The sticky truth seeps out between the cracks of my stony surface; a syrup that leaks from some unknown internal break. Its drops accumulate and drip over time, leaving a darkly dotted trail of where I've been, and if read correctly, one may accurately estimate where I'm going. I'm worried about staying in one place for too long -about parking my body in one place until the drops gather to form a puddle, staining the concrete for months afterward. I leave oil stains on carpets and bottoms of chairs all across Michigan.
To combat this, or rather to out run it, I stay on the move. Driving is my favorite method. You can measure the time I've spent in transit by the stack of books on tape I've borrowed from the library and finished. Laying them in a row from beginning to end, I cannot seem to remember all of their titles, but I am certain these are among them: Dress Your Family in Denim and Corduroy, Treasure Island, Red Dragon, Atonement, About a Boy, Cannery Row, The Lovely Bones. I drive to fill the hours of the day, audible books that I can not access in any other way have become by friend.
All this to say that I have become dreadfully lonely. I feel so isolated. Bloated with stupidity, quick anger, and a cumbersome social awkwardness. I dislike the route my existence has taken- days filled with me trying to fill my hunger for food, entertainment, and seeking company. But the hunger for company cannot be satisfied. I string together a series of acquaintances that remain at a distance -adequately removed from my thoughts and at times, silent desperation.



I hate this.

Only a few more days until

The other day I accidentally deleted a post I had spent the better part of an hour on, just as I was putting on the finishing touches. It was all about my extended family and our shared idiosyncrasies -our eccentricities.
I write this in Denver Colorado while I stay with my Aunt Julie, the far flung colonist of the Manion family. About five years ago she married a good friend of hers. His name is Eric, and on occasion he bears an uncanny resemblance to a government teacher I had in highschool, with the exception of some glaring differences. This is something only a Northpointe Alumni would appreciate.
Kids: imagine a laid-back Mr. Anderson, twenty years younger. Now imagine he's a staunch democrat with a dark tan and an affinity for both sailing and a good bottle of wine. Now understand how hilarious I find the irony in their resemblance.
Colorado has kept me busy, despite the dry heat I find alienating being from muggy old Michigan. I truly am no longer in the Midwest. The people here are significantly more laid back -even friendly. Everybody seems to lead an active life-style. Everybody has a dog. Denver chicks are hot.
But I find myself less apt to think, write and read in this environment. I miss the afternoons of reading that Glen Arbor, and the mornings of poetry in Chicago. Instead my days are filled with trips to Red Rocks, rafting, and mountain biking. I have been traveling for a while now, and have been enjoying myself immensely for the most part.
But I am eager to return to my reading and writing, and my friends whom I have not seen in what seems like ages.
But I also find myself eagerly awaiting the shifts in lifestyle I see as completely voluntary -just another path through the woods that will lead to the road. This all comes with the gradual search for your own identity that in turn comes with moving out and growing up. I am eager to grow. The movement is now.

A few days ago, I left the briefest of posts on my blog for the briefest of hours. It simply contained the lines from a movie I saw a few days ago; words that had stuck in my mind as fodder for thought.
"What do you want out of life, my son?"
"Sorry?"
"What do you want? A shot at the title...or a seat by the band?"
Is the title ours to shoot for, to stand the chance of gaining or losing more than we can possibly imagine? Or are we removed from the ring, cheering or helping those others claim what is theirs? I submit that for now, the only answer I have is the response the character in the movie gave.
"That's a very expansive question."

Spiders in the Sky

It is the fourth of July. The Declaration of Independence, the groundbreaking document that I have never read in entirety, is two hundred, thirty two years old. The good folks at the cable television head-quarters have decided to celebrate by broadcasting some professional wrestling “Smack-down.” I imagine some beefy, steroid laden thug growling “Happy birthday Uncle Sam –get ready for a spanking” before launching himself off the ring’s corner post.

“Choke hold! Get him in a choke hold!” God bless America.

I am in down-town Chicago. My father acquired a condominium from a friend of a friend for his study break and we have joined in the good fortune for the weekend.

We are on the top and seventh floor, and I write this while sitting on the balcony with my sister’s boyfriend. Though our lodgings are for all purposes affluent, we overlook a section of tenements. Two blocks to the north we can see two green grass vacant lots –all that remains of the infamous Cabrini Green projects, where for years gangs ruled and the police themselves were afraid to go. For the present, many blocked row houses are below, to the east, and well lit. Seven stories and one street removes you one whole world. Fireworks and rockets shoot skyward between the buildings, exploding at our eye level some couple-hundred yards away. M-80’s go off with enough force to trigger car alarms and flinches from my father. Hip Hop and R&B is playing loudly, though we cannot tell from where, giving us a soundtrack to read and write to.

The magnificent mile looms over all of this; so well lit in against the black night behind it that it resembles some form of cardboard cut-out or computer generated image too perfect to be real. On the way home from Navy Pier’s fireworks, we passed several nightclubs, complete with red carpets, ropes, and bouncers. We imagined what enclaves of the social elite were permitted inside, and what forms of bizarre, ritualistic, Hellenistic hedonism they engaged it.

The two worlds, filled with two peoples celebrating the same event in their own fashions, did not escape me. Two nations, on either sides of the same fence. First and third worlds, juxtaposed, both seemingly empty, with hardly an individual to be seen inhabiting either. Where did the sea of people we flowed from the docks with disperse to? The flood of people crashed upon the rocks of the city, falling through its cracks. All that remains of them is their noise and their lights in the night sky. The horizon to the west is filled for miles with the ignition of the fireworks of many towns and villages and suburbs. The mass of humanity, sprawled out in this tide pool, seen from above.

Fireworks always remind me of the collected images my brain has stored of war time. Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome taught me that no kingdom can last forever. How will ours end, and how soon? How long will it be until the explosions in the sky mark something horribly different, and people flee at the sight of them? How long will it be until the lights of Chicago are dimmed, and the forests overtake its sidewalks and rooftops –and we all resemble the ruins of Cabrini Green?

p.s. Four Friends, the coffee shop that is a mainstay and institution of Downtown Grand Rapids is closing on THURSDAY. Sadly I will be in Denver, and cannot be at its side when it breaths its last. Remember me to it –I have loved it so. Order a 007, and think of me fondly as you sip its goodness.