All posts by Drew
Discovery of the Lotus Flower
Was lost somewhere near Magnolia and Glen
Oaks at the bottom of a very dry
mountain and wedged above an underwhelming
indoor mall when I discovered a
lotus flower floating in a pool of chlorine.
And I plucked her from the fumes and hid
her among the lesser vegetation then watched
as it caused a landslide that carried us
down into the Deer Canyon debris basin.
But through it all she bloomed as I stared in awe.
———————-
But you’re too smart for that. You’re all
Buddhists and business, numbers and quantum
physics finding Shakyamuni in the scatter
of the Universe’s own red shifted light. You traced
your lineage back to the same black hole where
we always met up. It was our event horizon, our
costumes of space adventurers. You were the princess
and I was the smuggler and I got jealous when you
took a picture with that space alien. He didn’t
know you. He didn’t know you had lived an entire
lifetime before I found you, always blooming and
seeding at the same. Such a perfect flower, such a majestic
purpose and I wasn’t about to let some alien move in.
We fled to Ikea and hid among the throngs, among
the fellow holograms living on the edge of love.
I realized you were the cause and effect of an entire
Universe that I was just starting to understand.
I closed my dating website account that night.
Brilliant
I was always told how much of a genius I was. I was always assured I could do anything I wanted and could do things other people couldn’t. They put me in all the best elementary school programs and gave me all the attention a budding genius could ask for. They even told me my IQ score and let everyone know how brilliant I really was. The bullshit flowed and smoke was absolutely being blown up my naive ass.
Then it all fell apart. Somewhere around middle school the support ended and these stewards of mine withdrew their support. The middle school I went to was ranked as some of the worst in the nation and gangs ruled the school (yes, even in middle school). Bullies were more prevalent than teachers and support staff. I became hardened and spent a lot of time on the absentee list. I became disinterested and stopped studying. My life morphed into a latch key existence – a swirl of domestic violence and self preservation – where I strived to just get by and survive as opposed to thrive.
Little did I know how far behind the eight ball I was falling. I didn’t then understand the learning disabilities growing in me nor realized that alcoholic, latch key parents having to work ridiculous hours would have massively broken results in my adulthood. No one celebrates the cessation of your normal childhood development. Nobody touts that you can’t socialize or make friends or that you wouldn’t know how to date if your life depended on it. How could they when they didn’t even realize you weren’t actually going to school save the days the school gave their cookie cutter tests. I was a broken human being at this point and how I squeaked into college was a comedy of systemic errors.
And luckily, college was where, after three years of scraping by, I would be diagnosed as being functionally illiterate.
The Microphones – I Want Wind To Blow
Been a long time
Missed you and thinking about you but when I go to write it just doesn’t feel right and I close out. For a long time I didn’t even know the password to get in so I just changed it and here I am.
Funny how important you were when I was sicker and weaker and was lost in my own little world. I wrote and wrote and added video and made up all kinds of stuff to add to this place but these days, I dunno, I feel like I have to save my energy for other things and so you sit here languishing. And even now, I’m not really sure what I could add?
Don’t be mad. I’ll be back some day and give you what you so deeply deserve but for right now, I am putting my time into other places that just don’t include you.
Much love
G
Sonic Youth- Rain King
Old school cool from Daydream Nation (1988) – I hear their influence all over the place these days.
I am immature
I may be 44 (gasp) but I know that on the inside, I’m really nowhere near that age. Probably more like 20ies which is a huge gain from where I was a decade ago.
When I first started my recovery, when I was about 33, I was no more than a 13 year old on the inside, maturity level and all. And had all the trappings of a early teen; making the same mistakes, feeling the same irrational emotions and beating my head against the same walls a kid that age would beat.
But even with my recovery and all the excellent work I have done to be my own good parent and raise my inner age to something more appropriate for an adult, I am still immature and still feel more comfortable around people in their 20ies. And that’s frustrating when you are 44 and really should be interacting with professionals.
But I will carry on and continue to pursue my human revolution that will at some point, I hope, lead me to a time when my inner age reflects more closely with my chronological age.
Poetry on the spot – find a book, pick a page
Based on pg 44 from “Vorkosigan’s Game” – Lois McMaster Bujold (Sci-fi)
Culvert
Yanked out by the heavy legs
with dread of not knowing
what the other end would look like
Half a man?
No head?
Nothing so dramatic-
soggy parka and big prune face
eyes still wide, searching mine-
was this a suicide?
Was he trying to hide?
He was a private from supply
a man child in over his rank
playing in murky head water
just clogging up the pipes-
contents of pockets unspectacular.
It was the culvert that revealed
the reason for his end.
The siren of his mother’s
pastries dropped into the opening,
singing their song of home.
Andrew Bird – Eyeoneye
Go ahead and congratulate yourself
Give yourself a hand the hand is yours
When the eye that eyes itself is your eye
And the ear that hears itself is near
Then you’re getting too close to your source
You’ve done the impossible now
You took yourself apart
Made yourself invulnerable
No one can break your heart
So you break it yourself
Bringing your own
Break it yourself
Go ahead and reionize yourself
Give yourself a hand the hand is your hand
And you go ahead and wring it out
And you go ahead and stretch it out
And you go ahead and wear it inside out
Day trip in the desert makes this
Boy and girl too wise
Through a raging wall of sand that’s
One hundred stories high
So you reionionionize
And it’s eyeoneyeoneyeoneyeoneye
All this time it took to realize
That you could use some help
Bringing your heart breaking the shell
Bringing your heart breaking the shell
Go ahead and defibrillate yourself
Give yourself a hand the hand is yours
And you go ahead and wring it out
You go ahead and stretch it out
You go ahead and wear it inside out
And it’s eyeoneyeoneyeoneye
And it’s eyeoneyeoneyeoneye
“Break It Yourself” (2012)