He sighed and looked at his watch: easily another thirty minutes. If the score wasn’t so loud he’d at least be able to nap until it was finally over. He looked down at his date: she had curled herself up in her seat and was holding tightly onto his arm, using it as a shield whenever a scene became too unbearable for her to watch.

He looked back to the screen: what garbage. Look at that idiot going into the house like that knowing what he knows. Like someone would really do that.

He sighed again and wondered how someone whom he he had met in the library’s science section amongst all the physics books and who had seemed to him to be so rational and perceptive and…smart, could, firstly, choose such nonsense for their inaugural date and, secondly, enjoy the nonsense as much as she seemed to be enjoying it.

There came a sudden scream from the screen, then, near-simultaneously, came a scream from his date, and then, finally, from within his own head came the loudest scream of all as a self-chastisement for killing so many of own brain cells with such nonsense.

The car came to a stop in front of a lonely, darkened house. She put the transmission into park and pressed the button to kill the already silent engine.

He sighed.

She looked at him with a seductive smile and said, “So, didn’t you say something about having the house all to yourself this weekend?”

“Did I?” he said brusquely.

“Yes, you did,” she replied. She lightly placed her hand on his thigh and leaned across him to look out his window. “Your house looks so dark and lonely. Maybe I better come in with you so you don’t, you know, get scared in there all by yourself.”

He scoffed and opened the door. “Look, thanks for such a…well…interesting evening. But I’m a little tired so, perhaps it’s best that we just say goodnight here.” Without waiting for her to reply, he got out of the car, gave her another quick thanks, and then closed the door.

Incredulously, she watched as her date walked toward the empty house. As she sat there in the driver’s seat trying to figure out what had just happened, she noticed the silhouette of a rather large person in the second-floor window looking down on the scene below.

She was certain her date had said that his roommates were going to be gone for the weekend. She looked back up at the window. Still, someone was in the house.

Both she and the large silhouette watched as her date unlocked the front door, stepped inside the house, and closed the door behind him. She waited for a light to be turned on but the house remained dark.

She looked up at the window. The silhouette was gone.

Goosebumps, hardly having subsided after the haunting movie, returned with a chill as she pressed the starter button. The engine softly came back to life and then went silent as she quickly, but resolutely, drove away from her disappointed date’s lonely, darkened house.

*

I have no answers
I know just that grass will grow
and that leaves will fall

*

destroy to create
say the gods and demagogues
pain’s higher purpose

*

think and I ignore
say and I start to wonder
do and I believe

*

when everything hurts
each thought, each breath, each step, each…
then nothing can hurt

*

it’s not the disease
it’s the dis ease found within
the mind is the cure

*

low, gray clouds advance
footsteps crack like breaking bones
the wind’s chill churns deep

*

each quest has an end
each question has an answer
stay still; stay silent

*

time is everywhere
and moves in all directions
clocks mislead us all

*

existentially
to exist means to suffer
it’s the angst of choice

*

sometimes, to be heard
it’s best to remain silent
to be seen–vanish

*

it’s the irony
it’s the humor and folly
life’s absurdities

*

the shield or the sword
cower safe behind despair
or attack with joy

*

the wind fuels the flame
the light sustains the shadow
life’s paradoxes

*

the pine’s evergreen
or the maple’s sudden fall
flare comes with a cost

*

who’s the next Gibran
who’s the next Kurosawa
can twitter tell me

*

each morrow’s a chance
what becomes becomes what was
is is all there is

*

struggle through the din
yield not to the damning knell
onward to the calm

*

absence is sublime
the void becomes the proxy
memories feint truths

*

dismiss this missive
for to me alone it speaks
a lone I must heed

*

Tear me into pieces
and throw me to the wind
release me to the currents
never to be whole again

Each scattered bit of me
soon forgotten as a whole
will never forsake my spirit
and will forever retain my soul

The crack, initially not much to notice, began at the bottom left corner of the mirror—your standard medicine cabinet mirror (nothing fancy)—and extended upward and diagonally toward the center, and, for the time being, stopped its ascent right where the left corner of her mouth appeared whenever she had cause, or took pause, to look at herself in the mirror.

Awareness is a tricky thing: She was obviously aware of what was found in the mirror—the crack, her reflection, and all the sad stories they both had to tell—but she was not aware of her awareness. While, because of the larger mirror that was set over the sink behind her she was aware of the infinitely expanding reflections of herself in the cracked mirror, she was not yet aware of all that she saw. As a result, she did not see her infinitely expanding universal self: an expanding awareness of everything there is to know; an expanding awareness of everything that is not known; an expanding awareness of everything that is unknowable.

Everything was revealed for her in that cracked mirror and she saw it all for herself; yet, still, she remained unaware that she was aware, preferring, instead, to let her self be distracted by the crack and the sad story it had to tell.

