plotting for kisses

What the Living Do

// Bike as donation center: insert picture here

I wake up, slightly panicked, as has become the uncomfortable norm, and clamber up to glance outside my window. I breathe a sigh of relief when I spot my bike still securely bolted to the rack outside my residence. After washing up and dressing, I go outside to survey the damage today. It’s not bad, I note. They decided last night that my hand lotion was of much higher desirability than my sunscreen. Somewhere, I imagine a sunburnt homeless person cackling with glee as he (or she) finally has soft and luxurious paws for the first time in a while.

As always and unfortunately, my books are all completely intact. I have attempted to donate everything from fine poetry to more modern classics. Literary enlightenment and appreciation for the moment do not appear to rank highly on the list of priorities of my friends at 7th and Folsom. I make another note to myself to perhaps try leaving a spiritual tome next time — who knows what a Bible will provoke?

At some point I decided that I was conducting an ethnographic survey of the social and economic strategies of homeless individuals and markets as understood as the outcome of conscious deliberation and violent consideration with respect to the donation center that my green Surly Long Haul Trucker has come to be known as. Staring at my bike, I wonder if this donation center’s longevity is a result of a harvesting strategy where the discounted value of future goods outstrips the present value of immediate disassembly and liquidation.

Barring this new hypothesis, my initial conclusions, unfortunately, have not been especially surprising. Cigarettes and alcohol trade at a high premium. So does clothing, especially warm jackets. (Although this has a strong negative correlation with temperature and precipitation — my hoodies have lasted longer and longer.) Organic food is never taken, however soft drinks and processed victuals are almost always stripped.

There are a few surprises. For one, sometimes in a fit of generosity, my subjects find themselves leaving small items in return. Today I find an ivory bathroom hook left on top of my bike’s rack. Thank you, nameless homeless person! A few days ago, it was a pair of sturdy construction gloves. I am considering slapping a Goodwill sticker on the back of my bike and leaving a pad of fill-out-yourself tax-deductible donation receipts in case they itemize their 1040 rather than taking the standard deduction.

Mounting my bike, I travel to the nearby location of my second donation center to be greeted by the sight of countless fragments of glass. My heart stops in my chest.

// The first: insert picture here

I can trace the beginning of this entire sordid war to a skirmish at the crowded intersection of 4th and Market on March 29th at 4:10p. Coming back from Westfield Mall, I notice a curiosity. My bicycle seat seems to no longer be attached to my bicycle.

The next frantic moments are considered in a simultaneous state of shock and rational problem solving. My first thought, “Why the fuck would anyone want my bike seat,” is met simultaneously by an immediate scan on Yelp for bike stores with spare saddles. Somewhere in between, I manage to send out half a dozen text messages to friends noting my incredulity and, later, new-found sense of slight loneliness and alienation.

Greeted in a bike shop with rows of saddles, I am struck by nostalgia as I recall past hours and miles. I remember the rock-strewn road from DC to Pittsburgh and imagine taking another year to break in another bike seat and feel inwardly strange but mostly angry. I’m not even that upset at the loss of value — it’s just such a pain to break in another saddle.

But then I remember that maybe I wanted to, you know, upgrade and buy a saddle with suspension and this would be the perfect time to do so. The logical side of my brain kicks in and I compare prices, eventually deciding to buy an upgrade for $80 off eBay. Really not bad at all, I think, loneliness mostly forgotten as I haggle the price of a temporary beater saddle to $10.

Living in the Mission, these incidents had been quite isolated. A sweater or jacket would go missing and I would shrug it off, noting that the articles usually did not fit anyway. I also note that this is good practice for the Buddhist concept of non-attachment.

But moving to SoMa has turned these isolated lessons into a full-blown recurring curriculum pattern. The next significant casualty of war was my upgraded bike seat. I find my newly upgraded security system, a series of locks and chains, snipped by what looks to be a gaping bolt cutter. I realize I may not be able to break in a second leather saddle.

// insert picture here

On the evening of Sunday April 15th, the battlefield escalates nominally from just the contents of my bicycle to the contents of my automotive vehicle. I step into my car to find it has been broken into by a very conscientious individual, (in retrospect) most likely using a hanger. Curiously enough, they only pilfer some of the Cliff bars inside and have left most of the valuables untouched. At this point, I shrug it off as an isolated incident of hungry hungry hobos.

Of course, my obliviousness obvious in retrospect, the very next weekend on Saturday night, I arrive to the sight of my car modulo its front passenger side window and most everything inside stripped. The next few moments are spent in that familiar pattern of shock, frustration, and resignation that I have come to acclimate and treat as necessary background noise attached intimately to existing in San Francisco.

