obit - Tumblr blog

[obit]

I wake up with the smell of the sea. My face and arms tingle from the heat. I should've remembered the sunscreen but I didn't expect this nap out here in the middle of the day. The beach house belongs to her mom. It's perched on a slight hill right over a busy street. Just beyond the street is pretty amazing sand and that low saturated blue which hazes out into a horizon. I hear conversations some near distance away. My eyes open to birds and I can see the wharf just a walk down the street.

I leave the balcony and enter back into the house. I see her cooking with her mom. They are in lively conversation regarding the recipe of a dish. I blink and let my eyes adjust to the lower light of the room. Her mom looks up from some chopping to smile and welcome me back into this world.

In my dream, there were three men holding wrapped packages. Each was offered to me for purchase. But I was wary to choose any of them as I saw the twine wrapping the package extend down from the package into the floor and through a barely preceptible hole in the floor to some unknown thing below. The twine was taut. I stepped forward and felt the packages. The twine moved as if I had plucked a guitar string.

It's for my friend, I remember telling them.

They didn't say a word. I remember my vision following down the twine and below the floor to find them tied to someone's finger.

I don't remember what happened after that.

I wash my face in the sink and head back to the kitchen. I am put to work. I can sense her mom's careful eyes watching me. I think she is just making sure I am okay. She mostly watches providing a little guidance here and there. We keep things playful as I have no idea how to prepare the dish. I can sense Soph too watching me work with her mom. I sense her slight hoveriness, worry, care, and desire for things to go well between me and her mom. I turn and catch her eyes looking up to me with the tiniest of smiles. Things are going well.

In another fragment of a dream, I am the referee of a game I do not exactly understand. Someone throws a ball to someone in the audience and the person walks off with the ball. The athletes and the coach gather around me looking for guidance on what to do next. I run to my car and open the trunk to find balls of various types. I am unsure which would be the appropriate one to keep the game going. I dig through what feels like a pit of balls until I can feel one that feels right. I confidently toss it to the gathered players without looking at it. The game resumes. I have no idea if they will catch on that I have no idea if that was the correct ball.

[obit]

I find her under the sun leaning her back against the rails of the balcony and I see that she is staring at me through the glass door. I catch her studying me and her expression does not change as I study her back. A breeze unsettles bits of her hair and makes the soft collar of her white linen shirt to wave. The sun shines through her shirt and I can make out the tone of her skin and the shape of her body. She is squinting at me. I can't help but squint my eyes back. I am still holding the plates that I was clearing from our lunch. It takes a minute but I catch her take a small breath. Her chest rises and falls quickly.

I let my eyes relax and as I do I see her lean her head backwards and she closes her eyes. The bright sun illuminates her face and neck. I think I see her swallow. And another breeze swells and rumples her shirt in little waves as it crosses her body and out the hem.

[obit]

I get colder after taking off the wet suit. My buddy sees me shivering and tosses me a towel and I skip over a few slippery rocks to settle on the open trunk of the car to hide from the wind. I feel my toes and feet tingle then numb. I imagine them gone and the feeling, the lack, rises up my shins and to my knees. I think of hopping off from the trunk and falling to my knees and on my face. Then I'll drag myself out from this beach while bitting the towel in my mouth and I'll drag myself to the street then all the way back home. I'll try to get home before the numbness rises up my hips and chest until I am just a head rolling down the street.

What the fuck was that train of thought?

We stop for food at this tidy little shop that only does breakfast until about noon just four days a week. I think about what a great work schedule that would be. To be done so soon with so much of the day left. I recently moved and started living again with a girlfriend, and she works from home. I've yet to fully settle here in this part of the world so I worry I'll be a bother just hanging around the house waiting for her work to be finished. I don't know too many people here who are a quick driving distance away and I hate doing anything alone anymore. I've turned into a dog. I lay about the home pining for her attention. Can we go out? Are you done with work? Can we get some food? Can you pet me now please? I think about this and I change my mind. It's probably good that my current work schedule overlaps so much of hers.

My office hours are regular and everyone is mostly healthy. My panel of patients are adults and they don't tend to have too many health demands besides the usual hyper- this and that and the metabolic diseases that demand a regular conversation about exercise and diet. I think about the breakfast burrito in my stomach as I come out the shower and do the buttons of my shirt. I rub my stomach imagining the tortilla and the potato breaking down to simpler glucose and pumping about my body. I imagine a little campfire inside each of my cells. I feel my body heat up and I can almost imagine the smell of burning marshmallows. Toasty.

