Tomorrow will be the first day of November and the leaves are all yellows and reds and falling from the trees, blanketing the ground and I guess, I’ve been told, the tourists love to talk about them and come to see them but then they go home, out of state maybe, and they don’t have to spend their entire Sunday raking them, bagging them, don’t have to worry about slipping on some matted down wet ones and banging their knee off the curb, getting a citation for burning them in a metal trash can in their yard, don’t have to ride around on the packer all day collecting them, tons of them, for the entire month, everyday, every night, in the dark.
It’s windy right now and unusually warm. A few of the trees, maples, oaks, sway a bit when the wind really picks up looking like they could fall over at any second but they won’t and somebody’s wind chime clanks around, a car engine fires up down the street as somebody sits in it and turns the key in the ignition, a child screams somewhere but it isn’t the type of scream you have to be worried about. Tonight all the clocks will be turned back an hour and 7 o’clock will become 6’oclock and 6’oclock 5, and so on and so forth, and night time will come much earlier and everyday everything will feel a little bit sadder.
My stomach growls and I feel hungry. I stare at some fruit I bought a week ago but never touched. The bananas are overripe but the apples are probably still good, also the nectarines and the grapes. There is a sugar pumpkin that I could roast with some honey, brown sugar, cardamom, but I don’t think I have any of that so i’ll just stare at it some more until it rots and then, what?
I want to quite my job. I want to get out of debt. I want to buy a new car, a Lexus GS 350, and drive it across the southern part of the country, heading west. I want to go back to Venice and be able to drink the wine. I want to revolutionize the sanitation industry, I want to turn myself into half a machine, I’m a monster, I want to stop aging. I want to be healthy again. I want to go back ten years and tell the idiot me that I was all the things I know now, of the unavoidable doom, of the car wrecks and the injuries, surgeries, the overdoses and the possession charges and the deaths of lovers and the deaths of emotions, I want to tie him down to a chair and tell him NOW LISTEN! but he won’t, no matter what, he’ll still do the same shit and end up playing lead idiot in the same catastrophes.
The phone rings. I look at the name on the screen and then put it back down on the desk. The second hand of the backlit digital clock on the coffee pot goes around, around. Click. Click. Click. Click. The phone stops ringing and then vibrates to let me know I have a new voice message. I want to put my phone down on the street and run it over with my car. I want to drive my car to the edge of a mountain cliff and put it in neutral and push. I want to pull the fire alarm out in the hallway and then put a lit match to the kerosene soaked couch. I want to have chronic laryngitis. I want to lose all feeling in my extremities. I want to go blind, go deaf, forget how to walk.
The voice on the message says look, you gotta call me right back. It says, where the fuck are you? If I sit completely still and hold my breath I can hear what sounds like maybe a plane flying overhead, or maybe it’s the plumbing. The ancient, intricate heating system, the buildings furnace. One of the old ladies below me taking a shower or washing her dishes. A boeing 777 just leaving the airport heading nonstop to somewhere warm, with resorts with pools, beaches, women in bikinis, people in a band playing music with smiles on their faces and when you touch down and they beg you to stay they say, everything you’ll ever need is here and then two days later you’re sitting on the beach hearing nothing but the surf, totally, completely relaxed and you start looking at your hands, flipping them over, over and thinking, I have to get the fuck out of here.
Call me right back or fucking forget it, the person says on the voicemail. They tell me, I don’t have all day for this shit. And they sound angry but they never mean a word that they say.
You spend your entire life searching for what you think is the right answer but the truth is, and you’ve always known, there isn’t one. There is only what you choose to believe. There is no god. There is no plan. Pick a god, any god, and believe he will save you. Choose a path, any path, and believe it was meant to be. You start regretting everything you’ve done, you start second guessing yourself and never feel committed to a decision anymore, and you pray to the fucking wall that things will just somehow feel right again but they won’t. Am I supposed to do this job for the rest of my life? Am I really meant to be a father? Am I meant to call this person back? Should I burn all my possessions? Is any of this shit even real?
