Some Other Person

Here, I went back and looked at what I posted last year on this day. 10/28/2010. Can you believe that was the same person who is writing this post now? It is the same person, it must be, and you can probably believe that without too much effort, but I am not so sure sometimes. That Curt had so much vim and vigor, blogging daily--or almost daily--and working two jobs, and caring for two large dogs, and paying bills and living on his own.

How wild is that? Where is that Curt now? Is he gone forever? Why are things so much more difficult now? Is it all just chemistry? Do I have a slow leak? Do I need therapy? Drugs?

But am I so different now? Is this way of thinking just revisionist history? Were things ever easy for Curt G. Jimenez?

I suppose not. For me, maybe there are just degrees of hardness. Sometimes things are hard like a diamond, and sometimes--if rarely--things are easy like Sunday morning.

Reboot. Reboot. Reboot. Reboot. For a day or two, I get it together, I have a plan, I execute. And then it is gone, and I reboot. Reboot. Sisyphus, bottom of the mountain, Present Curt, I have seen the future and it is just as s**tty as the past only your the back pain is more intense and you start drinking earlier in the day.

I am losing. I don't even notice my motivational posters anymore.

I should say something positive. I should take some fiery breaths. Here is something:

Perhaps I expect myself to be this, when I am really that. A lot of people have a difficult go of things at points in there lives. Think of Scott Fitzgerald! And R.P. McMurphy! And Dickinson! She shall lift us up:

He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,	5
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!

October

One October afternoon, Mom drove me and my sister to a field of pumpkins to choose pumpkins to carve. A man came up to Mom and said, "These aren't for picking," and my sister and I stopped searching the ground, and the man said, "You see, this is private property." Somewhere, a gunshot went off. Some birds flew up from a nearby tree and Mom held our hands as we crossed the field and got into the car. She drove to the grocery store and we picked white pumpkins on a shelf of straw because they were the only ones left. The seeds inside were large and when we baked them, they tasted like nothing. She was emptying , slowly, always crossing, it seemed, into private property.

Today, my sister stopped by while I was at the gas station. There were small, white pumpkins on top of the TV and on the radiator cover by the back door. There were pumpkins on the kitchen table, and two, one on each side of a vanilla scented candle with an image of a snowman in a blizzard on the glass that held it, and there was a pumpkin on my dresser with a note--

Hey Curt,

Stopped by. Hope you're well.
Dad kept talking about soup.
You remember when mom
took us to that pumpkin patch?
Call me sometime.

Love,
Sis