8.5b

Today, I was you for a while. You told me to run things while you stepped out, but I barely fit in the hole of your shoes. If people had just noticed, just taken a second look, they would have seen a fraud standing where you used to confidently pose.

8.5

28 hours
There is a place where my body gets when I am tired unto exhausted, after I feel a physical shudder where my body dips into a lower state than before. There is a place where I fall asleep on my feet, walking without consciousness, without sanity, without intention. There is a place where my only path is a straight line and any danger is of no consequence.
I have been there; journeyed to that place. I was perhaps in more danger from myself falling out of the boat and drowning than from the river I was on, its guiding force pushing always to the middle, but inarguably I was touching death's face with a caress, as if he were my lover and not a fiend. I have taken my trip and had my passport stamped on the return, and I doubt I'll ever need to see that place again.

7.23

I caught a glance of myself in a mirror today and stopped for a second look. I look healthy. My skin is a good color, my eyes are shiny and bold, my hair soft, even if it is wispy. My shoulders are wider than when I was a boy, my waist narrower than when I was a slob, my legs stronger than when you loved me. I look healthy, of course. I look it.
My new wide shoulders throw a sigh in the air and my new strong legs feel weak and ineffective. What of my waist? Probably starvation born of melancholy. My good skin feels sallow and my hair feels thin, and all that's left of my staggering health is my eyes. My eyes are piercing bright, true, and they look and feel sharp and important. I suspect they have been sharpened as a weapon. It's not by choice, but I do secretly hope my glance would cut you if you were here.

7.17

I'm frustrated by the fingertips of your indecency--that which you so carefully drag across the back of my neck. Why here, please? Why now? Of a thousand possible moments, why choose this one to thrust yourself into, full-faced and force-bared? I would stop you, but I want to feel it a little longer.

7.10

The following list of firsts have utterly defined me: breakup, funeral, surgery, bankruptcy, loss. But my first kiss? First love? First child? These don't enchant me. Where are the songs for my values? Where are the nightmare songs about waking up under the knife, your heart beating out of your chest, the pain slowly sharpening to frightening intensity, your limbs leaden and unmoving, but your eyes frantically tearing about, looking for anyone who might notice and throw you under again?

7.9

She just changed everyone's mind by putting her foot down, and she got her way. We all just bent aside like willows in a hurricane. I hated it. I watched her blow by the rest of us like weeds, whipping about, our cells stretched and breaking, our sap spilling out.

7.3

He looked across the table at the girl he liked, who only had eyes for that boy, there, the one who tries to keep his intentions from being obvious, but everybody knows the future of them if their trepidation can be overcome by a force outside the two would-be lovers whom he, remember, envies, and in his envy, cherishes begrudgingly, despite his best friend leaning in close and whispering softly "Aren't they just the cutest?" Yes, they are. And it's terrible, he thinks, but privately. Outside, he smiles.

7.1

If I wanted to, I could see the surface, but I'm looking down, searching for the bottom. My body, uncooperative, is suspended midway between salvations--air above and kicking off the bottom below. My eyes strain against the increasing black, but all I see are peaceful sun ripples spreading themselves across my stagnant arms.

6.29

There's a swiftness to justice, I hope you know. The speed with which the righteous receive their punishment would shock you, I'm sure. You don't expect it because you've only lived among sinners and the morally corrupt, and justice turns her eye from those. Their lot is to expect comeuppance in each moment, each heartbeat, and never receive it, their nervous glances all wasted.

