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I’ve always felt solitary. Not alone, not always lonely, but content to just be with myself. But I need the company of loved ones more often than I remember and the lack of such company makes keeping my head up an arduous endeavor. I certainly don’t take joy in sounding miserable when all indications are that I am rather happy, but I am not as satisfied with my life as I could be.

I’ve felt hurt by the rather unintentional acts of both of my close friends in Alaska. And while it has been easy to point to them as the cause of my hurt, it has been dishonest on my part. They have been living quite happy lives, lives I am so happy that each of them has found. If I were faced with a life filled with someone to give all this love to, I too might become rather inconsiderate of the feelings of mere friends. But that knowledge does not mitigate the emotional pain. They are not responsible for my perpetual bachelorhood and I don’t fault them for their happiness. It can be difficult to realize that I don’t sit at the center of other people’s worlds.

Existential crises are becoming common. Friends tend to distract me enough to not over think what it means to be me. Forgive my depressed ramblings and heavy heart. I just feel alone sometimes and I just want someone else to know about it. I’m fine; I always am.

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I’ve been reading a lot lately… and updating my books page daily (sometimes more than that).

There are things on the tip of my tongue. Stay there, on the edge of your seat. I’ll say them soon enough.Continue Reading

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I think the previously posted poem Hiking At Kennicott will either will be edited to be shorter or fleshed out to be an essay. I like it, but it is almost begging to be prose. I find myself rather blocked this week. Perhaps it has been the turmoil this past week seems to be in. Things are in disarray. It causes me to not want to face myself and I slink into my corner and pretend I don’t want to write. In reality, nothing would bring me greater joy in difficult times. Facing myself always seems to convince me that I like me more than I thought and still troubles me because I don’t understand how I can still be alone. I’m feeling rather desperate to have what those around me have and desperation causes foolishness. I hope I can keep the antics at bay. In the meantime, I’ll risk a poem on here that could potentially offend those mentioned in it. It is about three people I love a great deal — a family of sorts. Like all families, it is the quirks of individuals that sometimes receive the focus. It rarely means that those quirky people are thought of any less.Continue Reading

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I got out of Anchorage for nearly three days. David, Daniel, Denis, & I took a trip to McCarthy & Kennecott in the Copper River Basin. Kennecott is an old mining town that was abandoned in 1938. The trip was beautiful, therapeutic, and well-deserved by all of us.

Honestly, I imagined great tension and possible distance on our return, but the four of us play very well off one another and if I can get over my jealousy that the other three live in two adjacent houses far from me, I think we’ll continue to have a strong relationship.

I’m not a nature person… so I say, but I do really enjoy getting out and doing things like this trip. I mainly say these things about not being a nature person to prevent people from inviting me on adventures that I can resent them for going on later. I should see someone about that, but for now I will just admit it and try to deal with it. I seem to be all too willing to sabotage my own happiness. Curious. I think getting a little nature all over me was good.

My pictures will be around soon. Too tired to care tonight.Continue Reading

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10th & Cordova

I’m working on feeling unconventional
in a world of unconventional people.
I’m melding with others,
with those whose lives barely cross mine,
I am again like a loose bit
dangling from a ragged tree branch.
And I feel love. Love.
Quantified love. Finite and sequenced love.
Quantified?
I know I’m last. The love left is different,
the love is coated with a sticky doubt.
Denis is made up in shades of green,
needlessly feeding himself pain, gorging himself on his own thoughts.
His love is ranked, ordered, defined by hierarchy.
Denis uses his love to feel closeness,
and he wraps that love in money. Family.
Quantified? Finite?
David makes diplomatic concessions,
talks in circles and understanding tones, tries to hold together
things that aren’t in danger of slipping away.
He spends his time adding on to the structures, stroking egos,
helping Denis find even brighter green vestments.
I can’t even seem to get attention from myself.
Love? Love. It’s possible.
Expanding, filling the room, I feel uncomfortable
and take up too much space. How can I be ignored?
Sometimes I deflate the elephant and shrink to almost nothing,
transparent.
I shrink into a corner and watch my family below grow ever closer
without me, saddened by my own inability to include myself.
Daniel has come in, found David, taken him down a path I cannot see.
The fields of sweetly scented flowers cover the trail.
There is an increased interest in green.
I try to figure out how to be seen,
how to understand quantified love.
Denis longs to not be green, but I only know about this too late,
after I have purchased green tinted glasses that I wear when I look at him.
David and Daniel playing in the flowers makes me
simultaneously happy and enraged.
Enraged at me, at my ignorance, at how insufferable I’ve become.
Daniel brings back flowers and shares them with me,
and I am happy enough. Family.
Quantified? No.
David keeps tabs on the situation, sometimes,
very occasionally checking to see how I’m doing.
It’s easiest when he speaks about Daniel, about secrets and sex,
about the fields of flowers down the path.
I feel happy when he mentions Daniel, free.
The cracks are forming, and we are all distracted with our efforts.
I’ll soon need to purchase another pair of glasses, this time in rose.

Notes

Written 14 June 2008 in McCarthy, Alaska. Revised 1 October 2018 in Payne County, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “10th & Cordova” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)Continue Reading

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Before Kennicott

Even before it begins, I want the end
Age has made me inflexible and cantankerous
I don’t want to live in the moment
don’t want to live
don’t want
don’t

I beg forgiveness for being inflexible and cantankerous
Waiting, sitting, forgetting why I agreed to do this
Sigh
I’m over heartache and jealousy
Clichés
I can see happiness in front of me, my arms outstretched
It is simple to vacation and so hard,
busy people all frantic about different things
personalities that barely mesh in the relative ease of our daily lives

I feel my rage staying near the surface
ready to explode at any moment and I hope I can suppress it long enough
and then scream into my pillow later
They’ve never seen my rage
I don’t like it
I feel like a child
Spoiled, inflexible
Things should stay as they are
As they are
Not quite
Not this
As they are
As I am
Inflexible
Cantankerous
Impatient

We’ll find ourselves soon at a lodge
a disappointment to my urban sensibilities
to my immaturity
and I’ll feel ashamed to not be more connected to nature
or Nature
Connected to the universe
I am clichés
waiting for a beginning I want to end
longing for moments I fail to experience
I’m waiting
and Daniel is sleeping

Written 13 June 2008 in Anchorage, Alaska.  Revised 1 October 2018 in Glencoe, Oklahoma.

Brian Fuchs, “Before Kennicott” from Okie Dokie (Scissortail Press, 2019)Continue Reading

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I paused to bend your ear [it didn’t go well]

Secrets whispered make this place
tolerable, despite crumudgeons
who’d have it otherwise.
Would-be librarians shush us,
make get-back-to-work motions.
My face goes blank like a yokel
with nothin’ in my noggin ‘cept dust.
I’m animally staring into
the headlights of disapproval,
amazed that people think
themselves as so much more
important than they are.
I forget the secrets for now,
pretend to obey these adults who
wish to again be hall monitors.
I’ll wait and shout bits as I pass by
to show you that I still include you.
Together we’ll prove ourselves here
and these asses will fall away
to make room for our ascent.

5.20.2008

I’ve discovered that I wasn’t the only person to want to create a Title Wave book. Now, having discussed it with a coworker, I’m going to try hard to make it happen. He proposed donating profits to a charity, which I think is brilliant. We wouldn’t be in it for the money anyway. Now, choosing the right people to run it will be tough. One of the strongest resources is not a supporter of the project, so we cannot count on that person or the knowledge from them. I think it requires people who are willing to get things done, so I’ll be working on staying on other people about it, as well as myself.Continue Reading