2 - IMPRESSIONS

I must confess that my desire to impress is far less potent than it once was. I used to want the world to know how amazing I was because I knew there was something inside my head that I needed to share and I wanted you to care about what I thought – how I felt and prove that even if I’d been dealt a losing hand I could still come out on top.

Now, however, I don’t care. This is just where I’m at and honestly it seems fair enough. I don’t need the validation of a single person or a nation but I wonder how I’ll find the drive to get back behind the wheel of this situation called life.

I am a Husband, Father and a Son and somewhere along the line writing stopped being what I did for fun and became a job and I’m okay with being done with the old me, mostly – but who am I now?

I keep thinking that if I stop, take a deep breath and look around it will come to me somehow, and I feel like writing about it will help me sort it all out.

I know that there are words left in me, thoughts I want to see on the page. They aren’t stories or tales of glory but ideas that reside inside my mind at 6:55 A.M. on a Saturday morning when I can’t sleep.

Life has a different meaning than it did when I was young and I harbor the hope that in 2 more years when I’m 41, I’ll have it all figured out, but I don’t want to wait so I’ll just shout out loud today – “This is what life is all about! This is the here and now and it is beautiful…”

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

I miss it; that feeling of starting from scratch – of writing every day. It made me feel like there was something in this world that could wash away the filth; that offered relief.

I dreamt of novels and stories and the strife of day to day life was my inspiration, but I’ve begun to think that I am nothing more than a poet. I wonder about all of this when I reminisce about the past and the dreams I had. I wonder if stanzas and chopped up lines can turn into something bigger; something full of meaning.


So I start with just a few words; and I move on from there trying to create a piece of work that has substance and form; something more than rhythms and rhyming – moving towards a vision that has more to do with timing.

I refuse to conform; and hope that each day from this point forward I will look back on these moments and know that there is no beginning or end - only the time that we spend in-between birth and death – and all of it nothing more than one experience after another, and I think, “This is what religion must feel like.”

SNEAK PEEK

See that dirty old man at the liquor store, down on the floor picking up a quarter? He’s watching the dime at the counter. He’s taking his time.

She’s a collage of color; short white dress, fancy shoes,  – and the old man’s a mess of emotions. He hasn’t been laid since Ethel died - how time flies. How many years has he been sitting there by himself on that front porch?

He won’t let it show. He wishes he could talk to her, just say a few words, but he doesn’t want her to know how weak he is, how sad, how alone.

See that dime at the counter in the liquor store, looking out the corner of her eye at the man stooping down to the floor? She’s seen him so many times, sitting on the front porch of his house. He looks so much like her father it bothers her.
 
She knows he’s all alone now, since his wife died. She wonders, how many times has he cried. What was her name?

She knows she looks like she’s “got it together”, but the dress is torn at the hem and the diamond earrings are the only ones she has that are real: a $60 deal at K-Mart. She wishes she could console him, make a connection.

She hands over her cash, gets her bottle of gin, and relishes the moment when she can pour an over-sized splash of liquor into her glass. Her father has been gone for only 2 months, but it feels like forever. Like she’ll never find peace again and she’s afraid if she lets anyone in, even a lonely old man that they will see how weak she is, how sad, how alone.