6.25b

It's a hot day, and I've sweated in my clothes already. My beard is scruffy and my pants legs stained at the knees from kneeling in the grass. Yet, I feel very little shame in looking at her, though perhaps I should respect the distance between us, socially. Her dark hair goes all to ringlets at the ends, and her dress is light and airy, an almost-long affair that scoops up to showcase her knees. Her face has a sharpened quality that contrasts with the lines of her bare arms. I reassess the catastrophe sitting on the grass before her. I've got no reason to chase her and no chance to catch. I'm married. She's married. But she's magnetic. I have to know if she's worth wasting my mind on. I look at her with the same scrutiny as I would a sunset or a herd of deer standing in a mist-filtered valley, their attention not on me yet, but somehow getting closer and closer until I can see the muscles beneath their fine coats ripple as their heads snap up, they realize what I've been doing, and they bolt.
She's only now walking my way. I can see all of her for the first time, no tables or trees interrupting, nobody talking to her, and she has a matter-of-fact gait, a firm assurance of where each foot has got to go. I don't like it. Somewhere, deep within, there is a stir. I make a connection I don't want, between her and myself. She's a piece more human in this second, and I shudder to feel it.
As she gets closer, I can see her more clearly. She has the face of a girl who was pretty when she was young. Her father could look at her and predict it maybe when she was only five, only six—a terrible gift, to worry for a decade what will happen to your child when she finally realises the same. She has the face of a woman who's put her realizing long behind her, who's had suitors since boys wore suits and not just some button-up their mom picked out: the face of a woman who knows she's beautiful. It's not just me, this time. She knows it, too. Sometimes, you find someone so peculiar to your taste that only a very few people have gotten to tell them first what kind of delicacy they truly are, but this girl is ice cream, is chocolate. She's a lucrative industry that generates thousands of admirers from moment to moment, and her advertising campaign is the same dependable perfection that built the empire in the first place. It's the shape of her cheeks, maybe, just full enough to remind you she's young, but not commanding attention. Maybe it's the slight lift to her nose, or the way in which it has the most definition of all her face, as if it knew its job was to build upon the softness of her without distracting. Maybe it's the pigment on her. I hope not, but my hope has the misplaced yearning of a badly-informed art critic, a man who looks directly at the painting and wants there to have been one draft, one grand effort with a single vision made reality by a single hand, not realizing that the painter has drafted this same image a thousand times, leaning into the mirror and making a face to stretch out the canvas, her paintbrush a dependable tool on an every day notice with an everyday demand: perfection. Her eyes are dark from her ministrations with the brush, but she's gotten the wrong fish with this bait. I barely look at them. I'm more interested in the weave of the canvas, of the shape of its frame, of the light in the room, of the building it's in. Skin, bones, tone, body. I have to ask, though: am I only looking at the museum because I know the artist has been laboring? Does the prestige of her eyes make the vessel that carries them important, or would I want the same tour of the grounds if the building was a home, only, and not a public institution? She's the only one with power to run the experiment, and she's not willing to go without her mask, so perhaps we'll never know. Either way the truth lies, I look off as she walks by. I hope nobody has noticed I've been staring.
For a time, I wait to hear her. I want a sensory memory that spans the available possibilities. I have a hunger that sight won't satisfy. But the longer I wait, the more I know, even without getting the song of her voice. I'm frustrated. Her laugh isn't a cascade of cold water over smooth, round rocks. Her voice isn't the mountainside morning before the sun hits the tops of the trees. Her voice may be intoxicating to others, but either I'm inured to the poison, or just not drinking it. I want to check. I need to know. I shift and actually address her: a statement that turns up at the end to invite her to finish the thought as though it has been a question all along. Something a person says when they're not afraid of alerting the subject that they're being scrutinized, worshipped. She responds, and I don't hate her voice, but she's missed the actual question I've asked. I'm slowed for a moment.
What?
But the lethargy lapses and I'm already drawing conclusions. Why, if she's pretty, doesn't she also have a powerful mind? Why, if I've spoken to her once, do I feel the sinking in my gut that reminds me of disappointment? Why have I judged her when I don't know her?
It's that initial taste of the gait she uses: solid, everyday, dependable. It's the realization, fair or not, that I love the makeup on her eyes. It's the three sentences she dribbled out to me. She's only pretty, nothing more. (How can I say that!? She's gorgeous in a way I know I'll remember later. Am I minimizing its effect on me? No.)

