pink and green aggitation act

Agitation – stir, rouse, move – cause to act.

If I have caused you to hate me I don’t mind. If I have caused you to be disgusted I don’t mind. I have caused you to be unsettled I don’t mind. If I have made you dislike me I don’t mind. If you never want to see me again I don’t mind because it means I have agitated you enough that you are now in such a state – and for whatever reason and for whatever purpose I caused it. I made you do something. I like to make people do things. Especially things they thought they wouldn’t or couldn’t ever do. I am great at that. A very smart man once told me that my true gift was the mastery of simple chaos. Making a hurricane appear in a soup-bowl and then riding the surfboarder’s lip of that storm while everyone else tries to have Sunday lunch.

Awaken – know that I do what I want in a perpetual whirl of whiz bang boom and then cool deflate float swirl and if I bump into you and you are roused or bumbled into action by me then welcome into my world for a moment. However please understand that because I told you I love you does not mean that I love you anymore than in thirty second increments, that would be a lie, you see. I do really mean it, and deeply for thirty seconds. I fall in love with bark on the trees and the particular way a stain on bus boy’s apron looks like a Dali face propped up on stilts. But telling you, any of you, anything about love or hate or devastation or sadness is really silly. How could anyone tell anyone how they feel? I can not use black shapes on a piece of paper to make you imagine some of the things I have felt and felt compelled to do to people and to do for people. Words are just little shapes that make you think of sounds in your mind and how could I make those things make you feel what counting a man’s freckles from across a conference table in full view of coworker’s, or murderous rage so rampant that you spill you own blood in fury over a confused look, how could these little words make your hands tremble or your mouth water or your heart pound? I can not make you smell the copper film of lobster bubbles evaporating into nothing the way it always does after lobster flavored bubbles melt in your mouth, kissed away by the man satisfied by the favor of it all. Words are stupid. I am stupid with them. I wish I could upload selected images, good ones, make movies of good moments. A man in a blue suit in July. Standing under this twisted oak tree. Being out to sea on the deck, rigged for dark, no moon. Having a heavy baby sleep on my chest. Making plans.

I dreamed of what love was every day of my life and every few days I find it. Mostly in my house or around my house in some small kindness; or some exhaustive effort of friendship the likes of which I hear few stories to rival. My best friend is not an anchor to which the ship is tied to, he is not a stanchion on the pier holding the anchor – if I had to make one dumb inadequate description of a simple symbol of what my best friend is. It is this. He is the very earth, sand, salt and water that holds the pier in place for the fleet to come home. He is the shore that my hurricane breaks against. He is the dry earth that soaks me up and the wet sea that washes me off. He is the salt that knows the salillum in me. He is the cold hard ground with bits of mica I must bare down and see myself in. Really see the gritty pieces of myself. The only real mirror. All of my other mirrors, all my other friends held at odd angles, odd times, odd wonders, off but incredible. You are held at whispers away, lips close, arms length or half a world away; some I pull to and some I push hard away. But he is the true mirror. My best friend. John Patrick Stansfield - He can tell me no, he can tell me to be still, he can tell me to be quiet, he can tell me. Only he can tell me anything. Everyone else asks. Or doesn’t ask.

I have sent odd packages to my friends over the years. In twenty years there have been green apples wrapped with silver string, atomic fire balls, nine phone books and a compass, a rubber chicken, all manner of liquor & beer, various books – Jitterbug Perfume went out to few that I really cared about.

In return I received some strange things from my friends. I received the ugliest flower arrangement ever delivered, black & red flowers with rotten beets. I laughed and cried at the same time – the quarterdeck watchstander wanted to know if I wanted to call security. When I said no and kept the smelly thing it solidified my position as the craziest sailor on the base. I arrived at work one morning to find approximately five thousand atomic fire balls littering the parking lot entry door. I was both so touched with love and devastated with the prospect of loss of contact that I stumbled at the door and had to feign tripping as a coworker was coming out the door. I picked up one of the candies and rolled it as if it were a magic token to the quiet day I got to spend with litterer. He taught me patience and gave me another opportunity to demonstrate loyalty. You all get cards and flowers. I get secret messages from friends in secret languages. Isn’t the inside joke always the funniest?

So if I have made you, anything. If I have made you anything you didn’t want to be – I will not say I am sorry, I can only say I’d probably do it all over again. Knowing what I know now, coming upon my birthday in a few weeks I’d probably have done bigger, scarier, faster, louder, nicer, funnier, more outrageous stuff way earlier in my life. I would have stolen all the cool things I’ve heard from your lives and done them at fifteen. I love the idea of running onto a public transportation vehicle and discharging a fire extinguisher! I still might do that. Maybe for my birthday? That was just one of the cool things all of you have done. I would love to list my friends but they are too many, too far, and too wide. Some come and go. Some are gone forever. Salute. I have loved you all in our own way. You know. I know. Look out world I started telling my girls all your stories for bedtime stories. Training. Grooming for the ultimate as controlled as possible chaos filled existence, ready at a moment’s notice to stop what their doing and really live and to certainly shoot you or cut your throat if stepped within a frog’s hair of out-of-bounds. My twelve year old daughter can drive my six speed, shoot my nine millimeter, prepare napalm with orange juice, survey a target a close range, long range, knock on your door and ask you to buy cookies. She is anonymous. She is a child. She doesn’t mind pulling the trigger from behind the sites. She is not yet ready with a knife. We are working. Have you been rude to a stranger lately? Have you ever wondered how a person happened into the life of the mentally ill? Have you ever wondered how a person ended up on the news? Being rude usually has a good deal to do with it. Manners are the key to civilization. I know this to be true.