To the Artist's Page                 To our home page

To Luke Buckham's previous piece     To Luke Buckham's next piece

i have only so much for myself, now

there are several love-making positions that i haven't tried yet, and i remember the strange ways my pets used to act, the way my dog would roll on her back on the front lawn, but only after it had snowed, ludicrous dog-smile of enjoyment, and the way my cat would go timid and limp when confronted by her own regal reflection in the hallway mirror. and my children's eyes like wet riverbed stones when they wandered into our bedroom half-asleep asking for something that seemed nonsensical at 3 in the morning, like a slice of american cheese or a lost stuffed animal whose alien name i always forgot, and it's very hard to think of my wife at all because i need this oxygen not to weep, but to swim as well as an olympic champion, which i'm not, although the water is so warm that it seems impossible that i will die, since we were stationed in a warm climate when everything went wrong. why did i ever take a job as a navy chef anyway? i didn't get to use the knowledge provided me in culinary school, never got to utilize my skill with exotic spices or obscure desserts, just cooked very large portions for men who seemed to be only differently-sized versions of the same man, all of them in white. heaps of lightly colored things like pancakes or cheesecake or mashed potatoes or scrambled eggs, impressive only in their massive quantity, but i miss those flat simple odors now, miss that spacious silver kitchen in which i became lonely for my wife, eyes welling up with proud tears thinking of the way her back looked taking a gentle scrubbing from the drape-diluted moon, and wish i was alone in that kitchen now, scrubbing the stoves alone at midnight, which was my favorite part of my duties because i did it alone and would listen to Stravinsky on that tiny radio that hung from the overhang above the largest stove, a beacon of healing sound waves. shark repellent tablets that i placed in my pockets before abandoning ship are dissolving in my pockets and drifting down my legs and out through my pantcuffs like very heavy smoke, getting thinner now and giving me my lower body back, which i can see because it's afternoon and the sun is bright as the fire of hell is dull. i thought shipwrecks only happened at night. the incredible thing was, i was almost pulled under by the suction of the drowning ship, and managed to escape, after being dragged down and seeing, or feeling, huge obnoxious bubbles flying by like horrified amorphous fleeing soul-things frantically desiring limbs. after the downward pull ceased, i opened my eyes against the strong salt and realized that the surface wasn't so far away, and i could see patches of sunlight as if a second lifetime were waiting up there. i didn't see my life flash before my eyes, just visions of making love to my wife, obscured by a jellyfish-like film that hid our more explicit movements, dreamlike.

i am actually enjoying myself at this moment, sucking in as much sensory input as i can handle, more aware of my own existence than i've ever been, because my goal is clear and simple; to stay afloat and move in a definite direction for as long as i can, even though i know exactly how many hundreds of miles we were from land, and know also that i will not be picked up by any ships, though i don't know how i'm sure of that. nobody can direct me here, and i have never been so aware before of how much i enjoy making my own decisions. i am more confident than i've ever been, proud of my body cutting through the waves and the time i have left to think of my family, and to think of myself. i think of all the times i almost lost my sanity, listening to dull instructions of fish-eyed bosses, city whores leering at me on my trips away from home, leaving culinary school to join the navy as a cook after this war started, trying to avoid combat, and i'm glad to have this opportunity to die in peace with my better memories filling up with forgotten details. i'm ready to go, and this is strange. isn't it wrong for a young man to want death, especially in such a calm manner? i think about my family, but only in an abstract way, since i haven't seen them in months and i was always aware of my inability to protect them. i have been aware of this inability since my first girlfriend died in a car wreck right after high school, and since that day at seventeen years old, i have been getting progressively more and more tired, mystified by the fact that i was able to attract a woman and feeling that i was raising my children in a sleepwalk. every now and then i let myself drift down just a bit, the way i did when i was very, very young and wanted to see how far i could push god with my body. when huge pillowy hands don't cup my sinking form and lift it into the heavens, i become unexpectedly terrified and thrash my way to the surface, wasting my energy in revolt against myself.

