Tag / friendship

by Josef Alton

Snippets—A lost and found poem of a buried hour

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We could bloom into green hours. We could smile every time the green hour arrives. We could watch green hours burn the sky. We could watch King Kong descend the hills among the fog. Watch the bush tumble behind his heals. Watch green ignite the red carpet leading to the Church. And there, there exists loving grandparents and Saturday markets and the feeling that this is how it’s supposed to be. On the way back visit a ghost town of old things adorned with wide windows ribbed with paper-thin windows. Harbor Street made us old like black-and-white reel, but also young like artists: inspired tangible blasts of ink to coat the therebetween with parted clouds soaked in sun-spray. Like infinite infants and how they track mud on granite windowsills.

We could just drive forever and never stop. I never wanted to stop because I knew that was it, so I drove until I couldn’t. I swear I would have driven to Alaska or back to New York, but I stopped at Denny’s, and then Denny’s again until I couldn’t, I just couldn’t anymore.

But no matter because we have the mansion in the nothingness that kept me dreaming of all the hidden history absorbed in the South Island’s naked creases of green and river rock aprons.

Making pizza until always, because it’s too good to never say no to. Talking about Fitzgerald, and Kerouac, and Hemingway. Reminiscing about ages we missed and the present we aspired to wrangle. Of ideals and future lands.

Never of the unsaid. Of anxiety. Of self-loathing. Of insecurities to do with loving. Of barely coping alone. Of sadness. Of guilt. Of the barriers surrounding accepting the love you think you deserve. Of sameness. Of entropy. Of the next attempt after you.

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by Josef Alton

Dear Joe, THIS is India. — A letter to a friend


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Dear Joe,

Hey, I remember climbing those ancient hills with you to the fortress and feeling out of place without a mustache. I remember the brown ocean of the Arabian and shouting, “I’m on the Arabian!” on a beach full of overweight Russian men with spandex togs and cheese cutter caps. On that swollen beach we met the American couple, Josh and Leanne, and we hung together hard. She came back from the world and died in Texas two weeks ago.

I remember getting lost in Mumbai. I remember the straight razor shave I received amongst a crowd of curious onlookers on that foggy street in Agra. I recall seeing a life lost on the road, but then in Delhi, millions of lives moving on with things. Moving on with things…

India, you sweet bloodletting. I remember watching my past marriage turn from wilted flowers to strange peddles floating down the recesses of unknown rivers: wet cobra backs ticking by finger smudged train windows. I remember the little girl with glasses correcting her father’s english. He said she’d have a bright future. I believed him.

What about Serge—that mad Russian with a porcupine liver? He would have turned to stone if he ever attempted to enter the Golden Temple. As would have Dave. Fucking Dave. I bet he’s still dying in Mumbai. A mess perpetual.

You recall Bangalore—The neon in the dungeons of the market? The countless tuk-tuk rides, living in a demolition derby? I love to recall the giant fruit bats that hung down from the trees of Bangalore like unshucked cobs of black corn.

I remember all these things because they mean something to me. I remember these things as I lay alone on a memory foam queen size bed and feel compelled to burn it if it would fit out the front door. (I suppose houses are built in the West with the beds already inside.) I remember being within a continuum but never within it. I remember being touched on the streets. My skin a story of inequality. I learned to understand these realities and accept how things are—but after some time to reflect—regardless if I agree with them or not.

When we chatted the other day I thought about how much I missed you. How I missed New Zealand too and the illusion that I’d travel forever and never have to deal with all the mistakes I made back home. Well, Joe I did what any man would do in my case and repeated them over and over again until I had to return to the source. I’ll say one thing though, I’m glad I came home to set things right.

I only mention this because now that you are in Wellington, seemingly collecting all the precious things that you plan to hold onto for the long term, I can honestly say that you make me proud to be your friend. It’s good to know that you’re not a captive within my kingdom of memory, but a real friend that recognizes that in that unfathomable universe that is India, we shared time, and we still talk because of that bond.

And, in this tiny little pearl of fact, exists a single truth: that everywhere is India, and every moment is Delhi, and every up swing is being lost in Mumbai, and every down moment, is that awful bus ride from Agra to Delhi. That every experience with every friend is every trip into the ever present, which to me is the musical faith I place in experience. All this mess could exist in ten thousand Arabian Oceans or in one bottle of King Fisher.

