The Same Mistakes

(Cartoon by The Perry Bible Fellowship)

I’m going to start by telling the story of a movie I used to watch religiously as a kid. It was a poorly translated Norwegian animation from the late 80s about a pod of whales constantly on the run from the terrors of man. In this pod there was a young whale that went by the name of Samson, who wants only to help his pod, and his female attraction, Sally; consequently, the movie is called Samson & Sally. He makes the decision to leave, searching for help in the form of Moby Dick, the whale that supposedly could solve all their whale troubles. In his search he runs into chaos, gripped with the seemingly futile quest to find one whale in all the oceans of the world. However, with his last hope, he comes upon the city of Atlantis (believe me, I have no idea how this place found its way into the movie, but I didn’t question it at the time) and there dwelt Moby Dick, now an aged, decrepit, dying white whale.

Moby’s advice: “When the time comes, you’ll know what to do.” Then he dies.

Samson somehow manages to find his way back to his pod, facing the imminent threat of humanity destroying their simple way of whale life.

I don’t remember a more hopeless movie scenario, but it stuck with me for some reason, and times of similar consequence – that is, facing the inevitable – I would find that I would fall back to the thought of that movie.

I hadn’t thought of it for some time until I invited an ex-girlfriend of mine to spend the weekend with me in Boston.

This would be the first of a series of mistakes I would make, and, although I didn’t know it at the time, from the moment I picked her up at the station that Friday, there was an unsure tension between us.

“I got you a sunflower,” I said after a long hug upon meeting her in Copley. I handed her the flower, a slim, healthy sunflower, its stem ripe, leaves yellow, and seeds as dark as her hair. They were her favorite; you don’t forget something like that. However, I had bought it a minute before on a whim at the street vendor. It was only three dollars.

"Thanks."

We exchanged pleasantries and smiled, but while we held hands on the subway, pretending to ourselves that, for these few minutes, we were happy, there was clearly aggravation between us.

On Saturday we went to the aquarium, I didn’t pay for her, and at the whale skeleton, we paused. She looked at it, then at the bronze statue of the tortoise underneath. I brought her here for her birthday only months before, and we had sat on the tortoise’s shell for a while taking intriguing looks at the skeleton. She was a very emotional, poetic, girl, and was easily overwhelmed when she read of the similarities between the human skeleton and that of the whale. When she read that the heart of a blue whale can be the size of a small car, she asked me half-heartedly if I thought whales suffered that much more heartbreak. I felt a little guilty for bringing her here, what with the whale skeleton and the tortoise and all. I felt worse that I had forgotten about these things.

We got drunk after dinner on tequila, my staple drink of choice, with a stolen salt shaker from the dining hall and a lime I nicked from the grocery store. With salt on our tongues and lime juice sticky on our hands, we found ourselves in a terrible argument. I slept on the floor that night.

And that Sunday she left, leaving her sunflower wilting on my desk, barely any words were said.

I found myself thinking about that animated Norwegian movie, Samson & Sally.

“Fuck it,” I said to myself after a few minutes’ debate on the floor. I still had tequila, and there were plenty of girls to get with to patch over this little scab. My friends would agree with me on that one.

“This weekend we’re gonna’ get our dicks wet! Ow!” proclaimed my drinking buddy Rivers that Friday as we made another dent in my bottle of tequila. We sat in my room doing shots with salt and lime, listening to Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time.” “What a song, man! What a song!” he kept repeating

That night we tried to get into three frat parties, and got denied by them all. On our way back I bummed a cigarette off someone and felt like shit as I inhaled the fumes. Back in the room I drank more tequila, then passed out

Saturday was more of the same; same rejection, different parties.

“Next time, man, next time. I’ll get us a connection into some killa’ parties.” Rivers said over dinner that Sunday, perhaps just trying to nurse his ego, maybe just mine.

The next weekend brought the same unsatisfied urge to drink and forget oneself, as did the next, and the proceeding weekend as well; until, I imagine, a full month had gone by, when one Friday meant something to me.

I drank by myself then called on another friend to get me into a party.

