School was a pain in those days. No matter how hard I worked, I couldn't remember most facts in history or much of anything in music. Partly it was the avoidance of study and the eschewing of a proper work ethic that caused my trouble. My own doing; my own self destruction. There was also a constant gnawing at my mind, a sort of nipping at the heels, by those other aspects of my life that I could not forget. Though I did try so hard to forget! Concentration escapes me....

It was inevitable, I suppose, that a letter would reach me from the Registrar's Office with my name on it. So it came to pass that in the second week of January, without warning and with little surprise on my part, I was placed on academic probation.

I wandered around campus with this letter in hand, sulking miserably. I wondered how I ever got into such a mess. Then I remembered: my own lack of studying, my own poor attendance; my own fault. My own self destruction! Woe is me!

Woe is me! I do not think cogent thoughts.

Instead my mind wanders around aimless,

As if always drowning in some pints draught,

Drunk on dark sober visions of pointless

Life, compounding itself, pain as interest -

Brittle as chalk, undertaker's soapstone,

Waiting to draw the outline on request -

Ruthlessly pounding soft dust from hard bone.

Life grinds on, and with each generation,

Another heart broken and cruelly wringed.

The brutal live longer than the gentle.

Pain outweighs what little good love can bring.

And so fearing what my sad end will be,

I hope it comes unconscious. Woe is me!

Mom was sad after I arrived home and no amount of poetry could have made her happy. Whatever it is that leads us to care for one another also leads us horribly downward in sorrow. In this bitter life, mothers agonize over their children's failings on bad days and rejoice over their kids' successes on good days.

She did not take the news well. She figured it was the end of me; that I was done for, done like dinner. I tried to explain to mom that as long as I passed my courses by the end of the year that I would be okay.

During dinner she looked sad. She looked sad while washing the dishes. She looked sad while sitting on the couch. She looked sad all over the place. It became unbearable to watch this new permanent pout on mom's face. So I went to hide in my room.

My gun magazine was sitting between the mattresses, hidden there like some teenager's Playboy. I pulled it out of its hiding place after locking the door. I did it carefully so that the pages would not get crumpled. I laid it open on my bed like a prized heirloom, opened to the centerfold of a hunter posing with his rifle and a big trophy buck. In the picture the hunter was holding up the buck's head by its antler. It stared eternally at the photographer. It seemed happy.

Isn't that really our desire? Happiness? And if to die means to be happy, at least to a buck, then should that be our goal? Death? Death is such a lonesome destination. The aged and the sick pray for his arrival, like a train too long delayed. So should we all not aspire to be less like the living and more like that departed deer? To stare blankly from the body while playing gaily in the spirit world?

I caressed the spine of the centerfold gently, imagining I could feel some sort of happiness coming into my world from that photo. I imagined the feeling of the antler's soft suede under the hunter's fingers. I looked at the orange sky in the background: such a romantic setting.

So I guess it was around nine o'clock when I couldn't handle it any longer. I couldn't handle the reminiscence. I couldn't handle the loss and the loneliness, which I was reminded of by all things. Even by the image of a deer carcass. I couldn't handle the feeling that I was being haunted, eternally and singularly, by one constant image and one unwavering thought.

Peter's gift bag of pills was still mostly full and still at my disposal. I decided I might take a few to ease the pain. I put maybe four or five pills in my mouth. I laid back on my bed to stare up at the ceiling.

Next thing I knew, Peter was shaking me awake.

"Wake up, wake up," he said, pushing and pulling at my shoulders.

I opened my eyes and everything was blurry. Peter stood over me, frowning worriedly and compassionately. Everything was spinning, down, down; the room was spinning like a big flushing toilet. All the colors blended together before my eyes. Blues into greens, reds into purples, yellows into oranges. There was no end to them.

All the colors were mashed together from one end of the spectrum to the other. They ate at the walls and danced across Peter's face.

"What?" I asked.

"You're awake, good," Peter said.

"What happened?"

Peter lowered his eyebrows, and said, "You don't know?"

"I don't know," I said. My mouth felt incredibly dry and gummy. I smacked my tongue around, brushed it across my teeth, and licked my lips. "Can I have something to drink?"

