No Place To Fall.

This day had passed by gently and I was lost, scattered inside a silent, shapeless reverie. The shocking suddenness of the season, a sharp shift into a summery spring. I had been searching for some patron saint, some living literary figure whom I could look up to. It was only so recently that I was told that was what I needed. I was told, "You deserve someone to whom you can look up, someone who cares about literature." And I laughed because I thought it impossible. But, perhaps that is not true.

The heat had suddenly descended upon the city. I woke up this morning in a thin sheath of sweat. I rolled around sleeplessly in my damp sheets. The fan blew brazenly at my body. And all the while I had been writhing beneath some unknown thing, beneath many unsaid things, beneath the sounds of my own silence. I am always wondering if all of this is scribble and nothing else, if I can find some breadth of meaning inside this waning youth of mine.

I am always sinking into some selfish dissatisfaction and I wonder if I had some goal in mind- if perhaps then I would feel useful or even moderately moving toward something. I remember all those years I spent training myself to think in words, training myself to see what I was looking at and to immediately, inherently spell it out in words, in articulate words inside my head. And I have found myself now, seated alone in a smoky bar scribbling things only to see them as they appear in black ink before my eyes. And I am watching the door and waiting for some uncertainty which I already view as a brightly glowing possibility. Is it because I have so rarely, perhaps never, met someone so full of words, so calm and quiet and full of knowledge of literature and what it means and what it is?

And I spent the day trying to press something literary out onto the page only to sit and scoff at myself, only to chew thoughtlessly at my fingers and produce nothing. Even after a whole day of trying, of bouncing back and forth between attempts and the lack thereof, I still ended up only speaking of myself. But, perhaps that is better than nothing. Perhaps, that at least articulates my own thoughts to myself. I am too mutable. I am too liquidy. I am caught up in all the things that I feel and I follow them off into distances and beyond the farthest limits of my own understanding.

I fell asleep this afternoon beneath billowy, beautiful clouds. I felt the wind blow breezily on my bare back. I felt the grass soft on my face and I heard the dogs barking and playing right beyond my half-asleep consciousness. I dreamed of the sky, of the birds which flew through it. I dreamed of light, spring-time dreams: the trees budding, the pollen flying, people peeking out open windows and laughing.

And then I sat in a dark, smoky bar and I listened and spoke. It was strange to speak to someone who knows more than I do about literature. It was very strange indeed. And I was my normal self, opinionated and absurd but I understood an inherent point in things I used to scoff at. I listened long enough to understand because the person speaking was not emotional and ridiculous and I saw someone else's point, a point which I don't wholly agree with but I was able to understand several things all at once. And, usually, I do not do that. I can only see one perspective or another. So it was strange but pleasant to understand something shades of grey. Even if I didn't admit to it at the time.


I am caught between too many understandings. I am drawn to too many things at once. I really don't care to do much about it but behave as I naturally would. I am only fearing feeling some whole, full-on guilt. But, I suppose that doesn't really happen. I will very soon write another Fernando letter. And it will be full of many things that I have been meaning to say but have only been wavering on the brink of everything I don't know. Ah, to know. It is a life-long effort. One I will never grow tired of.

Scattered Showers and Streaming Sunlight.

My dreams drifted lightly by as I dozed off into a soft sleep. The sky had just finished darkening and I awoke a few minutes later to the suddenly set sun. The day built bright around me and the rain fell erratically onto my head. Through scattered showers I walked, the sun streaming down in blinding little lines between big buildings. The wind was harsh and fierce and it blew the light rain against my face with a sting. All day I have been silent, mostly so, standing back and watching myself as I moved forward, through something and toward very little.

My nap was short and I was awoken rather harshly by an improperly formatted version of 'I Offered It Up To The Stars and the Night Sky'. Warren's violin shrieked in my ear and I jolted up from my spot on the sofa, searching frantically for the laptop. I fell asleep mid-sentence halfway through The Artificial Nigger by Flannery O'Connor and I think I half-dreamt the ending, the grandson's frightened eyes, the repeated buildings, the lawn-jockey. I think I remember it right but it's vague. I haven't read it in some time.

The night has now fully descended on the city. I know that most of what I will do today I have already done and I wonder if that is enough. I've updated afrailandslenderlie.blogspot.com and added photographs to the posts. I've walked around a bit and read the city paper, had an espresso and some lamb. I've stood on my roof and photographed the sun setting through the trees, bright behind the clouds. I've walked in the rain and stood in the sunshine and sat in a small cafe. I've written rather little but it feels like a lot.

The warmth is imminent now. I know it will come and I hope it will come soon. It is much easier to be fit and healthy when the weather is warm. I want to eat steak tartar all summer long. And sushi and salads. I want to sit outside of Grand Cru and sip Rose and eat smoked salmon. I remember those short summer breaks between shifts. They were always so nicely illuminated by a sparkling wine and a matching smoked salmon. But, I dreaded work more than ever because the sun shone through the windows and I wanted nothing more than to be outside. In the winter the fire is raging in the fireplace and there are few places I'd rather be than darting in and out of marble tables, listening to the bubbling din of the bistro buzz.

Tomorrow is Friday the Thirteenth. I wonder if anything strange will happen.

A Fernando Letter- Babbling Blurs.

Catherine,

I think of all the people that I've been; I think of the child that I once was. And I cringe to consider all the things that went unrecorded because of insecurities and hang-ups. Perhaps if I had written some of the things down that I felt as a child I would be able to read them now and know myself better.

I was always afraid to write, afraid to see so plainly infront of my own eyes what I was, what I thought. So, I buried myself in books and wrote about the characters I knew. I understood them because I could empathize.

The distant past sits in my memory as something I only pull out in parts and I twist it to highlight whatever point I seem to be making at the time. I let it simmer; I let it boil away, unused and barely touched. Only the recent past lives in my full view and all the rest is history. I try to attach it to recent experience. But, I fear that the older I get the less I remember being young. Things that were once full-blown, life-changing, emotonal episodes are now only distant, dimly-lit stories and what was once real life is now left, lost to anecdote, to the simple telling of a tale.

It is the people, though. It is the people who live inside me, who peer out from behind my eyes, people whom I haven't seen in years materialize in my daily visions and I cannot let them go. I cannot help but wonder and I cannot stop wondering. I often become so caught up in the people who peer out at me from the corners of my peripheral vision that I am distracted and the people infront of me become babbling blurs.

I wonder if this is a common thing, if many people face these same heartaches, these same problems with memory. I imagine they do and yet it makes me feel no better. I already understand that I am human. It changes nothing.

Unchanged and Unwilling,
Fernando