Saturday, May 8, 2010

SINCE WALLS CAN'T TALK NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW YOUR PAIN


LYING IN A BED HALF-MADE

First, I would like to apologize for the melancholy that I have been putting out over the last several months. Not that there aren’t other things on my mind or better things to write about, but there haven’t been many days where the skies were clear above my head. There are several sources for my disillusionment and my weariness. Even in making the ‘main thing, the main thing’, the light still comes thru in patches. And while the overcast doesn’t turn from dark to pitch, dark is still dark.

The twin from Chicago blew thru Friday to attend a funeral with her daughter and fiancé in tow. It was good to meet him and to see my niece again. My sister though,seeing her was another thing.

My mixed feelings towards my siblings are essentially between you and me, dear reader. Part of the idea of ‘the story that you tell yourself’ is that whatever it is you say or think to yourself is just that, a conversation that remains internal. To the observer it will look like one thing and for the participating party (ies), it yet again can be seen differently. Life is not too different from quantum physics in that respect, where the observation of an event can change how the result is observed and recorded. That is why I don’t bother people with my distress, whether I believe they were the cause of much of it or not. Once things were ‘did’, things were ‘changed’. As several of y’all have pointed out, you have start playing the cards in your hand and on the table if you are still in the game.

I am in the game. Believe that.

IT’S THE ENVIRONMENT, STUPID













The DOT buses seem to run not only as scheduled but they operate in synch with the SMART lines. In fact, there seems to be an increased efficiency in City services, but that could just be me. Still, I would rather not be here.

I have fought the urge to go out to Garden City and take a look at the small apartments across from the high school. The location is as close to being ‘as good as it gets’ for me. Even if I didn’t want to go out that far, on Greenfield Road, not far from my old high school, there are several apartment buildings that show signs of ownership investment and look pretty OK. But once you get beyond that… what do I have? As much as I believe that Detroit is going to rally, I STILL don’t want to be here.

The disharmony in my life is attributable to being out of place. I feel like ‘Howard the Duck’ here… trapped in a world that I never made. Maybe, just maybe I have been on this road to remind myself that if I am still going to hope and dream, that my hopes and dreams lie elsewhere.

The brief time I spent with my sister was enough to last a lifetime. I don’t want to walk her down the aisle because I would rather not have to reconcile what she has meant in my life with what I have obviously meant in hers. The whole walking down the aisle thing isn’t something that she deserves from me.

I use the taking of my ex wife’s side in during the terminus of our marriage as quick reference to the kind of betrayal and disloyalty I have suffered at the hands of my family… it ISN’T the only incident nor is it the most recent. What it is though is a clear look at the kind of harmful interference I have had to deal with from people who certainly should have had my better interests at heart.

AND WHEN HE GREW TIRED, HE SHRUGGED

The tragic sadness is that the SFC and I didn’t make it further. It was great theatre while it lasted… after twenty some years we rediscover and rekindle…

There you go. We didn’t have that romantic background to fall back on and I don’t recall any sexual tension between us. If she had shown any interest in me, then who knows? Even with me being young and (mostly) dumb at the time, for her I think I would have gotten down to brass tacks. And maybe…

But for a person that I would have given my life for and would try to do just that, having survived one of the first events that ‘destroyed’ (if I wanted to put a smile on it, I could have said it profoundly shaped) my life, I could not do so again. Such as it is with my sister, because it would not be easy for me to wrap my mind around breaking from whatever I am building towards in my life to come and swallow hard to help her make any moment in her life more memorable.

In my mind it isn’t about bitterness. But in ‘How Soon Is Now?’ fashion, I am asking myself if you tell me that it’s going to happen now, well, when exactly do you mean? Because you see, I have waited too long… (oh, y’all are also aware that there are dramatic flourishes used in the creation of some of these posts… the whole quantum physics observation thingy and all ...!)

3 comments:

Ken Riches said...

Glad you are somewhere where getting from here to there is something you know.

Glad you got to see sis and niece.

Hope you get things figured out for you soon.

mrs.missalaineus said...

homecomings always seem bittersweet to me when i go visit my real family.

it makes me uncomfortable and i always feel like an outsider. even though we are blood i dont belong by nature of my own birthright. i can so understand why staying in detroit proper would bring out these feelings.

garden city's not a bad place to make a new home. check out westland too.


xxalainaxx

DB said...

Mark, I'm not going to say forgive and forget. Forgiving is very difficult and it's impossible to forget. I will say minimize it. Think less about it and more of other things. There is sunlight even though it's dark overhead. I think you can find a future in Detroit so long as you don't look for it there, or any other place.

DB