The Poetics of Space

So after I've delivered the papers, I come home to my apartment, except that it's not my apartment anymore, but it is. I open the door and stop. The furniture is arranged differently and I think I've got the wrong apartment. I'm about to apologize to someone when Warden and Regrette come bounding from my bedroom, wanting to be taken for a walk. "Is that Curt?" I hear from inside the bedroom. WTF.

There's Guy in my bed. There's Guy in my bedroom, except, he's rearranged that too. "Curt," he says, rubbing his eyes. "So good to see you."
"What happened, Guy? What happened to my place?" I say.
"Curt, Curt, Curt," Guy says, raising his hands, sensing that I'm agitated. "It's the Feng Shui. It was all wrong."
Regrette and Warden are barking in the living room. I want to ask them why they let Guy move everything around. Why?
"Feng Shui?" I say. "More like you F***ed S**t up," I say. I didn't really say this. But, I wanted to...
Regrette and Warden start growling.
"If it ain't right," Guy says, "it'll cost you your life, you know."

I don't know what he's talking about. Or who he's become. But then again, I didn't know him know him ever, but only thought I did. "I can't believe you've been living so wrong for so long," Guy says. "You'll see. This is the first day of the rest of your life." He gets out of bed. He's naked. He was naked in my bed! I am not happy about this.

Homes used to talk about the poetics of space. He used to ask me if I lived in a nest or a shell. "Do you live in a nest or a shell, Curt?"
"A shell," I said.
"That's nice," Homes used to say. That's all he used to say when we talked about the poetics of space. I wonder if it was like Feng Shui.

I wonder if Homes secretly wanted me to say that I lived in a nest. I wonder if Homes also lived in a shell. I wonder if today is really the first day of the rest of my life. I wonder when Guy will leave.

Decision

I can't decide whether to have tomorrow be the first day of the rest of my life, or if I should wait for the new year.

And where the heck is Guy? The suspense is killing me.

The 3 B's

Thanksgiving got me full. Full of thinking and full of food.

Just think, last year at this time, the BetterButterBlog didn't exist. In fact, I remember that at last year's Thanksgiving dinner, I felt that I needed to do something, I was meant to do something. And that something was this blog. Over mashed potatoes and green beans, over Dad's scowling and my sister's concerns, there was the BetterButterBlog. The 3 B's.

At this year's dinner, there was something else. I can't quite describe what it was, but it was something and I'm sure it'll make sense soon. Maybe it's the Homesteading Club. Or maybe it's time for me to really take butter to the next level, whatever that level may be...

It's a scary time. But all times are scary. Or, at least that's what it seems like.

Coward

Within the week can be Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. There is no way that Guy can live with me, that he can move into my apartment within the week, that we can use the same bathroom. No. It is not possible. Yet, I feel it is inevitable. There is no room. I should have told him that I couldn't do it, but I can't. I am not that kind of person. But sometimes, I wish I could be. That I could say with conviction, No. Instead of feeling that I've lied to myself all my life, thinking that it is OK to lie to oneself because it is what it is anyways, is it not?

It is not. Or at least that's what Homes once told me. But Homes is far away now. Far and not far, but further than he was yesterday, and further tomorrow than he is today, and it will go on like this until Homes is Tony is Dad is Bailey is The Ghost.

I knew a girl once. She was my friend. We could have dated, had I not broken her heart and then killed Tony. She called me a coward.

She was right.

Pike's "Peak"

I was in the checkout line at the local grocery this afternoon, with my usual selections of perishables and non-perishables, when the young man scanning my merchandise took particular interest my stuff and started mumbling excitedly about homesteading and other such business and held out his hand and said "my name is Pike, how are you, I would like to learn the secrets of buttermaking from you, you seem to have a...passion!"

Where did this come from, I do not know. I didn't say much, I just mentioned how I was making sage butter for stupid Thanksgiving with my stupid father. And I explained how he always insists I make butter for when we get together although when he says it it always comes out like, "I'll pretend I'm interested in Curt's life because it seems like the right thing to do, even though I find his whole existence ridiculous and I can't believe he thinks butter-making is a legitimate hobby for a grown man, I bet I'm not even his real father, so yeah, bring some butter you disgrace."

