Isaak Fawkes is Some Kind of Writer

Current Project :: Fuck the Fitzgeralds!

[tendermimi]

— Mahmoud Darwish, The Hoopoe

[isaakfawkes]

I often reflect about that time in my life— it was full of humbling challenges that acted as a crucible, testing my mettle, so that only the best parts of me survived— these experiences forged my spirit, my values, and my capacity to love. I had just completed my stay at the Salvation Army, which I began as an avowed atheist and a stubbornly opinionated and decidedly inert malcontent. I was a loner, figuring myself for an unloved and unlovable castaway. I was a ghost amongst the living, my heart shattered, my hopes dashed, my once-easy smile long ago vanished. But through an extended period of suffering, and mind you, I was born to suffer — something good began to take shape.

I made a friend, then another. I began to work again. I made art. And I found a family. And then, I found love.

This memory was from Mother’s Day weekend, 5 years ago, in Pasadena. We saw Guardians of the Galaxy. And the woman on my mind then, she still lingers on in my thoughts today.

And the hope still lingers too, though ever so faintly, that from this extended period of suffering and loneliness and quiet desperation, something good will emerge, somehow, all over again.

Nothing good gets away.

[isaakfawkes]

[isaakfawkes]

Perhaps I’ve been mistaken this entire time. Because Atlanta would eventually return to me, sometimes after a few weeks, sometimes after a year and a half, I believed that it spoke to the strength and resilience of our bond. But it could just as easily be that the reason she always came back was, to put things cynically, because I allowed it. I have no control of whether she or anyone else stays in my life, yet I do have control of whom I allow into my life, and I’ve kept that door ajar for her since the moment we met. And perhaps she knows I’m someone with whom she can lick her wounds, someone she can use, before she runs off again on her self-absorbed adventures, never maturing or growing or changing, never healing, and therefore, inevitably crashing and burning again and again.

Holding that door open might not be love, but foolishness. And perhaps I’d be better off nailing it shut, like a coffin. But I can’t. Until I am overtaken by the cynical, fearful part of me, it’s in my nature to remain hopeful and optimistic in all aspects of love.

[isaakfawkes]



I recently switched back to an iPhone, and now I get these unsolicited compilation videos. She sent me a lot of pictures and we took a lot of them together. My life in photographs is predominantly a photo log of my time with her. And away from her. And back together with her and away and so on and so forth.

I wish that whatever it was that drew her to me would be strong enough to keep her here. But it plainly isn’t— I’m not enough or she is too afraid.

[isaakfawkes]

May 19, 2017.

[isaakfawkes]

May 18, 2017: On a mild and sunny Thursday afternoon in Pasadena, Atlanta called me as I finished a shift at work and asked me to accompany her to some of her favorite hidden spots in the city. She wore a floral, full-length halter top dress and her blood-red hair gave her pale-blue eyes an ethereal, enchanting glow. But I was already under her spell and by the time she poured her heart out to me as we watched the sunset over the other-worldly rockscape behind the Jet Propulsion Laboratories campus, my heart was hers. When I asked her out an hour later, as we smoked cigarettes and drank coffee on the front porch of our friend Richie's house, it was a mere formality. Richie had told me to swing for the fences, despite my fear and trepidation and dread of loving and losing after already having lost everything before, so I swung for the fences. And this beautiful, bewitching woman-- this force of nature, as lovely as the summer moon, but with all the fury of a storm raging in her beating heart-- my Red Saint taught me to live and laugh and hope again. Her love, our love, was my salvation. Today would have been our third anniversary, but God and Fate have seen it fit that my abiding love go unrequited. Yet as painful as her absence is today, I do not regret a moment spent with her. Nothing good gets away. Vetus Amor Non Sentit Rubiginem. Vetus Amor Sic Semper Fidelus.

[isaakfawkes]

It was never my plan to adopt a cat.

It was never my plan to fall in love again.

It was never my plan to recover from an alcoholic state of hopelessness.

But each came to pass, in reverse order, one leading to the other, and not of my own will, but by the whims of something greater than myself.

I am ever so grateful for the poignant experiences I've enjoyed, those stolen moments of joy which are ever so fleeting in my story, but I wonder sometimes why things for me turn out bittersweet at best?

The woman I love abjured me, and the ailing cat I took in and cared for has died. There isn't much of a silver lining in either situation, but there is a common thread that links them-- heartbreak. I've known heartbreak all my life, but I still haven't grown accustomed to it.

All I have is sobriety, which at its core is the prerequisite for even the most meager semblance of hope for a man like me. And this compels me to go on, regardless.

