In case you were wondering, my silence is not indicative of my thoughts. But what is there to say? These thoughts brew and bubble but nothing comes of them. Instead, midnight approaches and the lights dim as my eyelids fall. A night of restless sleep (and yes, sometimes dreams of you) and another day begins. My dear, it's not because I don't have time that I don't speak to you; it's simply that I don't have the words.

I write because no matter how far I run, how loudly I scream, or how much I scratch at the walls, there is no way out... and writing is all that's left for me to do.

I write because these thoughts cannot be consumed by the bile inside my stomach. They persist like stones, impervious to my attempts to mull them over and digest them. Not even whiskey wears away at them; they fester and seep into my blood. Left alone, they become cancer and rot away my soul. If I can't purge them from my body, I'll die the slow, retail death of the man caught in a rushing current, tired of simply not-dying.

Writing allows me to trick the water, to hold off that cold and pointless death one hour more.

In my nightmare I sit forever, nursing a glass of bourbon that never becomes warm or lowers its level, staring into the hard oak table, unable to die.

i'd hold a seance just to hang up on you

If there was a turning point in my life, it was that night.

It was one of my favorite memories, when I had favorites, when the past to me was a prophesy to the future and not the life of some fictional character, living in another world far from here. As the candlelight flickered off your eyelids, I spent that long lingering look upon your face marveling at it as one might wonder at the radiance of the sun. I've described the night with so many words now that it has become completely devoid of emotion. This is the tragedy of time, that descriptions of scenes as monumental as these can never carry with them the tumble of the heart, the stutter of the mind. But it is not upon that gaze that I wish to expound; doing so has done little to reveal the actual intention of that evening, or the actual consequence of it.

I could sense, even as I drowned in my own chemical ecstasy, that I was never going to feel that way again. I was at the peak of a curve, or perhaps as fate would find me, the trough. I was turning; the acceleration had finally reduced my velocity to zero, and I sat for one brief intentional moment in your presence, in that room, and I felt the world stop. I lied to you in that moment, brushing the hair back from your face and pretending that we could remain in that pause forever.

But it was a turning point, and we both knew it as we extinguished the candles one by one. My whole life before that night was spent dreaming of just one moment of tranquility, of knowing what true love meant.

And my whole life after that night was spent running from it.

A dark mist prevents me from seeing you, but I know you're gazing at me with those curious eyes again. You seem to insist, tonight as you always do, that I linger far too long here, standing in this wretched misery just because I find the glimmer of the brackish water beside my feet mysteriously enchanting. Yes, I admit that I come here to find you. I want you to set me straight, to push your hollow body through mine so I can feel the ethereal chill of the physically impossible but divinely required superposition of our souls.

Why do I continue to seek you out, and why do you mean so much to me? Why can't I ignore you, like everyone else seems so eager to do? Why can't I imagine you as a person? Why are you always a ghost, dead and inaccessible? I should be able to envision how you were: alive, vibrant, shimmering with the thousands of other souls I knew... but now you're something less than that... something less than real.

Were there any words I could have said to save your life? How could I have stopped this? Why can't you understand the guilt I feel, the overwhelming need I have just to be here, to try to find you once again?

No, there you are right in front of me, gliding back and forth, staring at me but hidden, veiled in your precious mist.

I can't explain how strange it is to see your face, to hear your voice. You died nine years ago, maybe ten now. How then do I feel this flood of emotion when you laugh, when you swear off the cuff in videos I was never meant to see? How can I explain the way your quirky tongue turning a phrase in a flat, two-dimensional mirage fills me with inexplicable desire to reach into the screen, grab ahold of your locks of hair, pretend that you really are alive and that all of these breaths you're taking are real; that all of the syllables you form with your precious, perfect lips are not simply voyeuristic fantasies of your afterlife -- or mine?