Peter nodded and said he would get me a coffee. "Don't move. I'll be back with some coffee in a second."

The next next thing I knew, I was laying on my back. I was naked except for a too-small towel. Steam trickled in runny beads all over my body, down my neck, my chest, and my legs. In front of my eyes there was steam. Off in the distance there was steam. And when I breathed out, steam. I sat up and the little towel fell away. I groped for it nervously until I managed to find it. I needed to wipe the sweat from my eyes.

With each movement of each muscle, my head pounded something awful. When I moved my feet, my head pounded. When I moved my thighs, my head pounded. When I raised my arms, my head pounded. But finally I was sitting more or less upright, and from this new vantage point I realized that I was in a steam room.

"Peter?" I called out.

"Who?"

It was an unfamiliar voice. The speaker was hidden away by the steam.

"Who's there?" I asked nervously.

"Just me," the voice said.

"Uh... who's me?"

"Me. Just another guy using the sauna."

"Oh, okay."

"Hey, are you okay?" the voice asked. A face unknown to me must have leaned forward, but all I saw was a blurry view of a boner. "You okay?"

"Umm, I guess I fell asleep."

"Okay," the strange voice said as it leaned back into the thick soup.

I stood up to make my way out of the room. I felt my way along the wall, tile-by-tile, until I found the door.

The next next next thing I knew, I found myself hunched over, seated on a park bench in Allen Gardens. There was an arm lying across my chest. I followed it back to the body of an old man. He reeked of liquor. His beard had dozens of miscellaneous bits stuck in it. He was thoroughly passed out. I gently removed his arm from my body and slid myself away from him.

I looked around. It was late dusk, or early dawn. Birds were chirping here or there. Vagrants and drug dealers wandered about the park, sticking to their business. It was cold, but not ice-cold, thank God. I was not very well dressed. I was wearing pants that I wasn't sure were mine and a thin button-up shirt that was not buttoned up, which I was absolutely sure wasn't mine at all. I was shivering, so I bundled myself as best I could.

I stood up and I immediately fell back onto the bench. My vision became blurry. I felt a headache coming on. I figured it would be a good idea to get home, so I stood up again. Tentatively, this time, I remained standing. I walked forward with heavy feet that barely left the ground. At the same time I felt like my feet weren't even touching the ground. It was like my feet were big marshmallow clouds and they just floated me along.

I was disoriented as I walked through the park. Thoughts floated through my mind. Images danced across my field of vision. Sounds ambled about in my head, reverberating excessively. The sounds crashed like waves washing up on the shore of a solitary beach.

I thought about dolphins, with their big round noses. I thought about herons, with their long thin legs. I thought about flamingos, all pink and gay. I thought about garbage collectors, all smelly and manly. I thought about all these things and other things too. But mainly I thought about how strange I felt. I wondered how I had got here. I wondered if I would suddenly find myself transported into a different place altogether.

Would I end up face-down on a red patch of sand, some red earth that could be any place in the south, or even Mars? Would I wake up in a body bag, having been insensate for so long that I was thought by the authorities to be quite dead? I thought about these things as I made my way out of the park and onto the glaring lights of the street.

The lights were bright, so bright that I was nearly blinded. This made me think:

Who am I? I am so confused. I am not bad, but I do not feel that I am good either. I am a man. Am I a man? I think so, but sometimes I doubt it, despite the proof that shows itself below my navel. I am alive, though I don't always feel that way. I feel like the whole world is falling in on me, and that there's nothing I can do but go crawl in a cave and die.

What am I? I am so thoroughly confused. Am I a consumer, existing for the purpose of producing and consuming economic units for the benefit of business barons? Am I an animal, working solely toward the reproduction of my own genes, all others' genes be damned? Am I a biological machine, a golem of sorts, functioning merely mechanically, mindlessly and unconsciously? Am I a golem? Was I formed out of the mud of the earth, depraved, profane and unnatural?

I am so confused. Who am I and who are you? Where do I begin and where do you end? If I press my skin against yours, how do I measure the distance between us? Is there an eternal, inseparable, microscopic distance? Or does our skin intermingle between us and become one at some quantum level, in the same way that our souls seem to become one when we make love?