Completely soused I strode between sweating bodies moving in chilling unison on the dance floor - really just a glorified grimy basement with Christmas lights strung up. I would liken the experience to being a ghost; no one notices you, but you’re definitely aware of your own presence, but I’ve never been a ghost, so I wouldn’t know. It was only slightly amusing until someone, a police officer I suppose, pointed a flashlight in my face and stated:

“You’ve got to leave, sir, this way.”

That night ended in me rethinking the same mistakes I’d been making.

Back in my dorm I sat on my bed glaring at the salt shaker and the lime and the bottle of tequila that had always been present in my lifestyle. Already drunk, I refused to compromise on procedure. I sloppily licked my palm, dipped it in salt, and poured a shot. I stood up groggily to properly down the shot, wobbled, and jabbed my hand down on the rough, exposed metal edge of my bed, cutting it.

I cursed and grabbed it with my salty palm, furthering the pain. Somehow some lime had gotten in there as well. I was a mess.

“Fuck.” I mumbled to myself. The pain certainly registered, but it was subdued and distant. I passed out on my bed and woke up to the timeless hang over, having made the same mistakes too many times.

There is a second story I’d like to include, also involving whales but in a completely unrelated circumstance, and it is my obligation as narrator to comment that coincidences like these just don’t happen. Yet they did happened.

A few weeks prior to classes starting, when summer was still real and we had time on our hands to waste, my friend Jonah forwarded a video to me. I didn’t know what to make of it. It was a news segment from the 80s about a beached whale in Florence, Oregon, and how it was to be gotten rid of. Those who knew of such matters agreed that the best way to remove a beached whale from the shore was to use dynamite. Blowing it up, generally towards the sea, scattering the remains for animals in the ecosystem to utilize seemed logical at the time.

They plant the dynamite, but not knowing how much to use, decide on some arbitrary value.

“Two cases,” says the man with the helmet and detonator in the video. When they blow it up, however, they don’t realize what exactly they’ve accomplished. The beach head is quite as the red sand slowly settles, but seconds later, in a twisted and ironic turn of events, chunks of whale begin to rain down on those gathered to watch the spectacle. While no one was injured, a car roof was crushed in the resulting rain of whale.

The reporting newsman jokingly alliterated that “the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.” But what’s more, the defiant carcass hadn’t budged. All of this from one whale.

I laughed it off as nothing more than a human mistake, but a gem among viral Internet videos. “How could something like that be repeated?” I posed to Jonah, “How could anyone make the same mistake twice and risk such ironic humiliation in the face of nature?”

Of course I thought that.

But a few days later we sat in my basement, scouring the T.V. for something to watch when we stumbled on a documentary titled “The Whale That Exploded.” Curious to say the least, our intrigue was furthered by the tagline: “Taiwan unknowingly had a ticking time bomb on its hands.” It sounded like the tagline of a B action movie to say the least, but we hunkered down to watch it.

Apparently a sperm whale had been beached in Taiwan in 2004, and the Taiwanese, obviously having learned from the Florence, Oregon incident, decided to handle their whale of a problem a little differently. In an attempt to perform an autopsy on it, they hauled it through Taiwan City via flatbed truck to an aquarium on the other side of the island. This seemed logical. But half way through the city – in a greatly dramatized, and greatly comedic, reenactment - this whale explodes, gushing whale guts all over a street and soaking everyone in the area in blood. Again, even a car was damaged by a stray piece of blubber. All this from one whale. Zachary and I were in stitches. Scientists were perplexed, ultimately concluding with the hypothesis that this explosion was a bizarre buildup of gasses inside the whale that amounted to this once in a lifetime reaction. Clearly, it was a mistake never to be made again.

Out of boredom, then, and with time to spare, I found myself voraciously searching the Internet for categorized procedure on the removal of beached whales– and no, there is no disgusting obsession here, strictly curiosity– and soon I stumbled upon one last video, a diamond in the rough; icing on the cake; the crown jewel of Cetacean situations. Something was indeed rotten in the state of Denmark, where another whale had wound up. Not to repeat any of the mistakes made previously, or to kick a dead whale, the Danes’ response was not to send a demolitions crew, nor scientists, but rather those who would really have a clue on the subject of whales and their uses post mortem – whalers.

