Irrational Freight

First picked you up outside Lexington I don’t know it was like two a.m.

We talked for a while through the passenger window.

Later I was telling you about my family you nodded along with the music.

We were making real progress as the sky got born.

That’s when I realized that I had forgotten to unlock the door.

I was alone in the car and had been.

So much time wasted.

The Extreme Claim

“But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark – that sort of make everything else seem – unimportant.”

- Tennessee Williams


He never would have accepted that. It is precisely the sort of statement that enraged him. It privileges the physical. It supports a worldview in which the primitive is not only tolerated but venerated. It defends those choices made of desire and which too often came down against him.

I see it differently. I have learned humility in the face of such compulsion; have seen the insignificance of plan and protocol and protestation. Ethics wilt and reason falters when presented with the grand, biological imperative.

He is gone and gone. Robert Pirsig, when writing about his own former self, used the third person. He spoke of a ghost, named Phaedrus, with whom he was once acquainted. It seems appropriate in that the gulf is adequately wide to consider these separate persons but disturbingly melodramatic. It’s reminiscent of the Extreme Claim.

The Extreme Claim, a tool of metaphysics, states that we have no reason, or no special reason, to care more about our future selves than any other numerically distinct self; that the currently cognizant ‘You’ has no connection to potential, future ‘Yous’ aside from occupying the same space. There is no logically defensible reason to exhibit greater concern for those separate entities than for the billions of other separate entities.

A similar argument could be made concerning ancestral selves; that the many identities you have held in the past have no true connection to your current identity; that the developmental thread that seems to link these selves is convenient construction. There is no schema of identity capable of encompassing all these divergent personalities, experiences, and behaviors.

I was a very different person once, sure. Or persons, I suppose. There’s shame, regret, sorrow, and bitterness. What there is also is a strange sort of pride felt for the mad intensity of those periods. Though I am pleased with the direction things have gone, and would choose this self over other, prior selves, I want very much to be perceived by means of that impossible schema. It is for this reason that I feel the need to reveal portions of my past. I want to receive credit based on my current value and also my previous values. That isn’t how it works, though. You just end up being a guy who can’t let go.

Part of me yearns for the vitality and certainty of those prodigal years, especially the boy who would have spit on Stella. He would only have seen the weakness. He would only have thought of himself. Representative of feminine scorn and abasement, brain between her legs and legs about the Cretan bull.

I see it differently.

All Around Me

Slip

I want to slip in beside you
- in bed in step in photographs -
fixated on each arm freckle again.
Sweater shrug,
cover and reveal and cover and reveal.

I hunger for involuntary spasm,
your body and I trading in whisper.
The rush of air propelling laughter,
the rush of blood blush quaking hips,
your own hand cupping back a cry to herald warm contortion.

“How much?”
And how can I explain how
your face forbids such thinking?
You coax out an early thing that cannot speak
- that needn’t speak -
and afterward the still warm chamber.

Part your hair with my breath,
the starts beside me, a body in dreams,
with a peck against the surface tension
like a fish, cooing recognition,
realigning against my torpor.

Slipping through some crowded wood - a party now -
should let you lead in such things you know better.
Waking in your bed, the gray,
holding hands while we slept
wound like coiled rope.

It’s better this way.
With you as one of many.
With me as one of many.
What other choice do we have we’re running out of time.
I press my face against your chest and draw you in.
It should be enough it is it is enough.

Posted reminders, diligent notary,
A transparent frame which surrounds the vision
on which to print
reminders in lipstick and marker.
Doubt in several fonts and sizes, “this is a person like you imagine,”
“it is you,” that will be easier
- it isn’t wisdom -
a tepid screed, another barrier,
my heart is in the right place. Write that last bit large.

Moments of anger that hint at something private and real.
A force that comes of distance not velocity -
when you slip up and slap temper -
I’m just going through the motions,
I’m just standing out back staring into the retaining basin.

You were right
I am a thing of the sea.
You always knew and I was scared to say.
A man part which you love but something further -
it’s adaptive and for survival you of all people
should understand that august finality,
the need to dive down deeply; the need to come back slow.

Exposed to certain imaginings
in youth, these were seared into my vision.
They do not merely influence they are
fellow participants
and too numerous, too congested in grime and file,
cluttering our vision and confounding explanation.
It’s simply difficult,
I understand that. I should have been patient
and wasn’t.