I no longer stare. I literally don't see her again, even though she's ten feet away over my right shoulder. I now know if she's worth wasting my mind on. I rock back in the grass and start forgetting her, start focusing on what I will take from this day—friendships, exhaustion, scrapes on my hands from climbing a tree, but not her. Her husband is back there with her, a man who looks lucky when you first see him, but might be cursed, when you think about it, because I have a choice of whether or not she comes with me in my mind. But she's going home in his car, and he has to live with stolid, plodding, physical perfection, a trait other men will talk about, from which he gains no benefit now, only headache and worry, and from which there is no reprieve. She certainly can't give it to him. And when the paint can't draw him to the museum anymore, when the building crumbles at its foundations, what is left inside? The artwork of a master and a doddering docent who's dumbfounded at his piercing questions. But maybe she's as cursed as he, and her decline will reveal nothing: he will always be the admirer and never the critic, and her carefully manicured grounds, the stately columns, the marble façade, the curling stairways and graceful arches will all decay, and he won't question "wasn't there more," because he's too enthralled by the artifice and forgets to question the art.
I crumple the blueprint I've been drafting of her and discard it. She's not my wife. My wife is in Oregon. My wife is a refurbished flyswatter factory, all exposed ducts and brickwork, overlaid with murals and neon. She's a nightclub that reminds you of industrial decline until you see inside and the weight of the wrought iron trembling bass drum clubs your chest and you're left suffering to the beat of loud music, unable to escape or unwilling to, drawn to press yourself against the crowd until you find your hands outstretched against the very stage itself, your voice hoarse from screaming you forgot, the outside of the building forgot, the neighborhood forgot, the borough forgot, all is this moment, all is one, until the music flares and the crowds escape, and you're left standing in the ankle-deep refuse, weeping, willing the band to return, begging the crowd to assemble, beating at your chest because you know the moment has passed and you're left with a factory again, a bare concrete floor and a slowly crumbling smoke stack. My wife is not anything like this woman, and I envy her husband the slow decline of his art museum. I wish my explosion could have outlasted the night.

[The first line of the final paragraph used to read "I crumple the mental portrait I've been drawing of her," which isn't fitting.]

6.25

I saw the most beautiful face today, attached to a woman who was herself attached—a chain no one can measure—to a man. Bitter, that was. I don't know her, and I guess I wouldn't want to. First, because I felt a scathing fear course through me at how long I felt compelled to stare at her, trying to measure the depths of her, so I could find out if she was too big to fit in my imagination. Second, because I told her niece that she had eyes like Hera's, and the little girl tattled on me. Cow eyes.
I'm not sure we would be friends. She didn't say hello to me, nor I to her, and any opportunity of that has evaporated long since. I don't think she wants or needs male friends who struggle replacing their minds every time she smiles, and that's what she would do to me, I guarantee. I found myself scanning the room, surreptitiously, trying to crane my neck to see her once more, however briefly.

I left this and came back, and I want to delete it, make it disappear, erase it for a million reasons, but I'm leaving it. I think it's interesting, seeing into how other people think, especially about things that are mildly embarrassing. I do want to try again and do her justice, though. I want to remember what I felt when I had my first impression sorted. I want to remember and do no dishonor to the utter impossibility of the situation.

6.24

Distressed, my joints creak. The staples pull at the wood of me, tearing through the old plant matter now preserved in a box-shape that contains me artfully and well. You slam the lid of me, cutting off light and hope, storing your sadness in with mine, a safe place, a vault for unwanted emotions. You turn the key, dropping it, walking away.
Where are you now, love? Why are you, now?
I keen and howl at the frightful keyhole, my only source of light. I miss you.

6.22

"People say they can't afford things. Bullshit. Just buy what you want." His rough hands have seen combat in the jungle of Vietnam, twice. His now-thin arms have held a wife for fifty years. His watery blue eyes have seen more than lifetimes. Now, those hands bag my purchases and the arms wave vaguely to punctuate some point. The eyes laugh as he talks to us. "On vacation, you see some of the craziest things." He pauses, for effect. "A buffalo, shitting." We all die, laughing. "My wife and I have a whole wall of photos. You just collect things."

6.21

His fingers spread the pigment, bringing him as close to the act of creation as he could get. It didn’t feel enough. He didn’t feel it. He laid bare his veins and spliced in his blood, the deep crimson streaked through the velvet black. The sting of paint brought him a closeness, and he was satisfied.

6.19

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, my main task has been to cavitate the still waters of friend's dreams. I've introduced an element of tragedy to the narrative of his life that I never intended, but what use is there in sorrow? It was necessary. His dreams were not my dreams. His life was not my life. Right? Is that not the way of the world? To tear the very heart from a flesh monster we like to call love, just to service a megalomaniacal urgency that wells up from under the surface of a deeper pool we never swim in, not of dreams, its surface glass, but of nightmares frothed by selfishness?

