Notes from an IPod Touch Pt. 3: Theme of coming up short

My Nemesis

My nemesis is tall and thin
Not goofy
Appropriately funny
A "joy to know"

He makes right decisions
The kind I would hesitate to make
And he doesn't try too hard
Always charming and clever

He has goals
Plans to achieve
And is realistic about them

He is everything I am not
But it's not what he is
And what I'm not
That makes him my mortal enemy

It's how he always gets the girl I want
without fail

But then again
He's the one they wanted anyway



Forgotten and Hidden

There are a lot of vast empty spaces in the world
And I occupy one
And feel it in my core
My heart
These dirty lungs
They fill with the beginnings of
deep sighs
No relief, just anxiety really
Crunching disappointment
Alone
This word that seeks me out
To smother my sense of trust
In positivity and hopeful feelings
Gone missing with my friends
I feel abandoned in this bed
at 45 minutes past 12AM
with the sounds of trucks on the 210 freeway
echoing off the San Gabriels
who even now spy through my window shades
The faint whoosh,
like a constant reminder
That people will pass you by like a long haul rig
In the darkness I feel my weight
my size
And I'm embarrassed to exist like this
With such fervor that I purposely shut myself off
in this isolation chamber of a room
Go Away
I think when somebody calls
But I want them here
I wish to God that I won't be alone
and it consumes me
A kind of paradox
Enveloped by emptiness
While I sing a song for no one to hear
And hope, beyond a reasonable measure of realism,
for someone to join me in the
chorus

In bluntness,
I am the song

The tragedy of the left (past tense)

God, it's a warm October day
isn't it?
The heat wrapping around
like a ribbon
or maybe more like a noose

Not everything is doom and gloom
the sun still shines
for the time being

Nobody has a clue what you want
until you speak up
That's the beauty of thought
it's secrecy
and there are no mind readers

Each person is a story untold
a novel unrealized
a poem without verse

And existence as a whole is really just humanity
trying to pry details from the authors
so we can hear another good story

In that way
everyone is a writer
sitting at their keyboard
while they walk through life

The good ones often keep it to themselves
While the desperate ones put it in type

So even on too warm days
prose is in the air
when it's just another ho hum afternoon

Writer's block could never happen in reality

Summer weather forever

"What's not to love about the weather!?"

By this point I had a look on my face somewhere between shock and annoyance. Why were we arguing about the weather? Who cares, forget the weather, that's not the point. The weather is never the reason to have a conversation, unless you're a meteorologist, and really even then.

"Tim that's not what I'm saying at all, the weather is fine for what it is. It's just a combination..."

"No, you said why can't we have distinct seasons like other places," he interrupted. "Where else on earth can you have mid nineties weather in October? I could go to the beach on Halloween while the rest of America is stuck inside getting warm."

I gave up. There was no sense going on with it. I sank back into a chair while he stood red faced and triumphant that our disagreement had produced no viable base for my supposed view.

"Listen, I like the beach as much as everybody but don't you get tired of summer by the fourth or fifth month?" I pleaded as a last ditch effort to stalemate him. "I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just a little sick of it."

What I didn't say was that I was tired of this place.

I saw a few of my other friends motion to each other for a smoke - a mute hand gesture like a horizontal peace sign kissing the lips- and decided to follow.

Outside the warm air was calm, dead, like the doldrums in old pirate stories. The doldrums represented a certain type of death. A lack of breeze, a lack of movement. Dead in the water as the saying goes. They each lit a cigarette and I asked for one myself.

The smoke hung in the air like spindly webbing and the nicotine hit my bloodstream after a few puffs.

"You feeling good Evan?"

"Yeah I think so, man."

There was a few moments of silence and peace. But peace, like a nicotine buzz, can only last so long.

"Do you ever feel stuck, Sean?"

"All the time Evan, all the time." he said.

"What do you do about it? Because it's all I think about anymore." I said.

He looked down at the ground and sucked his cigarette to the filter before flicking it out in a plastic painters bucket. For a second he just smiled at me, holding his breath.

"I just wait it out," he said finally as smoke flowed with his words. "That's all we really can do I think."

We all came back inside again. I wished they would turn on the air, it was getting uncomfortably warm in the living room with everyone else.

Sometimes the doldrums would last only a few days. The wind would pick up and the sail would furl with the power of the air. Pushing onward toward the goal, with minimal time lost. Other times they lasted for months and even if the breeze finally arrived it was too late. At what point do you get on a raft and row; hoping to hit an island or another shipping lane? The hardest part would be watching the ship blip out of existence as it crossed the horizon. The last comfort zone, a bastion of relief and familiarity no longer within reach.

Sometimes it takes a deadly calm to realize it's time to make a move. And that was the day I decided, for sure, not to wait it out.

When you become one with the chair

This is me waking from a dream.

This is me weary eyed and aching. Always aching. Always staring down, watching my chest rise and fall -checking to see if this is really happening. The years, they stretched by. Some yawned, others blinked. Now they count down.