Now I’d love to say they solved the problem without any violent explosions, and that there was no sense of humiliation dealt by a defiant natural consequence, but that isn’t the case, and it wouldn’t relate to my original story if it were. Instead, as soon as these whalers begin harvesting the leviathan, they are greeted with a rancid explosion of whale guts. The simple, graphic, footage shows the unsuspecting Danes approach the whale with their boarding knives, and begin hacking away at it, only seconds later to be met with whale guts, endlessly flying out of the carcass, raining down on them as they stand there in shock. While indeed gruesome, it’s nonetheless thoroughly funny. And all this from one whale.

As hilarious as it was, however, I just couldn’t understand why a seemingly educated body of people – experts, no doubt – would continue making the same mistakes over and over and over again. I approached Jonah, equally baffled, and we agreed, there simply had to be better methods to deal with it.

“How could anyone be so foolish as to never learn from their mistakes?” Jonah concluded.

Now in Boston, I recalled that conversation, then I realized my situation, and how I’d been making the same mistakes over and over again every weekend.

And I thought about what Moby Dick had said: “When the time comes, you’ll know what to do.”

And I thought about my ex girlfriend, and how terribly I’d been trying to replace her with each drink.

But I still went out the next weekend.

I suppose whether it’s whale problems or girl problems, some people never learn.

We Recline

We are reclining in Adirondack chairs, looking over the lake on the Fourth of July. It is serene and the waters reflect the milky oranges and purples of the sky.
The fireworks rise over the hills beyond the lake, and we recline further.
I put my arm around her out of pattern. It is a gesture of affection done everywhere, yet today, I don't know what to think.
The controlled explosions light up the sky, illuminate our faces, and she dips her head onto my shoulder. I shudder, the last time I was in this arrangement I was in love, and this isn't love. But I am happy.
We joke about the fireworks, and the fireflies scoring the sky, and the fires burning on the beaches around the lake. We recline further, our soft backs against hard wood, our feet digging into the camp sand.
It is late, I've got to sit duty over my bunk tonight, on this Saturday, the Fourth of July. I turn to her ready to say this, and out of instinct, our faces peering together, I instead lean forward and find myself in a kiss.
A tremble.
We are two on a beach in the evening, and we recline.
As we walk back, our hands slide together. They are different from the hands of one I used to hold, but I find comfort in them.
What do I make of myself?
It won't last beyond a week, but I do all I can to not think of it.

The Sailing Ship

And that day, we clung to each other, sitting up in a bed of blue folds, an ocean.

We rocked gently, our bodies together, swaying softly in the sheets.

I thought of the masts of a ship. We were those masts, clinging together. A schooner, or perhaps some smaller sailing vessel, surely not some Man-o-war, but happily greater than a sunfish.

Sails furled, our bones and truths lay revealed and ready for the reading, navigable only by the ropes and sinews of ourselves.

This ship is anchored in my room, in the calm waters of my bed. I can see gulls gliding softly above us as we rock, resting in our scaffolding. I can see them landing in the quiet waters around us to feed on whatever may be found overboard.

I can see in the morning as we move with the simple waves, the sun rising, stretching its golden fingers through the mists of Boston.

As the sun reaches up in the early hours, the harbor slowly wakes, and traffic outside comes to life.

But this is of no consequence to us.

I am beyond happy minding my own in the sailing ship anchored here in this bed.

Ready Made

In bed that Saturday morning, I felt like a ready made sculpture with her lying next to me. Something simple, but elegant, like Duchamp's Fountain, only we were more than porcelain, just shy of perfect. We were two people locked together like a pair of shoes tossed in a corner, their laces caressing their soles. I didn't move for fear of disturbing the serenity of our sculpted, affectionate stillness; I just smiled and, every now and then, maybe every five minutes or so, pressed a gentle kiss on her cheek, her neck, the bridge of her nose, her lips.

The six o'clock sun shown through Boston into my bedroom, decking us in hues of gold, lighting my navy comforter and casting the fine silhouettes of our arched backs, shoulder blades, and legs up on my wall. 

