Lately I have been working on a novel that heavily includes autobiographical elements. Below I have included two instances from my life that I will not be including in the project (for now). They are just recollections, very rough and completely unedited. The first of these stories was brought back to mind today while speaking with my dear friend, the poet Jennifer Woodworth (check out her blog here, and her Twitter), who will be included in the first print issue of Blue as an Orange later this year. Early next year I hope to publish a book of her work as well through my Lemures Books imprint.

i. Leonard Cohen’s shadow and the shadow of Leonard Cohen

In 2016 I was not well. I had recently traded a minor drug problem with a drinking problem and was in a highly abusive relationship. All of this was exacerbated by an intense work schedule. I was often working 12-20 (yes, 20) hours a day, seven days a week. The job was one of the best I’ve ever had but it really fed the dark portions of my soul. My day would start at 4 or 5 am where I would cook breakfast for the sheriff’s department, often still drunk or high. Afterwards I would set up the club, moving heavy tables and chairs to whatever configuration was needed for that night’s festivities (ranging from weddings to graduation ceremonies, class reunions to concerts). Come lunch time I would cook or serve food with a flask of bourbon cut with a bit of water hidden in the ice bins, sneaking sips whenever possible. After lunch I would eat a massive lunch/breakfast combination consisting of steak, eggs, hashbrowns, and whatever was on special that day, all topped off with three or four cups of strong black coffee. This usually sobered me up enough to run errands for the company. Every day I collected anything needed for that night from the local party shop (tables, fog machines, etc.), visited the ABC store to stock up on liquor for the bar, hit up the bank where I would deposit the companies earnings and trade my meager paycheck for coins to hunt through (I was an avid coin collector at the time), and ran any personal errands needed such as paying bills, stopping by the bookstore to drop off recent acquisitions and trade them for new reads, and pick up the cigarettes that I smoked constantly. My last stop was always the post office. The post office was a religious experience for me. It always began with a cigarette and coffee that I picked up on my errands. I would small talk with the regulars outside. I distinctly remember one day in particular. It was November the 10th. I arrived at the post office, having felt a malaise the past few days, a dark cloud of depression. Depression was not uncommon for me at that time, but this felt different. It had lingered in a unique way. I was smoking a cigarette when an old man approached me. He was tall but hunched, and incredibly thin, dressed in all black. He looked incredibly familiar, and that familiarity became clearer when he opened his mouth to ask for a cigarette. His voice was incredibly deep and warm. Of course I gave him a cigarette that he lit with a match. He took off his fedora and set in on the unleveled concrete sidewalk below us. My depression lifted, he asked about the book in my suit jacket’s pocket. In one side I had a small pocket edition of a selection of poems by Lorca, and in the other I had an extremely small Bible. When I asked which book he was referring to, his eyes lit up. We spoke of Lorca, his death and the uncertainty of his body. The man spoke of his body and how uncertain it was, how he wasn’t sure if it was there, with me, or a thousand miles away. We spoke of the Bible and Zen, the beauty of family and of silence, then, unexpectedly, he asked me about the Bermuda Triangle and what it means to me. Altogether we spoke approximately 5-10 minutes. Once his cigarette was down to the filter, he extinguished in on the bottom of his shoe and flicked it into the gutter before walking off, around the corner. I took off after him, trying to let him know he had forgotten his hat. I turned the corner and he was gone. I looked back and his fedora, too, was gone. In a daze I finished my tasks, dropping off and collecting the company’s mail and sending off Dink Press orders. I sat down in my truck and found tears streaming down my face. I tried to fight the tears, and started the truck. The CD I had on low volume was Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man. Then it hit me, that man, that strange man dressed all in black and spoke lovingly of Lorca, was the one and only Leonard Cohen. I was prone to such chance encounters. I’ve had the uncanny ability to bump into people of importance when I needed to meet them, always by chance. I sat there in awe thinking of Cohen and how important he had been to my life. At that point my mother called me to break the news that Leonard Cohen had died. My heart sank through the floor and rested on the filthy asphalt, collecting ash, pebbles, and broken glass. I haven’t been the same since. This experience is what ultimately convinced me to sober up and dive deeper into zen, deepen my friendship with the poet Jeffery Beam, and save myself from abusive relationship I was stuck in.

ii. polska’s sublime supermarket

A few years later I was in a much better place. I was out of that horrible relationship and had moved to Florida in equal parts to care for my mother who had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer (which she has since beaten) and to be with the true love of my life, who I had just become engaged to and will be marrying later this year. Dink Press had been killed thanks to a lonely psychopath from New Zealand, and I was working to rebuild it as Lemures Books. My photography was taking off, and my poetry was being rediscovered. At the time I was working at a supermarket in Melbourne, Florida in the frozen food department, another beautiful job for many different reasons. I worked closely with Shea O’Connor, a poet I have since published in a few magazines and a chapbook entitled Biscayne Dance. You can find him on Instagram. While stocking the freezers about twenty minutes before close an elderly woman approached me and said “Twoje miłe oczy przypominają mi niebo, o którym myślałem, że zapomniałem. Czy ty jesteś Polakiem? Straciłeś język?“. I looked at her and tears began to fill my eyes. She continued, “Ach, nadal jesteś zagubiony. Wstyd. Wzrośniesz w siebie, a potem znowu poza siebie. Mówisz po polsku?“. I don’t know how but I understood completely. Before I could stop myself I replied, “Tak, raz i może jeszcze raz.“. She sighed and said “Ale najpierw musisz nauczyć się mówić językiem nieba. Wrócę wtedy z nowym ciałem, aby spotkać się z twoim nowym ciałem. Do tego czasu pamiętaj, że miłość jest najważniejsza.“. With that, she took my hand, held it tightly, slightly shaking, before dropping it and leaving the store. I don’t know if I stood there for thirty seconds, or thirty minutes. I was filled with warring calm and conflict, the light battling the dark, the sun chasing the moon. At some point Shea touched my arm, asking how I was doing with my share of the stocking. I recounted the story and he asked if I knew Polish. We had often spoken to each other in broken French and Spanish. I admitted that though my family was primarily Polish, I couldn’t read or speak it. We sat perplexed, wondering about that woman and how on Earth I knew what she was saying or how to reply to her. The words seemed to just fall from my mouth. I’m not entirely sure if the words above are exactly correct, as this has been 4-5 years ago, but it is how I remember understanding what she had said. To this day I do not speak any Polish.

Please share some of the important moments of your life below. Also, what are you working on?