it's quiet

A crow squawks, “Hear that? Those are my children.” my mom says from her bed in the living room of a Seattle apartment. My little sister tells me my mom feeds the crows peanuts from the window next to her bed. That she dislodges the window screen to do it. 

I am up here for the first time in my life. My mom and little sister moved here six months ago. My mom found out she had breast cancer two months ago. Stage 0, the best of the worst case. She had a double mastectomy yesterday. I drove her home today, “Home sweet home.” she said when she climbed into bed, a dozen pillows awaiting her.

The surgery went well. “What size breast did they give me?” she asked not long after we were able to see her.

We were talking about moms on the phone and I told my girlfriend my mom gives me creativity. That when I am shut off toward her, it shuts me off from a source of chaos and wonder that has fostered me in many ways. It’s amazing to feel so many ways toward a person as if splintered through a prism of thousands of sides existing in different times.

My upbringing was strange and chaotic and full of a lot of dramatics masquerading as love and a lot of love true to itself as simple love. My upbringing was at the four hands of two separate people doing the best they could with themselves as they were giants in my mind and sorcerers in my heart. Gone and present shifting and rarely interlocking and gone and present.

And now here I am drawing closer toward middle age while watching my mother sleep in an apartment near a city I don’t know while feeling full of despair about my lifelong pursuits and a relentless gnawing energy toward them anyway. I am talking about art or the bastardized versions of  the art that I practice or don’t.

When my mom got out of surgery she said her “throat was dry like the frickin Sahara desert.” When my dad got out of surgery three years ago he took all the cords and tubes in front of him and he said “spaghetti.” When my mom got out of surgery she mentioned my father was funny. It was one of two things both my parents would agree about of my father, that he was funny and that he was great at putting in an I.V.

Drugged, before her surgery yesterday morning sitting before me in a pre-surgery room with no cell phone service my mom told me it wasn’t just selfishness that informed her reasoning for having six kids it was also that she wanted to make us out of love and joy.

-Josh Turek

feb 28, 2018

orange light

my sister had a husband and she was so nervous when they first lived together that every morning she would wake up early and walk to a nearby coffee shop to use the restroom. and one night at christmas dinner they told us about this and how they didn't do this anymore. how they were comfortable they told us.

i haven't been married. i haven't had kids. i haven't been involved in any accidental pregnancies. i only recognize that i am becoming more of an exception when i speak with old friends. for my showbiz pals i am right on schedule, delayed, now moving on schedule in things.

i still find nights to stay out late and still put myself out there in vulnerable places to try to stretch the bounds of my creation. i still have energy and it is troubling and it wastes plenty of time realizing how it's both trying to outrun death and remain humbled toward its inevitability.

life, what a difficult proposal inherent within itself for a human being. not a novel thought, the ones who think about it a bit, know this thought. and yet we go. and yet we go. and yet we go.

not too far.

oh how grief shifts our minds

I dreamt I took acid on a bus and drew my brother

I guess for awhile it became my calling to be filled with vapors for the antagonists.

Scratch that, it was my breeding that lead me down such a path. Scratch that, it's my back, you scratch mine and I'll scratch yours. See. That is the difference now, you see. How I am able to receive giving and soak up loving and not drive myself nuts draining myself into that acidic state beyond loving, yeah, loving.

Oh yeah, now we're rolling.