Winter Rain

  My sleep was uneasy and some sightless horror chased me into the gray dawn. The morning, hardly distinguished from night, mocked the weariness in my limbs. Born into the gray as a fish below the ambits of light, I struggled upward, hoping to find a point where reach could meet reach.

  The cool, damp air crept between my seams pressed dead lips to my flesh. I showered until steam billowed into the hallway, heat grabbed rapaciously by the darkness. Below my red, scalded flesh, was slate, cold and unmoved.

  Driving through puddles, a gray wall of clouds caressing the skyline, like a Siren reaching down to stroke a piece of driftwood. She wonders about the acorn that became the tree that became the boat. As I wonder about the thought that became the word that became the virus in your heart.

Finality

Well, it's over. A brief 2 months and 17 days.  The candle burned, then flickered, then bloomed brightly one last time before leaving the room to darkness.

So what did I learn? What's the takeaway?
I  try not to do regrets. What good are they? Every regret can be redirected into a lesson.

I should have listened to all the warning bells that went off in my head right away. The feeling of being tired, unbalanced, almost manic. I should have realized the cold seas of her eyes were the same that filled men's lungs as they sank to the bottom. I should have realized when there was no honeymoon period, when, after the starter pistol went off, I was pulling my feet through mud. Fighting for every inch of affection, running through the hurdles, too tired to lift my legs over.

So what did I learn. Relationships are like a dance, both people are responsible for their own balance, but when you can trust someone enough, you can start to play with counterbalance. That's where you can explore different centers of gravity, push yourself beyond what you could achieve alone. But when your partner drops you again and again, it's time to find a different dance.

August 28th, I sent a text to my friend Jen. I wrote:

She is going to either utterly destroy me,

or she's going to gild me with invicible armor. 

Either way, it's going to be a hell of a ride


So clearly I wasn't totally blind to the perils. I saw great potential for either success or failure. 

I am relieved that it's over. Relieved that I get to take care of myself for a while. 

And can I just say for a second that I'm a great fucking catch? Can I say that? I am bright, funny, and charming. I'm a good dancer. I am financially secure. I am disease free. I can speak, with some eloquence, on most topics of conversation. I am a passionate and attentive lover. I am thoughtful and kind. I surround myself with good, honest, well-intentioned people. I have an open mind and a full heart. I respect people and their stories. I constantly strive to understand the world better. I am playful and witty. I like to play games, to improvise, to "yes-and" almost anything. People at my job like me and value me. 

What the fuck was she thinking, throwing this away? Driving me to the point of insanity. Draining every last ounce of energy. What was she thinking?

Sundays with M.

Dear Follower,

As there is now only one (1) of you, I guess these have become letters more than blog posts. Although perhaps even you having adjusted your notification settings so that my infrequent updates don't manage to make their way into your sphere of perception. Nevertheless, I shall blog on. It's almost liberating knowing that these little posts are more of an offering to the goddess Entropy.
Maybe Entropy is male. It seems like destruction is more under the purview of the less fair sex and creation under the purview of the fairer. Maybe, intrepid follower, you will grant me the poetic license to do what I may and if the gender of my personal pronoun offends, then I shall hide behind my aegis of atheism.

I met a girl. Her name is M[redacted]. She is...complicated. She is complicated and lovely. She is complicated, lovely, and warm...like a slow sip of scotch.  She looks taller than she is; she has pale blue eyes, like the heart of a glacier. The heart where the ice is pure because all imperfections have been forced out under titanic pressures. Shipwreck allusion unintended.
She has dark hair and a dark wit. She dances like a succubus on duty. She can pierce my heart with a glance.
I've known her for fewer than 14 days.
I feel especially exposed with her. I told her as much after an incredible night of swing dancing. I told her that she scared me because I didn't know what she was going to do with me. This sounds, inadvertently serial-killer-ish, but what I meant was that I was...like those Black Lab lyrics "Will you be there on the ground if I should fall...fall for you." This relationship is starting to feel like a trust fall, but I didn't even look behind me to see if she's looking.
We exchanged books. She gave me The Perks of Being a Wallflower and I gave her Jack of Shadows. Aside from the fact that you would be hard pressed to find two more different novels,
Perks was fantastic. Truly the heartbreaking work of a brilliant mind. The more I read the more I think I learned about M. Someone's favorite books can tell you more about them than a direct interview.

