December
2007: And Sometimes It Just Happens
For someone that prides himself on not apologizing
very often, I find myself saying “I’m sorry” a lot these days.
Take, for instance, that last Exiled piece: never in my six years of
doing this, have I had to settle for such complete horseshit.
This space here had been, whatever it’s worth,
my pride. My last stand. I always did that much, decently, if not more.
And if that was my new poem, I guess I reached a new low.
Fact is: I got nothing but respect for those that
do this sort of thing on a weekly basis. If I had to do that, I imagine that
I would never be exactly right.
Anyway, I’m not one for looking back. But
I need to just this once.
Funny thing is just as I began the new season proclaiming
that “I do my best work with my back against the wall,” the walls
came crumbling down. For one, the President of my family’s company resigned,
so I was asked to temporarily fill the void. It took awhile to acclimate myself
to the idea, but I did. I had a few days before my deadline, so I took the opportunity
to quit both drinking and smoking, and was immediately rewarded with a sickness
the like of which I’d never experienced before.
It was ridiculous; I couldn’t go forty-five
seconds without coughing. Couldn’t sleep a minute straight as a result.
And my deadline was quickly approaching.
So, the night before my deadline, I hit upon the
bright idea of buying a twenty of blow. I would work through it, as
I had done so many times before. Thing is, in the morning, I had more pop-ups
on my screen than I had words. In fact, my entire Exiled piece consisted of this:
My
tongue is tied in knots but that’s the least of my
worries. The sun is about to rise and set simultaneously.
It’s not any day of the week, as far as I can tell.
My newspaper is blank. The walls are blank.
No wonder my mind.
I
was embarrassed, to say the least. There was no way I could
pass as much off as justification
for being away from my girl all night, especially while not
even saving her one single paltry line.
Where
do you turn
when
you trust no one
and
everything that conspires you
to
fail
comes
from inside yourself?
That’s
what my diary read, at this dire hour. I was lost, so I
did what any normal
person would do, I started reading. I read a magazine, Esquire,
if we are to be honest. In fact, I was rewarded with a wonderful
feature on my new sudden Presidential hopeful, Dennis Kucinich.
I was amazed, heartened even, to discover someone willing
to accept that mantle say things such as this:
“.... The doctrine of transubstantiation....
That’s spirit into matter, okay? And then matter extends into spirit....
This is basic physics....
Cough, cough.
“But I’m talking about it as—the
church has its doctrine, and the doctrine has many different possibilities within.
It’s theology, but it’s also about things seen and unseen. It’s
not just a matter of faith.... There’s a reality that stands within existent
reality, what’s apparent. But there’s something just behind it that
holds that reality together, kind of in those interstitial spaces. There’s
another reality there. The way I look at it, translating it into social action,
is that that other reality is waiting to be called forward, and made, and set
into motion.”
Who wouldn’t find themselves suddenly excited
by the fact that finally a Presidential hopeful found himself comfortable enough
to segue from this to Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound to saying the “nexus
where spirit infuses matter and transforms it, that’s where I live, there
at that connect-pole.” The guy knew where I was coming from—especially
tonight—and all but had my vote.
In fact, he prompted me to write:
What
do I believe in?
Cynicism,
poverty of soul?
But, knowing my deadline was quickly approaching,
I knew this wouldn’t be enough. As a result, I started pulling books off
the shelf pell-mell. Bukowski, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso.... Searching for inspiration,
I’d read each for a few minutes, and then toss it on the pile. The whole
enterprise netting me this:
I’m
a construct, far from real.
Did
I choose this?
Am
I afraid of something?
I know, in hindsight, that all this was in response
to the fact that doing coke anymore is one of those lessons that one need not
re-learn—that, regardless, certain of us are destined to live again and
again. The whole thing made me feel, as it was meant to make me feel, pathetic.
Not to mention that much sicker.
I gave up on reading, decided to watch TV instead.
The first thing I remember seeing was a commercial.
The Eagles apparently had released some new material, Long Road Out of Eden,
and it was announced accordingly as “the new album by America’s Greatest
Rock Band”—which was funny, or interesting, if only because it was
available exclusively at Wal-Mart. I couldn’t help but think that
If
The Eagle’s are
America’s
greatest band
Than
I am our
Greatest
Poet.
Which
is neither here nor there at this point, as my deadline
had now truly passed
me by in a haze of cough syrup. Undeterred, I made the wise
decision to switch to PBS. A documentary about Charles Schulz,
of Peanuts’ fame, happened to be playing.
And there I experienced one particularly poignant moment,
when in response to his wife being burdened with entertaining
his friends while he worked on the next day’s strip,
the author was asked why he didn’t do a couple of them
in one night and thus get ahead. To which he answered that
he “didn’t spend his entire life finding his
dream job so he could take some time off.”
This causing me, of course, to wonder where I had
gone wrong.
That done, I then noticed the Democratic Presidential
Debate was on. I had to watch that, if only to root for my new horse.
But I quickly realized my little guy, Dennis Kucinich—the same guy who
had, as mayor of Cleveland, saved his constituents from the evils of privatization,
single-handedly saving them millions of dollars while simultaneously making him
their only mayor whose portrait to this day isn’t hung in their City Hall—was
being unabashedly marginalized. It was Clinton, Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Obama,
but no Kucinich. I watched for two hours when, finally, during a lightning round
that seemed more in tune with The Dating Game than a Presidential debate,
my guy was asked whether he believed in UFO’s.
I tried to will him to lie, but he was simply incapable
of it. I believe in UFO’s, my new hope replied, because I saw one with
my own eyes.
Good grief, I muttered. Then, I turned the channel.
I had been sick for seven days now--If I sleep,
will I heal?--and my editor had been patiently awaiting my piece. Somewhere
along the line, I made a pact with myself that this column may in fact kill my
career, but it wasn’t going to kill me. It was Halloween now, and as such,
I figured I would pass myself off as a writer and thus sent that last shadow
of a piece.
Whom
do I expect to answer?
Feeling peculiarly defeated, I then proceeded to
watch more TV. This time it was The Contender, a reality show about
boxers. Sam Soliman, a somewhat highly regarded journeyman who happened to be
near my age—which is to say old—was game but out-pointed
by the younger, stronger Sakio Bika. His final words before hanging up his Contender
gloves hit home:
“I’ll be back,” he said, “but
stronger. For isn’t that the measure of a man,” he asked, “that
when he gets hit on the chin, he comes back twice as hard?”
Well Sam, I said aloud to the TV in-between coughs,
we will see. Personally, I’m past tempting fate.
All I know is that it’s a long road to Wal-Mart.
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