Month: June 2008

and it was then my father started to pay more attention to us… or to me at least
he’d always paid more attention to my brother and sister
but now he was trying to prove his love to me

for my 8th birthday party he arranged a complex obstacle course in the back yard
and told me to invite all my friends

i didn’t really have friends, apart from my brother and Neil and Brian (or had he moved away already?)
well, i liked Charlie and Mike…
so i invited mostly kids i WANTED to like me
and that was the age kids started to hate me
i wanted so badly to be liked and accepted and
desperation is so unbecoming…

my father wanted so badly for everything to work out
and i couldn’t do most of the obstacles…
maybe no one could…
i think some of the kids could
he tried so hard and i got embarrassed
i kinda went and hid
coz everyone was making fun of me

i was still sucking my thumb at this age
it drove my father crazy:
as he gave me more attention
i was more an more a failure in his eyes
which made him try harder:
he wrapped my thumb in duct tape
or masking tape with tabasco sprinkled on it
he eventually broke me of it
but i’m still a very self-satisfying person. . .

and sometime during that summer
my brother stole a quarter and a matchbox car from Neil
and our parents made him go back over to Neil’s house to return it
once for each item, as it kept unfolding
and he got spanked each time.

that christmas we got a Nintendo
which was the perfect excuse not to try to get people to like me anymore
i started “relating to a screen” as a friend puts it
and started getting fat

my following birthday i had ever more kids up
but 9 years old? common!
we had a sleep over
and stayed in the upstairs part of the barn out back

we did terrible things
like making one of the boys who fell asleep piss his pants by putting his fingers in warm water

and we used all the nasty words
and told very nasty stories

i was shocked the next day to find that my father had been listening in on us down stairs (or outside?)
and he heard all the nasty words i used
he wrote them down
and scolded me about them the next day

made me write over and over
“i will obey my parents. i will not use profanity”
500 times or something

i didn’t really love 3rd grade
it think this was when i really started to hate school
i was always getting picked on
was terrible at sports
was ugly and awkward around everyone
and had the worst luck…
went out to the playground in fear of being beaten up every day
.. so i started pushing for doing theater: i could get big roles in that
even if my real life was severely failing…
but another class had done a science experiment with incubating eggs
i wanted one so badly
that teacher went and bought me a little chick
it turned out to be a rooster and i named him “Eggbert” (at my mother’s suggestion)

that may also have been the year my sister got a “bunny” and named it “carrots”. . .

before the Nintendo
i remember that summer of playing out on the rusty swingset
Neil was my friend when it was just the two of us
we would empty out the mice traps in the barn (shed) and discect them with my brother’s lab kit (he never used it)
Neil’s dad was a Science teacher in Middle School
so we were learning ahead…

we’d put the brains in one test tube
the intestines in another
the eyes and penis in . . .

we didn’t use any preservative
and they really stunk when we opened them up later to add more to them

but what i’m getting at was the time we were playing with the hose in the back yard
little plastic pool
and hose
and sprinkler
on the big lawn
backing into the cornfield

(oh, i forgot that, when i was 5 or something my brother and i went for a walk… a four hour walk through the corn field… i remember talking to a fox who gave us a ride on his go-kart. we came out the far side of the field and went into a little farm house where a woman gave us a glass of water… then we walked through the corn home… stopping by a little drainage ditch to play with the frogs and turtles
when we got back, police were everywhere and my mother was hysterical: praising some saint or other and grabbing us tightly against her)

anyway
we were in our swimming suits
and Neil and Louis went inside to eat or something
and i lay on the back porch where no one could see me
and took them off
lay naked in the sun

i felt so free
so alive
so full of joy

but i also knew i’d get in trouble
so i had to hide it
and not let anyone find out

often, then
i would sneak outside and be naked
it filled me up with life!

perhaps it was this year my father started being away a lot
or i noticed that

there would be long periods where we wouldn’t see him
as i remember it

he was in russia
or california
or iowa
germany?

