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. I’m skilled at the Irish Goodbye. 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, it’s too much. It’s the same down up down, maybe not as far down, maybe a different kind of up. Maybe I’ll crash out, recover, figure out what the trigger was. Maybe not. Not even knowing I felt trapped in the unease, 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