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ashtrayfloors · 5 months

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In the grand tradition of me, I started this journal entry ages ago, but then more stuff kept happening before I could finish it. Let’s see if I can get it all down—

I’ll start with the hard things.

There's my perpetual broke-ness; trying to prepare for the impending holidays while not having a lot of money to buy gifts. And that's fine for my friends and most of my family members—they appreciate handmade gifts. But for my kids? Well, I'm hustling every day to have enough money to buy them some gifts. (It's especially difficult because C.’s birthday is four days before Xmas, so we have to buy gifts for that, too.)

There's a struggle I'm having in regards to my mom; I've written about that extensively in my private journal and don't feel like rehashing it here right now, because it makes me too upset.

And D.'s been struggling again, with anger, and with (lack of) focus. I’m not sure if we need to increase the dosage of his meds or what. I hope that he gets into equine therapy soon (he’s on a waitlist), because my cousin S.’s daughter M. tried years of different meds and talk therapy for her depression and anxiety and PTSD, and none of that has helped her as much as equine therapy has. In the meantime, we’re trying to limit his video game time, because even though gaming is his favorite thing, it also brings out his rage like nothing else.

There are my own mental illnesses and disabilities, which can make even good days turn pretty shit.

And there have been some writing rejections, which have sucked on two levels. One being that these were paying publications, and I fucking need the money. The other being that getting rejected just fucking sucks. (At least rejections no longer send me into a I'm never writing again spiral like they used to; though they do occasionally send me into an I’m never submitting again, fuck traditional publishing, I’ll self-publish everything from now on spiral.)

But then there’s so much good (or at least happysad) stuff, too. I’ve been writing a lot; mostly poetry but also some prose. I’ve been working on my Rimbaud translations again, and now I finally know what I’m going to do with them. I’ve been reading a lot—new and new-to-me stuff, plus rereading some of my perennial favorites. Same with music and television/movies—I’m spending about equal amounts of time on discovering new things and rediscovering old favorites. I’ve been doing as much as I can both dayjob-wise and side hustle-wise and activism-wise, but also trying to take it easy on myself when I need to rest. Speaking of rest and self-care, I’ve been drinking less coffee and more tea. (Even caffeinated tea is better for me than coffee; too much coffee makes me jittery and anxious, whereas caffeinated tea does not do that, no matter how much I drink. Also, I’ve been having a lot of stomachaches lately, and coffee makes them worse whereas tea actually helps.) And speaking of dayjobs, P. has started actively applying for work again. I’ve been spending a lot of time in my favorite places here in Racine, and thinking about how much I love it. It’s funny, for a lot of years I thought I’d rather live anywhere other than here. Even when I did move back, I thought it was only temporary. But sometime in the past eight years (around the time I became Poet Laureate) it started to feel like home, and I will be sad when I do leave it.

On the 9th, I drove down to DeKoven (a place I have written about a lot over the years, including in one of the pieces in my most recent zine), to the art gallery there, to set up for our art and poetry event. It was a perfect fall day; leaves wet from recent rain, a chill wind off the lake. I helped hang the art and set up the sculptures; I also hung my poems on the wall next to the pieces which inspired them, and added relevant decorative embellishments with oil pastels. I remembered how much I like being involved in the actual set-up of an art show. And I got to see some folks I hadn’t seen in a while, and also met a few new people, including a gorgeous woman named K. It was her birthday; she was wearing a gold glitter jacket, shedding sparkles everywhere, and she brought cupcakes and sparkling grape juice to share with everyone. By the time I left, it was full dark, and there, over the lake to the south, was the skyline of Kenosha, glittering gold in the blue-black.

Two nights later was the art and poetry event, so it was back to DeKoven, hat on my head and boots on my feet, jazz on the radio. It turned out to be one of the best nights I’ve had in a few months. I drank a La Fin du Monde; one of my favorite beers since I first tried it in Montreal twenty goddamn years ago. All the art was amazing; all the poets writing in response to it wrote amazing stuff. I love poetry readings like that, where everyone has very different styles but they are all so fucking good.