I hesitated the calm and moved to put some music on. Radiohead rippled through the golden room, and with my eyes closed, I fell further into the dream of being a sculpture with her. Maybe we were two pencils, one lying at a slight angle over the other. Perhaps we were the pages of a weathered book, together through years of pressure under a pile of other novellas and works of fiction. Or perhaps, ultimately, we were simply two people, affectionately happy in each others' arms on a Saturday morning in February.

Another Dream

The following is another dream I just had. Maybe a daydream, maybe a dozing kind of dream... either way, I just thought this, and I'm trying to write as many subconscious thoughts down as possible, to identify myself.

Imagine a city of canals and black water.

I am stationary on the corner of a bridge and street, peering down a river to a distant point that's not really important. 

On both sides of the river are buildings perhaps six stories tall, maybe more, maybe less, but their windows are dimly lit up by black lights, giving the air a terrifying, dark look.

Reflected of the black waters, there is nothing. No stars, no lights.

But.

I see the ripples become like hair.

Deep black hair, waves of it. And of course it reminded me of your hair, and you told me how you used to have it extremely long. 

I leaned over the edge of the bridge, the concrete must've been ages old, perhaps from an old world city like Dublin or Berlin or Paris or Madrid.

Bits of the rock begin to crumble, but I don't care; because I am peering deep into this pitch black river water that is your hair.

More rock is crumbling off.

Suddenly, milliseconds before I fall, you appeared before me, on the other side of the bridge. You shouted very quickly, "Don't fall off the bridge! Don't fall too quickly into the rivers of my hair!" But of course you shouted it so quickly, it sounded simply like "DERP!" 

As I tumbled down the bridge, I saw you extend your hand as if to catch me, and, amazingly, your pale thin arms almost did, but I fell too quickly.

It was only until after I fell, after I landed in the soft rivulets of your hair and after I was quickly washed downstream like shampoo on to the banks of your neck did I begin to understand what you said.

I fell asleep on your shoulders, the harbor of this city with black lit buildings; and of course, in dreams when you fall asleep, you really wake up.

So I woke up.

I found a sticky note next to my bed with a picture of a city, and a canal and bridge, and in the water was written "The canals of this city know more than the streets and all their infinite cobblestones because the flow of water is a black mirror reflecting the depth of everyone and everything  that's ever peered into it."

A Dream

I had a dream of an abandoned house, and an island with a ferry.

My dream began with me following a friend, or at least I believed it to be a friend, it might've been one of those dream people who has a distinct body and fine details like fingers and tattoos and such, but no face, as dream people often don't.

I was following her through these streets of, initially green trees, lush and rich, then slowly the trees became barren, and dark, then slowly, the trees turned to bombed out brick houses.

I ran after this friend, I still have no idea who it was, and she led me to this house.

In the house there was a terrible green glow, who knows what that means, it's a dream, maybe it's just setting the mood. 

But the next thing I saw was another friend sitting on a bench playing Tetris on an old skool game boy. She was remarkably chill, despite being in a bombed out house. 

Then she turned at me and said "You're looking for someone, aren't you?" I nodded, but I think I must have fainted, or passed out, or maybe my dream just decided it was bored, so it changed things up a bit, because the next thing I know is I woke up on this island which reminded me of Martha's Vineyard.

Pablo Neruda was speaking on a porch somewhere, it must've been Edgartown.

He told me to swim the channel to Woods' Hole, the port on the mainland. If I swam, he said, I would find happiness, a pencil, a book of love poems and infinite pages for writing on, and another person.

I arrived on the shores of the island, near the bridge where a scene from Jaws was filmed, where one of the Kennedy's had been drunk driving and killed a girl, and looked on in the distance, it was a clear day, it might've even been summer, who can tell in a dream, really, you know? But the distance seemed immense, because I couldn't see the port.

But Neruda said I would find happiness, amongst other things, across the shore, should I choose to swim.

But the Ferry seemed mighty tempting.

I took the Ferry.

And as I sat down, I realized everyone on the Ferry was me. They looked just like me, and as I got up to mingle, so did they. One jumped off the boat, and 4 or 5 Me's called out "Man overboard!" However the crew, also Me, didn't do anything.

