Altered Thought

I recently finished the rough draft of a book of poetry.  A Book of Poetry?  I don’t know.  Either way, I finished the first draft and have sent it out into the universe (read: my editor/sister and my first reader) to be looked over and perused. 

I am currently looking into options for self publishing this bastard so that everyone can read it.  Not that EVERYONE will read it, but they will all have that choice.  I am super stoked not only to be looking at actually putting some shit out there in an official, legit, PUBLISHED setting- but I’m thumbing my nose at the big boys and doing it myself.  Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to get mass distribution… but fuck it, I’ll rationalize it however I want.

More details coming soon.  Sorry about the infrequent posts.

The secret to dealing with the chaos of life is to embrace it.  Often people will claim to harbor no regrets.  They will claim that what they’ve gone through, the choices they have made, have made them into who they are today.  Technically speaking, this is entirely true and valid.  Yet there is an arrogance to that statement.  There is an empty fragility.  It is well intentioned, an active effort to accept the past for what it is, as it is ever unchanging.  To not dwell on what was, or what could have been.  It also belies a conceitedness that who you are today is the most perfect version of you, that you are now as high as you may ever hope to ascend.  Obviously everyone has made choices that led to conclusions apart from what they wanted.  Thus is the essence of regret as it really is, stripped of the connotations some would impart upon it. 

    In denying that, you are left with the realization that you have stopped growing.  There is nothing left to learn from reflection or introspection. 

    That seems like an awfully lonely peak to perch upon, that perfection.  Regret is the motivation that drives one to form experience from their missteps.  Lacking that, you accept that Fate has driven you to be who you are, that this is by definition who you are meant to be, that you are nothing but a doll an unlikely creator has dressed as it pleases and that you have no power to control yourself or your future.  Perhaps at some point someone should have taught you that when you achieve a goal, you’re supposed to set a new one.

I write less often when I am happy

but then

when I go too long without creating

I am less happy.

This is a short story I recently wrote as my first contribution to the site hitRECord.com — which is a pretty bad ass project run by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is himself pretty bad ass -where I was challenged to write from the perspective of a grandmother without sentimentalizing too much.  I don’t know that I succeeded with the second part of that. I know that reading it now that its finished is emotional for me, though.

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I wake up tired. I know that I have lived because my body reminds me every waking moment. I dream of being too tired to stand, yet never having a place to sit. There is too much to do in my dreams. These are the echoes of memory. There are clothes to mend, children to mind, cabinets to fix, chores to finish, and meals to make.

Morning light slithers through the curtains in my room, though I have been awake for hours now. My joints ache too badly to move. It would take everything I have to sit up. I used to greet the rising sun like a no good lay-a-bout, sleeping in long after the wards in my home have risen to go about their tasks. Now moving to the seat beneath the window would drain me of all the energy I will have for the day.

I miss the dreams. They are frightening and painful but I find them much more acceptable than reality. I’ve been confined to a prison. It has no bars and the guards wear clean white uniforms and warm smiles. Their smiles bother me. Their feigned innocence infuriates me. They would not think to patronize me the way they do if I had the strength of body or spirit that I had twenty years ago. They would fear my wrath for the things they had done. Some might believe the fallacy they had constructed so very carefully, but I knew better. I could see through such things. The kind faces were masks that hid the monsters beneath, and it was not something I would allow myself to forget.

Forgetting things happens too often, now. I am getting older. It is a fate I have resigned myself too. I will not let myself forget the crimes that have been done to me, though.

The monsters bring me breakfast. I am not so foolish as to eat it. The food was how they had done for my lovely husband. I try my best not to think of him, but even so, every time they bring me food that I will not eat I see his face. I used to cry when I would think of him, but I knew better now. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. They could play their sadistic games, they could hold my fragile body hostage, but they would not see me cry. I would not let them see the torment their punishments had done to my soul.

The day continues, the food grows cold, the sun moves to its zenith, shining down like a beacon of the way things used to be. So much had changed over time, yet the sun still traveled the same path every day. It mocked me in my purgatory of sterile white sheets and floral pattern wallpaper. I would wring its little neck if only I could reach it. If my hands still held the wiry strength they once had.