After dialing the police and insurance and finding how useless the entire system of reporting and deterring (minor) vandalism really is, I try to, largely unsuccessfully, carry on with my day. I can’t shake the creeping feeling of learned helplessness and wonder how much more of my life could easily get sent into a state of a paralysis based off the forced habits of a few apparently unknown and uncatchable individuals. The only thing that helps is when, in overhearing my story, a stranger at dinner notes he has actually allocated a yearly glass repair budget for his Honda Civic and his mechanic is on quick-dial. (“7 times in 7 years, like clockwork!”)

A day later, today, after shockingly quickly getting the glass vacuumed and replaced for an amazingly (to me, at least) cheap sum of $300 and 30 minute outpatient wait, I can’t help but feel crazy and grin and wring my hands in despair at how ridiculous this entire situation must seem.

This series of petty thefts and constant violation — how do people operate in this world? I start to see why it is impossible to lift yourself out of a ghetto. When bad things happen all the time, what can one see other than the world as a series of pointless hostilities and disappointment. I understand why hope, idealism, and the occasional individual escape are such remarkable events within this context. I also start to understand why victims of violent crimes often carry trauma long after the actual incident.

// insert picture here

But even after talking with a close friend and integrating this new, and interesting, observation about the world into my consciousness and resolving to find a private garage for my car and bike, I still feel a strong sense of unease.

I walk into Sightglass, a nearby beautiful coffeehouse and try to shake the feeling by getting to the work I desperately need to finish. I write a little bit and, mid-sentence, my favorite green pen finally sputters and gives out. At this final crazy machination, I lose it. I consider throwing myself off the balcony in despair or, at the very least, hitting someone very, very hard.

Angrily storming out into the hot sidewalk and feeling the wind in my face as I bike in search of a replacement, something breaks in me. I can’t rationalize this new development in terms of Buddhist detachment, ethnographic studies, or wardrobe replacement. It’s irrational and senseless. God, I miss my goddamn fucking pen!

I suddenly see, at the moment of that proclamation, so clearly, that I’m in mourning. I also see, so clearly, all the rational coping mechanism I’ve employed over the course of my lifetime. I see my life as based off so many rituals, from traveling to work in the morning, to spending time writing, to biking in the sunlight, and that these rituals, altogether, mean the world to me and are as crucial to my identity as thought and skill and friendship.

Even though I constantly proclaim my independence from objects, I care so much about the things that remain. So much that I detach from even admitting to myself that I care about them. I scan the cards I receive and all the notebooks I create before shredding them. But really, the quick act of destruction prevents a truer and more nuanced consideration of true value. Every happy marriage dreads the day one of them inevitably leave first.

I know logically the lesson I should be learning is to be even less dependent on my things. But I just can’t. It’s a delicate balance, but I realize what I had been calling detachment was actually denial. Detachment comes only after one acknowledges the value of an object. We can simultaneously realize that everything comes to an end and be in mourning constantly, while being always so hopeful every day of everything the world has to offer and our own soft beauty and everything we can hope to create and love and one day be taken away. I feel so protective of all the things I have left.

I guess these are moments when the universe is trying to shake you awake and god, oh god, I just hope we are all so conscious enough to just listen because these sounds are so beautiful.

// insert picture here

Coming back into the coffee shop with a new pen, there is a daughter sliding down her father’s leg yelling gleefully, “Slide!” We three grin so widely at each other that I at once feel painfully shy and joyful. And then, as I walk further in, I have this strong sense that life is constantly beginning.

San Francisco

“It’s only warm here two weeks out of the year,” she claims, her orange sundress fluttering softly against a backdrop of water and daisies.

“What was it Mark Twain said?” I shift in my seat, uncomfortably aware of a bead of sweat threatening to form on my brow. “Ah, yeah, the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”

Behind her, heavy light filters through a sloped array of gentle trees, falling upon patches of flowers strewn about, quivering, seeming like they might at once suddenly sprout into stained glass, color refracting brilliantly, brilliantly, everywhere. Slightly further beyond, one can catch the ruffle of lazy sails set at bay as, between, cars whistle by.

I breathe in, tasting the live scent of spring, and arch my back slightly and search her eyes, two reflective obsidian orbs in focus, slowly, suddenly, wide and intelligent and sharp.

“Do you want to stay here forever?” I ask — a half-second too early, her eyes tightening almost imperceptibly slightly. A half second matters urgently, I think to myself. It is, perhaps, the difference between a life spent floating through perpetually unfamiliar houses and one spent in a well-lit condo, artwork calming mood scattered gracefully, everywhere.

