November 10th, 2021

This Is Part Of It And So Is That, And That Too

It starts slow . . . It starts with nothing, really. Nothing at all. Just the chair and being in it. Sitting. Waiting. Nothing else. Just waiting, or not waiting because nothing else matters. That’s all there is to it.

It’s this. And before you know it’s happening, you’re doing the thing without wondering if anything will come of it.

Sometimes it’s staring at the walls, at all the things one accumulates in a lifetime. The books. The pictures. The furniture. Anything that can happen in a moment and become something else. Sometimes it’s letting go of what isn’t.

Sometimes it’s a blank page that remains blank for hours.

Days. And then something happens. First with a word. And then another. And another one after that and then it starts to take shape with marks and lines and it doesn’t make sense but that’s okay. That’s how it starts. There really isn’t any other way to go about it. It just happens after awhile. And then everything begins to connect because the mind has been affected in a certain way. Glimpses of imprints impressed upon the mind. Acted out and superimposed. An existence that tickles the inside of the skull.

Like standing there, staring down at the golden leaves on 50th halfway to Dodge. The cars passing along to and from Underwood. A warm day before rain. Maybe the last in four months. But that’s not important because you’re in it. Headed down the road. And the world goes its own way as it always has, you going yours. On it. A part of it. Connected. Moving. Or not. It doesn’t matter. And the aches and the breaks take place though there’s not necessarily a say about it. That’s just the way things go but you participate nonetheless. Why not. It’s happening. This and that. Then something else.

Sometimes its sitting in the black leather chairs at the low bar of Pageturners Lounge with the low yellow light of the candles, the darkness of the place holding you there with a friend or no one at all or the drunk sitting next to you who leans over and says something, not making any sense and so you order a House Jam to speak his language finding out he’s not much older than you, living at home, trying to change the course of his life from selling crack in Minneapolis to selling houses in Dundee. “I had to think bigger,” he says. Some dreams born of a struggle. And after awhile, after he’s talked in circles about the thing, it becomes clear that the answer isn’t there though it’s part of it and so you get up and head out into the night, down the road towards whatever comes next.

Sometimes you have to follow the thought. See where it leads. Perhaps it points you in the right direction or at least help the realizations become clearer. Less pixelated. More defined around the edges so that the colors become distinct. The images more bearable.

Sometimes you become the symbol.

The thing missing for someone else. The piece out of place for another. You become an identifier, an aspiration. A direction out of complacency. That death. But that’s part of it.

Sometimes it takes a text at 8:20 in the morning from someone you love. Sometimes it takes a lot of doing nothing or doing something else for it all to become clear. Sometimes it’s putting a period at the end of a long rant, not as a finality, but a placeholder for something else to begin.