From a Window (Crazy Chris story)
Jan 23, 2022 21:46:07 GMT -5
Marcus Welsh and Dylan Thomas like this
Post by Dangerous Dan on Jan 23, 2022 21:46:07 GMT -5
Tonight, you’re all going to get a glimpse of the ‘reborn’ Crazy Chris. I’ve learned to meditate, and I’ve learned to control those inner demons in me. This pandemic has taught me how to be a better demon. So, join me as we sit by the window and view the world for one night.
10:52 p.m.
Tonight, Linda Gregg writes: “Moon, you are getting worse and worse.”
I read at least two poems a day. It’s one of the few practices I have. Each morning, I pull a book from my bookshelf and read a poem, and each night, before sleep, or nearing it, I do the same. I do each by a window, the same one, and overlooking my street. Tonight, I’m sipping a glass of vodka after doing my nightly reading ritual. Tonight’s book was Linda Gregg’s All of It Singing, a book that seems to oscillate in its place on the bookshelf, ever so slightly, on certain nights. The book itself is singing. I don’t know. The street outside, though, is not singing. It used to. Sometimes people would fight, and you could hear the trajectory of it, the way it began on opposite sides of the street, met nearer to one side than the middle and then spilled violently toward the endless ends of the earth.
I like windows because of this. Life goes on through them, even when it doesn’t. Like now, when all I see outside are the quiet, blue-lit rectangles of a hundred people watching television. And the occasional star, or satellite. The ever-worsening moon. Anything can be a reminder of anything. It’s why looking is as good as feeling. It’s the same feeling of stepping inside the ring and proving that I am the best at what I do.
9:32 p.m.
Tonight, someone on a bike argues with a car and holds up traffic. All behind them, the cars honk and honk. Sometimes I have a tough time understanding this—how someone can create conflict, escalate it, and then extend it for so long that they now have a conflict with someone else. I’m old enough now to know that I spent my childhood watching my parents do this to each other until they were far enough away that conflict could not bridge the gap. That conflict is what made me want to wrestle. That conflict is what helped me become the crazy one. That conflict is what creates me to be a better wrestler.
I have spent a life dealing with this conflict. Wrestling people to release that inner demon inside me. I’ve always wanted to shy away from difficult conversations, but I’ve learned to love the conflict. I use that conflict to succeed inside that ring. My mind replays conflict over and over, I destroy my body every time I step inside the ring. I watch as the screaming yells, rises cacophonous until the honking behind the screaming is loud enough to end the screaming for now. No conflict is resolved. One is abandoned because of another. This seemingly my curse.
Where does it go, this anger? It lives inside the self. Could this be the reason for my inner craziness?
10:26 p.m.
Tonight, a dog holds a piece of cardboard in its mouth for an entire block. I don’t know what it finds in such a small, almost useless thing, but then again, I horde so much of what is small and useless, even to me, even to a dog. In most moments, there is something beautiful about trying, even if it’s impossible. I once had a dog. His name was Buck. I was six, maybe seven, when he shat on my rug, and my dad grabbed him by his collar. I never saw Buck again.
For a long time, I didn’t know what it meant to be good. Before me, a carousel of figures rotated, and I did not want to disappoint a single one. I learned a complex set of morals. I learned that what your mother loves, your father does not. I learned that Jesus can mean a whole lot of things. I learned that sometimes, you can bend God to make of him what you will. Sometimes I liked the pain of a belt on my ass. Sometimes I liked the hard certainty of knowing I did something wrong. It felt right to be met with something pure. I’ve learned to be tough, and maybe that is my downfall.
10:32 p.m.
Tonight, three planes circle above my window, caught in a holding pattern. The apparent stillness of planes never ceases to amaze me, how they seem to hover, like lights on a building’s roof, until they descend out of that far awayness, and become close, and fast. When I am in a plane, I press my cheek against the window and look down onto the world until the clouds obscure my view. There’s something about the world viewed from a great height. At once so deeply familiar in its overt, atlas-like landscape, and at once so gone, so removed from the intimacy of skin.
Most days, I want to be both far away and close. To touch without touching. To love without loving. To hate without hating. To hurt without hurting. I want to punch a wall without bruising my skin. I want to scream without making a noise. I want to dream without waking up. Pain and joy alone exist on the ends of things. Like meaning and suffering. Like living and dying. To live in between what you want and what you do not want is to have both at once, or none at all. To live nowhere is to not be alive.
10:43 p.m.
Tonight, at the nail salon across the way, two people stay behind and give each other manicures—with a disco ball for a light. A year ago, my grandfather went to the same nail salon to get a pedicure. He had just recovered from a hip replacement and hadn’t touched his own feet in months. His nails were craggy mountain sides. I watched him from my window—this man, early-90s, easing himself into a chair to let himself be touched.
