One Thousand Words

posted by Pacer 7/28/2002

Misty

It just seems that I'm walking
Walking in a dream
A sweet, soft, languid dream
Not really here, or there, or anywhere
Just floating along, just being
Outside of the real, disconnected from the world

Nothing can touch me
Nothing can harm me
My thoughts of you bite
But more of a nibble
Like all things, in this dream

I can't seem to move on my own
I'm just being swept away in a current
With no where to go
Nothing to see, nothing to be
In a dream, in a dream.

Soft thoughts pitter, and patter
Down out of the sky
Like rain
Dropping onto flowers of memories
Running down their petals
Into the soil of my mind
Like a dream, nothing is real
Nothing is as it seems

Nothing is. Nothing was.
All things are
Just a dream
Just a dream.

posted by Pacer 7/28/2002

Thursday, July 25, 2002

Love

The best analogy is
Grasping at water
Or the attempt thereof
When it comes to love

And so, once again
I sit grasping
And it slips away
Through my fingers
Once more

I would cry
I would dwell on it
I would sigh
But what's the point?
We've all been there,
And will be there more

posted by Pacer 7/25/2002

Monday, July 22, 2002

Love

Take, for instance
A match
And a candle
Both burn
Produce heat
Produce light
But the match,
It burns quickly, violently
And then goes out in a flash
While the candle,
It burns long, soft
Able to be relit as needed
What would you have?

In my life I've had the match
And the match has had me
But, for once, I'd have the candle
If only it would have me

posted by Pacer 7/22/2002

Friday, July 19, 2002

Sleep ...

I've found that the more sleep I get the more disconnected from the world I feel. Or maybe it's that I'm more connected but I don't like what I see?

posted by Pacer 7/19/2002

Loneliness

Loneliness envelopes like a thick fog
And distorts my view of the world
Trapping me in nonsense
And fantasy

I try to move out, but I can't escape
Until I begin to drown in it
Choking and flailing, down I go
Into the never ending abyss

If there is an escape
I lost it long ago

posted by Pacer 7/19/2002

Thursday, July 18, 2002

A Girl

There is not enough air in the sky
She said
And I looked over at her and thought
What a dud
How did I get stuck with this one?
A good mood was no where to be found
So I looked some more
And she said
The sky is not blue, but open
These words did not fit, but I saw her eyes
And they smiled, and I smiled
Maybe not a dud
But certainly odd

posted by Pacer 7/18/2002

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

Waiting for Inspiration

So there I sat as the pot sunk in and I waited. I was waiting, pen in hand, for inspiration to hit me. People often said "one needs inspiration to hit you to truly write well." It was in the middle of these thoughts that a woman, with blonde hair and wearing a white toga or dress or something, appeared on the table in front of me. With a two-by-four in hand, she swung and hit me over the head. I'm afraid, however, that inspiration hit me too hard. I don't remember anything from then on. I had blacked out.

So there he sat, joint in hand, waiting for "inspiration to hit" him, as he kept saying. He kept mumbling about this, obviously losing it, when his elbow slipped out from under him and his head went crashing onto the table. He blacked out.

posted by Pacer 7/16/2002

It's amazing ...

... how simple things can turn into fantasies for no reason and no rhyme, all it needs is a little time put here and there, then we all can distort reality as we care.

posted by Pacer 7/16/2002

Monday, July 15, 2002

Love

Love is a fiction
That we can't reverse
Into reality
Though we try
And fail
And try again

It once was real
But now has become a myth
A story
An ancient history
So old no one is its historian

So instead we hold
And kiss
And pine
Not real people, but ideas
Myths
Stories

We try and find love
We make love, describe love
But it is all fake
A rather opaque venture
Is the way we see love
And the world

The reality is that love is dead
It died while humans lived.

posted by Pacer 7/15/2002

Sunday, July 14, 2002

Far Too Introspective

And so I sit here, in my rocking chair, and I ponder the musings of the day and,in reality, I have very little to say. There is something constricting my heart, but I've learned not to probe to far. It feels like sadness, or something, but I know if I just leave it alone ... alone, it will eventually go away. It has been a stressful week, an even more stressful weekend, and I'm worn rather thin. I want to go hide, in my bed and under my sheets, but let's face it - the world won't stop for me. And I can't afford to let it go by.