he was working for his career

i saw a special on TV about truckers who had two separate families that didn’t know about eachother
so told mother that must be what it was

she was freaking out anyway because she had no real friends
and her family was so far away: over 5 hours up in Grand Rapids
how was she to know how to raise a family all by her self?
she was in a lot of pain, something about her womb
though her teeth were perfect

there was the stereotypical “i won’t eat brussel sprouts” or beets
so having to sit at the table for ever

and perhaps this was when my brother did something “bad” so my mom decided to discipline him
and broke a green ruler over his butt. . .
he started laughing
which made her feel even more hopeless

this was the year, i think
when i was sleepwalking a lot
my mother and father were watching TV
and i came out and asked them if they’d seen the sky
— apparently i was looking for the sky
i said i went out the garage and couldn’t find the sky

i had no memory
but the telling of their story to me the next day created a rich visualization

maybe this was the year i started school
oh no, i mean First Grade
— i couldn’t do my homework for some reason

i would bring it home
and just not do it

by the end of the year
i had a brown grocery bag filled with unfinished homework

i had many meetings with my teachers and my mother to try and figure out why i wasn’t doing my work
they said i should try and get it all done over the summer
but i never did it

2nd day of going to sleep at Dawn

does food
somehow
keep me from sleep?

so much stimulation!

perhaps this is where it gets patchiest

i remember my mother kept multi-colored sugar crystals in a pretty vase/bottle thing on top of the stove
she’d give us a few in the palms of our little hands when we were good

i remember one time trying to reach up onto the stove to get it
and knocking down a pot of boiling water
scalding my chest
— i think i had to go to the hospital
— i think i had a gauzy-bandage covering my entire chest for a few days (or weeks?)

i remember microwaving M.U.S.C.L.E. men, watching their pink bodies distort and meld; the stink

i remember the toaster catching on fire

i remember my mother screaming at me about knocking over some of her potted plants

i remember sitting in trees in the back yard
feeling the trees
supporting me
feeling their life
— they were my friends

and the turtles and the frogs
i would be scared
but touch them
catch them
make little houses for them

they’d die
or i’d let them go
or they’d escape
and i’d find other ones

my brother (or father) decided to keep a stray dog
golden retriever/yellow lab mix
they named her Cindy
and she was often moody
sometimes violent
sometimes playful
she liked to hump us
and we pretended to be scared of it
but i think we all liked it: i know i did

we had two close neighbors who were friends
i think one was called Brian Ellis (maybe?)
we would play with dandelions’ white puffy heads
and lay down on the earth, trying to feel it’s warmth (this probably happened later)

the other was called Neil — ah, what a story

there were two other boys who lived down at the end of the row of houses
their father was a welder
and their mother used to dress them up as girls before she actually had daughters

then there was that kid who was actually from a farming family
he didn’t live in the row
but in an isolated house in the middle of the field (right?)
and i remember seeing mushrooms growing in his ears.

.flickr-photo { }.flickr-yourcomment { }

I just ate my first bowl of
very watered-down curry.

it’s so nice to return to the land of the body

on my fourth birthday my uncle Rick (also my GodFather) gave me a set of keys
he was a locksmith
and i think it was just a ring of all sorts of duplicates he had made for various jobs that he no longer needed
they were on a huge ring bigger than my hand
maybe 30 keys
maybe a million
i don’t know
but there was ONE that was cut in green metal
and i knew that THAT one was the one to take me home
that is
i knew that when i was done with this life
i could use that key to open the door and go back to the world i was from
(?!?)
that was late spring, of course
and it wasn’t many months more before it was mid summer
the heat
and the awkwardness…

i’d decided i’d had enough of this world
and was ready to go

i walked into the middle room
which was no longer my brother’s and my room
it had been turned into the guest room
and we’d moved back into the corner room with my year-old sister

i struggled against the bed to move it away from the wall a bit
and stared into the wallpaper
seeing the white dashes move over the dark blue
then looked down into those strange and magical key-holes around our house
that made the lights shine and the appliances flicker
i pulled out the green key and stuck it in the socket
.
.
.
and flew across the room in a blue arc

i cannot describe my confusion and disappointment
when i opened my eyes and found myself laying on my back with my mother and brother looking down at me
“What Have You Done?”

for perhaps about 20 years after that i was disgruntled for having to be here when i had chose to leave.

