Around Town

Seems people are starting to take notice. The girl behind the counter at the coffee shop asked if I was that guy who rode his bike around town. It’s odd in this town. No one does that, except me it seems. She asked me about myself, and I lied. The lies were simple enough, they could have been true, but they weren’t. Often I find myself lying when I’m around people who don’t know me or know anyone I would know. Why? Call it a game or a test. I like to see how real my lies or stories sound. I stick to several basic principles: stick with what you know, don’t give yourself time to think about it, or make it so fantastic they wonder more about whether it’s possible than if you did it or not. The only story I was ever called out on was true, which told me something important, it’s not what you tell them, but how. She asked my name so that next time she could use it, and maybe even shout at me as she drove by me riding in her neighborhood.
A guy sitting outside asked me if I was new in town because he had seen me coming around recently. I tried a different story on him. It seemed to satisfy him, and I liked the idea of meeting more and more people presenting a different story to each one, a different person even. I called it practice.
I left the coffee shop and went to a cigar shop where I thought I might run into an old friend of mine. Someone I hadn’t seen in years, and actually didn’t care to keep in contact with saw me a week ago in Denton because he was at a wedding reception that got moved last minute to the pizza place I was eating at. He called this friend of mine and told him he saw me, then he came back to me and said I should stop in at a certain cigar shop because this friend was there almost every night. I didn’t know then I would be in this town.
Yesterday I stopped by to check the place out, and I asked about my friend. They said he was there almost every day. I asked what time. They said around 4:30. It was 2:30 then, but I knew I wouldn’t be back that day. Instead I went today. The same guy told me he hadn’t been in yesterday, so he was almost sure to be in today. I looked at my watch, it was 4:30, so I bought an inexpensive but good cigar and sat outside with an iced coffee and a book to see if he would show. At 6:00 I was done waiting and I looked in my backpack for a card, but I had none, so I decided to leave it to chance. It had been years since I had seen him last, though we had only been a couple of cities away. I could have tried harder to run into him again, but I knew it would be more an exercise in nostalgia instead of actually reconnecting. That was a different time. I was a different person then, and instead of me recreating myself, it had been time. I didn’t feel up to pretending to be who I had been, who he could relate to, and I didn’t feel like explaining who I was now. About the same as asking a butterfly why he isn’t a caterpillar anymore.

I Lied

So I lied. It’s true I’ve been wrapped up in political philosophy lately, but there are some things I can’t stay away from. I haven’t been reading fiction in awhile, but I’ve gone back to those old stories. I knew what I need to do with that book which was basically tear it apart. It came from collecting my monkey stories. I realized all those other stories belong with them. I read one of those stories, and I think of all the others I have to write, and I’ve been doing that. The running and the biking has helped.
Today I had my first drink in a week, not that that’s some sort of accomplishment, but not drinking has helped me focus on other things, and for now I’m just not interested in drinking. Now if some beautiful woman were to show up with a bottle of wine, I wouldn’t say no, but aside from that I’ve been making some real progress the past week, more so than in the past few months. Well, that’s about it for the night I have to get up early and run tomorrow.