I got to see two more old friends for the first time in quite a while—J.E. and N.R. N.R. is one of my favorite people ever, like he is just the type of person who makes friends with everyone and is chill with everything. We were both drinking beer, and laughing about how back in the day we would’ve been smoking weed, too, but how now we can’t do both at the same time anymore or we just get sleepy. During the intermission, J.E. and I stood outside smoking cigarettes, and we talked about everything. I asked how he was, and he said, “Well, I don’t want to die most days anymore, so I’d say I’m doing alright.” And then he said: “I hope that’s okay to say, it’s just, you’re this person I trust that when you ask me how I’m doing, I can be honest about it, no bullshit.” And I said: “You’re absolutely right.” And then I went on to talk about how sometimes I still think ‘I wanna die,’ but it’s not really that I want to die, it’s that I want my life and/or the world to be completely different, and he totally understood what I was saying. Then we talked about parenting, the great parts and the hard parts, and we talked about living in poverty, and I just. I know I’ve mentioned it before but I’m so glad that we are friends now. As fucked up as we both were when we first met back in 2008, I’m so glad that after years of not talking to one another, over the past almost four years we’ve become close and now I consider him not just a casual acquaintance but a good goddamn friend.

I got a bunch of compliments on my poems/performance, including people saying my stuff reminded them of the Beats but that I’d surpassed them, and the poet who was set to perform after me saying “how am I supposed to follow that?!” I met a bunch of new amazing people that night, too. Like P.W., a Romanian man who was one of the artists that had work as part of the event; he had the sexiest accent and looked super sexy, too. I’m pretty sure he’s a bit younger than I am, but he’s fully silver-haired, and gorgeous. Like T., who was one of the artists and one of the poets, and he was wearing an amazing shirt—a button-down with a print of ink pots, fountain pens, and notebooks. And K. was there, too, because she was one of the poets, and her words were fire, and she was gorgeous in a tight dress and tall boots and a beret. After the performance part of the night was over, I hung out for a while, finishing my beer, talking with people. T. and I talked about God, and the mycellium network, and mycellium-as-God; we talked about Beat poets and bisexuality. He has such an interesting story. He’s in his 60s. He married a woman in his early 20s, and always knew he was also into men, but they were monogamous and he loved his wife very much. She died about five years ago, and he still loves her (I could tell just by the way he talked about her), but now he’s dating a man for the first time ever in his life, and loves his current partner very much, too. He also told me he found me fascinating, and wanted to write a poem about me. I talked with P.W. again for a bit, he said he’d like to paint me sometime if I’d be interested in modeling for him, and uh, well. I didn’t commit to anything, because I felt a spark of attraction and though I wasn’t sure if he felt one, too, I knew if he did it could turn into a complicated situation.

Then I went outside to have a cigarette. J.E. was already outside smoking, and P.W. and K. joined us, as well as K.’s friend that had come with her to the event. K. was out of cigarettes, so I rolled one for her. J.E. said: “I’m not gonna lie, your ‘Blue’ poem was kinda long, and I started getting a little sleepy while you read it.” P.W. said: “I didn’t think it was too long. I liked listening to you read it. If it did make me feel sleepy, it was in a good way. Like a beautiful lullaby.” Which, well, wow. We all stood quiet for a minute, smoking; smelling the shit smell wafting from the wastewater treatment plant. K. and her friend left.

