Waiting on the Stairs

February. Monday. After a long streak of nights electrified by the joy of being absolutely nothing.

I sit and cease to exist until the quiet hours of the morning thrust me back into warped existence. Covered in the mucus of structured work and destination. It is foolish to think I am the first to tear through this banner... after all did not Shakespeare at some point litter his own floors with crumpled up pieces of paper? The difference is that my demons lie below me in the PVC pipes and his were right there in the lines of scrawled ink.

Is this what evolution has prepared me for? Escaping into a mirage of painted symphonies and walking the dog? At some point I start to wonder when the hurricane is coming, just so I can ignore the danger and taste the rain.  I keep putting on an extra layer, leaving the light on at night, as if growing up is a crumpled check I forget to cash. And now:

A Few of My Favorite Things

1. Getting back in the car after filling the tank up. alllllll the way up.
2. Grilled cheese for breakfast
3. Snow, for god's sake, this was the oddest winter ever. While 2011 went through puberty one of the reasons I actually like Massachusetts was invalidated. I WANT SNOW.
4. Climbing stairs. I don't know?

It's coming down stairs that freak me out. 

It was one of those stupid moments in which two people are approaching each other and neither person knows which way to go. I dodged and she stumbled around me. My teeth started to form "Sorry" but something about the situation stopped me. I stopped moving altogether and glanced in her direction. Late 40s, short, stocky. She trudged around the carpet in large galoshes and hid her brow under a knit cap, soggy from the rain. A ragged coat hung around her body. It looked as if it failed to keep any cold out. I struggled to see her face more closely but wasn't invested enough to care. She was carrying a backpack in one hand and a large drawing pad in the other. Homeless? Not frequent enough in this town to be a definitive explanation. Suspicion and paranoia bristled on my neck. I put my hands into my coat pockets and shrugged.

I was barreling down the stairs  minutes later when I saw her again, this time from the back. She had planted herself right in the middle one of the steps. I saw that what she was still clutching wasn't a drawing pad at all, but a white rubber bathmat. The before encounter still chilled my core. I swallowed hard and spun on my heels to escape the way I came but she craned her neck around to look at me before I could get away. I could feel beady eyes slicing into me like a laser cutter. Her wrinkled cheeks looked weighed down with years of neglect, and her eyes were as yellow as her finger nails.

"Excuse me," I said, leaping over her bag onto the following step. Almost out, I thought, few more steps. 

"Cold hands?" she gestured to my pockets, still filled with my clenched fingers. Her voice was wet and smokey. I wondered if she had been drinking the rainwater.

"Uh, yeah," I smiled politely, avoiding eye contact.

"Or a weapon..."

I was already down the hall. My anxiety was spiked and this last comment propelled me past being rational. Did she really think I had a gun in my coat pocket... Maybe I should start carrying one. 

The Ground Up

For the first time every goosebump on my arm is filled with worth and anticipation's hum. We're all so close-knit that we breathe together. My inhale is their exhale. And I'd say we were a machine but there's too much life in us to be made of nuts and bolts. Instead Band-Aids and soggy mittens. Coffee cups, inheriting thumb war strategies, and forgetting. A dollar here and there to contribute to the Consistency Fund.

I wish I lived in the time before existentialism was invented. They didn't have to question their existence because they were too busy not to have a purpose. The thought never even crossed their minds. It's answer was splayed out physically in the black dirt underneath their finger nails. The sweat in their eyes would blind them from seeing their own inaccuracies. But me, I fill pages with wishful thinking and over-analysis. Because I can. Because I give myself too much rope and then hang myself with it.

One Old Cigar

I settled into adolescence without assistance. Even if I didn't understand something, instead of instinctively asking for help, I would rather leave it blank. It wasn't pride, or that I thought I was weak. It just never occurred to me to require anyone else's expertise.  It started with homework, 5th grade. My father would refuse to do my math for me, as I'd heard so many other kids brag that theirs' had. "Figure it out yourself, you're smart enough," he'd say, not looking up from the newspaper or occasional WWII memoir. I would trudge down from my prison of a room like one of the soldiers in those memoirs for the tenth, eleventh, twelfth time that day. "Is this right?" I'd ask, not making eye contact because I knew it wouldn't be. He peered at my scrawl of an answer: "Nope, try again." Christ, it was taunting. Even when I did ask for the problem to be explained, he poked at me over his glasses.

"Dad, I need help on this."
"On what, be specific."
"On this." Pointing, exasperated.
"I'm not a mind reader, ask me a question and I will do my best to help you."

