Tag: body

Season of weak oranges and terrible plums.

The weight of mentorship is heaviest when the future is at stake. It stands to reason, then, that consideration of the future is the flaw, and one should focus on the present.

I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what I want.

The obvious response is to be here now. I am proven, I might add, and leave it at that. Where do you go during a storm, after all? To shelter, and shelter is not without its toll.

I looked at a hamburger I was eating the other day. I opened it and examined its components. The pickle was appealing, but the rest—ketchup, ground gray meat, cheese—disgusted me, as so many things these days seem to do. I threw it away in spite of my preservative upbringing. An orchard would have been nice. Plums, specifically. A field of plums. A nice picnic in the plum fields in the spring or summer. It brings a warmth to me that has been left behind and neglected in spite.

My desires have been painful. I hit her across her face and she said don’t stop. I have been collecting photographs of her bruised ribs, hips, ass, all of which I will delete except for one after she goes away. Some people collect porn in hidden and cleverly named sub-directories—I collect one photograph representative of the whole experience. And words like these, of course, in a far less collected manner.

I predict I will one day call her by a different name and she will say don’t stop, and I will not, because she will be who I tell her to be and will derive a feeling of control from my attention and dedication of my time to her. Her fear will subside with experience, as it always does. Her fear, her indecision, her hatreds and heartaches—they will all go away, replaced by memories and certainties about who she was and doesn’t want to be.

Season of weak oranges and terrible plums.

The weight of mentorship is heaviest when the future is at stake. It stands to reason, then, that consideration of the future is the flaw, and one should focus on the present.

I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what I want.

The obvious response is to be here now. I am proven, I might add, and leave it at that. Where do you go during a storm, after all? To shelter, and shelter is not without its toll.

I looked at a hamburger I was eating the other day. I opened it and examined its components. The pickle was appealing, but the rest—ketchup, ground gray meat, cheese—disgusted me, as so many things these days seem to do. I threw it away in spite of my preservative upbringing. An orchard would have been nice. Plums, specifically. A field of plums. A nice picnic in the plum fields in the spring or summer. It brings a warmth to me that has been left behind and neglected in spite.

My desires have been painful. I hit her across her face and she said don’t stop. I have been collecting photographs of her bruised ribs, hips, ass, all of which I will delete except for one after she goes away. Some people collect porn in hidden and cleverly named sub-directories—I collect one photograph representative of the whole experience. And words like these, of course, in a far less collected manner.

I predict I will one day call her by a different name and she will say don’t stop, and I will not, because she will be who I tell her to be and will derive a feeling of control from my attention and dedication of my time to her. Her fear will subside with experience, as it always does. Her fear, her indecision, her hatreds and heartaches—they will all go away, replaced by memories and certainties about who she was and doesn’t want to be.

Schedule

For a time, I tried exercising in the morning. This was a short-lived and futile change in my schedule. It didn’t take long to switch back to working out late in the evening so’s I could then return home, take care of some odds and ends until midnight, and fall right to sleep. For too short a time, then, the only thing I had to look forward to in the early morning was wanton cravings for oral sex. Specifically, a certain indifference toward our need to sleep and a hushed agreement that one would lie there and accept the other’s hands and mouth greedily going down before dawn.

I am left with the insomnia of angst and the existential darkness of winter. If I’m fortunate, I wake up early enough to listen to the silence of rainfall and return to sleep for an hour or two, hushed by no one and allowed to be so lazy as to sleep right through a particularly carnal dream.

Schedule

For a time, I tried exercising in the morning. This was a short-lived and futile change in my schedule. It didn’t take long to switch back to working out late in the evening so’s I could then return home, take care of some odds and ends until midnight, and fall right to sleep. For too short a time, then, the only thing I had to look forward to in the early morning was wanton cravings for oral sex. Specifically, a certain indifference toward our need to sleep and a hushed agreement that one would lie there and accept the other’s hands and mouth greedily going down before dawn.

