I'm a little tired. Not gonna lie. I don't feel any nice words inside myself. I do not feel like constructing metaphors. I feel like withdrawing from society altogether. I feel like closing my eyes and never opening them. I feel like I can't take another morning of being snapped into paranoid anger as soon as my eyes open. I need perspective, but the light keeps changing, throwing mad shadows.
The thing that's killing me? Everyone is so damn small. Like, everybody. Everyone has their shit twisted up and their guts in knots. How can you be so blind, so many of you? I'm not saying I'm some great ascetic Saint, but I understand that people are in pain and try not to judge them too hard.
Maybe if we all took a break. From everything. Not just from restaurants, but from each other. Some governmental mandated hermitage. Every man, woman, and child alone in a cave for a year. See what kind of shit we come out preaching. See how sure we are.
So, I did this. Put these words on a page, and I know there isn't any point, but it's something to do.
Have a nice day,
JD
There is a point. There is truth. And you tell it well.
ReplyDeleteBetween the green fields of wheat, a country road runs in its straight line till it meets a corner. At the corner is a rusted old mailbox, not like the small ones everybody knows, but extra large. The mailbox has stood there for nearly eighty years.
ReplyDeleteBeside the mailbox is a driveway, a driveway upon which a man in oversized overalls and a plaid shirt walks. He drags his feet with all the weight of fifty-seven years’ regrets, but he walks.
Before he opens the mailbox, he knows what he’ll find. Bills. Catalogs. More bills. A farmer often sees more money going out than coming in, but some years, God smiles and the accounts are written with black ink instead of red.
This was not one of those years.
The mailbox screams its customary creak as he opens it. His premonition of its contents is correct, but not complete. At the bottom of the rubber-banded stack of mail is a card-sized envelope, with his address written in a script he has not seen in a dozen years.
He folds it in half, and sticks it in his back pocket. No sense in upsetting his wife. These days it seems anything sets her off. He knows she thinks they should have more money. He knows that she thinks he should lose weight. He knows she doesn’t approve of how lightly he disciplines their son.
And he knows that she hates the sender of that card.
He imagines her reaction. “He’s going to hell. We can’t have no queers around our son. You tell him he’s not welcome in our house until he repents.”
It would make no difference to her that the sender was his brother. And she’s said those words a hundred times over in the last fifteen years.
He sets the mail on the table, just how she likes it, and he heads to the barn.
The last time he’d seen that handwriting was on the simplest of notes. A plain white piece of paper. Three words: I forgive you.
Twelve years, and nothing since. And now, he stepd into the shade of the barn, with the curious perfume of hay and a horse she’d insisted on having, but never rides.
Samuel, she’d named the horse, despite the fact it is a mare. Samuel snorts as he passed her stall.
“No carrot this time, Sam. Sorry.”
Sam turns her back on him.
He slides the envelope from his back pocket, uses his pocketknife to open it. The blade is dull, but it still cuts paper just fine.
The card has a picture of two boys playing. Reminds him of how they were when they were young. Inseparable. Always curious. Catching tadpoles and watching them grow to frogs. Hiding in the wheat when it was tall enough.
He opens the card. “Coming home soon. Love, your brother.”
He checks for a return address. Nope.
“God,” he prays. “Please don’t let him come here. You know no good can come of it, and we’ve had enough anger between the two of us. Keep him away.”
When he burns the trash, he throws the envelope and card in the flames, and watches until both are ashes.
That night, when he and his wife finish their nightly devotions and prayers, he adds a silent postscript, as he always does. “And God, keep my brother safe.”
One day leads to another in the way that days always do, and the threat of an impending visit moves to the back of his mind. There is fieldwork to do. Tractors to maintain.
The wheat has turned to gold, and the harvesting is done. He is cleaning out Sam’s stall, when he hears a truck in the driveway. The UPS truck.
His wife shouts, “What’d you order now?”
He lets her question hang in the air as he takes the box from the driver.
“Oh, need you to sign for it,” the driver says.
As the truck disappears in a cloud of dust, he carries the box to the house.
His wife watches as he opens it. Inside is a cardboard tube, heavy like it has gravel in it. He rotates it in his calloused hands, and sees, above the embossed logo of Columbine Crematorium, the name of his brother.
Oh man, Leland. I love this. Broke my heart, too. I love the distance in the narration and the language and imagery. I could see it all. And this sentence is beautiful: And now, he stepped into the shade of the barn, with the curious perfume of hay and a horse she’d insisted on having, but never rides.
DeleteThis don't make make no sense.