But the day wasn’t really depressed.  Intellectually, he knew that as a matter of fact; but, as a matter of feeling, he couldn’t help but think that because of his own sadness, the day, too, was sad.  He thought, couldn’t we, by the sheer force of our moods, affect the environment around us? If our brainwaves are electric, then surely our electric thoughts must do something to that, and those, around us, right?

He softly scoffed at that thought, knowing as a matter of fact that it was impossible for his thinking to affect the weather.

He tried to remember whether he was sad before the day turned dreary or whether the day turned dreary before he became sad. As he pondered the order of the day’s depression, the clouds suddenly broke and a sharp beam of sunlight sliced its way through all the grayness and found its way through his window and turned his room into a brilliant denizen of light. The change in the room from gloom to glow was drastic and forced his eyes into a tight, reactive squint, which, in turn, forced the corners of his mouth upwards into an unsuspecting smile.

As I have detailed in several posts in the past, prednisone, while being a very amazing drug that may have saved my life, comes with a cost…and that cost is many dangerous side-effects.

One of its most annoying side-effects are severe mood swings. When I woke up each morning, I always had to wonder who I would be that day. Would I be one who was effusively overcome with happiness and joy? Or, would I be one who was trapped in a deep, dark depression? Or, would I be a paranoid, hypersensitive mad–as in angry at any little slight–man?

It was an interesting time in my life, to say the least.

But now that I am three-months removed from that oscillating mental trip, I have been reading through the articles that I wrote during that time and I am not all pleased with what I am finding: The articles are either overly sentimental or overly psychotic.

Nevertheless, the articles represent my mindset at the time they were written…a mindset struggling with what is medically termed as “steroid psychosis.”

Today is the first day of spring and I must admit that, in spirit of the season, I have done a little spring cleaning on this site by throwing out a few of the more embarrassing and ridiculous articles; however, I left most of the ones that I feel best represent how my mind processed information, as psychotic as it may have been, while strung out on the evil mind warping drug called prednisone.

Petey Peter the Garlic Eater

My review of Maugham’s masterpiece OF HUMAN BONDAGE reminded me of a poem I wrote and which was included in POEM MAN, a children’s poetry book my family and I published back at the turn of the century. The book is currently out of print, but here is what the poem has to say:

Petey Peter the Garlic Eater

Petey Peter the garlic eater
Sat right behind me in class.
And if he wasn’t busy boisterously burpin’,
He was busy passin’ poisonous gas.

I couldn’t concentrate on my studies
Because of the stink he emitted.
As a result I failed all my classes.
As for graduation, I wasn’t permitted.

Now, if you’re a lover of riddles and rhymes
You might just remember his name.
Cuz his great, great, great, great, great, grandfather
Is famous for a name just the same.

But their names are their only sim’larities,
For they both liked to eat different treats.
Old Peter Peter preferred to eat pumpkins,
While it was garlic young Petey did eat.

Though I can’t imagine eating pumpkins
Unless smashed and baked as sweet pies.
But I do wish young Petey had eaten them,
Cuz his garlic breath always drew flies.

But pumpkins, too, can bring trouble.
It’s cuz of pumpkins old Peter lost a wife.
I guess if you do too much of anything
There’s a chance it could ruin a life.

It’s cuz of Petey’s stinky garlic breath
That every single class I did fail.
And it’s cuz I dropped out of grade school
That I eventually landed in jail.

