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Not sure how honest I can be so I might ramble and I might be honest vicariously. For some strange reason yesterday was hard on me. Christmas is hard on a lot of grown ups; the young grown ups it’s hard on because they sort of miss the being spoiled and sort of loose tooth feeling of a quasi-belief in magical stuff, for older grown ups it’s hard because they miss seeing that in their kids or that they didn’t have kids. If I had to put a name to it I’d say that was what was hard for me with yesterday.

My first apartment in Portland was in the basement of this building right behind a high school. The football field of the high school is where they shot off the fourth of July Fireworks that came between traditional at home double headers at the park where the triple A team played, I want to say a farm team for the Twins. When the kids were very young we’d take them and a picnic and a blanket and set up camp on the strip of grass between the school and the football field and watch the fireworks shoot from right in front of us and explode over the stadium.

I think I’ve typed in various journals over the years that I can’t remember ever loving the seahag, though I must have, more an indictment of my memory than a reckless or a cold heart. I still can’t remember, but I remember the smell of the back of my babies necks, asleep in my arms walking home from the fireworks or to the car. We didn’t have children when we lived in that apartment. My son, however was born within walking distance. Even later when the kids were morose and rebellious teens me and the kids would find some unusual vantage point to watch fireworks together.

There is no magic to the fourth, the lame commercial patriotism a few hundred years removed is sort of like the nativity scene, everyone knows baby jesus is just a boring Sunday school story, the magic is the fat guy who brings presents. The magic of the fourth is baby sweat and blowing shit up. We never went to the big works. For the PDX area the big fireworks are actually across the river at fort Vancouver. You pretty much half to park there on the third if you want to be near them. They look a lot cooler from the 205 bridge.

All of that is true but it might be bullshit as well. I mean it’s a true story I told myself about why I was so bummed yesterday. Yeah I miss my kids, but they haven’t been sweaty babies for thirty years. I sure as hell miss Oregon, but it’s likely I’m never going back. None of the that was more or less true than it was on July 3rd or September 29th.

Every six months or so, I think, I type on-line; I am so fucking lost. Every three months or so I say it to someone. Every day I struggle not to think about it and I think I’m batting around 500 with that. I’m not sure that location or circumstances are even the reason I’m so fucking lost. A sort of mundane example is that I didn’t go anywhere to see fireworks last night. It was a given. It’s not like any plans fell through or I figured out where the fireworks were and it just seemed like too much trouble. When I was a kid they were at this park just up the street, but the city of East Lansing doesn’t do fireworks anymore. It doesn’t really seem to do anything but decay. I don’t know why and most people don’t even know what I mean and the ones that do, well, it’s just like we’re bitching about it. I assume they blow shit up over the Grand River somewhere near the capital.

I still have it bad for this woman, a miracle, really, but I don’t think our plans are … I don’t think she believes them, not in a it’s about me way but in a sort of doomed way. By mutual consent there are some things we keep secret, that’s part of why y’all never hear much about her. Some of that is a good idea, some not so much. It makes for dialogue that’s become rote, like the future is a fairytale for a kid that never existed. She’s the only one here I can say I’m so fucking lost too that really understands what I mean, all the empathy is there but the dialogue is like the water here; it doesn’t move. I not bored or disinterested, I’m scared. I have no plans. I sit in this dark attic surrounded by metallic cigerettes as minutes, hours, days, years go by … wait, no, I’m just as lost when I’m not in this attic.

I think it was the big chill where someone asked the tilly that played the girlfriend if their buddy, the suicide, was happy, and she says something like “I don’t know very many happy people what do they look like?”. It becomes less profound because I’m quoting a movie, but it relates to my life, scripts, not the big chill. When you write a story, I mean when try hard to write a meaningful story or, at least a well told story, there’s always a percentage of each character drawn from your own life and part imagined from your own psyche sort of your real “ideal” life or “real” nightmare.

When you’re stuck and staring at a blank screen or piece of paper, indulging in some bad nervous habit or addiction, you are forced to reflect on the stall — is your real life that boring or is your imagination that two dimensional? Yes, yes, yes, it’s much more complicated for you, I understand, but, still, that’s a fiar summery; Have I lived to little or is my psyche barren? And that never really gets answered, your indulgence either puts you sleep, or you shut things down and go out hoping to get stabbed or something but you avoid the obvious stabby places. And then you pick it up the next day or next week or you give up or something. Ideally you go out and live more or you rip the scab off your psyche.

Or, it’s option number three; you are too chicken shit to face your own hubris straight on. To scared to admit you lost your cherry in your dads Torino on the vinyl back seat and it felt like pain and she smelled bad and afterwards you tried saying comforting and kind things but they all sounded hollow and you just wanted to take her home and scream yourself hoarse. That’s hypothetical, that’s like a first hurdle. I know how to be honest, how to be visceral, I don’t know how to be lost and I really don’t know how to be scared. That’s not machismo, it’s an admission of ignorance. Again, there’s probably a thousand movie references with cool lines about bravery and cowardice and foolishness, they all sound trite when you are faced with a real world problem.

It really would be easier for me to run into a burning building to rescue … something or someone on fire, than to follow the skein of thread to it’s source to figure out where I got lost and how to get back. I know how to run, I recognize what fire is and the thing that’s screaming is the thing that wants rescuing. That seems brave to the people who were already there actively not doing it, but there is no one else in my head … wait, that sounds like I work for accolades, that’s not what I mean at all. There is nothing screaming on fire to direct me where to run, and Christ I really need to run. Metaphorically. I need adrenaline and incentive to actually run, but it hurts a lot afterwards. Still, it’s easy for me to imagine myself running into a burning building, easier, in fact, than to imagine myself as a bystander. That’s my own hubris the whole needing to look yourself in the mirror thing.

I don’t know. Yesterday was very blue. Tomorrow and the day after I have diagnostic medical tests. Right now, I mean at this minute, part of what drove me to start writing, I feel like canceling them. I won’t, it just seems like more trouble than it’s worth; they’ll either find something I don’t feel like dealing with or not find anything at all and in either case it does nothing whatsoever about the feeling of being so fucking lost. It won’t answer the sort of thing I need answered.

Shit, I don’t know, sometimes it helps to start writing and things will just come to you. Sometimes it doesn’t. This is one of the latter. I suppose sometimes shit comes to you that you just don’t want, I don’t know, that’s never happened to me. I have to … go … do … something … probably.