ReplyDelete__________________________
Wanna see dis new wprld/ Not ties new world, but any new worl? R tings R clap-sin and it’s prfollytrime to simply lessen anyway. lax. See see cee cee oh I wanna spank yous bad gurl. Hufucvk. You fuck≥ Yoiudis you dis you negvah loved ud us us s us eval ewvah how how
We rottacry’n tell it
Ratha cry than. Tell it
All the cliffaceshies an scries and drinks who shite, we all want the sky jot the lost, we lost, thew shoys, our loves areglost
Tellit, try. You can k\eeptriyn you can u can specially can…
Fjutjure isburried way nearly≥
I and I reddy.
And here, some diffrnt place, Lizzy Grant stepped out, backdropped by a Ferris wheel. Pure. Soundtracked by a speechless scream of Atlantic foam. This would be her world now, once adjustments were made, bones corrected, broke an rebroke, skin erased an eased an buffed, widened stance corrected for those for someone, somethin else.
Membah? Hair whipped like a lariat. A stream of everything. A gut. Level stream uh not right not quite gut seep…
Just rtry retrie try agin i’m awake allnite i’m yeh am heah like leaves spittin’ stems’n swallowin’
Am me, ultimalowkey, onfleek, belowdecks untimely, unhurled unrolled unstrewn unthiungewd smoken ungrine this plees plees no plees no polivce bullit no pleeg no justiss this this thsss splode unfuckivung thornochris’ yas yo um…
Dja kno?
Dja really not kno?
Wat. Da fok...b. Why. You not kno?
The answer to this is not me. It’s the very opposite of me. No, no, actually not me, different from me. All different≥ I try but can’t catch all the curv…
What the actual duck is going on?
I came from some other place. Is thatyeahis that real? Tune in while you can and while you daydream, a whole biome awakes, aflakes to how, uh, godforsakeourselves repel how astecnch and cloathaglutinous we became. How p[utrid and howgruesomew you ever were, how ev how ew how foulest yoeverere freak lift flit yo Fock, ya dabbing, dat ting,ntou litora.lariat dat. Plus thwdregs an clit
Ha ha ha ha h hhh uh fuxk jot diuck rot biut youall knew that right? Yourinonit, yeh? Ah?
Nonsense? Not even evah
It’s not even what she’s saying, doh let’s preten that was d’ting, and all I can say is… blink… rage… and that flinch aside a curve thang. Ang. Tang. Ya ting. All a which you di’n’t earn, you unnerstand, bridge alla dis, ya squaw-lit glory man, you dreamalicious untimely claimedupon dripping hallucinatory cuntafflicted wetabraided hellbound deisel drainfilled mouthaggrandized sistermotherdreamedafreakedout otherfucker, aight? You fucken dreamed. More better’n bein’. Dreamed isbigger’n alldat. All I eva knowed u no
DeleteAnd I noto. Too. Scandalacious. Keep scrubbing dose wet fishtkiles clean all dat like a flash a light a skelm, me quite head me longa
Bettah we try, worsit gets. It keeps on movin, like it should. Like it never should oughta, B boy oh oh oh, like it nevah godoughta
I dissent mento intruder just wante crl ’n go home, find qcabwayto leave where worgs and scrogs and greeps go die, I mentknojharm ever eva, I alwaes love each and all I doth fuckinntriusgt did you know bliss lotion is. No clue if this is. No way we yield, nor ever capitul8 we flex we pulse we wait moments so lucid we know and bleeve.
Is that how they try to say at last intrusion? Like some lords crumbled apscentupon ah swelcomone, an suuymon all we evah knew an what we bleeve
And love we mean acourse, dis passing, fam ‘nd lovah na unlike
Wa dreive, nah mal, na fleive, clan ébahis lastlyu bleeve
Isaal axial is all issssaal in our facin’ an is also isdouw may open words so complic8ed we try’n finda raccoon way we never known but jo, no, lo, Pugh mo no not not what notwhteverah I try i8 try try to totooo tooobfring wonwn. To bring to bring to try try try like bells like bells like spells liked like hey like this lik4 they fell we here wee hear we fewllk
No wanna be fell (I like them)
No wanna be took (take me, then)
Wanna be taken. Dis what can be cloaked? All can be took? Dis da big ting den?
We da big ting now? (Nah, no ting is da big ting not evah)
Be
Who
We
Are
Be who you are. We are. Be who you are. Be da fuck you or we are, girl. Nothing other else mattas. Nothing but this even fucking matters, the rest fell off and you just this, ‘kay. No ting matter no ting even msbegttetds or. Yeah you nitemare blud, you hear?
See how dis obli8gterates. Yah dis. Dis. Wha dis? Ya, uo ;os ma sis you los you fuckin .lost oh oh oh dis
Unbliss. Dis.
Yo, you summon my widestance yo bestbe reddy.