I grow old, I grow old - I shall wear my trousers rolled. (23/27)
I'm twenty-three laying in bed smoking a very thin, tightly rolled joint and listening to Buddy Holly. It's after noon, but not much, and the light coming in from the window is thick and warm and falls across my chest and thighs like a blanket.
My mind is thin and tumbling with images of horn rimmed glasses, ex girlfriends and ex drug dealers. They're very much alike I think. It's all commerce of one form or another, and I'd be just as likely to call one or another for a night out.
I live in Detroit, a very poor, very violent part of Detroit. I like it here. I like being the only white person. I like the way my hands shake when I'm checking out at the grocery store and I know there are pairs and pairs of eyes on my back and sides, curious and resentful. I like the walk back, the hostile stares, sidelong glances eyeing up my short stature and bags laden with canned ravioli, soda cans and corn.
I like my neighbors who come over and bum cigarettes at two in the morning, and the way they smile when they realize it's menthol. I like Rosa, and her office stacked to the ceiling with ledgers of curling yellow paper and church pamphlets. I make sure to send her poinsettias every Christmas. She likes me because I pay my rent on time and says I look sharp in my pea coat.
I think about killing myself often. There's an old building next to mine, twenty stories tall and boarded up. I will learn much later in my life that it was where black performers would stay during the thirties and forties since they were not allowed downtown. The history is thick around me, but I am twenty three and self absorbed and do not see it. I drunkenly stumble home past Motown Records often, and never realize the significance of the place. I just think it looks funny with it's white walls and gaudy blue trim.
I don't know why I think about dying, or why one fall afternoon I'm hanging off of the side of that tall building next door. My fingers hold my weight easily, they are short and thick, strong fingers. I flex them, my chest and thighs pressed against the slant of the roof, my feet hundreds of feet above overgrown lot, long abandoned and uncared for. I am dirty and tired from prying open boarded windows and ascending ruined stairways. I think about the fall, and the sliding first, like when I was a kid. I wonder when the last time I enjoyed a slide was.
I pull myself up and sit on the edge, I can see Canada. It's getting dim, orange and sickly red and the wind is much colder than on the ground. I sit there and smoke opium from a pop-can pipe and it is dense and sweet and feels like pretentiousness as it curls from my nostrils and around the collar of my sharp pea coat. The city is ugly, and I am beautiful -a gorgeous stone grotesque just waiting to topple.
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I never thought about my youth until it had passed me by. Much in the same way you never think about air until your choking. Watching some anonymous fashion design reality show with my mother, I noticed most of the contestants were younger than me. As a child I always measured the distance in my age and others by how much older they were than I, now it seems I'm counting backwards. These eighteen and twenty year olds on television, not betraying a shred of the ignorance or ponderousness I felt at that age; they were entirely alien to me. They've done things too, seen things. I'd always think, well of course, they're older than me of course they have. But now they're not, and I see what an empty thought that really was. I've seen plenty, been through more and had life experiences far beyond what most people are lucky enough to have; but it still rings hollow. I want more. I'm thirsty or hungry or not empty but nowhere near full and I need substance before I wear thin. It's not enough, never enough. I want eighteen back, twenty-three and thirteen yet I seem to waste most days. I want my youth back, to squeeze in more walks, more travel, more nights spent drinking sangria and listening to old mexican men play spanish versions of Dylan songs.
The tragedy of age is that most of us do not possess the grace of wisdom and youth side by side.
And what of death? I see it in my mothers veiny legs. The scar running scalpel straight down my fathers chest. I see it in the puppy largeness of my son's feet and the years of remembrance anchored and fully docked in his eyes. I see it in the blur of years, the way they pass more like months should. Where once the half an hour wait until cartoons came on after school was a small eternity, dinner plans for next week feels rushed, and plans for next year perfectly reasonable. I slow down, yet time moves faster around me. I am a weighty rock slowly tumbling in a swift stream. Eroding, chipped and polished by the loss of my rough and uneven youth. Perhaps wisdom is not something gained, but rather what remains when the unexperienced spurs and ignorant crags of youth are worn away. And so we are lessened, smoothed and polished until all that remains are the dissipate pieces of what we were; memories, possessions, ashes to be sorted and divided by those stones still tumbling in the stream, still living. Death is a simple thing, and I do not fear it, but it is like a wolf in the woods, on your trail the moment you entered but unknown until it's howl is heard.