Well, I guess Pike asked me some innocent question and I guess I may have been a little too eager to share and I guess I made my passion apparent. And Pike told me that butter-making, and other such returnings to our agrarian roots are wonderful, legitimate things to do with one's spare time, that as human pursuits they are old, old, old and that they will probably outlast more fleeting "manly" pursuits like watching men chase around after balls on the television set and bowling. I told him that these were both also activities with ancient roots, but that I got what he was saying.

And he told me about a local Homesteading Club that he is a member of. He said, "Curt, you should join!"

I told him I have a lot going on, but that I will think about it.

And I will, when I have a little more time.

Baggage

Dad says he would like to have Thanksgiving with me and my sister. A family Thanksgiving. I guess he doesn't really tell me, but tells my sister, who tells me, over the phone, that he would like to have Thanksgiving with me and my sister, a family Thanksgiving. I tell her I'm not that keen on the idea and when she asks why, I tell her it's, I dunno, complex. Like, it is, and it isn't, you know? She says that she has no idea what I'm talking about, and furthermore, that I sound like an idiot. This is why I am not excited about a family Thanksgiving.

And then Guy calls. Out of nowhere, he says, "Curt, I'm moving back because this place is killing me."
"That's great, I guess," I say. But in truth, I don't know if it is or not. The whole Peggy Waters incident and the "baggage" that Guy seems to carry around with him.
"So we can be like roommates, right?" Guy says.
"What? I don't know..."
"Great. Hey look, I've been thinking. You've been great, Curt. Just great," Guy says. "You've really come through for me. I owe you. Big time."
"When are you moving back?" I ask.
"Within the week," Guy says. He asks for my address and asks where I keep the spare key.

Things are happening. Fast.
Nothing. And then, a whole lotta something.

Misnomer

Today, I was walking around when I saw a flyer that was painfully familiar.

The first memories of Rick that kicked around in my head were positive ones. That time in my life was good in many ways. Much like now, I guess, there were good things and there were bad things. Maybe Rick was to me what that feather was to Dumbo. I needed him to show me that I didn't need him, if you know what I mean.


It is sometimes fun and sometimes painful to go look back at those old posts. So much can happen in a year! What if I'd been blogging way back in high school, or even further. Can you imagine? It is probably a good thing those days feel so distant now.


Rick. What more can be said about Rick? I still have emptinesses I am unsuccessfully trying to fill. People have come and gone in my life. I think about Bailey sometimes, and Guy still calls every once in a while. Things change, though. Rick. What if he was just a friend, and not my spiritual adviser. Would I like him more? Less? He used to talk a lot, without saying anything. Or that's what I thought. Maybe it was me who screwed up that relationship. Maybe I expected too much from him--or I expected to help me more than he did--because I was and am such a mess. Who could fix me, really? Mr. Phil? Freud? Alan Watts?


Reading over my posts over the last few days and weeks, I wonder if I have been sadder than usual. I heard once that you could input the text of fictional books into a computer and the computer could tell you things about the author. They could tell Agatha Christie had Alzheimer's from her late books. I wonder what of my writings could be boiled down into something meaningful about who I am and what I am. I wonder if Curt is brief if he is depressed and if Curt has a lot to say if he is lonely. I wonder what it says about him that he blogs at all, mostly about nothing. I wonder about the misnomer blog name, seeing as how he hardly even mentions butter anymore.


What of that, scientists?

Burrdens

Today, I ruined a good sweater. I was walking Warden and Regrette and decided to take a detour, on account of the street bread. We walked through tall grass and twigs, leaves, and dead birds--Warden took great interest in the birds! When we got back to the apartment, I found my sweater was covered in burrs. Hundreds of burrs. There were no burrs on Regrette and Warden, thankfully, but the sweater was one of my favorites. I spent the entire afternoon trying to pick the burrs from the sweater, but there were too many. I got emotional. I even cried. I threw my sweater away. Then, I took it out from the trash and tried to pick more burrs from it, and threw it away again. It's in the trashcan now, and I'll probably take it out and try again, and get upset again and maybe, I'll take the scissors to it and cut it into tiny strips and throw it in separate trashcans. Maybe, I'll throw the bits of sweater in dumpsters around the city. Yes, that's what I'll do. I'll do that now. I feel like I could throw up. Throw in the towel.

Oh, burrs are burrdens!!!

