That "Time" of Year

by M. Blake

So many skies, so many settings, so many scenes, he thinks, as they fall and crumble and retreat somewhere back in his head on yet another bright spring morning, another day in good health years after those pictures from the past (music from the past there too) were living, breathing scenes. Years doesn't even seem like the right word for it (Since when do we ever get the handle on time?). Years, tears, fears, all washed away, and only certain pictures remain. Certain images and details. Colors. Smells. A scattering. Johnny Appleseed, tossing your past to the wind. Pieces of you from here and there.

He scavenges through them, occasionally thrilled by a find. Moved. There is nothing wrong with feeling something, he thinks. That's what spring mornings like this were made for. Another renewal after the cold stillness of winter. Another "coming out", and he doesn't mind being strengthened by his past—the roots beneath the new shoots, so to speak. The closest thing to wisdom that a man can have.

How many books does he carry in him? How many characters or personalities? How much variety in the conglomeration? He is his own Frankenstein sewn together over the years, patched with this and that, his life's juices coming from different nozzles. He always did open his arms to inspiration in its many guises, even if he did sometimes get hurt in his search. He had learned years before not to shun any potential source of inspiration; a spiritual touch could come anywhere, at anytime. And then —one of his kicks in life—his imagination could take it from there.

So much has played in his head's cinema, so many short flicks and features, a combination of all genres—a veritable movie house for dreams and fantasy, something Hollywood can't and never will touch, something that celebrity faces and gestures have no part of. In the end, it is something that sustains. All that a man has. Or does he?

And here he comes back to time again, and what is had and lost, gained and given up. And the nature of reality. Questions that have and always will be around.

He knows that, personally, in his own quest for "freedom", that he has tried to do away with time altogether— at times. To live for the present moment, and that moment alone. No thought to the past or future. A man open to his present impressions only, "free" from any hindrances from the past, or distressing forecasts for the future. A man adrift in the moment, unencumbered. An ethereal presence, almost. For the body remembered things, too.

No matter, he wanted to absorb the "here and now". Although what was the here and now if it had nothing to do with time?

It is on warm, bright spring mornings such as this that he can laugh at the seemingly endless questions that stream through his head like the small brook running by his feet. He is reassured in his good feeling: by that clear blue sky, and the clear, fast running water, the birds calling, the breeze in the air; even the distant sound of traffic on the highway. Life is busy, inside and out.

Copyright © M. Blake 2004

Head for the Woods

by M. Blake

"Troubling thoughts again for Simmer on what most people would call a beautiful day—weather wise that is. He couldn't argue with that. It was springtime warmth in early November. The sky was azure, as he often read in books, cloudless. Despite his ill mood, he is drawn to the woods; it's necessary that he get away from the house. Take whatever it is that's bothering you and go sit under the trees somewhere, he tells himself. Get away from even the sight of people for a few hours.

Which he does, and feels better for it. He finds himself a seat on a cushion of leaves, in the sun, and watches the squirrels scampering around or racing up and down tree trunks, chattering away. The birds, alarmed by his appearance at first, quiet down after a few minutes, for Simmer makes no sudden moves. He is anything but jumpy today, despite three cups of coffee. He thinks that he probably should have stayed in bed.

But here he is in the woods with his notebook, thinking he might feel better if he can get something down on the page. It has worked before: a shitty morning transformed into an afternoon of accomplishment; a day pulled out of the waste heap, so to speak. He can put something in writing, some expression at least, whereas he would sit quietly stewing at home, listening to the noise around the house and hating it. There's just no way he'd find the right words to tell his parents something like this; there never had been. He was hitting emotional depths here that they didn't want to know about; it wouldn't be good for their quiet Sunday of the newspapers and TV, and a big dinner to look forward to. The last thing they needed to know was that Sonny Boy was distraught again. Yet again.

A recurring madness, he called it. It came in waves, and they seemed to come more frequently as the years went by, to the point now where it seemed he didn't feel "right" or good about himself half the time he was awake. He had heard the phrase "losing a grip on reality" plenty of times and he wondered, truly, if things were slipping away on him in those "waves". Was insanity a gradual wearing away process? Years of "losing it", until the "beach" was gone.

The troubling thing was that Simmer didn't see things getting any better, not at his age. The rest of his time here was going to be a fight. He could see some things all too clearly, even if he was depressed, angry or frustrated, even if he felt powerless to change anything. Everything was there for him to see; there was no escaping that. It was reality taunting him, saying that there was no way he could leave it for good into something he preferred, of his own making. Temporarily, yes, but not permanently until the day he died. I'm always going to call you back, it said.

And as he sits in the woods on yet another bad day for him, his notebook still blank on the ground beside him, Simmer sees himself writhing like a tormented organism under a huge, unseen (by him) microscope, but he soon laughs at this pathetic vision. A laugh of despair, but a laugh nonetheless, for he has never been able to take himself too seriously.

Some day your head will pop from an overload, he tells himself. And then the rest of you will just unravel, and it won't be bones and flesh, but just a long stream of paper, like a long computer printout, everything that was his existence printed in scroll form, and the end of it cut off in mid sentence.

How does he stay in touch with "reality" when very little of it means anything to him? How can he not feel the temptation to escape? How can he pretend not to feel, period? Or "feel" for something so trivial that it disgusts him. He can't immerse himself in material acquisition while forgetting how to feel (every once in a while being jarred awake perhaps by something "out of the ordinary"). Some count on heaven as the time ticks by. And they want him to grab a piece of that reality? Yes, that will certainly get him through the night.

The routine, that's what gets him every time. He loathes the predictable pattern, the uneventful. He feels that time going and it sickens him when he feels he is only half living, going through the motions. And the thought of being stuck in this routine for months, years, goads him into looking elsewhere, searching for something else, searching. By this time he knows there is no alternative and he doesn't care whether people understand him or not. Of course he'd prefer it if they did. It would make things easier sometimes, especially with family and friends. And yet he was never good at explaining himself—at least not verbally. He could always say more in a written paragraph or two than in twenty minutes on a phone.

And so he is back to putting on a face for the people he lives with, going through the day-to-day act of being part of family life. Yet while his parents are wholly committed to this family endeavor and the daily household routine, what they would term "normal" behavior, Simmer is thinking of other places and other people; his mind is never fully there with his family (Is his mind ever fully in one place?). He looks at his mind as a theatre with dramas, comedies and monologues playing out; he never knows what scenes will come. He doesn't need TV. And even some of the books he reads seem lame compared to what is offered up in his head. Yet, unlike TV, he doesn't have a channel selector for his mental pictures, and his thoughts aren't something he can close as easily as a book. If there is something unpleasant weighing on him it still has as much validity as something pleasing; he can't edit out the ugliness or the nightmares.

Copyright © M. Blake 2004

On Top

by M. Blake

It's the idea of feeling good (not knowing or caring why it had to be done then), but going ahead with it anyway, living for the moment. He thinks of other times he has sat just like this with just this feeling, and with a greater part of the day still ahead of him. He has never felt richer—as in "a man of substance"—than at moments such as these when he can kick his feet up with all the easy confidence of a lord, a baron, a titleholder. Kiss my boot soles, he is saying to everyone and everything around him, and a bold laugh punctuates that.

Of course, he knows it is only temporary, as with all of life's pleasures. It used to make him sick to realize that it was coming to an end, the good time, the high; it was a feeling that made him think of crawling into hiding somewhere. But now, if he can help it, he tries not to allow himself to get so high that the fall will be painful. There is more forethought, and it comes from years of experience.

Don't get carried away on temporary feelings, he tells himself. Enjoy what you've received and count it as a respite from the truly horrible. You don't have to reach the moon on every experience. Settle into your role as small town boy for a day, quiet, breathing the fresh, rural air, relishing your health, and thinking that there will be plenty of time to let it all hang out again. It is wintertime, the season to pull into yourself and store your strength.

He gets a little drink buzz on and looks out over the pond, frozen over. There are no skaters or fishermen on it though; he hasn't seen that in years. Hell, there used to be cars riding around on the ice, but it doesn't freeze over as thick anymore. He remembers skating or playing hockey every day at this time of year. He remembers doing plenty of things outdoors that he doesn't see kids doing these days. With computers, video games and TV, they find more entertainment indoors.

And it's thoughts like these that will bring him down sooner than he wants. Don't let them take you from your perch yet, he says to himself. Don't indulge them.

Copyright © M. Blake 2004

And So It Passes

by M. Blake

He looks at the pictures of his young nephew and there is an impulse to reach out and protect all that those images represent, something that isn't even there anymore. The kid is already two years older, and so all that can be touched now are those images, the early child that the camera can still surprise. Truly: wide-eyed innocence with an eternal peering wonder; the hope for man; a treasure.

And though there is a sadness in seeing how things don't last, there follows a reassuring feeling that there will be more coming, more fresh chances, and that this nephew will one day be looking at pictures such as these.

Copyright © M. Blake 2004