If I could just slog off all this ... stuff, these feelings and thoughts and cares, and just be that would be ... nice. I can't let go of my life, and just let it float, I've hung on dearly and won't let go. Sometimes I wish I did not feel. Anything. Nothing. If I wrapped myself up in a blanket of me, like so many do, maybe I could get by, maybe I'd never cry, and I could float along life absorbed in my self, smiling and laughing and always being happy, the way everyone wants, but I can't.

But I don't want to be a sheep. I don't want to feel. It hurts, this is true, but I'd rather be real. The hardest thing someone can do, perhaps, is to accept the person God has given us. Anyhow, I'm off to bed, for just a little while, and then off to see the day and what lays ahead.

posted by Pacer 7/14/2002

Friday, July 12, 2002

Disconnections

There was a blue monkey sitting on the shelf. My friends just laughed. Still, it was there. Their words came out like drops of water, but still and stagnant at times. It happens, everyone goes stagnant at some point. The world began to shift, then. Something moved and I fell down. I landed on a deck of cards, but that was all right. They didn't cut me. I did have to scramble out of the way of the stapler. It was trying to staple me to the papers nearby - I was apparently their prime specimen. Little did they know that I could run fast. My years of track paid off, although at times I wished I had done the hurdles. It was then that I began to tumble over with a bag of marbles. I clawed my way up one and rode it like the bull it was. Marbles are, after all, male and female. This one did not have horns yet, though. But we tumbled down to a drain. I fell in. It was not so bad, though. It was like the Bonzai Pipeline, a water slide at the local water park. The marble and I slid down through and then we landed on a cloud. Except it wasn't a cloud, which was all right, it was a cotton ball. Or cotton balls, I should say. It was then that the attack of the alcohol bottle came. Apparently someone skinned their knee. Not a good thing, I've had many skinned knees in my life. They tend to hurt. Especially in the shower. And that's where we were, although the water was not running. And then I saw the alcohol come and I don't remember much after that.

posted by Pacer 7/12/2002

Thursday, July 11, 2002

Nonsense

An arrow
And I drop
Into
The bottom
Of the pool
As I slip
A little more
Into the madness of my head
Right before bed
The nonsense of my brain
Hardly sane
But not insane
Maybe inane
Slip
Once more
One step for
One step
To the
Next floor
Drop
And drip
Drop
Downtown
Let's get found
All alone
With a drink
Hanging over a sink
Or toilet
Did you enjoy it?
But we're still lost
And we'll never afford the cost
So down we go
But you, you I don't know
Just
Flow.

posted by Pacer 7/11/2002

Sunday, July 07, 2002

Looking For Something ...

She said she wanted something, but he could tell that she wanted nothing. There was an emptiness about her, and emptiness he knew all too well. At least he had discovered the truth about himself - he wanted nothing. Or had he?

He didn't know.

"I want you to want me."

It came on over the speakers, and the woman's eyes shined a bit more.

"I like this song." She said.

"So do I." He said.

She began bobbing her head back and forth to the beat and singing the lyrics.

"Didn't I didn't I didn't I see you crying! Feeling all alone without a friend you feel like dying!" She sang.

He smiled. The first smile he had in a while. It didn't quite come out right, it looked more like a grimace than a smile, but that was okay. She understood and laughed. Suddenly he got the urge to dance along to the song and belt it out the words. She joined in.

"I want you to want me!" They both sang at the top of their lungs. "I need you to need me!"

They didn't know who they were singing too, they were just singing. All of the customers and sales associates stopped what they were doing and stared at the two. They didn't mind, they were lost in the song.

