homework

11.30.2023

I think too much. It upsets people. What I say, what I don’t say. It upset grade school teachers and other hierarchical thinkers. I could read, I liked words, I knew some math, I was not good at erasing. My Dad was a Lithographer. I got an F in coloring because I tried mixing CMYK with RYB crayons. My Mom was a nascent poet and we submitted her poem as my homework. I thought it odd, but it made her happy. I wanted to know things. I asked the wrong questions. I irked people with agendas. I used to rock and sing to assuage my discomfort. I lucked out. We were too poor to have psychiatrists at school.

I am a Horizontalist. I remember the days of the ubiquitous bumper sticker that said “Question Authority”. For me it is/was not just a bumper sticker, but a call to arms, or at least, to smirk.

Recent years have brought up a lot of soul searching. Since the complaint that I Just Go (aka the Irish Goodbye) I have taken it as a badge of honor. It’s not every day and every event that I can breeze through and socialize. I want to get out and be public, but sometimes I revert, I lurk, the weight becomes too much. It’s the same down up down, maybe not as far down, maybe a different kind of up, where I won’t go Crashing afterward. Maybe I’ll crash and recover, discover what made me uneasy, what the trigger was. For a long time I felt trapped in the unease, the sense of safety gone, returning to my possum holm to check for bite marks and splinters. Are those teeth marks yours? Or mine?

Look at that. I made my parents proud. I made them allies. The sun is out, the convo is too loud, I have to go for a walk.

leaves in the gutter, late november 2023