Tag: story

Throwing a Hippopotamus

Posted on by Paul In The Buff

Sometimes that’s what this life feels like.

I have been given a hippopotamus, and my job is to throw it over a wall.

And I have to do it. But I have to figure out how first. I’ve already spent too much of my life having this damn hippo falling on me again and again…

The wall isn’t getting shorter and the hippo isn’t getting any lighter.

But as I get older, I’ve learned a little about this hippo, and this wall. And I’m trying some newer, less subtle approaches.

I think I’ll just knock down the wall.

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December 2007

We’re Being Watched

Posted on by Paul In The Buff

...aliens are tracking us. Not all of us, but a significant number of us. Abductions happen, and just as we tag animals in the wild to study their lives, aliens are tagging us too.

See these people with all the piercings in their ears, face, lips, and/or nose? Some of those are actually alien transmitters with which they study the person's movements. They have the technology to create false memories and make the person believe THEY chose to get their ear pierced again... they enjoy having all of these piercings... they experienced going to the "Piercing Pagoda" at the mall or "Old Stinky's Tattoo, Piercing and Botulism Emporium" and got this done.

Meanwhile, the aliens are watching... always watching...

Of Nothing

Posted on by Paul In The Buff

From June 3, 2009 - a time when my traveling was all but over and all I had left were past reflections of what was, and what I learned.

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Isn’t it funny how a flavor can be a smell? Like the sweet taste of scotch on my own breath as I exhale. The flavor invades my nose and I smell... a place. Smells remind us of so much, so vividly of our past.

The smell takes me back to a bar; a random bar on some random summer night in a random city on some random trip. Does it matter where? It doesn’t to me. Who was I with? No one. And that's meaningless.

All that matters is the feeling. That feeling of being able to lose myself in the empty anonymity of being nowhere in particular. To sit at a bar and drink. To be nobody to everyone. To watch the people around me come and go while the ambient music is just a little too loud to be pleasing. The glow of my cell phone in front of me, beckoning me to start a text conversation with someone, or to drag me a little closer back to the reality I’m so far from.

Happy to be far from.

Days long gone.

The time, like all time, was fleeting. But the magic of discovery, and discovering me was vital. Learning what this life has to offer before returning to a trap set once more with the intent of pinning me down, holding me tight, choking me and snapping my neck just for the pleasure of hearing that halting snap.

Now, to play out the details of what remains while still remembering that smell.

And those nights of a different nothing than the nothing of my life.

Incompletely

Posted on by Paul In The Buff

Originally written September 6, 2010

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Paper lies cover tight
Unfolded skin
Taken light
Where gaping wounds cry
Lacking eyes for sight
Crying from their vein
Begging to hear your voice
Speak my name
To see the echoes
Gather in crowds
Inside my brain
Sweating, seething
Crazy or sane

You can feel the past
And recreate it

It’s just never the same

Incomplete and broken
Where you once stood
Your love my only token
Giving rise to this flood
This emotion, hope and love
We give in to sheltered dreams
Happily ever-after scripts
Played out on our own silver screens
Fortune for the few
Fame for even less
More of us live askew
Dreaming of false success

But we all have hope
To make each day new
A chance
A ray of light
That brings our dreams into view

While sins we fail to fear
Consequences?
I’m well aware
Revealed when the voice that said
They are more than just words read
From a book of stories told
Fables falling from the fold
The icy waters that rush over stones
Washing the sins that stain the bones
Left by the choices of days past
In hiding places unable to last

And it was here when the voice
The voice said to me
“These memories you hold
Won’t set you free,
And the bodies in your basement,
You must let them be.
Piles of silver, galleons of gold,
And creature comforts,
Truth be told,
Won’t fill your heart
As you grow old
Your world will grow cold
And then, where will you be?
This life is the one,
The only one you’ll get.
Will you live it in full,
Or die in regret?
If you want to live it
In your own human way
Then lift up your roots
And enjoy every day
Break free from what binds you
And seek distant lands
Never look behind you
At the fallen sands,
Live your life true
And life will reward you!”

