Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

I've moved. Yes, I resisted. I did not want to be a conformist. But I was beguiled, bewitched, bewondered... and bothered to heck and back that blogger did not let me do what I used to like to do. So, I checked out wordpress and liked what I saw.

This blog will remain here and I will go to my new site free of baggage.

Two Inches Of Formica

see ya there folks.

Evening

Circles surround us. All of life operates in an infinite loop. There are no ending and no beginnings, but just transitions into other states. Some never come again, and others visit us, yearly, monthly, and even daily. When I first learned about circles the thing that impressed me the most was that they had no end.

I have a book called "A Modern Book Of Hours". Low gave it to me as a present a long time back, so long that I can not remember if it was for a holiday, anniversary, or a birthday present. But I pull it down every once in a while and look through the pages, filled with drawings, poems, and old sayings.

It helps remind me that the day is a circle contained in the circle of the month contained in the circle of the year. Sometimes it is so easy to get caught up in the rush of humanity that I need to stop and think about the stages of the day, like evenings. I love evenings.

In the winter they are short and quiet. The sun slips quickly below the horizon and the skies light up with colors that have already been leached from this world. In the spring they lengthen and bring me hope. Summer evenings last forever and stretch out like our kitty, languid and serene. In the fall they are crisp and tight with winds that blow away the light.

I have a photo album of pictures taken with a cheap camera that I bought using S&H greenstamps. I have more pictures of times and things than I do people, including pages of sunsets over the back pastures of our farm. In the evenings I would go out and watch the stars come peeking through the sky. I danced through the fields until I stomped away all the color from the land.

I dreamed. I rested. I imagined what life would be like. I've dreamed under those skies and I've shared them with my love.

Here's to evenings.

Inside my heart a glad wind trills;
through slatted shades it blows
From distant rolling blue-tinged hills
I ask whose lights are those?

my gentle times of ill regret
the soundings of my blame
I in this slanted light forget
by day's last purple flame

across my mind I skip once more
to see my kindled sparks alight
the stress stained times that come before
like roosting birds take flight

as it falls, the days last breath
i cling to throttled paths
and know that in the light's dim death
that nothing here will last

Ice

in a world of motionless
i am kinetic
where men and women stand
in games of statues
i dance gladly through

in thin ice
i am the water below
and in our cold
i am the fire

in slow time
i move with light
in dreams
i spark the real

the times i have known
where souls are glass houses
and perhaps
slips of paper for me to write on
and certainly
sands to place my feet
i go uncertainly

the places i have seen
perhaps not part of this life
and understandably
part of any other
still feel more real
than any other place
i have ever known

in light
i break apart
in darkness
i come together

the sounds i have heard
of souls bound
of tears poured into this
tide of humanity
the press of instability
only beasts
we style ourselves gods

in peace
i speak with arrows
and in war
i fly with doves

the touch of pain
i have given
we all have felt
pain it is life
and the dreams
it passes are
not the dreams
we should gather

the doors of this world
open to oblivion
the windows look out
upon the death
of one spirit
we all hold

in the arms of eternity
i am a second to hold
and in the breath of divine
i am steam going

we speak in tongues
forked and doubled
and we bait the bear
while feeding our anger
and never
do we think of
who we trample

divine contradiction
that is what we are
a confusion of the sense
a hazy halo of thought
we mistake
as holy
when all is
profane

the power of few
are the crimes of the many
the tolerance of voices
are the prejudice of thought

the wings of life
are not to be tried on
by ones who fly
too close to the sun

eclectic electric
walking mammal
that thinks itself
into being I am
and never supposes
it should not be

we are a dice game
a genetic game of chance
we are a purchase
on the debt slips of our mistakes

we look with hazy
eyes over great distances
and never see
birds in our own backyard

being nothing new
just a combination of old
spliced and sliced by death
and birth
and resurfacing to
murder our own mother

i sigh... and winds rip
i cry... and waters rise
i live... and life goes on
i die... and so does life

and leave nothing but
a sad lonesome moon
to look upon
nothing

Going All Out

How life changes one. Back in my twenties, Low and I were out nearly every weekend dancing our butts off. The weekends we were not doing this were spent driving to other cities to visit their bathhouses and bars. Now most Friday nights are spent watching movies from Netflix.