But, like all things, the song had to end. So there they stood, smiling from ear to ear at each other. This time he got the smile right, and it blossomed into something beautiful.

"Did you figure out what you wanted?" He asked her. He was, after all, supposed to be on duty and helping the customers. Not dancing and singing and disturbing the other customers with this woman here.

"Yes." She said, the smile still in place.

"I got off in an hour, would you like to go get something to eat?" He said out of no where. Like all good, perpetually single people, he never did such things.

"Exactly." She replied.

The emptiness was not there anymore. For either of them.

posted by Pacer 7/07/2002

Sometimes ...

... I run out of things to say. Really.

posted by Pacer 7/07/2002

Saturday, July 06, 2002

La Première

Surprise drifted down from the steeples of the churches in the old European town just as snowflakes fell from the skies during the cold and bitter winters of years past. Surprise at the simplicity of the boy's dreams and the audacity he showed in pulling them off - or more so that he, indeed, did pull them off. And it was because of these dreams that, in the town square, a group of citizens of the town, and some non-citizens like the reporter Nigel B. Arthur, gathered to stare up in wonder at the piece of rock which now stood there.

It was not rock anymore, however, but something so much more grand. The boy had turned it into life, so it seemed, but not quite life at the same time. The shadows seemed to play along the edges of the sculpture so that the muscles of the piece seemed to move, to flow, to be real. Anyone there, that day, would swear that the statue, although that is not what they called it, had a soul.

"La Première," as they called it, was the boy's dream. It was little Ansel, the boy's only friend, who coined the term for the work of art. "The first," as in "the first of all sculptures," was how the people who were there that day, and many who were there subsequent days, would come to call the morphed rock which stood before them in the town square.

But, needless to say, "La Première" was not always there. Indeed, the boy was not always there. I na town that had suffered so much through the ravages of war, hope and beauty had not always been there. And this is what the boy's dream was - to bring back the soul of the town he loved, and bring back the people he loved.

The bony had not been an outcast, the boy was certainly no loner. True, Ansel was his only friend, but more so because he had strict rules as to whom he called his friend. The boy was popular, well-liked, and not prone to flights of fancy and dreams of, well, anything. But that all changed with the devastation, the hunger, the sickness which came with the war. His town had been devastated by the conflict, and afterwards the people grew more and more bitter, reclusive, and insular. Harsh words were said more often, songs of any kind but hate seemed to disappear, and the boy grew sad.

No one, however, saw "l'incident" coming. No one could imagine that this boy, this dreamer in disguise, would perform such a feat. No one, even Ansel, knew that the boy could do anything artistic at all. They all simply thought the boy had cracked under the strain, the pressure, the hate they all felt as he worked and worked under the blankets which covered "Ma Pierre," as he called it.

The one day, one morning to be exact, the baker's wife came out of her kitchen to draw some water from the well in the center of town and there it stood! The blankets had been thrown down, the boy lay lifeless at the feet of "La Première," and the wonder stood plain so all could see. She dropped her pale, hitched her skirts, and ran back to her house to bring her husband. Soon, the whole town had been raised and they were standing in the square staring in awe at "La Première."

Nigel B. Arthur shed a tear. He was a cynical man from America, a reporter of the utmost professionalism. This meant he had turned his soul in, his emotions, for a typewriter. And he was proud of it. Still, a tear rolled down his face for the first time since he had been spanked by his father when he was five. He was moved. All were moved.

Nigel had come to the village to gather material for a piece he was doing for a magazine back in the States concerning the devastation of the war on the small villages of Europe. He had seen squalor, death, misery, and devastation all before this. Nothing moved his heart, except the boy. There was something about him, something that made Nigel sit on the edge of his seat in the little Cafe as he listened to the boy describe what he was doing, why he was doing it, and what he hoped would come of it. The boy moved him, just like "La Première" moved him now.

