Nirvanic

Dearest Leon,

My journeys have now led me east, to the mythical land of dragons and demons. I have found refuge among the ascetics here in a remote monastery nestled in the frigid, snowcapped mountains.

I realize it has been such a long time since you heard from me last, I can only assume you surmised me dead. And this assumption wouldn’t have been too far off my dear friend. But by God’s graciousness, I have unshackled the stubborn locks the opium and absinthe held on my thoughts and my body. I am clean now. It was a terrifying journey, a horrible dream rife with suffering. I still suffer. They still haunt me. Sometimes at night I swear I can hear their hushed whispers outside my window. Sometimes at dusk I will see their fleeting shadows on the hillside and I must resist the urge to follow. Sometimes I will see the silhouette of a man in my peripheral vision… only to turn and find myself standing alone..

It has now been several years since I defected from the battalion but for the first time since childhood my thoughts are lucid. I commune with God daily Leon. I see him in every gesture, every fleeting glance outside - I commune with God even as I complete the mundane tasks assigned to me, when I clean or cook or mend the thatched roofs, he speaks to me. We hold such lively conversations. Perhaps I shall tell you of these conversations, in fact I hope to my friend, over tea and hot cakes… one day.

If I can offer any advice, and I feel so foolish offering advice to you or to anyone, but I will write down these words so I may thereby also remind myself: If you are alive then be truly alive. Just open up your eyes and pay attention to the signs. Pay attention to the color of the sky and of the endless night. This life you hold so near and dear will fade in time.

So just let go.

You shall hear from me again Leon. I anticipate my stay here shall continue for exactly a year and then…well, we’ll see which way the winds decide to blow.

fitting in

I woke up this morning in Paris. Light streamed into my tiny room as I lay in my tiny bed staring at the cherubs zipping about above me. I reached out my hand oh so gently to catch one and startled them out of their playful revelry. The tiniest one, I believe his name was Max, smacked away my hand with a snarl. I shrug and swing my legs to my right-hand side, always my right hand side, and dismount the rickety bed in a fanciful flourish. Nothing is going to bring me down today for tonight I will be meeting my friends at the burlesque show for dinner, drinks, and various other forms of forbidden debauchery.

I pad my away across the cold floor softly humming Giussepe Verdi. I fling open the rococo white and gold armoire door with a loud “Ah-Ha!” No monster, he is taking the day off it appears. I shrug and pick out a crisp red turtleneck, black pants, and a black blazer. The perfect ensemble for which to haunt le musée du Louvre.

“ Papa where are you going today?”

I dab some mousse into my palm, rub my hands together like Mr. Miyagi, and press my mess of black, but graying, hair back into a neat arrangement. “Little man I am going to the museum and then I am meeting a friend at the corner café for a cup of chai tea. And then tomorrow this time, well, you and I will be spitting logeys at tourists off the Eiffel tower."

“ But we are tourists.”

I slowly turn around and look deep into his eyes… into my eyes. I hold a finger up to my mouth and shake my head. “Shhhhhhhhhh, no we live here now.”

repeat

It was 2001 and we didn’t give a fuck. Latin American kings intent on a dream. We were poor as shit, nothing to claim but the jizz in our dicks, the clothes on our back, and our motorcycles and road packs. We moved in a shadowy world of women, clubs, and filthy hotel rooms - we were like Iggy and David but minus the needles and spoons. Sometimes I tell people we should be dead, but instead you see me now here so fucked up in the head. Eyes made of lead with a heavy heart, falling apart, irony and bitterness a la carte. Life was simpler then, short days and long nights that seemed to never end and the scratchy record plays my memories again and again in my head as I stare into the elusive nothingness which I so used to dread. Nowadays I seem so dead.

I seem so dead.

I seem so dead.

I play the game and it's the same shit. I grow so bored and I'm too tired for it all. It is now 2008 and I'm no longer twenty-two and I'm also a dad. I sarge and I go out and I can still hang but given a choice I'd much rather sit alone in an empty room in a quiet house. I now find other ways to pass the time, no more games no more drugs no more playing the field. I am so incapable of love right now and I have erected walls and there's a moat with sharks equipped with lazer beams and trust me no-one is getting in.

No-one is getting in.