We asked each other if we had turned into a boring couple. I like to think not, just that our needs have changed. I am much happier now that we do not go out. I am not fond of crowds and no matter how much I push myself to convince myself I need to be a social animal, the rationale never sticks when some obnoxious kid in a movie theater kicks the back of my seat, or some queen in a bar does not see me and flicks ashes on my shirt.

But the strange thing is that now that we do not go out nearly as often... we have more friends. The times we spend out... we have more fun. Like tonight as we go to a WANG party. WANG stands for We Are Naked Guys, the Pittsburgh chapter of GNI. We are a bunch of nudists that get together once a month and let it all hang out, literally. Tonight there will be over twenty-five guys there for dinner, most of them good pals of ours, like Hooter, who is driving us down to the event.

The guys that go to WANG are mostly older, but they are also the nicest, most honest and open gay men I have ever met. It is something about taking off your clothes that brings out the true spirit in men. It is not about sex. It is not about hooking up. It is about being as nature intended and not being hung up on looks or material possessions.

That means now we go out about once a month and sometimes we have friends in for dinner, games, and movies. But for me, it is much more rewarding than all the times we spent out in the traditional gay watering holes.

Erika's Candy Castle

In fifth grade I learned one of life's hardest lessons. Our teacher, Mrs. McGee gave us a huge assignment: build a castle. We had been reading stories about knights, dragons, and damsels, so it seemed a natural extension. As we left school that day, my head danced with all the ideas of what I would do with this castle, of what I could build.

We had two weeks to build this thing. I finally convinced my mother to go out and buy supplies for it the weekend before it was due. It took some time to motivate my mother to do anything. She would rather sit in her bedroom and smoke cigarettes. Now, I wanted to make it glamorous. I wanted to use sugar cubes, but that would be too expensive. We had little money. My second option was Styrofoam, but I needed a special cutting tool, which again my mother could not justify buying for one silly school project.

In the end, we bought some white construction paper and tape along with some crayons. I spent the rest of the day cutting out the shapes and trying to fit them together. No one helped me on it. No one in my family ever concerned themselves with my homework other than to complain when I received a bad grade. I did the best I could, but my little thick fingers were too clumsy to cut everything to the right shape. My castle had gaps in it. The crayon walls seemed very sub par. But it was my own creation. I worked all afternoon on it, taking extra time to fix a wall that my brother had smashed with his fist.

The next day I took it to school. There were only a few of my classmates on the bus. I knew most of their mothers were taking them to school with their creations so they would not be harmed. Like mine had... one of the sixth graders had poked the door and it had fallen in, causing the towers to lean. But I tried to be proud. I had done it all on my own.

As I walked into the class with it, I wished I could just chuck it in the trash can. Some of the other students' castles looked exactly like mine. But then there were the ones Mrs McGee couldn't stop going on about. Tim had built his out of sugar cubes. It looked amazing. Michelle's mother had helped her make a crystal castle from beads. Again, fabulous. But Erika's mother had outdone the rest of the class. She and her daughter had baked an extravagant gingerbread castle, with chocolate squares for the crenellations and gumdrops for posts around the moat. Oh yes, the moat was filled with chocolate syrup that you could dip the pieces of cookies into.

In the afternoon, we were allowed to eat the spectacular creation. I did not have a single piece of it. Erika became very offended and told me I was just jealous because my project was so lousy. What could I say? I knew it was true. I could have shot back that her mother had done it for her, but then that hurt even more, that she had a mother who cared enough to help.

I received a C for my efforts while Erika, Tim, and Michelle received A's.

