only God didn’t hear

time lapses between obsessive bouts with surfing, or something else all together. as I grow older a sense of deepening responsibilities to others also grows within me. but always, lingering there in front like a dangling carrot, is my obsession with self. what will I do next? when will the swell arrive? can I write like Arturo Bandini? at least I’m not as lost as he was. or Hamsun.

they were madmen. they swung from one heady emotion to the next like howler monkeys. screaming obscenities at the sky -at God. only God didn’t hear. he’s left a long time ago, on the 8th day. he went somewhere where someone loved him and treated him with dignity.

you think you know what is what? OK well then spill it. tell me. I watch my kid learn to climb and string words together. he knows more now about what is what that I ever did will. he lets the watermelon juice drip down his chin and onto his belly without a care in the world. all he knows and cares about is that the fruit is truly good and it is to be enjoyed without as much as a care for sticky red juice on his chin. I bet he could tell me what is what if he could talk.

maybe not. maybe Arturo and Hamsun were right in their madness. they fasted by way of destitution. a purposeful destitution only made rich by selling a few words here and there. sell outs. yes that’s what it is. the real muse is cash. we all know it. legacies are for birds and historians -whose jobs are to twist the truth like wrought iron, into some spiraling staircase. at the top of that staircase are all those words, bought for a pittance from some destitute bard. Bandini was an Italian from Colorado. his Catholic guilt was so heavy that even his disbelief in God could not lighten the burden.

so  I run. not for fitness or health. wellness? that’s what they call it these days. no. not for wellness. I run because it feels like Hamsun must have felt. those quiet moments of solitude and struggle. those moments spent day dreaming about a life that could be when I get it together. I run past trees and moss covered stones. I run past ferns whose ancestors were here before the dinosaurs shit in those deep deciduous woods. Thoreau was a fool for writing about that damn pond. Whitman was a fool for thinking he knew. I’m a fool too. I just haven’t quite figured out why.

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