The other day I saw a Jew kissing what looked like the door-frame of a house. Why don't I do that? The house isn't Jewish, yet it still gets kissed. So I could do it if I wanted. Even though I'm not Jewish, I could do it too.

Besides, there is only one religion, one overriding, overarching rule that embraces all creation. The laws of Jews, the traditions of Muslims, and the rituals of Christians - they are all a part of this one religion. This is the religion of the creation, the mystery, the nothing, the unnamed, the unexplained, the unknowable, the unbelievable, and the unfathomable. It is unthinking, unreal, unfeeling, nonsensical, and absurd. All faiths must pay deference to its ultimate truth.

So I can kiss the doorframe of a house if I want. Jew, Jen, it's all the same. It's all meat that rots into the ground, and goes away, and struggles not. Jen:

My eyes are alight with the living flesh reflected in them.

Like the firebrands of a thousand torches upon me, upon my skin,

I come to life, riled by you, struggle at you,

and claw and scratch at the world of flesh.

Your soul: like fire, like quaking thunder.

My knees are weak. I am stricken down.

I know not, but this, but this:

that such beauty is timeless, and eternal

and belongs not with me, but at home with the heavens.

You are Demeter, a pregnant Aphrodite.

Like fertile fields sown with seed,

I wash you, purify you by my emotion,

my compassion, my heart, my essence,

my embrace, my breath, my love.

I have you in my mind. You are mine.

You are for me, and I am for you -

Your bellybutton, the lines of your calves, the notches of your spine,

the lengths of your fingers, the dry skin on your elbows,

the lobes of your ears, and the lops of your hair,

the tilt of your neck, the back of your knees,

the scoop of your buttocks, and the curve of your chest -

You are for me, for me alone to love, to hold, to fathom.

You are for me, for me alone to comprehend, to understand.

To decipher, to translate, to decode, to devour.

I sit and listen to your breath,

its calm rhythm, its regular in-and-out motion,

like the tides, in-and-out, and washing away

each worry with each breath.

Just as I wash you, you wash me.

I am new, like a suckling baby - how many times have I said this?

I am new, reborn into you and of you,

I am made anew, a new man, new spirit from old flesh,

like the firebird, but not like the firebird.

It is rekindled by the virtue of its own inspired greatness.

I am reborn by your mercy, I am reborn by your pity,

I am reborn by your grace, I am reborn by your love.

I am reborn, of no act of mine, but by you alone.

You are inspired. I am insipid.

You drive me to be driven, like a racehorse,

but I am a crippled nag. I limp and cower in your arms.

I shudder and wheeze, while you becalm and relax.

I dither and waver, while you move me with purpose and focus.

I am not, but for you. But for you, I am not.

What am I but a cork on the ocean?

You are a rock to me. You never float away.

It is beyond my control, my reckoning is flawed,

I can not resolve my mind to you, my puzzle.

I can not anchor without you.

I talk like I am a boat, but isn't it true?

I hold no water with you, you see me as I am.

You are a mooring, without you I would be adrift.

You are a distant light, without you I would be sightless.

You are a clarion call, without you I would be deaf.

What is it in you that forces my hand?

Makes me do things I can't control?

Makes me desire, makes me run, makes me flourish?

What is it in you that forces me to act?

I would rather do nothing, but for you.

Forces me to strive, forces me to think, forces me to love?

What is it in you that makes me love?

Is it your look? Your gender? Are you fairer than I?

No, I think you are really no fairer than me,

for I am beyond the pale.

But if fairness be measured, let it be measured to you.

You deserve it more than me.

You deserve the attention, you deserve the adoration.

You deserve the congratulations of others.

You deserve the world's adulation.

What is it in you that makes me pray?

I would not do it on my own.

I do not feel the spirit, not so much as I feel you.

If I fall to my knees it is because of you.

If I pray, I pray for you.

If my heart breaks, it breaks over you.

If I pine for the fjords, I pine because of you.

If I molder in sorrow, I sorrow over you.

If I exist to grieve, I grieve over you.

The next chapter will be posted 11/27 or 11/28/2015.