.flickr-photo { }.flickr-yourcomment { }

I got my computer today

… and around age three
my sister was born
so for that year
my brother and i lived in the middle room, while my baby sister was in the corner room

we had bunk beds
and i often “had” to sleep in the lower one because i was the younger
— it was like a cave.. which was a good safe space for me to delve into my fantasies
… the wall paper in that room was dark blue with white stripe-type patterns on it
many verticles, then boxes, circles, with dashes and hashes through it
i would look into it and see faces
all sorts of creatures and characters
my eyes would go far and wide
and i would disappear into reveries in some far off reality
where we didn’t have bodies or even such distinct personalities
… how can i speak of such things…

back then
i always slept with stuffed animals
i never had teddy bears
but i had some sort of dog thing, and something else and something else
i remember waking up one night from a nightmare
and in the gloam i thought the animals were some huge three-headed monster (like cerebus, two headed dog…)
and ran screaming into my mother’s room
she told me everything was alright, of course
nothing to fear

and i thought about that

it may have been in those years
or shortly after
that i learned how to control my dreams

being followed by some gigantic towering stick-figure monster
chasing me over verdant hills
terrified
i suddenly realized i didn’t need to be experiencing such fear
and stepped back from the whole thing:
it was suddenly just happening on a TV i was watching
i reached forward and changed the channel.

(i just wrote out a long blather, then cut it, here’s the short part i like)

i had reason to be over on York Avenue today
really far east around 60th street
i intended to walk down through the beautiful sunny day to 53rd,
across to get the E to the A home
crossing under the bridge
i was
all of a sudden
on Sutton Place
and there were beautiful old buildings

does anyone know the history of this?

i was a bit mesmerized
thinking of how most of manhattan used to look like that
(and around grammercy park…)

i instantly wanted to know someone who lived in these houses
to go up into them…

how?

maybe post something on craigslist asking?
but my iPhone wasn’t connecting, somehow

i walked down to the bottom (after having explored a few of the parks
at the end of streets)
and saw a triangle park overlooking the FDR and the river
a man sat with his shirt off
i came up to him and sat next to him and said
“what a brilliant idea”
and took mine off as well
i was sure he was gay in an instant
… maybe he lived here?

he lived over between 1st and 2nd avenue
and i quickly forgot to ask him about the history of the area
just commented on his sizeable nipples and how we might enjoy eachother sometime

i was so spaced out from the fasting
i just lay back and enjoyed the sun on my naked torso

i gave him my card
and walked down 53rd

everything is so exciting when i’m fasting
because i can’t have any of it
that mexican food
that indian

the little porn store run by two dykes called “Come Again…”

hmmmm

when i got home
the computer wasn’t here yet
the internet was still down
i was infuriated and made a bunch of phone calls

i got the internet company to reset my modem
and it seems to be working now (i’d done plenty of hard-rests myself)
and i got the cards saying i could pick up the computer tomorrow at
the post office

Phew

i think i’m going cook some congee tomorrow morning too
it’s time to get back to food.

i remember very little from my childhood
and as far as i can remember
nothing from being a baby

i think my parents had it changed as i grew older
but i remember the carpet when i was very young
was a mottled orange/red/brown shag
— it looked like vomit
i noticed once, when i was sick with the flu
that it blended in perfectly

there were plates hanging on the wall
above the toaster
i don’t remember what they were
collectable something

there was dark wood paneling, i think
a large sliding glass/screen door lead to the back yard

a large “master bedroom” for my parents at the back of the house
ours across the hall

ah, i remember one thing
— i hated being in a crib
the cold isolation
the bars
the endless black to stare into
though there was a mobile over it the light would catch
… and i will always remember the car lights driving across the walls and ceiling
(we were close to the road)
but that happened every night
and i’ve always been the sort to lie in the dark a while
before finding sleep

My parents grew up in Michigan: father in (a suburb of) Detroit, mother in Grand Rapids. They met pretty close to 30 (though my mother is older), and decided they should get married… coz they were getting on.
When my mother was pregnant with my brother, they moved to Harrisburg Pennsylvania and lived there for a year. Louis was born there and my mother was quickly pregnant with me. I don’t know the details, but they left PA for Indiana. It’s cheaper and “nicer” and “whiter” i imagine. They bought a little house in a row of houses surrounded by cornfields on a road called “975 E”. Little yards, eight houses. acres and acres of cornfields in all directions.
I was born there at 1:55pm on a Thursday afternoon, June 1st, 1978.
apparently i was jaundiced
maybe i was just olive-skinned?
i was named after my father’s mother’s father’s brother: Domenico Guiseppe Palmozo. . . and one of my mother’s favorite saints.

(back-posted because my internet was down yesterday)