This is my chair, in a dark room. Broken down cushions. Worn corduroy into shiny skids were i'd been for so long. Creakiness, the rule, not exception. The fabric smells like me, has become a part of me and together we watch the Television set.

The room is dark with late afternoon blackness. Sun peering through the blades, like a dog watches through chain linked fence. Wanting to come in, but knowing the unshakable certainty of boundary.

This is me adjusting to white light. For a second, I am being born. Sensations I'm not supposed to remember are coursing my synapses, playing over and over and over in my mind.

"Honey, they'll be here in 10 minutes, I just spoke to them on the phone."

"Okay, I'll get up. Could you turn out the light, though? It's giving me a headache."

And the lights went out.

This is my peaceful 10 minutes. Everything I'd worked for is here with me. The house, the furniture, the photographs on the wall, the television set, this chair. All of it my own and of my consequence.

I sit up. I'm not so strong any more. Like the rusty tools that stare at me from the patio, our capability does not necessitate our use.

The knock at the door - and tapping below that.

I am 75. Why did the years skip me over? To be young when I went to sleep and geriatric upon waking.

"Grandpa!" they all say and I stand up. A pain shoots through my body but I smile and hug them.

"Don't be so rough with Grandpa kids, he's tired."

"Watch what you say son, I don't feel any older than you do," I say.

"Come on in the kitchen, dinner is just about ready."

They leave and I exhale. In the other room, plates clash and silverware jingle - in my room bones grind and cancer cells multiply. The pain is excruciating. I feel like I'm dying. This isn't right. I'm not part of this life yet. To have lived the story and forgotten the arch - it's nauseating. And I break down. Slumping into my chair which is part of me. I bite my hand, blood dripping and tears well up, but I feel nothing. I see my degree, framed and set above the mantle while I black out.

Then dark.

This is me waking from a dream.

Negative

"A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house"
-Matt 13:57



The only way I can think to describe my life back then would be "drunk on unhappiness". Maybe it was a product of growing up on post hardcore music or Woody Allen films but it seemed like there was no spring to the winter of my discontent.

The worst moments were the late nights. A bright computer screen and the looming, nearly audible, grind of time passing and being wasted. Waking up late because, hell, why not? Staying up late for the same reasons and perpetuating a dull existence.

I wanted so badly to give it all a reason - to say that the small things, the insignificant experiences, could be a microcosm for bigger things. Thinking I was struggling for my art. But in reality I was just like rubber soled shoes on melting ice. The worst was imminent, all that was left was for fate to decide if i slipped or broke through.

I thought I could write something important back then. Grow into something worth listening to. I would look at my favorite stories like arrows pointing to the tidy slot my voice could fit into. I have no idea why that thought popped into my head. The notion that I had a chance and the blind hope in a phrase like "making it."

I was watching TV with my parents one early afternoon. A recorded late night talkshow that we could all agree on. I always talked when I watched TV. It might have been when I was most conversational.

"You're always so negative Evan."

"But this band is a joke, look at that guy, he's seriously convinced that he is a cowboy."

"Don't you have anything positive to say ever, son?"

"They can't play more songs, I guess that's a good thing."

"See? Listen to yourself every once in a while, not one good thing comes out. Nobody likes hanging around a critical person."

I was the accused in my own home -though, as they saw it, it was their home and I was still living in it. A sentiment which was at first unsettling but it seemed like every day I felt more like a guest. My parents were probably right, I was being negative, even prodding them a bit. But the more they derided my behavior, the less I wanted to tone it down.

"Whatever, I'm just saying-"

"That's the thing Evan, you don't have to say anything at all."

"You're the one that asked me why I was laughing. I mean the guy has two slide guitarists. And the sound is so cleaned up, it's a wonder they didn't just play the track over speakers while he two-stepped around the stage."

"You can't even do it Evan. What happens when you have a wife someday? she wont want to listen to that kind of talk all day."

I just ignored them. I wasn't rebelling because there's no point in rebelling in your 20's. I wasn't even trying to make a point. Really all I wanted was to be left alone. If I couldn't be listened to in my own home then why would anyone else care to?

"Fine, I won't be negative, I'll just go upstairs."

And then I left the room.

Harvest Moon

I really needed this
I thought
sitting on the icy metal walls
of my truck bed

A starless night
without breeze
and clouds loitering in the valley

It's that time of year again
I'm lonely and cold
the cold I can stand though

Three months to the finish line
will I make a sprint for it
or roll into another New Year's
dreary eve?

It's so quiet and I feel like
I own the whole valley
and everything around me
nothing less
and nothing too

I shook hands with a flower
the other night
her petal extended and I looked her right in the eyes
Her name lost in a meadow of others
But it's her image I can't shake

I kept thinking
she's so pretty, she's so pretty
and she was

So much so I forgot myself

I'll never see her again
Just another memory
I wanted to scribble down while the inspiration was still warm