Learning to Inhale Solids

When our high school lit class read Catcher in the Rye, I read it out loud, the entire thing, at a rate of sixty pages per hour. It did a lot for me then, but it does very little for me now.

When I think about it, a lot of little things had big affects on me before the ball really got rolling.

The ball is time itself, by the way.
I’m talking about before time got rolling.

We were taught a lot about history, but when I say history, I’m only referring to the very brief portion of it which I am personally acquainted. As far as I’m concerned, everything else is as good as myth or progressive fiction.

So when I say the ball got rolling, I mean my ball. My time.

Before we read Catcher in the Rye, which explained a lot of things to me, my best friend had an abortion and I stopped getting hungry
Even though it was “nothing to get upset over.”
Which I knew because I got an A in my government class.

There is something about science that doesn’t sit well in my stomach. Like Indian food.
I remember when they cloned Dolly.
And I remember when she died.
That’s science for you.

I thought all those studies in horticulture would come in handy after our neighbor got in a car accident and her husband died.
She planted grapes. A lot of them
She read grape books.
But when winter came, they shriveled up beneath the snow.
The damn fertilizer didn’t do shit in combat with nature.
And that’s science for you too.

I liked politics before I read about Kent State and before
Jeromy was shot and killed in a war for peace…
Which made about as much sense as when my brother and I ate mud together.

I spent some time just thinking about that-
They taught us how to think critically in the sixth grade-
And it really did me in.

That’s when I began to learn French.
So when someone said
“What is wrong with you?”
I’d say, “Je’ne sais pas.” (I don’t know)
And they’d give up.

Je’ne sais pas
Je’ne sais pas
…Isn’t that the truth?

Step 2: Un-learning/ beyond antics

Sometimes I look around and see brokenness.
Sometimes I feel completed by it.
There’s a swing set in the old yard where we used to sunbathe and cut down our own Christmas trees
Before Grammy died of lung caner and Grandpa had to have his leg amputated…
Even though he was a soldier
And soldiers are supposed to be tough.

I watched a documentary of the guy who wanted a good scar
And shot himself in the shoulder.
“I’m a lifer of life,” he said, “The world is my prison.”
Then he shot himself
And cried like a baby

After someone showed me pictures of the mushroom cloud at Hiroshima,
I remember the towers fell and some little kid asked me why.
I told him,
Someone was so angry, the anger made the buildings fall
And he asked if God was angry.

I went to a museum where they had pictures from Picasso and Dali
And someone behind me whispered that art imitates life.
So I looked around.
Behind me was a painting of black and whites squares
And all I could think was, “No.”

I remember stringing cotton around a replica of the Statue of Liberty
For Halloween
And I said, “Spider webs on our lady liberty-”
And you said, “-how metaphorical.”

When nothing made critical-thinking sense anymore,
I stopped watching the news, and started sleeping.

When I couldn’t fix anything,
I read Dostoevsky.

Step 3: Understanding

I started talking to my rearview mirror about of habit
After being trained to talk about nonsense
Like mathematics and central intelligence
And people see me in the car and think
CRAZY
But…
So what?

I met a boy who told me that living is like jumping into gravity turned upside down
He didn’t want to know about books, he wanted to know what the world looked like
from the top of an Iraqi building…
He joined the Army and spent years fighting in the desert… for
one moment on a rooftop.
I said, “How was it?”
He said, “You should have seen it…”

I read Slaughterhouse Five between 12 and 3 am
In which Vonnegut describes death as being nothing but a translucent blank
And a steady hum
Like coming to conscious after coma with the hospital lights in your eyes
Like coming to conscious after coma

So I guess that maybe, in the beginning, there was darkness…
But it seems that afterwards…

After there has been so much…