Blooming

A cult symptom is passing a car on the street with a Germs sticker and thinking we are somehow connected. There’s a camp along the tracks where I could go and live if I wanted. What is radical love? Peace is a concept and it costs someone else, peace is an idea that most people can’t afford. Head down in their phones in line at the weed store. The boy’s lip starts to quiver, suddenly, at the dinner table, he says “I miss mommy…when can we be a family again?” and I say “I miss mommy too, bud, I’m sorry” and I don’t share my anger or humiliation or betrayal but I do share my sadness with him, I don’t hide the tears, the reflection of his pain. He is too smart for his own good and it scares me because it is dangerous to be so aware so soon. He buries his head in my lap and we grieve together. Abandonment issues already presenting, he won’t believe my father when he insists that the man in the white shirt leaving the hockey rink is not me leaving him, ignoring him, I find him in tears and he clings to me until we reach the car. Terror dreams return.

I am fighting my basest instincts because I know I have goals, I have motivations, I have things to accomplish. I am indulging my truest instincts, short-circuiting a hardwired survival mechanism. I’m watching the sexy young people dance in the disco with my friend Jim, who is 13 years my senior, and we’re laughing and talking about poetry, debating, venting, and sharing nonalcoholic beers, as the temperature rises, the crowd more dense, the hot dog machine blowing hot dog air at Shelby, and it’s all exactly as it should be, and Celina says “You forgot to mention “good looking” older man too…”. I thought love was on the verge again but I’m better than that now, I know to breathe, to back away, to regain focus when the footing is off, it doesn’t feel right, I know I’m not ready. The strangeness of desire feels wrong, to be wanted again makes me feel raw, it feels like vultures which were circling to pick the bones, it feels like I’m betraying, and to want, in turn, is too betrayal. To be alone feels right in sickening penance. Summer is when I miss smoking, drinking, sex, vice, I’m compelled to return to all, should I rejoin Instagram? Rejoin the world? The Culture? Should I show people I exist again? Does any of that serve me?

We are united in the hospital. New therapist, new diagnosis, math learning disability, PTSD on paper, triggered by car crashes, I’m so much better now, I don’t miss a task, I play through the pain, my body feels steeled and focused, I was always this man, just buried by shame, burdened by pain. I am selfish with my time, I say “No” and like it, I learned what works and apply it, maintain it, this rigid little routine of mine, day in and out in service, in sacrifice for the purpose. And maybe I was more desirable when I fought more, when I protested and resisted with jealousy, with desire and hunger and desperation, full of piss, vinegar, drugs, cum and dread. I was wild and reckless and attractive, romantic.

Parents tell me that life used to be so much easier before kids and I cannot relate, this boy who is more beautiful every time I look upon him, has turned life into a singular function, no more the endless complexities of existential confusion, I don’t wake and wonder why I do it anymore, why endure the pain, the existential uncertainty, the dragging one’s self to employment every day, everything is so simple now, I have one task, one singular purpose. I chose his existence and I owe him the seriousness of that responsibility, I owe him the right to grow unburdened, he gives me every purpose I need, existence is easy now because it is only for him.

Calypso pleads with Odysseus to “Let go” and I sob violently in a matinee show full of the elderly, sitting alone. I needed to shed the weight. I think the film is beautiful, I appreciate the altered ending. She noted I use “everyone” a lot and thinks that it makes sense, the understanding feels like more than I deserve but I deserve good good things, I deserve all the good things I can get. The garden feeds me dark red fruit in the morning, I’m always nurturing now, feeding the flowers, pruning the trees, pouring all my love into everything I touch, averting my eyes from the filth I am sometimes overcome by, the ignorance and abuse, the city surrounding is doomed. Its hard to care about the people here anymore or perhaps its hard to hope they will endure. He falls asleep to my singing and there is no greater compliment, no more satisfying reward, I brush his hair aside with the deep breaths and watch him for a moment, he’s all the things I could have been and my boy inside me smiles, I fight and work to make it right.

Poem bits in phone notes:

Haunted
By the form of your hip
On my fingertip
In the dark



A man is weak
And swayed
By sirens songs
The left
And lost
The gathering
Inferno

I know
How to sit with it
Like the fruit fly
Struggling
In the glue strip
Like the fence
Overcome
By the vines

I know
It is necessary
Like healing bone
Grown stronger


I sang the tears out
Picking wildflowers
And helped
The helpless trees
To stand again


Sometimes
Birds
Just fall from the sky
Dead

I saw Blooming open for Marisa Anderson about a month ago and fell in love so I bought three copies of their debut cassette at their release show last week and have become obsessed. I’m not sure where these kids came from but their playing in beautiful. Delicate nylon stringed acoustic guitar with upright double bass alternating between plucked and bowed. Get all that you can out of this because its gorgeous.

I’ve also been indulging in a steady stream of rare archival live shows from obscure hardcore bands like Mohinder and Turning Point:

I’ll be returning soon with a slapdash thinkpiece about how hardcore and punk is actually just a big toxic cult and how I’ve been attempting to heal and resolve my punk-damage-addled brain.


XO
JWS