Heaven

Sometime…
… in October
of 2002
i was in Amsterdam
— it was only for a short time
, with eli
When i was a teenager
i fell in love with films
they often had subtitles
places very far away
with situations
so poignantly real
it made life feel justified
as i had never felt it
in the artificial void i was fostered in.
i fell in love with long distance
i put my heart in foreign places
i hoped one day to be alive
[ i would record them on audio cassette
listen to them as i walked through the halls
of that mid-western high school blankess
— hearing all those words i did not know the meaning of
surrounded by the mise-en-scene
and the score ]
/
i arrived in San Francisco
as i once did in England
the similarties only
of leaving Indiana
after having not slept for a long time.
when i got in town
i felt like i had wings
open
i was soaring.
i decided to ask a friend if i could stay with him
— his emotional thick-ness and other qualities made me hesitant to stay with him
but i knew
that even through his annoying human story
he could often be real with me: tell the truth, listen to the truth, and occasionally speak the thruth.
i asked him if we could go out for a walk
i told him i need to see beauty; i needed to see life
— we walked down to castro
where crowds of people were protesting and making a scene
as the announcement had just been made that the supreme court had nullified the marriages that happened here between homoesexuals
i told my friend i just needed to see people being pasisonate
and i wanted to see beautiful people
i wanted to see people i knew and loved
and hug them
and just feel good and loved.
—-
there was a man i met here many years ago
— i had broke my best friend’s heart:
i realized that our relationship was based on love
— we loved eachother more than i’d ever known love
but our love came from such damaged hearts
the imtimacy we experienced and allowed eachother
only served to abuse ourselves
, , , and those we loved.
., , , . i broke his heart, and damaged his girl friend
upon a visit to SF, i went to see her… to appologize… somehow ameliorate…
after leaving her house
walking down Noe… i saw a man with bright clothes
and such bright eyes
selling flowers on the street
the truth and beauty… the reality in his eyes snapped me
and
had i been the kind
i would have cried into his arms
[but i am not that kind]
last year
i heard a lover of mine was comming to SF
to see his new
imaginary
lover
i wanted to show him beauty
and took him to see the flower seller
and all the flower seller had then
was anger and bitterness..
as me and my lover had grown…
—
i had… been thinking of him recently
and decided i wanted to see him again
there was another i had met, thought of recently, and wanted to see again
there was another i had never met, but wanted to see, somehow the attraction and subtle feeling was still caling me..
i did nothing, yet, about finding these people again
but on this walk, yesterday, through the castro, among the crowd and cops
they all came to me
i love getting what i want.
today
i made some phone calls
some of them didn’t go through
some of them didn’t go where i wanted them to go
but there were two people
like brothers
i wanted to talk with today
Eli and Nayland
i got through to Eli twice
and though he assured me he wanted to talk with me
(it was he, after all, who had asked me to call him)
now… Then
was not the time.
i called Nayland on all three numbers i have for him.
i called him many times
each time i reached a robot
which had his voice
saying
“you have reached Nayland…”
and after hearing it a few times
i yelled at my phone in the sunny california grimy streets
‘ LIAR! ‘
i saw the flower salesmen today
and today i wanted marijuana
he gave me some
and we sat and talked.
there was lots of stress flowing out of him
where i kept trying to steer it back to some beauty
— perhaps because i needed it so badly.
perhaps just to balance…
i looked at him
stoned and firey
and told him i wanted to have sex with him again
-[we had sex a while after i first met him back in 2001]-
because i wanted to have a fuller exerience with him
, perhaps go back into that blessing, that healing– more fully.
; i told him about how i appreciated him
how i met him shortly after i met Leo
and how my relationship with Leo and this man taking me to Glide
was what ‘ allowed me to enjoy christianity again ‘
but it didn’t seem to affect him much
he just wanted to have sex with me again
calling it ” the nasty ” or “the dirty”
and though i felt an attraction for him
and more… a yearning
i felt a severe pain in my heart
that that reality and honesty i once felt and was now seeking out
was dissolved in the sexual baseness of this city.
i came to the house
and moment after moment
convinced Pappadom
i must go out into the city
he didn’t want to
but upon saying i would do it without him
he said he would come with me.
so we had some bad Pizza at “escape from NY”
and then rented “Heaven”, a film written by Kristof Kryslowsky and direcected by Tom Tykwer
— we went to Samovar… a tea-house here
and though it was nice
it struck me
that everything i loved about Tao of Tea in Portland
was lacking here
that is: simplicity and love of product
supported by knowledge about every little detail…
as if everything here was just surface
no matter how much kindness was put into the ambiance…
we came back to the house
and it was only shortly
before we started watching the film
i had seen it before
in Amsterdam
with Eli
late in 2002
with dutch subtitles
though much of the film was in Italian
seeing that my whole life was like that at the time
(seeing so many events, hearing them… but not understanding the details…)
now was an oppurtunity for me to understand it more fully.
charecters of completely different lives coming together and finding they are TWins
and
finding they cannot live in a world built on lies
escape
(into …?)
i feel
somewhere
inside of me
i am surrounded on all sides
by crazies
… i don’t understand the world and all its lies
it bothers me
that i must acquese
i fear
getting destroyed by trying to live a truth
that… erradicates this… civilization
and imagine i can only choose…
to Escape.
There Is No Where To Go.
in that knowledge
follows the understanding
that
That Place Must Be Made.
i have known this
over
and over
and over again.
this Film
shows
not a place created
but a simple understanding that it is time to go
Accepting that
and
Going.
i suppose
one of the things
i will always be remembering
is
There are Too many things to Consider
and
like my own heart beating
i am not deciding, nor controlling
but am party to… am gifted…
Comes In the Charecter… of Faith.
Take my hand…