over two decades in the making.
a timeshifting autobiographical poetry collage w/photography.
a diaristic, nearly "daily writing" (ad)venture.
new pieces are posted most days..
**new and in progress** --
recordings of each poem are being added.
these are read by the author & posted to each poem's page.
--Del Ray Cross (contact delraycross at gmail)
I’ve this I suppose you could call it (as I will, especially if I spend too much time on it in one stretch) guilty pleasure of going through old photographs of mine online, correcting the dates, the locations, tagging the people I know in each photograph, and even the lives of my forbears from as far back as I have such photographs (and that’s pretty far back as I’ve some family photos that date from the mid- 1800s), essentially piecing together a life, my past, what got me here, a rendering somewhat outside of myself of who I am. I say “guilty pleasure” because I can get lost in the task and in doing so ignore for hours or an entire day or so the things I surely need to be doing, things much more important than this habit I have. It’s a useful habit, though; it is quite practical, at least for me. I write to remember, as I always say. For the same reason I generally take a photograph. Because I’ve always seemed to have trouble remembering in whatever way or ways it is most people do. I imagine that there are six or seven ways people generally remember things, and whatever my way of remembering is, it seems unfamiliar or rare, at least when I try to compare it with others’ methods, which becomes clear when I attempt to discuss memory with other people. These photos, I might add as a reminder, and the words I’ve slammed together over the years, I have saved just like the photographs, they are all I have left of the first 50 years of my physical life. I lost everything in one of those ordinary, almost cliche, yet tortured ways people often do, it seems: standing at the sidelines watching it all disappear, so to speak, in a resigned, exhausted, helpless way. The loss of these things, this physical stuff, is not for me a hard loss (except when I think of the shelves filled with familiar books that always stood stacked like walls around me; and only then sometimes), especially since I had the forethought to begin at an early time cataloging these pieces of me and my life and the life of those around me, including pretty much hording every random photo I’ve ever taken, as electronic files, going to the trouble of scanning all of my photos from before a certain time period, making all of those electronic as well. The files which I now spend maybe too much time getting lost within, cataloging, tagging, dating, as a way to piece together a life, so that I may better understand who I am. And, despite or through it all, this life, these pictures are there, representing where I’ve been, from whence I came, act not as a reference to a place or time I yearn to go back to, although they do fill me with such a warm and pleasant nostalgia, but mostly they continually teach me about myself, each time I sit with them it seems I learn something uniquely new to add to the collage of my idea of who I am. They don’t answer all of those questions, but they give me enough to know which way I should aim, which direction my legs might take me next in order to build in the most appropriate way upon what I have become, who I am, what I’ve learned about who I am and the things most important to me. So, here’s to guilty pleasures, I suppose. And perhaps curtailing my time spent with these pieces of my past so that I might build more and better using what I am at present, becoming who I might best be, who I can be, during the finite but luxurious stretch of time that I have been allotted.
I’m feeling too overwhelmed to begin to explain why I’m feeling so overwhelmed, but here are some thoughts on that subject anyway.
Staying inside again all weekend because, in my mind, there’s too much to do (note to self: need to edit the MS Word preferences again, the fuckers change back to their template every few weeks or less lately, is it because I’m a beta tester?) (This is going nowhere) (And on a day when-) (I go back to uncapitalize the w at the beginning of that line – fuck!) This wasn’t my first intention but do you see what I mean here – too many things to do today – getting sidetracked and having to backtrack at every action I take?
Last night I made a long to do list of what I wanted to get accomplished today. According to an expert in her field who
gave a company-wide speech, imagine it a bit of a corporate
Ted Talk – many of you know what I mean – anyway, she
says that the days when the experts thought (via research,
of course?) that writing in a journal each day before retiring to bed being such a great thing to do in order to get that all-important sleep has been kicked to the curb for a new, more predictably workable way to ease oneself into sleeping with a bit of productivity (productivity being the key word here, this woman speaking to a corporate crowd, and of course the importance of sleep, which no one seems to deny – it’s a practical lesson) thrown in, which is writing up a to
do list just before bed. So that’s what I did. It was over four pages long. Thus far, I’ve done nothing from the list, but did wake up realizing all the things I didn’t put on the list which I needed to, like cut my hair (done), read some poetry (about to do) and watch the Michelle Obama speech for Kamala Harris in Kalamazoo (done). There was something else that I’ve forgotten, which I’ve been sitting here trying to think of for a minute, which
seems like my old standby now: stalling.