What is it about being a man? There are rivers we spend our whole lives damming. I wanted to span my arm across the street to touch him. I never knew I’d want that. But I do, and I did.
12:01 a.m.
Tonight, Linda Gregg writes: “Cruelty made me.”
Tonight, outside, there is something about the world that is cruel. It lives in the blue windows, the loneliness inside the loneliness. It lives in the conversations people have and the ones they don’t. It lives in what makes someone walk down a sidewalk silently, head down, hands stuffed in pockets, without looking at a single thing. Such cruelty, to be denied witness. It lives in the passage of time. The moon arcing its reflection from one side of a puddle to the other. What makes us, you ask? From a window, it seems like everything. For a long time, I wanted to be everywhere at once. But from a window, I know my smallness. A weakness I’ve learned to deal with.
7:43 a.m.
Tonight, is gone. It’s morning. I wrote something about cruelty last night, didn’t I? I forgot to say that you return, most days, to the same place in a different light. Sometimes it’s changed. Sometimes not. Sometimes I feel that cruelty bottled up in me. My inner demon relishing on that fact.
It’s still quiet. There are birds alighting on the chained storefronts across the street. Someone is sweeping a broom through another window. Above the buildings, the sky is cloudless, stuck in some placid blue. Imagine if morning appeared each day like a life does? Screaming. Maybe scared. So small. Would we ever emerge out into the day at all? What does it mean to make sense of things? It doesn’t always mean to have hope. To make sense of things means to sometimes let them be as they are. Light shines on the day no matter the horror, no matter the love. The store opens. The bird flies away. The people begin to arrive, one by one, carrying yesterday’s burdens, and the ones from the days before, and sometimes the burdens of others, and sometimes the burdens of actions they did not choose, the burdens of consequences they did not deserve.
It’s endless, this sense-making. You understand why it becomes impossible sometimes to even say a thing. I want to believe in a world where all it takes is light, and a cheek turned into it. Maybe, just maybe. Look, the people are coming. More, and more. I need to join them. I can’t stay here. I am full of words that mean nothing unless I say them to someone else. It’s time that the crazy one returns. That time…is at Access Denied.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
“Okay, so this may be a bit weird, but my brother and I have seemingly switched personalities. Am I the logical one now, while he’s the sinical one? I don’t understand that, but things will eventually be in order. I know for weeks; my brother has only thought about one thing and that is claiming the titles that have eluded us our entire career…
I can totally relate, as I’ve wanted those tag team titles since the first time Dan, and I stepped foot in OCW. We were at the top of our prime. Our previous employment closed and OCW took us in. We accomplished many a thing but claiming those tag team titles. It’s that one constant thing that lingers over our heads and has been for that last decade…
They always say that the third time is the charm. This is our third trip around OCW. This is the time that we showcase who we were and who we still are. Dan and I have been training hard for this match since we received the phone call to face the Dravers Twins for those belts. It was the one requirement for us to come back…
I honestly don’t really like when people compare someone to me. I, unlike my brother, don’t take it as flattery. I find it an insult that guys like you are being compared to us. I don’t see anything of us in the Dravers twins. I’ve went back and watched you boys in action. Honestly, you don’t fucking impress me at all. You’re both weak and immature. You care more about yourselves than you do anything else. It’s funny how you think you can easily defeat us, but you have no idea what we are capable of…
At Access Denied Dan and I going to show you what a Danger Zone match is. This is our specialty. This is our kingdom. You accepted that challenge to face us in the once in a lifetime match. It isn’t going to be easy boys. It’s going to be one hell of a crazy ride…
Once that bell rings boys, your locked inside that cage with us. Those belts hanging up above the ring. You can’t escape over the cage to win either. So, if you think escaping the top is the way to go, think again. The thrill of the match is beating someone to a pulp with all those weapons around the cage. Bring anything you want to use boys, use anything in the cage you want. You can use ANYTHING. I like pain, I love pain, I love weapons, and I love seeing someone bleed…
Once Dan and I have beaten you boys to a pulp, we’re going to climb that ladder and retrieve those belts. But the fun part about that is going to be when we climb back down and exit that cage with those tag titles raised in our hands. But if you think you boys can do it then go ahead and try…
But I should inform you that one of the rules is that BOTH members must escape with the belts. Not just one member, but both. That’s the thrill, that’s the fun, that’s the pleasure in assuring that BOTH members of the opposing team have been defeated. You might think you are going to be victorious, but Dan and I are KNOW we are going to be victorious…
Jonathan and Nathan, is it? You’ve already met my brother so allow me to introduce myself. My name is Crazy Chris. I’m no ordinary man in that ring. I’m a lunatic and can pull out anything to assure that I win. You think you know my moves? Guess again. I’ll have you thinking one thing and then completely fool you. The don’t call me the crazy one for no reason. At Access Denied you boys are going to learn just how crazy I can really be. At Access Denied the Danger Boiz are leaving the Danger Zone as your NEW tag team champions. That, boys, is the Gospel of Crazy Chris. Chapter FUCK verse YOU!”
