Portrait of a Disabled Ramp

 

Back in 1992 or so, I wound up getting a job at UPS, unloading trailers from 11 pm to 3 am. I was in college, and it was a fairly competitive job to get at the time (health benefits, paid vacation, brown shorts rizz). It was an exhilarating job, and I had been just about to take a trip to Washington State for the first time over winter break and remember telling myself, 'Don't quit this job, it's the best thing that's ever happened to you.' 'I won't,' I replied, thinking of all the other things I had quit before, baseball, the saxophone, caring...

When I returned to Missouri, all the adrenaline had worn off, replaced by a stomach virus, and puking in the back of the truck, unloading boxes as my supervisor counted the parcels, I knew I would quit the next day.

There are too many posts I've written where I've talked about being done with booze to believe that it's true. Nobody likes a quitter! But (THERE IT IS) in the last four months, I've noticed I'm overwhelmed with dreams, so much that I've taken to writing them down when I wake. Alcohol fucks with your REM and I love REM (even post Bill Berry) and I'm happy for the time being. 

I'm also afraid to say out loud how my new job is going, understanding what happened 34 years ago. 

I've also been flooded with memories, and a little sad. When I was younger, I believed that all of these experiences and people and places and mistakes would result in some handbook of remembrances that would guide me towards some purpose or destination or understanding. And now they feel they might as well be so easily forgotten, like dreams not committed to paper. 

This week, we had our house painted and new gutters installed. Right now, it's raining, and I can hear the drops of water mark a steady cadence striking the aluminum bends. Outside my window the chestnut and pear and vine maple are singing a chorus of green.

Don't quit this.

Last night, I dreamed I was a student again, and late for my final exam. In this case, the assignment was to recite to the class an original poem, and as I wandered the campus, making the impossible way to the classroom, completely out of ideas, I remembered that I had once written something, had written it down, and it would work because it had captured how I was feeling, how I was experiencing my life. And as I entered the building, the classrooms were gone, replaced by offices, and now the dream was different.