I waste time being productive.

Twelve years old, what will happen?

It is the cities and the mountains that I love. Either a concrete playground illuminating overpopulation or the natural areas so empty one cannot even escape themselves. However, I wake up every morning to see suburban bliss, the in-between that ignites in me no inspiration or muse. I find myself frequently visiting the city or running away in the summer to the mountains; however, in the times where I cannot escape suburbia, I seek solace in the land that literature creates. For, at my very core is my love for art.

In the last four years of my life, art was not only my retreat and my passion but also my education. In the hours of the night that were too late to even check the time, I found myself in a room filled with words. Meanwhile, I was also searching for new sentences to fall in love with. There was Bukowski and Brautigan taped to my walls. Books covered the shelves and the floor simultaneously. Articles filled binders. With every word, I had discovered something new. At the very best, I had not only learned but changed.

Although I spent nine years at a Catholic grade school, I never understood Catholiscm until reading C.S. Lewis. Even in the country’s current mess regarding immigration, it was Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath that shaped my stance on the issue. And for many years I succumbed to innate shyness but only after watching Cool Hand Luke did I really learn how to speak my mind. I confess that it is as though I need a fabricated world to help me understand and change reality.

While rummaging through an issue of Adbusters one day, I came upon a quote from Lee Henderson, in which he says, “Art is the only god you can prove exists”. Immediately, this quotation got written down and lingered in me for years since. He articulated the role that art plays for me. It is not for sheer entertainment but illumination. It is immortal. It gives me direction and meaning, a role similar to that of religion. Thus, when losing myself in a piece of music, I have found myself gaining a sense of existence.

If anything, I am a passionate person who does not wish to stop learning once the school bell rings. So give me trains, give me buses, give me a sidewalk, and I will wear out my Chuck Taylors until the rubber sole is all that is left. Give me words, give me passion, give me beauty, and I will ignite all that is inside of me. Give me life and I will try as hard as I can to live it.

age: 29

location: apartment

I completely depend on electricity, a digital screen and phone lines. My attempt to regress back into a natural habitat fails as I am surrounded by everything artificial and everything clean. I am neither. I can’t remember the last time I shaved, anywhere. I do not feel more primitive or more rooted into the animalistic self that a human truly is. I just feel like my belt will stay in its loop, and the buttons on my pants will not come undone. No one likes animals.

He makes a lot of noise, stomping and swearing, to solidify his anger. Emotion. Noise. Emotion. Noise. Not music, but a representation of words he cannot speak. His drink spills. He is unhappy. He gives up. Is it shameful that I only like him when he cries?

And when did you meet him?
I met him when I was 16.
How old was he?
20.
How old is he now?
21.
Does he buy you alcohol?
Yes.
Do you love him?
Yes.

She latched onto life, taking the train to shed mediocrity. The train takes her to Kyle, whom she met years ago when she was wonderfully innocent. Even now, having seen and experienced much, she clings on to naivety naturally.

She walks to him in the rain and knocks on the door, a body at perfect ease. He walks out into the early spring downfall to greet her. It is not romantic. It is wet. But they stay out as the thunder continues to sound.

“Come on in,” he says.

He leads her into his space shared by four junkies. Recycled paper fills tables, floors. People come in an out of the apartment all day long. Coffee is forever being made.

They sip on their own cup of freshly brewed coffee, listen to electronica in the background, and melt into one another.

“How is school?” he asks.

She says it is getting less stressful. She has been making time to read for pleasure and is overall much happier.

“Makes sense,” he replies. He then tells her of his distaste for spring.

“Have you thought about what you are doing for summer?” she asks. The scene seems black and white. The rain rhythmically descends, the light is dim, and ink overwhelms the room.

The summer is a continuation of the year for Kyle. His friends will be hopping trains while he stays in Chicago getting acquainted with the city he already knows quite well. Above all, he is a man of details.

Outwardly, his dirty blonde hair is forever tousled, unbrushed. He has glasses and walks hunched over. His appearance is one of humility while Bailey, humble in tone and shy in manner, has a boldness in her beauty. Her natural splendor sits untouched. Her grey eyes beam.

