17:35 - 2003-11-09
Cold Pizza
The only thing I could find in the fridge tonight was pizza...
Last night I shoved one in the oven, grinning at the prospect of eating something and not choking it down, or worse--back up again. Then my dad came in and asked me if I was decent and ready to go. "Why?" "We're going out to dinner." "Where?" "Haven't decided yet." So the pizza finished cooking and was instantly foiled and put in the fridge. I thought of it, of the crushing aluminum, the sliding into darkness farther and farther away from it's purpose and from what it had been waiting all it's life to be: eaten.
Well, I'm eating it now, thinking about how much I'd like be taken out of the fridge and eaten myself lately. My purpose hasn't really been my aim lately, so I know I've been fowling that up. I just wish some of the things I lived for weren't iced down so suddenly and so soon after I had a glimpse of how lovely they are.
The last month has done nothing but revolve around one day and the struggle to comprehend and to remedy certain occurences within its lapse.
The rest has been chaffing itself for a long while.
Today my dad carted away more of my home, looking to buy a new stereo system. There were complaints about the dust.
"That's okay," I thought, as I reached out inside to the retiring speakers. "Dust only means you were great. You never had to be worried about, or repaired, or adjusted. Ten years is good, and those ten years were yours. I'll remember you."
And those were my respects to pay to another shard of my crumbling, old, happy life.
Since Cheryl lives in an apartment, she does her laundry at our house. While she and Dad were out looking at new stereo stuff, I had to fold her laundry. I may have only imagined it, but my hands felt raw and stinging as I matched the seams and sleeves. "Runaway Train" played on the radio, and I noticed how apt it was...
Since a month ago, I've been drawn out into my backyard, into the cool weather to swing on our swing set. It's been there ever since I can remember. I even ran into once before I had glasses, though I don't think it was because I couldn't see, but because as a child I had a tendancy to run with my head over my shoulder.
Lately I would go out there, snap my CD player onto my belt, and just fly away. Just go inside my head. But yesterday as I was lifting off, the chain rubbed one last time and snapped, sending me into the leaves and dirt.
It's not the first time this has happened, the other swing busted too and sent my sister into the back fence. You'll remember my exciting fling across the yard earlier this year, causing me to have to switch the chains around, leaving one last swing.
But now I'm feeling very rusted and old and spent. Very near to replacement, as well. There's a little pile of dirty, rusted chains next to my swing set that look much more homely now than my "new", "improved" living quarters. I figure sooner or later, I'll snap too, and I apologize if you're the one swinging with me at the time...
"What could've happened on this so very eventful day?" you wonder.
Have you ever prayed that you'd someday meet the bestest friend you ever could? Even if you had wonderful friends and lived a content life, did you ever on a whim wonder if you'd ever meet someone to match it all or out-do?
And then when all those amazing times were in memory and all those close-knit friendships ended up woven together only by the thin threads of conversations over wires, and you were only praying for the strength to swallow another day, what would you do if that ancient wish came back to you in the flesh? How would you respond to the person you've never met, who unexpectedly takes the seat next to you and who talks kindly and articulately without a care? Who is affectionate in the way that only old friends are? Who even sings little duets with you whenever the chance arises?
And what do you do but sit there, worried about the rest of the day, about times past, about what to say, about what is going on and why you are in such an unlikely position, and about why you are so worried about everything...
And then...What do you think when this stranger, after hours by your side and no one else's...is nothing but just that: a stranger. Gone. And you're but a soloist again.
You don't know what to say, what to think, what happened before and what is happening now.
And now that you've seen so closely what you never thought you'd really be very choked up about when you first uttered that little prayer in your moment of contentment, you realize a burning, seeping, kerosine longing for it that soaks into every part of you.
For like the zest for life a man gains when he was viewed upon cruelest death, you now know what company is in such vivid portences as reality rather than nostalgia. And you miss it.
You interrogate every part of you about what was transpiring in your head when you had this thing so warm in your presence, and what your role could have possibly been to repell it. For such tenderness could not have strayed away on its own without a meaning. Surely. And you already know that you're every word has been poison in your own ears recently, you can easily concieve the damage your behavior could've done elsewhere, harmless as it may have seemed at the time.
So, after a week of brooding and regret and guilt, you approach this answered prayer, this miraculous individual and in a rush of held-back tears, muster a heart-felt apology, relieved at the hope of retaining company and returning good for good.
Now what do you do when this individual looks at you quizzically and doesn't have the slightest idea what you mean about your coldness, or awkwardness, or whatever loathsome traits you exhibited? When this person shakes his/her head sincerely and you are forced by time to go your seperate ways.
If you have any blood in you similar to mine, you stop short in thought, you ponder, you cock your mind's head and for hours you consider and meditate and contemplate and recall and yearn and laugh at it, weep, scream! It's in your eyes at every blink, your last dream, your first thought of every day, the subject of your every superstition:
What you had! Where did it come from? Where did it go and why?
And maybe all this is just a product of how sick you've felt lately. You don't eat, you barely sleep, you shiver at nothing. You run once again with your head over your shoulder, looking back at all the lovely things that used to be there, be here: In this place that is in ruins.
If so many awful things hadn't happened, would you wish so much for the sweet and succoring thing that would make the notion of them go away? That would wrap you up when you were crying and wretched over all their horridness. That would put you back together and make you feel human again after all the things that have cut you and worn at you so profusely to make everything in the past come tumbling to the ground.
That would take your hand and warm it when you felt so close to fading away from existance.
I tried to think fondly of my pizza tonight.
Because I feel so cold...