Words so irresistible
I had never heard
From voices more tangible
Or the echoes they stirred
But this stranger’s voice
Deep in the dark of my head
Left me no choice
When I heard the words that it said

I listened deep
And I took it to heart
Not in wake nor in sleep
But where should I start?
To embrace this life
This proposal so sweet
Would end all the strife
And sweep me off my feet
It would close a chapter
Leaving the past behind
And bury another body
In the basement of my mind

What is there to lose?
I pondered over and over again
Life will always change and move
No matter when or where I begin

So it all starts here
With a decision
And worry
And hope
Set the wheels in motion
Something a little more reasonable
Break away the corrosion
And get to something more feasible
Close my eyes and take a step
Feel the oceans hidden depth
Feel the clouds move again
Feel the rain that they send
Feel the Earth move at my feet
Feel the Sun’s eternal heat
Feel the Moon and the gravity
Feel destruction without calamity
Feel what I feel when I feel
And I feel this wound finally heal

And Nothing More

Posted on by Paul In The Buff

I

In his declaration, he astounds
His good intentions, in sucking grounds
Sinking in the depths of watery Earth
A muddy place of death and mirth
As bystanders watch amused
Nothing more.
Bleeding.
Bruised.

And nothing more.

Nothing more.

Trapped by roots, in a sullen town
Too broken for making speech or sound
Trapped between sky and ground
Not a heaven and hell
Just soles and crown
The hard trodden roads
Under street lights shining down

While the rest of life drowns

Heartless life made muddy brown
A soul left lost.
Tied.
Bound.

Weathered.
Tethered.

And there
His report was found

II

He had waited for his day of knowing
A day to reap all he had been sowing

His day for solace and understanding
Nothing special he was demanding
Just answers to his questions
And the fruits of his intentions
To the satisfaction
Of his innate curiosity

And nothing more.

Nothing more.

The why
Especially the why
There was never an answer to the why
And it haunted him
Lurching a black cloud above
On the sunny days
And times of love
Weeping tears and pain
Cold and drowning in this rain
Rolling down his creasing brow
Nothing that he can change now

He felt older
Older, not wiser
And left behind
With the broken arrows
Beneath the targets he could not pierce
Each one begging the question

Why?

III

Wistful scrawling
On the wall
Ceiling, floor and down the hall
Symbols, words and statements made
Begging for a barter trade
To make them real once again
Bring them to life was his plan
No breath, no sigh, no blood in vein
No beating heart, no thinking brain

Broken
Beaten
Spirit buried

No more this life
Would make him harried

Left with words and nothing more

And nothing more.

Nothing more.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Originally written May 27, 2011

Insomnia

Posted on by Paul In The Buff

Sometimes the tired mind gets to a place it couldn't go when rested. Thoughts flow, and words from them. Ideas begin to set in and discoveries are made....

This is from October 16, 2007. My birthday. It was a turbulent time in my life when everything seemed upside-down.

Except for one glimmer of hope.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I slept horrible last night. Or perhaps better stated, I didn’t sleep horrible last night. Knowing I had an early morning to get into work, and the hell of a commute in New York City facing me to start, I tossed and turned just waiting for my wake-up call.

I suppose it didn’t help that my mind was running circles around the same issues it has been running circles around for quite some time now. What should I do? All these daunting tasks; the mountains that stand in my way, the raging rivers I must cross to reach what I want.

It is a metaphor I’ve used before… like trying to swim across a raging river; knowing what I’m leaving behind on one shore, unsure if I am strong enough to make it to the other.

The man who would play it safe would just live in contentment in the safety of the shore he was already standing on. Why dive into swirling torrents full of danger? What is so bad about quiet contentment, even if it isn’t exactly what makes you happy?

But as time has gone on, it’s not so much I can’t bear to stand on the shore anymore, but the river is rising. My room on this shore is eroding into the swift currents; I can’t stand by and let it sweep me under into a quiet despair and drown me. No, it’s sink or swim now.

I have to swim.

Not only do I have to swim, I have to realize there is so little for me on this shore it is time to throw myself to the swelling white-capped rapids before me. The rocks are sharp and jagged, the waters full of undertows. I can almost feel the mist of the waterfalls in the distance mocking me and calling me to fail as it chills my skin.

Sink, or swim?

Or simply succumb to the inevitable?

I must swim.

And what lies on the other shore? What is my guarantee that it is any better on that side of the river? Perhaps the murky waters have already eaten away too much of that shore I’m only swimming towards nothing, no future, no happiness. Nothing but the slow drowning death I’m already trying to avoid.

Still,it’s a risk I have to take.

Through risk, we grow. Through risk, we fail or succeed.

Only through taking risks can we achieve what we want in life. No one said life would be easy. The easy way is to stand on the shore and deny it dissolving under your feet. To keep backing up… regressing… avoiding the future and trying to hide in the comforts of the past.