The relationship has been kind of unexpected. I don't think either of us imagined us so together just some time ago. We were totally different humans. She needed more control in her life. Less anxiety. More plans and more successful implementation of plans. She found my inability to plan stressful. She thought my previous job environments insane and too unpredictable and considered my previous relationships with people largely unhealthy and sporadic. And I think I just hit a point in my life where I started to agree with her point of view. I found a more regular job out of the emergency setting. I found a friend more focused on healthy activities conducted at regular times. Decided to plan meals instead of spending gross amounts of my salary eating out all the damn time. They say homecooked is always better, and I disagree, but it's been nice to have more time with her cooking and eating and even cleaning up afterwards.

One thing, I can't sleep on the same side of the bed every night. It does not make sense to me. Some nights I want to sleep on my right while facing her. Sometimes on my left while facing her. Sometimes I want to spread out on my back horizontal across the foot of the bed with my knees dangling over and close to the AC vent. I like pillows placed all over the bed so that I can find the position I need as I venture about it finding the right position.

My god. I might be a dog. I am turning into a dog. I see myself drooling at night and moving about to find a comfortable space and shape next to her body. I find my body hairs shedding on the bed. I am allowed to just go pee went I want, right? Why do I have this great desire to pee outdoors? Does food taste better from her hand?

One of my patients stated that her bowel patterns have become more regular since we last met. Regular. Regularity. The word sticks in my mind and it is adjacent to poop. But poop is good. Poop is necessary. Poop is vital to healthy life. I think about my life. I am regular. I am good poop.

[obit]

I have an inability to be still. Quiet nights alone are death. There must be some emergency somewhere. I look for them. Without them, I become the emergency. The spaces of my chest flutters excitedly as I throw myself off another ledge. I am sure I will be fine. I am always fine. I fall and tumble and crash into tomorrow. I wake up dented and misshapen. For that moment, I promise to myself some stillness and peace. But when I find it, I cannot be still. I cannot be peace. I eagerly await for some war or great disaster. I go searching for them. I cannot find meaning in contentment. I run across the street. I call out for those like me. I judge their brokenness and praise their ability to be fine. Always fine. We start fires and fill ourselves with bad songs. We jump from the ledge. Maybe new dents will fix the old.

[obit]

Coffee now made him anxious. So he told me. So we walked down the aisle with some basic food stuffs in the cart: eggs, bread, salad kits, cheese, dips, spreads, a frozen pizza, some sandwich goods. I stopped by the alcohol aisle wondering but only realizing it won't be good for his mood or his medications.

I had been on a string of trips to see old friends. Some visits were lovely. Some intense. An ex. A good friend. An old friend I had not seen for some time. And now a friend I may have neglected. There was some guilt but I tried to excuse myself to time and distance.

He is not dead. Or, he is alive.

He was my definition of heavy shit. Not just lows but a series of life fuckeries that can leave a person feeling optionless. He chose one that he felt was best for himself and the world. It did not work out as intended, and through some intensive hospital effort and some months of hospital stay, he still had his life. He considered it just another fuck up. Said it in a way that was almost a joke. But how could the joke work around people that had more pity than empathy?

We checked out and loaded the car. He drove us to his home. No music. Just a string of cigarettes he ashed out the window. Some ash flew back into the car landing somewhere in the back seat. Sky was wide and a dirty orange. It was different out here in the valley.

At his home, we had some of the pizza. Then after we sat in front of the TV, he pulled out a bottle of tequila from under the coffee table. I made a questioning face. Should he really? He told me not to make that stupid face and stood up to grab two glasses.

Some more drinks later, we were outside on his balcony. He smoked again and leaned against his door. I looked at him as we talked and felt some semblance of normality. We had grown up as kids sneaking away to drink and smoke. As kids, we had our spots where we drunkenly talk the night away. Then we would sneak back into our homes in the early morning before the sprinklers awoke. He looked so much the same now as back then. He had a casualness to him as he talked about simple philosophy and remembered our stupid stories. I leaned over the balcony looking out to his neighborhood. It was night now and the air was cleaned of noise and light. The ember from his cigarette grew. I saw a smirk behind it. I knew what it meant. I felt so grandly happy and sad at the same time.

[obit]

Everyone else had left and things quieted down. A bit of music still played and you found me laying on the couch. I remember you staring. I remember saying sorry that I was the last to leave. Then you sat next to me and asked to put my head on your lap.

I scootched up.

It had been just over two years. There were so many strangers at the party. You have a new life, I guess. New people. New home. I introduced myself as an old friend. Some of them understood.

I remember you put the bottom of a beer bottle on my forehead as I laid my head on your lap. I felt the coldness seep into my brain. I said again that I was sorry for lingering but you said, no, that it was good that we get to talk.

Then things got quiet between us as I stared up to you. You lifted the beer bottle and took a sip. I still felt the condensation on my forehead.

I was going to ask you something. I was supposed to. I remember this gripping feeling that I was supposed to ask something really important right then at that moment. But I forgot what it was. I closed my eyes for a second trying to remember. Then I felt your fingers wipe away the droplets from my forehead.

