Author Archives: james

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About james

hoyden will follow the free tendencies of desire hoyden is a pill dropped in a glass of water hoyden is an illusion on a surface of memory hoyden is a finger resting on the controls of a broken machine hoyden turns as she pleases toward all horizons hoyden is perfect sadism, at least as a method hoyden is a beautiful chimera hoyden crouches to intercept shadows hoyden is not in the habit of saluting the dead hoyden will always find buyers hoyden is at most a thinking reed hoyden writes sad and ardent love letters hoyden is a door someone opened hoyden is a dark intention hoyden never waits for itself hoyden leaves an exquisite corpse

doors

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I’ve never been good with closed doors. I like open spaces. Rooms that are arranged in a circle so that there are no corners. Maybe I should get some of those large roundy security mirrors in any corners so that I can see into the other rooms.

I’m not sure why I have this problem. Or when it started. Closed doors mean disappearing, secrecy, and aloneness. I want to know what’s on the other side, because there could be anything on the other side.
My imagination makes sure I know that.

When I was a kid, I didn’t like being in a room with the door closed. It felt like the world outside had fallen away. I would leave the bathroom door cracked for fear that if I closed the door all the way I would suddenly be in a free-floating bathroom in some inky void. Too bad there wasn’t a fridge in there, I would have been set.

This caused problems later on in life. As a young adult, I lived in a large, cold twelve bedroom house with eleven strangers. I hated closing my bedroom door all the way. Apparently, leaving my door cracked six inches caused great consternation with my floor-mates. At least one of them felt because my door was ajar, she had to tip toe around in the morning. I told her a few times that she need not change her patterns, but it gnarled her up bad enough to cause a rift in the house.
I started closing my door.

I still dislike closed doors and I prefer to keep them open if possible.
But as difficult as it might be, sometimes I have to close a door.

It’s what I do.

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Lately, I’ve been thinking about moving. Oh, I’m not going to go anywhere (most likely), but this line of thinking stirs up frequently in my head. It is a familiar refrain. I realized today that when I was younger I had a sort-of self identifier of “I move. It’s what I do.”

I moved frequently growing up, and then continued that trend into my adult life. For many years I had a ritual of listening to Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” while packing. Now when I hear it, I get a strong desire to dip back into the unknown.

There is a feeling I always get when packing my stuff up for a move. Most of the moves I’ve made have been to cities I’ve never even visited. Leaving is a looking forward to the possibilities. I don’t know what is next, and that is exciting. I’ve always loved that feeling and it is part of what drives me to make those big changes. The idea of what might be out there is so much better than the present reality (even if the present is pretty okay), that I take that leap into the unfamiliar.

A bunch of years ago I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t move /from/ anymore, but I would only move if I had some compelling reason to move /to/. This requires me to not pack up and get in my car and drive drive drive when that GO feeling tightens my chest. It also means that when I consider the idea of changing locations, I have to really look and see if I am moving towards a better possible future, or moving away from some frustration or disappointment.

As they say in business, “location is everything.”
How do you know if the location you live is right for you?

more human than human

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I’ve been missing my dad this past week or so and I just now figured out why. Of course. It’s Holiday Season…with all the talk of family get-togethers and such. And this is one of the first years in many that my mom’s side of the family hasn’t done a good Thanksgiving gathering.

But when I really think about holiday family gatherings and my dad, I have to admit that he was usually an ass. He had a tenuous relationship with his family – they were all very close, but he was considered (or perhaps moreso considered himself) the black sheep of the family. So, as tends to happen during these festivities, they were often fraught with difficulties.

I remember one Christmas in New York with my dad’s family where he taught me how to pour him a proper drink (2-3 fingers full with a couplea ice cubes) and we played hours of Atari. That was great for me, but in retrospect, it was rather rude of him.

There was a Christmas where he came to Illinois to have the holiday with my mom and grandparents. I think we were having a big extended family get-together that year. It was the one and only time we did that. Dad was drinking a lot and was rather unpleasant. Nothing terrible, just not fun to be around. He spent a fair amount of time alone in the basement drinking and smoking cigarettes and being rather anti-social and surly. My mom was furious. I was young and just knew that dad wasn’t being a good guest and kept trying to keep him entertained.

When you are a kid, you think that adults have things figured out. That somewhere along the line they realized how to live life. But as you grow older, at some point not only do you realize that your parents were just flying by the seat of their pants, but suddenly you are in your late thirties or forties and realize you don’t know jack…and here you are a full-fledged “adult”.

I don’t know if that realization frightened me or just made me kind of sad.

The knowledge that my dad didn’t know shit and was just doing the best he could, well, I guess it sucks when you realize that your folks are human. Humans are fallible and have the ability to fuck things up. When you are a kid, you see your parents as more than human (and not like the White Zombie song, although I have met some ‘rents who might fit that category. Maybe there really are replicants running around posing as humans. But I digress) and when you realize that they are just plain ole’ people it can be disappointing. What have we to look forward to if we are just going to grow up into staying plain ole’ people? I was kinda hoping to grow up and become one of those infallible “adults.”