We kept on going, and I felt sick, as if part of me had died.

Well, I suppose it had.

We came into port, and as I stepped off, the 200 or so Me's on the ship dissipated, and I found myself very alone. 

I never found Neruda's prophetic gifts.

I never found my friend, either, or whoever she was, and I guess that's who I was really looking for in the first place.

I sat down on the shores of Cape Cod, and looked out at the Atlantic. It was very cold, and it felt like a movie, like the end of some hopeless journey, yet ultimately, the atmosphere was clearly that of a place you would take an intimate lover to, as the Atlantic slowly crashed on the shore, and a lighthouse in the distance shone bright in the fading daylight.

I woke up and it was Monday.

Galileo and Us

Galileo's middle finger is on display, somewhere in Italy.

 

Is it odd that I find that poetic? 

The digits that knew the subtleties in glass, and discovered planets in return, are visible from a podium in some museum.

His eyes, having gone blind while under house arrest, are even more intriguing.

The eyes that saw the difference in 4 of Jupiter's moons from his villa in Florence,

that saw the 'Ears' of Saturn, 

and that saw the passing of 4 popes in the Vatican over his lifetime;

became void in his old age - from staring at sunspots, no less.

Is it odd that while I look at my fingers, and yours, I see in them two souls that have measured countless other glasses to discover our own heavenly bodies.

 And when I reflect on our eyes, I can't help but see the brightest stars in the universe of our Solar faces.

Josephine

Josephine

 

            “You know,” I said to myself as comfort against the cold January winds blowing in from Boston’s Atlantic, “you don’t have to yell to be mean, like you, Josephine. You use words.”

            I had begun talking to myself that winter. The winter I stole a saltshaker from the dining hall so we could do shots of Tequila with the salt and lime. The winter she started to simply ignore me after both of our attempts to heal our own faults of ill friendship, as if that word is a luxury we can afford. The times as they are give no allowances.

            I battled the wind back to my dorm at the university, the cold glass saltshaker still in my pocket. I hadn’t taken it out yet, it had just sat there for three weeks in my jacket, hidden from those hostile days.

            “Actually,” I say to myself again, “you’re worse than this shaker of salt.” I took it out and looked at it while scraping my feet over the frozen-over sidewalk. It was simple glass, with a slightly rusted top. But it was in my admiration of this trinket that my foot caught ice and I fell forward, the glass saltshaker shattering in my palm.

“Fuck.”

 Snow, salt, blood, and ice congealed across my broken lifeline, burning like no other. No frostbite hurt this much, no freeze stung so bitterly.  Colder than the worst wind chills, my hand ached, covered in muddy, bloody chunks of snows and salts, jagged cuts racing across my sour flesh.

“Josephine, you’re a real bitch to me, even a week after we’ve lost our touch, you know that? Karma, you haven't been any better, either.”

The Astronaut

Listening to none other than David Bowie's Space Oddity, fantastic.

It is a new year, and I am resolving myself to a life of exploration in expressive adoration and balance.

I will not be unhealthy in my adventuring, but ambitious.

Columbus. Magellan. Lewis & Clark. Laika?

An Astronaut?

Why not?

Sailing across celestial bodes, heavenly souls,

I can, in fact, see solar winds of good fortune blowing through me.

An Astronaut-

Truly a romantic figure if ever to be.

A scientist discovering, 

while simultaneously 

a virgin observing.

Exhilarating; traveling thousands of miles an hour, 

while simultaneously

very still in intimate action, floating in the shadowy beauty of

a bed,

can I see myself, hopeful, innocent, in intrigue of another's soul, a starred tiara sitting on her head, my lips diving comets on her cheeks, our bodies organic satellites orbiting lovely planets; ourselves.

Thinking like Defunkt Aeroplanes

I'm not really the adult I thought I was becoming. In fact, of course, I feel more and more like the child I always thought you brought out in me. Yes, I suppose you made me feel the most childish I've felt in ages - childish in my giddiness, my jealousy, my affection, my every sense of the word - but I think I liked it. And now here I am, still malleable, shaped still by your mock creative hands months after the fact of us. Do I enjoy the hold so evident you still maintain?

