Friend

April 30, 2022

Hellbent Brewing, Lake City

Friend,

I’m drinking Citra IPA at Hellbent Brewing. Alacrán is sniffing around the picnic table, excited by the aroma of all the other dogs that have been around recently. He gets excited every time we come here and even when we pass on walks the furry guy starts towards the entrance expectantly. Cass and I used to call the couches upstairs our “living room,” and my coworkers come for catch-ups and spicy book club meetings. Today, Al and I are here by ourselves because I had some quarters to use 75 cents at a time at the pool table.

Let’s get it straight: I’m not good at pool. Of course, since I’ve started thinking about it and wanting to become better, I’ve improved. Practice makes whatever. However many hours it takes to become a master at la-de-da. Is it true, that anyone can become great at anything? Knowledge, or the capacity to be great, is not the same as true greatness. Knowing means nothing unless one has the physical vocabulary to enact that knowing. This is how I feel in pool-playing and in writing. I don’t know what I’m doing but maybe my body can. I can’t design a method to do anything but unblock the channels of energy inside my arm tendons, the back of my knees, and the cartilage of my toes so that the greater knowing from outside me can come in, use my body’s language for its own ends, and leave me empty again with a sunk shot or a page of words. I don’t practice craft or technical skill. I practice emptiness, opening. I practice allowing myself to not exist.

I feel restless. Allie must have picked up on my energy because he paces on his leash from where I’d tied it to the underside of the bar, following me with his eyes as I look at the balls from different angles trying to find a shot. He finds a bug on the floor, pounces on and kills it. Instead of eating the roach or a beetle I couldn’t fully distinguish in the dim light, he bats it back and forth with his front paws, shoves it in his mouth and spits it back out, teasing the dead bug until it lands outside the limits of the leash. I am annoyed and overwhelmed by the air vibrating in the room. I kick the bug and untie Al, who saunters over to sit in a patch of light by the couch and survey the space in an alert but relaxed manner. I push the same two balls around for ten minutes until I fear my ghosts had abandoned me — then they return to my arms and I sink four in a row. It’s nice to know they don’t want me to feel lonely for too long.

I’ve never played pool with my dad, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him try something he would like but do poorly. Maybe it embarrassed him, or he did play but not in front of other people. I haven’t seen him do anything he enjoys and only remember him being blissfully miserable with what other people wanted him to do. That’s where I get my malleability, my obsession with molding my body & personality into whatever I need them to be. I decided to like pool & now I like pool. I decided on all of my favorite things and now, stubborn and tenacious, I am stuck with them. Ugh! Unfortunately, I have decided to be a poet. I hope I embarrass my father. :P

I remember copying the mannerisms of men I admired since I was very young. I used to try to walk in time with my father and great uncle, matching my left footstep to their left footsteps and walking with the same stride. After I was kissed for the first time at the Mariner’s House in Boston, I walked behind the man who kissed me and drunkenly sang the time of my steps, left, left left, right so I wouldn’t fall over.

Negroni

All the ghosts walk into a bar

wearing whatever body they are

& try recognizing each other

with their new eyes. “I want

to love someone I have never

thought to love before,” some

body with broad shoulders

& crooked teeth wonders if you

can hear what he’s thinking.

You don’t answer. Unfortunately

a late arrival to the party

has slammed the door

to demand everyone’s attention.

He simply orders another Negroni.

He doesn’t want to talk to anyone else.

I disagree with Joe Brainard. Well, not entirely. He wrote, “Time is jerky except in retrospect,” but I think it’s just as jerky looking back — I refuse to smooth my own memory. I’ll tell it how I can, but all I have are these urges to remember. Will the scenes be overwritten? Is it possible to capture the seeds of emotions I felt in moments long lost in the stream of time, or is it inevitable that I will add new layers of sand over them?

Every time I return to the page, I draw on vague memories of what I have already written and project the idea of earlier drafts onto what I’m currently working on instead of reading them over. I see now why some write quickly, forcing as much out in one sitting to maintain a semblance of continuity. Here, I refuse to make sense of my own emotions. I withhold my own perceptions from myself so that I can approach my memories from different angles. I take a shot, miss. I don’t play pool for months. I write in an email that I will try to love someone again in two years but email them again the next time I feel desire because I’m excellent at forgetting my own intentions.

An Email

It’s absolutely absurd

but when the email says,

“I am going to love you

for the rest of my life,”

I really do mean it.

*

Do you also know the feeling:

allowance, non-emptying?

Shocking, ha, I’m sad today

and not trying to hide it

or blame you.

*

Actually, I enjoy the sensation

of fantasizing your eye roll,

realizing we can both be

nothing to each other,

recognizing the razor

*

behind your sternum.

You laugh suddenly.

Unexpected moment.

I don’t know why but

now I am feeling

*

joy. I stood outside

waiting on Market Street

after Benni’s show slowly

realizing. Thousands of miles

away your delight at the wind

*

makes me so glad to be alive.

The night goes, beer and pinball,

clamoring dogs to return to.

I lay in bed thinking about you.

Yes, I told you that love is just

*

a feeling and that everyone

deserves it. You do, too.

So when I wake up

I will shout on the Internet

that I am not going to stop.

It’s hard to write about interesting things. Sometimes I wonder if writing is just missing the mark over & over enough times that you can sift through the muck and find one or two worthwhile pebbles to polish until they gleam. Repetitive motions. Lately, when I miss completely I’ll position everything back in the original locations before trying again, miss and then hit the solid purple on specific edges, attempt to control the aftershock and future path. When I finally manage something close to what my body desired, the friction spins off in a way just off from my imagination. The slight difference in motion unfolds quickly and diverges from what I was trying to achieve.

I remember the calm I felt in the moment of lining up to break, breathing out fully, becoming empty just before striking the cue ball. No matter how good of a game I play, nothing is as good as that moment before the ghosts take over my body. In the dark back corners with no one else around, I mean and feel nothing for that instant.

Woof,

Joe

P.S. This is what was in the red notebook