I am left with the insomnia of angst and the existential darkness of winter. If I’m fortunate, I wake up early enough to listen to the silence of rainfall and return to sleep for an hour or two, hushed by no one and allowed to be so lazy as to sleep right through a particularly carnal dream.

Sweat

Tonight is a night I sit up all night, writing an essay and avoiding the heat.

It was hot out today.  California knows what I mean.  I was going to spend the day in the library to work on said essay but then went balls to that when I started sweating on the way there.  Instead I went home, put on a movie to fall asleep to—There Will Be Blood.  I can only fall asleep to movies I like, you see.  TWBB happens to also have a great soundtrack and music does indeed soothe the savage beast.

The ceiling fan was whirring away, doing what it does (so simple a purpose, so necessary a tool.)  As I laid on the couched-up futon trying to fall asleep, emptying my mind like I sometimes imagine a Zen master does, I thought, there will be sweat.  Fuck me, there will be sweat.

I recently spoke with someone about heat after she remarked on me ordering iced coffee or iced tea every time.  We were in line and the cafeteria tables were sparsely populated with college students, most of them younger than me, still in the phase when life is college.  The lights were also sparse, and a slight breeze from the foggy exterior slipped in through a crack between the entrance doors.

“I can’t stand the heat,” I told her.  “It’s one of the reasons I left Los Angeles.  The fuckin’ heat.  I’m going north forever.”

“What?  Oh, I love the heat,” with emphasis on love.  One of those long, drawn out loves when you wish the woman saying it was saying it about you, those kinds of loves.  She’s moving to Los Angeles.  Teaches ballet to the kids, which is a cute thought, then I thought about the slightness of her frame, the intelligence of her voice.  The tiny dancer wants to go to UCLA, become a lawyer.  A lawyer living and loving in the heat.

She’s a writer, too, and this just makes it difficult to process everything.  If only it wasn’t now.  If only it was three years ago, or perhaps a year from today.  A time before or after the sweat.

I woke up from the nap just as There Will Be Blood was coming to its climactic finale between fraud and evil.  Daniel Day-Lewis’s Plainview was beating Paul Danno’s Eli in the head with a bowling pin.  The look in his eyes was concentrated.  You could see the intent, the need to finally do what he’s wanted to do.  It’s satisfaction.  I’ve always believed that that was the whole point of TWBB.  I mean this man, he’s not right.  He holds onto his hatreds like a miser holds onto his money, but he thrives on them.  If Plainview didn’t have the hatreds in his life he wouldn’t be the man he is, successful and cutthroat, able to get the best of his adversaries be they the big oil companies or greedy preachers. Plainview is a model of getting what one wants and, eventually, what one needs, even at the cost of family and life.

I drove to work and realized I’d forgotten to bring along my laptop’s power supply, which meant I’d be making a return trip through the evening warmth.  My back was sticky, my temples coated and forehead smooth from my constant squeegeeing.  What would have been a simple trip to the office to work on an essay (they have air conditioning and space to think) turned into an ordeal.

I don’t like ordeals.  They complicate what could be otherwise simple plans.  But they are natural, and faced with the possibility of more sweaty driving I turned toward the gym.  If I was going to be sweaty I decided I’d sweat for good reason.

The exercise was bland.  Some quick weights and then a mix of walking with short bursts of jogging, leaving my heart dry as jerky and pounding to get the fuck out.  I half-heartedly read the Closed Captions on one of the televisions and listened to one of the many fiction podcasts on my old iPod.  It was Julian Barnes reading Frank O’Connor’s “The Man of the World” for The New Yorker’s fiction podcast.  I’d never heard of either writer, as it often the case with these podcasts, but O’Connor’s story and Barnes’s discussion of it left me with some choice quotes and thoughts on the subject of the “world of appearances.”  A quote remained in the air as I walked along in place.  It won out over the phat beats of the gym’s speakers and drone of the late night sports chatter on the televisions, and that’s when I knew it was a keeper.

