Recognizing home; three negronis

Recognizing Homes; Three Negronis

I had discussed the opportunities with myself a dozen times.  Chase worry and follow suit, or crash land into an atmosphere of impossibility.  While I never dug so deep for an answer, I questioned all the same. Yet the problems arising grew to block the view of my tomorrows. Is it a problem to be forced into the present? Appreciation is a tool better let lived, smile accordingly and transfer less concepts from alternative areas.

We the well-travelled specimen, the courageous, the indifferent, the well to be unique. This is the age of forgetting tomorrow, and letting yesterday wash past like a stream.  I question the daily investment in my mind, but the health built on sand is a creaky foundation at best. I hear the nails rusted in the doorways, creaking, squealing as I open the screen to leave, once again. 

I stammered

“I need to leave”

I have to get out of here. This is not home anymore.  The cry for else, for other, for anything to do but to stay.  I was crying for the death of my day to day. A strangled minute of sweet commitment, and I wanted to run bleeding through the streets of my hometown.  Testify to my insecurities, admit to me my fallacies, my inability to stay; this is a complete and utter lack of control.  The ways in which I am irresponsible. Yes, this is no problem with me.  I leave you for the ways I want.  Goodbye for the days you ignore, and hello for the mixed message I left on your voicemail.

She told me not to make the decision because of her. I agreed. I told her she was only a factor. The pity of a comment like ‘you are a factor’.  Is it more pathetic to tell that in earnest, hoping for a long-lost gift, or to believe it when it drops from my tongue like a red stained cherry pit.  Sweet tasting, isn’t it? 

My cadence of irrespectively deciding my fate for the next ten minutes is a hobby to say the least.  Building a correspondence point, giving myself some type of reference point.  I could have a map someday if I keep it up, but realistically I’ll have a dart board of whoops and fuck its. I swear I want it, to build that home in a desert plain, grow seasonal crops that moan like a saxophone for love. Corrupting our own youth with the wishes of a semi-cemented foundation we hold in ourselves. As I want that though I want a dozen factors, redefining my lines and road signs as I see fit.  It’s the anarchistic factoring of my well being. Decided by a mix of dice rolls and existential crisis, compressed into a manifesto of nonsense.  Maybe someday the manifesto is worth reading again, but until then it is like my notebooks, shut once after written. 

Franz Kafka supposedly burnt the majority of his work.  The artistic components of a fucked-up mind, or vis versa.  He built a home for himself and his family, watched it glow in the sunset before he burnt it to the ground.  He the monk, drawing mandalas out of sand, single grains at a time; finishing didn’t mean the piece was done being created, finishing was the act of sweeping it up. How many glances you take at that ‘masterpiece’ tells something very defined about you as a person.  I am casual when it comes to this.  Thorough enjoyment of the process is so necessary. And maybe someday I will wander in a circle, realizing the tail end of my process is mouthwatering, and find the ohm in my infinite chase from there on.  As of now I chase a shimmer, a whim of a light that once set and I can’t find. Like chasing that beautiful drunk just before you’ve had too much.  How do you stop when you keep running after that feeling?

Possibly, I will admit my own emaciated chances of success. Or I will find that pristine balance in where I fall madly toward dedication in the capitalistic senses. Maybe someday I will realize my deep love for statistical analysis of profit margins.  The reality may be that I fall on my head, crying to the cement that this was my dream.  And that dream is once again over, and I wait, again, for the next dream to be fulfilled.  It is magic. And I set those goals so I can achieve them. Undoubtedly, I will follow it, dipping toes to check warmth, and walking to the counter once again for a drink.  This isn’t so majestic as it seems. Really just a mirage of ironic and oxymoronic expression.  If I can chase myself long enough, maybe the sight of my ass will make me turn around. But as of today it is just a continued reminder that I’m moving quickly toward nowhere, but not quickly enough.

I sat outside a church waiting for Caleb to finish work.  I ordered a Negroni at some Italian named café that served pizza and pasta. They hadn’t heard of it so I told them how to make it, one part, one part, one part; drink. The waitress was a beautiful blonde woman as tall as myself. She answered in English when I ordered in German. But I didn’t mind, just continued to stammer in my painful attempts at an extra linguistic conversation.  She smiled a big fake smile like she was impressed.  I took my drink and finished half before I made it back to the patio. Thank you and one more please, that was delicious.  The bells rang as I jotted notes to my family wishing to be there alongside them for the moment before returning to this cobblestone patio for another negroni.  That bitter sweet nostalgia, I could drop one for a smile, or smile trying to drop one.  Well the waitress asked me where I was from, she had spent time in DC as an Au Pair. And you can tell when she asked it was for her coworkers. They heard the accent like a missed note to a low-level composer. It didn’t matter that I ordered in German, nor that I taught them how to do their job.  No subtlety gave me a heads up on her questions. The planned conversation ran our ways, and I left her with a joke, and she left me with a real smile this time.  Casual conversation is a strong suit if you want it. I didn’t, and the bell ringing was a beautiful sign for such. One more please, and I will go find Caleb, I told myself.  The roads raised and fell several times on my way to him.  Hills of West Germany, thanks for the stumbles. Disengaged with the surroundings, I noticed people and structures and statues like a picturesque knight on his steed of truth and dignity.  I laughed loudly at some punks on a fountain in the center of town, ideally, I could watch, waiting for Caleb and the time to head back to his apartment.  The punks were smoking self-rolled cigarettes and chatting for the time.  They asked me for an apple after I bought some, so I tossed a few around to the crew. I was drunk enough not to care, and it seemed fair after I got a good laugh at their expense. Not that they noticed, I hope at least.  Not that they’d care. I hope at least.  The sunset was pushing and I was leaning too hard for how slanted the stairs were that I sat on. In a weak moment I would have clamored on to them about the predicament of my being, and the lack of my family, and the buildings being fraudulent with their painted on pylons like they were really made of wood and muck and stone like they used to be. But instead I watched the punks fall over drunkenly, happy I was the more sober of strangers in this small suburb of Stuttgart.  And I recognized in them the same burning edginess to escape. And yes, I see the mockery in my inability to shake the edginess from me, the angst that grows like a Japanese elm, breaking sidewalks and leaving cracks in my foundation if ignored. The irony is thick as the roots lay, dead, rotting, softening.

And as I stared at that group of cracked individuals, pin-holed by a society that decided they were odd, or more pin-holed by themselves in deciding they did not fit in that society, I recognized their escapist ways. The need to be unattached, and strange, and not aligned with the roadway signs that told them how to act. As I stared at these cracked individuals I could see the crack in the front rooms window of my childhood home. Those cracks, made by a bb bullet, somebody shot through it when I was a child. It was unnoticed for days, until the cat got to it repeatedly. Discouraged on the safety of my home, I realized how comfortable it was to sleep on couches, floors, dirt.  Disparaged by the mimicry of home in the doorways and windows of other buildings.  And I could recognize, if only for a second; the call to run is a sweet one.  Bellowing from the church towers and echoing through mountain enclosed valleys.  Melting with the ice in my boozy Negroni, getting heavier on gin and still easier to drink.  And for that second, I realize, hope, decide, I may not be running from a single thing.