Backflow and Expanse

What's new with Captain Intermittent, you ask? Well, here's the lowdown. Since my last post, which I happened to accidentally post on the other blog I write for (the Nonalignment Pact), I have been very busy. Some of the highlights have included the arrival of a natural gas bill that was about fourteen times the highest bill I would normally receive in the course of a year. I almost never run my heater in the winter here in Texas since Houston really has no winter to speak of. Therefore, my highest gas bill in this town, in this apartment, is about twenty bucks. The bill that arrived the other day? Two hundred and ninety one dollars. I'm sorry, that's wrong. I meant to say two hundred and ninety one motherfucking dollars. Well, I had smelled gas outside for the last few days before the bill arrived, so without wasting time, I called the gas company and reported the smell (or the additive in the gas to give it a smell).

In retrospect, this was perhaps not the best move on my part. The dickbag assface fuckhole cockpony ballsniffing shithorse that showed up to find the leak, who incidentally looked like Freddy Fender, was one of those emotionless imbeciles who refuses to answer any questions, never listens to sensible direction, and then fucks you up the ass before leaving and taking your dignity with him. Translation: He red-tagged my wall heater for leaking around the valve core, and shut down my gas until my landlord calls in a liscenced plumber to fix that problem, hopefully find the actual leak (because the wall heater never smells like gas, and especially not like two hundred and forty five cubic feet of gas in a month's time), and fix the leak. Then, the plumber has to call in a city insepctor, said insepctor must check out the joint and sign off on the repairs, make sure it's all up to code, and then the inspector calls the gas company and they come out and hook up my gas again. The whole thing, if it goes right, takes several days. That's several days without gas, which means very cold showers and no cooking. Great.

And the best part is that no one wants to take responsibility for my exorbitant gas bill. The gas company says it's my responsibility sight unseen, case closed, no further discourse needed. My landlord has not been quick to jump up and let me know that it is his responsibilty since it's his apartment and his leaky pipes that caused this in the first place.

So it's the weekend, and inspectors don't come out on the weekend. And even when he does come out, the plumber has given me no indication of where the leak came from in the first place. That means that even if the inspector gives the greenlight, there is a good chance that when the gas company comes out I will still be reaping the fruits of the mysterious leak no one seems able to find.

Someone is going to pay this bill and it won't be me. I have told my landlord I want out of my lease for reasons other than this fiasco, and since he unceremoniously was uninterested in my pleas, if this gas nightmare doesn't pan out in my favor, I will have a legal reason to bail on this fuck.

What else is new? I feel like a rubber ball, in my personal life that is. I feel like a superball. Rememeber those, the ones so bouncy all it took was one throw and you never saw the thing ever again? I feel like that. My life has changed rather dramatically in the last four or five months. Yet, with all the upheaval I am still the victim of all my issues. I am still at the mercy of my innumerable idiosycracies, shortcomings, and neurotic tendencies. Not that this comes to me as any sort of surprise. I am more than well versed in the ways of my weakness. I am the master of knowing that which leaves me less than whole.

This post has begun in the straightest of narrative formatting. I am relatively comfortable utilizing this voice in order to literally convey certain sorts of information. In effect, this means that whenver I am simply venting an annoyance without interest in protecting anyone or keeping a certain level of opacity, I will do so as directly as I can. It doesn't make for exciting reading but it does get the job done. But what if I were to degenerate this post in the course of writing it by simply beginning to disassemble the immediacy of the style in order to make way for something mre florid, something that interests me much more, and also affords me the opportunity to express myself more easily, more comfortably, and more openly?

There is that day, that once annual day, and it signifies certain things that are obscured through the lens of ignorance that is fit over the frames of the entire world. The day never seems to work out right, maybe due to the weight placed on its already fragile shoulders, maybe due to the ambivalence I happen to feel over its importance, and its origin. The latter is the most likely culprit. Nonetheless, on this day, this year, much has been at stake. There is a currency that is at work here, and its value is up for grabs. It is valued by its use and by the context in which it is employed. Nothing truly new there, age old problem, but it is always new at certain points in life, and this point is axiomatic in importance.

