Lightning in Afterlife

I take a nap on the afternoon of New Year's Eve while Marcio goes out running errands, and I have some strange violent dreams, culminating in a dream in which I had died. How I died didn't matter, even in the dream, at least not at first, but what I remember is that I was in this strange world, a purgatory city where I found myself waiting to go wherever it was that I was going next, and I was far from alone. I don't know if something catastrophic had happened, and the dream didn't answer that for me, but there were a lot of people there with me, some people I know, and the mood was unexpectedly light, as we joked and waited. We went down a stairs, exactly like a subway platform, and I was with my new friends, some of whom are people I'm acquainted with in real life. We were prepped as if an individual transport vehicle was coming for each of us, but then we were told that because of the volume of us, they were going to send a mass transit machine, and then an electric bus, like a San Francisco aboveground subway car, slid up. I got onto the train and it was dark and already crowded, mostly with younger people, many who seemed to know each other. I tripped over someone who had decided to sit right on the floor and I looked back at him, handsome, and smiled. I made it through a number of cars. all the way to the very back of the last car, where there were four seats, and I took one. Three of my friends were at the front of the car and I gestured for them to come back but they took seats closer to the front of the car. The girl in front of me was crying and holdng a map full of made up place names and it was raining as the train powered up and began sliding noiselessly through a made-up place, and I suddenly thought of my mother, on the other side, in the living world, and knew that I would have no contact with her, or any of my real friends, and I promised myself I would write them all letters that I could never send until maybe one day they could join me wherever it was I was going but I realized I didn't even know where that was, and my throat seized up, my stomch turning over, as I suddenly realized what I'd been trying to laugh my way around all along, that I was dead, that I had died, and I still couldn't remember how. I was alone.

I wake to a dark room. Alone. I don't know how long I've slept but I know it's longer than I wanted. I stumble into the living room and Marcio looks at me. "I'm going out again," he says, and leaves me.

I remember that strange electric city, the rain that never stopped but didn't get anyone wet, the lightning that preceded the train's arrival, how I was irrationally scared of it. I remember the train, the faces on the train, and the landscape, remembering that feeling of brutal epiphany: alone.

Charles =

The tagline for this blog is, probably obvious to some, a riff on the line from the '67 TV series The Prisoner: "I am not a number. I am a free man." It seemed like a funny thing to do in response to my odd decision to use a number as the title of my site, and if I can get all dreadfully serious for a moment (which would be a welcome change here, as my posts of late have been so hallmark card cheerful), it also carried the meaning, for me, of my perpetual struggle with self-imprisonment. I like to mix the silly with the serious. I like things with multiple meanings.

Turns out there's another, which was completely unintentional. Yeah. I recently looked up what my name, Charles, actually means: It is of Old German origin, and its meaning is "free man".

Well, hah.

On Friday night, I went out with my friend Kurt, to a bar, the same bar I'd had such a miserable time at on Monday night. He hides his coat behind the front door, which I think is goofy and very Kurt-ish, but I go to the coat check to dispose of mine. My claim number? 324.

I Am Not A Vending Machine

I see him coming and know what's going to happen.

"Got a cigarette?" the homeless guy asks.

I nod, fish out my pack, and hand him one.

"Got another?" he asks.

I give him another.

"Got another?" he asks, almost robotically.

I shake my head and close the pack, returning it to my pocket. He turns from me and walks away without a word. I knew it when I saw him coming, saw it all as if it had happened before, and though I'd turned away to make myself inconspicuous, he targeted me as if he knew too.

"You're welcome," I say, but he is gone.

440

I went out last night, to a bar that was once familiar, by myself, for the first time in many months. I'd been there more recently with Marcio, or a few times with friends, but not alone, alone, and last night it felt different. The place reeked of memories. I remembered that first time I'd gone on a Monday night, with my friend David who'd been visiting from Dallas, how wasted he'd gotten, and how pleased with myself I'd been for looking after him and not seizing the opportunity to take advantage of him when I clearly could have. I remembered night after night of trips to the same bar, an endless stream of conversations with people whose names I might not remember, and I remembered standing in the upstairs with Marcio, admiring the trippy artwork, with our margaritas, laughing, kissing. Last night I felt like a stranger, awkward, my limbs too long, my feet too big, clumsy. I walked there as I had done so many times before and realized I didn't want to go, didn't want to go, found myself so disappointed that it had come to this, but still harboring some notion that I would have fun somehow, I would loosen up after a beer or two, and somehow I might achieve a state of forget.

