Being stuck is the natural state of spirits. Being caught in a web, or tangled while attempting to spin one, nothing could be more natural in the world than stickiness. Limbo, limb, a limb is a limb, like a leg or claw or branch reaching towards the light. A spirit stuck in limbo is like a limb stuck in a spider's web, trying to free itself.

Human limbs free themselves easily from spider webs - they barely even feel the silk that took such effort to spin into shapes. But smaller limbs, like the skeletal delicate legs of an ant, they remain stuck until the spirit leaves them, the spider sucks them dry.

The world can suck a human spirit dry; and usually the ones doing said sucking aren't attempting to gain sustenance the way a spider is. The other humans can keep a spirit stuck in limbo for days, weeks, months, waiting to hear back, to obtain the currency that keep people able to obtain food in ways less visceral and traumatizing than how spiders obtain their food.

A spirit stuck in limbo is waiting, the way a worm waits on the sidewalk as it dries in the sun, having left the dirt during a rainstorm. A human spirit left waiting has an advantage to that worm - it knows what concrete is, what the sun will do if the spirit fails to move. Being stuck isn't always a choice, but one has choices to make while waiting, while stuck, while unsure and insecure of their place in the world of people. Stay in the shade, nurture limbo the way the sun nurtures limbs, branches of a tree reaching towards it - there are free resources for spirits stuck if one knows where to look. Libraries are brilliant ways to keep one's mind intact while waiting for a more fulfilling pastime. Prose, writing, that's how this spirit keeps afloat while in limbo.

East Chase Street ca. 1944

1. After dark,

passing cars spread white sheets of light

on the ceiling of the 2nd floor front bedroom.

How comfy to know I’m put to bed in the room

where my grandmother will soon join me. Plus

I can tell from the headlights that the machinery

of Baltimore keeps going without me doing a thing.

2. Jack Flood’s place

was what my scary one-eyed step grandfather

called the derelict auto repair shop rotting and rusting

across the street. “He used to keep his women

up on the 2nd floor.“ “Fallen women,” Grandmother

whispered. I pictured women in denim overalls

who had somehow been injured in the War Effort

making the fenders and radiator grills that still spilled

onto the sidewalk. The iron sign said AUTOREPA.

I knew it meant AUTOREPAIRS but I still thought

Autorepa would be a swell name for a make of tractor

along with the John Deeres, International Harvesters,

and Cat Diesels pictured in my step-grandfather’s

Camels- yellowed copies of The Farm Journal..

3. The Red Cross Volunteer place

was three or four houses farther down Chase Street.

Each house we passed had a Gold Star in its bay window.

My grandmother and I walked there every morning.

I forget what she did. What I did was so important

the Red Cross ladies made me a kid-size Red Cross cap

and gave me a big magnet for picking up Invisible Hairpins.

Ladies went to the Red Cross place to get their hair done--

permed or blued.. It was also Miss Viola’s Beauty Parlor.

4. Miss Alma

lived on the third floor of the house on Chase Street.

She was one of my grandmother’s church ladies.

My mother would drop me off at my grandmother’s house

every morning before going to School 49 to teach English

to the Accelerated Middle School boys and girls.

Miss Alma was very tall and slim, with black hair slicked

into a bun. In her long black dress she would float

without making a sound down the stairs to the second floor,

to the first floor, down the hall to the front door, out onto

the fancy tiled vestibule, down the marble steps, out

into her world, whatever that was. I never saw her return.

When my mother was in her nineties, her heart doctored

by one of her girls from School 49, I mentioned

Miss Alma to her, thus adding to Mother’s theory

that I was crazy and a liar. Uncle John, my mother’s

much younger step-brother, remembered Miss Alma

and even her last name: Sinclair. Miss Alma Sinclair.

5. The marble steps

to the huge old brownstones on East Chase Street

were not like the ones you see in pictures of the city.

Housewives on Chase Street hired an old lady

with a scrub bush and bucket to do the steps each month.

’Common,” my mother called people who sat on the steps

on summer nights--part of a phrase ending “…as dirt.”

My grandmother even said the family on the steps

a few doors away was Common. But it was common,

to sit on the steps as the July sun moved west all the way

to Howard Street. The marble was gritty from coal dust

and the dirt of the Elevated stop a few blocks over

but cool, for my grandmother and step-grandfather

and especially to me in my shorts. All of us fanned

ourselves with church fans, cardboard pictures on sticks,

6. The castle

you could see from the Chase Street front steps

turned orangey-pink in the summer sunset.