Street Bread

For the dogs, every walk is an adventure. Regrette has a theory that anything she sees that looks like it could be food is probably food, so she is constantly lunging at things and jerking me around trying to find some precious morsel that has been lost by some child or some businessman eating on the run. At the same time, Warden is searching for other dogs who have invaded his territory. Curt Jimenez, caught in between, must never appear to be in control.

Especially not on days like today when there is an abundance of street bread. Street bread just happens, I guess. I don't know if people are feeding pigeons, or if they've been disappointed by some bread that they just purchased, but once every couple of weeks there's bread all over the streets, at every corner it seems, and poor Curt Jimenez is jerked around even more than usual.

You would think I would have something more interested to talk about, but I don't. I have been doing this for almost a year now, after all.

C(K)iller Clouds, A Story

Today, the clouds came to kill what they could. This happened the day after the warmest day in November. It could not, nor would not, be explained. The clouds looked especially soft, but not thin, nebulous. They came from the west and consumed the browned grasses first, with field mice and deer bones scattered on a plain, like a plate. They ate without making a sound. They were experienced killers, these clouds, and when captured, slipped through fingers and floated up into the sky. We looked up at them and named the shapes they formed, Bunny, Horse, Star, even Mink Coat. The clouds started killing children, taking them without their bodies--these they left behind beneath the jungle gym bars, with rosy cheeks. We closed our doors and our windows and watched the clouds sink to our streets and roam with soft murdering. Sometimes, we heard a muffled cry, sometimes laughter, and then silence. When the clouds left, we mourned. The clouds were ruthless and those taken up into the sky also remained on the ground, with mouths hanging open. The clouds came down to kill every year, for one day. The day after the warmest day in November. We hated them. We sent balloons up into the sky with messages tied onto string. Some begged for the return of their loved ones. Others wrote hateful words. Every year, since I learned to write, I wrote: Who taught you to love this way?

Adjustments II

"You need to make adjustments," The Ghost says. I have heard this sort of thing before. He tells me I am a mess. He tells me, even though I come to work every day and do my job better than any of the other "stable" married alcoholic schmoes he employs. "I know," he says, " that one of these days you are going to have another meltdown like you had in front of my wife and I. And I just can't watch you do that to yourself, Curt."

He doesn't know. I am not on the verge of a meltdown. Sure, I've made mistakes and been unpredictable in the past, but we are not talking about the past. We are talking about the future. Who put The Ghost up on his little pedestal? I wonder how he got to be delivery coordinator anyways. Nepotism, I bet.

Curt Jimenez is adjustments. He is changes. He is tossed about in the wind. He is the wind.

He is.

He will make some "adjustments".

Blue Whale

I am sitting in a warm room, enjoying a cup of hot cocoa, when I get to thinking about the ocean.
How deep and mysterious it is. How dark and cool the water is in some parts of the ocean right now, and how some parts are full of light and coral. I think about the dark and cool parts with glowing jellyfish. Or, glowing fish never seen before. But it's hard to think about these, since I can't quite picture them.

Then, I think of a blue whale. Motionless in this dark, cool water. Six fathoms below the surface. Or more. Surrounded by the sound that water must make on top of itself and next to itself with small things moving about inside it all the time, like the wind and dust, like the sound of a creaking door. I think about this blue whale.

Think about it. Think about the blue whale.

Losing

Voices follow me around. Frequently, voices I will never hear again. It's amazing how they live inside you. Laughter, and angry voices, sometimes. Disappointment, sometimes. You wish that you were able to let those voices know that who you were once isn't who you are forever.

It warmed up today, and I took the opportunity to spend some time outside. Things that come back year after year are comforting. A 60 degree day in November. Warm like a heavy blanket. Wrapping you up, and making you feel good inside. Walking around on a day like today with dogs like my dogs makes people go out of there way to smile and say nice things to me. It is a good thing. Without the dogs, who would ever say anything nice to me, or anything at all?

"Are you walking those dogs, or are they walking you?" Hahahaha.

"Whoa, big dogs!" Yep.

It's the same stuff every time, but it's still nice. Today, Warden found a chicken bone, and I let him suck on it for a while, because I didn't want to deny him of that unexpected pleasure. But only for a little while. I can't lose another animal, I just can't. Not to choking to death on a stupid chicken bone.