It isn’t long until my wardens come and pester me to take my lunch with other inmates. Simple fools who don’t even understand this quiet Hell we exist within is a penitentiary at all. What crimes have we committed? They ask. What crimes must we commit? There is no justice. Freedom is an illusion, and the wool has been pulled back for me. They have not realized it yet. At first I pitied them their incompetence, but their continued refusal to accept their fate only makes me angry, now. I no longer have the energy for patience. At least the others have learned to fear me. I can see their terror in their eyes when they look at me.

Still, my captors will not relent, so I do. I have learned to pick my battles. They settle me into a wheel chair and roll me like an invalid into the “living room”. It is the little cruelties that still cut me. Why should they call it that? It was a room with several small tables, a few couches, and a large TV. Some of the inmates play chess and chat amicably. They require so little to be happy. I envy them that much at least. They have not had to deal with the horrors I have yet, though. Their day will come. For that, I pity them.

They bring me another plate of food I have no intention of eating. I nibble at this course to satiate their persistence, though. If I eat nothing they will eventually put an IV in me anyway. I don’t understand why they bother with the farce. If they wanted to drug me, to sedate me, or even to kill me there would be no one here who would try to stop them. Why pretend? I think it is to try and break me down. To make me think I have lost my mind. I am made from sterner stuff than that, though. They may torment me, steal from me, enslave me; they will never break me.

I have a visitor. I used to have them more frequently, but they do not allow them to see me as often anymore. I always try to tell those that come to see me of what a terrible place this is, but they are powerless to free me. So they lie. I think they are hoping to deceive themselves more than me. They are ashamed that they can not save me from this place so they pretend that it is not the nightmare that I make it out to be. Of course they could not truly understand it without living it.

It is my grand daughter and her children. I think of her as a daughter. Her mother died while she was still very young of breast cancer, and so I raised her with as much love and discipline as I had raised my own children. She had been very loving, once, but now she grew distant. It was the work of that no good husband of hers, I am sure of it. He had been a Navy man, like my daughter’s husband had been. That had given them something in common, at least, but it didn’t fool me. I didn’t care for him, and I had made sure to tell them of it lately. I don’t have much time left- either from my age, or my tormentors, I didn’t know which would eventually take me -so I had told her before it happened. It had hurt her, but sometimes the truth does that.

I had known the older two children before I had been imprisoned. They were good kids, if a bit rebellious for my liking. Raising children had been different in my day. The youngest I didn’t know, and I didn’t trust him. He was wild, and loud, except when he looked at me. If he saw me looking at him he would hide behind his mother- my granddaughter -and hug her legs. I found his fear unbecoming.

I speak with them briefly, because they are family, but I do not have the energy to face their grim denials of the truth. Why should I lie about any of these terrible things? I have never been a liar or a gossip-monger. Life had never been easy for me, why should I suddenly become a malcontent in my old age?

The thing you have to understand is that my husband used to live in this place with me. I had never been arrested and convicted to this place. We had decided to live here on our own. They had tricked us into thinking it would be a safe place where we would not have to bother ourselves with the daily affairs of running a household. We could live in peace. It would be a life of luxury compared to what we had known. Our meals would be cooked for us, our clothes laundered, our beds made, the garden tended.

It had seemed so wonderful for a while. I try not to think back on those times fondly. If I would have known what would become of us I would have run then. Which is why it hurts to want to smile when I think back to those days. We had lived in peace, in comfort, in quiet. The world had finally given us a chance to rest.

Then they had taken my husband. No one would admit what they had done. Maybe if they had I could have found the conviction in my voice to convince one of my visitors of the terrible things they had done. They would never relent, though. Even when I could hear his hollow screams from the basement. They must have put him directly below me on purpose to further torture my mind, because I never heard anyone else scream. I had been with that man for over sixty years, though. I knew his voice intimately, and I could hear it nights before I went to bed when all was still and silent. It was terrible to hear and imagine the things they did to him. I am ashamed, though, for I fear the nights when I do not hear his screams more. I wonder if he has finally gone on to a more tranquil place. I want him to be at peace, but when he dies I will be alone. I still secretly harbor hopes that he will break free from his bondage and rescue me. I do not have the strength in me to rescue him. Not anymore.