From Frank O’Connor’s autobiography:

“I was always very fond of heights and afterwards it struck me that reading was only another form of height, and a more perilous one.  It was a way of looking beyond your own backyard into your neighbors’.  Our backyard had a high wall and by early afternoon it made the whole kitchen dark and when the evening was fine I climbed the door of the outhouse and up to the roof to the top of the wall.”

“I felt like some sort of wild bird, secure from everything and observing everything.  The horse cart coming up the road, the little girl skipping rope on the pavement, or the old man staggering by on his stick, all of them unconscious of the eagle eye that watched them.”

I couldn’t help but notice several short, tightly curled hairs on the tiled floor of the shower after I finished the workout.  They slowly migrated as the water ran down my legs and they were pushed toward the drain.  Many people might find such a sight deplorable, the way a dirty bathroom that is just a bit grimy will send people running, but they were just hairs.  I stood and watched them swim away.  When I got out of the shower I looked at myself in one of the many large mirrors placed in a locker room and it seemed interesting that one man could have short, curly hair and then another man could have coarse, wavy hair.  I never would’ve thought of that.  Body hair’s just not something most folks think on.

After the gym I walked back to my car with my head down, avoiding the snails that were so desperately crawling to the sprinklers in the shrubs.  Some were barely moving and others were so far from the water that I doubted if they’d make it.  I was already sweating again and my hopes that the mist from the sprinklers would provide some relief were dashed.  Sweating is sometimes a subconscious effort so I focused my thoughts on the last time I felt sweat that wasn’t my own. That night it was warm, slightly denser than water.  It tasted of ink, smelled faintly of cauliflower and smoke.  The sounds were breathing and short little female gasps.  The sight was faint outlines of her contours in the darkness, loose hairs catching light from the window off to the side.  I looked up to her face every minute or two to catch anything I could, because it was a rare sight, one to be remembered, and a woman’s eyes remain with you long after the rest may fade. There was sweat and that night it felt good.  I invited the heat with open arms.

I wonder if she could see me remembering her.

Sweat

Tonight is a night I sit up all night, writing an essay and avoiding the heat.

It was hot out today.  California knows what I mean.  I was going to spend the day in the library to work on said essay but then went balls to that when I started sweating on the way there.  Instead I went home, put on a movie to fall asleep to—There Will Be Blood.  I can only fall asleep to movies I like, you see.  TWBB happens to also have a great soundtrack and music does indeed soothe the savage beast.

The ceiling fan was whirring away, doing what it does (so simple a purpose, so necessary a tool.)  As I laid on the couched-up futon trying to fall asleep, emptying my mind like I sometimes imagine a Zen master does, I thought, there will be sweat.  Fuck me, there will be sweat.

I recently spoke with someone about heat after she remarked on me ordering iced coffee or iced tea every time.  We were in line and the cafeteria tables were sparsely populated with college students, most of them younger than me, still in the phase when life is college.  The lights were also sparse, and a slight breeze from the foggy exterior slipped in through a crack between the entrance doors.

“I can’t stand the heat,” I told her.  “It’s one of the reasons I left Los Angeles.  The fuckin’ heat.  I’m going north forever.”

“What?  Oh, I love the heat,” with emphasis on love.  One of those long, drawn out loves when you wish the woman saying it was saying it about you, those kinds of loves.  She’s moving to Los Angeles.  Teaches ballet to the kids, which is a cute thought, then I thought about the slightness of her frame, the intelligence of her voice.  The tiny dancer wants to go to UCLA, become a lawyer.  A lawyer living and loving in the heat.

She’s a writer, too, and this just makes it difficult to process everything.  If only it wasn’t now.  If only it was three years ago, or perhaps a year from today.  A time before or after the sweat.