The boy was no more, now. His lifeless body lay at the feet of "La Première," a smile on his lips and a soft, peaceful look on his face. It was as if he knew he had won. The darkness had been lifted from the town, from the people's hearts, in one fell swoop. Even the day seemed more bright, more colorful than it had the previous day, or the previous day before that. Lightness filled the air, and the hearts, of the people of the town. All except for one, Ansel.

With his friend's lifeless body lying at the feet of the work, Ansel cried tears of sadness, and happiness, for the companion that had left him. He knew this was his friend's dream, his friend's ambition, and he was glad his friend had accomplished it. He was also sad, however, he'd never see the twinkling eyes of his friend, eyes that seemed to bubble over with the joyous soul deep within. It was then that Ansel looked up at the work, up at the eyes of the work, and he knew.

"This is the first of all sculptures, all statues." Ansel said. "La Première."

All the eyes of the people in the square turned to Ansel and nodded in agreement.

"La Première," they all whispered.

posted by Pacer 7/06/2002

Friday, July 05, 2002

The European Shuffle

His feet shuffled along the cobble-stoned sidewalk of the European town as he dug his hands further into his jean-pockets and smiled. He didn't know why he smiled, he just did. There was so much activity going on all around him he couldn't stop looking around. In the buildings next to him, on his right, people were nearly bursting out into the streets and the noise swirled and consumed the leftover space in the air around him. The air was stuffed, and he moved through it like one would move through jello.

For the first time in his life he was happy. Genuinely happy. He couldn't remember the point of epiphany, or the paradigm shift, but it had occurred all right. All his cares floated away. Into the air. Across the railing and down the winding river past all the beautiful bridges that made him smile. It reminded him of the river in Florence. But this wasn't Florence.

Come to think of it, this wasn't anywhere in Italy. Or France. Somehow, though, he felt like it was a combination, and amalgamation of the two. But this did not matter, he was happy.

A pair of cars, driving like typical European crazies, sped down one of the narrow streets and came speeding across the intersection where he stood. Or sat. He couldn't quite grasp which. He just was.

So he walked, or moved, or floated, or something down the buildings bursting with swirls of noise and people and action towards the bazaar down the way. He remembered buying a coat there, or he remembered he was going to buy a coat there. He could see the exchange between the oily Italian vendor, who talked poor English but was very enthusiastic, and walking out of the store with someone, or someones, but this had not happened yet. Or it had. He wore the coat now, but here was the vendor.

But none of this mattered, he kept floating along. Along. Soon her came upon the nice man from Bretagne he had bought some jam or something from. Come to think of it, he never tried that stuff.

"Ah, hello!" The man said. "English, yes? English?"

"Non, je suis Americain." He said. "Vous ete Bretagnese, oui?"

He knew he did not know how to say "someone from Bretagne" correct, and the man's wince confirmed it.

"Ah, oui." The man said. "Je vos connais."

The man's next sentence was a series of loud, pulsating beeps that tore at the fabric of reality. Suddenly, the springs of a bunk bed hung over his head.

"Whoa." He whispered. "What an odd dream."

posted by Pacer 7/05/2002

An Answering Machine Message

"Hey Alissa, I was just calling ya about later today. Was just wondering what you were up to. I'm just sitting here, trying to tackle cleaning my room. Listening to some music and drinking a coke with a big plastic bag in my hand. You'd think tackling my room would be a bit easier. I mean, it's not like it talks trash or looks like the immovable object it is. It just kind of sits there. It's rather difficult, I tell ya. I don't even know where to hit it. After all, you normally would go for the legs in tackling but, well, my room has no legs - just four walls. So my room is still untidy as I ponder my next move, but I figured I'd give you a call. I just thought of you when the radio played that song you liked. Well, I guess I'll go before the answering machine cuts ..."

