Sunday

I can’t read the news.

It was easier to understand when I was a boy. Now, the writing seems to be just...words.

People who don’t enjoy what they do never die.

That’s cause they’re never born.  They simply exist through life. And they hang around like gnats, forever. Doing EVERYTHING, buying EVERYTHING, watching EVERYTHING all the while the grip on their soul gives way and leaves a tattered trail of crisp-withered tears like the leaves in a Twentieth Century autumn.
Crick! Crick-Crattle, Flip! Crick-Crattle, Flip! That’s the sound of a dying man’s soul turning over, changing color, getting older…

                                                                      *

I’ve already explained to Nancy that I'm dying. I feel myself slipping, the rot setting in between my teeth, eating away at the edges of my brain. Have you ever seen your bliss deflate like a helium balloon in the bleak corner of a public school gym in a working-class neighborhood which thinks it’s middle class? (By the way, to be in the middle is to be wedged-in-between, safe within someone’s sticky pages. I say the top or the bottom – but never, never the middle!)

Monday

The frantic sea of job interviews and emails and...how hard it is now to even look for work. It has gotten physically harder for transients who don't want to be transients. Yes, I am one of "those" who don’t have a computer!
And the havoc I have brought upon myself: Bold unflinching masochism!

I’m taking up space. I’m a good person and I try hard and look for the goodness in people (and I usually find it much to the chagrin of most people who act ashamed as if I have found out something about them that they would rather not divulge; I realized being “good” irritates people) and am most grateful when others can overlook my sins or faults and can see a shade, a figment of the man I am trying to be. But I am taking up space. And I should either add something beautiful to my surroundings or simply give up the air I am breathing because life – no, the anxiety of life – is simply not worth it. I am ashamed to be part of it. And so I had to say, “YES,” when I was asked because - …Well, because I wanted to be able to tell Nancy I had a job and that I was hired and just once share a moment of victory.

The job starts tonight. And I need this type of job the way I need a hole in the head.

                                                                        *

I was sitting on the cross-town bus, heading east just barely past the park.

It was sunny and the ancient sadness of the fires roared down on us cutting through the trees and grass and the tall buildings sparkled and I remember thinking how pretty – how truly pretty – life was untouched. How amazing a sun, how incredible our land actually is. How important architecture could be…if we were as human as we think we once were. And I remember my stomach griping and bursting inside as if the plastic of my soul was beginning to stretch and finally snap. Staring out into the sun long enough I always think about the beauty of birth and the horror of slavery. I wonder what the animals have thought. I wonder what the butterflies have thought. I certainly know what the sharks have thought. Sometimes, late at night-early in the morning far deep in the pocket of the twilight, I can hear them burp. And I have no pity for them and I explain this to the Animal Rights People. Believe me, I tell them, they have eaten a great deal more than some people ever will.

It is in the shade, only in the shade, that I can reflect upon myself. As soon as the bus dove back under and the park and the sun and the painful poetry all vanished harshly – and not without cruelty like a gambler’s luck - I am able to hide and die a little in between the tall buildings and skyscrapers which cast the only eternal harmlessness that we can still rely on. They got it all wrong – or she or he or it or whomever they were that proclaimed a “little death” is in between our loins and our orgasm. All great fucks are affirmative and they give us sunshine inside where we cannot seem to be touched. A little death is not between two lovers – it is stuck somewhere between our organized madness and the revolving doors of Monday-through-Friday and the urban renewal of more shadows to lurk behind and more sadness to cover your cup.

The bus ride was peculiar as all things seem to be when you’re looking for signs. It was empty and the tryptophan roared. At the third stop, a trio of elderly people boarded. He shuffled, the two ladies crept. They moved all the way to the rear, which aggravated me because I felt as if my own territory had been invaded.

The old man had been a jockey, the two women were his sisters. They were still very close. He had lost his wife to an attack a year earlier and since then he never let his sisters travel alone. His wife had been beaten and robbed by three teenage thugs.

From the suburbs.

Who were moving to the city.

His wife had been on her way back into the city from visiting her sister, Fran. Fran had recently gotten married to her best friend, Gina. The jockey’s name was Harvey and he had eyes the color of smog-infested snow. At first I thought he might have been blind. His hands were like overgrown claws. His face was etched in a permanent scowl and I expected a gruff, ornery voice. But is was tender and buttery and tended to trail off and get lost in the back of his throat. He had muttered something to his sisters, two well-dressed old ladies and it wasn’t until he pushed back his cap that I noticed the small hole in the center of his forehead, as if a tiny third eye had not quite grown in.