I’ll work on the list. The one primary two pages of which is to write a long letter detailing my quibbles with regard to this SRO I have lived in for 6 years which, all of a sudden, I’m being told I owe even more each month (even after
a 150% upgrade in rent thanks to the fact that I have a
job now, and despite the fact that my paychecks are now
being garnished by the California State Franchise Board
or whatever they’re called) (income tax; state income
tax). And this amount plus around two months of back
pay! So, without even talking more about this giant
mindfrack of an election, nor about the fact that my
job’s about to end and I’ve only just begun sending
off resumes for a new one and between those I have to
go down to Peru in order to maintain and hopefully finally normalize a 5 year relationship, followed by getting the hell out of Dodge if someone the color of a fascist orange gets elected--and then there’s all of the rest of the bureaucracy of the world. And here I am trying to climb my way out of a 10-year old disaster that I seem to have found myself at almost a precipice from which I might escape it, the most depressing journey of my life. I’ll not sugar-coat it, but I’ll not continue this meandering set of depressing, throat-tightening complaints either. This has been today’s words pelted out into the ether in this now nearly twenty year public project about me. I can’t feel good about it, but I do what I do – and I send it off to you. I’d recommend not reading it unless you’re in a very particular state (knowing it’s too late to say such things, and having no idea how to describe such a state)….
Knowing I can get caught up in anxiety, I don’t believe I’m deranged or delusional, much as I am, much as Del has always
been short for it, delusional, but do I know deep down any real reason for my name to elongate into any further complexity? I’m
Del, in Spanish the combination of preposition and article. Oh, how I’ve angled for more depth, more mystery, more than just
those one or two levels before the game is over. But as I was suggesting, I do think my head’s placed firmly upon these shoulders.
It may be a bit wobbly with age, but within it are the ringing alarm bells being hyperbolic? I truly hope so. A clean objectivity
comes and goes, I suppose, when dealing with one’s inner workings. But it does seem to me that if ever there were a time
to act, if ever there were a moment when having a contingency plan on top of a backup plan might be a feasible mode of existence….
I keep looking at clocks. I haven’t worn a watch in years. Outside, people are banging on doors, walls, shouting obscenities. Does it raise
my anxiety even further? It does. I’ve saved some money. Haven’t traveled, even outside of my fair San Francisco in, what, over nine years? Common Sense,
keep speaking with that soothing voice. I listen, nodding my head, as all in as I get. Yes, yes. I think you’re right. Let’s not make it ten.
This decade of his work was quite heavy. Was actually only two to three years in duration. We go to work with so much on our minds. Later, we try to tuck ourselves in without having glimpsed how the other half live. Knowing already that it’s so repulsive.
To Be Frank, Art’s Not So Pat. (IMHO) (but maybe someday I’ll talk pretty, too)
Writing letters counts as writing. Writing emails doesn’t. —David Sedaris (during a MasterClass ad on YouTube)
The man also says unless you’re sitting at your desk, [writing is] not gonna happen.
I used to wonder why everyone but me thought him funny. I felt problematic when attempting to go along. Although I don’t have an intentional fake laugh.
Also, where I live these days, where I’ve lived for nearly six years now, I really don’t have room for a desk. Not that I haven’t done a lot of work at desks. And I continue to do so, standing up and walking around as much as is feasible.
I laugh when I laugh. I cry when I cry. Sounds funny to me, my insistent attempts at being so transparent, at being real. I’m
straight up (not straight). I’ve tried being on the DL, but it’s entirely too stressful.