posted by Pacer 7/05/2002

Thursday, July 04, 2002

Tiffany

There's a girl I know
I met her one day long ago
And I didn't know what to say
But she smiled, she smiled at me anyway
And I smiled in return, but she went away
I didn't see her for a while
But then there was a different day
The kind you can feel
The kind you know something is coming your way
That something was her
And I saw her once more
She smiled at me, I smiled in return
I felt something stir, what exactly I don't really know
But I felt her, and I think she felt me
Or, perhaps, it was all just some far out dream
But now she's gone away
Away for a while longer
But no worries, I can endure
For her eyes I'll always carry
And her smiles I'll always remember

posted by Pacer 7/04/2002

Wednesday, July 03, 2002

At the End of the Day

At the end of the day, at the real end of the day, you just feel wiped out. You have nothing left. Nothing to move you. To motivate you. To make you work. To make you love. To make you feel. You feel nothing. You are nothing, at the end of the day. You are simply a tool that needs recharging. At the end of the day, you move a bit more slowly. Your chest rises a bit more heavily. Your mind grows a bit more weary than the last ending of a day. At the end of the day, you cry.

posted by Pacer 7/03/2002

Spinning Aimlessly

So there I sat, in the rain, with my car overturned in the ditch on the side of the road. Yes, rain. I felt like I was in a bloody Hemingway story. Typical.

It was raining. The drops kept falling. He sat there in the rain. He couldn’t figure out where she had gone, or what had went wrong, so he sat there. The rain, he thought, reminded him of their relationship. Rainy.

Luckily, no one had died. It wasn’t that kind of Hemingway story, I suppose, just the other kind: you know, the super-cheery, fun and happy Hemingway story about love, and life, and misery, and depression, and being lost, and general “Why the hell did I not put that shotgun to my head earlier in my life?” feelings. So much love.

So there I sat, in the rain, with my car overturned in the ditch on the side of the road. I’d tell you what kind of car it was, but I really don’t care for cars much. It ran, or did run, well enough. But I can tell you how I got here, sitting in the rain and watching my car’s tires spin aimlessly, like he felt his life spinning aimlessly away, overturned and in a ditch. Yea, and I won’t drift into that Hemingway nonsense anymore, either.

So, like all stories involving a guy, and something happening, this one involves a girl. Not the girl next door - this ain’t no Spider Man comic and she ain’t no Mary Jane - but a girl who infected my mind nonetheless. You see, it was one of those girls who, when you first met her, you were just drawn to her like two magnets. Sorry, that’s the best analogy I have in my bag ‘o tricks, so it’ll have to do. Magnets, but strong magnets. And not the kind of magnets attached to the groin area, either.

I honestly can’t explain what drew me to her. It just … was. It felt like it had always been, and I imagine it always will be. I can’t honestly say if she felt the same, I am me and she is, well, her, after all, but there was some sort of connection. We just kind of clicked, and kept clicking until, one day, something caught. And caught bad.

What it came down to was this: the two of us fell in love. Just, not with each other. We had, however, spent inordinate amounts of time with each other and had grown very close, very quickly. A mistake I hope to avoid duplicating in the future, I assure you. But what caused the friction was not the loves in our lives, but the sudden loss of … something. The connection had been severed, and we both felt it keenly.

So, like good boys and girls in love, we wallowed in that disconnected feeling. We both knew something was odd, felt odd, seemed odd, but we couldn’t really see the oddness. Then, out of the blue like a bolt of lightning (kind of like the lightning happening above my head right now, coincidentally), I realized what it was! I wasn’t in love with this other person – I loved her!

Unfortunately, no bolts of lightning graced her with a similar understanding, which immediately caused problems. After an awkward moment of expressing my undying, terribly romantic affection for her in a genuine, romantic way, I was out driving. It went sort of like this:

“Umm, Rachel, think I could take you out to dinner sometime?” I said.

“Sure, where to?” She replied back. This was not out of the ordinary, for we hung out far too much as it was.

“Um, I was thinking, I dunno.” I said, in the super-smooth manner of a professional. “Like, on a date.”

“A date?” She said. But not in a good voice. Certainly not in a good voice. I knew I was in trouble.

