Bite.

We are all made of the same stuff. billions of years of stars being born and exploding has somehow  included us in the astronomical, gastronomical digestion of the universe. Of course this doesn't extend only to humans but to all living things. Including the huge trail of ants crawling across my kitchen floor. When I was younger I would sit for hours and watch ants. I would try to imagine what it was like to be an ant, what it felt when the tiny reward centers lit up in its tiny brain.

Now with what appears to be over a thousand of them creating a line from the trash can to a hole under the sink, I was feeling a bit less empathetic.  I related this to the person who Iwas talking to on the phone.

“Kill them” she said matter-of-factly. As if it was obvious that the arrangement of star shit that me and her were made up from was vastly superior to the slightly smaller simpler arrangement that made up the ants. I grabbed a bottle of dish soap and spilled it on the hole under the sink. It swallowed up the ants like a dam breaking over a small town. I then grabbed a spray bottle and sprayed the line from the trash to the sink like a plane dropping bombs on fleeing refugees. And the tiny moving black dots turned into not moving black dots. I was a little disturbed at how I felt almost nothing while doing this. Was this how dictators felt when they killed people? Was it because I was literally  so high above them that I could simply turn them off forever without a second thought?

I pulled out the trash and began to clean the whole kitchen. As I mopped the floor I felt something on my bicep. It wasn’t  pain. More of a feeling of slight discomfort. I looked at my bicep and saw a single ant trying to dig its mandibles into my skin. Without thinking I said “good for you”.

The ant reached me. It made me feel something and I had to acknowledge it. I then put on the sink. It was already partially poisoned from the cleaning spray I used. It wriggled in a way that I could not deny was pain. Yet I hesitated to kill it. If I put it out of its misery i would have to acknowledge that it was capable of misery. That I was a source of its misery.

I ignored it.

I cleaned off the counter around the ant. Sweeping crumbs into my palms that were 10 times bigger than it.

when I was younger i would take some bread to the ant hills and sprinkle crumbs on them. I would watch them dance excitedly as they collected the crumbs.

I wiped up the trail of dead ants on the floor and tossed them in the trash. All while the single Ant on the sink counter writhed in pain. Finally i couldn't take anymore and I pressed on it hard with my finger, ending the ant’s pain. I flicked it into the trash with the rest of them and continued living the rest of my life.

To and Fro

I try to do one thing, and I end up giving up and starting something else, either because it is too hard or because I have lost interest in the thing I was doing, or sometimes it is because something more interesting has popped into my head and I will suddenly divert all of my attention towards this new exciting project!

 Until of course I am distracted by something else. the cycle seems perpetual unless I'm medicated.

I no longer have issues with the fact that I'm only functional member of society unless I have amphetamines running through my veins. I no longer take issue with the fact that I will need help sometimes to get what I want. I'm less irked by the fact that defining factors of my personality are easily redefined and "remedied" by a pill.

what bothers me is that I'm naturally ambitious, 

and it is a quality that I have learned to tie down and strangle with a thread of past failures and disappointments. I ride on a seesaw of passionate enthusiasm juxtaposed with numbing crushing disappointment. the ups and downs of life are chafing me. 

and apparently talcum powder causes cancer. 

some people are better at making chafing look like a swagger, I am not one of them now. but on the next swing up I might feel differently.

Temporary Center

I stepped out of a hot shower this morning  to find light coming from the window making all the steam in the small bathroom glow.

It moved and rippled with every move I made, and as I raised my hand the steam around it floated off and away from it, pushed away by my body heat. Suddenly I was a Poseidon at the center of a vast ocean. Every breath I took caused a tide, and with the smallest gesture little hurricanes burst from my fingertips. As I dried myself off and began to dress, specks of dust came floating from my clothes. the dust mingling with the steam created small solar systems before my eyes, I gently spun and the tiny stars spun around me. I became the center of a galaxy in my aunt’s tiny bathroom.

