I could never explicitly tell you why things changed, but they just did.
It all started in June, the month of scorching sun and hot rain.
I lived with my parents and that was wonderful for the time being, until I really had enough of the cramped feeling and the
“Eat, eat, drink, drink.”
I was done sleeping on the couch and so was my back and neck.
And then I wanted to be alone again.
I’d go over to my grandmothers for coffee in the afternoon and what-have-you, to talk to my grandfather about the Vietnam War and the pretty hooker that taught him how to catch bugs and make his bed.
My grandmother would make me coffee and offer me things I didn’t need and I would nod and believe that I would need them. Taking these things, to have them rot away in my car.
I’d drive, drive around everywhere because my home was filled with little bugs that could really never hurt me. Giving me the feeling of dread and loss, the bugs— and made me think of pins and needles in my brain when I saw them at night, walking around my apartment like they wouldn’t go. To which they never did.
Things just don’t go bump in the night. Food isn’t just eaten around the edges.
One night, I reached out across my desk for my glasses and three of the little things walked over my hand as if it were some sort of bridge.
So I broke the lease and let go of my connection to that little place that I loved so much. I remember many long nights there. Many drinks. Many hungry nights.
I hadn’t been there too long. Only about a half-year, but jeez did that feel like a lifetime.
The summer solstice neared, the days grew longer, the nights shorter.
I remember sitting, accomplished across the floor on the first day, listening to music and smoking inside.
My apartment downtown was my friend, but he grew sick and infested. A great time for the both of us, but I do miss you from time to time.
As time grew I knew that I couldn’t go back, because this complex fear of going back would mean more bugs before my eyes and many more nights alone with them. They could reasonably do anything they wanted to me while I slept with my mouth open. Crawl in and out, clean my teeth, travel down to my stomach and back.
They aren’t very friendly or hospitable and they also carry many diseases. Terrible things. Terrible, perfect looking things.
So I read a book on divinity and complexion and figured out that I fear bugs because of their strange mechanical appearance.
Wouldn’t that be the weirdest thing? Because my fishing rod is mechanical and it is a lovely and also a piece of machinery.
Fishing,
Weekends were for fishing with my cousins and the day after fishing always felt like my last. Those days were usually Sundays, so driving around as I usually did, was extra sentimental because I knew that I’d be braced with the job and more expenses on Monday.
Monday is the worst word in the English dictionary. It wouldn’t be so bad if I was unemployed.
Unfortunately, hating Monday is a relatively normal thing. It always has been. The dawn of man most likely hated Mondays because it meant hunting deer or something. And it probably mean’t a lot more because it was a means of surviving until Tuesday. Hating Monday is sort of like hating traffic or sitting next to someone who smells bad.
I wrote this back in June. After a long day.
“The sun is beating down on me from the skies and it is incredibly hot in Saint Petersburg, on a Monday, on a fucking Monday. On this fucking Monday the boss decided to put in a work order that made me lose my lid, because now more than ever, on this very Monday, blood is running through the top of my head and around my cheekbones. Monday is filled with nannies that don’t have jobs anymore and have a sort-of lust for killing on the road that cannot be satisfied with fucking. Fucking Monday. Monday is wild and weird, when you never stop working, because Monday means death to your Monday. Capital ‘M’ in Monday is for the Mildew that cannot go away when the sun comes out, capital ‘M’ in Monday is for Mortuary, where I will spend my very last Monday on earth. Why does Monday have that capital ‘M’? Well, because it’s Monday, of course. And Mondays will persist to the working man for an eternity.”
Anxiety can be a great tool when writing. But I've grown bored of being alone. This sort of thinking is almost woman repellant. Fixation is almost a bad thing. Shit, even the word is weird. But amidst a crisis in life, it is so easy to get fixated with something. Bad things, like people walking their dogs or the thought of bugs crawling all over you when you sleep.
Incorrect women also can be a poor target of fixation. After the smoke clears, everyone gets their bearings and when the fixation goes— the woman might not.
That slow pin begins to push into your skull, driving you quite mad. You definitely don’t want to be the guy with a frown on his face, not in this world.
Tiresome that all is, and gee does it get old.
I don’t crave the sea because I spent a year on it. It generally behaves the same way under circumstance and varies in color based on who you ask. To me, it's always blue.
When I see the sea, it looks back. I feel that we know each other and act like we can coincide together on an evening. Like divorces or ex-lovers, Sea and I have some time together, as it took from me, I take from it. No kids. It was a clean break. That is just how we operate now.
The sea looks great on weekends. It doesn’t look as good on weekdays. It’s not forgiving and it's grueling and never-ending. The bites on Mondays feel better than the ones on theSaturdays. I guess, in relation to a ‘Sex-Life’ — you’d expect the electricity of something so unexpected for a Monday to jolt you with the dopamine of spontaneity. Just like sex with the old woman outside the regular programming.
The fish bite every once in a while.
I’d like something bigger than the usual trout or catfish, but the event is much greater than the prize. This activity is one of the few things that eases my mind from the loud and unrelenting world. So much to care about, absorb, digest in life, but on the docks— my mind is sort of quiet. I don’t care about what I’m wearing or the amount of women passing through. There never is any girls, and the ones that do roll in, are big and weird looking.
