happy 72nd birthday

This brings to mind one of my favorite B movies Bubba Hotep. If you are an Elvis fan you should check it out:

"We find the King as an elderly resident in an East Texas rest home, who switched identities with an Elvis impersonator years before his “death”, then missed his chance to switch back. Elvis teams up with Jack, a fellow nursing home resident who thinks that he is actually President John F. Kennedy, and the two valiant old codgers sally forth to battle an evil Egyptian entity who has chosen their long-term care facility as his happy hunting grounds… "

fire + water

I feel fire burning my throat as I drown.
I woke up miserably depressed this day
despite the shining sun and clear blue sky.

Last night I leafed through thousands of pictures of one of our many trips together so that I might send them to the other. How wrong it felt to scroll past your happy face, all of the happy moments, that smile in your eyes that I was solely responsible for. While I conversed with the other you sat only yards away and out of the silence you asked if I told my mother why you were incited to a personal rage resulting in injuring your hand the other day. I stiffened and my fingers fell back slowly from the keyboard. "No ...simply because I don't recall at what particular moment you did so". Then we both sat motionless and quiet and some unspoken understanding was building within until it was cemented by you uttering his name.

Hours later as we climbed into bed I asked why that question had risen so randomly, although I knew it was meant to illustrate my insensitive actions at continuing that correspondence right in front of you as if nothing ever happened. Your lighthearted mood grew heavy suddenly as you turned your back to me to conceal your pain. You then reached out and turned off the bedside lamp which coated us in darkness where we both fell into separate dreams.

In mine you were always there with me, following as some invisible presence watching me go from scene to scene, mistake to mistake until finally before I awoke I lay in some young mans arms. He was broken and I tried to touch him in the hopes of healing him but there was only an empty void filming our skin so that although pressed flesh to flesh we always had a thin layer separating us. My observance of that layer made me speak to you in my mind and ask for your permission to peel it off of us but you quietly placed words in my mind that gave me the understanding that I fabricated that layer with my burden of guilt for my actions and that I will carry you forever with me in this fashion.

Then I awoke to the blue sky and sunny warm wooded house. I sauntered over to the couch and you walked by stating that it was a shame that you wouldn't be living here anymore by the time you got your license you had so patiently waited these past 9 months for. As you walked up the stairs away from me I lay on my back and tears poured instantly from my eyes. Now you are out at a store and I am finally alone to cry as loud and as long as I wish. Maybe that layer coating me symbolized the constant flow of tears produced by my making you walk out of my life. Perhaps subconciously they would envelope me for the rest of my days therefore never allowing me to be close to anyone again? Perhaps it explains this drowning sensation since I awoke as well...