In the late afternoon, they dance, giggle, relax. There is a sense of comfort present found only when one rejects the need for constant excitement. They find it glorious.

While eating cereal for dinner, Kyle’s roommates drift in and out of the space. Jim, the oldest of the roommates, hops in soaked. The bearded man smiles at the sight of two, hugging Bailey.

“Heard anything about tonight?” asks Kyle.

Their old friend is coming home to Chicago. In the city, people are always coming home, and people are always waiting to celebrate their return. Kyle finds himself in a crowd of immobile. He is aware that his need for people, for Bailey especially, is all-inclusive. She, on the other hand, is wrapped up in her desire for experiences, for grandness but unconsciously; she would sacrifice everything for him.

Already jittery from the lack of food and excess of coffee, Kyle and Bailey linger over to the apartment later that night. She laughs, internally, at how magnified her double-life is now. Twenty minutes away, she says things she does not mean for the sake of speaking, plays a role for the sake of being. Here, she is a child, the extrovert she once was, becoming bigger than herself, finding completeness with Kyle, and not taking life seriously enough to remember it.

She eyes the room. Jim flirts with an older woman. Jim is circling the room, proclaiming, “I have ADD!”

A girl turns to Bailey and says, “Shit. All that means is life is that much harder for you” then she walks away.

Kyle goes off to the corner laughing with some old buddies. Bailey walks from group to group, conversing, bumming cigarettes from anyone who offers. People start to crowd around as she begins to dance with Jim and make a fool of herself to Daft Punk’s “Superheroes”.

The city lights shimmer in the distance, illuminating a chaos everyone feels at home in. But Bailey and Kyle leave early, walking hand in hand to catch the 1:40 train. She finds that her life is lived scene by scene. Above all, she wants fluidity. Yet, stumbling onto the train, she rode back home to monotony.

————-

Summer comes with temperatures that are unbearably warm. Kyle decides to take the train, surprising Bailey with a visit. He loves coming to her, always with a desire to walk through the town and witness its pallid liveliness. It is a place of family, tradition, and Sunday mornings where one reads the paper rather than recovers from the night before. With her home, he feels he gets a second chance at childhood.

Entering Oak Park, which rests on the outskirts of Chicago, he recalls the fact that this is also Hemingway’s hometown. When Bailey and him just met, they ventured into their shared passion for the man. “He just felt so much,” they agreed.

Chicago is especially toxic for him now. He is sleeping less, writing more, isolating himself. It is a natural reaction. He has spent the last week denying that on an intoxicated Thursday night, he betrayed Bailey. Her name was Lisa. They had been friends for years.

When he comes to Bailey’s bungalow, he does not have strength enough to take on the stairs that led to her doorway. He sits down instead. His attempt to be honest is but a whimper.

Bailey’s mom finds him there and informs Bailey of the sight.

She comes to the doorway, telling him to come on in. He motions for her to sit next to him, and she walks down to his side. He does not dare to touch her. Instead, he looks into her reflective gray eyes, never having understood loneliness so well.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

He apologizes. He almost weeps. He tells her. And the look in her eyes sting so greatly that he sat jealous of her role as the victim.

“I know you are sorry,” she cries, “that’s not the issue. I know you never wanted to hurt me. I just can’t believe you want to be with me, really.”

Her heart is broken. His own heart, annihilated.

In the months that follow, Bailey retreats, finding thrills right out her door rather than a train rides away. Kyle isolates himself fully. His irregular talks with Bailey are, for a while, his only conversation. He pretends that music, art, and coffee is all he needs but so much more is required for his sanity.

On the other hand, she tells herself she is not addicted to popularity, or booze, or cigarettes and hooking up with boys without remembering the pursuit the next day.

She begins to listen to her best friend when deciding how to act. Usually, it contrasts with what she would really say, how she would really act. Her friend tells Bailey to stay away from Kyle. And so she stays away. Even when she goes down to Chicago for a Halloween party and sees him dressed up as powhitetrash drinking beer and keeping his distance. She wants to say, “I wish we could still talk.” Instead, she fools around with Peewee Hermann in the stairway.

Fall comes and thoughts accumulate within Bailey since her time away from Kyle. She wonders why she had kept her purity. She wonders why she realized early on that she loved Kyle but held back from expressing the notion physically.