It is getting dark around 6 here since we fell back. Early darkness helps me hide, which is also nice. Today, I do not know whether I want to hide or if I want to be seen and acknowledged. I guess the truth is probably somewhere in between.

It would be nice to have someone real to talk to. I don't know what that means, but I think it's true.

It would be nice.

"Hanging" in there

Curt stepped outside because it was nice outside, much nicer than it was inside, and that is why he stepped outside. He started to walk, without the dogs. The dogs were inside. They were inside where it was not as nice as it was outside. But, Curt thought, it was nicer to walk without the dogs right now, than it was to walk with them, and so he walked without the dogs, outside, where it was nicer than it was inside. He thought about something he'd read after work, tired. How true it seemed to him: I'd never known anything else but this, to look at how the time goes past, to have someone do and do for me until there was nothing left for me to do.

I have been holding on, Curt thought. This whole time, I have been holding on.

Oh, how he looked then! Walking like he'd broken a small sensitive bone in his foot. He wanted to cry. But how embarrassing that would be, he said aloud. To cry on a day like this? But he didn't feel...right and then there was the world around him, bright and moving and he thought he'd stepped into a fun house. He was breathing, it seemed, through his eyes and his mouth was moving without his thinking, opening and closing and opening and closing.

I have been holding on. Hanging in there, he thought. For much too long.





Reader. If you've fallen and found yourself gripping onto the ledge of a precipice, you find you have two options. You can climb back to the surface, or you can let go. But before you make a choice, you hang on, desperate to live. If you pull yourself up, where do you find yourself? You walk home, shaken, and take a shower. You eat your supper, like every other night. You may tell someone that you were close, close to falling...where to, exactly, and this is how you live--much like before.
If you let go, you fall, fast. Sooner or later you will hit, something. In this case, you live with intensity and a furious passion. It is brief, but imagine that kind of life.



Curt felt that he could pull himself up or he could let go. He could pull himself up, or he could let go.

I can pull myself up, or I could let go.

Pull myself up.

Let go.

You.

A feeling.

Sometimes that's what you wake up with. And you have to go about your business, do what you have to do, and that feeling might persist. It might persist. Or it might go away. And you ask yourself, "what happened? Why did you let that go?"

But that's what you did. You let it go.

You let it go.

Just when you think the well has run dry...

there's Kesha:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt_0dYTSk-U

We bury Vernon

We buried Vernon today. Ronny has a favorite place in the cemetery, which is actually pretty free of graves, and we went up there this afternoon after I got off work and laid him to rest. The ground was cold and tough to break, and so it wasn't just "hard" emotionally for us. But the physical difficulties in some ways made me feel it even more. It shouldn't ever be easy to bury a cat, especially if his dying is your fault. That's how I feel, anyways.

Ronny asked me if I wanted to say a few words. I read from a Raymond Carver poem that I posted in this space when Stella died:

Your Dog Dies

it gets run over by a van.
you find it at the side of the road
and bury it.
you feel bad about it.
you feel bad personally,
but you feel bad for your daughter
because it was her pet,
and she loved it so.
she used to croon to it
and let it sleep in her bed.
you write a poem about it.
you call it a poem for your daughter,
about the dog getting run over by a van
and how you looked after it,
took it out into the woods
and buried it deep, deep,
and that poem turns out so good
you're almost glad the little dog
was run over, or else you'd never
have written that good poem.
then you sit down to write
a poem about writing a poem
about the death of that dog,
but while you're writing you
hear a woman scream
your name, your first name,
both syllables,
and your heart stops.
after a minute, you continue writing.
she screams again.
you wonder how long this can go on.



Raymond Carver

"That was nice," Ronny said.

"I think so, too," I said.

And it was over.

GEB

I needed some fresh air, so I took a walk to the library. I started a reading a book, to lift my spirits, and thought I saw someone I recognized, although, I didn't look up from the page because I was enjoying what I was reading. When I finally did look up, I did recognize this person, but I forgot his name. It'd been too long. We used to play chess together. Intense matches at the kitchen table. He'd let his beard grow out. He was wearing sandals. Sandals in November! I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything, and pretended to read, staring at him, but not noticeably so, you see. He was reading a book and then set it down and left. When he didn't come back, I looked to see what he'd been reading. I decided to check it out.