My word well is starting to dry up, so I say goodnight, gentle follower. I hope whoever you are, wherever you are, you are loved the way you deserve to be loved.

Your friend,
Charlie

The Veil

I have nightmares. I don't know where the line between nightmare and night terror is, but I think my experiences lie somewhere in the middle.

I will wake up, sometimes just 20 minutes after I've fallen asleep, and I will be haunted by some image I saw in the twilight kingdom. I will see, with my waking eyes, some phantom, some demon that existed only in dream. The fact that I can carry that horror from my dream state to my waking life reminds me how thin is the veil between dreams and reality.
Sometimes I will awake in a panic, imagining I'm covered in spiders or that something is standing over the bed, watching me with dead, lidless eyes. In those moments, the horror is real. I awake and there's already a backstory in my mind. My reality is completely consumed with the creature reaching out to squeeze the life from my body. I will sometimes throw back the covers, leap out of bed, and turn on the light. I will look around my room and at some point, reality returns. My own, personal narrative is restored and I remember who I am, where I am, and what is real and what is not. Like a crane dropping a cargo container full of memories onto a train, I become me again. I calm down, maybe even laugh a little, and go, fairly quickly, back to sleep. The next day, the memory of the event will wrapped in gauze. Distant, hazy, and laughable. Like a dream that fades upon waking, so does the memory of the abject terror.

But as hard as I try to forget entirely, the event always leaves a little fishhook in my brain. And sometimes, during the day, something pulls on the line connected to that fishhook. Something whispers, what if? What if that crane malfunctions and the cargo container gets stuck? What if, standing in that moment of confusion and horror, nothing comes to fill the amnesia? Then I would be a raw nerve, a freshly drilled tooth, existing in pain forever. I would run into the lonely maw of night, chased by a demon whose continued existence is just as much of a surprise to him.

Dialogue exercise:

Dennis: Hi, I’m Dennis.

Bar Girl: Hi.

Dennis: What are you drinking?

Bar Girl: Hemlock.

Dennis: You hardly seem the gadfly type. What cruel device of fate has sent the poison to your lips?

BG: Sorry, I’m not interested.

Dennis: Really? Even after I picked up on the Socrates reference? Or was that a trap? A little intellectual honey for the over educated barflies?

BG: Something like that?

Dennis: O.k. no harm no foul. Just out of curiosity what was the correct answer?

BG: I’ll know it when I hear it.

Dennis: Like podcast porn. Gotcha. Well, enjoy your evening.

BG: What, that’s it?

Dennis: Now I’m confused. Usually when a girl says she’s not interested, there is a singular interpretation.

BG:Unless she wants you to fight a little. Unless she was just waiting for the second bite to set the hook.

Dennis: No thanks.

BG: No thanks?

Dennis: Listen. We’re one of the only species where the female does the peacocking. Even with peacocks it’s the male. So, in defiance to the rest of the animal kingdom, you, the female, don your Friday night best, sit at the bar with lips that can be seen from low earth orbit...your, ah, femininity amplified via silk contraptions with levers and pulleys that would make a greek shipbuilding scratch his oily head.

BG: Point being?
Dennis: So, we’re confused. The men. Somewhere inside this mammalian brain, we’re thinking, this isn’t right. Shouldn’t I just stand in a field and flex, maybe sing the song of my people, until a woman deems me genetically viable, bends over and presents?

BG: Sounds barbaric.

Dennis: It’s more honest that this debasement of nature.

BG: So sing me the song of your people.

Dennis: Even if I did know all the words to that Right Said Fred song. I wouldn’t waste my breath, expend those precious calories to someone who’s just fishing.

BG: What if the bait were irresistible? (uncrosses legs)

Dennis: I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt...