Euonym

In the olden days, way back when, people were given last names because of their occupation. Woodman was a man who worked with wood. Wheelman was a man who worked with wheels. Goodman, well, he was just a good man. If I lived back then, I wonder if my name would have been Curt Buttermacher. Except, I haven't been making too much butter lately. Maybe, my name would have been Curt Sitzmann. Or, Curt Nada. Or, Curt Houndlessmann.

I had a dream the other night, where Warden was biting me, but I still loved him. Can you believe that nearly two years have passed since I began blogging? I can't. Nothing really changes in prison. You wake up, you walk around, you do some things, you go to sleep, and then you wake up again. But outside of prison...it's almost too much. Even my handwriting is different! Can you believe that!

I just wish, sometimes, that I knew, without a doubt, I was a winner. I wish I could walk around knowing that I won. Just sometimes though because if you win all the time, winning doesn't mean a thing. I almost pity Curt Winner, but not too much, because Curt Winner is still a notch above Curt Jimenez. Like this post. It isn't great, but if all my posts were great, what kind of blog would this be? Boring, imho.

But it would be nice, for once, to feel like this:

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

The Worst Betrayal

the poop

was lying there,

still and steaming.

when Stella,

with obvious intention,

kicked it.

all over the leg of the one,

who gave her so much.

but i guess it wasn't enough.

if she was trying

to cover something up,

she was unsuccessful.

Exterminator

I've never read Remembrance of Things Past. Things pass. Things are remembered. But it is the book I've used on the cockroaches in the house. Early mornings, there they are, lazy and unafraid, or maybe surfacing because they know I will drop the book on them. Vol. I. And they've committed to dying. I give them a chance. I say, "Run for it," and put my foot close by, to give it a reason it can see, maybe even feel. Can it feel the displaced air from my footfalls? Maybe I should read Remembrance of Things Past so that it is less of a weapon and more of a literary device, so that I do not crush the cockroaches with it, or I do, but with more of a purpose. That I've killed them with some device I despise. Vague pronouns, everywhere, I don't like them too much.

After I've done the deed, it looks like I've just dropped a book on the floor. It is there, on the floor, and I am looking at it. I lift it up, anticipating or hoping that the cockroach will run behind the refrigerator, but that is never the case. I turn the book over, and there it is, crushed and juicy, a leg dangling and certainly dead. I wipe it off with a paper towel but there is some remnant it leaves behind--it is a silvery patch on the navy blue cover. It is one of many.

The sound of a book falling in the morning and hitting the ground is louder than you'd think. But the sound is abbreviated. Then it is replaced with the sound of coffee brewing. But early in the morning, the sound sticks with you like a sore, when it is in that empty space before coffee it carves a notch in your skull.

Today, I returned Remembrance of Things Past to the library. I will never read that book. I look for a bigger book, one with a spine as thick as the width of the book. It is Atlas Shrugged. This book, when it lands on a bug, I bet it will open up to a gray page with closely knitted text and I bet it will sound less...heavy. Less...despairing. Then I can go on with my day. Then I can remember the page I read in Atlas Shrugged as I picked up the book. Then I can feel more productive and less guilty. Then I can feel less guilty. Yes.

Elsie May

We took acid, and we went to the cemetery.

I remember the statue, and I remember how she was young and old and beautiful and wise.

We circled her, Tony and I. We said, "She is young and old, beautiful and wise. If you are standing here, she appears to be one thing, and over there, another." We said, "here is something profound, something bigger than anything we have known before." We talked in circles, convinced that we were wise. That is what you do when you take acid. You figure it out, and then it disappears.

If I was by myself, I imagine I would have been scared. The voices in your head can grow too loud if you are by yourself. I found that out later. At times you need to talk to someone to keep them quiet.

Elsie May was the name of the woman memorialized with the statue. I wonder now, as we wondered then, what kind of wife she was. What kind of mother she was. If, when everyone left for the day, she was sad. If she cried out audibly, or suffered in silence. Or if she felt free in a way she only felt when she was alone.

We wondered if she died in childbirth, or of some terrible disease we don't even think of now. It is sad to think of people dying young. We talked about that.

It is sad to remember.

Werner! Herzog!

In 1982, I killed someone and Werner Herzog had a steamship dragged across and over a mountain for a film he was directing. The ship weighed 300 tons, or something like that, heavy. Why am I writing about Werner Herzog? I'm not sure. Why not? He ate a shoe because he keeps his word:



He ate his shoe in 1980. In 1980, I was getting high with Tony. I don't remember 1980. Except, there was Tony, and getting high. I was not eating a shoe. I did not own a gun.

In 2006, Werner Herzog was shot during an interview.

He did not stop the interview. I was in prison and there is not much to this story, except in 2006, Homes asked me if I'd heard of Werner Herzog. I said, "No."
"He's a ridiculous man," Homes said.

Now it's 2011 and Werner Herzog has a new film in 3-D, about something very old, ancient. I have a new life. Werner Herzog says there is nothing glorious about filmmaking. It is an endless sequence of banalitites, and sometimes, I feel that way about life. Then, Werner Herzog says:

However, there's very rare moments where I get the feeling sometimes I'm like the little girl in the fairy tale who steps out into the night, in the stars, and she holds her apron open, and the stars are raining into her apron. Those moments I have seen and I have had. But they are very rare.