6.16

Failing seduction, the man in the mask would capture her. He swore that, and marked the promise with blood. When he grabbed her wrist, he found it too warm and life-like, and he dropped in horror at himself: at what he had planned to do.

6.10

I'm filtered through so many layers, now. I miss the days when it was possible and necessary to face my gods and fight my heroes every day and each moment. I had no role models, they all dying at the first faint blush of morality, I killing these demipotent magnates with calculated ease. But my current self is too refined for such measures. Now, I rethink myself entirely too often for my false gods to fall. Now, I'm focused internally more often than when I once flexed mind and destroyed the images of my heroes.
What has become of my safety, my self-protected existence?

6.2

In what cloud were you born, frail princess? I fear you, in a way that drills deep to my animal self. You are not like me. Not like any of us.
I have pledged my life to your Keeper, and he has put you in my charge, but that is not why I protect you. It is there, in what I first said, that you are unlike anyone I have ever met. Your skin is dark like a warm night filled with fireflies and no moon, and your eyes follow curious things like the edges of groups or the places where walls meet. Your hands move too fast for your mind and your feet throw you forward into new places, whether you will or no. You are unlike my solid self, and for that I have grown to like you. Perhaps the old adage is true, that fragile flowers are better because they could so easily be bruised.
Perhaps this letter is too forward, ma'am, but I feel like it is my duty to let you know how I feel. The callow fool today who asked you why you--well, he wanted to know the rhyme of your perpetual movement, but he was exceedingly rude--he asked a question I would have made him swallow, were I in charge. I think he has never seen someone who looks or acts like you before, and he wanted to feel comfortable. He wanted you to be the one who stood out in the room, but as soon as he asked it you saw how he fled. We all saw him for who he really was: the only monster in a ballet of otherwise-persons, and suddenly he was the one who stood out in the room. He was the person we would all go home and whisper about, not you. I hope you know that.
I fear you, and I know I have said that already. You should begin to feel why. I fear that one day you will turn to me and let me know I have been unnecessary. That shouldn't be a burden on you, and it shouldn't put you off it when you know the time is right. But I fear you should one day leave my side and that will be the day I truly know how alien you are. For right now, I can convince myself you're like me, but different. You've seen the words I use in this letter. Please, let me hold to that conviction just a while longer. The day you crush my illusion, I'm afraid, is the day I wake up from this very pleasant dream.
I suppose now I'm just rambling, part to keep the letter from ending there, part to hide that I did say fear, perhaps didn't mean it, and now wish to explain it away. But that's the worry when writing with ink, you see--nothing is reversible. That's a problem I don't think you've ever faced. Forthright! Direct! Other-worldly!
I'll be burning this letter. I wish you knew the questions I ask here, regardless, so you might accidentally answer them. Maybe then I wouldn't fear you so much.

--Yours--
Kenji

5.26

Found an unlikely friend today. He's been standing on the same corner for fifty years, waiting for his heart to give out. I didn't want to tell him about mine.
What good would it do him, to learn what wars rage inside me? How could I help his situation by adding ballast to an old patchwork balloon? He's been trying to reach the stars, stretching up his fingers and scraping heaven with his thoughts, but all this time he hasn't grown a single inch closer. I tried to listen to his stories, tried to reason with his thoughts, but couldn't make him out above the explosive silence of the place he stood.
I take solace in this fact: when his core wood finally does collapse and suddenly his heart then snaps and the noise brings what his corpse attracts, he'll have accomplished exactly what he's worked for all these years. While he patiently stretched up to the sky or waited for it to come to him, he's stood among the reflected heavens all this time.

5.25

"I guess it's the anniversary in six days," he said. I could only make out his silhouette in the dark room. Beyond him, the weak candle strained against the inveterate night. I could hear the sharp whine of his sigh over the sound of the wind on the glass. "With her gone, I don't think there's any reason to celebrate." I wanted to say Don't be like that or But the past doesn't own you or There will be next year, but I wasn't sure any of them were true. Not for him.
He turned to me and I couldn't see anything of his face, but I knew the eyes were dark and deep-set behind furious brows. I imagined his pain written across his features. It was horrible to look at, that aching face in the blackness. "What will I do without her?" Go on, I screamed, but I said nothing. Live your life. Just because you lost something, you can't let go of the rest. He thrust his hand deep into his pocket and drew out a small something, which he held to the light. I couldn't see it--had never seen it--but I knew what it was. He didn't trust me that way, didn't trust many people at all, really. But it was no secret that he still kept a small memory of her with him wherever he went.

