thirty-two

Back when a man's hand was used for nothing but shaking.

(I think this is my Paris post.)

I'm looking at my thirty-two year old self in the mirror and I'm scared.
Maybe I'm getting to the half-way point cuz I'm almost positive this is my mid-life crisis.

I look at my face in the mirror. Scratchy. My chin, my hair, and the wrinkles lining my eyes. Am I sad?

I guess it happens suddenly, huh? Because that's how I hear the knocking. It had been a while, but I still remembered how to open the small door to my bones.
So, it was in my hands that I held them. I wanted to rock and to roll with them. They sent a shock through my palms that ignited every regret I had left in me. I heard them talking and it was the first time in 10 years.
That's when I saw in my hands, mixed with the blood and the bones, a picture of Paris.
I stared at her. Did I even own her from the start? I don't think so, but I know Paris had seen me. I'm thirty-two and even dad doesn't know what to believe anymore.
But, somehow, my bones drew a sketched up picture of the Eiffel tower and I knew it was for me.

Suddenly I remembered the bricks they used to keep me here. The night my bones helped me sand them down to make my escape. As I stand here in my 10th grade locker room, my heart is hurting and I remember my first look through that hole at the Eiffel tower. My Beacon. There she stood, shining, melting the snow in my footsteps. My bones are beating to get through to my 32-year-old self as I relive once more... stepping through the hole, my hair brushing against the crumbling bricks, and hearing Resistance calling my name.
I wish I never looked back.


But that night, my bones were set. So I turned and ran even faster.
I jogged till my legs were burning, but I only took life from the fire.
Because that summer I slept under the Eiffel tower and I will never forget it.


But now I'm thrity-two, looking down at my hands, shaking my head and thinking I should've sealed up that hole. I didn't realize how I was holding that picture so tightly.

What happened.
I'm 32 and I have just as many hours in my day as I did when I was 6. As they always have. All that's changed is that I've read so many more books.
Life happened.

Life isn't called living if you're using a dead player.



I'm still very much a little boy.

wipe me off the table

If there was an announcer right now, viewing myself on a television screen, it'd say "Lonely boy, sits hunched over on bed. Figuring nothing out. Not really caring about anything."
And then he'd go off about the game and the strikes in my head again. and everyone would flip to the next channel.
That's why the television never made me anything.

I'm as easy as that.

My life is just 60 seconds in slow motion and when the time's up every part of the world will continue to move as fast as they usually do.
I could be swept off the plane just as easily as it took to get me here.

I'll be wiped off the table and the world won't even pause to see if the air feels differently without me in it.

NOT devasted

"What do you think I think you think about me?" 

At least I'm just lost in the right direction.
Slowly I'll become the "right kind of crazy".

This is the time we sat in the car. I can't remember if it was before or after we got out and for some reason that matters a lot.


I dream of her falling asleep on my shoulder again.
I dream of it at morning and at night, although I know I shouldn't. It doesn't seem right to dream a dream that won't come true.
Something I hate about myself: I try to pull back memories to make me feel something again.

So I think of her falling asleep on my shoulder again.
I could feel her weight getting heavier as she fell
in and out
of sleep.
Our bodies warm under that heavy blanket.
Her arm pulled around my waist.
It lay sleeping like the sleeve of my sweater sometimes.
The energy we created, and the heat, was simple. Just that simple kind of touch is something I want back.
I told her I loved her that night. That might've been the very first time.
It was taking everything I had not to kiss her right then, and I told her that too.


Now I'm wondering if that girl was just a reciprocation of my infatuation. What if that's true... and every gesture, every movement, all those words, every laugh was only to tease me and my balancing act.

It wasn't a breeze for me to be in love, but this girl made it look easy. I thought that just meant I was out of practice.
I think about what the inside of a heart must look like and, gosh, it's disgusting. I know you know that.
I think of her.. playing with my heart in her hands.
Tossing it back and forth,
rubbing it between her palms while she's having a casual conversation with somebody.
Playing with my heart until it rubs raw.


All my feeling's are just memories now.

I don't know why I've still got her memories.
or have they got me?
I really don't know, but I know that they're not setting me free.


"I know what you're saying and all I can say is that I know that you know that you're wrong."

You don't know how pathetic it feels to be alive right now.



It's like everyone's thinking "why are you even trying, Benji?"






















































































































































"Why are you even trying?"

Washing

On my mind RIGHT NOW...

All the expectations of the world.

This probably won't be nice or poetic and I'll say now that I'm sorry.

But sometimes, I wonder if this is the only place where our expectations are pushing us further into the ground. 

With all these expectations, it makes it hard to walk, you know. It's near impossible to get anywhere. It's grabbing at our ankles and weighing on our shoulders.

It's like we're being whipped to run faster, but the ropes are pulling us back. and our tennis shoes grind into the linoleum floor. Cracking tile bits flying everywhere.

