Sadbastard Monologues pt. I

(Denn and Sum on the Cliff, 2009)

Come here, I want to tell you a story; a story of growing up, and growing strong, but not without falling down a few times, and learning who you are each time.

When I was your age I used to run all over the place, from one person to another, and every love I had was different and exciting and came with its own complications and beautiful imperfections. I learned to walk on my hands, and smoked cigarettes once in a while without ever telling anyone. In fact, you're the first to know, can you keep secrets?

I was moving so fast through life that years would pass me by, and I had forgotten the names of the many faces I'd meet, seen, and left or left me, and it would only be on a sad Sunday afternoon I'd remember their names, and see their faces, and want to contact them that moment in hopes they were thinking the same thing as me; I wanted to be missed when I realized I missed someone in my life. And this would happen over and over, and I'll call her or him and wonder where they had been, and what they had done only to realize that time is unforgiving, some hadn't changed, or perhaps it was our situation hadn't changed; frozen at the bottom of a lake, preserved from the moment we last spoke. How many times do I have to say goodbye, only to say hello not knowing if they'll still be there.

The sun is setting, and the light is diminishing in golden rays and flares on my spectacles. I feel warm to be alone in this moment, and cold to be alone without someone to surprise me, in full mystery, in nakedness, and in endless love. I see a world of memory, and slowly as age catches me restless in a fever of youth I see my life before me now. I have lived and relived all my saddest memories to the point of an analysis that renders no further information, and I am desperately searching for relevance in my life, as an older man, as an aging tree; sloped, sloping, willow in the fall.
I forgot who once said that we tend to see the bad in things, we look for imperfections, and seek an escape to associate with failure. I have taken so much of my life and put it into cardboard boxes and had forgotten the room they were stored in. Along with all those sad memories are the greatest moments of my life, the ones that make me realized I was happy, and I should have never let that happiness escape me even though those I share memories with are no longer with me now, let that moment be relived, and that person who I once loved, once cared for is still alive in that frozen water slipping through the wrinkles of my hands.
The minor details escape me now, and my childhood is all but a few memories. My time as an young adult is vague, mistaken for yesterday's dreams. I once called to the wind asking it who I was, and though I never heard anything back, for years I would call and sometimes yell that same question until I forgot why I was asking it in the first place. I grew tired, and before I realized it, I was an old man, holding on to a cigar box of every love letter I had ever gotten. I sealed that box a long time ago, and I forgot the faces attached to each of those letters inside. I wondered if the scent of her and her were still on the pages of her heart. It wasn't until the last of my curiosity had me pull the nails from that cigar box apart, wall by wall, I destroy the format of my most precious memories.
All that remained was salty pages soaked with tobacco leaves and faded letters eaten by the sea. I searched for any and every sign of life on those memories and found nothing in my hands. I tried to remember her appearance, seeing a blinding glimmer too bright for my weak eyes. I looked at my fat, rough, and wrinkly hands and saw disgust. Nothing. Nothing at all.
The years passed by, and in dreams I had lost my connection to what was real and what was of my own fiction. I had lived my dreams like I lived my life, and as I dissolved I turned to salty white water; an estuary of my memories real and makebelieve. Which I keep and which I have left a long time ago escapes me, and I have learned to appreciate what is now before me, with its ability to grow, to fall, and to get back up. With each moment, with each voice, I hold a face to know each one for a moment; the moment we shared, when we were both fools, when we're both in love, and saw time as an endless thing.