It had towers and turrets and a scalloped roofline.

I knew it was really the Jail, but I wished

people would stop telling me so. Rapunzel herself

might let down her hair from one of the windows.

7. The Funeral Parlor

was a brownstone mansion my mother and I passed

as we headed down to my grandmother’s house. It had

an imposing stone arch over a yard full of black cars.

“Limousines,” my mother said, “and hearses for coffins.

“t’s The William Cook Funeral Home. Think of those

Gold Stars you see on Biddle Street, one per lost son.”

Later in junior high school we sang a song that went

When you die better try William Cook’s.

It’s the best undertaker in the books.

Its coffins are much cheaper

and they’ll bury you much deeper

When you die better try William Cook’s.

We sang it to the tune of a well-known commercial:

When you buy better try Hochschild Kohn

It’s the store Baltimore calls its own. . . .

A few years later I was a very reluctant debutante.

My date for some big party stopped at William Cook’s

to pick up two debutante-boys’ dates. I was shocked

to realize it was the Cook sisters’ family home. They

wore fabulous dresses pouffed out over huge hoops.

Bridal Hoops, that what whose Gone with the Wind

hoops were called. They hiked up and out in front

in the car. They’d have been just right for a black limo.

- - -

8. Street smarts and my life in crime

My parents felt I should get to know my way

around downtown. “Walk west (where the sun sets)

Walk up a block or two. You’ll find Biddle Street

and Preston Street.” I figured that Preston Street

was named after my father, Robert Preston Harriss.

But Biddle? Was that some kind of stupid baby talk?

Farther north was a Read’s Drugstore and a Five & Ten.

Both carried paperback books with guns and bosoms

on their covers. I would walk there by myself and

read those books till I could see it was almost dusk then

I’d take home with me whichever one I was reading.

Nobody ever caught me. I always got home on time.

9. Little Mysteries

that I used to ask my grandmother about included odd items

I’d see in McCrorie’s so-called NOTIONS DEPARTMENT

like the long skin-colored balloons at one of the counters.

She told me that they were to protect the hardworking fingers

of people who sewed. She didn’t seem to hear me when

I wanted to know why she never wore them, even though

she made all my clothes and bled on some of them.

10. Coal Dust

covered just about everything on Chase Street.

Grandmother’s house had brown velvet portieres

and brown upholstery with was a layer of black dust

on top of it all, even her windowsill African Violets.

I liked to sit on the dusty cellar steps to watch her

go down there in a bathrobe and my step grandfather’s

way too big bedroom slippers to shovel the day’s coal

into the furnace. Her ancient Bible Story Book

had a wonderful scary illustration of wicked people

shoveling babies into Moloch’s Fiery Furnace.

Grandmother was only keeping the house warm.

I understood that the Bible Story Book was just

what it said it was, a bunch of tall tales. Stories.

11. Uncle John’s furlough

brought Uncle John home on a short leave.

He stayed in the way-back second floor bedroom

on Chase Street. Often he and his fiancée Jane

would nap in his room. “So sweet,” my grandmother

would whisper to me in the hall. “They love each other.

And the door’s open.” They married when he came

home for good. “John and Jane.” Cute as a kiddie book..

12. My Criminal Life

continued. After the War ended Uncle John came back

to his home on Chase Street. If I happened to be there

he’d take me for a ride in the family’s old DeSoto.

At first I’d merely sit on his lap and shift the gears.

He did the pedals and the steering. When I turned ten

he let me drive on my own around the farm his one-eyed

father owned. Uncle John smoked Luckies in the passenger’s seat

13. Lessons I learned

a few years later when my Ps asked me if those boys

I ran around with drank: NOOOO I howled

thus assuring Mother and Father that they drank like fish.

The Boys’ Latin School where my drinking buddies

from Bolton Hill went had a fraternity called Gamma

Beta supposedly standing for God and Brotherhood

but really for Gin Belt. That was the semi-official

name of the boys’ prestigious neighborhood near

Chase Street. My Ps seemed rather relieved to learn

I could drive. “Grab their car keys if they’re drunk.”

14. I celebrate Memorial Day

thinking about Chase Street. Gold Stars, Red Cross. dust..

All over Baltimore celebrants are driving drunk. Thanks

to my family and especially Uncle John I’m alive. Still.

