whtnoise

been quite awhile since i've written too much of anything 'round here... figured now's about as good a time as any to put somethin down.

i got torn into the last time i wrote something, by someone else in the forum, probably because i don't take the most conventional approach to saying whatever it is i've got to say, and it'd probably be better suited for my journal - but there's not too much of anything in there anyway, and i can't really find the time to put much in there that'd make it worth reading.

so.

I.

right now, i'm sitting at a table, in a chair, of what looks like to be lawn furniture, too expensive to be set in the lawn. ouside the window, above some random chicago street, under a waxing october moon, and along the tree-lined sidewalks, fall seems all-too ready to arrive again.

jack daniels, and a cup of ice. five dollars. just about noon. two hours from chicago, thirty-thousand feet over new york, and seven-hundred and ninety-one miles from an inevitable autumn.

the man sitting next to me, in the middle seat, 19e, is probably in his late forties, stands well over six feet tall, and having been in coach, couldn't have been more unhappy sandwiched between two people less deserving of aisle and window seats. no amount of extra leg-room could have made that trip any more comfortable for him, and no amount of in-flight alcohol could have persuaded me to give a shit.

as the plane prepares to touch down, there's a part of me that wishes the landing gear would fail, or perhaps, the wings would just, fall off. maybe some terrorist had slept just a bit too long and had to do his business, remotely detonating an explosive in some piece of checked baggage sitting in the compartment directly below me.

unfortunately, people like me don't tend to ever be that unlucky. no extra-ordinary circumstances, no crazy twists of fate - i manage, somehow, to just slide right on by, without too many people ever giving notice.

standing outside the baggage claim at o'hare, smoking, watching the cabs pick up and drive by, i'm temped to run back inside and find the next flight out, to happiness - or at least my definition of it; less the unfamiliar bitterness that accompanies places like this, for whatever reason, or my reasons. in reality, you could easily spend the better part of five years running, trying to find that happiness, and still, come back with nothing...

my dad, with his own bottle of jack, and a revolver, loaded, sitting on the desk to his left. one last drink of the once had drinks of too many nights in the same company. the answers to all too many problems point three-hundred and fifty-seven millimeters away, either from himself, or my mother, who's insurance policy looked, at this point, almost too good to pass up.

the logs of his hand-built house moan in anticipation of some catastrophic but calming solution to his sudden involuntary abandonment of a more than sixteen year career with the same company, quadruple bypass surgery, mortgages, sons in college, and an infinite number of debts. but tonight... waylon and willie say no, and everything else of some importance takes a back seat, for tonight...

now... i've always heard that home is where your heart is. a place where fond memories lie, a comfortable bed, and plenty of pillows, a warm shower, hot coffee, thanksgiving dinner and peach cobbler. the place you always know you can do your laundry - or - still willing, your mother will do it for you. the place that at night you smile before closing your eyes, because you know, undoubtedly, that you are home, and there's no place in the world like it, and no-one to take it from you.

then, home falls away, and the last bit of security you know becomes some far-off thought, too difficult to completely remember, too easy to completely forget.

dlish

i'd be damned lucky if i could pen my thoughts the way you have.. you have quite a talent..

__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

tecoyah

Agreed....beautiful writing, and I will officially ask for more.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

shesus

That is written very well, but if it's true (which I'm assuming it is since it isn't in the literature thread) I'm sorry that you feel that way. Imo, home is where you feel comfortable. I have moved every year for the past 5 years, so I really feel as if a place has never been 'home' to me. I've learned that a place can't be home because it can always change. I think that home is contentness with yourself and enjoying the company of loved ones around you. The loved ones around you are typically the family that you choose, not blood relatives. This family could be a spouse, kids, or friends. Happiness is hard to find and harder to keep. I wish you luck in your journey to finding home for you.
Oh, and the first step in your journey should be to get rid of idealistic thoughts. Life is never like it is in our dreams or on tv. It took me a long time to lose the feelings you wrote about (i.e. thanksgiving dinner, peach cobbler, mom's that do laundry after you're grown, etc.) While all that stuff is great and does happen, it never has the same feeling that you expect it to have. There is not a magic dust that sprinkles down over those moments. Its the same feelings with different scenery.