[isaakfawkes]

Two years ago I experienced some of the happiest days of my life, and here's the proof.

I still think of Red night and day, and pray that she is blessed with everything I want for myself.

[isaakfawkes]

[isaakfawkes]

Adapted from Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry, written on February 22nd, 2020:

C'est tellement mystérieux, le pays des larmes.

Si quelqu'un aime une fleur qui n'existe qu'à un exemplaire dans les millions et les millions d'étoiles, ça sufât pour qu'il soit heureux quand il les regarde.

Moi je connais une fleur, une rose, unique au monde, qui n'existe nulle part, sauf dans mon petit monde. Mais, tu sais, les fleurs sont si tellement contradictoires! C'était une rose tellement orgueilleuse.

Vraiment, j'ai des difficultés avec cette fleur. C'est une rose enchanteresse mais elle a beaucoup d'épines et ses mots peuvent être tout aussi pointus. Ça m'a causé une grande tristesse... certaines nuits, je pleure moi-même pour dormir.

Ma fleur, je crois qu'elle m'a apprivoisé... On ne connaît que les choses que l'on apprivoise.

Et bien sûr, il y a d'autres fleurs qui pourraient lui ressembler. Cela peut sembler être un remplacement digne, mais ce n'est pas le cas. Parce-que c'est à elle seule, elle est plus importante que les autres, puisque c'est elle que j'ai arrosée. Puisque c'est elle que j’ai mise sous globe. Puisque c'est elle que j'ai abritée par le paravent. Puisque c'est elle que j'ai écoutée se plaindre, ou se vanter, ou même quelquefois se taire. Puisque c'est ma rose.

Dans mes voyages, j'ai appris quelques vérités simples, et voici :

On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur.

L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé.

Donc, je suis responsable de ma rose.

《C'est le temps que j’ai perdu pour ma rose qui fait ma rose si importante》

Joyeux anniversaire ma chère rose.

[isaakfawkes]

Happy Birthday, My Beloved Red Saint. I love you with every atom of my being, and I wish you only the most joyous of days. I miss you so.

[isaakfawkes]

[isaakfawkes]

This morning I made a joke about Red and her choice of an alter ego on Instagram. It was an inside joke that she and only she would understand.

Though she ghosted me late last fall, she occasionally unblocks me on Facebook to check up on me-- or, what she would call stalking if I did the same. I also keep all of my social media public, partly to aid her in her search ( she admitted to snooping a while back) but mostly as a litmus test; if I'm not comfortable with sharing something publicly, then I shouldn't be sharing it at all, since word does travel quickly and far. It was her snooping surround on November 22nd that caused her to panic at the discovery that I dared cross into South County and contact the Aliso Viejo Sheriff's Station and begin the proceedings that would result in a frivolous restraining order against me.

I don't know why, but I had an inkling that maybe Red was looking, and when I when I look at her profile and discovered I was unblocked, I spotted a little message for me-- my #stillmissyou evoked a #stillhateyou. Aww!

Now, to normal people, to those of you who aren't raving lunatics or alcoholics in recovery, this will seem like a petty and childish dynamic, which it most certainly is. However, it is also, in my view, a brief moment of honest albeit passive-aggressive communication. I'm not at all hurt by her stating that she hates me; I don't believe she really means that, and if she does, that's something that she'll need to address through her working the Steps. I may love her unconditionally, and maybe I forgave her last summer for what I perceived as her wronging me, but I too have picked up a number of major resentments against her since then, so I have a lot of work ahead of me as well.

I responded with my own hashtag response in my bio line (#loveyouanyway and #clever) and with a post featuring this quote from Chuck Palahiuk :

Later that evening she reverted back to her original status of #eldermillennial (that's a reference to a special from Iliza Shlesinger, one of his favorite stand-up comics), and so I deleted my hashtag and went on my merry way.

God, do I love this broad or what?

[isaakfawkes]

It was this moment, I so declare, this was the moment. And while there were other instances later that evening, the likes of which I would mull over in my mind the following weekend, which I would replay and analyze for meaning and weight, ultimately deciding a week later to do something brave and worthwhile, to swing for the fences, as our good friend Richie implored me to do, and to profess my abiding fondness for her and ask her out, in front of the moon and stars and that very same good friend Richie, it all had to start somewhere, with a moment in which my heart of hearts knew, even before my mind could grasp it, that I was in love, or would be very soon. This was that moment, this is the first inception of love, and I was powerless to stop it.

[isaakfawkes]

[isaakfawkes]