He's always spoken like that. Canned, artificial, as if reading from a telemarketer script. He's always been frustratingly calm and rational. Sometimes I just wanted to provoke him into screaming profanities at me. Maybe his tight, woolen sweaters prevented any fresh air from getting to his lungs. Maybe one too many tobacco pipes had finally shriveled his brain-stem. Maybe raw feeling was raped away by periodical haircuts and old Clint Eastwood films. I had experimented once with a leftover cigar I had found in the garage. As I inhaled slowly, I could feel the flavor of 40 years' apathy slithering into my mouth. The feeling was familiar, not one I had already felt but one I would grow into. I wasn't fooling anyone, I was going to be just like him. A turtleneck.

Merry Christmas

Hell for your heart is when a hero dies. Not expires, but disappoints. The person goes on living but the concept is no more. The power goes out in your soul forever, it seems. And then there are those moments afterward when you try and revive her, try and attribute that last broken camel-back event as a surreal dream. An old woman frantically climbing stairs, dirty rosary beads draped over one arthritic claw of a hand. Her elephant skin slung around bones, holier than the blood itself. But you know. It's just you now. Alone.

And I've watched from a distance, seen you thrive in your environment, seen you make your surroundings one with yourself. I've tried to work that into my own persona, but the variables have changed. I question myself, you are completely confident, completely happy. You aren't loud about it, your song is quiet, but saturated with relevance and art. Every fiber struck gold in your manufacture. Your golden flow just makes me emphasize my own flaws.

My Newfoundland

The whole town is chasing December and impatience is on the sweatshirt strings of all so anxious to shed them for winter coats. I am heavy with the task of producing my own caffeine for the day and don't notice much else. Where's the snow? Where are the goosebumps as I undress. That trembling I've grown into? Where's waking up to my father making breakfast to Pat Metheny on Saturday morning while the roads are being cleared? It's been post-poned and we have nothing but sticky humidity to stew in.

I thought about him while shaving my legs in the shower, drizzling conditioner over my legs like gasoline on dry logs. I thought about him and his pout when I joked to him about his hairless chest. It was a soft spot, like his solar plexus was to his heart. He made music sound more triumphant and sunlight sweeter and calculus tolerable without even being there. He was the ray of heat in the microwave defrosting my cold stares.

My heart fluttered out of my chest, through my esophagus, and into the foggy world. I saw him as I rounded Lap 4, chest heaving 7 feet out/7 feet in, mucus in my lungs, anvils strapped to my knees. I took his grin into consideration and 2 more laps wasn't so bad. Wouldn't you know, I was finished 10 seconds sooner that last week. That's one thing to be happy about.

One of many, I'm finding out every day. Which is totally ruining my arrogant, unsympathetic teenager look by the way. I find myself speaking more than when spoken to, smiling at strangers in the dog park, so frequently that I didn't notice Henry getting frisky with a 200 pound Newfoundland. Dream big, I guess.

He was my Newfoundland. Just... not as heavy.

Italians Love Walmart.

I love Thanksgiving.

During this weekend in late November, my Thanksgiving is spent surrounded by Italians who are forever nursing the "When in Doubt, Make Pasta" philosophy. Surprisingly enough, I am comforted by the casual yelling, the chaotic 8:5 kid to adult ratio, the endless questions of "Are you hungry? Would you like twelve more meatballs?" Maybe this is only born of the fact that I've been around it my whole life. Otherwise, how could one explain my tolerance of my huge Italian family, which unsurprisingly enough, pure-blood Irish Dad can't handle?

My greatest regret is that after seventeen years of being submersed in this language, I still have not picked it up. My immigrant grandparents sport a mix of English and Italian when they speak, the production of four decades in the states. I can understand the general concepts but everything else is a big Italian blur. Instead I focus on the braccioli, italian stuffing, cannolis, granita, and home made espresso. So good.

"Dobbiamo andare a Walmart per ottenere tomato sauce piu, perche abbiamo persone troppi per alimentare."

What's worse is my grandfather's incessant need to yell at me in a language I do not understand in the least. I doubt he could keep himself from such disapproval if I was Gandhi. 

Despite the circumstances I derive comfort in high-stress holidays. I even enjoy the airport.

^^ sample from yesterday.

I'm not Naive Enough to Say I've Won

Stuck in solitary this weekend, so here goes.

It went on like that for 14 minutes... we both stood opposite each other and took turns flicking on and off the light switch.

"It's 2pm, why do you want the lights off," I screamed at him. It felt like I was calling down a long tunnel, on the other end of which he was standing.

Every couple of switches I punched him in the chest for good measure. An 18 wheeler cascading down the tunnel. I didn't want to hurt him but  I had run out of ways to show him that I care. If a fist to the breast plate was the only way to revive his crashed web pages then so be it.

Every time I turned them on another memory of us came to light in my head: the kayak in the Appalachians, badminton in the backyard over a torn net, tutoring me in math late, late at night. All burning up with the bulb filaments. If only he could direct his anger at his fear of success, instead of at me. My biggest fear was that he would mistake my anger for the fact that I didn't care about him anymore.

Eventually I just took the bulbs out of the overhead lights and hid them under my bed with the rest of my inhibitions.