Darkline
The first full day of Fall. I shouldn't be here. A small and hopefully short illness had kept me from working a gig this week in California. Instead, I find myself outside, in the dark pre-dawn of Georgia, displacing the humidity with a body recently resurrected from yet another virus. I wonder if there's a me-shaped void roaming the west coast to balance out the extra me-shaped mass that's walking these streets. Minuscule mounds of sweat swell up from under the skin of my brow. Why am I wearing a jacket? When did I put this thing on? I’m half-awake but not half-asleep. Sleep is the last thing my body will allow, even though I should be exhausted. My body should be dragging. My bed should be the soil that sprouts some hopeful shoots toward the sun. But the hardened futon is more of a coffin that leaps as soon as the lid is latched. I’m lifted out. Exhumed to resume a continuous existence. Not even an hour had passed buried beneath my subconscious. Shouldn't I be exhausted? Overturning a minor flu takes unknowable energy. Why am I even more animated now? I'm pulled by some preternatural gravity toward a darker, hotter room. A place for pushing and expansion. A yogic practice that offers limits and insight. The rites are a blur. The air is a cloud. There are unfamiliar faces and mirrored movements. There are puddles beneath each body, an amoebic testament to effort, now separate from our form and former selves. Effort that could be measured in milliliters. Given another hour, each puddle would stretch out themselves until they reached each other and breached open and redefined the floor from a surface to a new bottom plane. Submerged. A layer that, after the final corpse pose, would be buried by bodies and sunken in sweat. I’m weaker than I assumed but stronger than I began. Time extends beyond the room. If there’s an end to the practice, it’s marked by contact from another, from the instructor. She relieves the fire in my feet with frozen cloths infused with lemongrass and eucalyptus. The foldable sheets of ice extinguish the heels that simmered, the arches of embers, and joints of heat. More and more often, the guides finish each practice with some form of contact--specifically on me--something I haven't experienced until recently but still appreciate. Half a dozen instructors have brought their hands to my temples, neck, and shoulders, others douse my feet with these cold, oil-infused cloths. Maybe the guides provide this for those who need the most help, and the most hope. Maybe it means something more. Maybe it means nothing at all. The instructor this morning brings us back to the theme, that “All difficult things have their origins in that which is easy. All great things have their origins in that which is small…” and the words hum along with the string of events over the past eighteen months that brought me to this place in the first place; how a sudden and severe weakness from an injury had carved out a space for growth. There's a blur. I’m back on the streets, my inadvertent and unintentional and superfluous jacket clutched in my hand. I’m back inside the open cell before the sun rises. I’m back outside again… and still the sun hasn’t risen. This will be quite a day if it ever begins. There had been enough pre-dawn time inside to stand at my terminal and order a blood-pressure cuff. If I’m being honest with myself, this is merely an unwarranted purchase to fuel an obsession with health metrics. If I’m being poetic, it’s merely to prove I have a pulse; some form of propulsion beneath the skin. Also on the order: a matt to roll out for every following hot seance. It's the color of grass. A purchase that only gains meaning when, moments later upon entering the nearby park, I shamble past actual earthen mats meant to bury unsightly soil. A more immediate observation disperses that rumination: there's finally a break into daytime. Sunshine corrupts the clouds. I pass dozens of students from the nearby high school on a hill gathered for a sunrise picnic. I’m impressed with those who showed up. If this had been offered during my own teenage years, I wouldn't even consider attending, not because of the early morning somnabulations but because of the dreaded notion of socializing. But these kids are not my former self. They are joyful and energetic, excited by the extracurricular start to the day. Most wear pajamas and robes and… inflatable floaties on their arms. It's not that I'm unsure that I see them wearing inflatable floaties--that's pretty clear and unmistakable--I'm only unsure about the context. What does it mean to wear inflatable arm-floaties on the land? During a sunrise? Just as my mind exists outside the meaning of their accessories, my feet take me around the perimeter of the meadow. It's a walk long enough to erase any trace of transitions. It's undeniably daytime. Fully sunlit. Fully humid. I'm fully out of place as a creature of darkness, illuminated within a brilliant arena known as daylight. Upon circling back to the beginning of the meadow perimeter path, the teenagers have all dispersed to their respective destinations and classrooms. Some parents remained, taking down the tables they’d set up to offer fruits and drinks to the students. In a gesture that would’ve horrified my reclusive teenage self, I approach the strangers and say, “Hi.” If that's not enough to frighten my former youth, I ask, “Would y’all like some help?” One