Welcome to the third chapter in this sprawling saga. When we last parted, I had officially discovered that I was going to be a father, and decided to cope with it the best way that I knew how: Poetry. Now we’ll fast forward a couple of months, and welcome in 2007, wherein the fetus has a name for either gender, and I get a little philosophical:
General Mayhem and Confusion
January 23rd, 2007
7:33 p.m.
Sorry it’s been so long since the last installment in the continuing adventures of The Batmart. This one isn’t going to be fantastic… Just need to start getting myself in the habit of writing again. It’s been too long… I think it’s getting to be time to put down some things… you know… for posterity.
I’ll be 30 in less than three years, assuming I don’t bite it before December. I don’t think I’m prepared to cope with that. Maybe even less than I was able to cope with 25.
I need to make time to start writing again. That’s my only hope out of where I’m at now. I have no other skills, save maybe photography. I gambled everything years ago on that talent, and as the years go by, I see I may have been shortsighted in my approach. Not about my gift, but rather about the time it would take to come to fruition, and about how long I’d have to stick around (not entirely the same point), and all of the other things that have popped up along the way. It never mattered to me that I was fucking myself over financially, putting myself in ill social standing, or at odds with the law. I was supposed to be dead by now. And the Bi-Polar Bears haven’t helped. It’s not that I see things in Black and White, but rather all of the extreme shades in between.
Now I have the feeling like I’ll be around for fucking ever, and like my great grandfather, outlive my savings and my ability to contribute anything to anybody. Of course, he had to live into his golden years, whereas the previous statement is self-applicable even today, aside from the “for fucking ever” part, obviously.
Now that I’m arriving at a point in my life where my word would be a useful thing to have in the financial world, I find I’ve no ability to use it- they all took their chances years ago, and even when I tried my best amidst my second chance, I still managed to fuck it all up again.
And so my only hope is to do what I do best- do what I was born for, stop sitting on my ass, and molding away in job for which I am ill-suited. And even then, might I not become like so many of greats- impoverished until my poor health and chronic misery consume me, only to have my redemption come years after my passing, when all the world might shudder at loss of one they would have never known, but for the volumes of sad and lonely photographs and stories, songs and poetry discovered by someone cleaning out wherever I had lain them.
And I wonder, would David William or Jennivee Isabel even care?
Or would they think of me forever as the failure that condemned them?
I forgot just how cheery a gentleman I used to be. The reason I included the whole post was to show that I’ve been saying I needed to be writing for almost half the time that I have actually wanted to be a writer. Also, how sad is it that I haven’t uploaded any new photographs in years? And now that I’ve got so much backlog, I don’t know that I’ll ever get it done. Suddenly, the amount of things I should be doing with my days of leisure are drastically increasing.
Out Here We Is Stoned… Immaculate
January 27th, 2007
2:50 a.m.
…I’m feeling pretty good right now. I still can’t feel the demon monkey dancing, but maybe my hands are trying to keep me from freaking the hell out.
My mom is coming down at the end of February. And again when the demon monkey arrives. ***THOSE OF YOU WHO KNOW OF THE DEMON MONKEY AND WHAT IT IS, PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT UPON IT IN THIS FORUM AS THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO READ THIS, THAT, FOR NECESSARY REASONS, CANNOT KNOW YET***
“I’ll always be a Word Man. Better than a Bird Man.” [-Jim Morrison]
Biiiiiiiiiird! Maaaaaaaaaan!………… [-Birdman]
Oh, having to keep the knowledge of my love child a secret from the world (or at least, my co-workers at McDonald’s). It took the longest time for me to actually feel my son moving around inside of my girlfriend. When I finally did, I can’t say that it made things better. There are certain things that Sea Monkeys should never be able to do. Just saying.
Greeting Card I’d Like To See
February 2nd, 2007
10:14 p.m.
Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
I knocked up your daughter…
That’s it. I’m really sorry.
By February, it appears that my usual sense of humor had returned. I had been trying to figure out what I would say if I ever met my girlfriend’s father (who totally looks like a Mexican Sean Connery!).
