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Evolutionary hindsight

I never thought there’d come a day when 25 would seem so irritatingly young. I remember being on the school bus when I was eight or nine and we’d go from lower campus at Kamehameha to pick up the kids in high school on upper campus. They seemed so old. Now I look at ninth-graders and they seem so tiny. The same transformation has happened with twentysomethings. When you are one? You rule the world. You know every answer. And your way is the right way.

It takes hindsight, I guess, to recalculate and add up all the stupid fucking decisions and the risky behavior that when bulletproof seemed like manifest destiny, but in reality, is mostly the luck of the draw. If I met the me from ages 25 – 35, I would tell him to quit being such an asshole. Think of those that love you. And can you please try to step out of yourself for one second?

My new theory is that it’s evolutionary. We need that bravado and sluttiness to propagate our genes. But at what cost? I’m not that old, really. But I see more clearly things in other people that I don’t like. And what you hate the most in others? Is really what you hate most about yourself.

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Pua mēlia

I walk to the store and I can smell the magnolias as the stench permeates the misty morning. I don’t see the sun. The smell suggests the plumerias from home. Almost a stink sweet. But for some reason, the magnolias stink like death, like the slow burn of a Southern dying melancholy. Plumerias, so common, so complex, represent the opposite in my nose’s eye. The sap bleeding from the picked flowers or broken branches that ooze white lifeblood. So common, so complex. Like the rebirth of long-awaited airport greetings, or high school graduates buried in flora. It is the surging force of beauty and occasion, of celebration and happy.

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Sentient gorillas

This life isnt easy. Gazelles don’t have it easy. Eventually 80% will get eaten by lions or hyenas. Honest to Buddha, I just watched a documentary on it. We are sentient gorillas. Look at a gorilla and try not to say fuck he looks remarkably like me. If you try to kill him he won’t like it. Probably put up a fight. They’re really strong so in this scenario he probably kills you. But after you’re dead do you think he thinks about tomorrow? Or death? Or why his gorilla girlfriend fucked another gorilla? This is hard to understand, but the Buddha teaches us it only hurts because you want it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care. Everything is transient. In this life you will lose everything and then will lose your life. Wanting more will bring you to your knees. I promise you. It all goes away. The sun will go away after it eats the earth. It’s sad to think about because you’re attached to your life. No matter how it ends? It will end. Friends will lie. Your children will disappoint you. Your lovers will leave. That is how it is. If you live 2 years or 200 years, in the span of forever, what’s the difference? That’s not a call to nihilism. What’s the point? You have five minutes on this spoiling, rotted globe. Why hurt other sentient gorillas if you can help it? Why hurt yourself? Dumb question. Everyone is killing themselves. What you eat, what you breathe, who you fuck. You’re not getting out of here alive. This sounds shitty. But my point is, and this was a long-winded way to say it, be nice.

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California king

I wake up on the floor in the only bedroom of my apartment. I’m parallel to the bed, but facing the wrong way. The lights are on. The fan is barely spinning; its movement looks almost accidental, as if it were being driven by exhalation rather than electricity. As consciousness slowly returns I am aware of a pain radiating down my right leg, starting with a serrated, stabbing sensation in my hip and ending with burning, near-numb needles in my purplish big toe. My left ankle literally feels like it’s on fire, but I’m unable to sit up and confirm the cause. Panic drives me to use the footboard of my bed to pull me to my knees, but the pain is so intense I crumble into a heap between the bed and the wall. Just before hitting the ground, I decide it was a mistake to squeeze a king size bed into such a small room. The bedroom furniture was one of the few concessions I was granted in the divorce, however, and I was determined to enjoy the Pyrrhic victory.

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The Ben Folds Five

The band is actually a trio, but I guess you have to be a fan to get the joke. Reinhold Messner is hard for me to listen to, even though I love it. It’s too close to home and too near the bone. I never tempt the past with Muse or the Weakerthans. I remember when we were a secret, when it was dangerous and beautiful. I remember the fire drill when we stood in the stairwell and I stole a hand squeeze, and we spoke innuendoes about sex and corporeal delight by quoting song lyrics.

I sometimes feel like I’ve lost that ability to yearn. When celebrities die, I subtract my age from theirs. The number keeps getting smaller.

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Ancient crimes

I would have thought by now. And this still happens. Young girls. Half-naked and three-quarters wasted. I can still see patterns. I can tell the turntable is on repeat. Okay, you may be too young for the turntable reference. The CD was on replay and if you’re too young for that reference I will immediately walk to to the bathroom and hit my liver in the face. But why are you are having me explain there was vinyl before mp3s? What made you listen to my bullshit? No platitudes. That means when you’re trying to be profound when you’re being condescending. Fuck. Life.

“Why are you here?”
“I want you.”
God, if I could be 25 forever. “No, you don’t want me. You want the idea of me. I like the idea of you. This has to stop.”

That happened. Most of it was in my head when she was next to me. Crimes are caused because of her beauty. I literally talk to myself like a crazy person. Why does she keep talking to me?

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The lonely ant in us

The meaning of life comes to me sporadically. I wish I could hold it. I guess it’s value comes in being unholdable. Who am I really? I don’t really matter. I’m not being dramatic. I smashed an ant today. It wasn’t on purpose. I like everything to live as long as it can. And then I saw that I am that ant. Fragile and lost. Walking among the many, but probably scared. And actually alone.

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Deaf, blind, and mute

I was blind because I was deaf. I was both to everyone that looked or listened. I was chasing numb. I won the race. Numb is so slow it looks stupid when you grab it. It’s so easy to buy, it’s so easy to ask for. It’s almost like something wants it to happen.

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Home to Beaumont

I do remember that night. We were on the patio, so you existed in half light. Coffee. SoCo. Late-night Austin. So beautiful and sad you were. You knew what your part was. I asked who you stayed with when you went home to Beaumont. “I don’t want to talk about that.” The internet churns. I already knew. I saw the picture. I swallowed my tongue and we laughed at Greg Giraldo. Most of the time? Sex usually doesn’t mean anything except how it feels. But it always turns the dial.

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Why bother?

It doesn’t have to happen because it already happened. My love, I wish I understood. It’s always just happening. It has always already happened. Yes or no is just a question because you asked. The honest answer is yes but also no. It changes faster than the literal speed of light. Much faster than I can explain. Indeed, time is a construct. We have taken the arbitrary distance this planet travels around the sun and called it a year. We measured the distance this globe makes during one revolution and called it a day. Then we divided that day into arbitrary parts, and divided those parts into smaller parts. Then we kept dividing. There is nothing inherently true about a nanosecond that we did not arrogantly declare to be true. What is has always been whether or you or I bothered to notice.