The world does not revolve around me. I allow my insignificance to be a factor of liberation rather than discontent to counter  my egocentric mindset. But all the points on a scale are  subjective. Everything is subjective except facts. Facts are like physical objects, they can be buried, crushed, or burnt, but their mass will remain constant and they could never truly disappear or change. Truth on the other hand, is a concept, Truth is pliable, personal, perishable, part of how we see ourselves. And while the fact remains that I am an insignificant speck in a vast, cold and uncaring universe. My truth changed for a moment today, and I enjoyed being me.

CHECK ENGINE.

I was raised believing I was incredible.
 never in my life have I doubted that my family doesn't love me or isn't incredibly proud of me.
 perhaps that is what's missing. perhaps a lack of shame or urgency has stagnated me. 
I've broken down because I have ignored the "check engine" light in the back of my mind because I never thought I should worry about it.
 the fantasy version I've constructed of myself can do no wrong, but this facade is cracked like my windshield.
 there are things about myself that I don't like.
 I don't like that I distract myself the moment I am faced with an obstacle, 
I don't like that I've become so hungry for affection that I'm willing to manipulate people to get it.
 I don't like that I catch myself feeling empty and thinking that other people can compensate for that. 
 mostly what I don't like about myself is simply that,
 I don't like myself.
I have been fired from my job,
I have been falling behind in school,
 and feeling so lonely that I've resorted to using dating websites and hook-up apps.
 the "check Engine light" has been replaced by an unhealthy rattling screeching sound, 
  my trunk wont close, the crack in my windshield seems to grow a little every day, my headlights are dimming on a dark road, and I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with my blinkers... 
 It is time to either get a full overhaul or get a new car, and although my ACTUAL car has all these problems, I don't have the money to do anything about it.
 but as for me, my money is time, and I think its Time I spent on myself.
 maybe get a few loose screws tightened, re-calibrate, brighten up, pop a few dents, god knows my stick shift needs some attention... 
but mostly its time to fill up on gas, and make a decision on where this moving wreck is headed. 

"Eggory"

Last night I had a dream that I was dressed up in an egg costume and I was singing "I'm Eggory the 8th" I was also standing on a stool with a noose around my neck. 

When I woke up I was worried that this dream might an omen that I would die today.

I get in the shower and rinse the inside of an empty shampoo bottle to get the very last essence of shampoo onto my head, I manage to get some soulless suds out of it, I find the discarded nozzle and in a maneuver equivalent to toddler CPR I manage to get a few drops of the pure stuff out of it. 

Oh yeah now we're cookin! I ponder my dream and I think to myself how statistically speaking it is now less likely that I will die today, because what are the odds that I would die on a day that my subconscious decided to go Edgar Allen Pun on me?

 I then come to a worrisome conclusion that statistics don't actually affect chance or vice versa, as I flop around trying to get conditioner out of my eye, I think of how trying to predict the future with statistics is now just science backed superstition, another attempt to control this crazy world around us, like religion. 

As I climb out of the shower I think of how we come into this world with no real control of what happens around us, until we learn how to speak. It is now that we can ask for things, 

"Mommy I'm hungry!" 

"Daddy I want out of this bath!" 

Suddenly we can affect the world around us! But then we grow up, and we no longer see our parents as all-powerful cookie and bath time suppliers, but our mentality of asking doesn't really change, except now that our parents aren't masters of our fate then who is? 

 I go downstairs to the kitchen and pour myself some cereal with raisins. We never really stop treating the universe like a parent, some of us pray to it, asking the big Daddy in the sky for help, some try to predict the universe by its behavior: Like an astute child might know that mommy isn't so nice when she has the "grownup bottle", so it's time to play quietly in their room, AKA looks like a storm is coming, better get to higher ground AKA time to get the f*^%k out of Syria, 

and some of us assume that we are just children raised by children who have been here longer, Walking around on a great big beautiful ball of mud. 

And we might as well sit down and make a nice mud castle or two before we become part of the mud ourselves. 