We went to John’s Pass and waded out underneath the bridge. I believe that this was on a weekday. The sun had been gone for about thirty minutes and my jeans were soaked and rolled up to my knees. Constricting the life out of my legs, wearing one of the most uncomfortable fabrics when wet. In life, wear wet jeans with a goal like catching a fish. That will teach you a lot about being comfortable and patience.
Wind carried from the gulf blew under my arms, at peace, amongst my cousins. Life is golden in these moments. Nothing seemed to bite except a big and dumb sailcat and that was okay with me.
Lures and bait. Buying this dumb new rod as an ‘in’ to the sport. I shouldn't have done that. Big waste of money and an impulse buy. My uncle had about a million that I could've used. And the thing sucked anyways.
But I caught a few on it, so it did its job and fulfilled its mechanical purpose. It fulfilled its purpose. Many can’t or couldn’t say that.
It sits in the back of my cousin’s truck.
Fishing has made me appreciate a certain convenience that I condemned at one point in my life. When I shop around at Walmart or the bait shop, I geek on things that clip to my belt, or hang from my hat. Little hooks or pins that dispense weights and lures, just things that appear tacky… Yet prove to be useful in certain situations. I hate digging around in the tacklebox for things, especially with something freshly on the line, why not buy a glove that clips to your belt.
When I pick this chintzy stuff out, I am never worried about being perceived with it on my person. Because as I mentioned before, there aren’t many people to impress on the dock. No girls to gawk at your clip-on sunglasses or belt-clip pliers.
Asides, your appearance means nothing in the light of a big fish.
Fishing is such an involved sport.
Fishing has shown me that when you find something special, the world closes out. Nothing matters except the love for it.
When you’re binded like that— wear funny t-shirts.
Who gives a fuck.
Argument,
I had spoken to this guy who had seen me at a low point back in January. I don’t really mind him, but he has an ego like a professional wrestler or something. I don’t really get along with the overly-Macho, but he wasn’t bad. I’d driven him and his girl to a party, unfortunately ending up as the dedicated driver.
He’d drank and drank all night long. The party was sub-par. But instead of embracing the socially confused— I decided that talking to him, sober, was probably the safest decision I could make. Anxious, outward and gay people aren’t my forte. I have a hard time relating to any of those things
We got on the subject of a mental state he had seen me in the last time we’d seen each other. I had to recall, but then I remembered when he and his lady had visited me back in January. It was cold out and I had just gotten denied publication from Marrow. I was most likely a mess.
It is sort of funny thinking about it though. I certainly chuckled when he said
“I w…was really worried about you, man.”
He should have been, rightfully. But he went on to say
“I looked like a man without purpose.”
I followed up with,
“Wrong.” “Too much of it.”
He hadn’t known that I wrote in the passionate way I do. There was no use explaining that to a drunk guy. I can’t blame him for being worried.
If I saw a man walking around with a bottle of wine in his coat pocket with no reasonable explanation on why he was doing so, I’d probably be worried for him too.
Or maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe I would've celebrated him. Life is hard.
Big, Stupid, Idea.
Well, I’ve thought of something grand again to provide some comic relief to my life and the growing problems I have with North-Easteners.
I think I’ll move to Michigan and show the Michigan-ers a little bit-or-two about zoning, since they’ve turned my precious downtown into a place that only Michigan-ers can afford. Or enjoy.
I’m gonna buy a big heap of land sandwiched in-between quiet, elegant horse farms. I am going to get all the proper LLC’s and legal paperwork to cement my idea into legal grounding. I am going to righteously, piss my neighbors off, to no foreseeable end.
When I buy my big plot of land, I’ll open a multi-business venture on the property.
I’ll have a house too, but it’ll be small.
This is because I am going to need all the land for all of these annoying ideas:
Firstly, I’ll open Michigan’s only 24 hour gun range. Allowing anybody with proper licensing to fire Handguns, Rifles, and Shotguns at any hour of the day, Monday to Sunday. Range safety officers will be on duty, don’t worry. With flashlights at night, ensuring no casualties take place. Again, this will all be within legal confines.
Secondly, I’ll have big burn pits. Three big burnpits to be exact. Burning all night and day long. Twenty-five dollars to burn anything you’d like. Trash, wood, rubber. The worse the smell, the better. On top of the brush and trash disposal, you will also be able to dump any kind of chemical waste into big deep holes located somewhere on the property. Big loud trucks backing in and out at all hours of the night.
“Beep, beep, beep…”
Guys yelling about the correct reverse trajectory of the trucks:
“Yep… Right there! Keep ‘er going… Yep!”
Guys yelling about the incorrect reverse trajectory of the trucks:
“Fuck… Pull it forward… Pull it the fuck up!”
Third, I’ll have dirt bike trails located on the outskirts, also a 24 hour venture. Big mudpits and jumps, dips and big-bowing left turns, for any motocross enthusiast to enjoy. Again, this is about annoyance, so factor in the loud noises of 400cc engines and giant protruding flood lights, shining in all directions.
Are you understanding my vision now?
These things will be happening simultaneously.
Fourth, I’ll have some serious religious services held on the property. I'm not really talking about Sunday Church or Wednesday Mass— I'm talking about big loud, night-time ceremonies for hicks and people who really don’t mind expressing love for Jesus Christ. Frankly, the people who don’t mind expressing that kind of Christian love, are quite annoying, and that is perfect for the angle I am going for.
Loud sermons held by people that think the world is being taken over, poorly sung songs of Christ, all that kind of shit…
Until next time.