There is a certain level of flux under which I have been forced to operate, and I am not sure how I feel about it. Sometimes the world will do several revolutions and I will feel like I hopped up and allowed the whole damn thing to turn while I hovered above and looked down in increasing bouts of discomfort and apathy. With each turn of the globe lives change down below while up in my cocoon it is always in stasis. By the time I decide to return back to earth I am faced with a sort of dilemma. Now I must figure out how to rectify myself with all that has come in my absence. Thus, a conundrum is created by the situation. If I stay engaged and reactive for too long, I run the risk of falling apart, of being spread so thin that I begin to lose form and am virtually worthless. However, if I make the choice to leave this world, to leap into the firmament and take flight, then there is the risk that I will become almost incapable of having the will to return, and with each passing day, the world becomes less and less appealing to me. I used to think there was a balance in there somewhere. Now, I know better.

There is no balance. There is only tension and release. A whole lot of tension, and only a precious little release. That's just the way it goes, I guess.

And then there is the aesthetics of being, of just being, and then of being in my life. There is that in which I find beauty. And this tenet of being has been redefined for me in ways I could never have previously imagined. I have been handed the keys to the castle, but I have never been given the map. So I stumble through the growth, bushfighting, battling to find the way, all the way knowing that there are great riches that await my arrival were I actually able to arrive before being overtaken by confusion and digressive backflow.

It is amazing the ways in which I have inherited this intense ablity to take the force of life and to wrangle it into a submissive posture, its belly exposed while I am the one being vulnerable. I don't know how that works, only that it does, and only that I have inherited this trait from my deceased mother. She was the one with the strength, she was the one with the humanity, the workable humanity, the qualities that gave me dignity. My father, still living, strong in his own right, a great inposing wall of impenetrable silence, an infulence all his own. This man is distant and vague and self supportive to a flaw. I have inherited his rage and his confusion and his awkwardness, and little of his self-sufficiency, little of his inner fortitude. Of my mother, I have inherited her humor, her intelligence, her insight, and her vision. I have also inherited her fears, her fragility, her unconventional instability, her virtually inpossible lack of usable drive and motivated direction. We are virtually inseperable in our inability to take this life and make it work for us. We have both kept to the road of exclusion, both have enjoyed the place of the outsider looking through the windows at those who were welcomed, gilded invites in hand, enjoying the fire, and the warmth, and the security of the indoors. Our vantage point is in the blue light of the moon, with the crisp air against our flesh, tattered in our lack of compromise, insulated in our thick cover of emotional distance.

And I am now alone in that expanse.

I am left to leave the window, alone, and head for the seductive path into the woods. I am alone to follow that path into the darkened growth, flashlight in hand, hearing the insects bleat through the air, hearing the brush crackle underfoot, a rustle in a nearby patch, a bird overhead, voices in the home on the edge of this wood. I am left to curl at the foot of a behemoth and let the mossy root be my only protection against the rage of the coming storm.

I am on the top step, I am looking down at the gentle edge of the great lake. The water is pitch black, it is night. The sky is so clear, the moon is so full, the landscape is tinted a deep rich blue. The wind is picking up, the leaves are drawn across the hill leading down to the water, and my coat's tail is whipping against my legs. I make my way down the stairs, careful not to fall, the steps so close together and so steep. As I clear the brush and enter the open beach the wind slaps my face indiscriminately. There are visible stars, so vast in number, painted across the sky in an impossibly balanced array, and it is almost impossible not to be drawn into their alluring fray. There is the boat, the small skiff right before me on the shore. Funny, I didn't notice it before. I step into the boat and sit. I close my eyes and listen to the lapping of the gentle waves against the sides of the boat. I see the tails of the lampreys attached to the boat, swaying in the current. I sense their hunger, their desire to latch on to my flesh and nourish themselves on my lifeblood. I look back up the stairs and see the dog. She is at the top stair, where I just was myself, wagging her tail dutifully, awaiting direction. I gesture her towards me. She takes one quick look back at the house, at the orange glow from the windows. She takes one quick glance back up at the house with the rooms full of revellers, party in full swing, a world away, and then she descends the steps and enters the boat.

I push away from the edge of the water, and as we drift out into the lake, I take one last look back at the house on the top of the stairs, and then look back to the open arms of the great bottomless lake, and allow the lampreys to guide us to the place we must go, never to return.