***

03/11/23 (11:03-11:29pm)

What’s up Doc,

Listen, this is an odd one. I know both of us seem to struggle with a lot of the same things for different reasons. I thought this might be a good skill since I shut down when talking about emotions. If I can write them, then we can skip that part. So I thought I’d start this series and see what happens. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not, but either way maybe it’ll help one of us. I’ll give you some of my old writings, if that’ll help; this will definitely be the most casual I’ve ever written. I think you’d like my Science & Scripture piece a lot. Remind me to text it to you. Maybe this will help me fall asleep. All I know is my heart hurts and it’s not even a full panic attack.

I think a lot of it is because I get too understimulated before I fall asleep or my body is scared to fall asleep for a number of reasons (primitive, spiritual, introspective). There’s a list of reasons for all three of these; maybe the primitive is the easiest to tackle for now since the adrenaline is wearing off.  I was born premature, 24 week, pound and a half baby. They had to do caffeine, blood, and ventilators to the point there’s scarring on my lungs that triggers my bronchial asthma. I was in the hospital for 101 days and came home on a breathing machine because I would forget to breathe. This was seen in small ways throughout my life. I would forget to breathe during dance performances; I don’t breathe going up stairs. It makes me wonder if my body is just concentrating on breathing to the point it doesn’t want to sleep.

But that doesn’t account for a number of things. It’s deductive in the sense that I’ve always disliked. It doesn’t account for the productivity addiction, or the compulsions, or that voice in my head that knows if I could see myself from the outside I would hate myself. It doesn’t account for my accomplishments not being mine, getting lucky in what I do by being at the right place at the right time. Hell, I’m not supposed to be alive in the first place if it weren’t for the time I was born with modern medicine. And then there’s the guilt. How can someone feel so guilty for simply existing? I don’t want to be dead by any means but why…

I know my purpose. I know my potential and I can’t stand that I can’t live up to it. Other people know their purpose and go and do it. I’ve lost my sense of identity once trying to do everything I could; it didn’t work. Those weren’t limits, those were restraints. And if I could get around them, maybe I’d finally reach my potential. I’m stubborn. The only reason I lived is because I’m stubborn. The only reason I am still alive is because I’m stubborn. I’m alive so what do I do now? Maybe hating myself gives me more motivation in a way, to become someone or something I don’t hate. Someone I can look at in a mirror and not have to worry about. I forgot I have a piece on that too. Here:

“Another night of staring at my own reflection. Why do I always come here? What even am I anymore? This mortal shell of mine seems to trap me. These dark bags only emphasize my melancholy eye contact. I try to reach out to myself but only feel the distant chill of this wretched surface; if only I could destroy its mocking gleam that judges me so. My efforts would be futile. When I walk out of this bathroom I could avoid my reflection, but I must face my own existence. These abhorrent conceptualizations must occur from within my own psyche, yet what does it mean to truly be mortal? This cursed mirror offers no clarification. I will nevertheless contemplate on my pitiful state: how can it be true I am no more than a spec much like the abomination of condensed sand I stare into? My heavy sigh only fogs the mirror and my thoughts further. Perhaps reflecting on memories rather than my empty husk will heal these reckless emotions.

As my conscience molds to my comprehension of this world, I am introspecting to discover who I truly am unto this earth while that same conscience no longer dictates my preconceptions miniscule. Among man I am just another cog within their own creations yet what I truly am can be defined by my beliefs. Improvement is what means to be human, and steadfast will I travel among the planes of reflectivity to reconstruct my identity. Though I may be perceived as this outwardly form, I am distinct by design. The miry fog releases its toll on my thoughts as I snap back into my own reality. I no longer feel numb to the stool I am perched on and gaze into the eyes of one I knew long before my melancholy state. I have never forgotten yet how can I begin to rebuild what I have lost?  Lightheaded, I rise from my perch. The fire within rekindles as I turn the worn door handle and step into the land of opportunity before me.”

I’m not afraid of death, never have been. I’m not afraid of life, or nothingness, or myself. I’m afraid of living my life as if it was never mine to live, of wasting it as if I’ve never lived at all. I need something to keep me grounded and believe in who I am. I’ve tried everything I know how and I still feel numb.

I think that joker was from years ago, before I was diagnosed with anything. Have a field day with that one. This might be my solution to express my frustrations for a bit until I can cast them down. Hope you are doing well, man. I’m working on doing better; I promised myself I would and this is so much progress in such a short time. Thanks for always listening.

~TBA