proud flesh

Dear K-

I don’t know where the days go. Each afternoon I find myself in a similar position, slumped over a paper-littered desk trying to stuff my head with facts and figures while the sun slinks below the horizon and I am left in the twilight straining my eyes. Usually I am too preoccupied for a half hour or so before I realize I can turn on a light. Up until that point there are no thoughts except bcl-4 and p53, p21, C3a and C3b, and of course TNF and IL-1. Alphabet soup. My mental processes are being reduced to alphabet soup.

I look up and suddenly it is Thursday. How did I get here? It is necessary for my success, but I feel guilty for blending my days into a muddy grey haze. Four years from now, will I be able to look back and remember anything meaningful from this period of my life?

Living in the city is a different way of life. So many things I overlook every day but which truly are a contrast to with what I was raised. I look out my window and see the brick face of another building stoically glaring back at me. The sounds of car alarms and bellowing buses reverberate through my dreams. It’s not unusual to see not a single familiar face when I run around my neighborhood in the early evening.

But what about when I was young? I remember the fields, out on Tower road. Expanses of corn and beans and plots of tall, untended grazing fields, all shimmering in the sunlight and smelling like earth. That thick, sickly sweet smell of agriculture that feels heavy in your lungs. I used to know every bump and divot of that battered asphalt network of roads out there, knowing when to swerve to avoid a pothole or when I could coast at my leisure without fear of encountering another living soul. I used to drive it late at night, when I was sneaking back from the Harris household. Bubbling with emotions from the night, from stolen kisses or frustrating defeats, I’d let the slow winking red radio towers guide me home. Whether they were slyly winking in acknowledgement of our new evening secret or they were wincing in pitying consolation was always in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps, in retrospect, they were always doing a little bit of each.

But I cannot convey to anyone how much those roads mean to me. That’s a part of my life I can never return to, never relive. Of course this is not a new thought, not for me or for anyone. The fragility of time and the inability to hit rewind is nothing that hasn’t been lamented by many long, long before my time. But it doesn’t stop me from thinking about those roads. Doesn’t stop me from remembering driving with my windows down and listening to Modest Mouse while heading to the lake to take some photographs with a friend. Doesn’t stop me from remembering how the fields in winter were completely white, unblemished by trees or tracks, shadows or debris. Simply a horizontal band of white separating me from the grey expanse of the sky above.

But I can’t explain that to anyone. I can’t explain the things that mean the most to me, the things which I will never have again.

Returning to my studies,
-K

It's time to sing a silly little love song to the moon

Dear K,

I'm out in the courtyard under the sky, and the trees are shedding their summer coats, slimming down for winter.

You know I never really loved you. I only ever loved the ideas you gave me. That's no excuse for the way I act though. This letter isn't really for you or me, this letter isn't between us.

I'm sorry none of this is making sense, it must be the whiskey and the cigarettes, my two favorite poisons. The words keep coming though, somewhere my fingertips hit the keyboard. It is an abusive relationship. Just like the one I have with myself.

But this isn't about me or you. I wanted to talk about the moon, and why she doesn't love me anymore. I went there once, back in my late sixties, and I haven't left since.

Parts of me are still up there frozen in grey dust, thumping slowly across the craters. But she doesn't love me, she never really loved me, she just pulled me in when she was reaching for the ocean. But she's still got my heart and it is the only one I'll ever have and I gave it to the moon. I'm already old at twenty-five. I make my parents sit on my knee and I tell them how to live their lives.

I wish I was up there right now. Flying around, not giving a fuck about what Frank Sinatra says.

Fuck those old blue eyes.

K