The Tempest

Like lightning striking
Through a new moon
The Lord's anger thundered
In the pitch black rooms
Of a house
Sinking deep.
No life boats.
No S.O.S.

Some children are raised to believe
that Family's a ship
With a Shainghaied crew
Left drift on the sea.
They'll fall to their knees
When the stormwinds blow.
With eyes rolled back,
crying out to heaven.
Hoping, maybe,
Just once
All the stars would align.
Come! New World!
Come! Armageddon!
Either way
They'd wash up on shore
Free from the icy wait
For the keening wail
Of the yardstick
Or the belt.

But raging lungs bellow
And young sailors,
Resigned,
Curl up and wait
To mix blood
In the brine.

Young Starbucks
Know nothing
Of original sin.
But deep in their bones
They know what is true
to them.
That no lash falls
On the back
Of an innocent lamb.
(And that poison seeps in
Each time the lightning strikes.)

The Second Coming - Reflections on Death and Resurrection

I have never been able to relate to most of Yeats' poem, The Second Coming, and its apocalyptic despair in the aftermath of processing the first World War.  But at times in my life, the first three lines, and the third in particular, have rung more like an irrefutable axiom than a line of poetry.   "Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold..."

For me, right now, things have fallen apart.  The center could not hold.  After losing my job at the start of May, my wife of six and a half years left me.  I loved her since the moment I saw her. 

At first, I loved her in that unfettered way that happens when you project an infatuated image on a beautiful girl whose style, interests, intellect, and humor strike resonance in your soul like a gong in some mountaintop Buddhist hermitage.  It's the kind of love that comes in whiffs of incense, a distant rumbling chant, and the awe of being confronted by giant stonework Buddhas.

I loved her steadily, as a friend.  We laughed until we cried while playing games of Password with our crew.  We went to rock shows.  We sat in cars during lunch breaks while one of us was in crisis, tears on our cheeks, one spilling an overflowing cup, the other baptized in sorrow and pain.  And we sometimes got coffee during free periods, just to bullshit.  I'd skip class to talk to her in the art room.

We loved tragically, never able to seem to get the timing right, even after we knew how we felt about each other.  And one year, crying over her Bombay Sapphire and my New Belgium stout, desperately clinging to each other's hands, we somehow figured it out.

For a bit.

Waking up the next day in a haze, feeling still in some kind of dreams, things started to fall apart.  I do not want to make this entry tawdry.  I do not feel like confessing all the large and little things I did wrong without providing some balance.  And I refuse to parade the same from somebody I still love in despair.  But we all hurt each other at some point in relationships.  Sometimes it's intentional.  And sometimes it's accidental.  And sometimes it's just because the center cannot fucking hold.  Not always in the brief, and even less on the whole.  But I will make one general point.  We are both people with hereditary mental health issues, and both experienced at least emotional abuse in households.  I think our ability to understand each other helped bring us together, and even to keep us together.  But it was also probably the most significant force driving us apart.  At least, when combined with a desire to live a normal life.  A life with a steady job, retirement accounts, the possibility of raising children, and pursuing careers that actually challenged our potential.  (Nota Bene, I fully realize this is not even a "normal" life anymore, but it's what we're programmed to think of as normal.  And so it begins.)

And that brings me to where I am now.  At first, when my wife left me, everything was anarchy.  I couldn't sleep, or I couldn't get out of bed.  I could stop crying, or I couldn't feel anything.  I stopped applying for jobs briefly, not knowing where I would even be living in three weeks.  I started watching TV and movie dramas.  I stopped taking my anti-depressants, and started crying a lot more during the tear-jerker scenes.  (Disclaimer, never do this without consulting your doctor.)  I started actually experiencing some small amounts of catharsis in between my anesthetic treatments: sake or whiskey. 

I decided to leave the (relatively) big city of Portland behind and return to my Eugene roots where life is slower, bike paths are actually accessible from almost anywhere without needing to ride part of the way in a regular traffic lane, and the rental market is not a blind auction.  I lived with my parents for a month, which was appreciated, but humbling and maddening.  I got a new apartment with my oldest childhood friend.  I brought my cat to Eugene to give me emotional support.  I kept applying and taking interviews for jobs in Eugene.  I am even waiting to hear back about a job I would consider a dream position after working corporate law and finding it to be soul crushing.  But now, I am in a brief period of no distractions. 

I still have two thirds of my unemployment benefits left, so I am limiting my job search to openings that will use my degree and experience in some way, but there are not nearly as many as Portland offered.  And my living situation is finally settled.  So I am left with endless hours during the week when all the people I know in town are working.  For the past couple days, these hours have hung over me, filling me with dread.  The reality of no longer being able to talk to or see or hold the woman I love is starting to become even more real each night I spend talking to my new roommate instead of her.  The deep loss I feel at the emptiness where she used to be strangles me.  I find myself crying and choking out "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," just trying to get a grip.

This is supposed to be a new start for me.  For both of us.  We are both supposed to be able to take care of ourselves for a change, to strike out towards happier careers, less stressful living environments, and communities that fit us better as individuals.  But I can't help but feel betrayed, and helpless, and ultimately at fault for everything.  It is crushing.  Crippling.

I sit here wondering what really went wrong.  If it can even be quantified and qualified.  Or if it was simply the inevitable spiral to catastrophe that our relationship was destined for.  And then I wonder if we tried too hard to keep things from falling apart.  If we tried to hard to keep the falcon on a tight gyre.  Like trying to stop up a high pressure leak  by completely plugging it rather than doing damage control.  Slowing the flow.  Diverting it to safe outlets.  Our dam just broke one day.

This is probably more for posterity than to help me right now.  I will read this one day, older and wiser, and remember this past life with bitter-sweet fondness.  Right now, I do not know any better what to feel or think than when I started writing this.  But my gut tells me to stop worrying about it.  To turn from within and step outside into the sun.  To let just let things fall apart.

I better start writing a blog again.

I like writing with my fountain pens.  But honestly, they can be kind of a pain.  And anything that is an obstacle to me writing is something I need to avoid at the moment.  Not to mention, I like writing on a computer for things like poetry, because I do a bunch of edits before I even have a first draft.  With a lot of poetry, or even with prose, I have no idea what I am writing about until I have gone back to the beginning and started over a few times.

So, it's time for me to start blogging again.

During my senior year of high school, I used to joke that I would not live to be 30.  Some of those jokes got pretty morbid.  At the time, I had never touched a drop of alcohol, but insisted that I would drink myself to death before I hit 30 because so many of my favorite authors died of alcohol related illnesses.  Dylan Thomas, James Joyce, Ernest Hemmingway, Edgar Allen Poe, Jack Kerouac, William Faulkner, Charles Bukowski.  Really, some of the greats.  But generally a bunch of a assholes, too, with maybe a couple exceptions.

Well, I'm going to be 30 on Friday, and all signs point towards me making it, barring a terrible car accident or other unforeseen tragedy.  I did my share of heavy drinking, but not nearly my share of heavy writing.  And, as most of the best authors I listed insisted, drinking and writing do not really coexist.  At the moment, I think I'll take a cue from them and try to keep a clear head while I struggle to distill all the madness of my 30 years on earth into something worth reading.