You already bear such weight.
There’s a steel framework comprised of train trestles,
a certain stance with feet set and the arms wide to receive.
The awful thing is they expect it.
Leaning in and on and suppose suffuse you suffer buffeting
waves and broken yolk misplaced faith placed faithfully.
When it’s you afloat they’re gone
and you slip under.

I don’t want to love you, I want just to see
lights that peek out underneath
like tiny silver eggs.
Frail on some park bench or, better, fretting brunch,
and to then remember so sincerely something so sincere.
I nodded and I knew and now I’m saying:
you wonder what’s before,
I wonder after.

Records

Do you remember this? It was very near the end.

It's funny the things we choose to remember. I wonder where you are sometimes. I wonder what you've become. Base or chaste. Married or marred. Suffering or insufferable. It's a piece of history I've long since tucked into a basket and sent downriver.

There are days, though, when things are especially quiet and the rain falls. On those days I want to lie in bed and listen to records. Stare at the ceiling and move only to relieve the tensions of the body. It's not for everyone. A private moment of thoughtful counsel requiring little dialogue and no explanation.

I know that you would want that, too.

Supportive

The core issue is about data processing.

I am, as I have said, very good at identifying social patterns. Using observation and mimicry for so many years has allowed me to develop a fairly sophisticated type of cataloguing. I can predict probable outcomes based on these observed trends. There’s nothing particularly unusual about this aside from the fact that it is, I believe, unusually cognitive. It would rightly be considered a coping strategy. When there are deviations from these patterns I notice immediately.

The issue arises when it’s time to actually analyze those deviations. I’m terrible at it. I’ll know that there's something happening, something potentially important, but determining what that is exactly is mostly guesswork. This is where a lack of instinct becomes crippling. Sometimes it’s a pretty simple puzzle to solve. At other times I will proceed on a completely incorrect assumption and find myself wildly far afield before I realize my error. There has been a lot of damage done from such mistakes.

I have no idea how one becomes better at such things. The options seem to be either:

A. improve
B. react less

By reacting less I mean disconnecting my behavior from the behavior of those around me; internalizing the motives of speech and action to a high degree. This has proven to be successful but only in those situations where I am not particularly invested in outcomes. We’ll call this the “I don’t give a shit” approach. When you really don’t give a shit there’s no need to calibrate based on feedback – you do or say whatever you choose to do or say and call it a day.

Clearly, this is less useful when you are invested. Pretending not to give a shit offers all the downsides of not caring and none of the advantages. It’s also an awful, disingenuous way to treat someone you care about. We’ll throw that one on the woodpile.

In the interest of possible improvement, I spend time studying those who handle this process well. Of particular value are those who, like me, take the long division approach of watching and calculating but somehow achieve better results. The friend I’m thinking of specifically seems to follow my format but does so with more accuracy. At some point in the processing stage she is able to take the same information I’ve gathered and know better what that information indicates. I don’t know how. I’ve asked her and she doesn’t seem to know how, either. She suggested that I am over thinking things. That’s definitely true, but not tremendously helpful. Watching her to see how she behaves in such situations brings us back to the beginning so no solution there.

In the short term maybe the best practice is to trust such people. I’m hesitant to do that. It’s not a matter of pride so much as it seems to be a weakness; a dependency of the sort that is so deeply unattractive. Sounds like a pretty weak objection. Perhaps trust really is the operative term here. She’s good at such things, I am not, and so when in such matters we disagree I should consider her position quite seriously. There’s something else in there, what’s it called? Oh, yes, being supportive.

Kendrick

You need to get with this shit.

Burial + Four Tet - Nova

Notes II

If I could wear you like warpaint
I would
a slick rouge up the cheeks
to identify my patronage
remind me of purpose
to caution strangers
______________________________

Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg; The Alhambra; Ko Samui; Florence; The Vatican
______________________________

Andrea Doria

I don't care if you're a boat or a hole in a dirt road
Remains of a rotted cake, can hardly remember then
kissed her on both cheeks taught her to hate men
______________________________

I'm standing at the window
waiting to see a walking figure or headlights
some sign that you've arrived
some sign that you've stayed
______________________________

When I see you smile so genuinely, an old smile I feel like a boy so open it's a pleasure and a fear I never feel
like a boy
______________________________

If I were a prince I would like to imagine
that I was not the product of a dowager
that I was not imperious and vain
that I could hold no distance between stations
and that such gravity as I could provide
would be made manifest in smiles and hale greetings