Quasi Emotional Hollow of Heaven….

Isn’t that what we all want? Some piece, a slice of something that we can chew on, savor and reflect on in our darker moments? something that carries us through to a better end? Something to suck on when the whole world is dark and wet and cold. Something more akin to comfort over the torture. I don’t have that…yet.

I was telling Don this morning that part of the reason we hate it here so much is there is nothing happening in our lives. This is a precarious situation brought on by poverty and just a general whatthefuckedness that is what Denver has become for me. I think, truly, that if you live in a high functioning city that trading it in for a semi-functioning one such as this kind of places you in a place of shock that is almost impossible to recover from–it’s a state of mind that is hard to shake, and there is some delicious irony in realizing I hate people for their inflexibility but my own brain is not realizing that maybe I just haven’t gone out enough, surrounded myself with enough people, done fucking anything to change the scope of what I see and who I encounter, and what I do. Maybe I have been totally unyielding and it’s all my fault.

Working from home clearly hasn’t improved this facet much, given I encounter dog people, if nobody else, on a daily basis. In general, I do think the temperament of the dog matches much of the temperament of the owner, so there are a few favorites, and a lot of duds in the mix. People who will look like they want to drag their dogs away when they see the goofy face and wiggly butt of my 95 pound Duke, some people who just are timid, and some people who are just straight up assholes and will run away. For those people I usually mutter when we walk by–no Duke, those are not friends. My dog is kind of a dog ambassador, and will greet every animal and person with the same wiggly lean, head arched up looking for a little ear scratch. Duke is what I used to be, open and friendly with everyone despite whatever stance they might be taking. Now I just look at them all like I looked at people after the election…is she a traitor, is she a terrible person, is he stuck up, am I suddenly in a swarm of stockbrokers, who will ultimately just bore me to death?

In this conversation I realized it was a familiar feeling, recognizing these markers were missing from our lives…I told Don that is when you realize you’re near the end, when you stop collecting or participating in stories, and just become a recycler of the same ones. It’s what old people do, think about it. I see this in us, him repeating stories to me and me doing the same in reverse, because nothing is fucking happening in our lives that doesn’t involve him running wires through ceilings in homes and office buildings, and anything exciting relayed by me is usually either Duke met this dog, or this story someone told me today at work, usually involving their stories of striking off checkmarks from their bucketlist of travel. Something I can…in some ways picture, and in some ways be totally fucking jealous of being able to do.

When I was living in NY in my early twenties most of my friends had already graduated college, something I just didn’t want to afford at first. For years I scoffed at student loans. And for years I felt totally insecure in so many social circles who had the commonality of the college experience to relate to–I did not have that or party years, or stories of RA’s and roommates. My experience with roommates was almost adult to start, my first apartment as a senior in high school. And we smoked a lot of marijuana and did ecstasy once, but I was not in a place where I felt like we were partying or things were remarkable enough to remember in great detail. Even in NY I was tame, recognizing that parties where cocaine was present meant I had to get the hell out, for fear of even accidentally sniffing a few airborne grains of coke–ready to throw me into full cardiac arrest. But the insecurity I have with the progression, or rather stagnation or rather how did I get left behind feeling is exactly the same as when I was 26—but now I am 40. JFC. I have got to figure out how to start living again instead of just base level existing. It is not a nice place to sit in your mind.

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