5.21

The thing I was I am no more. I must reinvent myself as phoenix: to die and be reborn in flame and wonder. I am afraid, though, I will aim for the sun and reach only the aether above me, no higher than I can reach with fingers unassisted. Instead of phoenix, I will be stork.

5.17

Lost pinnacle of common man, the stone bones creep from the earth as a failing reminder of more languorous days.

I turn and run at reminders that my self marches on apace, a short flicker of power to the brief bulb of my life, blinking on and failing again in the selfsame moment, filling the room with a transitory amber before again fading to black. This edifice serves as a stark contrast to a personal time-locked insignificance. Yet--when I look at the old maps, this slow-motion excavation seems stately slow as a landslide--this rejoinder of the pioneers didn't exist with those men. The map even of 1870 contains no such stricture of river, no such violence of relief as this heavenward thrust of stone. Maybe the good old days were made (produced created) for me.
Someday, this geologic invitation to introspection will be worn down to nothing, and someday even memory will not suffice to complete its height. On that day, may the children of tomorrow look back and fear my days as good, and turn from the reminder that all life seems shorter when viewed from behind.

5.11

To hold up the sky, we built a tower of weeds. It was our hearts we used as counterfeit seeds: they, over-anxious, well-shaped, grew.

My tendrils are coronary, my shoots are veins. The pulse of life in me is flame: all-consuming, all-defeating (binary, opposite, confederate pain). Two states of matter together obscene, a destruction complete by inveterate green-growth more abundant than anyone's need. Harken yourself to the turbulent sky. That's the sound of a worldy sigh. It creaks a melody, sings fear, keens. How can you claim to know what it means? Elaborate towers of herbicent fuel, exceeding destruction and winning the duel, a thousand-year fire purposely cruel, stripping the edifice exposing a fool: I am the man who stokes and who grows. It is my soul, friend, that you'll never know: I, enchanted, scar-studded, grow.

Edit 1 Oct 2017:
I noticed a violent typo in the last line that I don't understand. I have written this poem in a book, on shoes, repeated it a hundred times. How did I not notice it until now? It loses the slapping punch at the end, without.
Before:
"I, enchanted, scar-studded, slow."

5.10

I cursed, loud, in the car when I saw the sunset cloudbank last week. The clouds as canvas let the sun paint a heavenly picture: biting blue sky meets orange mountain range of cumulus, deepens to royal blue as the clouds sink to the ground. I battled with myself: should I turn around to find a place just to look? I was late, of course, habitually nowdays, and I couldn't spare the time to stop moving.
But, then?
I yelled: "Live in the moment, idiot!" My car tires screeched and I threw the wheel left. I turned around and drove to Curtis' parents house and just ran to their backyard to absorb the wonder of something I didn't expect, something God would never replicate, something new and old and wonderful.

5.5

Single Dad Garage Sale [A found poem]
220 Wallika Lane
3-6 Friday, 8-7 Sunday

Weed eater,
fishing poles,
bird houses,
6 1/2ft x 9ft insulated garage door,
tv stand (like new),
engine stand,
floor jack,
tricycle,
bicycle,
S-10 truck parts,
tools,
toys,
new shop lights,
new dvd player,
lawn mower (runs great),
wedding supplies,
girls clothes size 6-12 months,
maternity clothes,
plus size women's clothes,
women's scrubs,
dvd's,
cd's,
and video games.
Lots of misc items.

Priced to sale.

5.4

I was falling asleep and I suddenly felt like the sound a marble makes as it rolls across wood. I could hold in my head all the vast expanse of space that surrounded me, and I was alone, inconsolate. I hate that no one made me feel this way; my brain just decided I must.

4.28

[I got home today, rode a bike, took a shower, and fell asleep.
I just stopped doing. This is not to say I was done for the day; that's far from the truth. I could have done a million things and should have done a million more. I didn't read a book, wash the dog, or write a play like I wanted. I didn't grade papers or prep for tomorrow like I needed. Instead, I just fell asleep. Sometimes, I feel like this is my entire existence right now. Survive. It's my mantra.]

