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werewolf
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"I used to want to tear down the cubicles like Jesus in the temple with the moneylenders. It was part of a broader tendency I had of imaginging" he slurred his words on purpose like a drunk even though he was sober, because he really didn't like the solid dependable format of communication he had left behind. he looked up at Johnny from the street below. "your mother is still asleep?" johnny nodded. "well it was part of a larger tendency i had of imagining doing inappropriate things - like dumping a dinner plate on some rich stranger's head at a fancy restaurant for instance. they'd cry - I need those files as i overturned computers - stapled documents in random order to other random documents - and faxed photocopies of my ass to the companies we were courting. So I had to quit. needless to say your mother wasn't very happy about this." johnny whispered down. "i don't know if my mother is very happy, period" "oh she seems fine with your uncle" "yeah i guess" "well anyways, so i started to look at life and stop asking what i was good at and instead what i should do. i mean a lot of us would be good murderers or torturers but should we be? and the new thoughts were like this...well they were difficult and frustrating because it was a lonely part of my brain not often used, a path not tread often or never tread or...it was just this sitting fading background. we become who we work as and live as because the rest is pruned, panned. and that's sad if your daily routine doesn't require much happiness or love or passion. when something was ugly these thoughts were like hacking through a jungle to clearings. it was suddenly ugly often. i looked at my house, my marriage, and it was all kind of ugly. the good in it had long been eclipsed by the bad. and it's not that there was no good in it. it's just that... well with these new thoughts, on the bright side were also suddenly beautiful often. i'd sometimes retravel some path that was barely nostalgic - like cutting a path in that jungle and finding a trace of a former me's inhabitance - a message of previous wisdom desperately sent in case there were blinder times. I'd remember thinking a cloud looked like a bulbous clown nose before when i was a child sometimes when i'd stop to look at clouds. You can learn a lot by remembering what you wanted as a child. some primary needs occur to us early and need little adjusting. you add details of course- but- for instance we need love and it's so primary, that to ignore it as something to grow out of or as childish just because it occured to us then or wasn't a complete understanding, would be foolhardy. So too do certain strategies for reaching for this love occur to us as children and occur to us rightly. maybe we do all know what and who we want to be but are taught to doubt it." johnny had been only half listening. the rest of him was looking down at his dad, who had worn power suits half of his life, in his tight jeans, light blue, fading, smeared with dirt. it seemed that no matter what clothes you started in, you ended up in homeless clothes. it almost seemed that the very rich and the very poor were incapable of style, they were simply limited by the expectations had of them. "for my part as a child, i used to think that in heaven everything we ever did or even thought or just experienced would be recorded and shown to everyone else. and finally all of the jokes with elaborate setups no one else could understand, and all of the solitary moments of beauty would be understood and you'd be vindicated" his father continued "i wanted to win fights, write epics, love and go on and on, reach a conclusion - in other words - be a hero. And living now - looking to spirituality - I do feel heroic." Johnny felt a turning in his stomach suddenly when he mentioned heroes, when he mentioned the desire to be seen, understood, forgiven. This turning in his stomach felt like he had drank tears a long time ago and just now could no longer hold them down - a strong and intoxicating drug - and it was true, his father was both heroic and saddening to him. it was like you had made a hero of some famous theif or scoundrel lover or pirate - and yet here they now pointed the gun on you, or had uncomplicated your own wife's heart and body, seized control of your ship. He was stuck between admiration and his desire to keep his everyday emotions which he had earned, kept moderate enough, day in and day out. Those emotions which were worthwhile enough for peope to toil day in and day out for mere moments of, fixes of, piecemeal approximations of intensity into total everything unity. and suddenly those emotions seemed overshadowed by a lust for forgetful life, as if he could join robin hood and his band of brothers.
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040511
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