I looked up to you. Obviously falling in love all over again.

Why do I do that?

It would have been better if I left early. It would have been polite. It was probably what was expected. Then maybe I would've seen you again some years down the line when I was in the area again. Or maybe not. I do not know how all this works.

I shook my head side to side for a reason I did not consciously recognize. I felt your dress and your thigh under my head.

I remember I started to hear the music again. I closed my eyes. We rambled over it.

[obit]

In the same way I recall forgotten words or play the notes on pianos, I type out your name. I think my knuckles have grown and maybe my fingers have shortened. There are long strands of hair in my nose now. I trim them once in a while and blow my nose into the sink so as to not inhale the cut bits. Then I look at my face in the mirror. I think I look the same as I did when you were alive. But I know this is not true. Just a way the mind blurs time and the self continues unnoticeably changed to itself. I think of hair trimmings in my lungs. It makes me cough.

I can still find you and your obituary group on Facebook. They changed the name of Facebook. I forgot my password. It took a while to log back in and see old photos. For just a moment, I get a feeling in my chest like I suddenly realized I was missing my heart and lungs. There's a great cavity and I can feel the circulating air. God, I say expelling the air. Then I say your full name and I can feel old neurons activating pathways I had not used in some time. Then I feel bad. You know. For how long it's been.

I only feel my age and only feel like I'm growing old when I compare it to the year you left. Is that something? I don't know. Time has changed me. I know it has. I think less. I ponder less. I feel a little less. I just move and work and do. Maybe it's a good thing. I don't get so low anymore.

I play your favorite songs. I remember small details about you. For some reason, I recall how your breath smelled, the thing you did with your one eye, and the last things we said. This is how I age, I think. I remember you and how far and far and far things have become. And things will only get further and further. I want this fact to break my heart like it used to. But it's different. It's different now. I'd say it's different in a worse way. This kind of losing you feels more tragic.

[obit]

As a still-californian, I cannot hate the rain. It waits for those ready for change and when the wait becomes too long, it does its thing:

It rains. It washes away months of dried, flaked sun. It seeps into the pours of our concrete skin nourishing the deep parts of us we did not know were so in need. I had forgotten so much in the blinding day to day. Words had become words. Moments just moments. Things spoken and time past, day after day of sunlight,

which hides things so well, better than the unshared darkness can.

I had forgotten all the things unsaid. The small things we repeatedly mutter to ourselves when we are alone in a car. How hateful we are to ourselves. Let the windshield wipers on and wash away the rain. Let us have a chance to be good again. Let me start anew. Let a new world reveal itself after the rain.

[obit]

her bare breasts below the phone screen’s light, I know no other home. I lay my ears against her stomach and hear little gurgles from a dinner we had shared. my hair is short and she strokes my head as she lists out the places we should hike tomorrow.

a breeze from the open windows. I am myself now so infinitely myself: I am here now writing, I am there now turning my head and kissing about her breast, I am here now rolling a sweating, cold water bottle up and down my shins as the sun glares on the back of my neck, I see here there standing shading her eyes with her hands, standing tall, unneeding of love, but so deserving of those kinds of things -- a breeze upon the hill at the end of a hike, I can smell her hair.

I look up to her face lit by the phone screen and by the odd glow of the street beyond the windows. And for the life of me I can’t tell her how it feels, how it all feels, to be here, everywhere with her, and how strange life must be when she is not there, was not there, will not be there --

she looks at me strangely, I must be looking at her strangely. I hold her tight pressing her nakedness against mine. I press my head at the hardest spot between her breasts and blow my lips.

[obit]

yeah, let tomorrow be tomorrow, and let today’s slow froth spread off and on.

its has been a while since i have been so carelessly happy, untimed, unconsidered, dog drool happy --

my body is floating and my heart is somewhere else and i can feel her holding it each tip of her finger shooting excited butterflies within and about the cardiomyocytes electrified just enough to send a snap or a buzz as she moves her fingers by each wet groove and beat --

i try to breathe and i breathe fine but there is a happy puddle in my chest where my heart used to be.

i sip my drink and i feel my reddy cheeks like hot microwaved potatoes i peel my skin down to the flesh past the escaping steam i wonder if this will be permanent

?

yeah, let tomorrow be tomorrow, and let today’s soft shells dry in the sand.

i feel her moving my heart about her hands tossing it back and forth now up and down each catch a small bottled lightening about my heart.

[obit]

If I know anything said by my death

who sits about my shoulder silently

I know that it is raining

and it is night

and the orange glows from the lamplight above

lighting the dozens and eternal dozens of ripples

splashing above a never draining puddle.

I know it is friday night, no, saturday early morning

some night extending into AM

the moment before and after midnight

and we are hungry

drunk and hungry

stumbling to a stack of pancakes somewhere.