It’s the uncomfortable something you can feel rotting your core while you wait for the bartender to put the double scotch in front of you. It’s the longest half a second of your life right when the plunger goes down before the rush hits and you think, what the fuck is wrong with me? It’s the sick feeling you get when you finally blow your load and you look down at the pale flesh of some whore you’ll never know past the end of the hour. It’s the moment you realize you’ve been dreaming and you’re now awake, real, laying fully clothed on some mattress without any sheets.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things somebody else swears are true
Courage to leave my will, myself, my identity and everything I know behind
And the ignorance to smother my wisdom
Amen
It’s windy right now and unusually warm. A few of the trees, maples, oaks, sway a bit when the wind really picks up looking like they could fall over at any second but they won’t and somebody’s wind chime clanks around, a car engine fires up down the street as somebody sits in it and turns the key in the ignition, a child screams somewhere but it isn’t the type of scream you have to be worried about. Tonight all the clocks will be turned back an hour and 7 o’clock will become 6’oclock and 6’oclock 5, and so on and so forth, and night time will come much earlier and everyday everything will feel a little bit sadder.
My stomach growls and I feel hungry. I stare at some fruit I bought a week ago but never touched. The bananas are overripe but the apples are probably still good, also the nectarines and the grapes. There is a sugar pumpkin that I could roast with some honey, brown sugar, cardamom, but I don’t think I have any of that so i’ll just stare at it some more until it rots and then, what?
I want to quite my job. I want to get out of debt. I want to buy a new car, a Lexus GS 350, and drive it across the southern part of the country, heading west. I want to go back to Venice and be able to drink the wine. I want to revolutionize the sanitation industry, I want to turn myself into half a machine, I’m a monster, I want to stop aging. I want to be healthy again. I want to go back ten years and tell the idiot me that I was all the things I know now, of the unavoidable doom, of the car wrecks and the injuries, surgeries, the overdoses and the possession charges and the deaths of lovers and the deaths of emotions, I want to tie him down to a chair and tell him NOW LISTEN! but he won’t, no matter what, he’ll still do the same shit and end up playing lead idiot in the same catastrophes.
The phone rings. I look at the name on the screen and then put it back down on the desk. The second hand of the backlit digital clock on the coffee pot goes around, around. Click. Click. Click. Click. The phone stops ringing and then vibrates to let me know I have a new voice message. I want to put my phone down on the street and run it over with my car. I want to drive my car to the edge of a mountain cliff and put it in neutral and push. I want to pull the fire alarm out in the hallway and then put a lit match to the kerosene soaked couch. I want to have chronic laryngitis. I want to lose all feeling in my extremities. I want to go blind, go deaf, forget how to walk.
The voice on the message says look, you gotta call me right back. It says, where the fuck are you? If I sit completely still and hold my breath I can hear what sounds like maybe a plane flying overhead, or maybe it’s the plumbing. The ancient, intricate heating system, the buildings furnace. One of the old ladies below me taking a shower or washing her dishes. A boeing 777 just leaving the airport heading nonstop to somewhere warm, with resorts with pools, beaches, women in bikinis, people in a band playing music with smiles on their faces and when you touch down and they beg you to stay they say, everything you’ll ever need is here and then two days later you’re sitting on the beach hearing nothing but the surf, totally, completely relaxed and you start looking at your hands, flipping them over, over and thinking, I have to get the fuck out of here.
Call me right back or fucking forget it, the person says on the voicemail. They tell me, I don’t have all day for this shit. And they sound angry but they never mean a word that they say.
You spend your entire life searching for what you think is the right answer but the truth is, and you’ve always known, there isn’t one. There is only what you choose to believe. There is no god. There is no plan. Pick a god, any god, and believe he will save you. Choose a path, any path, and believe it was meant to be. You start regretting everything you’ve done, you start second guessing yourself and never feel committed to a decision anymore, and you pray to the fucking wall that things will just somehow feel right again but they won’t. Am I supposed to do this job for the rest of my life? Am I really meant to be a father? Am I meant to call this person back? Should I burn all my possessions? Is any of this shit even real?
It’s the uncomfortable something you can feel rotting your core while you wait for the bartender to put the double scotch in front of you. It’s the longest half a second of your life right when the plunger goes down before the rush hits and you think, what the fuck is wrong with me? It’s the sick feeling you get when you finally blow your load and you look down at the pale flesh of some whore you’ll never know past the end of the hour. It’s the moment you realize you’ve been dreaming and you’re now awake, real, laying fully clothed on some mattress without any sheets.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things somebody else swears are true
Courage to leave my will, myself, my identity and everything I know behind
And the ignorance to smother my wisdom
Amen