Waiting For Life To Begin.

I am falling apart.

Or so it seems.

The one year anniversary

of my exile

is rapidly approaching.

And truth be told,

I don’t feel any better.

In fact,

I feel worse.

God damn,

I am.

God damned me,

And so I will be.

Nothing has gotten any better.

The ache inside of me

seems to grow exponentially,

with each passing day.

What hurt yesterday,

will hurt tomorrow,

only just a little bit more.

Nothing gives me comfort,

anymore.

I am riding home from a hard days work

The physical toll on my body,

has caught up with my mental fatigue,

and I am separating at the seams,

as we pull up to the shop to off load

all the tools and trash

from our days labor.

My partner in the crime of hard work,

is humming a song.

It is a familiar tune.

It is a song that moves with the cadence

of a steady moving freight train

through the heartland.

It is the kind of song

that becomes instantly popular

amongst smart and arty people

and then quickly becomes a cliché.

It is enjoyed,

but then reviled because of its popularity.

It is Pete Yorn,  Life On A Chain.

And Tommy

just won’t stop humming it.

He eventually starts singing it

as he bops along,

stowing away the tools from our days trade.

I can feel myself just drowning in mid air.

When all the implements

of our physical destruction

and reconstruction

are tucked away,

on dusty and greasy shelves,

we shut the heavy old wood

and steel doors,

second test the locks,

and climb into the truck,

and head back down my old familiar streets,

back to his home,

just blocks away

from my old home.

Before we turn from the alley,

Tommy pulls out his I-pod,

and dials up Pete Yorn, Life On A Chain.

He turns it way up,

and begins to sing along,

with the freedom and happiness

that I am no longer capable of.

He’s tapping out the beat on the steering wheel

As we cross over onto Fleet Street.

I am dying inside.

I don’t know why.

And I know why.

“I live on a chain.”

And we glide down the hill

from the top of Highlandtown,

across Clinton, Elwood, and East Avenues.

And at each intersection,

at each stop sign,

and pause,

the hell inside of me starts to rise up.

As we get closer,

I realize I can’t hold back the ache.

We come to a stop,

at the intersection of Fleet and Linwood,

and I am completely engulfed in tears.

A right hand turn,

and I would be on my way,

back home,

back to my old home.

“I was alone, and you were just around the corner from me.”

I place my head against the window,

and it feels as if the weight

of my tears could shatter the glass,

as I look down

Linwood Avenue,

and desperately imagine going home.

Tommy turned the music down,

“I’m sorry Murdoc.”

Me to Tommy.

Me too.

I learned towards the radio,

and turned the stupid song up to full volume,

and we sang our hearts out

the next couple of blocks to his home.

We beat the dashboard silly

like a couple of lunatics,

to the cadence of a song

that sounded like a steady moving freight train

through the heartland.

An hour later,

I was sitting alone

with a heart full of lead, broken glass, and choked back tears,

out back of my new home,

by the water,

watching the sunset,

tapping out the beat to a song,

on the arms of an old Adirondack chair.

And the sound it made,

was like a steady moving freight train,

fueled by sorrow,

through the heart land.

Nothing has gotten much better.

http://youtu.be/_XwOeJW_9HU

Let The Sea, Lift Me Up.

Over the last two days,
I have lost myself in the exercise of fishing.
I have lived on the water now for almost ten months;
and I have had yet to drop a line,
into the water,
that is my backyard.

I have studied
this vast blue and black vista at great length.
I have acquired nautical maps.
I have tracked the ebb and flow of the tide,
in relation to the passing stars above.
I have spent hours photographing
it's never ending change and flux.
I have endured and revelled
in storms of unimaginable strength.
I have watched as ice crept in,
and turned the all of Old Road Bay
into a sheet of mottled glass.
I have seen much change,
while I have just stayed
the sad same me.

I have embraced this new world,
as my own.
Here, in a place so far removed form my old life,
I have found a home;
where I can place my sadness
into a boat made of folded love letters and photographs;
and set it all adrift on the easy tide that takes all things,
everything,
back out to the sea and away.

I imagine,
all the ache and uncertainty
inside me,
as a gray and heavy weight;
like the driftwood that washes up on my beachhead,
or the pier pilings that break free from their duty
and sometimes float free after a storm.
As immense as these things are,
the current always takes them away
over time.

Where all this heavy substance goes,
is a mystery?
Perhaps,
there is a beach,
just like mine,
on the other side of the world;
where another unhappy soul,
studies the immense garbage
that has washed ashore
into his unhappy life?
He looks at the crazy
gnarled driftwood,
discovers a name carved in it's side;
carves his own name on another branch
of this broken, buoyant tree of life,
and then drags it all off the shoreline
and sets it adrift once again.

Even the heaviest of weights,
can rise up
and float away
on the sea.

So,
for the last two days,
I have sat out on the pier,
and dropped a line into the water.
And tonight,
as the sun made it's way home across the water,
a thin line of incandescent filament
with a hook and a bloodworm,
and a lead weight wasn't enough.
With my usual purpose and dedication,
I began to remove my clothes.
As each piece of my outer layer
was peeled off,
it was folded neatly
and placed upon the rusty crab trap.
When there was nothing left,
but my boxer shorts,
I took a deep breath,
removed these too,
and then,
dove into the water.

Dropping a line into the water
just wasn't enough anymore.

I needed
to baptise me.

Something inside me,
just needed to float.
Perhaps I needed the sea,
to ease and lift,
the weight
of all this ache and uncertainty
inside of me?
I worried.
Had I become so heavy,
that even the strength of water couldn't lift me up?

And like the driftwood,
I floated.
And it was awe inspiring to be so weightless once again.
It was like being in love.
It was like Christmas morning.
It was like the embrace of a lover,
after waking from a horrible dream.
It was.
I was.

And I floated and bobbed about
as the sun set.
And for a moment,
I imagined that I was
just driftwood,
with a lonely strangers name carved in my side,
waiting for the tide and current
to carry me away.