I looked up and read an ad on the bus: Save Darfur, People Are Dying. Outside a homeless man struggled with his cardboard box, the wind pulverizing the flaps at the edges and sending endless newspapers into the air. I looked back at Harvey.
“You lost?”
“No…”
“Oh. You look lost.”
I didn’t tell him I was going to a job interview. I don’t think I said anything. “I feel lost,” he said. He turned to his sisters,” We’re all lost aren’t we?”
“Hmm,” the older one said.

I got off on 66th street and walked south. Before I reached the end of the block, I turned and looked, as if I knew. Harvey stood at the corner like a face from some ancient circus poster. But with the sun dazzling the way it was I could not tell if he was smiling or frowning and from where I was standing his lips appeared to be two glistening orbs circling and crying out to God knows what.

Angels, demons, we are all the same.

Wednesday

Well maybe trepanning is not for me.

Harvey has been generous enough to help, but I’m nervous at the thought of performing such an act on people who are willing to go through so much for so little. “Brain damage, even death, it’s a risk you take, so what,” says Harvey. And perhaps he’s right about everything he says about side effects and consequences. And I agree with him that no man has the right to tell another man what he should or should not do with his own body but this really is getting to me. I shake terribly when I get home. It starts as soon as I turn the key and unlock the door. Something spreads all over my insides and I tremble. Last night, I shook so intensely – Nancy caught me with the drill (I did not have time to put it away!) and she asked me if the construction was giving me stress and was I all right?

Thursday

This morning when I woke up to go to the bathroom I noticed a drill bit jutting out of my bag, a slender sun ray caught it right on the tip revealing the dried specs of blood and pus.

I was repulsed and gagged, but not too loud so that I wouldn’t awake Nancy. She’s already getting suspicious, she told me: “You haven’t screwed me for two weeks!” I tried in not so many words to explain to her that it was the stress, yes, but not her. It has nothing to do with her…In fact I miss her. But the bottom line is that I have rent to pay and a family to feed. Maybe its not a giant family, but it’s all we’ve got. Plants need water, food, and care, too, you know. Once I get back on my feet I will be able to cultivate my life again: write, play chess, eat salads (I can only relax and eat salad when I am not concerned about money), run in the park, and…pay attention to my wife. I just have to find a way of asking her to please not use the word “screw.”
I looked at the drill again and all I could think about was the time I was ten and I was eating a sandwich and I was nauseas and the ketchup mixed with mayonnaise dripped down the sides of my fingers. A pasty-brick-milk. Just like the fluid that spun out of Harvey. I can’t do this anymore, I’m gonna quit.

Friday

Top 40 radio has just reminded me that you cannot live or die without spending money. The music played was the very soundtrack of the negotiations, printing, and synthesis of dollar bills. The chords and fibers of legal tender have proven they have a mouthpiece – and an earpiece – and a whole lot of representing. I am feeling very run down, exhausted, and extremely frightened. There is no way out is there?

Next Monday

I did not sleep last night/this morning on account of the decibel levels that rocked our flat between the creeping purple blackness that covers the nostalgic pain of 125th street and the early dawn traffic, when buses and taxis outnumber the trios of birds singing their songs at the top of another working day.

The female birds seem a lot more interested in newer songs and newer forms, the males seem to be less threatened only when singing traditional ones. I know this because I don’t sleep and by the time birds are awake they don’t have to catch the worm – all they have to do is eat. I have the worms all ready for them, my bantering and madness wills them down until they cannot stand it anymore. My shrieks of pain and agitated insomnia literally make the worms turn. I pick them up, I feed them to the birds. And the worms are glad. They are relieved of their burden: no one likes to be a lubricant of neglected roses and newly colonized concrete. Not everything is about colonization says Nancy. But when tractors and saws and machines are pounding and slicing and cutting the air outside your window and your landlord doesn’t care – colonization seems to find its way into your sleep-deprived vocabulary. The clock is ticking and condos have to be built: Better they don’t stop the morning traffic and simply make sure the conscious-working-pathetiques don’t get their sleep. After all, why would we want sleep? We don’t work, certainly not…And sleep? Sleep is a luxury for the rich who don’t have to work…but choose to.

The sound of the drill has convinced me it is time to stop trepanning.

Next Tuesday

Harvey died this morning. There were three people at his funeral. His sisters carried the coffin.