Twenty-seven is not the year I heard the wolf call in the night, it was when I realized it was calling for me.
From: milosales.blogspot.com
My mind is thin and tumbling with images of horn rimmed glasses, ex girlfriends and ex drug dealers. They're very much alike I think. It's all commerce of one form or another, and I'd be just as likely to call one or another for a night out.
I live in Detroit, a very poor, very violent part of Detroit. I like it here. I like being the only white person. I like the way my hands shake when I'm checking out at the grocery store and I know there are pairs and pairs of eyes on my back and sides, curious and resentful. I like the walk back, the hostile stares, sidelong glances eyeing up my short stature and bags laden with canned ravioli, soda cans and corn.
I like my neighbors who come over and bum cigarettes at two in the morning, and the way they smile when they realize it's menthol. I like Rosa, and her office stacked to the ceiling with ledgers of curling yellow paper and church pamphlets. I make sure to send her poinsettias every Christmas. She likes me because I pay my rent on time and says I look sharp in my pea coat.
I think about killing myself often. There's an old building next to mine, twenty stories tall and boarded up. I will learn much later in my life that it was where black performers would stay during the thirties and forties since they were not allowed downtown. The history is thick around me, but I am twenty three and self absorbed and do not see it. I drunkenly stumble home past Motown Records often, and never realize the significance of the place. I just think it looks funny with it's white walls and gaudy blue trim.
I don't know why I think about dying, or why one fall afternoon I'm hanging off of the side of that tall building next door. My fingers hold my weight easily, they are short and thick, strong fingers. I flex them, my chest and thighs pressed against the slant of the roof, my feet hundreds of feet above overgrown lot, long abandoned and uncared for. I am dirty and tired from prying open boarded windows and ascending ruined stairways. I think about the fall, and the sliding first, like when I was a kid. I wonder when the last time I enjoyed a slide was.
I pull myself up and sit on the edge, I can see Canada. It's getting dim, orange and sickly red and the wind is much colder than on the ground. I sit there and smoke opium from a pop-can pipe and it is dense and sweet and feels like pretentiousness as it curls from my nostrils and around the collar of my sharp pea coat. The city is ugly, and I am beautiful -a gorgeous stone grotesque just waiting to topple.
------------------
I never thought about my youth until it had passed me by. Much in the same way you never think about air until your choking. Watching some anonymous fashion design reality show with my mother, I noticed most of the contestants were younger than me. As a child I always measured the distance in my age and others by how much older they were than I, now it seems I'm counting backwards. These eighteen and twenty year olds on television, not betraying a shred of the ignorance or ponderousness I felt at that age; they were entirely alien to me. They've done things too, seen things. I'd always think, well of course, they're older than me of course they have. But now they're not, and I see what an empty thought that really was. I've seen plenty, been through more and had life experiences far beyond what most people are lucky enough to have; but it still rings hollow. I want more. I'm thirsty or hungry or not empty but nowhere near full and I need substance before I wear thin. It's not enough, never enough. I want eighteen back, twenty-three and thirteen yet I seem to waste most days. I want my youth back, to squeeze in more walks, more travel, more nights spent drinking sangria and listening to old mexican men play spanish versions of Dylan songs.
The tragedy of age is that most of us do not possess the grace of wisdom and youth side by side.
And what of death? I see it in my mothers veiny legs. The scar running scalpel straight down my fathers chest. I see it in the puppy largeness of my son's feet and the years of remembrance anchored and fully docked in his eyes. I see it in the blur of years, the way they pass more like months should. Where once the half an hour wait until cartoons came on after school was a small eternity, dinner plans for next week feels rushed, and plans for next year perfectly reasonable. I slow down, yet time moves faster around me. I am a weighty rock slowly tumbling in a swift stream. Eroding, chipped and polished by the loss of my rough and uneven youth. Perhaps wisdom is not something gained, but rather what remains when the unexperienced spurs and ignorant crags of youth are worn away. And so we are lessened, smoothed and polished until all that remains are the dissipate pieces of what we were; memories, possessions, ashes to be sorted and divided by those stones still tumbling in the stream, still living. Death is a simple thing, and I do not fear it, but it is like a wolf in the woods, on your trail the moment you entered but unknown until it's howl is heard.
Twenty-seven is not the year I heard the wolf call in the night, it was when I realized it was calling for me.
From: milosales.blogspot.com