I'm forming my thoughts carefully, dreaming that I might get one more chance to talk to you, to tell you everything you (could have?) meant to me, but it's a fantasy I'll never realize. It's just enough to make my heart sink every time I pick up the pen and try to write about the intimacy we never shared, shouldn't have shared, needed to share; how I try to tell you the future I saw apart from you in your eyes; how I try to ask for your forgiveness for being nothing by trying to be everything to you. As I watched the photons dancing before my eyes, all I could think was how foolish I was to ever believe that this terrible pen could produce the eulogy to do justice to your memory.

The restlessness is what infuriates me most, the knowledge that it's a matter of time, perhaps, and that this feeling will pass as all feelings do; that in a week or whenever this dull pressure at my throat finally drifts away I'll be back to holding the pen in my hand as I always have. So it's a matter of waiting, of knowing that in the meantime the cuts from my knife are as impotent as the man who wields it. And here I stand, waiting and restless, like a turtle on his back, unable even to right himself.

For the first time in months, I opened the notebook of magic tricks half-learned, and the anticipation I felt with thoughts of smoke and mirrors was only equated by the sudden sadness at realizing how soon tomorrow will end.

this messy house and restless sleep
and hours of staring at tiny bright pixels
flickering and wavering after a while,
this tired sore knee and aching foot
and a combination lock at the gym
growing a thin, stale layer of dust,
this foggy head and tired eyes
and longing looks at a soft black case
that's opened far too rarely,
this dying car and long dead iPod
and all of this entropy collecting
on everything I own and am,

every day a little bit more like a drop in a bowl,
this blood thins and this skin dries
and I ponder with my hands on the keyboard
the next words I will write
and how they could possibly make
all of this
go away

the less likely I am to listen.

2000-11-07 23:04:21

It's kind of like watching a hockey game, in the playoffs, which is tied and going into successive overtimes. I admit freely that I'm as caught up in this as everyone else around here. I chose my preferred of the two and am rooting him on, watching the scoreboard intently.

But does it matter?

Probably not. My life won't be affected. Tomorrow will still consist of me not doing nearly as much studying as I should, spending too much time trying to be clever in the presence of unexpected girl, sitting around in class wondering why I haven't chosen an easier major or whatnot.

Test Thursday, test Friday. Does the matter change that? Will either one prevent my diploma? Would either one make a decision that will affect me as a person?

I sigh into ruminescence.

The night is not permitting me slumber; the emotional irrationality is too strong. Has Iowa been decided yet? Oregon?

Too easy to watch to board light up in blues and reds. It would be a different story if I were to look at myself, perhaps. Have I been decided yet? What do the exit polls say?

Where am I?

being on the outside
but friends with insiders
holding the instrument
but unable to play

After a while it's all like eating cardboard.

The routine, when it holds, is sufficient and acceptable but at the end of the day it feels like cardboard, all cardboard, and stress -- or what we call stress -- has dwindled to a forced mantra of some kind to keep up the rhythm of mastication.

And then there's that moment, sitting with you, as our conversation drifts to the impossible. I see the fresh cherries you're holding and I allow myself a restrained sigh. "No," I say, "that is no different. What you're offering is just like what I'm eating; I will not be tempted."

You smile, the edges of your lips sparkling as you wink at me. "You're right, I offer nothing different."

"Then why offer?" I reply.

You just smile, and I slowly feel the moisture forming a trail down my chin. Recognition dawns as I wipe the red juice away and taste the sweetness on my tongue.

is better than an entry containing nothing.

Tonight, Jake said something to me that I'll not soon forget:

"I suspect that the reason people who choose to write 'Optimus Prime' on that little blank line are the same people who realize, at some level, that the freedom they've been condemned to is theirs, and theirs alone. They aren't willing to allow multi-million dollar campaigns take that freedom away from them; these are the same people who would withstand days of torture with only the word 'no' on their lips, only to give away the secret plans as they were being rescued. Freedom isn't about anything beyond choice, and there's something in many of us that ticks like a bomb, a realization that our senses are being constantly manipulated into losing the ability to make that choice, by presenting alternatives that look different but are in fact identical.