I wish I could convey this moment to her. This understanding of unrepentant urgency and permanence — actors taking our parts, characters in a painting. But I don’t have the words, the poetic stripping and beauty painfully out of focus.

Unobserved, she answers eagerly and earnestly, “No, I think I’d like to move to Los Angeles.”

I’m aware of the vast chasm of experience separating us. I berate myself for being so judgmental, but I know — suddenly, clearly: we might as well speak different languages; we only share a glimmer in our shared unconsciousness, an uncomfortable heat and slight sense of befuddlement. Touch and gaze are what keeps most of us humans together.

I, slightly embarrassed, wipe away a streak of sweat and tiltingly respond, “I don’t envy you in the slightest,” and we share a laugh.

Later, the worst of the midday heat has subsided and I am staring into space, feeling vast and self-conscious. Sensitive to a paralyzing hollowness, I feel every mote of sun and wind, a line from a Dunn poem floats through, temporary, fleeting, painful — somewhere a philosopher is erasing \ “time’s empty passing” because he’s seen \ a woman in a ravishing dress. \ In a different hour he’ll put it back.

Ritual

We get into habits.

Writing was difficult — to write was a mood I couldn’t see myself in. Force myself into.

Now it is an itch. I face others and wonder ‘they seem so alien.’ And uncomfortable. I want nothing more than to be ghostly; to move in the realm of thought, to wield those hieroglyphics that control a world imagined.

I wonder.
I wonder if these are the things we carry on for a lifetime, returning to again and again, when everything else we seek escapes us. I wonder if these habits somehow become imbued into our psyche — become an inseparable statement of who we are and how we think. What calms us, stabilizes us and lets us be coherent rather than a collection of wonton and ragtag impulses.

Orpheus, in daring to descend, returns remembering only the laurels he is missing.

Light Touch

Waking from an afternoon reverie, it surprises me that we’re not all insane and I take a few minutes to stare out my apartment windows and watch the traffic lights slowly flicker from red to green. In the fading light, everything seems strangely romantic and naive but I am left with a lingering sense of unease.

It suddenly seems inappropriate that we live our lives like this; each day blending into the next, years stretching onwards, highway into desert horizon. I don’t know what brings on this dizziness but I instinctively close my eyes — and am awash with the muggy air preparing to seep into the Pittsburgh night.

Some time later, I am brought back by the gradual sounds of my neighbors preparing dinner. A wok sizzles to the background hum of an indistinct foreign conversation. My roommate has turned the central air on. Feeling older, I count the shadows on my wall before sitting up and bracing myself for everything that lies ahead.

Meeting Others

Our souls are molded not so much by the imprints of biology or schooling or status — at least not primarily — but rather by the trials and tribulations and sorrows of loneliness. The only story that truly matters in a person’s history is the one about their loneliness. Through it springs every other major tale: the pleasures and disappointments in work and love, family and friends, spirituality and art. No other story skirts so close to pure psychic DNA — no other story means as much.

And yet, sadly, these are the stories that are least told, both to ourselves and to our closest loved ones. Many a man has lain in a fallow grave without heaving any true understanding of his own condition to rest at another’s feet. The tragedy is two-fold: that we don’t have the skill or compassion to excavate and that the target of our affections has entrenched denial and forgetfulness at the heart of their self-defense.

The declaration of loneliness is an act periled with social shame. So much so that most of us can barely bear to think of ourselves as lonely. Instead, we distract ourselves with ephemeral and peddled cures. Some of us distract ourselves with work and curiosity, or similar vices. Others with church and community: the local PTA or synagogue. Most of us find friends and lovers and take solace in bickering and other familiar dramas.

Occasionally, the terror slips through our crude defenses. Most of us can scrape by for years – some lucky ones for decades – before such an event occurs. But when it does, we are encountered by the poverty of our worldly trophies and learned routines. Usually this brief malaise ceases as soon as we manage to find and throw ourselves into anything or anyone new.

For others, an unmistakable pattern emerges and begins to infuse itself deep into one’s entire psyche. For what modes of transportation are fleet enough to outpace this frantic cat-and-mouse game? Like the inexorable dripping that eventually forms labyrinthic caves and caverns, this incessant call-and-answer becomes a steady tempo through which to meter out life.

To trace the path of loneliness is to gaze at the secret moments in life – all the pain and disappointment tempered with imperfect and unsatisfactory reactions. And yet, I think that is the kindest and most intimate act one can perform for another. We can never, by definition, really be with someone in their loneliness. But we can take solace in the a posteriori telling and expression of such.

