Breath or Die

Hank sat down and started typing : A report on my current status.

The rest of the page was blank. Hank realized that he had no status, or perhaps a bit closer to the truth was that he was just at a loss to say what that status was. Everyone has a status, everyone is somewhere, doing something, is in some definable situation. Hank knew that. Hank knew.

What was he to say if he determined status in the present, which was the question posed – current status. He could weave a decent tale about his future status, it would be mostly rosy and productive, calm and clear minded. That had always been the answer and for the most part people believed him.

Hank was, after all, neither a gay or glum man. He carried out the affair of getting through life with what a lot of folks called charm. It was the charm of a great potential. Since he was a very young boy everyone had agreed on that. Hank was full of potential. Good and interesting things would happen around him.

For Hank charm had been a survival tool. It still was, though now in his late fifty’s when Hank looked into his survival tool bag, he realized that he hadn’t invested in many others. He had been aware for some time that charm was something that dissipated with time, and for that he had become expert in future status reports. It gave hope. To everyone.

But staring at the page before him Hank had a gnawing realization that he had wondered himself into a route sans issue. That would perhaps be the nearest to the truth that he would allow himself to tell. If he was describing it like a traffic report, the current status would be bumper to bumper traffic. Hank wasn’t in Chicago on Lake Shore Drive at 11 :30 p.m. on a Tuesday night in the middle of fall with cars moving quickly and fluidly around graceful curves on the dry smooth concrete road. No, if Hank was sticking with the metaphor, he would have to say his current status was more like the pot-holed Kennedy expressway at 2 p.m. on the wendesday before thanksgiving. There was freezing rain falling and an accident at the junction ahead. Everyone is stuck, sitting behind an idling machine periodically plodding inches ahead. No one is moving anywhere.

Hank realized his current status could only be reported as ‘on hold’. He was waiting, waiting for something to happen. He had a plan and he was waiting for it to begin so that it could arrive at it’s expiration and another could take it’s place. Everything changes. Nothing had changed. Hank resisted change, pretended he could live without it.

And then… The call came. Normally he wouldn’t even have picked up the phone at that moment. That day he did. It was Her. She said she wanted to talk. He said he had to talk to her too, but he was lying, he had nothing to say. The only thing he could say to her would be to repeat that he was blocked in traffic and that she should go ahead without him.

It had been that, more or less, that she had called to say. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to wait for him, it was just that she couldn’t anymore. More or less she had said it was a question of time. If everything worked out they could meet up at an agreed upon destination point, but for the meantime, she just couldn’t wait anymore, she was going on ahead without him. Forward was the last word Hank remembered hearing, and then nothing.

Hank dropped the phone and leaned hard on the horn.

-Where the Fuck are You going ? He cursed out loud as a truck squeezed just in front of him.

The driver of the truck didn’t hear him, and neither had She. She had hung up the phone and was probably already on her way out the door. Hank meanwhile had moved nowhere. It was just at that moment that Hank saw his future. It was scrawled in the soot on the back of the dirty white truck that had just cut in front of him.

‘Breath or Die’.

It Was a Beautiful Day

If your talking about the weather then today was a fine day. But then what day isn't that is bathed in the clear bright sun of winter. Sixty degrees, light cool breeze from the north. A day full of vast subtle colors and birds flitting about. Light sweaters and warm boots, a hat on your head if you want it. Yes a fine day today, when you are talking about the weather

Up and down the rows I go. Me, the vigneron and his wife Back and forth, back and forth. It's what I'm doing now. In the vines and in my life. Clermont and Plaissan, back and forth. Tomorrow back to Plaissan. Pack up the old kit bag. Smile, smile, smile. Back and forth, frown and smile, to and fro, laugh and cry, and along the way, all the things in between.

Order, and a lot of kilometers. The idea being that if things work out right in Plaissan, the back and forth will turn into something closer to straight forward.

Sap Mgmt.

Just to let you know I’ll be in for the next six months. You see the days need a bit of order. It’s what I will be doing in the vines. Cutting back the old growth. Pruning. It’s all about sap management.

It’s what I’ll be doing too. In Plaissan in a yurt. Cutting back old growth. Learning to stretch into myself. In the vines it’s what makes everything fruitful, the control of the flow of sap. Having realized that we humans are all sap too, I figured it should work for me too. Sap Managment Inc. is what I am calling myself. It’s a total self-service business.

So for the next six months I’ll be in the vines, or my cell in the big house that’s just up the hill from the yurt, cutting back. Making room to breath new breaths. One after the other, like the years in the vines.

Order. Consciousness.

Clip-Clip-Clip.

Another Day

I was back in the vines again today. The pause after the harvest is done. The last full moon before winter is waning, the cutting back begins. I was happy to see the vigneron and his wife, and they seemed happy to see me. We exchanged the stories of our lives from the last chapter which ended several months ago. I could say it was an uneventful day, but then what day that we are alive is un-event-full.