What I’m trying to say is that we traveled light, but travelled hard, much like how we live. Lets meet again sometime.

Yours truly,

Josef

by Josef Alton

THE STORIES THAT ENDURE

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There were good times and then there were the other times where my hair started to fall out in clumps in my hand and when I’d ask people to tell me how I looked they’d say fine and I thought they were just being nice until I looked in the mirror and everything was in place and I was just imagining things. I’d get a pint and we’d all drink together and I’d wander off in my head every so often thinking about a new story and how we were all going to be a story once the night was done when all of our clothes would be scattered on our bedroom floors, our conversations echoes, and the looks shared between us absorbed and stored away. There were many of those occasions, the times when we would all text each other from locations around town and slowly but surely tighten our proximity to collide at the pub and recite the happenings of our respective days in the cadence of comedy. There were good laughs, and the more there were the greater the magic to multiply empty glasses and fill ashtrays. But the whole time I was feeling this eruption in my heart that I couldn’t explain or control and I knew that something big was growing in me and I couldn’t tell anyone because I didn’t even know what was happening and it was too much anyway.

At night I’d feel like I was drowning — but I eventually learned how to be a submarine in the murk of my subconscious. I’d wake up wet in my room and feel really cold and alone and would want to talk to somebody about it but there was no one except the end of a cigarette and they were the wrong kind of little mouths when I needed a big hug and some self-love to carry me through. But I knew I’d get over it eventually; all I had to do was put more effort into others and get outside of myself.

I’d take walks to the harbor from my office and imagine packs of wolves combing the stretched green skin of the hills on the other side and watch them scatter in a wisdom of full-sprint and hunter’s architecture — chasing down my anxiety and devouring it so I could be normal again. They would tire and look around confused like their prey had disappeared into thin air, leaving no scent to retrace.

When I was a boy I used to watch my father sit at the breakfast table with the cereal box, jug of milk, bowl and spoon always in the same spot. He was in his uniform, but he seemed seldom in his body and I remember being scared if I’d be a ghost like that in the mornings. And at the height of my depression, I’d carry myself around in a sack sewn from my father’s old post office uniform like a bag of hollow bones licked clean by my own wolves. I knew that I was eating myself alive and I was both the hunter and the hunted — so I stopped eating and stopped running. I knew that my anxiety was temporary and that I would get over it; the last thing I wanted was to leave and return home to America. That would be accepting defeat.

This all sounds rather morose and sad when in actuality I was still enjoying my friends, the green hour before sunset, coffee dates, music, cooking, baseball… I was still laughing, still having fun, but quietly housing hungry wolves in my stomach. I couldn’t write anymore. I was all locked up, dry, mouth full of sand, in dream still sinking to the seabed. I was falling apart. It was terrifying to know that I loved what I had so much but would have to leave it for my own good. Most frustrating was not even having a reason. Not knowing what was wrong with me. Not being able to figure it out. Not being able to make it all better. Watching things fall to pieces without needle or thread to repair the damage. Just having to watch it all float down stream. It was heartbreaking. And I remember laying in a cobblestone alley on my last weekend with my shirt off, feeling the cold cobblestones press in my ribs, so in a daze about leaving this old town behind that I couldn’t understand what leaving really meant and what it would mean to everyone. I was near collapse I guess and all the laughs and comedy and pints and filled ashtrays from the good times were just as I predicted, stories, but of a sad nature at that moment because the ease of those moments was temporarily suspended and replaced by melancholy and I felt like it was all my fault. I just wish I could have gotten better. Maybe I should have told someone that I wasn’t well and it wasn’t their fault.

Now that I’m back home and there are no longer any wolves, or a submarine, or anxiety, or little mouths not doing their job, and big hugs at the ready, self-love appears to be blossoming in the dead of winter. I have so much, the same as I had when I left, but even more. I didn’t burn down as much as I thought. I guess people’s capacity to love is greater sometimes than your madness. I feel nothing but gratitude for those I call my friends. Everyone of them.

So, I suppose this is an apology for a poorly written chapter. Perhaps it’s an admission of honesty. It’s maybe just another one of my stories. However, our stories of the times when we were all smiling outside the pub planning adventures together and just being kids are the best. I like those stories most because they’ll be the memories that endure.