After that I really stopped trying in school. No matter what I attempted, I knew that others who had so much more support would accomplish more. I had to face the fact that I was a smarty in a family of dumb-asses. I often wished I would have been born into a clan of more nurturing individuals. All my father ever cared about is if I did my chores and stayed out of trouble.

And that is the lesson i learned in fifth grade... life is unfair.

My mother only existed. She barely did anything around the house. She was content to let life sail right past her while she slowly killed herself with overeating and chain smoking. In the end she did just that, dying when I was twelve from an aneurysm she could have had taken care of before it got serious. I remember watching the lump over her eye grow, begging her to go get it checked out. When the pain became too blinding, she did, but it was too late. The blood had begun to sink into her brain.

All these years, I am still undermining myself, giving into the little voice that tells me why try when your little cardboard construction will not match up to the gingerbread castles of the world, those that had the better education, the nicer home life. This is what I fight daily inside.

But then, life is what you make it. I realize now that while the castle might not have been the prettiest thing there, I still passed. And I passed on my own. But deep inside my elementary years helped instill in me a sense of carelessness. Why try when others can do it better? For years, I have fought this urge in me. It is getting the best of me now.

Writing this book has been tough. I second guess everything I write. I wonder if I am good enough. I am afraid that the Tims, Erikas, and Michelles of the world will laugh at my efforts. But I know now that I am smart, I am creative. Why then, do I still have this little boy in me afraid to show the world the castle I created all on my own?

I have spent four months puzzling over this and have come to this conclusion. I need to change. I need to do things for myself. I need to get my life back on track. I worry too much about what others think. I have instead of putting my life back on track, have hidden away thinking that the world would forget me.

It has not. It is catching back up and I need to finish that castle and at the same time realize that I can make it dazzling. I have the ability. I need to stop being that insecure child. That is why I have changed my blog back to a basic format. I do not need to dazzle you out there with fancy graphics. I just need to be me.

I need to concentrate on the good. The friends I have made. The lessons I have learned. As Low said last night, I am always changing. I'd like to believe that, but it is not change, it is just sliding another face over the core of myself, a core I do not like very much.

If this is rambling, I guess it is. I am writing from the heart. Puncturing the last problem area of my soul. That is why I have gone back to this format. It is time for me to strip away those notions that I am not good enough and believe in myself, not what others tell me, but to look deeply into my heart and tell myself that I need to become what I should have always been.

When I Fade

when i listen to the sound of myself
i fade
into the wall
down the hall
and out into the wide world i know nothing of

when i see the steps of my heart
i sing
of tooth and nail
of heaven and hell
and know that i am both

when i dream of you
i hide
behind the carnival rides
because you see my insides
and know that i am not perfect at all

when i think of forever
i smile
there you are at the end
right where reality bends
in upon itself and begins again

when i am alone
i cease
i become just belief
some etched flat relief
that only your angle can conceive

and when i fade
i go away
for we always were one
a chain of moon stars and sun
in the sky of my entire life endless and benign

Dream Fish

When you live with someone for seventeen years you learn everything about the person, at least the day to day personal quirks. I love Low dearly, but one of the more um 'endearing' things about him is his sleep talk. It's calmed down over the years, when he used to get up out of bed and search our closets for 'bad men' and fight with himself in the closet mirror, but still it surfaces from time to time, like last night.

Pleasantly slumbering, I woke to Jim smacking my legs with his hands. I am used to this behavior by now, so I just looked up to see what he might be doing. He kept patting down the bed. I figured he had to be dreaming about mice or spiders, two of his favorite nightmares, so I asked him what he was looking for.

"The fish."

"The what?"

He kept patting down the covers. "The fish! There is a fish in the bed!"

"Ok, Low lay down and go back to sleep. There is no fish in the bed."

"Really? Ok" (big yawn) "Good night."

I had just started falling asleep when KitKat began jumping over my legs. Opening my eyes again, I noticed him skulking across the bed.

Obviously he had heard about the fish.

And that's the wonderful little quirky things I love about my man.