My descendants had wandered during my reverie. My granddaughter was still by my side, looking at me with sad eyes and chewing on her bottom lip. I would have chided her for that, once. Her oldest son and only daughter were quietly watching the large TV that was on the other side of the room. They were usually happy children, if a bit shy, but now they only stood there awkwardly. They were too young to be cynical. They had heard me describe the conditions of myself and my husband. Their mother would shush them if they spoke up about it, but there was doubt there. There was belief in their innocence.

The youngest had gone far afield. He was standing in the shadow of two old men playing chess. He had charmed them, rattling off an incessant list of questions that they were delighted to answer. Who was he, to be so young and fearless? What right did he have? To enjoy himself when his ancestor was belabored with an incredible burden of emotional and physical torture, right there before his very eyes?

I couldn’t take it. I slapped my granddaughter. It was a weak and ineffectual thing, but I could tell that it had its intended affect. I doubt I hurt her, but she was instantly wrecked. Tears formed in her eyes that she would not let flow until she was alone. I can’t help but feel a pang of guilt over forcing her to bear that burden, but there is something I must do. I roll my chair towards this tiny oppressor and his childish joy, and I scream. I yell. I accuse him of things he could not have possibly done. I cannot stop myself once I start. All of my frustration, and rage, and anguish pours from my lips.

With the words, the emotions go with them. Everything that is left in me is behind the words, and despite my damaged, destroyed, defiled voice being so weakened from age and malnutrition, they sing. I am powerless before the might of these feelings that I have been forced to experience every moment of every day for some God-forsaken amount of time. I’ve lost track of the days, but not the feelings. Each one escapes. As my spirit begins to slip from my body I feel a peace I have not known in years. The smog that has polluted my mental landscape begins to clear.

All at once I know that I have been cruel. I have folded within myself in grief and despair at the passing of my husband. The cracks that formed in my mind were ripped apart by the weeds of doubt and fear that were nurtured as my mind slowly failed. Now I am not confused, though. I had been cruel, and yet my granddaughter comes to visit me. She brings her children who can’t begin to comprehend what they are seeing. They do their best to be charming and well behaved despite facing mortality while much too young.

I feel gratitude, that my granddaughter bears me so much love. I feel pride that she has raised her children to be mature enough to deal with this frightening and confusing environment. I feel kinship with my great grand children, because I too have not been able to comprehend this place for some time. I know exactly how they feel when they come here.

The youngest, the victim of my assault, cowers. He is afraid. Though my mind has cleared and I have finally found peace, I can no longer control my body. I can not stop myself now, silence my screams, to comfort these children- even my granddaughter is still a child in my eyes. I can not explain to them what I had been feeling, and why I acted the way I did. I hope the older ones will see me for who I really am and was, even if this youngest can not. He will not understand me for decades, if he ever does. I understand him, though, and I finally understand myself again. There is a peace in that understanding.

He looked at his hands. His beautiful, ruined, bloody hands. The scar from when he was ten and wrecked his first dirt bike. It had been a long time since it had borne the purple of being fresh. Now it was pale and ghostly and would be invisible if the rest of his right hand wasn’t so tan. It was funny how the blood split just before the scar and ran around it.

“Its the red sea.” He laughed.

The doctor looked at him sideways but said nothing. Ryan was too high on pain, adrenaline, and cortisone to care. He was obsessed with his hands. The knuckles were cracked open and wrinkled from age and hard use. They had faded out at some point, the valleys and peaks violet like some kind of alien mountain range. His left pinky finger had an unsightly bulge and hooked violently in the wrong direction. It hurt almost every day, but not today. Today he couldn’t feel a thing in his hands. Today was game day.

“Its almost time.” The doc told him.