I crouched in the semi-dark and let my eyes unfocus. I attuned my vision to any motion in my peripherals and waited for even the softest flicker of light or dark, a tell-tale whisper of light that would reveal prey or predator.  The trees over me rustled softly against each other, but no breeze cut through the dense canopy to touch me, and I began to sweat. I still didn't move, even though salt water ran down into my eyes and collected on my nose. The density of the air trapped me like a slowly solidifying mud pack, gently easing my muscles into a hardened set fixture. I began to feel oppressed by the mounting weight of air setting on me. My mind curled around a new idea and it became distressing to breathe, my diaphragm now moving consciously, mind-controlled, a burden instead of a boon. I felt the air rush in and out like time-lapse molasses, a reminder of the stillness of earth and air that led to me sitting, attenuated to the microscopic motions of hairs on my arms and of leaves in the woods, my body an extending reality, the woods breathing with me, damp and exhausting. The trees were my skeleton, the water my blood, the whole world around me just as I was: still, pregnant with expectant strife, alert.
The reverberant echo of the gunshot nearly killed me. From all around, birds exploded from hiding places I didn't think possible just moments before. Every leaf hid a feather, every crook held a beak, and every bird burst into flight in the self-same moment, a hundred thousand wings beating the air downward and making an enormous rushing sound to match the now-thunderous burst of blood in my ears, the still forest leaves beaten down and trembling in the crush of noise and air. Every bird gave call in its voice, and I screamed with them, the fright and wonder of the echoing shot just as keen to each avian escapist as to the human trapped on the ground. The forest became unbearably heavy as the birds took off, the bone-bending sound of them pressing me to the ground and crushing out the air in my lungs, and just as suddenly: the atmosphere lightened as the forest did, the mass of a thousand thousand birds suddenly lifted from it, the weight of terror lifted from me.
I looked up, and the birds blocked out the sun itself, and I felt the darkness interior to match. I had lost the moment and still had my life.

4.25

I grabbed my bag and snapped off the lights in the room. I rolled down the hallway to Mr. Bills' classroom, my normal Wednesday haunt. I'm the nominal co-sponsor of a writing club that meets on Wednesdays, but this week I was not showing up except to beg off.

"I won't make it today. I'm going to go float a creek."

"Oh! Good. Have fun."

Bills gets it. Apparently, when he was in his early twenties, he bummed a ride to the bottom of the Pacific Crest Trail and took off northward. He met his wife on that trail. He knows what wanderlust can do to a mind. I turn on my heel and thrust myself through the doors of the middle school. It was 3:05, the earliest I had ever left the building. I was going, and nobody would stop me.

The real problem with canoeing is that the canoe doesn't just magically appear next to your car at the end of the trip, and I was running a small local river that gets maybe forty paddlers a year, so there wasn't an abundance of help for me. I had to get back to the truck all by my lonesome, and with a wet butt, and racing the sun. For me, the solution was obvious. Canoe atop, bike on rear, and I drove to the bridge I knew would make the best pull-out. I swear I could already hear my knees creak and groan as I lowered the steel framed monstrosity down the rockface and to the safe hiding place under the road. I admit it was a touch anticlimactic, driving away from my thousands of dollars of hidden hobby.

I put in at the Pinnacles Youth Park near my house: a spine of stone, a storehouse of memories, a favorite haunt of slightly outdoorsy college kids. The rock face is staggeringly high for such a flat part of the country, and Silver Fork below it is strictly seasonal. This year, the actual runnable days might number below two dozen. It's a humorous understatement to say it's not a big canoeing destination. Puffing like a freight train, I carried the canoe the quarter mile to the creek, clipped into my life vest, and pushed out into the creek. At that exact moment, three men riding in two canoes came flying downstream from my left.

You can't imagine my shock.
I can honestly say I have never seen anybody running this river but me and the few people I drag along with me. I've heard stories, but I always felt like a Sasquatch when I put into water here. To see a paddler--no, three--put me all out of sorts. I asked a few gormless questions, got a lecture from a man who probably assumed I was an amateur, ("Are you going downstream?" "Yes, sir." "And how far?" "Just to Old Number Seven." "Well, be careful down that way. There are some dozen trees down in the stream bed where a farmer let the bank fall in." "Oh?" "Yeah, I would be careful." "Looks like I might have to do some walking." "Just be careful.") and then I just left without actually asking his name, or giving him mine. I'm bad at meeting people, maybe.