Then this very drunk young woman walked up to us. She was swaying slightly on her feet, holding a plastic cup of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Turned out she was there for her sister’s wedding reception, which was being held in the great hall part of DeKoven. “Most of the people there other than my girlfriend are super boring and straight, but I didn’t want to stand alone while I smoked, and I saw your hat,” she pointed at me, “and decided to come over here. You’re not straight, are you?” she asked me. “No, no I’m not,” I said. “I knew it!” she said. “No straight person could pull a hat like that off so well!” Then: “Anyway. I’m L., I’m gay, and I have a useless English degree.” J.E. and I laughed, and said: “Join the club! We have useless English degrees too!” She said: “No, you don’t understand, mine is with a concentration in creative writing, so it’s extra useless.” “Us too!” we said. She went on to talk about how she’d tried to write fiction but her stories sucked so she gave up and now just worked in customer service. J.E. said: “Have you tried writing poetry?” But he said it in this sort of creepy, Waits-y growl, like he was some criminal or pervert in a trenchcoat, lurking in a dark alley, like: “Hey, kid, you wanna try poetry?” So I just fucking lost it at that. When I’d stopped laughing, J.E. and I both tried telling her in all seriousness that well, of course most writers, including ourselves, do non-creative writing work to pay the bills, but that we still write. We told her that, in fact, that’s why we were there that night; we’d just done a poetry reading. Then the topic moved on to where we were from/lived. L. said she was from San Diego originally but now lived with her girlfriend in Brooklyn: “But not the cool part. The part that sucks.” Soon after, a very dapper, short butch woman came running over: “There you are!” she said to L. “Oh, hey everyone,” L. said, “this is my girlfriend.” Then, to her girlfriend: “I came over here because of her hat,” she said, pointing to me again. “It is a great hat,” said her girlfriend. “Thank you for taking care of my lost puppy,” she said. “I was in the bathroom when she disappeared and I got worried.” “We should probably get back to the reception,” L. said, rolling her eyes. “You guys should come crash it! There’s plenty of free beer and wine!” And they walked away. I considered it for a split second; that’s the kind of thing I would’ve done in a heartbeat in my younger days, and it has been a very long time since I’ve done anything that spontaneous and wild—but it was already 9:30 and I had to get home to put C. to bed.

“I should probably get going,” I told J.E. and P.W. “Yeah, we’re gonna leave soon, too,” J.E. said. “I’m crashing at P.W.’s place because he only lives a few blocks from here, and I’m too drunk to drive all the way back to Kenosha.” “You could stay there, too,” P.W. said to me, “I mean, if you don’t feel safe driving far.” The smile on his face told me everything I needed to know: Yep, he felt something, too, and may not have been offering his house as a crashpad for wholly gentlemanly reasons. Again, I considered it for a split second. Again, something I would have done in a heartbeat in my younger days… “Thanks for the offer, but I’m fine. I’ve only had one beer and I don’t live that far away.” I waved goodbye and walked to my car. A little sad that I wasn’t crashing a wedding or crashing at a relative stranger’s house, but mostly just buzzed from the great night, the art and poetry and all the beautiful people I met. I remembered, for the one millionth time, how much happier I am when I can get out in the world and be among other people.

Two days later, C. and I went to the library. Everything was beautiful, the lake and the wind and the golden light. They were having craft day in the kids’ department, doing a Diwali craft, so we stayed for that. They showed a short video about Diwali and then had the kids do a modified version of Diwali sand art—glued onto plates, rather than just free-form. C. had a lot of fun with it. That day was also D.’s birthday, my first baby is twelve now, which is wild to me. We celebrated at my parents’ house. D. really loved his disco ball piñata; I’m so glad we were able to make that happen. Two days after that, C. and I met my mom downtown. It was another gorgeous day, sunny, warm for the time of year; we walked around, went into some shops, I took photos of jukeboxes and cigarette machines sitting in the window of a closed-down store. And another two days after that, P. and I took the kids to Mound Cemetery, to visit the Native American burial mounds, as well as to see some of the old graves. The next week and a bit was work, activism, the dailinesses of life, taking food to my favorite neighbor. Then Thanksgiving, which was less stressful than holidays with my parents often are, though not without some hiccups because I don’t think there can be a holiday without some kind of stress.