Greg was a good enough guy even if he didn’t know when to shut the fuck up and mind his business. Greg was coming back over. He’d make Ryan follow his finger with his eyes. He’d ask him stupid questions. Probably shine a light in his eyes. Deep down he knew it was for his own benefit, but Ryan had learned how to lie to doctors a lifetime ago. They wanted to protect him. It made Ryan uncomfortable. He wasn’t someone who needed protecting. They wanted to take his love away from him.

Once he had bullshitted his way through the tests he braced himself. The test was the easy part. Odd, how the treatment for an injury can be so much worse than the getting injured. Most people are scared of getting hurt. Ryan would never admit it to anyone, but he had never been afraid of injuring himself.  He was scared of getting fixed.

Properly setting his nose made Ryan growl more than scream. At some point he had given up a part of his humanity to be who he was. He had embraced the beast, looked too long into the void that separated the animal from the man, and he’d become something from a bygone era. His eyes watered, but he fought back the tears. It was a purely biological response, but that didn’t matter. There are times men are allowed to cry, but a little pain and discomfort is not an acceptable cause.

Greg’s hands came away bloody.  It shouldn’t have been that bad.  Ryan felt a twisting in his stomach like butterflies with razor blade wings.  It reached up and caressed his heart, finally ceasing its advance when it had crept into his throat.  Once it was there it made breathing next to impossible.  

Greg wiped away the blood on Ryan’s face automatically.  The doctor had disconnected himself from the reality of his profession.  Ryan was pretty sure most people who become doctors are interested in more than just the money.  There were easier, faster ways to make a quick buck.  There was probably a time when Greg had genuinely felt the urge to heal the broken and beaten.  Somewhere along the way he had taken a side road, slipped into a dark alley and never come out again.  This was his nightmare.  Mending the ungrateful gladiators of his age, mighty men with no regard for their own welfare, where almost every interaction was a subtle ballet between the truth and deception.

The stab of fear Ryan had felt would have been where most people would have drawn the line.  It was that moment when he realized that something in him had crossed a line it had never crossed before.  It wasn’t drawn in the sand.  It was carved out of the concrete carcass that was wrapped around Ryan’s world, and he was never coming back to our side.  He had gotten too good at ignoring pain to find victory over defeat itself.  In his quest to come, see, and conquer something had been left behind.  His sense of self preservation.  Pain is at its heart a warning, an indicator that one must change course to avert catastrophe.  Ryan had turned his body into the Titanic.  

There was a sense of tragedy in that that he could appreciate.  Ryan’s life was nothing Disney would make a movie about to inspire a young generation to overcome great adversity, but it had never been easy, either.  He had been born with both a great mind and the body of an athlete.  Intellect was not something that bore one away from the suburbs he had known all his life, though.  Sports were an avenue to escape.  To escape both the disillusionment common in young men of a certain age, and also the boredom that had crept like a virus into his mind.  It was a road to college. A path to change.

That was where it was supposed to end for Ryan.  His sporting career would come to a close with a degree paid for by ticket sales and taxpayer subsidies.  There was enough of him to play Division I ball, but he wasn’t big enough, or strong enough, or fast enough to go to one of the prestige programs like USC, or Florida, or Ohio State.  He’d go to an overachieving Mid-Major like Utah, maybe Stanford if he was lucky.  Somewhere with an alright football team.  He’d give them four years, put that wear and tear on his body, and he’d take their degree with a smile.  

That wasn’t how it went for Ryan, though.  Somehow as the years went by he got a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger, and a little bit faster.  He got his degree, but he also got a buzz.  He was a big name player on a small time program, but they had to go all Cinderella and storm their way to a perfect season and a BCS bowl win over a big time program.  The sports casters had spent the days leading up to the bowl game speaking of their imminent demise; once it came out that their crystal balls were filled with clouds they needed a reason for their fallibility.  They needed a story.  They landed on Ryan.  A quiet kid who never missed practiced, never took a play off, did as his coaches asked him and never quit.  They had found their story.  