I finish my cereal and take out the garbage. I decide that I will probably not die today, but that doesn't mean I won't, just like any other day really. 

So I might as well wash the dishes and pretend to be master of my fate.

TimeyWimey

I wake up feeling like I should go back to sleep. My hand slithers out from the protection of my blanket to seek my phone, it is exactly 7AM. I roll over attempting to delay consciousness. Too late though as I've already started thinking, The neurons in my brain have started chirping excitedly like an overly enthusiastic flock of sparrows, everything I need to do today lights up behind my eyes like Christmas lights in November.

 I shield myself with funny pictures and memes on my phone, muting the chattering birds and dimming the electric pissing reindeer. My escapism is interrupted by my peripheral vision, the blinds on my window have sliced the sun light hitting my wall, cutting it into little rows of rectangles, new rectangles form one after the other on my wall, with a gentle subtlety they fade in as the sun rises from behind an apartment building.

 I realize that my comprehension of time was woefully mechanical, associating time with the rhythmic ticking of clocks, but now as I watch the sunlight trickle into my room like a warm flow of honey, I realize time isn't a beat, it's a crescendo, one that will never abate... 

I decide to go put pants on.

עולמים

 הדלקנו נירות ונקית לי את האוזניים,

קניתי חלב קוקוס שסרפו לך העיניים,

שחינו על חופיי צרפת והתמסתלנו בגרמניה, ואני זוכר שפעם כמאת נדקרנו באיטליה

 חוויתי איתך דברים שלא יקרו יותר לעולמים, תמיד קשה לומר שלום לאנשים שאוהבים.

הסתנו את העיניים מפנטזיה מתפוררת, התעוררתי מחלום ואני אם מישהי אחרת.

המשכנו הלה עם הסיפור של החיים, עך לב שבור לא מתרפה הוא רק גודל סביב הסדקים 

חוויתי איתך דברים שלא יקרו יותר לעולמים תמיד קשה לומר שלום לאנשים שאוהבים

היו זמנים טובים והיו גם קצת פחות

 משהיה היה והכל יכול להיות

יש עבר ויש עתיד אבל חיים רק בהווה

כל רגע שהיה איתך היה לי די שווה

חוויתי איתך דברים שלא יקרו יותר לעולמים תמיד קשה לומר שלום לאנשים שאוהבים

 

Bruno

I wake up in a bed that's not mine, not nearly as exciting as the stereotype entails, as what woke me up isn't some stranger from a promiscuous encounter, but Bruno, the gigantic rottweiler mix that I've been dog-sitting for the last week.


He needs a walk and he won't hesitate to bark at me to emphasize his point. I mutter my resistance and get up to feed him. Hoping that will satisfy him for an hour or two as I crawl back into bed.

I hear him wolf down the food in the other room. Just as I close my eyes a cutlery-rattling bark reminds me that the only bitch in this apartment is me.

I sigh and get dressed. I put his chain leash around his neck and take him out.

As we walk towards the elevator to get to the ground level I am confronted with a spectacular sunrise. I feel a touch of gratitude as I push UG⭐️. (Upper ground)

as we exit the building we are confronted by what looks like a tiny Cerberus.
on closer inspection it's three small fluffy dogs bunched together and led by a large bald black man with sunglasses. the three small dogs bark and growl at Bruno. The man leading them giggles, as to him they might have names like Charles, Frufru and Lady Fuzzington, but to Bruno they could easily be called breakfast lunch and dinner. Bruno pulls on the leash but I deny him a fuzzy snack and a lawsuit as we continue onward. 

      We meet another dog but this one has manners, and as is proper Doggy etiquette, both parties proceed to deeply inhale each-others genitals. Bruno could spend all day like this so I drag him away from his new buddy and we continue our walk.