"I think you should carefully consider who stands to gain by your decision. Maybe you'll feel the buckling in your stomach as you realize that you're trapped, that you finally realize what the world is like as you remove the veil from your eyes.

"I think I'll write some Kanji on that line. Maybe I'll fill in the bubble for the candidate I hate. It doesn't matter in the end. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something, and all it'll cost is a little piece of your freedom."

a pigeon condescending in an empty room.

(A 20-minute reply to this 20-minute entry)

"You're right that there is a definite aura of solitude that surrounds us," Jake said to me as he leaned back and sipped at his Rolling Rock, the thick white foam at the top breaking apart around his lips, "and it definitely is about ego." I fiddled with my small cup of Maker's Mark, knocking the ice into the glass walls for the light tinging it afforded.

"You have to be arrogant to participate in this sport," he continued, "if you choose to call it a sport. There's no winners or losers in fiction, of course, unless you consider the winners those who manage to get a deal and sell their work. I don't call them winners, though." He took another gulp of the rancid beverage. "No, the winners are the middle-men, the publishers without a creative bone in their bodies, hocking other peoples' sweat and blood for a Cadillac and beach house. Bastards, every one."

I raised my glass in the air to feign solidarity. I didn't feel so strongly, never having sent a work to a major press. Maybe he had gotten burned one too many times.

"The rest of us writers are in it together. You'd think we'd all get together and encourage each other, submitting work back and forth, trying to generate magnificent works of art that are better than any of us could ever do alone. But of course we don't, and here's where ego comes in: as you put it, the Other is either unaccountably better or indescribably worse than I am. And, either way, I feel a nauseous pit open in my stomach to read their work. No, I'd rather be alone." He stood and walked to the window and gazed at his own reflection, enhanced by the darkness outside.

"So why me?" I asked. "If you don't want to work or share with anyone, why even talk to me?"

Jake sighed. "That's the key, isn't it? I will tell you again and again I'm writing for an invisible, almost epistemic audience, one that only exists in my own fantasy. I imagine the fictional readers riding on fictional busses, but at the end of the day when I sit down to type my thousand keystrokes that night, I find myself unable to focus because that audience isn't real. Even in my fantasies of sending Mary or Joshua my completed manuscript, I know that they'll look at it and smile and feel proud (perhaps) of me, place it on their shelves, and go on with their lives."

"So why me?" I asked. "Why not these online sites, or these communities that do try to provide support to young writers?"

"Ego." He walked back to the table and downed the rest of his beer. "Their writing is phony, derivative, unimaginative. I have nothing to learn from them. And the few who are good are unaccountably good - people that I feel anger about learning from." He chuckled to himself. "Kids these days. Anyone can write, you know. Anyone can open a fucking Word document and scribble down a hundred thousand words. But they all think they're Salinger because they read 'Franny and Zooey.' They've got egos incommensurate with their creations. They're full of themselves, cysts believing they're gods."

"So why me?" I asked. "Why do you even bother to discuss writing with a single competent writer? Why don't you live in your romantic solitude?"

"You'll get no answer from me. All I can concede is I'm asking the same question of you."

Daniel stepped timidly onto the wing, as everyone before him had. I watched him climb over to the side, holding tightly to the bar. He was hanging by his fingers now, his legs dangling over half a mile above the ground. Alan thrust his head out the doorway and yelled at him, "One, two, THREE!" I saw the white knuckles release as Daniel bit down and squinted, and then he shot out of view like a piece of litter from a speeding truck.

I grinned at Alan and dove out, anticipating the rush of the wind and the ground roaring up to meet me. Instead, all I could see were the words from my phone, imprinted on my retinas. Corn fields and forests and roads and creeks around for miles, and all I could see was this:

Meet me in Dubuque. Don't tell Daniel.
–N.