And thus, she goes to him. She marches into his apartment so blind sighted by her spontaneity that she doesn’t recognize the sadness Kyle now resides in. She saw nothing in his eyes but boyish hope.

She wakes up the next morning, wounded. She is not an addict, she says. Fuck perfection and therefore, fuck moderation, says the broken soul.

age: 25

location: apartment

There are many moments I lie in bed imagining us meeting again – the lights are dimmed, and we are alone, together. I repeat the line in the Broken Social Scene melody that faintly sings “Separation is divine” over and over but honestly, our separation is an uneasy freedom that trumps a burdening reality, at times. Sometimes I convince myself I am free, and other times, I feel that freedom truly. All of which is fine because concrete, absolute emotions are only found in mere moments of our lives. Love, realization, inner-peace all come in a nirvana-reaching sort of experience. Fleeting. It really doesn’t matter much our physical state anyway, we always were and always are and always will be alone. Together.

Dead Man Walking

I see the man in me answering questions about success, pacing past ‘DON’T WALK’ signs, staring into the eyes of the mediocre. The man in me has a tone about him. He knows how to dress as the city asks of him – so good it is golden, so good the world could die in vain.

Two boys stand under a streetlight, in love although they’ll never know it. They know fragile bones are a medical liability and it all comes down to debt. Too easy to break, too expensive to repair so they substitute with plastic.

They don’t realize they are amidst a city; instead, only aware of the street lamp that illuminates their happiness, their inner core, their sexual fantasies. Fabric, like all barriers, will one day be ripped off, and so it all comes down to how the boys will react to their nakedness — free or head down in shame. Their fingers interlock, yet they scoff at the innocence they must settle for.

Dance, Kiss, I say. From a distance, I become angered at them just staring into one another’s eyes. Eyes hold no meaning and exude no personality. They are a product of being glamorized over the years. Staring into one’s eyes is the result of fearing contact, which is the only sincere way to know how a person reacts to tragedies or responds to beauty or how they are really a whole being rather than a mix of ingredients. Sex is not selfish.

It is a beautiful scene. I see the boys in them yet standing on the sidewalk from afar; I cannot locate the man in me. I’ve never been one for plastic.

age: 47
location: Boston, MA

Finding out about my condition didn’t change anything. It put a title to a story but never affected how the story would continue. Or how it would end. My story is on the streets. I’ve learned that there are many ways to make money and there are many ways to die and there mostly are ways to die making money. And it is here that I group people into one of two categories: having control and being captive. You know what? It is all just grey. – you and me and the concrete. I can’t say I like it particularly. I do like the unafraid. Unafraid of what stands still, unafraid of those at will, unafraid at nil. Nothing. It cracks me up. The weather, the seasons, the rain, sun, sleet, wind, breeze, crying snow. Buying layers to cover up its hold on the lesser beings. I’m not on anything, I promise – but no one believes. Oh I promise. With the sky above, I sure do wish it holds a promise. And really, all I’ve ever wanted to know, the only question I want to ask, ever want answered is how do you escape when there is no way out?

I dole out his medicine that’s all. It’s not a matter of how high a dose, Frank will always come back to me. He will not get better, and in the meantime, I will keep doling out his medications.

Working in a psychiatric ward, Frank has come in and out since my time here. As a patient, I have lost him. At the same time, I cannot stare in his eyes for too long. I need to break the gaze. When I do, though, his delusions pull him out the door.

“Why do you prefer the streets, Frank?”

“I don’t prefer the streets to here because that would mean I had the gift of preference. If I had that, I would not want to be on the streets. I have been robbed. My house was taken from me. If you had no house, where would you go?”

“Frank, you have not been robbed.” He gets up from his chair and switches to a seat across the room.

“Yes I have. I see houses that were mine. I see people wearing my rings. My jeans.”

“What do you do to these people?”

“I take my stuff back.”

“Frank, why don’t you stay away from these people?”

“They will rob me again. I can’t hide. Things don’t go away.”

“What things?”

“People. The ones that are always watching.”

“You mean God?”

“No, I am God – not God as in Jesus Christ. I am a prophet in the way everyone could be a prophet if they wanted. We can speak, that’s all. Listen to what I am saying and tell me I’m not God.”

