Darkly Dreaming

Returning to a place can begin the reflection, roaming the memories that turn up the usual and the unexpected.

Don't know what it is that makes a moment of indecision hang around the brain, those words spoken without sensitivity, a blank heat swooped stare, linger. A misplaced expression of disinterest that won't leave you alone, returns, gathers reinforcements and leads to restless natives at the gates. Pretty soon everyone seems to be giving you a look like a seventh grade math teacher with a crew cut that takes you out in the hall and tells you why you should get a hair cut. And you always remember that before that time you were doing well in math.

Some will say it's not enough exercise, or too much drink, or smoke, or sex, or almost anything but that which would do you the most good. Like that chilly morning I wore gloves in gym, playing baseball on the asphalt school yard, when the teacher that had to have been a marine said, "what are you gonna do when winter comes?" Why can't people just ignore those things, stir up a bit of compassion to say I won't make an indelible painful memory out of this moment so small no one else will ever remember it. When someone does say something good that takes away the moment it is rare, and not usually our own voice from within, though it could be, as I find times when I have said such things to an other and made a friend.

Too often those moments are also rare. As when I said, "I understand," to a woman in college, we fell in love and spent a number of years together only to find that I didn't have the make up to say things like that often enough, and eventually she was telling me I wasn't aggressive enough. That statement was most confusing as she seemed like the kind of person that preferred collected balanced men, but in truth was attracted to passion and spirit. That was what she meant, but I didn't have a clue. Sometimes people don't say what they mean,I don't know, it was one of those times when one takes up reading, as I did, Loa Tsu every night, and tried to better myself, literally find or replace what was wrong with me and make it better. It went pretty well until one day while contemplating my condition with a candle in a cast resin candle holder, somebody distracted me. I don't know if it was Joe who, when I asked if we could talk said, "you never talked to me before," as if I had been secretly implying his inane behavior and gave him his chance to take a hit, as a few others were doing. In later consideration, much stronger moments, I thought, why didn't a friend say something, if I was such a stupid boy friend . . . and so times begin to add up, take confusion as a header, and end with the question why do people do things. But only long after an age of soul searching from the point of view that I was a jerk.

I came back shortly to a room filled with carbon and a smoldering candle holder. The smoke was thick, almost blotted out the light from the windows. The carbon crept into the open drawers of the dresser. Plastic resin carbon sticks to everything like memories of a break up. I was able, it seems for the most part, to forget the ordeal of cleaning, where to sleep, before or after, how we could have done it successfully, and all the details, are blank. These emotional moments remain, undetermined by significance, certain moments that leave questions in our minds or heart seem to live on after thirty years or more. They are clips or frames of a day with a person or two, a pot of soup, a painting, a house, most likely some words that have slipped away are why the clips are there, but perhaps, too painful to keep, the rest of the day hangs like a carbon covered coat in a closet.