When us kids were young, Dad had a way with people he'd just met. This was during a time in the nineties when America was just coming down from its yuppie high and beards didn't have the je ne sas quoi that they enjoy today. Dad's bushy beard communicated something his words didn't. He just screamed "I'm wearing this suit and tie, but I would rather be planting walnut trees in the rain." And to be honest, that's his preferred activity.

Sometime during a trip to southern Missouri for a float trip, we stopped at a little country store for some sandwich ingredients. Dad left Philip and I in the car and went inside, apparently forever. We watched him through the windows and made up dialogue.

"How's your day?"

"Eh?"

"I said how's it going today?"

"Slow."
"I remember when I worked in a gas station. [Editor's note: Dad has worked in every conceivable occupation] The slow days were the worst. I started yearning for someone to come in and shoplift something."
"You ain't stealin' nothing, is you?"

"Just a bit of your time." Big cheesy grin. "Do you know how far it is to the Current River?"

"Oh, you're goin' for a float? Let me tell you, the river is top-notch this year."

Ten minutes later, our gregarious father finally rolled out to the car and got underway again. Apparently, I did not inherit the same gift of gab, even if he somehow carved a paddle in my heart. That's why I was out this Wednesday afternoon: the wanderlust was upon me, and only a canoe would satisfy it. I splashed my way out of the park and on down the river. I only saw one other human in my four mile gallivant: a man who had walked down from his truck to the river, just to see the water go by I guess. Otherwise, I was alone with the birds and the trees.

I rolled through a couple big bends of the river, shot some small riffles, scraped against at least one rock. I'm only half-decent at handling a watercraft. I passed the low-water crossing that runs parallel to Silver Fork, the last reasonable rescue point where I might call for help and a pickup. My hands twitched. I mean, I was sure I could make it back to my bike, cycle to the Pinnacles, get the truck, pick up the canoe, and head home--all before dark. I was positive. But I am also notoriously overzealous with time estimates. I slowed, backpaddled. I needed to make up my mind, and quickly. The river was pulling me towards a chute. I would have to carry the canoe back up if I wanted to get out of the river early.

I sat back in my seat. This was why I was here, after all.

Then, exactly what I wanted happened. I was floating along, and I looked up. There, through the trees and looking down the little farm road, I saw a rich amber light cutting at a slant through a soft, verdant scene. I stood up.
I know I was in a canoe; I stood up.

I stared at it. I sat down and pulled hard to throw the nose over into the mud. The back end whipped around in the current, and I tossed my legs over and ran up the bank.

Down from the right, the bluff fell away into a farm field. The little double track wended its way through a rich springtime grass and down into the field. The trees on the right and left leaned over and made a leafy tunnel through which I could see a lone tree off in the field, shot full of golden light filtered through the wet after-rain air. I think I sat and drank in that scene for five minutes or more. I didn't find much joy in talking to the down-to-earth men in their aluminum canoes. I'm a good listener, but I just can't find myself launching into new friendships as easily as I want. I feel disconnected from humanity, but I'm in love with the Earth. Every few days, a scene like this will just catch me up and pull me to a halt. It's been happening more and more recently over the last year, like I just suddenly opened my eyes to the beauty in small things, like I just suddenly became sentimental, like I just out of nowhere gained the ability to sigh. Do you know what I wish? I wish I could see people the same as the golden atmosphere falling through trees that guard the roadside. Maybe someday.

4.22

[Edit 5.26: I don't like that I wrote this. It could do without the last paragraph entirely. It could do without the last two mainly. It could do without all five on principle. But I wrote it and I must own it because here it is, unavoidable, on the Internet. I'm not wiser now, and I've not grown in any way. I'm just not proud of it. I was angry at something I couldn't put my finger on and I . . .
Well, I guess that's just the point. I'm not racist--or am I? Do the voiceless get to apply labels to me, or I to myself? Some may point out the irony in that.]