mother ignores me. Another continues walking away. Another clutches the neck of her hoodie and quickly says, “No. We’re fine," as if I were still in the morning's corpse pose but moving upright. Undead pose. I return to the open cell apartment. There, perched on a stool at the standingdesk, I place a bag of frozen cherries upon my lower back to ease the ache of my psoas muscles. Shortly thereafter, after thawing, the stone fruit builds a bridge across the void within my emptied stomach. My reveries are dispelled. A message received from my younger brother. It rests on the surface of my attention and sounds like someone knocking on the wall of a mausoleum, or a bell ringing from an adjoining though distant field. I can't respond, not yet. The need for expression can no longer remain under the realm of the unearthed. I have to write. Even typing on a keyboard is imbued with meaning. To press my fingers upon a valley of tiny-lettered gravestones. I mourn the decay of my skills, the extensions of my corpus. Where once I imagined possessing creative flourishes of life there are only now rattling hollowed bones of alliteration. Strings of sentences to torture the tongue into twists, twirls, and abrupt hisses within imagined sepulchral mouths. Outside, the sun has surpassed the segmented sky. A demarcation toward darkness. There's no going back. This is when I told myself to run to the lake and escape the ruts of a past timeline, but I suppress what I'm supposed to pursue. Instead, it's another day like all the others: yogic seance, a walk, a round of reaching and stretching, a ride along a concrete path, an enervated jangle (occasionally known as a "run"), another walk, hours on a stationary bike. This is more than I do in days. This is an excessive amount of energy expelled onto the city's surfaces. When I should be immersed in the chorus of forests and birdsong, my ears instead ring from the cacophony of wired headphones. In recuperation, I place a bag of frozen riced cauliflower on my problematic knee. I think of the bag of frozen cherries from this morning to ease the tension of my lower back. Twice makes a trend. I could grow accustomed to edible ice packs. I respond to the texts of my little brother, my own knock from inside a sepulchre, too late to be released. I read the weather report. A tropical storm--if not a hurricane--is anticipated during the exact time I'm supposed to rendezvous with my crew and resume the regular Chicago gig. A crack forms on my face. Not so much a demon grin. More like the smirk of a little-stinker. One who shares in the prank of nature. This could be interesting. There's no glee in the promise of destruction but in the disruption of the normal, the every day, the expected, and the known. For the first time in months, I pour out a snifter's worth of rum. This could be interesting. It's my own form of disruption. A draught of dysregulation. I've been so measured and practiced for so long. Months, now. I've been living the highfiberlowcarbhighproteinlowcaloicintakehighcaloricoutputprebioticprobioticpostbioticpastpresentfutureomnibioticmeditativeyogiccalisthenicstrengthtrainingincreasedcardiohandwrittenjournaled daily logged life down to the gram, fluid ounce, minute, hour, date, and day. Any goddamn form of deviation elicits elation. A coffin jump where this horse lands in a ditch. All the better if that deep ditch is filled with water, sweat, effluvium, those drams of dysregulation and disruption, or any other disreputable fluid. No inflatable floaties for me, please. Nothing that decreases the sheer joy of surfacing from a cesspool, breaking free from hardened tension, and pushing against the tenacious gravity of an uphill path. I continue to type. To tap the tops of cenotaphs and tombs. It's a messy mass of organs and stutters. Rounded, unrecognizable, and incoherent reconstitutions of corporeal constructions. An entry of entangled entendres and tattered entrails. All this textual gesticulation and theatrics is a mere show. one to force former selves into prying my fingers off the casket displaying the carrion of an Ideal Persona. Today is a resurrection. The reinvigoration of the corpse of the Not-So-Ideal Persona. A frame that jangles and shambles and sweats with familiarity. Each drink drudges up last year's deceased routines from where they decomposed under soil rolls of painkillers and pain, doubt and abandon, isolation and blurring darkness. It's been so long, any stumble might trigger a perpetual fall. Just one day's indulgence with the corpse might erase all that's been gained by shedding dead weight and building signs of skeletal success. As the resurrection continues into nightfall, I find myself laughing more than before. The mind moving faster and farther the longer I sit. The reestablished essence that gleefully bumps upon the top of the earth, as much as a spirit of dispossession can strive to signify. Is this not the first day when darkness falls faster and more fully? Now, on the other side of nighttime, when this morning's lessons are mirrored and blurred and dessicated. Everything is dimmer in this reflected existence, diminished and similar enough to make opposites obvious. In contrast to the morning, I'm alone in a cold room. A guileful guideless voice asks, What was lost within that which was gained? What great omission has been carved through small sutures? What easiness now brings about difficulty?
