Logic & Geometry

Syracuse NY, 238 Euclid avenue; third floor, apartment 4. I lived there on and off for the better part of a year. Then again, to say that what I was doing there could be considered living, in the traditional sense, seems a bit presumptuous now.

I can remember the smell; it smelt like geranium and bad hot sauce, incense and cat shit. Originally I came to Syracuse for lack of anywhere else to go. A girl whom I was seeing at the time had a brother who was supposed to set us up with a friend who needed a roommate. The plan fell through and about a week and a half later we were out on the street.

Nevertheless, we were confident in our confusion. I slept in the park during the day in an old outdoor theatre, while she went about town looking for something to eat. One afternoon she woke me and told me we were going home. “I am home!” I said with tongue in cheek, but she wasn’t listening. She was to busy gathering our gear or just decidedly not listening. I shook myself, then joined in on the collecting process. Some College students were doing tai chi underneath a willow tree and a lone tulip hung its head in my direction.

On the way “home” she explained in the condescending tone she loved, that while i had been sleeping She had secured us a place not far from the University; some obscure apartment on a third floor with a balcony.

We settled in soon enough and as the weeks started to pass she began work in an oversized restaurant on top of a hill near the other end of town. Surviving on rice and hot sauce, we settled into our surroundings and I started writing poetry at the request of my ever-patient, ever-beautiful benefactress.

In those days I had a healthy relationship with the bottle so all I wanted to do was drink, and while she was away that was all I did. We had a full-sized bathtub beside a window where I would spend my days reading and drinking, drinking and reading - more drinking than reading, as was more likely the case. When the sun set it left a warm amber glow inside the bathroom and a strange sensation in me alluding to a long lost childhood memory: me 7 years old looking through my bedroom window as the sun set upon the cherry tree. At night she would come home and we would have immense fights over my intoxicated worthlessness, and then make up sensually on the balcony over the streetlight; under the moon.

Two bedrooms, a kitchen and bathroom, living room and porch all for $425 a month. It was perfect for a while. We even took in a cat that someone gave us downtown. Our neighbors were friendly or mostly tolerable. She was meeting new people at her job, I was writing like mad. We had a “home”, we were almost a family, and yet something felt vacant; still missing.

One day the landlord came by to inquire about the lateness of our rent. I attempted to assure him that he would get his money and that all monetary nuisances would be settled come next month, but he cut me off by asking what I did for a living. “I don’t exactly work for a living” I told him, and after some good old fashioned, caustic ribbing about how my girlfriend worked while I stayed home all day, he asked me if I would like to come and work for him. I started to feel agitated. Why wont this guy fuck off and leave me to my bathtub, I thought. He told me I would be painting houses and that I would start with this one, the one I was living in. I agreed to do it if only to get him to leave me alone. So it was that the very next day he came by with the paint and supplies.

This was a drag. This was an enormous Victorian style house that I was to paint all by myself. I remember my younger days on long island and how some friends and I would climb the water towers with bottles of whisky. Water towers and whisky don’t mix. So, I decided that to paint this house I was going to have to be sober or at least severely caffeinated to function on the ladder four stories up. Soon enough I fell into a routine and the landlord came by on the weekends to deliver my pay, and again things seemed to be changing and for the better.

Things seemed good but it wasn’t meant to be. There was still something missing, that untouchable, unseeable, unnamable something looming over the horizon, like a heavy mist slowly starting to envelope and overwhelm me. As the months scrolled by I saw that she must have felt it too. Too much pressure maybe; too much misinterpretation and a lack of fulfillment or satisfaction of what we thought we were accomplishing. Eventually even the painting job started to give, and the apartment became my cave. I became more reclusive than ever.

Finally she came home one day and violence came with her. It entered our home. Violence kicked in the door and exploded in our faces. It left us hurt and bereaved and we each crawled to our separate corners where we licked our wounds in solace. After that we slept in separate rooms. For two weeks we retreated to our own individual spaces in dreadful silence. Until one night I woke to her naked soul climbing into my bed. We embraced all the way into our dreams though by the next morning she was gone.

I spent one last despondent week waiting even though I knew she wouldn’t return. She was gone and I couldn’t remain there alone; the nostalgia was so thick it suffocated. But today I remember the nights spent in that dreary Syracuse apartment with bold sentimentality, where love to me had always manifested in fierce explosions of vehemence. Something’s are so tender they can never be explained through violent ardor and altercation, but may be understood beneath open, night firmaments where tears and fears fall further from hearts unhinged.