FEELIN HOT HOT HOT

it's been about 100 degrees around here for a week straight.

i almost got mugged at gunpoint tonight.

what's worse?

actually, when the party goers started going (home) after the fireworks, anne's parents were part of the first flight. bam. robbed. i was probably climbing down from the roof at that point. totally oblivious to the detroit that keeps all the rumors alive. detroit where the ... how does the t-shirt read? ... where the weak are killed and eaten.

yeah.

it's like the trash can through the window in DO THE RIGHT THING. what the fricken frack IS the right thing? it's almost too hard for people to think straight enough to do the right thing.

why is that?

why are punkass teenagers snagging guns and holding sway over hardworking people? people's whose daughters moved into a still grungy but hanging on neighborhood three weeks ago? people whose daughters are really happy to be living in the city and giving back to the people and training community members in AIDS and HIV awareness?

what is this shit.

really.

a friend tonight was telling me about his plight in another nearby neighborhood. a neighborhood choked by an incinerator (sp?) that spews the burned wreckage of any kind of trash it gets (human waste included)and whose teenagers taunt stranger cars as they roll slowly by...

y o u're in the h o o d now, whatcha g o n n a do?

wearing race like armor. class warfare in sneakers and six-pack abs. there is no battleline. it's the community members versus ... other community members.

and the friend says, 'so when i was gone the neighborhood kids took my trashcan - the one my ex-wife painted a big green peace sign on - and stuck it in the middle of the street with a half stick of dynamite and blew it to smithereens.'

how do you/they/we DO THE RIGHT THING - ain't no leaders - kids, elders, indian chiefs - showin us how. WILL THE REAL LEADERS PLEASE STAND UP?!

it's too damn hot in detroit.

it's too damn hot everywhere.

did you hear the one...

so tomorrow's my last day at work and today i had off, so i go over to ellen's house...

me: what'd you have for lunch today?
ellen: pop-tarts.
me: i wish they'd make a flax seed pop-tart.
ellen: then it'd be called a poop-tart.

no joke.

a little light reading:

why does sharing feel so damn good? and why are the saddest stories bearable only b/c of the jokes swaddled inside? http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2005/05/08/lamott_mother/print.html

ruffles - the new spanish fly

i dated this guy for a minute back in the day who used to wag his eyebrows and go, whattya wanna do? i know what we ken do... and he'd waggle his eyebrows some more.

my stomach flopped there was so little charm in it.

i mean, don't get me wrong. he was cuuuuuuute. and smart. but where had his innocence gone? he had no idea yet the gifts he had to offer. because of his style i wanted ice cream sundaes or potato chips in direct proportion to what he wanted - disclothes'd sweaty things. things perfect for l a t e r but not for then, not for us.

the swaggering. the bedroom eyes. the heat of june. i dragged him to nature preserves to walk and talk; he dragged me to dark neighborhood parks. i dragged him to peopled places to investigate, to explore, to wander; he dragged me to dark neighborhood parks.

youth.

now, more than what? 15 years later, when i hear the phrase, whattya wanna do? the smirk eats up my face. i think of rob, his lanky frame, his sexed-up blue eyes and excellent pouty lips. then i say, i know what we ken do...

then, hand in hand we go the the important room. where all the food lives. chips. the perfect aphrodesiac.

it's a super hero kind of thing

all the marvel comic rip-off movies must be getting to me...

it's been a day and night of nigh-what-ifs... i feel a bit like clark kent watching superman's life unfold...or is that the other way around? (and what was wonder woman's mortal name? i forgot.)

situations at work in medias res, part of me interested, part disinterested. an observer witholding and yet somehow unable to withhold judgement. it's like i'm suspended, moving away while still part, the child leaving the mother; foreign to the situation, an innocent bystander with a wallop of an opinion in reserve. and that friend's ex i mentioned... he called me. he wants more... my action hero intuition pricked, my ears raised. something inside my head, near the back, shifts.

hm.

an interesting development it telegraphs to the rest of my brain.

the question sits unasked. why?

it sits and it sits, gaining bodyweight, like the taking steroids by osmosis.

whatever happens i won't be part of it. not at work, not after hours between my friend and her old flame. they're no longer my experiences to be having. i'll intuit happenings, or they will be told to me, or they will be kept from me, or they won't happen at all. but the workworld will continue. this this extra-curricular life that the ex- and my friend won't be telling the wife... not mine to share. i'm clark, i'm superman, i'm...just enough out of range to view from a distance. arms folded b/c to reach out is just too much.

i guess it makes sense that in the midst of leaving one world and entering a new, unknown one we gain/sense the superhero perspective, but who knew? it makes our human situations that much more extraordinary and banal. they are at once exciting and strange and powerfully human and untouchable. humanity. you can't make this stuff up.

driveby truckers

this morning i got a honkhonk from a trucker with a clean, smut-free rig. i caught myself thinking 'what's the distance between this honk and what eventually happened to thelma and louise?' turns out about 5 miles and the roof of my car. couldn't see inside the rig b/c my roof blocked my vision... and i got off the highway about 5 miles after my friend's horny hello. as i exited, the fella (i imagine it was a fella anyway) was in my rearview. by the first red light on the service drive i was smiling, forgetful of what coulda been and thankful for what is. sometimes it's our perspective that turns the screwy into the sublime.

a word on leaving

whoa.

leaving is in a strange way like exploding. one instant you are here. in the next you are moving away - speeding away and apart and coming together in slow motion. you are no longer here. you are... t r a v e l i n g . you are, you feel, different. you = transition. you feel sortof...see-through. skin, face, arms, your eyes even, nearly there, nearly not there. your hands. the fingers clasp, unfold, clasp, unfold. they feel each other and yet...your brain is moving away from center. outside of comfort. taking your heart, lungs, memory, you, away away. and so your skin and fingers move too. move differently. yours, not yours, not really. semi-present. semi-understandable.