I discovered something last night. People will try to take advantage of you if you appear weak, or if you appear strong, and if you somehow manage both, you become a massive target. People in bars don't care about you, don't care to understand the nuances of you. They will use whatever power you allow them to get what they want. The more you give them, the more they will take.

I know I'll go back. And back, and back, until I've become one of them again. I'm disappointed that it will come to this.

Walking

"Warmest day forever / Feeling the warmth from your skin / How was I supposed to know life would / Make a joke out of all our love / Everything passing by is not coming back / How could I be so careless / Its not like we live forever / How was I supposed to know life would / Make a joke out of all our love / Everything passing by is not coming back / Everything passing by is not coming back"
-VAST, "Everything Passing By"

I walk to the coffee shop in the morning fog, wondering if the fog will abate later today but thinking it probably won't. I juggle words in my head, snippets of a poem I'll never write, distract myself with words as I so often do, try to lose myself in them. I cross Market Street, with my backpack and my music, just like any other day, but it isn't any other day, it's the first day of December, cold and wet, and the first day of what I can only assume will be a new chapter in my life. I watch a single sycamore leaf, still partially green but also yellow, and brown, burned by an absent sun, drifting slowly towards the sidewalk, and it is as if it is drifting through me too, opening me in places that I had tried to keep closed. Just like that, I'm crying, as I walk alone through the fog, crying, wondering: how did this happen? How did this happen? I remember warmth, I remember touch, and I remember dreams, some dreams that had become reality and some that had never managed to cross over, and I am crying, and I am walking.

Thanksgiving: Outro

Monday morning, I wake, emerge from complex and confounding dreams, and roll over to you for comfort, but find the other half of my bed is undisturbed, empty. You are gone. Then I remember, I remember that you left and that you are gone. I should try to fall back to sleep but I don't, still in my bed, staring out at the trees behind my house, waiting for the sun to rise. You are gone.

Thanksgiving: Prelude

It's a gray and rainy day, typical for this time of year, and I've been at Peet's for a few hours, doing a bit of writing and a bit of work. I think it's time to go home soon but I go outside for a cigarette, with my hat on to protect me from the cold drizzle, my headphones replaying the same song I've listened to repeatedly for every smoke break I've taken. A homeless man stops and asks me for a cigarette, and I offer him the last of my pack, something I would not have done a decade ago, but I have another pack with me so it's not a hardship. A few doors away he encounters another homeless man who is walking in the opposite direction, walking towards where I am with a can of something, probably a beer. The first guy, in a surprisingly deft motion, kicks the other one's hand and knocks the can out of it. The can goes flying and they start shouting at each other but I can't hear what they're saying because of my headphones. I feel bad for giving the first one a cigarette if he was going to do something like that just a few seconds later, but I realize I know nothing of their relationship to one another. The second one is one I've seen wandering around the neighborhood for years; sometimes he frightens me with his bursts of anger but mostly he just makes me sad because I think he's just crazy and needs help. So they go further down the street, arguing, and I watch. Number two gives up and returns to his original path: towards me, and he's angry and shouting, shouting, shouting. I casually get a parked car between him and me as he approaches, as he passes, and then I watch him reach into a tree pit and fill his pocket with shiny obsidian stones. Then he turns back and heads to the site of the incident, where a third man has been standing the entire time with a colorful umbrella, under the awning of the Japanese restaurant. My song ends and I put it on again. And as unexpected as the first event, number two attacks the third guy, seemingly unprovoked, and I run over. The third guy is maybe homeless too, but he does have a single white headphone in his ear, which I would normally assume means he owns an ipod, but with street people it's impossible to tell sometimes. The third guy tries to protect himself with his umbrella and the second guy has such unbridled rage that I'm afraid to get between them, and again, unsure of what their relationship is. Number two chases number three up the street, back past me again, knocking over placards as number three desperately tries to get away. They get dangerously close to traffic and I think I should cal the police but I continue to watch, and by this time, a number of other people are watching as well as the shouting is impossible to miss. Eventually number three gets away by crossing the street and the second guy starts heading back towards where this all began. I head back into Peet's, to my safe window seat, and watch as he stops at the tree in front of me, and empties his pockets, dropping the stones back into a tree pit, oblivious to the fact that he is returning them to the wrong tree, and then he passes me, passes by my window. He is nearly toothless and his dirty blond hair is slicked down by the rain, and he looks so sad, so lost, so sad.