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Aesop Rock - Jumping Coffin
[Listen on bandcamp]
Aesop Rock - Jumping Coffin
I'm a slow burn, crawl around the road work
Something from the other side, clawing at the known world
Cough up all your cookies with the autumn air incarnate
He all-city by the time your eyes adjusted to the darkness
In parts uncharted, always find the corners cozy
You can send your fastest riders, I return the horses lonely
Controller, the locals only note the lucky charms and army jacket
When your addy's in the heart of 'thar be dragons,' I know
No solicitors, waves away his visitors
From ten minutes in front of a tainted energy signature
Still bullseyeing womp-rats from the scenic route
Sugar in his coffee like a seance in the TV room
The cheek swab came back half-amazing
Half of what he make end up on his lab apron
If quieter than most, I'm mostly mastering the science of
Keeping one's composure while the limbic system's lighting up
Some try to combat any kind of odd force tryna make contact, nah
Let it in, let it in
Some try to stonewall any kind of woo-woo tryna make a phone call, nah
Let it in, let it in
Let it in, let it in (what's that?)
Ring around the revenant, let it in
Said he wasn't ready yet, he never left the etch-a-sketch
Stuck around for more than just a parlor trick or flickering fluorescents
Had a couple still to visit with a million pressing questions
Like, "Where you the night of?"
"What are you traversing Earth in spite of?"
"How are you adjusting to the triumph?"
I'm asking for a friend who caught a loss and never surfaced
Simply curled up in his cubby, shutting down the central nervous
Look, float up into urgent care, a checkerboard of blurry squares
Flowers in the lobby shrivel back into the earthenware
Humans in the lobby holding crosses up
I understand the caution but
Some of you just wanna see the coffin jump
Until the coffin jump, then it's what I call a punk
Didn't even get to where he coughing blood and talk in tongues
Not to mention, once you hassle the hoard
It doesn't matter how much furniture you stack at the door
Some try to combat any kind of odd force tryna make contact, nah
Let it in, let it in
Some try to stonewall any kind of woo-woo tryna make a phone call, nah
Let it in, let it in
Let it in, let it in (what's that?)
Hand-drawn map cross over, cross back
Calling from the flight deck, I collect dog tags
Tall grass, asphalt, or salt flat
It's all jazz like an alphabet to Saul Bass
Bratty to the basic anatomy of a death stare
Passing through the old Manhattan, ectoplasm everywhere
Pack a second teddy bear, I'm headed for the panic
Take a second for some bacon, take his head off when in transit
I don't coexist, I don't exist
Even J.C. miss him with the loaves and fish
You feel dementia getting closer like the devil getting over
Now his antennas are roaming for radio terra nova
Going, "Ksh, ksh, sir, I think we've got a signal
It's fuzzy, but they're playing one that wasn't from the hymnal"
I'm a faint scent of sulfur, I'm the source of the ooze
I'm security tape of a glowing orb in a room, 'sup?
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