There is a woman, I don’t know, who is going to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist uses images in situations to get into what the patients are feeling. This doctor uses the images as a relational object, a tool that allows her to ‘work’ with the patients. In this case the patient is the woman that I was talking about, the one I don’t know.

For example, the doctor says to this woman patient - you are standing in front of a sink and the faucet is running.

The patient replies to the doctor – I pull out the plug so that the water can run out, and I clean the sink out with my hands.

The conversation goes on. How do you feel about doing that, what are you thinking when you are doing that, what does that bring up for you etc. etc. Well they get to the crux when the woman, who is the patient I don’t know, starts remembering that at 8 years old when her alcoholic father was slapping her mother around, she had taken a frying pan and whacked the father. The father quickly proceeded to pass out on the ground.

She thought she had killed her father. Imagine what would run through your head at that point. It did for the woman and she consequently pushed aside, into the shadows, those reactions for the rest of her life until that moment with the doctor. When the doctor asked her what that invoked in her now she says two words. .Culpability. Guilt. Then is silent for a long time.

It seemed hard to believe she could forget such an event. At least that’s what I thought until I tried to think about myself at 8. It was long ago but still within my lifetime. It was me - and as I realize when I remember something from a long ago time – it is me. But thinking back to 8 years old I could remember nothing. Zero, neither good or bad. Just nothing.

I know something must have happened, and if you told me something from then I would probably remember it. But randomly I could bring up nothing. I suddenly thought how the woman I don’t know could have forgotten that episode and the soaring – Culpability and Guilt. – that came within that moment. Why would you want to remember it.

That’s who we are, the events we are made of. Remembered and forgotten, they etch themselves into our brains. Like deeply embedded lines of code on a computers hard drive, if the right buttons are pushed they dictate how our program operates.

We’re complex, we have code in our brains that was written tens of thousands of years ago that’s being added to at every moment we experience. With this we make our life. We are all working on our own hard drive which is connected to a network that spans all time. Meanwhile our shadow is constantly hiding, following us, shifting shapes, insinuating itself into who we are.

It’s amazing we aren’t all screaming and wailing in the streets. That is an event itself, and it happened today. That’s why it’s hard for me to say that it was an uneventful day even though it seems all I really did today was just more immigrant labor in the vines.

Perplexed

Hank is way out on the edge. Every moment has become critical, and the moments just keep coming, one after another. Fatigued, broke, with everything on the horizon but nothing in hand. Hank is full of potential, but then again he has been all his life. It finally has dawned on him he has to act, that time is running out.

The realization did nothing however, to change anything. He still was ensconsed in his life, and everything had recently got more complicated. Perhaps that was the cause of his realization. He found it hard to remember which had come first – his crisis, or his need to act. In any case he had little idea what to do.

His first response was to run, flee, escape, but he had no where to go to. It was this fact that had left him, if not frantic, at least perplexed.

There were moments now when he felt pressed against something opaque and yielding. He could never break through it, but now he was so far in, that he saw no way back out. There was no light at the end of this tunnel, just an omnipresent dim glow which was so diffused that it seemed to come from everywhere. He was paralyzed with the thought of suffocating and cognizant of the fact that paralyzed folk can’t move. This was the edge he was on. An edge so far down that it was without a precipice, leaving Hank without his default option of falling to get started.

In his everyday exchanges Hank admitted to be worried. There was no way to explain more. Who could feel see his churning thoughts. How could he describe the weight of his limitless potential. And why describe it, no one cared for either his reason why all potential was limitless, or his explications of why his was un-actualized. Even Hank had tired of them.

No, the time had come to act, to move, to get on the ball. If he could just get started…

Carlo's Day

Carlo woke up with an anxious sensation. He tried to ignore it and switched on the reading lamp above his head. He read a few pages absently. He realized it was futile and reluctantly got out of bed, something was pressing on him.

He went downstairs, saw a note on the table. It was written in the hand of his wife. Carlo discussed with himself and decided that he would read it later. He saw his shoes, slipped them on and went out to collect his mail.

He walked back into the house sorting a thick bundle of letters. When he entered the front door he fixed on the wall before him. He stared at the pictures grouped up in front of him - his friend Art, his brother in law David, his brother Al, his niece Alma. He remembered tomorrow was Art’s 81st birthday, he thought of the rendevous he had made with Art’s wife for tomorrow. He had told her he would call today to fix an appropriate time.

He felt a pang of sadness and doubt. An anxiety rose up in him. Carlo sifted through the mail, picked out a brightly colored envelope and began opening it. It had no return address and for that he chose it. It seemed to correspond to his feeling. He pulled the letter out of the envelope. The page contained just one word, large and precisely written, it covered the entire page. It said HAPPY. He quickly looked up again scanning the photos on the wall.