so you hold them there. and you look at them. through your fingers you see your pants. hold them up: through your fingers you see tree leaves flickering in the sun and wind. turn them over. hands you've seen what? a hundred million times? which line is your lifeline? you look in the dictionary. lifeline. there is a picture. still you don't understand lifeline. lifeline. it's moving away from comfort. moving becomes important in this way. it becomes life. it becomes. and comes. and ... comes...

exes and tex-mexes

had a 'date' last night with a friend and her ex-boyfriend from college. they were together for four years and haven't seen each other for the last eight-ish. weird scene. fun, but weird. i just kept running into the guy in the last few months and my friend got curious, so i set up a meeting with the dude to thank him for some advice he gave (some professions are truly outrageous in what they can expect in return for 'counsel')... anyway, reminds me of my own past loves.

one was too short-lived and far too far away ago to have even a rekindling of friendship or retouching of lives or whatever last night was for these two former lovers. for me and t-, we were young lovers. 17 and 17 and 17...

*dang*

sums up 17 pretty well eh...

and there was another. oh we devoured each other fantastically. what else can be said about 28 and 29? wall-crumbling fence-exploding years those.

and...what about...my Other, my other half for so long... my growing up lover. even after, he stayed with me for years in my dreams, my emotional guage. i almost saw him recently...

but no.

most likely close is what we'll have forever. no overdressed but not too overdressed late night martinis between laughs and stories of not-much after an eight year absence. no sloppy i'm sorries from him to me. no need for things like that, it wasn't like that for us. our time was...weightier...

then again, i shouldn't say what other lovers' loves were or weren't like. but ours...it was...e v e r y thing. it was our age our DNA. it was the mingling of blood. no, for us there will be no slow lingering or fingers fingers like those i saw last night - in a parking lot next to the spic-and-span explorer after the reunion. he's married now too. but married in a very different way maybe than my friend's ex. married in the soul. married. deep loving. deep being. but no room for the surprise grieving. for what's past. is it ever really past...? perhaps it all does pass...

shoo. or not. he just isn't interested in dredging up what was by touching our presents...our presence...

we always were different.



i mean, hey, i got my own next chaper even if it ain't in the cards, the late-night wow-wee how you be martini. i already had one or two too many parking lot goodbyes. tex-mex is on my schedule...and like my dad says about me and vin: 'you guys are a fitting pair : a coupla knuckeheads.' yo. word to your mama - or your ex.

open market

in the relatively open market of swaggering, teetering, sauntering, running bodies in royal oak at dusk today, i saw a girl with her father. unconscious, uninterested in who was seeing them, the two were walking hand-in-hand. she, about 12. he, 40-something. his yellow izod-clad belly hung lazily over his beltline. his hair unruly and lounging on his collar. the father mullet. her stringy brown hair clumped up unapologetically, her toes stretching in horrible nike-style flip-flops. bad blue skirt. totally in love. telling a story. they passed overdressed mid-lifers in mid-panic attack, sexy underdressed flaunters in mid-pout, semi-stylish middle-class mid-west americans. a site for sore eyes. such ease. such protection.

i watched them while my brain ticked back to someone my brother told me about yesterday. mildred. "i think she called me the other day," i said. "but i'm not sure - she never called me before. the connection broke and she never called back."

mildred. a beautiful girl who always, even at four years, six years, and recently at 20-something, looked to me a little more than a little overwhelmed. a girl hanging on. tough and needy. quiet quiet and on the verge. waiting for something big - or at least bigger. so sweet and so...taken. terribly taken. in. up. maybe for granted. by sixteen she became a mother. not too much longer a mother again. a beautiful and nearly unclaimed child-mother. where and with whom did she take her unconscious walks?

my brother said, "i'm tired, can't help her again. too many times crying wolf." seems mildred has been spending time with someone she would be wise not to be spending time with. the first sign came when mildred's windows got broken. the second involved a rather vicious dog. hard to know when she'll learn her lesson. and what lesson is she looking for in the lesson?

as the girl and he father, in-step with each other, passed my bench, it fell on my head: the difference: i'd bet mildred didn't have too many walks hand-in-hand with her father. not very much hand-in-hand at all. not very much ease. no protection. maybe she never demanded it. maybe it was never offered. somehow, though, she weighs in her own terms the worth of it all.

i guess no matter the open market, you'll give up with very little inducement what you have when you've never been shown the value.

The Fear

"i started to notice it when i bought the house."
"what, The Fear?"
"yeah, The Fear."

this is a true excerpt from a recent conversation i overheard during dinner a few nights ago. friends were talking about the settling in of The Fear, that strange and stiffening thing that cages your dreams and puts cement boots on your desire.

talk moved to "what ifs"... what if i could get that job i want, what if my boss treated me the way s/he used to... what if i just coast for another year or two -- or three... what if i magically become happy again without any effort...

what if

what if

what if


what if i told you it takes the same amount of emotional energy and physical toil to remain as it does to change. why, then, do we think that the hardest thing to do is move. move your thoughts, move youself out of comfort. like a battered wife, sometimes it seems easier to take the pain of staying, of knowing the ritual, of counting 1-2-3 until the next expected thing comes...next.

but how dangerous. how exciting. how motIvating to stretch.

to hurt and feel good in entirely different ways.

to meet ouselves outside of our element.

to challenge our capacities. our limits. our needs.

to expaaaaaaaaaaaaaand.

what if you slink smooch stagger-step your way toward something. crawl around in the dirty gray areas. breathe other air.

scary? yep. worth it. yep. but that's just me. it's hard work being a real human being.