in·​ter·​view: gray/blue

I lose track of the number of people who have told me at one point or another that they 'just have so much going on in their head.' Don't we all have so much going on in our heads?

Do you?

Of course I fucking do - if I didn't, I'm part of the problem, aren't I?

Would that mean then, that everyone who's part of the problem doesn't have 'so much going on in their head'? That the empty-headed people are the problem?

It's not an emptiness--

Sorry, would 'calm-headed' be better?

I guess calm-headed. Ok. I don't know if I can conflate them, but there's so much going on to think about, people can't just… there's something there, yea.

…

I punched myself in the stomach just before this.

Why'd you do that?

I feel like a wuss too, because I didn't even really do it - I flexed my core so it wouldn't hurt. My knuckles just rammed up against my abs. Then I punched my hips and my legs, like I was waking them up with a series of harsh knocks on the door. My friend did that once.

Punched you, or woke you up by knocking?

By knocking. At the time I wished he hadn't - I was caught off-guard by the disparity of our perceived closeness.

Follow that thought

I think it was a really physical symbol of him feeling closer to me, feeling comfortable enough to wake me up at my own apartment unannounced, than I felt to him. Than I feel to him, I guess.

And has that changed? You mentioned 'at the time' you wished he hadn't.

I wish he hadn't. I wish it had grown on me, become something precious to look back on, but it's only become a pinball flipper that like, plings me right back into my head and thwacks me against the wall and gives my neck this lateral whiplash. I can feel it in my neck, it hurts.

Where is it plinging you to?

To the person whose memory feels like a graveyard. And death is there, and I don't know if he's me or he's looming beside me, but he isn't there, but he's everywhere there. And maybe he's the fog just above the ground, only moving as I step through it. So once I realize that, I don't step any further, so as not to disrupt it, but then I'm stuck standing in a graveyard and I can feel death breathing, not on me, just breathing his gray, washboard breath, and I'm asking (from behind myself) WHY did you bring yourself here again, Ryan? Why are you touching back on this?

And it's because now I'm him, and I have to see what it feels like - I have to ask the mist, 'are you still mist? what did it feel like to vaporize? I see you as this, but are you something else, somewhere else? Have you taken another form in another place, in another field with a beautiful big gate?'

Because I don't want to vaporize, I'm so scared.

What are you scared of?

Vaporizing! Listen! I do this to people, and then others do it to me, and no one is doing anything malicious but everyone's doing it wrong, because no one teaches you how to dream with other people. No one taught me that nighttime is gray but so is the daytime, and so is kissing and so is holding eye contact and so is saying goodnight and holding the door and not talking and talking and talking and not talking and asking about your family and asking if you want help moving, it's all gray, and I wish it were all blue.

Why blue? Is there anything that's blue?

Your fucking mom!

…

Sorry. My family is blue. And I guess the bus is blue, even when it's late. And when I fold my laundry that's ok too. But I'm still scared.

I think we're all scared.

Don't patronize me. Or like, don't… I don't know - everyone being scared doesn't help with anything except the perceived isolation of being a scaredy cat, but I’m not scared of being scared, I'm scared of the things I'm scared of.

Which are?

Doing it all wrong, not learning my lessons and wasting my time. I'm spending time talking to you right now, is that what I'm supposed to do?

Supposed to do?

SHUT up about supposed to, I know there's no 'supposed to' but there is, isn't there? There IS a supposed to, because we have greats and we have losers, and I saw a loser at the bar last night and my boss said, 'little men like that are so fun to play with' and I thought, 'but who loves them?'

When I'd arrived that night he grabbed my back and pulled me into a cheek-kissy hug, and later when I stepped aside from the group he asked, 'are you texting your booty call?' and I thought 'who loved you so poorly or loosely that you have become this way?'

At least 4 people told him to leave. He'll probably be fired soon.

Why are you telling me this?

This is probably so boring to you, sorry. People who don't matter to other people break my heart.

…

And… and I wish my brain didn't ask 'mattering' to look so affectionate.

…

And my body will always be my body, but it won't always look like this. I'm just feeling really temporary, because I'm seeing a lot of directions life can take but also how quickly life can stop moving for good.

Mmm…

I'm hearing you.

Is that our time?

That's our time for today.

mad·​i·​son

This was written exactly a year ago.

I have no idea what it’s about.

Enjoy my art

while I step back behind the twigs

Where I don’t feel anything good

Close your mouth and breathe more

Inhaling strands of brown and tan and white

Marking up your insides with uncertainty

To be high over and over again

Is every minute lost or prolonged

Are we tricking time or wasting it

Did I grow bangs to recede?

Am I walking a full loop around school

Because I turned in the wrong direction

And couldn’t bear to turn around?

an·​oth·​er coun·​try

excerpts from the tragic & rough-edged book that inspired reckless:

It’s not possible to forget anybody you’ve destroyed.

