I’ve logged more experience than most with simplicity and the complexity you discover inside simplicity, minimalism and asocial behavior, endurance and landscape.
Here is the truth: I think some deep wisdom inside me (a) sensed the stress, (b) was terrified for me, and (c) gave me something new and hard to focus on in order to prevent me from lapsing into a despair coma — and also to keep me from having a jelly jar of wine in my hand.
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Binghamton, NY Lonely and a little bored, I used to donate blood every eight weeks at the Red Cross across the street from my studio apartment. Eyes skyward, arm shot straight, I’d sigh as a butterfly needle settled on my skin, its plastic wings drawn to a vein in my forearm: a thin river, ghost blue. And then — warmth. Like an oven turned low, a slow kindling beneath dark winter clothes. Afterwards I’d pocket Oreos, fig bars, a few extra juice boxes for later that night, yet leave feeling lighter, like I’d done something no one could diminish. I still donate here downstate, but last spring, after the butterfly’s sting, I blacked out in a synagogue basement — my soaked back on a gurney as the plastic sack filled. Nowadays I can’t tell who I’m meant to help, or how to help, or if anything really helps anymore, though I guess that’s me feeling lazy and drained while, up north, between two frozen rivers, a version of my youth reenters that waiting room beside a rusted diner and an off-brand department store, lies back, and believes he has so much more to give.
Jared Harél