Two days after that, I drove to DeKoven again; I was meeting some of my poetry friends there so we could record our videos for next year’s Woodland Pattern Poetry Marathon. I had to run a couple errands first, and on my drive through downtown, I saw a group of young (late-teen or early-20s, I couldn’t tell) punks, and they reminded me so much of myself and my friends at that age, and it made me so happy that there are still punk kids stalking the streets of midsized midwest cities, looking simultaneously tough and awkward. N.R. and J.E. were at DeKoven for the recording session, along with S.K. and J.P. N.R. had brought a small cooler full of beer, and so he and J.E. and I each drank one. In between recording, the five of us talked about relationships and food and publishing and poetry and various other topics. After I’d recorded my poems, both of which mentioned ghosts, we talked about ghosts. J.E. asked me if I believed in ghosts. He said he’d had weird experiences that could’ve been ghostly, but he wasn’t sure if he wholly believed or not. I said I’m kind of the same way—I’ve had experiences that I can’t explain away with a more ‘rational’ explanation, but I can’t say with 100% certainty that they were paranormal experiences, either. “I guess you could say I’m a ghost agnostic,” I said. Then I mentioned that DeKoven and the area surrounding it is supposedly one of the most haunted places in Racine; I said I’d had weird experiences on the grounds in the past but never any in that particular building. Less than thirty seconds after I said that, we all heard a noise in the room above us, like footsteps walking across the room, and then a door opening and shutting, softly. There was no one else in the building at the time. It was really as though a ghost heard our conversation and was like: “Oh, you’ve never had an experience in this building before? Oh, you’re not sure you believe in ghosts? How about now???” After we’d finished recording, we all hung out for a bit, and then I got ready to leave. N.R. said: “I’d like to hug you, if that’s okay,” and it was, and I was pleased because I love hugging my friends, but there are times when I’m not in the mood, and it’s nice when people check. When I left, it was dark, and I saw the waxing moon and Saturn, both rising over the lake. My parents were watching the kids for the afternoon/evening, so P. and I got to have an at-home date night. We had good sex and then cooked a great dinner.

The next day it got a lot colder, and snowed, and we had a cozy-at-home day; I spent most of the day drinking tea and reading, and also made some cookies. The day after that I felt under the weather—not an illness, just a flare-up of my recurrent issues—but I took it easy, with more tea and reading. The day after that, my period started, much earlier than I was expecting it. Over the past couple years, when my cycle changes due to stress or illness, my period now starts early; when I was younger, stress or illness always made it late. I don’t miss the pregnancy scares, but I do hate that I have to bleed even more frequently now. But it wasn’t so bad, no cramps this time. And that evening, P. and I got to have a delicious holiday stout at the pub where we went to pick up dinner for us, the kids, and my parents. The night after that, I got the news of Henry Kissinger’s death, and said good fucking riddance, it was nice to hear about a death that in no way made me sad.

And then, within five minutes of waking up on Thursday morning, I saw the news that Shane MacGowan had died. And I just…I don’t know how to explain all the things this has brought up for me. I’m working on a longer piece for my newsletter, about Shane and The Pogues, but in the meantime, I’ll just say… I mean, I already had a bunch of Pogues songs saved as drafts on my blog, and I’d already been listening to them a lot, starting in mid-November. November and December are Pogues months for me. Because of the weather, but also because of certain November/December memories which are attached to Pogues songs. And Filia and I were texting about it, because she gets it, understands why this is so devastating, was just as devastated, and I miss her, I will always miss her. And of course it got me thinking about Joe Strummer’s death, twenty-one fucking years ago, how she was the one that broke the news to me, over the phone, after I’d just gotten home from visiting her, and somehow Shane’s death feels close to Joe’s death. I don’t mean time-wise, obviously; I mean, in terms of how sad it makes me. Or something. Fuck. And I said on my main blog that Filia is the only person I know IRL who gets it, but of course that’s a lie. Because there’s also fucking Derry. He fucking knew Shane, like, personally (not super well, but still), and the night he first kissed me is one of the November nights attached to a Pogues song (see: A Foggy Night in Lakeview, the lyric essay/mini-zine I wrote about that night and “A Rainy Night in Soho.”), and. Well. We’ve already opened up the lines of communication between us again in the past year and a bit and I knew that if I didn’t email him he was going to email me anyway, so I sent him a message. He responded later that day, and I miss him, I will always miss him.