I can't help but think I have no effect on you, which is really quite the blow for me, but what can I do? 

I also think you're a fool for your own predicament, but my opinion is really nothing.

However being back in Boston is a medicine in itself.

With the cold nipping at my cheek bones, my goofy ears, my sloping nose and stubbly chin, I walk down Commonwealth Avenue, a year's worth in dollars of books for classes cutting into my palms. And I don't mind it. I love it. I bath in the simplicity of walking through dirty snow and slush, visible exhalation emitting from my and my friend's mouthes. 

This semester will be pleasant. I have told myself that I will find company this semester, someone who challenges me, appeals to me, feels for me and someone I can respect, who reciprocates such attentions as well. 

Perhaps a lofty thought, and yes I'll still fall for flighty kisses at drunken parties. 

However, affectionate company be the ultimate goal in this wintry sphere. 

Thinking in Spasms, Shooting at Flies like Ideas with those Suction-Cup-Arrows

I'm feeling more and more stupid as the days go on.
Perhaps it's being home with friends. Do I forget myself? Is not challenging myself making me say and do these pathetic things? Forgetting conversations? Drunk dials? Lazy actions?
To be honest, the past 4 days have been the laziest I can even remember. Lord I don't even know what to think of myself...
What's worse is someone I still admire completely called me out on it, and I feel horrible and ignorant. I'm positive their view of me is now tainted by this recent stupidity... perhaps they'll simply laugh at me next time they see me. Shit,that's what I need.
But I'll be back in Boston come Sunday. Back to thinking. Back to Breathing. Back to independently challenging myself, now to prove me myself that I am not a waste as the past few hours of realization have brought me to believe. I'll be myself in Boston, despite how much I love Barkhamsted.
I think my head is on screwy. I've been thinking in spasms, shooting at flies like ideas with those suction-cup-arrows...

Then again there's a perfect explanation for why I was completely ignorant to that conversation I had with that person.
Ugh.
I'm a fool.
Is stupidity ever forgivable?

Snows Fall in Barkhamsted

And a snow falls in New England,

serene and silver it glides to a soft landing on white carpets.

All over the world there are nations mobilized.

And a snow falls in New England.

Bullets hit targets and rockets are launched across hazing borders.

Don't think there is happiness for either offender in these times

These factions don't enjoy blood on snow

And anyone who thinks in extremes of good and bad

is the purest fool.

And a snow falls in New England.

In the spectrum of my mind I am selecting those to reflect upon positively and negatively. Perhaps for the rest of my life.

You make the positive list, while You make the negative.

Am I, in fact, negative on the inside, with a faux-positive outside?

There is a war going on in my mind,

But the snow, it still falls in New England,

serene and silver it glides to a soft landing on white carpets.

What I'm doing

I've got my radio show, and the people that I've wanted to forget are beginning to be forgotten. But I will go back to Boston in 5 days, and instead of burning bridges do I hope to rekindle old flames with past acquaintances. 

Sitting in a friend's room watching Extras and playing video games do I bring myself back to my cool. I feel as if I have never left, and our thrills haven't quit since.

1 am runs to Taco Bell 

movie marathons

legos

music

books

radio

snuggies

hot tubs

nerf gunss

it hasn't ceased.

Back to my radio show. The Poetics of Radio Towers. Saturdays from 12 to 2. Hopefully this will keep me writing, keep me searching my mind and hand for the makings of good poetry. I've been racking my pencil for poetic things and images of literary worth. Hopefully it'll keep me busy.

Well I just figured I'd catch myself up on the goings on of Barkhamsted. I hope to visit school and some old friends on Friday. 

Who knows what I'll be doing in the coming weeks? Who knows who I'll be seeing?

For some reason I find the anticipation fantastic.

Who else does?

New Years Resolutions (4 days late)

Write better. Learn more Latin dances. Fool around. Forget certain people, or at least care less about some of them. Continue to stay on Radio. Find poetry. Write poetry. Meet nice people. Meet nice people who write. Meet nice people who write well. Read good books. Love my friends and family. Make summer plans. Fool around more. Travel. Find my way to Israel.Get in touch with old friends from out of country. Love.