“Frank, you’re not God.”

————–
I cannot clock out. Coming home from work, my mind still reflects on Frank. I look into my daughter’s eyes and compare them to the madness I see in the hazel set belonging to him. It’s strange to think of Frank as a child – untainted by disease, with sickness stirring inside. His eyes, I bet, were not so much pure as ignorant. I wonder if he knew.

My daughter responds, “Can you help me with math, Dad?”

I tell her to try her mother instead.

The weather outside blurs between rain and snow. I hope for spring to hold off. Not because I like the winter. It is like when my daughter plays her wonderfully joyous music and dances, and I have to turn away. It is not out of distaste but rather; I cannot listen to what I cannot identify with. In that way, the spring is a stranger, with its blooming flowers and subtle rain.

Washing my hands at the kitchen sink, I wipe the moisture off on my pants, too tired to reach for a towel. I cannot recall when my energy started fading, when the internal fire inside me began to slink into the corners of my mind unseen.

I think of how, when it comes to human nature, we praise the just and the righteous but cannot reason why one must do so. Why abstain from sleeping with your neighbor’s wife? Because the Bible says so. Because it is the right thing to do. Because of that voice inside your head.

I need a better rationale.

I used to not need any reason why but now it’s the only question I ask. It brings me back to Frank. Everything. How the things we do without reason make us who we are.

age: 30

location: Charlotte, North Carolina

Most of my early twenties were spent underneath the birch tree that sat next to all of the other birch trees in the forest, blocks down from my apartment. I never had much money those days and that was expected. I bought a studio apartment and squeezed my bed and drum set and dresser in and then spent my time outside everyday in search of air. One day, I saw a girl leaning against my tree and I waited a couple yards away until she moved. I grew impatient and I grew uncomfortable. The tree I sat under didn’t have the right lighting, and the grass was moist. A couple years later, when I found a decent job and earned some cash, I decided to move out of the apartment. On moving day, I took out my bed and drum set and dresser and then I headed over to my tree. I looked at you and said goodbye. You thanked me for the company. I’m coming back soon. I just need to tell you that the tree by my new apartment doesn’t have the right lighting and the grass is moist.

age: 14

location: bedroom

It’s too late to know what time it is. The blinds are closed but I know its dark outside – just dark enough for the sun to come up shortly and become early morning. Hours ago, I put on my glasses and changed into my pajamas and went into my room to go to bed but not to fall asleep. That’s what I do. I stay up late and wake up early and spend an hour eating a bowl of cereal. It’s getting a little cold sitting here. Actually, it’s just chilly, and I don’t want you to confuse the two. There are no more blankets and I am left alone (but not lonely – I don’t want you to confuse the two). I started a conversation with myself earlier tonight but I have just started to continue it out loud.

-Why are you writing?
-Because I have something to say.
-What are you saying?
– I don’t know.
– Well then, why are you writing?

And the shoes lying on the floor need to put away into my closet. This isn’t the time to do so. My mind is using up the energy in my bones, and I can feel that it’s still dark yet, and I don’t need to move my shoes until tomorrow. My eyes are beginning to ache, and I’m beginning to think that I have no idea where I am going with this and finding it all a bit dysfunctional, but maybe even beautiful. Or am I confusing the two?

 

age: 16

location: bedroom

They never call. Even when you end the conversation with “call me” and they respond “definitely”, they still never call. Oh, it kills me that he said definitely. That denotes an absolute. I guess, what are words really but either truths or lies and no way of telling which is which.

age: 27

location: Paris

I associate happiness with electronic music. I do not cut myself to feel or throw my emotions into artistry or push myself through some physical activity that overbears any internal emotion. I drunkenly dance to DJs in bars and surround myself with others doing the same. We come together, we take off our clothes, we consume alcohol. We become friends, animalistic but not beastly. It is a happiness that does not need to prove itself through a smile.

Dressing in neon, the lights flash throughout the club as I vent through movement. A contrast is created of pitch black and a bright stream of light. Come to think of it, I find that the direction of humanity was solidified when artificial light was created. No longer did we have to follow what was natural. We could do as much as we created.