Breath out of breathing.
The trick to being loved by Kerouac is not to never yawn, but to never let him see you do it. Everybody yawns. Roman-candle madmen do not live like explosions, they flutter and they stutter, go dormant and then they start all over again, waging battle on themselves and their surroundings.
"No, I am over here."
I once loved a woman who was married. She thought I was dangerous. I was not. I was in love, and I was a little mad, but not dangerous.
We would meet in secret, that is, by feigning merely friendship. Some lovers meet in the darkness, whispering sweet passwords to each other: "Hark! who goes there?" "The eagle, and it is landing." - and then they swoop down on each other like birds of prey, and if your heart is too timid, that is where the eagles land. Of course, that's part of the game for everyone. Not just secret lovers.
She once asked me why I didn't smoke. I asked her why, she said, you're so neurotic. It would suit you. It's in fashion to smoke if you're neurotic, she said; it will never go out of style for madmen, thin, blue-lipped. Insomniac eyes like empty ashtrays.
Perhaps a loosely tied tie to complete the set.
I said I was not a character in a book. She did not understand.
When we first met, I was quieter, more down-to-earth. Slow. Not seeing things clearly.
I drank as much coffee as now. I was still a night person. I have always been a night-person, in much the same way that some people are cat-people and some people are dog-people. It's not so much a hatred of the day, it's a preference, if the choice is given, for the night.
I was working night shifts at a 7-11. It was an easy job, and I spent much time reading, and meditating.
Meditation is simple, but not easy. You lower yourself into yourself, and you let the walls bloom and you start thinking about breathing. It's a circle: Breath out of breathing. You live by living. You do not judge the world, you merely observe it. You do not observe, you are merely observing.
No wonder the old buddhists had fun messing with their students. What is the sound of one hand clapping indeed.
She would come in every night around midnight or so. Like a ghost, except, she was full of life. She had a tan. She was fit, but not too fanatically desperately God-I-Must-Be-Perfect fit. She looked tired every night, more tired every every night. She worked the late shift in a cafe which closed at nine, which was why she came in every night, and at least part of the reason why she looked the way she did. She had to, to keep her job.
We started talking. We started meeting each other in cafes, in our apartments, and in general. It was friendship at first, brought on by small-talk, and then it was an affair, brought on by more small-talk. Love is a thing of small words and smaller gestures.
She made me feel more normal. Which I guess is ironic, considering that I became stranger in the time that I met her. More manic. More energetic. More more of everything. I became someone else, sometimes radically so, and for some reason, she was the one who held onto me, through the changes. Perhaps she was in love as well. Perhaps that was why she ignored it when I began to talk in a louder voice. When I stopped showering for days at a time, and when I would disappear for weeks, partying.
Perhaps she was envious of my transformations, even as she saw how they were ruining me. She felt guilty about our affair, and wanted to be someone else on one level or another. A better person.
"No, I am over here. I am someone else."
In the end, it was too much, even for her. She was very patient. Too patient. The last time I saw her, I was drunk the way a bird is drunk on berries. It was New Years Eve, and the fireworks were in the sky, magnificent and dangerous and mad. She was drunk as well, the way old people are drunk in the suburbs. But she carried drunkenness with style. It's odd, how some people never lose their cool.
She was shouting at me, and I was laughing. She cried. I laughed some more, and she called me mad.
I remember being alone, later the same night. I was crying, and afraid of the fireworks outside. When I woke up the next morning, I had hurt my hand. I do not know why. I do not remember, and honestly, I do not care to. That was a different me. I sat at a long time, staring at my broken hand, trying to think and not think about the previous night. Outside, the children were using throwing their last, sad fireworks in the street. I got up, showered, and went outside to find a doctor for my hand, and for my head. It was January one, and the children were saving up for new fireworks.