 Only when one walks a dog or works at a hospital does one know the experience of looking hopefully at a sphincter. When Bruno finally finds a worthy patch of grass to soil, I collect his expressionist art in a small bag, I look up and see the sidewalk bathed in light from the morning sun.
 I would never see this without a dog. I wouldn't have a reason to wake up so early, just as we round the corner back to the apartment I hear banjo music. Some nomad is sitting by the entrance to the apartment and plucking a banjo, an oddly delightful surrealist moment as one does not usually hear live Banjo at the corner of Ventura and Centinela. 
The touch of gratitude I felt before grows exponentially. 
Some dogs are seeing-eye dogs, 
but all dogs are seeing-life dogs.

Long dead light

I sit at a tiny booth and pretend I have authority over people and which movie they should watch.

 Benevolently allowing them to pass if they have the correct piece of paper.

 As the people cross my little greeter booth to watch movie stars, 
I spend my time stargazing people.

 A little boy steps on an escalator while clinging to his father's hand. He slips on the escalator and swings slightly, never letting go of the arm that is the size of his body, he slips because the gravity which is collectively pulling us all down isn't quite as strong as the force keeping the child attached to his dad.

 I watch a mother with three slightly older slightly unruly children come towards my little booth.
 The children immediately start raiding the 3D glasses as I helplessly watch, words of protest from their mother go unheard until she uses the sentence of doom:"I think we should go home"
 halting them in their tiny tracks, 
they hastily put my glasses back in their little basket and temporarily behave themselves. 

I do my duty of tearing their tickets in half and unleash them on their designated theater. 

As the mother crosses my threshold the children take off again like a pack of rabid wolves that had spotted a crippled buffalo.

 At first it seems they are just running around wildly but I start to notice a pattern.
 the invisible force doesn't let them get too far.

 They orbit their mother like little moons around a planet.
A couple holding hands catches my eye,

 she says something and smiles, 

he laughs.

 A warmth radiates off of them like a sun. the invisible force 
where they hold hands,
like a hydrogen reaction
 in the heart of a star.

 A happiness that seems to make the movie hall just a little bit brighter. 
a brightness that bounces off of me
 like moonlight, 
I feel like I should be sad,
 but I catch myself smiling. 

I can't help but think how a collapsed sun turns into a black hole,

 a thing that warps space and time,
 an invisible force that pulls me from my tiny booth to a far away place 
and a long time ago,
 where the combination of gravity and love break a cheap Ikea bed and create a memory that shines bright, long after the star has died.

And until I do.

I tear another ticket and ponder if there is anything more beautiful than starlight.

Reflections

In my apartment bathroom I am confronted by 3 reflections of myself.

One is the face I've known and watched transform for almost 25 years, familiar.

I know thousands of expressions and goofy faces on this canvas of skin, yet there is another mirror on the wall to my right that reflects the first mirror, splitting it and reversing it, I'm confronted by the face that the rest of the world sees, my right arm is on the left side of that image and the scar on my left cheek is on the right.

This face seems less familiar and ironically more worn, yet the most jarring thing about it is that it doesn't look me in the eye.

if I met this person on the street I might casually pass him by.

Just another face in a world of millions, making me feel an odd normalcy that was strangely lacking.




I'm on the sky train from JFK airport to Jamaica station.

I stand near the back and look out to the train car behind us, I can see through to the people there but the window is at an angle that reflects the sky above us, making it look like they are standing among the clouds,

this reflects back to me drifting in a sky of my mind, melancholy daydreams float by pushed by thoughts.

My mind is clouded by old storms and vapor trails of memories that slice through my brain.

Echoing my rather bumpy flight to NY.

Yet serenity returns to my skies as I observe the Angels in transit.




I'm in a bathroom in Manhattan.

Two mirrors face each other and I stand in the middle, watching a line of young men curve off into a green blotchy eternity.

The same face in a world of millions and a million worlds. I feel crowded.

And slightly less alone.

Seasoning.

Bitterness has become a habit.

It's not even true bitterness, more of an afterthought.

