wanderer kyla Left me in the hallway, left me long and yellow like the old hallway. Left me in the closet, left me calm and dusty stuffed between tweeds. 010819 ... the looming shadow of a returning bird memory of a year spent on the edge of homelessness and insanity sleeping on the couches and in the spare rooms of whatever friends and acquiantences were willing to take me in here and there and the occasional in between nights in the ruins of my vandalized house and a few scattered nights on a well secluded bench eventually everyone else's patience with me wore thin, but by that time, i had begun to rebuild and had come back into the fold of my family all_my_sins_remembered 010819 ... guitar_freak upside inside outside downside I always run from one thought to another Needing a distraction Event place person thing too much to handle song write play act life and strife hang out together dramatics pragmatics and egotistical fools i find myself alone A lone wanderer searching for truth Waiting and watching for you 011122 ... kerry “well, the euphoria’s gone,” i told carrie. “i’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, to see how i can handle discomfort… and…” i told her the story, brief and mundane, how overwhelm snowballed into anxiety and then twisted into a knot of helpless rage. “there’s a void,” i said, “a void i’m trying to fill, but i don’t know what’s supposed to go there. i’m searching, but for what? am i making any sense?” she nodded her gentle head. “sometimes i wish i had some kind of spiritual practice… maybe that would help. an answer handed to me.” she was quiet, waiting. sometimes her silence, warm as it is, feels unnerving. “i’ve always felt like a wanderer,” i said. “and not always in a bad way–traveling, living all over the place, that kind of wandering. but now it’s more like searching.” i told carrie that my constant self-examination was slightly embarrassing to me–i felt like i was a self-absorbed adolescent. “it sounds like you aren’t really sure who you are.” she said that after ten years of being elsewhere, it was understandable, i hadn’t been able to grow. “i feel like i’m too old for this. to not know.” she shrugged. “but if you ask someone ‘who are you, exactly?’--i don’t think anyone can truly, fully answer that question.” that was comforting to hear. “it’s funny, though, because today i feel so old! we got back from new_york yesterday, i passed out, and i’m still tired. every time i go to new_york my feet are killing me by the end, it’s so much walking on concrete and i expect that, but… damn. my legs, my feet!” we both chuckled. “there can be a genetic component to addiction,” she reminded me. i began mentally browsing through my family tree. somehow we started talking about my dad–the epitome of self-control and moderation, substance-wise–but also a person who has felt the need to prove and protect himself since he was six, when he lost his father. my grandfather was a marine pilot, supposedly a good one, who died in a plane crash when he was training someone. it was in laguna beach, before it was built up, when it was only hills by the ocean. when i was a kid i asked my dad what it’d been like for him, what he’d felt, losing his dad so young. he shrugged and said, “i was just afraid i’d become an orphan.” today was the first day of my new job. i stood in my closet and stared at all the things i knew i couldn’t wear. i can’t remember the last time i had a job that required me to look “nice.” i settled on a royal blue sweater, brown corduroys, and some old brown leather oxfords. when i looked in the full-length mirror i noticed how discolored my shoes had become. i couldn’t tell whether they looked ratty and beat-up, or fashionably distressed. i decided on distressed, because it was nearly time to leave. the first day turned out to be another meeting with my supervisor, a couple hours of talking about what it would all look like, time for me to ask her more questions, discussing payment and schedule. perhaps being salaried within the year. expectations. a key to the office. it would start slow, but soon i’d need to be able to get dressed without the feeling of cobbling together something that would pass. since i was already in center city, i decided to go shopping. in the fitting room at uniqlo i felt like a child playing dress-up. can i convince them to trust me, to take me seriously? i only bought a couple of shirts–soft, blue–but i did feel a bit older as i left the store, as i rode the train home, as i walked in those distressed leather shoes. 220301 what's it to you? who go blather from