We are getting no where.

It's like everyone's blind or frozen. They stand as still as stone and continue to stare right through me. I'm waving and screaming in their faces. "Am I the only one who sees this??" But no one can hear me.

I look down at my hands, they're not invisible.

And that's why sometimes it can feel like we're drowning or dead. We're not. It just feels like it. We're still alive but not really living.

But maybe that's the way teenagers are supposed to be. Maybe living's meant for later.

Yeah, maybe that's what we've got the next 75 years for. I think some people really do believe that high school's just a survival camp and isn't meant to be loved. That you go just to get out. But if we are working to work for the rest of our lives, when do we live?

Being alive isn't the same as living a life.

We're not making any progress and I heard that progress is what makes a world class high school.

the 19th

Lying in the tunnel with some blue chalk in my pocket. I wanna write something but I can't figure out what.

I wanna write something really loud.

I'm angry but excited and I need to get out. Really I just want to fly, so I ride.
I wanna wrench me open and pull out the things scratching and scrambling to stay in my brain.
It's making me go insane because it feels so real.

There's a fight going on in the logic side of my mind.

It's not hurting me, but noises are shaking, scrambling my head.
Shoving and punching and pushing and twisting. The yells and the punches. The screams from the crowd. There's blood spitting through the air. Red coughing from their mouthes. My brain is getting battered. Like thirty something seventeen year old boys are all beating each other till we're soft. Thirty something copies of me having a boxing match in the top of my head. We're all mad and we're fighting for something. But the adrenaline's buzzing in the humid air between our flying fists like we're all gonna wake up in the morning and laugh about it.
Like we're all great heroes for fighting ourselves.
I always wanted to be a hero.

Still. We continue flipping each other over the line. Taking things too far and not really knowing why. Glass is breaking and somewhere a ceiling fan is throbbing. The yelling never stops. Someone must have just used the chair.

But still, we're all roped in.

Outside my head, I lie down in the bike tunnel. I'm wondering when the fighters are gonna break their way through my skull. Maybe they'd beat me up from the outside too.

Memory of her: I chase after her on my bike. It seems like we were the only people in Utah again as we sweat in the star stenciled night. She taught me really how to ride. I'm going fast, but somehow she was always going faster. I liked to stay behind and watch her calves, which might be weird. But, she yells something to me and I yell that I can't hear her. She yells again. "Scream!"
I'm flying.
We plunge into the long bike tunnel and we did scream. Not just yelling, we scream like the entire world's in the tunnel, here to clap for us and cheer for us and tell us we'll last forever. Yellow lights flashing passed us. Flickering through the spokes of our bicycles. I know she could feel it too. We both laugh and scream for the crowd. Her loud laugh echoed in the tunnel forever and I feel like I can still hear it now. Bouncing all over the yellow light. That's the night I said I'd spend the rest of my life trying to keep up with her.


They're tearing their way out now. Yeah if they'll beat me up from the outside too, I won't stop them.
Because maybe that'll make me stop thinking again. and I don't think I should be thinking about her this much.

The upstairs in my head is either a bar fight or a boxing match.

No, maybe it's a baseball game.

Blocks

I don't like to listen to music with head phones. I feel like I could be blocking things that might be trying to get in.

I always wanted to climb over these mountains and find the world waiting for me on the other side. I still wanna get across the lake and see my life from the other side. But my body's blocking me from going fast and everything else is blocking me from going anywhere.

It's like I can see it through this plastic floor, but I can't feel it. I can't touch it.

My parents are the biggest blocks.
I try to do things abnormally. I don't know, some sort of lame attempt at being a rebel I guess.
I tried not cutting my toenails for a few weeks.
I woke up early, sat outside and read my book.
I tried walking outside barefoot in the snow.

I know that if she were here she would've told me to run out in my boxers in the snow. And I would have wanted to do it too. Right now, I think I would do it.
How can somebody block so much but let in something completely new at the same time?


But nothing about her ways are logical. I can't read anything on her.
I can't predict a single step and that drives me crazy.
That's good. That's bad.
That's good. No, that's bad.
That's good. That's bad.
That's not good. That's bad.
That's bad. No, that's good.
That's good. No, that's bad.
That's good. That's bad.
That's bad. No, it's not.
That's good. That's bad.
That's good. No, that's not good.
I think it's fine. I think it's kinda nice.
You shouldn't. Shut up.

Predictable is safe.
I bet I could find a nice somebody someday and we could go out to dinner and see a movie every friday night. She'd kiss me at all the right times. We could tuck our kids in together every night and we could sit down and talk out our problems. I'd work from 9 to 5. She'd do the dishes and have dinner ready. And she'd kiss me on the cheek when I'd walk through the door.
Whatever.


It's like it's all building to block me from life.
and I'm just trying to decide what was meant to be done about it.

Because maybe God's hoping I won't break through it.
     But maybe he's waiting for me to try.