A journal of prose, pictures and fiction based on the life and travels of a twenty first century American. In the second year of this experiment I continue to seek love, build relationships, practice art and otherwise reveal myself through pure desperation, love, hate, boredom, fear and an honest unabashed search for meaning.
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strange chronic
It's a f**king rainy night, October 3rd, I'm behind on pictures, behind on art, ahead on heart, pain free. The day carried on with a grand rhythmic thump. I hear a soundtrack, it's something of an electronic beat crooning through granite. Thud thud clack doom doom thud thud clack doom doom. It'd be like the sound of falling water on granite from inside the stone, distant but always present. I call the hospital - Buttercup reports boredom and pain, the staples of recovery. Tell me what you are feeling. It f**king hurts so much Daniel, I wake up everyday with pain that makes me want to kill myself. This lady next to me is puking and shitting and moaning because she's old. I f**king can't take it. What else do you feel? I don't f**king know, they took my eye... I'm just ready to get out of this place. I'm done with it Daniel. It's not going to be forever, this we know. But if I were asked and I'm not but if I were asked I'd say you are doing better everyday. Even your bitchin' about everything. It's a big difference from going non-responsive to a few words to actively bitching. They took a lot of shit from you, it will take months to feel better. I don't know, no one does but I know this, that this pain won't last forever. Maybe. Listen, I know how you'll feel but I must report it, some friends have recommended someone who can deal with chronic pain. Oh f**k that, f**k that, they have no clue. I thought you'd say that. I know. They're just trying to help, they want to help. Oh, I know baby, I know, it's just i can't f**king take this much longer. You're getting better everyday, I promise. The night drifts off.
A bum screams from across the bridge, over the tracks. I see but the music is loud and only pierced by commotion. The mp3 cranks 'million miles.' I make eye contact and think of _ _ _ _, of Buttercup, the audience is small. We are ships. "Is it strange I should change I don't know, why don't you ask her."
The Boreal Forest, Part 2
I watched the nurse working, clicking machine dials, reading a printout, fiddling with instruments in the wee hours of the morning, my baby laid up with the ultimate head wound, a hot mess. Imagine a blow to the head with a pick axe where the pick axe cracks thru eye and meat and bone and lands into the fleshy brain. Now imagine that blow delivered meticulously and slowly over the course of three months. To your wife. To your lover. Buttercup looked up at me in a morphine haze as I dabbed the blood that has drained from the incision to her lips and neck. Water she whispers. Water? Yes she whispers. I ready the water in the thin plastic cup and fiddle a straw out of its delicate paper case, put it in and hold the end to her lips. She draws, coughs a light powerless hack, opens her eye. I look back. You're taking care of me. Yes. I remain looking until the eye drops and closes with the high. I watch until sure she's asleep and read a few pages of a novel. She'll wake with pain in an hour, maybe sooner so I position myself where she can catch me with her peak. It opens followed by a short breath and rolls back up and the lid slowly shuts. I watch the machines and look for changes, heart rate, pulse, oxygen, all of it. These remain steady until I drift off. In the morning the man adjacent coughs a hack, breathes deep and falls into arrest. Alarms sound. A medical team scurries and we listen, Buttercup in and out of consciousness, as they cut and work to stop internal bleeding. One hours goes by, two and they call it, the man is dead. We can hear the surgeon's call. It looks as if the cancer has grown rapidly and now has burst an artery. At this point we can remove the stomach, spleen and upper portion of the small intestine but I'm not sure. Pause. Yes. Pause. Yes, I'm sorry. Pause. Later we can hear the woman weeping in the same adjacent space. I'll never hold him again she sobs, I'll never hold him again. Buttercup is more swollen, visibly bloated and almost unresponsive. Babe. BABE. uh You have to drink water darlin. don't You have to. Her eye opens briefly, her brow knits. BABE. huh Fear. I hold the straw to her lips and she sips, barely making it over the accordian bend. The pain will decrease, this is the peak day of swelling, I say. F**k she responds. It won't be forever. For any of us I thought. Then I leave to find lunch, the day just as beautiful as can be, as perfect weather as can be had and I enjoy it on my trip across the packed blacktop lots to the intersection and into the bar where I order the italian house red. 1/4 liter if you have it. F**k it, make it a half. The barkeep works. Should I open a tab? Not this time. Maybe tomorrow, we'll see. I drink up and leave taking the long way around the sturdy brick complex in the perfect northern sun, slowing my pace to take in every second, holding my face to the sun.
The Boreal Forest, Part 1
It’s all fun and games until someone gets an eye poked out, I thought. I lay exhausted on the stiff hotel room mattress. How did I get here again? The past few months gliding by with such ferocious change. I lay sleepless in thinking of some of our last conversations. I’ll be a Cyclops, I’m afraid you’re not going to want to look at me. Babe, this is the least of my worries, seriously. You say that now but But there is no but. This may sound rude or stupid to you now but I see anything that you may not like as a design we can change. There is really no limit to what we can do. I want to say a prayer. OK. I’d like to ask god that if there is a way that you don’t have to do this, that if there is a way then please reveal that to you now. God stayed silent on this one. The following day every blue scrub and gown was a lump in my mind, a potential thing to bring news and to bring Buttercup through. But no news came, not for over eight hours, ten hours, twelve hours, fourteen hours. They said no news was good news but this was torture. Instead we prayed, we prayed catholic prayers. This was most moving to me because all the positive history and generosity of those prayers came rushing back, I felt comfort in every one of those words and felt I belonged into some family I barely knew and in place where I was a foreigner. There was nothing cursed about it, not in these moments and I made note of it, I fell right into it and listened for Buttercups voice.
Dear Friends
I will post again on Saturday, one for each day I've been absent, somewhere between fact and fiction, from circumstances I could never have imagined... stay tuned...
fools
What God wants for me are things I do not want. Sacrifice is built in. I have confessions my people, I have confessions my friend. “But you are dangerous Daniel, you have no limits.” “I do, I don’t lie.” “And you are not my friend.” “I see.” “Maybe you aught to learn your limits, maybe your quest for this ‘truth’ is bullshit. Maybe you’re a fraud.” “Frauds give up, I’m past that, but this idea of lying, I’ll consider.” “There are many ways to lie ‘Danny Rose’.” Danny Rose spoken with contempt. “There are many ways to manipulate.” “I see. And you think my questions now are manipulation?” “They are then.” “I’m asking.” Silence. So I walked, grabbed a bunch of papers, stuffed them in my bag and walked. I walked down to the bank, signed lawyers papers, had them notarized and walked on. The reason for any of it long gone, complaints of the past all stupid and base. The mourning of it’s occupants long dead and useless. In hindsight, the worst kind of uselessness, gone without benefit, lost to weakness of spirit, lost to fools.
