Dear Dad (7 page)

THE FIRST OF THE LAST

Well, after our trip, Haas had to leave again across the Atlantic. I resumed my normal shitty life and daydreamed about our trip for months. I began to drink again and met up with the wrong crowd. Many hungover mornings, I sat in bed sick and wished I was healthy and researching restaurants and exotic places like Haas was. I had placed him in the back of my mind, when my mom knew I was friends with him and asked if I had heard about him. I said “No, what?”. She texted back: “He died.” Simple as that. I had never really experienced death before, at least with humans. I am a huge animal lover, and have grieved tremendously more for pets I have owned. But, this was my best friend. “How?” was all I asked. “Heart-attack.” I had uncontrollable tears and clamoured for the bottle. The binge lasted years.

THOSE WHO LEAVE US

(my mom's dad on left.)

“Those who leave us behind will stay close within our realm until we let go”, a friend had said, as he consoled me after a close friend of mine died. And yes, I spiraled out of control and it was finally a real excuse to drink and pill copious amounts. Spirits are real and they will live around us until our memories fade of themselves. It is a gentle transition, this life to the next, whatever you believe. My mom’s dad died when she was seven. It is unclear how he died but alcohol is loosely mentioned. She has forever held an optimism that is almost childlike without the idiocy. Billions of people have died in the History of humans and yet it’s just you and I and we still laugh even in our wheelchairs, as we laughed in the sand on the beach when our shorts rubbed the sand into our skin until we were beet red. Why are people so petty until real traumatic events drops the bullshit and brings us all together. Look at 9/11. There was a certain silence in all of humanity after that one. Would it take World War III to humble us a little longer. . .and drop the bullshit?

My mother’s dad, I suspect, appeared in my doorway when I was ten. It was dark in the hallway and my room, but his permeable presence was made out of the orange night light that shone from the bathroom and struck across my bedroom floor. He stood for a second at the door, as if he were asking if he could enter my room, nothing was heard, but then he walked toward me and that’s when I screamed. He disappeared and nothing spiritual had happened since, until my mother talked about seeing and hearing certain things after her mother’s death. I won’t get into details of that, except both her sister and herself heard crying at their mother’s funeral, and it was wailing, not weeping, and they looked around and it seemed no one else heard it.

There’s a feeling sometimes, that animals are just waiting for us to catch on. That we all feel the same basic emotions, all need Love, and feel sadness and anger. I walked through town one night and was unusually calm and centered. I noticed two foxes playing in a field down the slope of a hill in front of a Victorian house near the water. One was orangish, but the other was almost black. I had never heard of a black fox before, and this is not fiction. They noticed me and trotted up closer until they were twenty feet away. We stood and watched each other. It was like two solar systems getting ready to merge, only this was the Animal Kingdom allowing me to visit. I knelt down and held out my hand. The orangish one remained behind, but the black one slowly approached and got to my finger tips and started sniffing. I turned a finger and got to touching its nose, as the fox playfully nibbled at my finger. It was ludicrous and completely real.

They ran off and I got up and walked on, forever endowed with a secret of trust between the animal kingdom and the fucked up humanity I lived in. It didn’t matter if no one believed me. It was as profound as losing virginity with an angel. To this day, I pray with the friend’s name who passed away. It keeps him close to the realm I live in. My mother’s eyes are still blissed out with the promise of an eternal life and the reunion with her father, and I remain enchanted with seeing him in the doorway thirty years ago. We all start together as Newborns and branch off into deviations that define us and produce a legacy for our name or we destroy our name. Were playing with molecules and worshiping the dust. At the end of the day there is only the sun wicking its flames on the horizon, and some of us won’t be here tomorrow.

