Beer Store

Hauled away by the OPP

Softly set me free

Plastic floor and Listerine

All common courtesy

Old town Bill did what he will

They got him twice last week

He told me “oh, that’s how it goes

They’re just too blind to see

The river runs quicker near to the falls

Same as you and me”

Walking through those same two doors

The sullen shore of the old Beer Store

I’ve seen it, all I’ll ever see

Oh please

Throw me off

Throw me right goddamn off, the tension has built too long

Missing the feeling of air rushing around me in open space

I could yell as I’m falling, flail, shout

Reach a rapid heartbeat, good cardio

I walk on the tightrope of expectation

Balance is not a natural state and I achieve it by pulling taut

I don’t speak to acknowledge the void, and yet it is there

- 

Resolutions are passe, no?

So many have acknowledged what a trap they are

Pinning your worth on improvement

Yet, shall we not fight?

Do we not have battles?

A battle unfought is an inevitable defeat

Are we comforting our failures with inevitability?

-

As much as I hate to lose a good shirt, some sacrifices are worth it

Monuments to nights where freedom was won hard

We hold on so tightly, but we can never win

A little bit of blood and a torn shirt now and then remind us

We are here, and alive, and falling

-

I wish I told you

Spoke it aloud

Not forever

But for then

And for now

To know I had been true

-

This I believe is true

And a lesson hard learned, and stubbornly still I ignore

When singing, the hardest and most vital thing is this

To commit to the note

Give it your joy, your pain, your breath

Give the note everything

Having learned this, I can sing

But what of the rest?

Someday I hope I’ve sung loud enough and clear enough and long enough that all my breath is gone

And that everything has then been given

empty night

a big wondering

at the meaning

of nothing

staring

is easier

than being seen

look at me

I need it

I can stand

and if I can’t

I can walk

or run

but I need it

I can’t carry

my legs give out

nowhere to go

I am nothing

my voice is choking

I have only spit

and salt

without a thought

is what I feel

looking up

I kneel

look at me

see what I feel

though I can stand

I kneel

I am nothing

just in the wheel

though I could run

No one really should take the time to wonder about death. Sure, I’m one to talk. I’ve done it so much I’ve spun in circles. But in the middle of a circle is the only place you end up, you’re surrounded on all sides and I don’t know which way to go. Look again - 

All around you, everything is travelling in a line. Lines twist, turn, intersect, change direction, start, end, and on and on. The scale relative to us is so close to infinite it renders whatever different between infinity and not immaterial. Honestly, it looks infinite, doesn’t it? What are you going to judge the universe on other than how it looks? What else do you have?

I’m being facetious. I am aware that bearded white men 100 years ago started to talk about the impending heat death of the universe. It could happen, sure. I’ve long been of the opinion that it’s irrelevant though. First of all, you have that issue I described earlier, where you end up doing nothing because you’re convinced nothing matters. It’s like how if you focused too much on each individual movement while riding a bike, you might suddenly become too self-aware and “forget” how it’s done. A bike that doesn’t move forward can’t balance. Another issue is that you’ll end up in a hole of meaninglessness regarding your life if you think of it in terms of legacy, regardless of whether the universe itself will eventually expire. We are relative specks, motes of dust, blinks in time, sneezes in a firestorm - 

There I go again. I told you it could happen.

I’ve got lines to weave, anyway. I’m lucky like that. I have lines in my grasp, and I am myself a line. I am weaving. Who cares where my line ends? It’s always just beyond my horizon, anyway. Always. It could end tomorrow. Oh, don’t I know it. Ask my cousin.

Or don’t! How did I start this again? Yes - I said no one should take the time to wonder. We go and we don’t. I’ve got lines to weave, anyway. I’m bringing tea to my grandmother tonight. No, I can’t tell you where I got it. It was hard to get. It’s for my grandmother! I don’t have enough to share. I didn’t steal it, I have a friend… no, you can’t have his name. Forget it, forget I said anything. That was supposed to be a nice point about how I’m doing something nice for my grandmother and you twisted it all around.

Oh well, I guess I should forgive your line for weaving as it does.

I’m sure you are sorry for the inappropriate request and I forgive you.

You’re not really a single line. I’m not. People aren’t. We’re actually like a bunch of lines all weaving. Sometimes they cross each other and we trip. Do you ever think about the lines within a person? How they stop and end? A person is a whole world, I think. Isn’t that so? We think we know the world… or at least part of it, but what is it to know except to contain within your head? To have within your thoughts? And if that is so, that means whatever we think the world is, that is in fact the world contained within our heads. So it’s unique! And there are so many.

I know I digress, but it’s a fantastic thought. I think it is! I have a whole galaxy in my head. Maybe I’ll call it that. I know of stars, I know of the earth. That is something. Every star I’ve seen on a dark night has built my map…

I am sorry. I wish I had a better way of cheering you up. I forget, these are my joyful thoughts. It sounds, perhaps, like I’m saying that we are not important, that all things that perish are meaningless. Not so! We are beautiful, wonderful, unique. The street. Your house. That flower. Your hands. I care not if they stay or go, because I cannot - and yet, here they are, and they are beautiful.

I’m still going to go about my day, and to weave my lines. And so should you. So must you. Other than what I’ve said I’m not sure I can even tell you why. Whatever works for you - duty to the Empire? Very noble. Welfare of others? Noble again! Even obligations we care not for can keep our lines weaving. I have a shift at the factory. I’m heading to it soon. I’m not excited, but I am moving forward.

You are not calmed. If I may ask… do you feel guilty? For being here when so many are not? Do not be angry at your universe for existing! No matter the circumstances, we are spared for now. Perhaps someone far away is advocating on our behalf. Are we in control of that? No - and we should not feel burdened by responsibility for things we cannot control.

Look upon the beauty around us. Just for today. And accept that it is for here and now! Trees swaying in the breeze. The grit of dry dirt beneath your shoes. The smell of food. And all around, each person a whole world in themselves. A city full of galaxies. A universe in a moment.

Start a day

Colon

Finish a task

Comma

Feel a frustration

Period

A big thing ends

Exclamation mark

What fills every gap

Question mark

Punctuation

And how the fuck am I supposed to write without it when every sentence is another reminder of everywhere it fits and I worked it into everything to the point that now it is hard to work without

But

Dot dot dot