At home, I did something I rarely do. I watched TV. A commerical came on and I lost it, I started to cry. I thought of Vernon. I thought of my Stella. I miss my Stella. I miss her so much. Warden, like always, licked my cheeks. Regrette, well, Regrette she sat there and looked concerned or confused.

And then Ronnie called. He called, he said, to apologize.
"Apologize?" I said. "But why?"
"I bet you're crying over Vernon," he said, "and I didn't want to bring that kind of sadness to you."
"But what about you?" I said.
"What about me?" Ronny said.
We listened to each other say nothing then, for a moment, before Ronny said he had to go, get ready for supper.
"Sure," I said. "Me too."

Mistakes

When Ronny says, "Curt, it could have happened to anybody," I nod. Of course, that just isn't true. I screwed up, as I have countless times before. I was, as my father never hesitated to drop into conversation, a mistake. I am defined by the mistakes I have made. I am a cruel joke. Why would anyone want to have anything to do with me? This is why I shouldn't leave my apartment. Regrette and Warden are surely living on borrowed time.

I can only persevere.

I can only persevere.

I mean, yes, it could have happened to anyone. And anyone could have done the things I have done in my past. Anybody could be where I am now. It's true but it is not true. I killed Vernon. I killed Tony. It is not a coincidence that not many people want to have anything to do with me.

Considering what could happen, what is the benefit? My cunning wit? My boyish charm?

A Quiet Mourning

This is hard.
I decided to scoop what was left of Vernon up from the street, to place him inside a shoebox (I didn't have any, so I emptied out my cereal and used the cereal box instead) and placed him in the freezer. God bless, I said. I called Ronny and told him that something happened.
"To Vernon?" he said.
"You better come over," I said.
"On account of Vernon?" he said.
"This is hard," I said, "to tell you over the phone."
"Is it or is it not about Vernon," Ronny said.
"It is about Vermin," I said.
"About the mice then," Ronny said.
"No, I meant Vernon."
"It is about Vernon?" Ronny said.
"Yes. Please come over Ronny so we can talk in person."
"Why didn't you just say so then."

I waited, with a knot in my stomach, until Ronny knocked on the door. I opened it, maybe too quickly, and Ronny stood there, with nothing prepared to say, so I said, "Come on in, please."
He asked about Vernon. "Where's my little rascal? Where's he at?"
"In the kitchen," I said.
Ronny stepped behind the counter, looked at the floor, even opened a cabinet door.
"Freezer," I said.
Ronny opened the freezer door. As if a live cat would dwell in that space! I could have laughed. I could have laughed and embraced the man because he believed that his cat was inside, alive, purring or licking a paw with a hard, pink tongue. I could have cried out, "Oh, Ronny!"
But instead, Ronny said, "Where?"
"Something happened. Something unfortunate, Ronny."
I took out the cereal box with Vernon inside. Ronny looked sick. He looked green.
"You see," I said. "It was an accident. The window and then the mice and he was up there and before I knew it and then--"
"Oh god," Ronny said, and then he was crying. I didn't know what to do but hand him the box. "This is what's left of him," I said. "I'm so sorry."


Ronny was crying, sobbing, screaming, without making a sound. It terrified me to see a man's face scrunched up that way. And then, a loud, slow, inhalation, trembling, guttural. What could I do but hug him? So hug him I did. "Sorry," I did say. Pat him on the back, I most certainly did. Pat. Pat. Until he settled down. The cereal box flattened against his chest, a sad tail poking out from an open flap.


"I knew in my heart of hearts, I just knew something like this was bound to happen, but I didn't know it would happen so soon," he said.
"But he was a good cat," I said. And wondered why I said, but. As if all good things left this world in such a terrible way and that this was an accepted fact.

Killer on the Road

This happening did not happen to put drama in the blog. This is not funny, or even something I should share on here, really. But it happened, and now I don't know what to do. Vernon was very much alive when Ronny loaned him to me yesterday. Imbued with that kitten vigor that had so awed the dogs and I not so long before.

Now he who was brought in to kill has been killed. The mice mock us with their scurrying and their ubiquitous droppings. Vernon has lost a valuable dimension, down to two thanks to what must have been a rather large vehicle.

This is not funny. Ronny has been calling. I cannot answer. I was scared before to tell Ronny that Vernon was missing...

Well, now he is found.