My sneakers squeak on the linoleum floor

and the rain pelts rhythmically against the glass

and I smell coffee when I see

out the window

a puddle above the concrete.

I can taste wet cigarettes

and sense the warmth in the hug of wet strangers

and I squish my toes against my wet socks

and I smile happily

hungry happily

wet drunk and dry and happily

--

This I know said by my death

who sits about my shoulder silently

[obit]

In her more depressive state she would explain the world so:

When you're born there's infinite possibility and millions of choices not made. But every moment that passes and every decision you make and every thing that is done to you limits what is possible. You can't go back and change things. Things become locked. Doors close. It happened and decisions were made. And this happens everyday until you're capable of less and less. More things become definite and set and at the end of it all you're stuck with only just one option.

[obit]

While vacuuming the car, I hear something rattling. It’s a piece of an earring. I blow on it and hold it up to the light. I think I remember exactly who and when this was misplaced. I play with it on my palm shaking it about while finishing up the car. It slips from my palm and drops to the ground. Before I can pick it up, he licks it up from the floor and lets out a small confused bark and stares generally in my direction.

The nearest open veterinary urgent care is 30 minutes away.

If the earring is retrieved, and obviously cleaned, is it something you return to the owner? Likely, hopefully, it will pass, the earring, from the dog. And having been inside an animal, I posit the sentimental value has increased.

Here’s your shit earring.

[obit]

There's this thought that it could be warmer:

I think about all the unpictured moments that float by passing through all the receptors and handed from this neuron to next until there's no one there to receive it. It floats unowned with all the other things unowned and vanished through some universal gap in the seal and it's gone forever. But 20 years down the line there's that hint it had been through here, through me, through my mind, little fingerprints. I try really hard to remember their faces and what they said and the moment they said it. But they and all of it passed. I don't remember.

*

There's this envelope without a letter. I dig through every drawer but then I remember all the moves and the new homes and the new people and the new jobs and the new hobbies and and and I find that it's too late and I should sleep if I want a decent day tomorrow.

*

I have not jogged in 6 months. But I lace up my shoes and place firm new earbuds. I look up around at my new neighborhood and see a hint of last night's rain snagged by trees and windowsills.

I jog early morning. I don't mind others who do the same. As a generally lonely person, I find the loneliness of others as polite. I keep up my pace searching for my old lungs. I find it all difficult until a bit of cold bites my breath and entices me further. I hear my breathing. It sounds, old, disturbed by new pathways, no longer clear but parts diverted and distressed to some whine.

*

I lay in bed. I hope no one calls.

I stay still wishing nothing triggers an action or thought. I hope everyone and everything is well. I hope I don't have to do anything.

I don't move.

But I think that it could be warmer.

[obit]

There is a sense a life is wrapping up and moving on.

I have nothing but love for everything that happened.

And you.

[obit]

how does the love work? by arm or action, by leg or footwork i start the coffee every morning i never forget our dog we walk smelling dew and by brushing off the droplets off grass with my freezing toes sticking out of my sandals i let him do his thing he looks up waiting for me to do my thing yeah, buddy, i clean feeling the warmth in the plastic bag yeah, i still love ya, i open the door to our home i wipe his paws there i see her drinking the coffee waking up for her job i present to her  her family  recently walked and awoke for the new day she places a kiss morning breath and coffee and all i dont care i love it all how does the love work? somewhere in there between coffee and home

[obit]

In the goodlight off the white hotel bed sheets and with my nose pressed so close to her hair, I am reassured, sleepily but reassured. But there is a perpetual hot stone that hangs in my throat -- ahem -- so I ask for all this to be more wordly. "Yeah, I love you," she answers and adds, "and wordly is not a real word." She then closes her eyes to return to sleep.

I ignore the second bit and I don't mention anything about our morning breath. I have no idea what time it is but assume it must be afternoon sunlight breaking through the blinds. I get out the bed and walk towards the warm window. I wonder if people in the building across from me can see how naked I am as I drink from a water bottle. My sleepy body parts dangle about in the air conditioned air. Good hotels have a way of relaxing my mood and attitudes.

I turn back and see her in the bed curled to one side. I sit on a chair across from the bed and use two Ls made by the index and thumbs of my hands to try and frame a perfect portrait of her sleeping. In the frame I decide to keep the package of midol on the bedstand. She claims its alternative use as the best hangover prevention or cure. I rub my foggy head a bit a wonder if I should take one.

Chk chk. I take a picture. The room is too quiet. I pick at the leftovers from last night's room service. "I love you too," I say a little too loud hoping to wake her up. "Really," I say again loudly. She lies still. Sleeping or at least near sleep and pretending to sleep. I look about the hotel room for things that will annoy her and wake her up.