I have two degrees in theatre, but not being me IRL is just not me, apparently.
So WTF, David Sedaris?!
I have tried hard to like you. Not in a play-acting sort of way, though. More from an anthropological perspective. Which requires research.
Do you do all of your research sitting at your desk? I wonder.
Quick change of subject, but sometimes I forget about the impending apocalypse.
If I could just but bitch for just a moment, maybe two, my love life, my financial well-being and my mortality might have a thing or two to say to you. But where would I begin? And what, pray tell, could I say that hasn’t been said so many times before? So I retreat and say that for starters, most nights I sleep. I do. These days, at least. This tiny radar blip that used to beep and beep and beep. And when I reach as far as I can reach I count ten fingers (and that while squinting). This extroverted hermit keeps his own company, unless by luck of placement, like, say, at work, a place I try to go from day to day, a few people pass me along the way. Some say hello, some even stop to shoot the breeze for a mere minute or two. And those moments take precedent over most others save for those in which I’m gabbing for hours with my most beloved, who lives well below the equator. So our intimacy is of the more 21st century type. But most of this you know already. Or probably not. Either way, for whatever reason, I do like to share with you that which I most treasure, alongside that which causes me the most distress. But I digress. I always do. In this one-sided conversation that goes from me to you.
Cool wind blows in open window, I am happy being alone. —John Wieners
But this contentment gives way to desperation only three stanzas later:
Won’t you come and see me again, please?
Given the source, what else might you expect: torn heart, tempting death, love spilling everywhere, mangled, almost lifeless body on the parquetry. How
does this compare to this October day, during a San Francisco summer’s hottest week of the year, in a one-room home
that’s never once experienced a cool breeze, either coming or going, through it’s one window? Six years now of toiling with
whatever trickery that might exist when it comes to ventilation. As exhausted as the burning mouth of a tailpipe, all attempts to move tepid air as it sullenly
refuses to stir. Unless this lint-grayed once- white Woozoo fan blows directly upon my overripe, mostly unclothed person and the
double-fan that sole window’s pane closes upon in as airtight a configuration as is possible clings for a moment to a bit of a breeze stirring in the courtyard behind it
and the door is splayed wide open to expose the lower depths of the city’s riff-raff crammed into similar rooms in tepid states spewing their infernal-
eternal nonsense all hours of the day and, especially, the night (as I do)— only then this classless occupant might but barely feel the movement of a
few breaths of warm air crawl, say, upon and mostly over the tops of his shoulders, or through the glistening hair that covers his forearms. Happy
being alone would be a nice epilogue, sure, would it not? Would it ever! But no. I still, however, can’t shake my mind’s aim toward tomorrow with a tinge of
what, I suppose, might best be called optimism. So, in camaraderie with a man whose shaking hand I once proudly clasped— there is always that. As of yet, at least.
Now there’s a phrase that might give you the heebie-jeebies, should you consider it for a moment or two, depending, of course, on your mental
acuity. Those last two words, though, might uplift, given their meaning in relation to the original phrase’s final word, one which I often use, aiming
for comical, when I say “Del is short for Delusional.” But am I just shooting for comical when saying that? Or is there a part of me I feel might be,
irrevocably or not, incapacitated? There’s a pun in that question, for sure. How might one really feel about stumbling around with one’s head in the clouds? As
my hopefully lucid thoughts move further in that general direction, it seems clear to me that I, myself, would much rather be delusional than decapitated.
Today I’d love to adjust to your reality. Mine is just no good. What a turn-off of a complaint. I wonder if I could exist inside anyone else’s reality, a
notion that hurts my brain. Thusly my process of waking up goes. Until I find my attitude adjusted and mostly positive, forward-leaning. Was that
mere fantasy? “Hope is a muscle,” I keep hearing someone saying, someone famous. I can’t remember at the moment who keeps saying it,
but I’ll remember it eventually. Most likely. I know what she means every time she says it. But now I just wonder, hoping I’ll remember.
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