That said, it is also the most difficult act one can undertake. No one freely admits weakness and even when prodded, the bravest of us have the hardest time talking about the moments they’ve lost courage. Moreover, we know that others are attracted by displays of strength, not existential tragedy. What fool or fatalistic oaf would risk answering immediately truthfully and tip the balance of respect to an exit stage left?

Thus, when deliberately gazing at someone else, we can only guess at the preceding rain and sorrows that have formed the caverns and fractures that lie buried forlorn and forsaken. If we are astute and trustworthy, we may begin the long intermittent process of digging and sifting and studying.

There is a certain spell of calculation to the task; a certain open and inquisitive nature that serves to impart context and temperament. But as explorers blundering down one keyhole or another, attempting to construct a cartography of our lover’s histories and accidents, we risk carelessly displacing undisturbed and fragile grounds. Worse yet – much like the tourist who attempts to see all of Paris in a weekend – in our rush to understand everything at once, we inevitably end up with a one-dimensional caricature. A map, perhaps, but one that charts only a race from start to end.

You see, the most important qualities in a person, and the ones we fall in love with, are the small ones. The way they breathe when lying in slumber, perhaps, or how they furrow their eyebrows ever-so-slightly while chewing on a difficult composition – mayhap even the way they’ve learned to bend down in speaking with children or lightly brush the shoulders of conversation partners.

Over time, and with study, we learn to interpret these signs. For example, the way a person kisses is indicative of how they’d prefer to give and receive. And the way they sit betrays awareness of space and sensitivity to strangers. Listen to the strength of their heartbeat after dancing, perhaps, and compare it to the tempo avant and après lovemaking.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we can know three layers of a person. The first, and most shallow, is the bibliographic layer of facts and timelines, family and education. The second is the realm of movement and emotion – how they perceive and orient themselves to the world, their natural rhythm in life – how much room they have for people and what they’d like those people to do to them. The last and least evident layer is the one of recurrent boredom and barely audible fears.

The last layer is tricky to describe. There are innumerably more novels about the first than the second; and still innumerably more about the second than the third. As they say in journalism, the average journalist reports the facts; the capable their meaning; and the truly skilled, what was left unsaid.

If you put my feet to the fire, I suppose the way I’d put it is thus: imagine a friend or loved one. Now, remove them from their lives: what would they think about and how would they act with no external stimulus? That is to say, if they had no work, no one around, nothing else to do, or future to attend to. In short, a state of forced boredom. How do they play with themselves? What then become their preoccupations? Naturally, one drifts towards the past – which portions and why?

These are, by their nature, private and guarded moments – not to mention, in practice, exceedingly rare and fleeting – the tempo of such as critical as the content. The best we can do as observers is to seek out proxies. We look for echoes of loneliness in how they are now. In surveying the formations of a subterranean labyrinth, there are a million hypothetical past reactions, but only one true sequence of events.

Getting at the “true sequence of events” is part skill and part art. Part skill because the true history has long been forgotten and our lossy reconstruction draws upon both volleyed questions and deft interpretation. All three layers are tightly interwoven and it takes a sensitive eye to begin to spot the incision and inflection points.

And part of it is art because we choose how to mold our disparate understandings of a person into a unified psychic whole. The “truthful” interpretation fades in importance to our intensely personal one – the one that determines the shared space through which our narratives intertwine and repurpose one another.

Just as every play can be interpreted as a story about status, every event in a life can be portrayed as a story about loneliness. And these are the tales that we can barely stand to tell in relationships and to our closest loved ones. Partly because in some senses it is saying “You aren’t enough,” but more so because we don’t even know how to begin expressing ourselves. It’s not a simple “I’m lonely.” It’s an overwhelming sense — that no matter how perfect everything is, there will still be a gaping hole, a sense of ethereal unease. And how can one explain that when we’re all suffering? It is not something to be cured, just something to be nursed.

There are years and even decades where the spotlight we win for ourselves is so bright, one has to squint to see. But light can only be sustained for so long and it is many an old and wizened man who stares back at his life and wonders where all the time went. The function loneliness serves for those of us sensitive enough to hear its cries is one of caution. It is not a reminder to be considerate to our fellow actors, but rather a warning that in the end, when the lights dim, we return home alone.

Each of our journeys is our own to keep. That might be the saddest and most tender truth about humans. And yet, we’re drawn to each other for comfort and understanding. In an almost obsessive and manic way we cling to friends and lovers and sometimes feel like our very souls ache when they at times inevitably leave.

My interpretation of such is fragile. Sometimes I forget how beautiful other people are. And sometimes I don’t want to be reminded of the fact. Yet, being drawn back again and again, I find myself always tracing the contours of their soul and catching glimpses of myself in their very peaks. Hope does indeed spring eternal.

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.