Like a man with no faith absentmindedly kissing the mezuzah as he enters his home. A thing of routine. The type of action that becomes so ingrained in day to day life that it's no longer a conscious decision, but a reflex, like breathing or walking or wanting to hug Elijah wood.

A thing so commonplace that it is no longer relevant, and so it becomes just another forgotten moment, not necessary to the archive we call memory, piled on the mound of other forgotten moments that obscures our view of the past and makes us look back in shock and wonder where all our time went.

I sprinkle bitterness on my life the way people add salt to their meal before tasting it, And yet my bitterness is bland.

I lay in bed and look back on my past regrets and no longer feel a sting, but an incessant poking to the side of the head. I'm not just sick of bitterness, I am bored of it, and Perhaps being bored is a sign of healing, perhaps I have literally spent enough of my time to move on from bitterness.


after all, Time is the best medicine that eventually kills you.

Feces and fees

"Shit happens, that's why we call it life."


Words meant to reassure me, words meant to normalize a fuck-up.


A mistake that puts me in the passenger seat next to an Uber driver named Antonio, he's friendly and we talk about the lack of applications for a BA in math in the real world, a conversation that almost distracts me from the fact that we are on our way to the impound to pick up my car.


This morning I woke up to find that where I parked my car last night was now a freshly paved road with a distinct lack of car. The slight panic I feel seems to complete my metamorphosis into a true Angeleno.


My first call is to my fairy god mother. A friend of a friend who pretty much adopted me when I first arrived in LA.


Her instructions lead me to Antonio and both of us to the impound. I dwell on her words of comfort. “Shit happens, that's why we call it life.”


It amuses me how literal that phrase is, a thing is defined as Alive because it absorbs and excretes.


I poop therefore I am.


And right now I seem to have pooped a large fee to recover my car. I part ways with Antonio, joking that if he hears gunshots he should drive away. He laughs nervously and speeds off... Maybe that wasn't an appropriate joke....






Everyone at the impound is pretty friendly and professional. I leave with my baby and a bottle of water offered in good will. I think of the phrase


“hindsight is a bitch.”

 yet I realize she isn't a bitch, she's a dominatrix, Leather clad in regret and wielding a whip of everything we could have done better. One who we crawl back to because we feel like we deserve to be punished. I have been an irresponsible naughty boy!


It's been a shitty day.


I feel so alive.

Orpheus has logged out

She hits me like a lightning bolt.

A quick pop-up flashes on the bottom of my screen accompanied by bubbly sound common among all messenger programs.

It might as well have sounded like thunder.

Its a message from her,

She says “ im ok”

she's answering a long dormant message I left her a few weeks back, maybe its a moment of weakness or pain or pride, Or basically the exact same reason that I caved in and wrote to her in the first place.

Still reeling from the shock-wave all I can manage is a small

“I’m happy to hear that”

she asks a question that would take me hours to answer.

“and u?”

some part of my brain that isn't still vibrating tells my fingers to write

“im ok” back to her

She proceeds to tell me she's passed all her exams and she's moving on to her last year for her bachelors degree at university.

“I have to go now, bye” she types.

out of the millions of things I wanted to say I manage to compress and compact it all into neat little-

“im proud of you, bye”

she's gone.

The little green light indicating that she was online.

Somewhere,

sitting in-front of a computer and talking to me turns into a little yellow

“away”

Leaving a chasm in her wake that sucks in everything like the punctured wall of a submarine

I feel like a ghost just ran through me.

And it takes effort not to follow that ghost,

not to charge after it into Hades wielding a lyre. Playing Cerberus a lullaby, rowing the river styx and charming the pants off of the big man himself, begging him to let me take it back, take back the ghost of the person I was when I was with her.

And yet all I can do is look back, all I can do is look back and doom myself over and over again as I send that ghost falling back into the pit because looking forward means I'll never see it again.

So I play this twisted version of soul yoyo.

Flinging my dead relationship up and down. Not letting it rest in peace but be trapped on a bungie-chord of self pity and longing.