51

Vivaldo said, "Maybe you should stay here, Rufus, for a couple of days, until you decide what you want to do."

"I don't want to bug you, Vivaldo."

Vivaldo picked up Rufus' empty glass and paused in the archway which led into his kitchen. "You can lie here in the mornings and look at my ceiling. It's full of cracks, it makes all kinds of pictures. Maybe it'll tell you things it hasn't told me. I'll fix us another drink."

52

He remembered to what excesses, into what traps and nightmares, his loneliness had driven him; and he wondered where such a violent emptiness might drive an entire city.

60

"When you're older you'll see, I think, that we all commit our crimes. The thing is not to lie about them-to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it." She leaned closer to him, her brown eyes popping and her blonde hair, in the heat, in the gloom, forming a damp fringe about her brow. "That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That's very important. If you don't forgive yourself you'll never be able to forgive anybody else and you'll go on committing the same crimes forever."

79

"You'll be kissing a long time, my friend, before you kiss any of this away."

114

“I tell you something else, don't none of you forget it: I know a lot of people done took their own lives and they're walking up and down the streets today and some of them is preaching the gospel and some is sitting in the seats of the mighty. Now, you remember that. If the world wasn't so full of dead folks maybe those of us that's trying to live wouldn't have to suffer so bad."

121

Strangers' faces hold no secrets because the imagination does not invest them with any. But the face of a lover is an unknown precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

172

It was so familiar and so public that it became, at last, the most despairingly private of cities. One was continually being jostled, yet longed, at the same time, for the sense of others, for a human touch; and if one was never—it was the general complaint-left alone in New York, one had, still, to fight very hard in order not to perish of loneliness.

230

"I remember you before you went away. You were miser. able then. We all wondered— wondered—what would become of you. But you aren't miserable now."

"No," he said, and, under her scrutiny, blushed. "I'm not miserable any more. But I still don't know what's going to become of me."

"Growth," she said, "is what will become of you. It's what has become of you."

236

"What did you do in Paris all that time?"

"Oh" he smiled-"I tried to grow up."

"Couldn't you have done that here? Or didn't you want to?"

"I don't know. It was more fun in Paris."

"I'll bet." She crushed out her cigarette. "Have you grown up?"

"I don't know," he said, "any longer, if people do." She grinned. "You've got a point there, Buster."

266

On what basis where they to act? for their blind seeking was not a foundation which could be expected to bear any weight.

288

Policemen were neither friends nor enemies; they were part of the landscape, present for the purpose of upholding law and order; and if a policeman-for she had never thought of them as being very bright-seemed to forget his place, it was easy enough to make him remember it. Easy enough if one's own place was more secure than his, and if one represented, or could bring to bear, a power greater than his own. For all policemen were bright enough to know who they were working for, and they were not working, anywhere in the world, for the powerless.

290

It was a city without oases, run entirely, insofar, at least, as human perception could tell, for money; and its citizens seemed to have lost entirely any sense of their right to renew themselves. Whoever, in New York, attempted to cling to this right, lived in New York in exile-in exile from the life around him; and this, paradoxically, had the effect of placing him in perpetual danger of being forever banished from any real sense of himself.

316

Terrifying, that the loss of intimacy with one person results in the freezing over of the world, and the loss of oneself! And terrifying that the terms of love are so rigorous, its checks and liberties so tightly bound together.

363

Because we're not kids, we know what life is like, and how time just vanishes, runs away—I can't, really, like from moment to moment, day to day, month to month, make you less lonely. Or you, me. We aren't driven in the same directions and I can't help that, any more than you can." He paused, watching Eric with enormous, tormented eyes. He smiled. "It would be wonderful if it could be like that; you're very beautiful, Eric. But I don't, really, dig you the way I guess you must dig me. You know? And if we tried to arrange it, prolong it, control it, if we tried to take more than what we've-by some miracle, some miracle, I swear- stumbled on, then I'd just become a parasite and we'd both shrivel. So what can we really do for each other except—just love each other and be each other's witness? And haven't we got the right to hope-for more? So that we can really stretch into whoever we really are? Don't you think so?" And, before Eric could answer, he took a large swallow of his whiskey and said in a different tone, a lower voice,

"Because, you know, when I was in the bathroom, I was thinking that, yes, I loved being in your arms, holding you"-he flushed and looked up into Eric's face again— "why not, it’s warm, I'm sensual, I like—you—the way you love me, but"

-he looked down again-"it's not my battle, not my thing, and I know it, and I can't give up my battle. If I do, I'll die and if I die"-and now he looked up at Eric with a rue-ful, juvenile grin-"you won't love me any more. And I want you to love me all my life."

396