A Helmet Or Not

My days have been political philosophy and life changes. I have never spent so much time reading any type of philosophy before, and it’s become addicting. I’m taking vigorous notes on The Social Contract, and I have Locke in view next, to be followed by John Stewart Mill.
I’ve been staying at my father’s since Monday, and I think I’ll be here until I make the move. I get up and take Lady running before I have my morning coffee. Then I pour over my books and notes. It’s slow going because I reread most passages twice or thrice to make sure I get them. It’s shifting my view of things to look at our world through the eyes of what could have been had we only listened, and also what seems to be the progression if we don’t change.
I have so many writing projects asking me to work on them, but I can’t seem to focus on them. Today I brought a book of fiction to the coffee shop thinking maybe I’d read it and do some writing because I had been too distracted for philosophy after a fight with my father over what the hell I’m doing with my life. He thinks joining the army is a way I could change our world, and that is my idea of hell. So after a bike ride I settled into Rousseau with my iced coffee and last cigarette because it seems no places out here carry American Spirits, especially not my kind. I just went online and the closest place is 2.5 miles away.
I got sucked into Rousseau again and had an idea for an article I want to write, but I’ll wait until I’ve read Locke and Mill. I was surprised because I even ignored the conversation of the table next to me which fragments drifted over of strip clubs with midget bands playing kiss, to a large black stripper hired for a party who seemed to have had a recent c-section and a meth pipe hidden in an unusual location, and the last fragment I caught was about going down a water slide naked. Normally I would have just pretended to read while listening to every word, but they couldn’t hold my attention today.
Thinking about the ride home I’m looking down at my arm which has some strange red marks that at first I think are from not being used to riding a bike for so long, but no, it seems it’s from the plums I was eating hours ago. Back to the ride home, it went well except for realizing it takes a different set of muscles than what I normally train, that and the cop who decided to pull me over.
On a bicycle? Really? At first he asked for my license and registration, then corrected himself to just say license. I said I didn’t have one. What’s the problem? He said something about a helmet and lights. Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that. I’m just down here visiting, and I borrowed this bike to get around, and as you can see it’s not quite right for someone as tall as I am. Where are you from? Chicago. You can just ride around and then put your bike on the front of the bus to get around the city. I love it. You don’t have any form of id? No state id? Sorry I left it all back that their house. I just took a few bucks for some coffee. I didn’t think I’d need an id for riding a bike. Never been stopped on one before. What’s that around your neck? A jaguar tooth. What do you do for a living? I take groups of people on trips. Really? What kind of trips? Like to Brazil and such since I speak Portuguese and know all the ins and outs of customs. Wow that must be really helpful. That’s what they pay me for. You don’t have anything with your picture and name on it so I can know who I’m talking to? Because I like to know who I’m talking to. I’ve got this card on my backpack that has my name on it. It’s for my travel insurance. Let me go back to my car and you keep looking for something with your picture on it. He came back. I have this ticket stub with my name on it. Ok. Got anything else? I dig through my bag and find a luggage ticket for Johannesburg. Will this work? Johannesburg, where’s that? South Africa. Cool. Yep, it was winter when I was passing through there. Say, you don’t have a passport on you do you? No, it’s back at their house because that’s something you don’t want to carry around with you because you might lose it. Oh, yeah. I guess so. Well, I’m not going to write you a ticket this time. Just wear a helmet next time, and have some lights. I hope you make it back before it rains. Oh, I’m sure I will, I said hoping I wouldn’t run into him again.
My father asked me how my ride went. Just fine. I need to get a bigger bike though when I get some money.
When I get there I plan on getting rid of my truck and just riding a bike around, so I’m getting my practice in, though tomorrow I will have to decide whether I will try and find a helmet or not.

Seclusion

So I won't be around much these days in part because of some tangible reasons and in part because of some intangible reasons. From now on everything will be different. Why? There are so many answers to that question that I won't begin to start.

still not finished

Searching the night for someone
Who wasn’t there
She planted images of herself
Where I wouldn’t find her
Like a puzzle where the pieces
Keep disappearing
As you find the next one
So that you can never finish it
But you know the picture
You just can’t see it clearly
And her
Did she mean it?

Dreaming of New Life

That dream came true. She told me online as I was on the phone and I came back to read the lines after she was gone. The strangest thing was that it happened a month after I dreamed it. That dream was July and it was January when she told me. Why did she tell me then? Maybe because she couldn’t hide it any longer, and was worried other people would tell me first because she found out in November.
Another lover who had moved on to a different stage in their life while I was still in the same, alone. She wasn’t going to get married, but was going to keep living at home with her mother while she continued with school. I couldn’t picture her so young with that belly. Hell she had just turned 22, and the thought of those breasts I had one cupped in my hands asleep at night now swollen in preparation. I wondered why that dream had disturbed me so and stuck with me for weeks afterwards, and now? It all came back again that inescapable feeling, though I wasn’t really a part of it. Maybe that’s what bothered me. I never got over her I guess, but I never was good at letting go, of anything. Childhood still bothered me, and maybe I was just too sensitive for this life. Who knows? Time will tell after I’m gone, though who will be listening?

My First Scar From The Amazon

I have many scars from the Amazon. I was just thinking about them on my last trip there. My very first was when I was 12 years old. I was running up the stairs of an old river boat, and the stairs were wet. 7 stitches later I was back on that river boat again traveling around the Amazon with my father over summer break. It all was so new to me then. That was also the trip were I had my first kiss. She was a 14-year-old Brazilian to my 12. I wasn’t sure what I was doing then, not that I even do now, but what struck me as funny was that my father told me to use a condom if anything were to happen. I was only 12 and had no ideas beyond a kiss, and the kiss was really too much for me the shy boy that I was.
That was also the trip where I got to visit Parintins for the festival of the bull. A group of reporters and coco-cola body guards had rented out the river boat for the world famous festival. I got to tag along with them and sit in the press box. This festival was second only to Carnival, and I wondered around the city using the phrases my grandfather had taught me to buy a t-shirt of whichever side I decided to be on. There are 2 sides representing 2 bulls, and there is a fierce rivalry between the 2, so it was important that I pick the right side. What was my deciding factor? Well at 12 it came down to my favorite color and which side had the cutest girls I saw walking around town. The festival itself was spectacular with the whole year leading up to this competition. But what fascinated me the most was one of the body guards. He towered over me, which was unusual because most Brazilians were on par with my 12-year-old height. He had been in the Brazilian Special Forces, and I used to watch him walking through the crowds as they parted to let him pass looking very much like a giant to me and these people. He gave me a t-shirt of the Brazilian Special Forces which I still have to this day.
It was strange to go back to school after that summer. Most kids just thought of me as the quiet kid who never did anything. They were right about me being quiet, but what else did they know about me?