Parting is such sweet sorrow.

A sweetness that has become a drug, taken again and again to fend of the harsh reality of growing up.

fancies of flight

I walk home after a long day of smiling and joking with people who are on a first name basis with me because I wear a name tag.

 The night breeze is cold and pleasant compared to what felt like being microwaved earlier that afternoon. 

My feet ache and I wish I could just take off and fly home, soar through the night like some minimum wage earning owl.

 The darkness and privacy of the long walk  spark a slight madness in me. 

suddenly I wonder if it's only because I know I can't fly that's stopping me from doing so. Maybe it's just a matter of baby steps.

 I walk under a tree and see a branch that's just out of reach.

 I know that if I jump high enough I'll reach it.

 So I do

. And then under the next tree I look for a branch that's slightly higher then that. Each time I leap and gain just enough height to touch the next dangling leaf, allowing the limit of how high I know I can jump to grow. Every time just a little bit higher. 

But reality is the most vivid dream of all and the ache in my feet is now a throbbing. 

I snap out of my optimistic madness and resign myself to the earth, allowing myself once again to be oppressed by the truth of the world rather then the truth of my soul.

 My destination isn't my shared room where the only things that belong to me are my sheets and laundry,

 but my car,

 a messy thing with cracks in the windshield, rust on the frame and a dent in the trunk the will never let it truly close completely, a beast that screams and whines if I pull the wheel too far to each side, a car that is a deeper reflection of myself then any mirror could be,

 it's also where I left my cigarettes. 

I finally reach where she's parked outside the apartment.

 I climb into the passenger's side because the window on the driver's side won't open. 

I light a cigarette and switch on the radio. Someone is reading poetry.

 I'm filled with a moment of pure melancholic masturbatory satisfaction. I catch a glimpse of myself in the door mirror.

 I look like douch bag. 

Worms and spiders.

It's a party.
 It's loud and exciting but I can't find who I'm looking for,
 I go upstairs. 
Someone is using the shower so I sneak by into the bedroom. 
The love of my life is pretending to be asleep there. As I open the door I can see her with her eyes closed.
 She's trying not to smile as I silently crawl into the bed with her, I lean in close. 

She makes a sound like a distressed goat.

 I wake up. 
My roommate has sleep apnea. 
I knew that last month when I moved in. What I didn't know is that sleep apnea apparently means that my roommate will randomly start moaning like he's losing his anal virginity. 
I glare at him for awhile, hating him for interrupting my dream about my ex. I look at the clock and see that it's 6:30 in the morning. I decide On a whim that I should go jogging.
 I tell myself 20 minutes of jogging should be good.
 What I thought was going to be 20 minutes turned out to be 2 minutes of jogging and 18 minutes of my body telling me to go fuck myself.
 I walk along, spitting and hating myself for being out of shape when I spot an enormous spider web on a gate.
 I stop to admire it. Thinking that perhaps witnessing this natural beauty is worth the pain in my knees and my shortness of breath. 
This thought dies quickly as I'm one of those unfortunate people who mistakes bitterness and sarcasm for intelligence.
 I'm almost back at the apartment. I decide to push myself a little, I figure that a touch of self respect would be worth the pain as I try to jog all the way back.
 I pass another jogger. I try to smile at her, hoping for some sense of camaraderie,
 hey friend you look like you have your shit together!
 I too am one with my shit together!
 She makes no eye contact as we jog passed each other, I guess she's to busy having her life together to notice me. I'm about 4 minutes from the house when I stop running to catch my breath again. As I walk up a steep hill I spot a worm crawling across the pavement I bend down to pick it up but it spasms and wriggles. I assure it I mean it no harm and pick up and put it in the dirt under a rose bush. I wonder if the dirt there might be too hard so I try to dig it up a bit. The worm ignores the little ditch I made for it and crawls under a little rose leaf. I get up and continue towards the apartment. Feeling a sense of camaraderie.