10:52 p.m.
Tonight, Linda Gregg writes: “Moon, you are getting worse and worse.”
I read at least two poems a day. It’s one of the few practices I have. Each morning, I pull a book from my bookshelf and read a poem, and each night, before sleep, or nearing it, I do the same. I do each by a window, the same one, and overlooking my street. Tonight, I’m sipping a glass of vodka after doing my nightly reading ritual. Tonight’s book was Linda Gregg’s All of It Singing, a book that seems to oscillate in its place on the bookshelf, ever so slightly, on certain nights. The book itself is singing. I don’t know. The street outside, though, is not singing. It used to. Sometimes people would fight, and you could hear the trajectory of it, the way it began on opposite sides of the street, met nearer to one side than the middle and then spilled violently toward the endless ends of the earth.
I like windows because of this. Life goes on through them, even when it doesn’t. Like now, when all I see outside are the quiet, blue-lit rectangles of a hundred people watching television. And the occasional star, or satellite. The ever-worsening moon. Anything can be a reminder of anything. It’s why looking is as good as feeling. It’s the same feeling of stepping inside the ring and proving that I am the best at what I do.
9:32 p.m.
Tonight, someone on a bike argues with a car and holds up traffic. All behind them, the cars honk and honk. Sometimes I have a tough time understanding this—how someone can create conflict, escalate it, and then extend it for so long that they now have a conflict with someone else. I’m old enough now to know that I spent my childhood watching my parents do this to each other until they were far enough away that conflict could not bridge the gap. That conflict is what made me want to wrestle. That conflict is what helped me become the crazy one. That conflict is what creates me to be a better wrestler.
I have spent a life dealing with this conflict. Wrestling people to release that inner demon inside me. I’ve always wanted to shy away from difficult conversations, but I’ve learned to love the conflict. I use that conflict to succeed inside that ring. My mind replays conflict over and over, I destroy my body every time I step inside the ring. I watch as the screaming yells, rises cacophonous until the honking behind the screaming is loud enough to end the screaming for now. No conflict is resolved. One is abandoned because of another. This seemingly my curse.
Where does it go, this anger? It lives inside the self. Could this be the reason for my inner craziness?
10:26 p.m.
Tonight, a dog holds a piece of cardboard in its mouth for an entire block. I don’t know what it finds in such a small, almost useless thing, but then again, I horde so much of what is small and useless, even to me, even to a dog. In most moments, there is something beautiful about trying, even if it’s impossible. I once had a dog. His name was Buck. I was six, maybe seven, when he shat on my rug, and my dad grabbed him by his collar. I never saw Buck again.
For a long time, I didn’t know what it meant to be good. Before me, a carousel of figures rotated, and I did not want to disappoint a single one. I learned a complex set of morals. I learned that what your mother loves, your father does not. I learned that Jesus can mean a whole lot of things. I learned that sometimes, you can bend God to make of him what you will. Sometimes I liked the pain of a belt on my ass. Sometimes I liked the hard certainty of knowing I did something wrong. It felt right to be met with something pure. I’ve learned to be tough, and maybe that is my downfall.
10:32 p.m.
Tonight, three planes circle above my window, caught in a holding pattern. The apparent stillness of planes never ceases to amaze me, how they seem to hover, like lights on a building’s roof, until they descend out of that far awayness, and become close, and fast. When I am in a plane, I press my cheek against the window and look down onto the world until the clouds obscure my view. There’s something about the world viewed from a great height. At once so deeply familiar in its overt, atlas-like landscape, and at once so gone, so removed from the intimacy of skin.
Most days, I want to be both far away and close. To touch without touching. To love without loving. To hate without hating. To hurt without hurting. I want to punch a wall without bruising my skin. I want to scream without making a noise. I want to dream without waking up. Pain and joy alone exist on the ends of things. Like meaning and suffering. Like living and dying. To live in between what you want and what you do not want is to have both at once, or none at all. To live nowhere is to not be alive.
10:43 p.m.
Tonight, at the nail salon across the way, two people stay behind and give each other manicures—with a disco ball for a light. A year ago, my grandfather went to the same nail salon to get a pedicure. He had just recovered from a hip replacement and hadn’t touched his own feet in months. His nails were craggy mountain sides. I watched him from my window—this man, early-90s, easing himself into a chair to let himself be touched.
What is it about being a man? There are rivers we spend our whole lives damming. I wanted to span my arm across the street to touch him. I never knew I’d want that. But I do, and I did.
12:01 a.m.
Tonight, Linda Gregg writes: “Cruelty made me.”