i have a preposterous vision of what couldn't have happened, an idea of myself being sucked under and whisked back into the drowning boat, through the hallways and into the kitchen from whence i came when i heard the alarm bell overriding the stereo and the boring hum of the air conditioners. i float through the kitchen seeing the pilot lights still bluing the bellies of the stoves, spatulas floating by cabinets opening like exhausted bowels, letting loose brown sugar and oregano and the dope that the assistant chef keeps hidden behind a huge canister of flour, cups that will never measure anything again, except time, following each other like lazy birds on their plastic links. and i start to cry quietly, wishing it was louder because i am alone and have always enjoyed crying alone. i reflect that all the fondest memories of my adult life are alone, listening to music in my over-sterilized studio that i should have used to take up painting again, taking long walks every night and being considered the eccentric neighbor just for that, but being forgiven by the neighborhood because i had a family and mortgage, even though shortly before i left for the harbor my walks had increased to the point where i was roaming the sidewalks till dawn, till the summer heat had left the tar and was ready to return. even my fondest memories of my wife are when she's asleep on my chest and we don't have to talk about anything, and i can just lie there relaxed because i finally only have one job to do, and that's stroking her hair. why did i spend my time in such quiet places, waiting for something to shock me into a rebirth? now the rebirth i never actually wanted has come, but i won't be around to see how i act for the rest of my life as a result, and i realize that the pain of loss that i'm feeling now is the thing i was running from by living such a noncommittal life. why then does this suffering that i feared now feel like such a relief? i forgot the healing of self-allowance, because i had to ignore my own mind in order to provide for a family and pay the bills. i had ideas to incorporate my love of food and all it's spices into my painting, weaving fruit peels and seeds and tea leaves into every canvas, and these ideas used to keep me up at night, painfully ecstatic at the obvious originality of some of my ideas, but i put them to rest, and the only rebellion i had left was a noiseless, colorless, unproductive one, my after-midnight walks, which i wouldn't even take if my wife wasn't sleeping soundly enough. why do i feel so peaceful, knowing that i left those canvases blank? i realize with a shudder that it is because finally, out here in the ocean, i have only one enemy, drowning, and it's one i probably won't beat, so i can relax in unavoidable procrastination, aware that it's too late for what i really wanted. i begin to tense, annoyed at this knowledge of myself, at the yearnings i thought i had put to sleep.

2 hours later i am picked up by a ship. when i see the tall white prow coming toward me, destroying the fading comfort of my resignation to approaching death, for a moment i submerge myself, avoiding this third lifetime because the first two were such a lousy hoax. but then some unknown circuit in my mind pushes me back to the surface, and though i don't bother to wave with my arms nearly frozen by tension, someone notices me staring calmly, not believing my apparent apathy. next thing i know, i am taking a hot shower, the hottest and longest i've ever taken, and it is worth my whole half-assed life, on my tired knees under the stream of water, drinking an entire soggy paper half-gallon carton of milk and vomiting it back up, laughing and choking hysterically. it was such a huge ocean, and it's such a small and comforting shower, but soon i will have to walk through these plastic curtains and re-enter life.

now i'm in some town office, and people are beaming at me, their faces starting to dim when they realize that i'm not beaming back. you're wife's probably seen the news...you can call her know on this phone, i'm sure she's worried, one of them says. you look tired, one of them says, and i feel a rebellious need not to be tired. people slowly drift out of the room like fleshy ghosts, and i'm left alone with this one clerk, who might be pretty if she stopped talking nervously for a moment and just stared at me, as serene as i am beginning to feel. then she turns for a moment, looking for something in a file cabinet behind her desk, and i stand up gently and softly pad out of the room, forever.

i am on another sidewalk, not interested in trying to access any of these ATM machines that pass like the shut eyes of a failed Atlantis, these remnants of a world i once tried to be a conscious member of, and instead became indistinguishable from those around me in my daze, finding that sleepwalking is common, and that almost everyone you know does it, beginning with the orange scream of the alarm clock too early in the morning, shattering a dream that you won't have time to record. i am looking for an inexpensive canvas, and i stop to stare at a dog rolling on it's back in a mound of snow, but it's summer and this is impossible. how will i record, or erase and rerecord, this world that i ignored for so long?

To the top of this page