This is an experimental piece that I am inviting you to interact with! It’s a new way to use my voice as a connection point, a meeting place like a coffee shop but in our mind’s eye.
It’s not exactly a proper reading, not exactly a solo podcast. A bit of a riff, a bit of a dare, a bit of an invitation to come over and hang out, sip coffee, smoke a cigarette, curl up on my couch.
And laugh about nothing and at everything, because life hurts like death—but in that strange vortex, we understand each other perfectly.
Let’s see what happens.
Have you ever thought about just how much of life is waiting? Waiting for the right time. Waiting for the train. The trip. Waiting for something to happen, for results, for the next episode. Waiting for your next great love, novel idea, creative endeavor, or dinner to arrive.
And how much of that waiting drives our addictions. We grab the phone to soothe us from the boredom. We grab the drink to free us from the ache of waiting for something that never seems to come our way.
The idea behind what I’m sharing here (which is simply what is happening around me on a day when ‘nothing’ is really ‘happening’) is that writing—or recovering, or creating, or living—is not some big menacing thing.
Just start with what’s in front of you.
We are all waiting to start the thing.
Might as well create something in the meantime.
Okay: Ready, set, go. I’ll start:
(Note: Audio begins now if you want to click play above to hear me read this section in my own voice)
Tell Me What’s In Front Of You
A vase full of decaying mini-daisies (forgive me, I really don’t know what they are, tall green stalks with the sweetest little white wispy flowerlets dotted all the way down the lengthy stems) sits directly in front of me. They’ve not yet begun with that low-key stench of funk-water but the tips are burned toast and crumbling.
I can’t decide if I keep them because I love them here with me, or because what’s here with me reminds me of what it was when I brought them home two Fridays ago; a fresh $4 bouquet from the local Produce Junction, not a flower store per se, but if you know what you are doing as a person who adores fresh flowers and has to watch your frivolous expenditures, this is the place you go. Springtime is the best. You can smell the sharp-cut green stems plunking down in fresh water bins from all the way out in the parking lot.
That’s a lot to say about a junk-fabulous bouquet, no?
Here’s what else.
I’m writing at my barnwood table, long and uneven, in my diningroom which adjoins the back lawn though a floor-to-ceiling sliding glass door. We’ve just had the glass replaced, as the old one was fogged so chalky-white that we could barely see through it. By opening the glass door, the problem disappeared as the lawn came into view. This explains—but by no means excuses—our taking over a decade to getting around to replacing the glass. Somehow it just blended in with the everyday way of things, when things are simply as they are without bother. It was only upon entertaining guests that we’d flush once again with the embarrassment of our inexplicable delay (negligence).
In any case, it’s a joy to have clear glass; to see the gigantic widespread arms of the reddish green Japanese maple sprawling out all across the corner of the yard, which is enjoined by a wooden fence to the neighbors’ who own a bunch of chickens and a roster who crows like clockwork every morning at 4:32am. I don’t know where the hell they keep him in wintertime, but he has once again emerged since April.
That’s much to say, isn’t it, about a glass door and a chicken, and some old flowers dying right in front of me as I type.
The chickens are making a noise just now, one I’ve never heard before. I wonder if they are mating. I wouldn’t know if it were true and I’m certainly not going to look. Today is the Celtic feast in honor of mating rituals. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t it funny that here I am listening to what could possibly be two chickens having sex right across the fence beyond the giant maple tree at the very back of my yard? And out there spring is singing and blooming and fucking as the flowers in the handcrafted pottery vase wither into browning stalks, that I still really love and may just keep as long as they don’t smell of that funk-water, or maybe even if they do?
The coffee is not hot in my mug with the beach-front hotel scene on it, but it’s not cold yet either. I will drink lukewarm coffee, I’m not proud. To make things worse, it’s decaffeinated! It passes my lips like a sadness usually reserved for passing through my eyeballs, but if I don’t drink this I’ll drink the real stuff and never stop. Never stop until I can’t sleep at night and instead lie awake watching the goddamn fan on my ceiling loop and loop around endlessly, and I’ll wake up feeling unrested and unwell, reminiscent of those times gone by (thank god) when I was hangover-sick and depressed at the thought of another day wasted-face-planted in pizza and booze, to crush out the previous booze. It was never a perfect plan, I admit.
But when you are in the midst of a thing, even a terrible thing, even a fine and nothing thing, even a beautiful thing, like the squirrels in the sun chasing each other so fast up and down the rough-pocked bark of the trees, tearing across the wooden planks of the fence, no doubt desperate to fuck themselves frantic all over again, when you are in the dead center of wherever you are, you can just have a terribly difficult time seeing up and over it, seeing beyond it.
It’s a lot to put on you, this story that isn’t really a story. This information about things alive and things dying and sound and sight and smell. But the thing is I’ve been waiting for something to write about.
I’ve been sitting here motionless,
clawing at my insides,
cursing at the empty air.
Waiting for a story to tell.
(Audio ends here)
Okay! Now: your turn. What is in front of you? What is all around? Create before you are ready. Move, try, engage with it.
You can’t fuck it up. It’s just life!
And it’s waiting on you!
But not forever, you dig?
Not forever.
You wild, beautiful, magical goddamn thing.
Share this post