When it rains...

The good from the bad

I climb the steep wooden stairs to the patio littered with leaves, reach through the screenless screen door, but the door is locked. The window. I drag a chair and awkwardly vault myself inside, and there it is: flashback. I used to climb into your window all the time, little kids just messing around. I wore a brown shirt, tan shorts. This hoodie. We got so messed up once, you couldn't keep your hands off me. Teaching you boys to shoot with cheap whiskey. I said no and you told me no. Yellow with the palm trees. I doubt you remember. I forgave you. Crawling on the floor after me and reaching, saying the grey shadows were after you, saying stay and take care of us. I escaped, and drove home like Cinderella. Swing swing. 

The Lesson.

I have a theory that we're all spiders. And maybe its a popular one. See, I think that all your relationships reflect, to a modest degree, your first sexual experience. That is to say that if your first experience was with someone you felt love for and were in a relationship with, then it's entirely likely you'll find that same scenario repeated in various forms throughout your life. Likewise, if it was dark, if it was yearning. If it was pretend. You'll always encounter those same threads. Perhaps we create the themes of our lives; perhaps they were written in the stars and destined to be. Or perhaps we seek them out, our unconscious...baiting the only love we've ever known, setting the snare of the same trap, and waiting, for the same catch, the same kill.

In the end, we're all just spiders. The crisscrossing of threads, the web we weave to catch, catch another.

You see then, how it's easy to know a person's history by knowing how they love. All of a sudden, you feel it, washing over you and into you, telling secrets and saying more than words ever could.
Sometimes like a tidal wave, awesome and overwhelming and too much. Much too much. Do you run from it's initial abundance? or do you take it, knowing it cannot be sustained.
Or sometimes, it's just a trickle. And while you put your mouth to the fountain, trying to catch every drop, taking the bait, perhaps you wonder, what is this love, where was it made? and who does it make me to have baited and caught such a thing?

You love in a tired way, not to say you are without energy or without passion. But in a way that says, you will leave, I dare not even hope that you won't leave. This love, tentative and withholding. Passed up from place to place. And me. My love says, you will leave, I expect you to. But maybe if I love you just enough, just a little, just right, this time you will not go.

Just two sponges, safe in the placid bottom of the sea. Anchored to the bottom, I'll leave you if you leave me.

And it's revealing, this demystifying, it lays the ugliness out in the open and you wonder how approach it, can I approach it, without failure. I look into your traps and see myself, and say, that could have been me, that could have been me. Maybe we could have been friends. Same trap, same catch. And here I am, here we are, and you say, just another lesson? This time, what is taught?
And I say, this time, I know what I did not know before. That you cannot plan an approach that knows no failure. That you must stand in the ugliness and open wide, and know that failure, that disappointment, that discontent, will come. That the very best you can do will never be enough, will never wipe this away, will never, ever, erase this ugliness, this scar, this misdeed of another.
Because it is not what you are called to do. And it is not what is required, what is asked of you, by another.

No, we are called to heal ourselves, and understand one another.

What is this lesson? Perhaps it has not yet been taught. But what am I learning? I am learning to walk through this life candid, and vulnerable, and trusting. I am learning that while a hurricane beats upon and threatens to topple anything that is barred shut and caught in it's path, its winds pass through a soul with open doors.

I can only feed my own fire, and send you warmth; perhaps let you hunker down next to it, and hope that, once its light begins to die, you find you'd like to come with me to find more wood. And if not, I'll send you warmth and watch you go, trailing thread.

The Drain.

I'm not sure when I became such a sad sap, but today has contained validation of such in a multitude of forms. I woke up this morning with a mission: to seek revenge upon the bathroom sink.

You see, for the past month or so the water at the bottom of the sink has drained slower and slower, until it doesn't really visibly drain as much as sit stagnantly and threaten to overflow whilst I, having forgotten about this inconvenience, peek through stinging soapy eyes and claw for the handle. But that's really been the worst of it, just an inconvenience, and nothing really more. The sink and I had lived in a state of mutual tolerance/neglect. Until yesterday. Yesterday the bathroom sink, a brimming cesspool by way of recent face-washing, consumed my phone. And though I quickly pulled it out, cursing, the damage had been done. So as my phone, swaddled tightly in a dish towel, baked in the oven set to low, I attempted to appease the fates I had so tempted and been scorned.

I drove to the intown Ace, and at the recommendation of a burly employee, bought a two and a half foot plastic rod fit with menacing barbs that were sure to uproot whatever questionable microbial mass had taken up residence in my pipes. So, following directions, I inserted the "Zip-it" tool, as it was called, into the drain, which it begrudgingly accepted about two-thirds of before it would go no further. At this point, the directions say to reverse the process and pull the thing out, a literary instruction accompanied by a visual depiction of the Zip-it tool leaving the sink, hairy clog-worthy clumps clinging to it. So as I pulled, expecting to hear the welcomed gurgle and vacuum sound of all my drainage concerns being released, I was clearly not prepared for the ordeal that lay ahead of me. It did not budge. And as my naive belief that this 3 cent recycled plastic piece of revitalized junk-waste could actually help me slowly evaporated, I tugged upon it's square tail to no avail. Tired, and faced with the prospect of devising a plan B, I took the dog for a walk. The bad news: my drain was still clogged. The good news: I now knew what was clogging it, and it was the Zip-it tool.