He looked at the page for a long moment. HAPPY. It was part of what he felt but there was a sensation much larger lurking behind it. There was a second page to the letter. Carlo wasn’t curious. He had no desire to look at that second page. He already knew what it would contain. He wanted to stay with just the word HAPPY.

Carlo turned his gaze away from the letter. His hand containing the letter fell heavily by his side. He stared at the photos hanging in front of him. He seemed to be divining some minute detail contained within them. He felt the anxiety rise, it spun around his brain before descending and coursing through the rest of his body.

He walked to the living room and sat down. He took the letter he had opened and turned to the second page. It contained a single number written over and over in large colorful script. 80, 80, 80…

Today was Carlo’s birthday. He was eighty years old. It seemed like an enourmous number. It seemed it had come upon suddenly, but he realized it had taken an entire lifetime. He breathed. He reflected. He wondered. Sometimes he felt sage, grateful, aware of the many good deeds he had witnessed and performed. Other times there was sadness, and doubt. He was anxious when he thought of his picture with the others on the wall of the entrance to his house.

He sat with the letter in his hand for a long time staring at the numbers covering the page before him. Eighty, for him it wasn’t a terminal number, but he knew it was close. He put the stack of letters down and thought of Art’s wife - Judith.

He needed to call her. Tomorrow was Art’s birthday. Last year they had all went out to dinner for Art’s 80th. He remembered them laughing at having made it so far in relatively fine form. He remembered the look in Art’s eye when they were singing happy birthday. Behind the laughter was the look of the anxious sensation Carlo was feeling right now.

He dialed the phone. No one answered for quite a long time.

- hello

- yes hello Judith, it’s Carlo.

- oh Carlo, I was just thinking of you. Happy Birthday.

- yes, yes Happy Birthday. Last year Art, this year Me. I guess I’m always just one step behind him. And if that’s the case this looks like it will be my year.

- don’t say that Carlo. Anyway, are you still coming with me tomorrow to visit Art, or should we just meet up there.

- No, let’s meet up first, I can’t go alone. It’s too sad.

- okay Carlo we’ll go see him together. It will be better that way, I’m pretty sure that’s how Art would like it. I can’t believe just last year we were all laughing together. It’s weird, one day laughing, two months later we’re not. Something just happens and it’s all gone.

- that’s whats making me so worried, I just keep seeing all the memories disappearing. It’s like when we cease to exist our memories are erased with us.

- Carlo, stop. Please.

- But what will become of all the memories I am.

- I don’t know Carlo, perhaps they just become some sort of energy. You’ve been a good man, you’ve created good feelings, happy memories. Think of that as energy, in the mean time remember what Art always said - Carpe Diem. And it’s your birthday today dammit.

- Okay Judith. What time do you want to me come get you tomorrow.

- Well the cemetary closes at 5, so come over for lunch and we’ll go from there. In case you change your mind and want to go alone, just leave me a message and I’ll meet you over there. Art’s in plot number 73842, you’ll need to talk to the man at the gate before you can get in.

Carlo hung up the phone and sat there looking at the letter opened before him. HAPPY. He breathed deeply, got up and prepared for the day.

Hanks Ongoing Future

Hanks future arrived the other day. He’s in it right now.

It’s raining out. The windows are still open in a last attempt at forgetting it’s late fall, but the ‘a bit more than cool’ breeze blowing in won’t even allow that illusion any longer. You see Hanks future came with a certain amount of clarity. At least, he told himself, he had seen it coming.

In his moments of self professed clarity he would often see himself lying in an almost empty, carpeted room. There was an strange sense of order that came from the emptiness he found himself surrounded with. Within himself he felt a void that he couldn’t precisely place though it seemed rooted in a nostalgia for something that never existed. At times it came with the warmth and odor of a woman. Though that could have been just a whiff of the birthing process that he pictured himself in.

Hank readily acknowledged that he was a victim of false promises and exaggerated claims. He was less forthright with the fact that on occasion it had been him at the origin of those claims and promises. Whatever their origin, there was no longer any denying he had been living a clouded existence filled with noise and bluster.

Now there was no more psychiatric babble or ladder climbing dancers. This was the future. He was in it. It was as silent as death. It was dark and fecund. There was only the sound of breathing. In Hanks case that was a rasping, rattling, in and out that kept weakly pronouncing that something was still clinging to life.

In this future it was silent. Hank was alone. After one, there was nothing left to count. In his exagerrated states Hank would pass the time counting – one, one, one, one… just until it became limitless. He would feel exalted, graced, but eventually he had to stop. Immediatly a wave of nostalgia would wash in and Hank realized clarity had come with a stiff price.

Breath in, breath out. Breathing in the pain was like diving under a wave. It washes over and another is before you. Dive under again, and there’s another, over and over again. In this future it’s all he could do, breath in breath out.

Hope it would pass. Hope it would get better. Hope grace would be bestowed. Hope in, hope out. Limitless.