Tonight, outside, there is something about the world that is cruel. It lives in the blue windows, the loneliness inside the loneliness. It lives in the conversations people have and the ones they don’t. It lives in what makes someone walk down a sidewalk silently, head down, hands stuffed in pockets, without looking at a single thing. Such cruelty, to be denied witness. It lives in the passage of time. The moon arcing its reflection from one side of a puddle to the other. What makes us, you ask? From a window, it seems like everything. For a long time, I wanted to be everywhere at once. But from a window, I know my smallness. A weakness I’ve learned to deal with.
7:43 a.m.
Tonight, is gone. It’s morning. I wrote something about cruelty last night, didn’t I? I forgot to say that you return, most days, to the same place in a different light. Sometimes it’s changed. Sometimes not. Sometimes I feel that cruelty bottled up in me. My inner demon relishing on that fact.
It’s still quiet. There are birds alighting on the chained storefronts across the street. Someone is sweeping a broom through another window. Above the buildings, the sky is cloudless, stuck in some placid blue. Imagine if morning appeared each day like a life does? Screaming. Maybe scared. So small. Would we ever emerge out into the day at all? What does it mean to make sense of things? It doesn’t always mean to have hope. To make sense of things means to sometimes let them be as they are. Light shines on the day no matter the horror, no matter the love. The store opens. The bird flies away. The people begin to arrive, one by one, carrying yesterday’s burdens, and the ones from the days before, and sometimes the burdens of others, and sometimes the burdens of actions they did not choose, the burdens of consequences they did not deserve.
It’s endless, this sense-making. You understand why it becomes impossible sometimes to even say a thing. I want to believe in a world where all it takes is light, and a cheek turned into it. Maybe, just maybe. Look, the people are coming. More, and more. I need to join them. I can’t stay here. I am full of words that mean nothing unless I say them to someone else. It’s time that the crazy one returns. That time…is at Access Denied.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
“Okay, so this may be a bit weird, but my brother and I have seemingly switched personalities. Am I the logical one now, while he’s the sinical one? I don’t understand that, but things will eventually be in order. I know for weeks; my brother has only thought about one thing and that is claiming the titles that have eluded us our entire career…
I can totally relate, as I’ve wanted those tag team titles since the first time Dan, and I stepped foot in OCW. We were at the top of our prime. Our previous employment closed and OCW took us in. We accomplished many a thing but claiming those tag team titles. It’s that one constant thing that lingers over our heads and has been for that last decade…
They always say that the third time is the charm. This is our third trip around OCW. This is the time that we showcase who we were and who we still are. Dan and I have been training hard for this match since we received the phone call to face the Dravers Twins for those belts. It was the one requirement for us to come back…
I honestly don’t really like when people compare someone to me. I, unlike my brother, don’t take it as flattery. I find it an insult that guys like you are being compared to us. I don’t see anything of us in the Dravers twins. I’ve went back and watched you boys in action. Honestly, you don’t fucking impress me at all. You’re both weak and immature. You care more about yourselves than you do anything else. It’s funny how you think you can easily defeat us, but you have no idea what we are capable of…
At Access Denied Dan and I going to show you what a Danger Zone match is. This is our specialty. This is our kingdom. You accepted that challenge to face us in the once in a lifetime match. It isn’t going to be easy boys. It’s going to be one hell of a crazy ride…
Once that bell rings boys, your locked inside that cage with us. Those belts hanging up above the ring. You can’t escape over the cage to win either. So, if you think escaping the top is the way to go, think again. The thrill of the match is beating someone to a pulp with all those weapons around the cage. Bring anything you want to use boys, use anything in the cage you want. You can use ANYTHING. I like pain, I love pain, I love weapons, and I love seeing someone bleed…
Once Dan and I have beaten you boys to a pulp, we’re going to climb that ladder and retrieve those belts. But the fun part about that is going to be when we climb back down and exit that cage with those tag titles raised in our hands. But if you think you boys can do it then go ahead and try…
But I should inform you that one of the rules is that BOTH members must escape with the belts. Not just one member, but both. That’s the thrill, that’s the fun, that’s the pleasure in assuring that BOTH members of the opposing team have been defeated. You might think you are going to be victorious, but Dan and I are KNOW we are going to be victorious…
Jonathan and Nathan, is it? You’ve already met my brother so allow me to introduce myself. My name is Crazy Chris. I’m no ordinary man in that ring. I’m a lunatic and can pull out anything to assure that I win. You think you know my moves? Guess again. I’ll have you thinking one thing and then completely fool you. The don’t call me the crazy one for no reason. At Access Denied you boys are going to learn just how crazy I can really be. At Access Denied the Danger Boiz are leaving the Danger Zone as your NEW tag team champions. That, boys, is the Gospel of Crazy Chris. Chapter FUCK verse YOU!”