The refund from dispute went to card #5973,
March 2nd, 2007
10:28 p.m.
…It reminded me of a walk Dave and I took one night stumbling drunkenly back in Emeryville after leaving [Fuddrucker’s].
Although, to be fair, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen blood gushing like that. It took months for the drops to wash out of the sidewalk.
I’m not going to give any other context.
Shut The Hell Up
March 27th, 2007
11:44 a.m.
Like some of my other friends, I have been re-reading the Harry Potter series in anticipation of the release of the final book. I am on the 5th, now, at the part when Harry receives the “badly wrapped package roughly the size of a paperback book” from Sirius.
Shortly before 9/11 I left my hometown and moved into the city (not the city proper, mind you, but still…). Every time I spoke to my mother or grandmother, they told me to make sure I called my great grandmother. And on the rare occasions I would come over for a visit, would, they would ask if I had gone to see her. I did. A couple times.
Here’s the thing: She was born in 1912. By the time I was born, she was already a senior citizen. But I never really saw her like that. She always had so much energy, so much life, that we all sort of seemed to take her existence for granted. Or at least I did. But by the time I had moved away, her age had begun to creep up upon her, or rather, overtake her exponentially for all those timeless years. She had begun to look and act old.
Maybe it was due to my youth, even as obsessed with death as it had been, but I became unable to be near her. Here I was, caught up firmly in the prime of my youth, and there she was, quickly fading into twilight. It offended my very nature to be near her- not for lack of love, no, she was someone I will always hold most dear, but something physical, as if my body was unable to face its own demise by fading- and so I did my best to avoid her, never really believing she’d be gone.
And so it was that in the summer of ’02, she finally sickened beyond cure and passed away. The day it happed, I was off [redacted, because this is a family blog]
Every year as far back as I could remember, we had had a family Fish Fry. All the cousins in the area getting together and eating and drinking an generally being a kind-of redneck-close-knit family.
That year it was a wake. Most of my Gram’s kids had quit smoking, but the smell from my own, enticed them to come over, and breathe in the 2nd hand comfort.
I remember at the funeral, looking at her face. It was the exact same except for the utter lack of resemblance to her at all.
And even knowing all of this, how much I wish I could have taken the time to just stop by and say hello- what tears me up inside is that I still don’t know of what we might have spoken.
Once in a while, the loss of my great-grandmother still hits me like the day I lost her, and I am reduced to blubbering while my wife and son look on in concern. I touched on this is the days leading up to my trip to Washington in December, but I’d forgotten a few things that I had remembered when the event was still closer to me.
Welcome to the Batmart (we’ve got fun and games)
April 7th, 2007
11:03 p.m.
It’s funny how “content” sneaks up on you. Not, complacent- content. Like knowing you’re doing the right thing, even though it makes absolutely no sense at the time.
I wasn’t quite happy yet, but a feeling of serenity had descended upon me, like succumbing to the inevitable. I was still about two and a half months out from fatherhood, and it looks like I was handling it with a modicum of grace.
A turning point
June 22nd, 2007
9:08 p.m.
More now than ever, I am confident in my ability, but as equally unsure as to how I will display it. No one …reads poetry anymore. Did they ever? I mean, by choice? I have a book within me that I know that I must write, if I am to ever write anything original again, and yet I know to write it I must throw myself into the past and relive the [things] I barely made it through the first time. And to do this I have to take the time to… I don’t know…
How am I supposed to throw away a career I hate which right now is paying ALL the bills, and gives me health insurance, to launch myself, sink or swim onto a path which all odds tell me I cannot follow to the Happily Ever After? I can’t f*** up anymore. I passed by my chance for one last Do-Over, and now it’s forever.
The cost of following my passions is also a monetary concern, beyond the bills. I need a camera. Time. I need time. A pause button. All of this… makes me miss the days when [redacted because this is a family blog] was my daily goal, when I could just allow my depression to consume me and treat with disregard the machinations of my life.
I…
-Batmart
I’ll have pictures later.
For now, I must sleep.
“Oh Jeffrey….”