Ryan became known for his natural leadership.  He lead by example.  He had a “high motor”.  He was a tough guy, an old throw back to the glory years of the game when men were men and the boys played some other game for pussies like basketball or soccer- and don’t you fucking dare call it futbol.  Maybe they never put the actual word ‘fucking’ in their columns, but that was the feel you got from reading them.

So he got good advice from bad people along with an invite to the combine.  His numbers weren’t great, but they were better than expected, so his draft stock rose a little higher.  Sure, his coaches, some agents, his family would tell him; sure, you might never make a roster.  Still, if you could get a few years in the league you’d have a great platform to start your life from.  A nice little security blanket that most people would kill for.  Surely you’d be a fool to turn it down.

So Ryan didn’t turn it down.  He entered the draft, got selected, and even made a roster.  He’d practiced, played, practiced, flown, studied, and played away most of his life by that point.  Football took over Ryan’s existence when he was eleven and it never let go.  It was a jealous lover.  Neglect it for one second and she’d turn around and give it up to some other gym rat with oversized arms and an undersized dick.  Ryan had never taken a shot in the ass, but high school had been the last time Ryan had been the most physically gifted athlete on the field.  Other guys were born with it.  Some guys injected it.  Almost nobody worked their way into it like he did.  If anybody deserved to get its attention, it was him.

The hype that bore him into the league never left him.  He really was a throw back to an old era.  He rarely spoke, almost never barked, and never tried to get into anybody’s head.  Which got into everybody’s head.  They took his silence not as meekness, but as a quiet confidence.  He was somebody who didn’t need to talk with his mouth.  He spoke with his body, and his screamed for blood and vengeance.  He was nine years into his career before he ever missed a play due to injury, as a safety with a reckless abandon for his own welfare.  There was no target too large to attack head on with wild exuberance, no gazelle too fast to chase down to the last yard line, and no quarterback too crafty to try and outwit.  He played every play as if it were his only play.

He hit hard, he hit high, he hit low, he hit often, but he never hit late.  Some were mere tackles, things that filled him up with relief when his adversary finally went down.  Some were brutal assaults on the contract of civilization.  They were things that come with ten year sentences off the football field.  He was adored for who he was for sixty minutes on a one hundred yard field.  He was abhorred for it.

Until today.  Ryan wasn’t completely sure what had happened in that pile.  The most bone jarring impacts were always accompanied by blackouts for him.  Whether his body shut down before contact or blocked the memory out after the fact was above his pay grade, but he never remembered them.  He had gone in low on the running back- Denarius Moore, a two hundred and seventy pound monster of a change up back -and didn’t come up for air for ten minutes.  Forced to guess, Ryan would have assumed a cleat snuck in and raked his face after his head-on with Moore.  Sometimes these things happen.  Accidentally or on purpose, they happen.  This is the nature of the beast.  Even if somebody had taken a cheap shot at Ryan, he wouldn’t hold a grudge.  Its common for guys who figure out they are in over their heads to play dirty.

Still, that shot had done a number on Ryan.  It wasn’t just the cut.  Did he have a concussion?  Hard to say.  It probably wasn’t any one thing, but the accumulation of a lifetime of unstoppable forces meeting immovable objects.  Ryan was the warrior.  He was loved because he embodied the old ideals of old dead gods from long passed civilizations.  He was living proof of the enduring strength and determination of the indomitable human spirit.  An avatar of greatness that every man secretly believes he can slip into should the need arise.  He was a warrior on a battlefield, but he had come a few hundred years too late into this world.  Medicine and science had kept him alive, kept him whole, kept him at war far longer than his meagre vessel was designed to.  It has never been the spirit that quits, but that which bears it.

Ryan’s mind snapped back to the present when he felt a warm liquid seeping into his open wound.  It came with a searing, ripping sort of anguish.  Again he growled.  The pain was immediate, it was present, and it was glorious.  To a man who has known nothing his whole life but boredom and duty, pain is an exquisite luxury.  Ryan had an idea he knew something of the Spartan mind.

“I’m done after this, doc.”  Ryan told Greg.  

