Did you pray today?

Did you pray today? I did, at 6 pm this afternoon. I felt heavy. My thoughts were so heavy that they gave me a headache, or I’d say I could feel one coming. I wasn’t thinking about anything at all, just some things I had to do, something I had to write but I didn’t find the words or the speed yet, I’d been looking around for them everywhere.

It was time to sit back and stop trying. Either those bastards find me or I’d never sleep looking for them. It wasn’t the right place or the right time to worry about anything that hadn’t happened yet. 

I was sitting in my garden, in the sun, eating a hot dog when these thoughts came to me. I was sweating and I weighed a thousand pounds. I had to remind myself that 

“It is like a finger pointed at the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”

–Bruce Lee

Enter the Dragon

I had been studying the holy Buddhist scriptures and if there are 

none, then I wrote them

this afternoon.

The wind, now, blew me off my chair like a feather, my hot dog

tasted good, my garden looked greener. I was expecting

somebody. They didn’t show up. Anyways, when you’re

at peace being alone is comfortable.

* * * 

That was my best description of the events of an hour earlier that didn’t really happen because they were all in my head. I’m still sitting on my chair, in my garden, my hot dog is traveling through me getting ready to leave me just like these words are leaving me.

The sun is moving positions and that disturbs me because my speed comes from my lighting and my speed is what helps me find the words I’ve been looking for. I’m a speed junkie. I crawl around the grass of my garden trying to maintain the high. 

I only care about finding the right words because I want people to read what I write. But that’s wrong, because the number one rule of being a good writer is to not try. But that’s wrong too, because the number one rule of being a good writer is to write good sh*t.

That is one of the many great contradictions. Like the fact that clothed you can never hold a lover close enough, or the loneliness of being a soldier coming home from war alive.

A mosquito bites my ankle as I begin to lose my light completely. 

I cut off my foot to stop the itching.

I have lost my speed and these words are getting heavy.

What do I cut off to stop the itching?

These are just the ramblings of a speedless freak swimming on the floor.

With the little bit of speed I have left, I rip out a piece of paper from my notebook and write down some words that I didn’t read after I wrote them so I have something other than waking up to look forward to tomorrow.

The night is young.

I put on one shoe, on my left foot, Brother Mosquito stole my right, after all. I walk to the grocery store, alone, not lonely. There I see Martina, she’s been working at the grocery store forever, started off as a cashier and now she’s still a cashier. She watched me grow up, I watched her get fat. 

She asks me what happened to my foot, while I put my groceries on the black rubber band that carries my groceries to Martina. I tell her about Brother Mosquito. I’m the only customer at the store.

I’m writing in my notebook and Martina can tell by the movement of my pen that I’m spelling her name Martina Martina. She asks me why I’m writing about her.

I say, I guess it’s because she’s always here and has always been here and will always be here. 

“That’s what it’s all about”, she says, her fat moving everywhere as she speaks and smiles. I say, no, it’s about speed Martina, that’s the juice of life. She says:

“It doesn’t matter how fast I get to work, just that I’m here everyday, on time, and that you know I’m here.”

“Oh, ok.”, I reply.

“I’m here.”, she says.”

It was Azrael speaking to me now, my friend, my guardian angel. She’s the one I’d been expecting, I guess she let herself into the garden. It’s raining and thundering and dark now.

“I see you prayed today," she says. That’s what she calls it when I write. She says she found me asleep on my notebook, still sitting on my garden chair, mosquitos all over me in the pouring down rain.

Azrael tells me that I should pray everyday. That way I’ll get into heaven, and maybe when I’m dead someone will want to read me. At least that’s what she tells me.

I offer her a hotdog. She sits with me and eats her hot dog, in the rain. It’s not the right place or the right time to worry about anything that hasn’t happened yet. In the words of Frank Stanford 

I was born, 

I ride tomorrow.

Augustin