“Um, yeah.” I said, continuing the age old usage of ums by men around women.

“Are you on acid again?” She said. “You’re rolling, aren’t you? Let me see your eyes!”

“What?!” I was offended. In her mind I obviously had to be out of my mind. Of course, I had been drinking. “I am not rolling!”

“Then what’s a matter with you?” She said. “Date? Let’s not mess up a good thing, okay?”

“But Rachel,” I pleaded, “I think I really like you. I just figured it out!”

“Really? So sweet. Let’s just hop into bed now and fuck and get it over with.”

Now, that one hurt. Partly because of the fist she swung at me, hitting my shoulder, but mostly because she thought I only wanted sex. I shouldn’t have told her about Amy. But that’s another story. With rain, actually.

“I don’t want sex!” I defended myself, but in the process left myself wide open for the counter-punch. Figuratively and literally.

“Oh, so I’m not even pretty enough for you to fuck, eh?” She said as another right landed on my opposite shoulder. I wish she didn’t have such nice rings.

“No, no, no!” I backpedaled. Into a bench. And fell over. “You know I don’t mean that!”

Needless to say, it was not going well. I’ll save you the pain of the rest of the conversation and, in the meantime, save me the pain of remembering it. Eventually, however, we talked about it. Without the punching, and all that jazz. We really talked about it. And, in the talking, I realized I did love her. I truly did, completely and absolutely loved her. Just, well, not that way. And it was then that the other girl in my life called the cell.

“I need you, my fish died!” She said.

I could tell she was crying. She seemed to cry a lot, I thought. It was then that it began to rain. Now that I think of it, something did die and, then, the rains came. Perhaps I am Hemingway’s amusement after all?

So, with both Rachel and I feeling a hundred times more connected, friendly, et cetera, I gave her a great big hug and ran into the rain for my car.

“Drive safely!” She said. She always said that.

“I will, always do!” I replied. I always replied that.

And off I went to comfort my beloved in her fish-stricken grief. And, in the watery roads on the way to her house, and to the comfort of her bed, er, my comfort of her grief, I didn’t see the dog. Well, at least not until it was too late to brake. I swerved, slammed the brakes on far too late, and watched as I slid by the dog in slow motion. It simply stood in the road as my car went spinning around like a top. Grinning that damn dog grin they have. Eventually something happened, I flipped, and went careening into the ditch on the side of the road. Upside down. With that damn dog still grinning that doggy grin. Bloody dog. I wish he was a Hemingway character.

So, that’s how it all happened. I have to go see Rachel now, however. She just pulled up. She’ll probably just be pissed I didn’t listen to her advice about driving safely. I love that girl.

posted by Pacer 7/03/2002

Monday, July 01, 2002

Writer's Block ...

... sucks.

posted by Pacer 7/01/2002

A Conversation That Never Was

If I sit here andd try to explain it, I imagine it will come out silly. You see, I don't really know what words describe the situation - my feelings and such. I don't know how to describe them to you, or how to interpret them myself. It's kind of like I have this ball of ... something ... in my chest. Something. And when you're not there it simply gets harder, and heavier, and I feel it more. But when you're around it melts, and a feeling of peace and relief and warmth flows throughout my body. Yes, very odd indeed. It's kind of like a great big hug that keeps on going when I'm around you, perhaps. I don't really know how to equate it with real world terms, perhaps it needs its words? Far be it for me to challenge Webster and the Brit's with their multi-volume set, I'll leave it all to someone else. I'm just going to feel a bit more, try to understand this oddness, and simply enjoy spending time with you. No strings attached, no expectations, no nothing.

Unfortunately, I will miss you while you're in California. Most likely more than you will miss me. I need to learn to not grow so attached to ... anything. Less feeling, more being. Less thinking, more acting. I just have to flow, and let go. Let go of all, and live with all. So many buzzwords, so little time. No worries, just love.

posted by Pacer 7/01/2002