22 September, 7:21 PM

The date is 22 September, 2009. I am tired, and tired seems like such a normal thing to label what I am. The last two days were only barely fueled, just barely sleep-fed enough to make it through until late at night, until I lay down and fell asleep in seconds. I have pain in my lower back- a pain that makes sitting exhausting and standing a short relief, then exhausting; and sitting again a very short relief, then quite exhausting. Sometimes I lift one leg up and shake it, rattling the little socket connector that keeps my leg on, rattling it against it's connector socket. We are like playmobiles, we seem so sturdy until we are irreparable. We seem so happy until you see us with our hair off. We seem so heroic, until the cat walks in and chews our faces off, or until the very young ones crawl in, pull our legs off, and chew our faces off.

I am composing this first installment with this pain in my back. I have mentioned it to you before. I mention it a lot, to everybody I speak with- this is not that many people, I know, but my rate of mentioning back pain is quite high. It is probably close to 100 percent. I do not mention it to people in public bathrooms who say things like "shoelace is untied", or "excuse me", or "Please please stop talking. I am pooping, and I do not wish to speak." I almost do. I almost mention back pain to these people too. I know that this would not be ok, that these people are inflicted with their own inflictions. They do not need to hear about mine. I want to show them all what true pain is, what true suffering. They think they know, I am sure. We all eventually lose somebody we love. But if they felt, for just one small moment, this lower back pain, that flares up when I pronounce consonants, I am sure that they would find themselves face to face with me. I would stand and stare stoically into their tear welling eyes, and when they whispered, softly to me, as tears ran down into the corners of their mouths "I am so sorry", I would smile, not unlike Jesus himself, and I would say "No my child. It is I who am sorry. That you have endured but a moment of this. It has taught me the strength to bear it's very lesson, and you are just a visitor, unaccustomed to this glaring reality. You must go now."

When I am spent, when this back of mine finally gives way and I simply break in half, and fold, skin stretching, to die by a heavy hit to the head, to die when somebody picked the earth up, and unexpectedly moved everything striking me where my feet were firmly planted, but the rest of my body was pointing downward, bent backward at the hips, finally pulling off that bridge that I used to agonizingly contort myself into. I remember in gymnastics when I was young. I wanted to keep up, so I did bridges. Palms firmly planted, feet firmly planted, and pushing my belly to the sky, vying for the approval of my wonderful gymnastics instructor, Jeannie, I was not just planting palms and feet. I was planting the seeds of my own eventual death. Oh cruel irony, why do you toy so with these lives of men and boys?

I hope that when I fold in half like a massive game of Jenga, when that last all to risky move of pulling a critical vertebrae out from under this tower of manhood ends this story abruptly, I hope that I am hugely drunk on Campos Reales red wine. I hope that I am drunk to that point that when falling, there is no indication of falling. There is no sense of up, and the ground simply rises, slowly and very slyly, up behind me, and I have no clue that it is there. I never find out until it is all over. Perhaps it is behind me right now.

That bald feeling

 

 

(all images are unshopped)

Hey, you! Moth!

 

Back Pain

Back pain is whole body pain. Back pain makes me look like I'm having a bowel movement in the middle of sentences. Back pain makes me stand up in class, in the front row, and lean from side to side, switch my balance back and forth and back again, lean back, clutching just barely not my ass, massage myself in front of people I barely know, lift my shirt and reach down the back of my pants to see if it has just been a fucking knot in my muscle these last few weeks. Back pain first made me sad, then made me angry, and now has me tired. The seat in my car is tired of being re-adjusted. My wife is tired of listening to me moan when I move. My 2 year old son just wants to be loved, why, daddy why have you forsaken me? Why are you laying there on the floor like that? Why don't you pick me up? Let's go to the park, daddy...
Fine. If I can't go to the park, I'm just going to climb on you.

Self Portrait

Fear

I just woke up sitting at the computer desk. I looked at the time, which read 7:39. I didn't know if it was morning or evening. I didn't know if I was late for work or had just fallen asleep while sitting at the desk for a little while, while the little one goes to sleep in the next room. I have not felt terror or confusion like that for some time. I was so scared. Now, my mind is slowly piecing back together.

While Standing In Line

While Standing in line at Safeway, I poured lavender scented dish-soap on my jacket and pants.

I was just waiting, holding both bottles upside-down, and one of them was open.

There was a splattered puddle of dish-soap on the floor, next to my soap speckled shoe.
I didn't tell anybody. I internalized guilt and moved to a different line.

That line was shorter- I had realized only once the cool soap in my pants had woken me from my stupor, my soap-spilling daydream. Being in this new line reduced my risk of slipping on soap- soap that had pooled in the middle of the aisle like some liquidy monster, waiting for the unsure step of some frail old lady- to make her fall, undramatically and quickly, and crack her thin skull on the otherwise sanitary floor, killing her instantly.