That has never been my way of doing things. It is a risk I must take.

So if this is the end of who I am, so be it. I’ll shed off the clothes I once wore and dive head first into the cold, sucking river before me. I’ll swim as hard and fast as I can, on my own.

I will reach the other shore, on my own.

Or, I’ll drown. But at least I’ll know I wasn’t afraid to take the risk and try to live my life to the fullest.

------------------------------------------

After writing this, and settling into my day, I received the following birthday greeting:

This day, is my new favorite day.

This day, brought so many other days that now, spark joy and breathe onto the flames of my happiness, desire, creativity, and bring a deep breath of life.

What an amazing twist of life, yarn and strands of what...fate? whatever it is...it twists and turns down paths neither of us can understand, yet here we are. And we collapse, we fall to the ground laughing because this is the perfect friendship.

So today, because this is the day that it all began before I even knew, I will dance. All day I will dance and sing, I will kiss the sky, stomp my feet. Beat a rhythm into the ground with my happiness and my small corner of the world will know how I feel.

I wish you the greatest, I wish only that you know the happiness that I do. The warmth that fuels you, brings a smile to your face as it has to mine, will be my first gift.

The first gift of many.

Perhaps the most positive, loving message I had ever received on my birthday....

Thinking thoughts

Posted on by Paul In The Buff

More random musings, from a tired mind. This, from December 19, 2010.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I mentioned it before; there are these ebbs and flows to life. An elliptical orbit around a center point of consistency.

If not consistency, at least a normal, unshakable, virtually unchangeable… something.

Sometimes the orbit takes you further from that center, but eventually, and sometimes too quickly, the ellipse is complete and you’re right back to where you started. Almost like a gravitational sling-shot – the harder you pull to escape that tug, the faster it snaps you right back into the orbit of patterns. Patterns of similar troubles, similar situations, similar feelings – and all too often, we try and solve them, to break the orbit, using the same solutions that never worked to begin with.

The problem becomes, as simple animals, we forget. Time erases or at least blurs the memory of the emotional scars. Or, we do a great job in getting past them and move on from those scars only to find we’re opening them back up without even knowing it.

Self-reflection is a good thing but it can only take you so far.

We attempt to make changes; to grab a new path, to find a new center, yet somehow we come right back to where we once were. Sometimes we try new solutions only to discover they were really the same old solutions, we just didn’t realize it.

How do we escape it?

What is the solution?

How do we grow as people, change for the better, become who we want and find happiness?

I wish I knew.

..how things change.

With a change in perspective comes so many other changes. What we will dedicate our time to, the things we want, the things we enjoy, our goals, our appreciations. Even who we relate to and how we relate to others.

Like the wind from a butterfly's wings and all that other string theory crap.

Sometimes I just have to sit back in amazement just to observe... then move on with life and wonder if that orbit was indeed broken, or if it will simply come back full circle again.

For The Ages

Posted on by Paul In The Buff

From December 2009

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Speaking as a matter of fact
He presses hard against his chest
Feeling the heart that beats within
Slowing to a pace more normal for him
“This change has come about,” he states,
“and I realize it combines our fates.
But less we hasten to a conclusion,
For together we can find a solution.”

He could do nothing as she parted
The unwinding of this threat had started
Without his knowing, just a hint
Although he knew it was merely a stint
Not life renown to be his own
Only a step for her as he was a stone
A support; a crutch to a future so great
And deep in his heart he knew he didn’t rate

With fond memories of what never would be
And a thought of what she couldn’t see
He stood with a tear rolling down his cheek
And wondering how he could be so meek
To let all of this slip away

But then he remembered…

The memory returned…

And he recalled that fateful day
Many years before they had met
A day no others would remember, I bet
The day he learned of this awful fact
Given in a lesson lacking tact

Unlovable
Unwanted
And easily forgotten

“Oh yeah,” he thought, “I guess I should let you go.
There is no way I could keep a girl like you
Such beauty; an angel on Earth you are
And me, just a dog groveling to be
Something more special to someone, you see
But this, us, this thing was never meant to be.
I wonder what you ever did see in me.
Something more than a forgettable wretch,
Better than dull and meaningless would be a stretch.
A provider perhaps, someone to care
When you were in a worse place than here
But now you’re on your way to better things
And I would only dampen your wings
So we will move on and you’ll be on your way
But, honestly, if I have to see you every day
I’ll probably go crazy, too crazy to discuss
Because my heart will never give up on us.”