The rest of the day wasn’t terrible. I made that Saint MacGowan art piece. It was a warmer day, so C. and I took a long walk around the neighborhood. We picked up nature treasures, and saw the silliest doggo, who barked at us and then kept bringing toys up to the window and shaking them, as though it wanted us to come inside and play—and when we of course did not, he’d go get another toy and bring it over, as though it was the toy that was the problem and not the fact that he was inside and we were out. Later, I made a delicious tikka masala for dinner. Then, I rearranged my altar, lit some candles, turned on The Pogues, and said a slainté for Shane. I was having this conflicting feeling about drinking that night, given Shane’s lifelong struggles with addiction, and my own past struggles with it. Part of me thought about never touching a drop of alcohol again; part of me wanted to get shitfaced. Ultimately, I did neither. I drank one Guinness, and the shot of Jameson I’d been saving for some unspecified occasion—Thursday night was that occasion.

The next day, I got double-vaxxed. CoViD and flu. The pharmacist that administered the vaccines was cute and kinda punky looking, and the vaccines themselves didn’t feel too bad. But I started feeling woozy within in an hour of receiving the vaccines, and felt like death warmed over for about 48 hours afterward. Sweats, chills, body aches, fatigue, brain fog, painful swollen lymph node in my armpit, the whole bit. I took it super easy Saturday; just laid around in bed drinking tea, reading, watching documentaries, and crying a lot. P. made stir fry for dinner. Yesterday I still took it pretty easy, and I felt mostly better by late afternoon. We roasted a chicken and some potatoes and asparagus for dinner; a simple comfort meal that was perfect for a chill-damp Sunday night.

I have jury duty this week (which is the reason I got double-vaxxed), and I’m hoping I don’t have to go in. I called in last night about today, and there are no new cases going to trial, so I’m off the hook for today at least. Today is National Cookie Day, and the kids want to make gingerbread cookies, so that’s my main plan for the day. Next Saturday is the last BONK! ever, and I’m so fucking sad about that, you have no idea. It has been going on for fifteen years. I have been a performer and an attendee so many times. I have given some of my best performances there, and seen so many other amazing poets and musicians. It makes me want to start my own performance series, just to keep something like that going in this town, but I have no idea how to go about it.

Other things from these past weeks: Intense, vivid dreams. Some hot ones—I’ve recently had sex dreams about both [redacted] and [redacted]. Others that wreck me when I wake up and realize they’re just dreams—like the one I had last week, in which Jack Terricloth was still alive, and Maggie and I were still friends. Memories of old friends and lovers—those gone from the world or just gone from my life, and those still alive and in my life (but the memories of how we were, back when). Moments of intense, unbidden nostalgia; of slipping in and out of times past. A certain hat or pair of boots, a certain smell or taste, a certain song, and suddenly it’s 1999, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2015, 2019. Moments of the DJs on my favorite radio station playing songs that are deeply relevant to either my mood or what I’m thinking about, as though they’re reading my mind. Watching possums in the yard. Melancholy weather—when it got colder and snowed, everything was beautiful for a few days, but then it warmed up slightly, and now it’s that late November/early December season. “Locking,” Kurt Vonnegut called it. Or, to misquote Sylvia Plath: the best of autumn gone, the new winter not yet born. Cold, but not cold enough to snow. Mist and fog and rising damp.

And my heart breaks every goddamn day. From the pain of life and the world, but also from the beauty.

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