THE DEVIL’S DRUG

Yeah, I’ve been taken down before. The tight fabric of my morality got stained and raveled and the perceptions of a normal life was tainted by all night paranoia and perversion. The ability to laugh and form bonds and create relationships deteriorated like an embryo stuck under a floodlight too long. While humanity traveled feverishly from Point A to Point B, I snuck underground with the vermin and my saliva became thick white powder puffs of crack and crank particles. I formed halitosis and my body stunk like a chemical plant. I became jealous of you and adorned the seven deadly sins with a cocky grin. I took my manhood and shaved it clean of virtue and masturbated with the demons until I was left the loser, alone, dehydrated, body chafed, panting like I ran a marathon but it’s just the speed withdrawals and lost sleep, lost dreams. My normal surroundings became a battleground for other demons and witches of the 4 AM clan who wanted the rest of my dignity. They had other prisoners in their basements already and looking up, up at the stars I noticed a star moving across the atmosphere’s ridge. It traveled with the solar system while I traveled at the speed of a quick demise. The leaves of the fauna on the ground canopy became little blue lights. I knew my mind was playing tricks on me but the believability of those lights made me question my mind. The more I questioned my mind the more I chased my tail and started to playfully tug at my own tail until I was pulling the fur off, then the skin. Headlights of cars flashed into my living room and they were driving too slow on the highway to actually be going somewhere but looking in my windows and seeing me pulling at my pants, trying to get in there. . .It was my body against a distorted mind and one was thirstier than the other to play this way and the show went on, with losers and winners. The winners were home in bed with loved ones not turning black and inward and masturbating until dawn. The winners were just as messed up actually and held beliefs with the false prophets and the warlords of religion and I think some supermarket GM’s are in on it too. My new crack friend thought that the employees at supermarkets were worker bees that were manufactured in the basement at the local paper mill. We stayed up all night and looked at the stars together. He’s the one that pointed out the star that shouldn’t be moving. I tried getting rid of him so I could get into my pants. It was one selfish deed after the next, which kind of looks like those Renaissance paintings of Hell, where everyone is stepping over everyone else, trying to get out.

IN RUSSIA OR A BARREN SOUL

The Russians are severe, in the way they ponder and regret and spend many months in the frozen barreness of their homeland. The Winter brings on a numbness that turns warm before hypothermia blankets the victim with euphoric death. Alcoholism is a name tag that everyone wears here. It’s not Russia anymore, it’s the crying soul or society’s reject or the incest survivor, It’s the nameless in a crowd, or it’s people that just don’t care anymore.

I stood by the wood stove after riding my bike in the rain. I could see my pant legs being licked by steam. The candlelight etched little valleys of shadow between my veins. I was young once and this didn’t bother me. Being wet. There were many books unopened on my bookshelf, no, not a bookshelf, an empty spot on the floor surrounded by beer cans and dog fur, no, they were lined up for shooting practice with Burroughs and Hunter. They spoke and told stories so I didn’t have to, along with everyone else who tells a story with conviction, like the comedian who tells a joke under the spotlight as if it were there last. Comedians are suicidal. Their dialogue is loaded with suicidal innuendo just like everyone could have saved Kurt Cobain if they had listened to his lyrics. Life is a tightrope for the Genius, walking naked with their toes bleeding a hundred feet in the air.

I love old photos of lumberjacks, standing around Redwood trees that are as wide as cars. They are men that are skinny but scrappy. It was work hard, play hard and the older ones sat in their own corner conversing a different modality, of prophets jargon and wise but demonic transgressions. The older ones held nothing above or below anyone and it was their ribs that etched the bed sheets at night with little concealed pools of blood and self pity. Another Thousand days and they will have earned enough for somebody’s silk tie today. The smell of sawdust and of whiskey mingling with the exhaust of the chainsaw could enlighten any business man. There would be a parade every friday night through the little Mainstreet and you would peer out your window and laugh with the opposite sex. There would be no work for another week. The only precursory witness to your debauchery is the pet that loves you unconditionally. There are no little games here. It’s meat and flesh and holds golden like a Rainbow in your child’s eyes, that of a million ambitions they wish for.
 
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