It was sudden.  He was getting older, but he had never mentioned retirement before.  The only time it came up was when the pundits and the legal lapdogs started talking contract extensions and long term degradation.  They weren’t even talking about today when they spoke of decline.  They were coming up with theoretical failures that weren’t yet even his.  Nobody would think less of him for walking away.  He’d already had a Hall of Fame career.  They would always whisper, though, like they did with Barry Sanders.  What could have been?  

“I know.”

Greg’s response surprised Ryan far more than he had surprised Greg.  He tried to focus on the doctor’s face but found staring in one direction more than a little bit difficult.  When he finally did a get look at him, he saw understanding.  There was a sadness there with it, and knowing, and more than anything resignation.  Yet somehow he knew.  He got it.  And he wasn’t going to fight Ryan over it.

“Thanks for the fishes, Greg.”

Ryan had seen the doc reading the prerequisites necessary to understand the joke.  He told himself Greg would have called back like a dolphin if he could have.  If his own throat hadn’t been swollen, maybe.  If he really understood, it’d be an emotional torment for him too.

“Let’s get this over with, then.”

Ryan left everything in him on the field that day.  It was the end of many things, and despite the myriad blows to the head he had suffered, the significance of that was not lost on him.  Football had taken him young and never given him back.  It was a jealous lover, a succubus that used him up.  It left him well rewarded, but broken.  It wasn’t a complaint.  Ryan was just born a few hundred years too late.  Football would live on without him, even if he wouldn’t without it.  

Ryan was a warrior without a battlefield, a viking with no Valhalla.

THIS JUST IN——

This is a joint tumblr and Altered Thought production.  Well, the creative mastermind behind Altered Thought is the only one actually producing anything, then more being distributed by tumblr and… oh, fuck it.  This joke has gone on long enough. 

In any case, this is an exclusive.  I wanted to take a minute to apologize for the fact that I’ve not written a damn word since who knows when.  I’m pretty sure it goes back into 2011.  I was subconsciously preparing for the impending Mayan apocalypse by starving the world of my meandering diatribes.  After the End comes to pass, you won’t have the internet to feed you my silly thoughts, and other than a few dozen notebooks of scattered, incoherent thoughts there are precious few copies of my written word.

Still, I feel guilty about it.  For one to myself, because it really is shameful that I refuse myself the pleasure I take from writing anytime I’m not completely miserable.  You see, most of what I write comes when I am too depressed to face society and/or the world.  I sit down with a glass of Seagrums 7 and 7 Up (yes, commonly referred to as a 7&7) and pound out a few thousand words about the malicious and fickle nature of reality and existence.  It is much more difficult for me to express happiness, both by my nature and because most of what I read (and thoughtlessly pilfer and steal, which we artistic types like to call ‘influence’) is cynical or bitter. 

I’ve decided to correct this mistake.  I will write, even though I am generally happy with life.  As it turns out, this was supposed to be a quick message to say ‘Hi!  Sorry I haven’t posted shit in months, if you come back and look at my stuff again you’ll see new shit!’ 

So now that I’ve said it, good bye.  Until next time.  Which won’t be very long.  I promise.  No, seriously. 

Can’t sleep…

dancing in the shadows in my head,

spinning the starlight around my fingers like spiderweb streamers.

The moon has secrets it thinks to hide,

but I am patient,

and so I wait to hear it whisper…

Stillness.  An infinite void.  Black velvet pierced with a million million pinpricks of silver, letting in just enough light to reflect across the surface of a pool of black water.  From somewhere unseen there was a slow, steady drip.  Small ripples cast outward from impact; tiny pale waves like the echoes of ghosts.  There was no reflection on the obsidian curtain, and it was impossible to see within its murky depths.  Whatever mysteries it held, it held hard, and did not mean to let them go.  There were strong currents hidden beneath, invisible to the naked eye.  They could not be seen.  Only felt.

    There was a trace of laughter in the dark.  One could just hear it at the boundaries of awareness, though it should have been deafening in the silence.  It was high pitched and girlish, in a pretty sort of way.  Though quiet, it rebounded against non-existent walls, undulating with the ripples in the water.

    Then, there was nothing.