I woke up from the nap just as There Will Be Blood was coming to its climactic finale between fraud and evil.  Daniel Day-Lewis’s Plainview was beating Paul Danno’s Eli in the head with a bowling pin.  The look in his eyes was concentrated.  You could see the intent, the need to finally do what he’s wanted to do.  It’s satisfaction.  I’ve always believed that that was the whole point of TWBB.  I mean this man, he’s not right.  He holds onto his hatreds like a miser holds onto his money, but he thrives on them.  If Plainview didn’t have the hatreds in his life he wouldn’t be the man he is, successful and cutthroat, able to get the best of his adversaries be they the big oil companies or greedy preachers. Plainview is a model of getting what one wants and, eventually, what one needs, even at the cost of family and life.

I drove to work and realized I’d forgotten to bring along my laptop’s power supply, which meant I’d be making a return trip through the evening warmth.  My back was sticky, my temples coated and forehead smooth from my constant squeegeeing.  What would have been a simple trip to the office to work on an essay (they have air conditioning and space to think) turned into an ordeal.

I don’t like ordeals.  They complicate what could be otherwise simple plans.  But they are natural, and faced with the possibility of more sweaty driving I turned toward the gym.  If I was going to be sweaty I decided I’d sweat for good reason.

The exercise was bland.  Some quick weights and then a mix of walking with short bursts of jogging, leaving my heart dry as jerky and pounding to get the fuck out.  I half-heartedly read the Closed Captions on one of the televisions and listened to one of the many fiction podcasts on my old iPod.  It was Julian Barnes reading Frank O’Connor’s “The Man of the World” for The New Yorker’s fiction podcast.  I’d never heard of either writer, as it often the case with these podcasts, but O’Connor’s story and Barnes’s discussion of it left me with some choice quotes and thoughts on the subject of the “world of appearances.”  A quote remained in the air as I walked along in place.  It won out over the phat beats of the gym’s speakers and drone of the late night sports chatter on the televisions, and that’s when I knew it was a keeper.

From Frank O’Connor’s autobiography:

“I was always very fond of heights and afterwards it struck me that reading was only another form of height, and a more perilous one.  It was a way of looking beyond your own backyard into your neighbors’.  Our backyard had a high wall and by early afternoon it made the whole kitchen dark and when the evening was fine I climbed the door of the outhouse and up to the roof to the top of the wall.”

“I felt like some sort of wild bird, secure from everything and observing everything.  The horse cart coming up the road, the little girl skipping rope on the pavement, or the old man staggering by on his stick, all of them unconscious of the eagle eye that watched them.”

I couldn’t help but notice several short, tightly curled hairs on the tiled floor of the shower after I finished the workout.  They slowly migrated as the water ran down my legs and they were pushed toward the drain.  Many people might find such a sight deplorable, the way a dirty bathroom that is just a bit grimy will send people running, but they were just hairs.  I stood and watched them swim away.  When I got out of the shower I looked at myself in one of the many large mirrors placed in a locker room and it seemed interesting that one man could have short, curly hair and then another man could have coarse, wavy hair.  I never would’ve thought of that.  Body hair’s just not something most folks think on.

After the gym I walked back to my car with my head down, avoiding the snails that were so desperately crawling to the sprinklers in the shrubs.  Some were barely moving and others were so far from the water that I doubted if they’d make it.  I was already sweating again and my hopes that the mist from the sprinklers would provide some relief were dashed.  Sweating is sometimes a subconscious effort so I focused my thoughts on the last time I felt sweat that wasn’t my own. That night it was warm, slightly denser than water.  It tasted of ink, smelled faintly of cauliflower and smoke.  The sounds were breathing and short little female gasps.  The sight was faint outlines of her contours in the darkness, loose hairs catching light from the window off to the side.  I looked up to her face every minute or two to catch anything I could, because it was a rare sight, one to be remembered, and a woman’s eyes remain with you long after the rest may fade. There was sweat and that night it felt good.  I invited the heat with open arms.

I wonder if she could see me remembering her.