__________________
Whatever did happen to your soul?
I heard you sold it

Choose Heaven for the weather and Hell for the company

abaya

You know, I've moved 10 times in the last 10 years, and all that time, home was still there for me. I tried to keep re-inventing it as the place you describe, that magical place where I felt "happy." But it never was like that, at least not after everything went to shit (parents split, weird relatives moved in, lack of maintenance, people being miserable there). Sure, my mom would still do my laundry, I could go to sleep smiling, a few times... but a year ago, my mom decided to sell the place to developers who would tear down the house my dad built by hand, rip out the trees, and vomit a bunch of suburban houses onto that beautiful land. 22 years of life there, all my memories, will be gone. Who would have known that my mother would have been the one to take that place from me.

So I feel a deep sadness, wanting my home to never change... my boyfriend and I go back for Thanksgiving next month, and there will be pie. But my grandmother, who lived there for half of my life, will mostly likely have died by then of a slow-moving cancer. My mother will be depressed, and looking to move on into a new house, a suburban one a few miles away. Her family will have turned their back on her. The house is run-down and on its way to obliteration.

But I can't be angry, because Shesus is right. After a certain age, we cannot expect "home" to be where we grew up, anymore. It becomes our own responsibility to make it wherever we go. I have to let go that idea of home... if I don't, I will suffer more. dhukka (for the Buddhists out there)... the pain of clinging on to something in the hope of it giving me happiness, when really, it can never satisfy me.

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

whtnoise

. . . . . .

whtnoise

II.

there aren’t too many nights now that lend themselves very well to sleep, so instead, i spend the hours with the window open, listening to the rest of the sleepless world, looking for faces in the speckled stucco on the ceiling of my hotel room. you tend not to wake up much; rather, you accept that any opportunity for sleep was lost in the last few minutes staring at the clock, waiting for the alarm to go off, crawling out of bed in time’s ringing, beeping, talk radio defeat.

outside, this morning’s parade of clouds march in over lake michigan. not too unlike a giant herd of pale-skinned elephants, they race to escape sunrise, soft and somber in their travels, misting this city and the next behind and below them, and in their wind, breaking the waves of blood-colored ivy that blanket the buildings surrounding, whisking away smoke and steam from accompanying coffee and cigarette.

to the south, about 2 miles in front of me, stands the sears tower, its top hidden in a thick blue-grey fog. i’m standing on a wooden deck, three stories up, on the side of a townhouse turned inn. the walls of the brick apartment building to my left form an alcove which leads down to a cement courtyard covered in fallen leaves, in the middle of which is a set of lawn furniture very similar, if not identical to one i sat at weeks prior.

it’s strange how scenes like this lend themselves so easily to memory, the places you recall in vain of escape, along with an endless library of others; rolling hills, long, isolated highways, a seawall over the pacific ocean. my wooden deck, my autumn-covered courtyard, my morning sky and its troop of cloud-like elephants.

i set my coffee on one of the supporting posts of the railing and throw my cigarette over the edge, watching as it falls. tiny glowing embers trail in the air behind before its impact in a puddle of small sparks below. for a moment, i think about following suit, but, i left the hot water running in the bathroom and i only have about thirty minutes to get ready for work.

into the shower. out of the shower. pull toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, and q-tips out of dop kit, use, and return them. having never seen the point in getting accustomed to foreign closets, i open my suitcase; retrieve one wrinkled shirt, one wrinkled pair of pants, one pair already-worn socks, last pair of clean boxers. make some attempt at fixing my hair, and stand there, in front of the mirror, accepting that this is, just about, the very best i’m going to do with myself today. now, run outside and jump over the fucking railing.

at eight-thirty in the morning, the fullerton station el stop is ridiculously busy. i understand the importance of punctuality, but not to the point of cramming yourself into a train that can obviously not hold any more people. i wait on the platform as another train comes, this one’s full too, but not to the extent of the last, and i manage to squeeze myself into the car. was it five, or six stops, grand avenue? i would look at the transit maps but it would mean raking three days of stubble through the woman’s hair in front of me.

the train slows as it approaches the next stop, shifting the sea of people huddled together in-between the doors, myself included, all struggling to hold on to the handrails. i lose my footing and find myself unwillingly thrust into the same woman, who already couldn’t have been any closer, and in this momentary if not somewhat perverted circumstance; she turns, and smiles.

off the train. down east grand, under michigan avenue on to the temporary office of my temporary job. in my temporary city. one more chapter, in my temporary life.