Take two. After removing my phone from the oven and staring hopefully into it's steamy face as I pressed all the buttons and it vibrated uncontrollably, I observed it's vacant eyes and crimson voided warranty sticker and resigned myself to purchasing another rather than wait three days for the short-circuit diagnoses I knew was coming. Sprint informed me that this was my third damage claim filed in a year, and that it would no longer offer me total equipment protection insurance. Fantastic. Asurian is officially losing money by insuring me. I'm a risky client. This is amusing to me. See this past watery incident is possibly the only cellular accident I am solely responsible for, but the fact remains that this will be my fourth phone in a year, and though not able to purchase another less expensive phone due to contract reasons, I clearly have no luck with Blackberry(s).

After tearfully parting with yet another hundred dollar copay, I attacked the drain issue with renewed vengeance. The last of my conceivable environmentally-friendly solutions, I picked up baking soda and vinegar from the store to complete the volcanic science experiment I was about to perform in my bathroom, and on second thought, stopped in the cleaning products aisle to examine professional "1st try guaranteed" products. You know, the kind of products that come with more than one warning label and an entire panel dedicated to self-help if any area of your body comes into contact it. The kind of stuff that people in white lab coats find traces of in the country's drinking water, and 30 years later parents of children born with one eye are judgmentally asked, "Well, you didn't use Drano, did you?" Heavy duty Drano in tow, I left Publix resolute. This clog was going down.
A half cup of baking soda and vinegar later, the inner child in me was delighted, but the sink was still draining slowly, and some disturbed mold mass floated menacingly beneath the bubbling surface of water/acid mixture. It was time for the big guns. Let me first preface this by saying I did everything I could think of barring actual disassembly of the pipes in the cabinet to NOT use the frightening DNA-degrading concoction that is this cleaner, and thus tried hard to avoid contributing to the future population of cyclops that is now destined to grace this earth. However, some things simply must be done.
The Drano gel needed 30 minutes to corrode the blockage to the best of it's ability, and during this time I periodically stood over the sink basin, staring expectantly, waiting for a miracle.

All in all, I don't see much of a difference in the draining speed of my sink. I might just have to live with it. I guess the moral of all this is a lesson in the dangers of procrastination. It's the observable and usually relatively ignorable problems in life will eventually culminate and proceed to consume your phone, money, and entire day. It's all just another step in finding this balance they say exists...somewhere in the chaos. As for me, I'm still working on finding the happy medium, but I can say that despite the trials and tribulations of the day, mine was still a good one. Sometimes life isn't about the problems themselves, it's about teaching you how to accept and deal with them and still have something left over to be a happy person. So cheers, here's to sad sap, self deprecating story, that I publish phone-less and alone, but with enough room to laugh at myself and see a silver lining. And that will be that.

I can hear the pitter patter of your running feet. Up the stairs, and down the hall, I can hear your breath quicken when you rest, I can feel your heart beat against your chest. Slow. And steady. Time lies forgotten on its clock faces, and the minutes expand...your rib cage swells, this moment smells like rain and wet earth. I can taste the smoke inside your mouth, I can feel the man behind the motion. Right here, having you in the ways I want you.

And I want to dig my nails in.

Normal

Life at Number 2

Rent. I'm a day late already, but I soothe myself with the thought that mail doesn't send on sundays. The trip to the wells fargo atm is a short one, only about two miles there and back, so I decide to walk. Wells Fargo, together we'll go far...lalala. Spring feels like summer, and a high of 90 this afternoon accompanies cloudless blue skies and a neighborhood flower bloom ratio that could rival the meticulously maintained botanical gardens for which this city is famous. I walk down Washita Street, it's quickest, cuts through little five and ducks around to Moreland, but it passes your new place. It's strange having you live in the old highschool, which, sparing a grove of bamboo and a line of Inman Park's finest bungalows, is quite literally my backyard, and I pass by keeping my head down, eyes focused on the broken pieces of concrete sidewalk and the soft pat, pat, pat of my feet that I can hear through my headphones. I feel the tension mount till I'm finally around the corner, to safety. It's not that I don't want you to see me, I just don't want you to see me and think I've passed this way hoping to see you. I am content with our interaction of ins and outs, they make sense, barely a ripple and don't make waves. A poster on a passing light post reads: "Please help us bring Molly home!" Under which is a picture of a winding road, and in smaller print, "Lost 18ft python." I realize it's not a winding road, but a very large snake. Peaches. Truthfully, this neighborhood was in need of a dangerous nocturnal predator, it's beady, heat seeking eyes narrowed on a slumbering hobo, death served on the surprising platter of asphyxiation, bravo snake, bravo.
On my way back I pass the small group of hippies that like to camp out behind Savage Pizza on Colquit. Last week they complimented my dog's sharp looks, and today they all have puppies. Now these aren't the "peace and love" hippies of the past, nor are they the tie-dyed, organically bejeweled trust-fund kids of today. This particular band appears to be a cross between 80's punk rock and the odd Caucasian rasta culture that's emerged recently. Think dirty heads of dreads, some decorated with feathers and beads, dressed in black rags from somewhere or other. One asks to pet my dog and I say sure. Behind him is a tiny black puppy, six weeks old, brand new. I don't touch it, and can't help thinking rather pridefully, "well at least my dog is up to date on his shots!" As I leave I'm pretty sure the guy asks me if I've ever wanted to huff paint, but I can't be positive.