But as for Petey, he invented a breath mint.
And it earned him a million or two.
And he married the great, great, great, great, great, granddaughter
Of the old lady who lived in the shoe.

~~~~

My review of OF HUMAN BONDAGE reminded me of this poem because they both, in different ways, discuss the important matter of addiction and dependency. In Maugham’s story, we find that because of his infatuation, his addiction, for Mildred, the protagonist, Phillip Carey, nearly destroys his own life. In my poem we find that both Peter Peter’s excessive love for pumpkins and Petey Peter’s excessive love for garlics, addictions in their own rights, destroy, not their own lives, necessarily, but the lives of those around them.

W. Somerset Maugham

I suppose the easiest, and quickest, way to sum up Maugham’s Of Human Bondage would be to write something along the lines of “most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them,” which appears to be the case for the story’s protagonist Phillip Carey.

If, however, that was all I wrote, then not only I would I be overly brief in this post (which probably is not a bad thing), I would also be overly unoriginal since we all know the above quote belongs to Henry David Thoreau.

Unfortunately, because I do not have Thoreau’s genius for writing simply (which requires skill and patience that most writers, such as moi, do not possess), I will have to deploy many more words than he for my own summing up of Maugham’s internationally renowned masterpiece.

But what Thoreau wrote so poetically is undeniably what the essence of Maugham’s story is about:

Carey, born with a clubbed foot and who grows up to be shy and insecure because of it, lives a life yearning to be someone he can never be, to love someone whom he can never love, and to be somewhere other than where he happens to be.

His yearnings, we find, go mostly unfulfilled.

What I enjoy most about the story is Maugham’s descriptive ability. His writing magically places me deep within the England and the Germany and the France of the early twentieth century. I can hear the cart wheels rolling along the cobble-stoned streets. I can see the crowded, smoke-filled cafe. I can taste the absinthe and feel the immediate allure and rush as it blissfully numbs away the bite of reality.

What I enjoy least about the story is Carey’s excessively drawn-out infatuation with Mildred, the cruel and insensitive simpleton who fancies herself to be of a station in life much higher than the one she is unable to escape no matter how hard she tries. While she does not have the capacity to improve her lot in life through earnest devices and effort, she does have enough smarts about her to understand early on in her relationship with Carey that she has a power over him from which he is also unable to escape no matter how hard he tries. She uses and abuses Carey with her power so often and for so long that I found myself becoming impatient and bored with, not only Carey’s unbelievable weakness, but with the story as a whole.

In the end (not of the story, but of the relationship between Carey and Mildred), Carey is not able to overcome his yearning for Mildred until she completely destroys her life and nearly destroys his, as well.

While I find the tortuous, one-sided love affair between Carey and Mildred to be a bit too much, through it I am reminded that any unhealthy dependency, be it our dependency on love, on money, on drugs, or on whatever, often takes us down a long and troubling path that, if we stay on it, will eventually lead us to the point of our destruction. And it usually is not until we nearly reach that point that we are finally able to realize just how destructive our dependency, our yearning, really is. Only then, if we are lucky and/or blessed (for unfortunately, many are unable to stop before reaching the point of their destruction and continue helplessly, fatally on), can we find the strength to separate ourselves from that which is destroying us and begin on a path to recovery.

Carey, like many addicts, nearly let his dependency destroy him.

But I guess that’s how life goes, and how it has always gone throughout the desperate ages — if we do not somehow find a way to come to peace with our satiated yearnings, our unrequited desires, they, like Thoreau so poetically, and prophetically, reminds us, will most likely be the sad songs we sing until we finally, and at last, are placed within our lonely graves.

*

Primal December
I ache for those pagan days
Saturnalia!

*

It’s those voices;
those penetrating and perturbing voices;
ethereal voices spoken from faceless mouths;
Yes, those voices.

*

how I view the world
requires not my eyes to see
my life’s perspective

*

long and dark-filled days
the light that once pleased now pains
still, faith guides my way

*

tho’ beyond my ken
speak unto me with thy tongue
whispered words betray

*

land between rivers’
nine year death knell rings no more
lies alone prevailed

*

Now is not so bad.
But, it always seems
to be a little better
as Then.

*

Surround me with such things
Erudite things
Simple things
Things of pleasure
Things of pain
Any thing
That can both
Take me forward
And can bring me back
To where I long to be
And to where I forever dread

*

minds provoked, pursued
the beating and burning heart
graves settle but dust

*

the blood turns not red
until the wound has occurred
truths are bound by scars

*

the slow burning fuse
the flash of the fireworks
none live less the spark

*

mete me with wisdom
mete me with the hidden way
blind, I find no bliss

*

empirical lust
a burning need for knowledge
cant douses the flame

*

Love’s arrival
demands Epiphany’s flourishing trumpet.

Love’s departure
requires no such song.

*

forge forever on
tho’ dark death rewards us all
forge forever on

*

whither journey’s end
is that which eludes me
yonder shall I go

*

from mind to matter
believe it and it shall be
you determine you

*

sing out savior songs
dance free amongst the cherubs
listen for the wind

*

if we chance to win
we must also chance to lose
both promise rewards

*

who among us all
leave no footsteps in the sand
who can bar the tide

*

the word is as told
its telling built empires
decontruct it all

Life is both a rip-roarin’ Kick in the Crotch
and a moist, long Kiss deep within the Secret Beyond

Life is all This
Life is all That

It’s nothing more than Everything
It’s nothing less than Nothing

Life Is
Period

And a Period is Infinite

*

the wind is blowing
unsecured treasure take sail
there goes my resolve

*

Time’s relentless pace
Truth content in slow pursuit
where has Wisdom gone?

*

The laughter fades
and the dawn never breaks
How still is the air
when the laughter isn’t there

*

like decaying leaves
first we whither, then we fall
oh, the coming days!

*

matters of the soul
ascendant hallowed secrets
the aching wind cries

*

well-worn and wanting
pocked and patched yet still preferred
beauty lies within

*

transcendental we
eternal epiphanies
pure stardust and light

*

ten-year retribute
sanguinary salvation
land of the horsemen!

*

sullen sky today
yet still, aspirations burn
shadowed paths revealed

*

my mind is abuzz
aspiring and desiring
a karma fuel source

*

There is no point.
That’s the point.

*

the silent stars know
so, too, does the muted moon
angels fall from grace

*

If we all are of the same matter,
then we all must matter the same.

*

the moment is nigh
when once self-evident truths
succumb to madness