I listened to a podcast today from Radiolab called Debatable. A young black gay man joined a debate club and quickly learned that the Kansas City all-black debate club aesthetic isn't the national norm, and that most clubs are all-white and coincidentally elitist snobs. Soon, he adopted the University of Louisville method of turning the debate on its head and asking whether or not the system of debate is broken and exclusive of black participants. He and his partner won the national competition a few years ago because of this tactic, despite what I think was a really deft rebuttal by the opposition.

They were discussing alternative forms of energy.

I've never lived his life. I've never been the only [label] in the room. Actually, I'm the only vegetarian at Moberly Middle School. I get misunderstood all the time and I have to explain myself and people judge me and think I'm weird or broken, but it's not the same as being black, which is obvious and unavoidable, in a room full of white kids (some of whom are bound to be racist). So I've never had his experience, and I can't speak to it, and neither can most of his opponents.
So what he's done is take a debate which has few rules apart from 1 there are two sides 2 there is one winner and he has taken a side his opponents didn't prepare for, but he did. He took a side that has the popular moral high ground (racism is bad) and forced his opponent to take the other side (thems the rules). He took a side that is heavily based on his own experience, which his opponents cannot speak to. He changed the debate. In fact, he hijacked it to serve his own purpose. I'm excited about what he's saying, because I would love to see more marginalized groups start to feel a part of things, and I'm even more excited to see what their suggestions are for fixing the things they love that still have problems. However. But. Sadly. What he's done isn't purely that. In a perfect world, it wouldn't matter, but the second rule of the debate is that one side has to lose, and he has attempted his best to frame it so that he has a chance of winning each debate because his opponents are unable to answer him (partially because there's no way they prepared for this argument and partially because it's so easy to slip when you're trying to argue the negative to a statement, especially about something so emotionally explosive as racism).

There's no altruism in his actions. That's the slime under the shine that makes me feel really bad. I want to root for the underdog, but I can't feel good about it because it's so self serving. Maybe that's me being privileged, but I don't think so. This is the whining rant of a sixth grader who hasn't figured out how to get what she wants without being incredibly selfish.
Anyhow, I hope I'm not racist. I don't feel racist and I don't want to do racist things. But if being racist is somehow controlled by what other people decide and not based on my motivations and thoughts and ideals, then I and the poor opponents in this debate are screwed from the start. If all I have to do to be a racist is get on the wrong side of a PoC diatribe, then I'm never joining a debate club, I guess.
I don't care about winning, really. I just don't want to be racist for doing it.

4.24.13

Forsooth-
A day of feasting and of games doth await. King Henry VIII hosts a joust, the likes of which has not been seen. Have you not heard of Sir Allyn, the most skillful and duplicitous of all knights? He rains terror upon his opponents and will not sheathe his sword until it has tasted of the blood of his most unfortunate foe. He is come to drive violence 'gainst Sir Heathcliffe, whose noble heart and righteous bearing impress us all.
The two shall game for points and prizes until Sir Allyn's dastardly ways show forfeiture to his victory. The rat, in his cheating, flies at Sir Heathcliffe and unhorses him. A fight breaks out! Blood falls warm upon the ground and seeps from the valiant Heathcliffe's veins. Shall this injustice go unnoticed? Nay--a duel to the death--to joust until fatal victory.
The dark Allyn and fair Heathcliffe clash upon another like the surf in a storm. Neither knight falls though lances shatter and horses froth. Until! Fortuitous strike drives terrible Sir Allyn to the ground. Unsatisfied with loss, Allyn takes axe and bootheel and drives Heathcliffe to his knees. The gasping onlookers cry at every resounding strike. But mighty HEathcliffe rises again! Allyn, the wretch, has a flaming weapon, the barest touch of which will sear our fair hero's courage as a brand. Skill comes to the champion of right, and he tears the madman's sword away with a whip. Again and again his strikes fall fast upon the wretched liar until like a beast, he is vanquished.
And yet--Sir Allyn rises to show us his bloody aspect. This cannot be, unless our knights be actors at the most glorious Georgia Renaissance Festival.
[I wrote this three years ago for the Photography final. I won the dot contest and got 150 of 150 points. There were some photo essays which were technically better than mine, but none were as interesting. Thank you, Ren Faire.]

4.15

Warning: Potentially impossible conditions exist. A non-exhaustive list of impediments includes theft, urination, hunger, dehydration, incarceration, infection, invasion (alien and otherwise), abduction (also alien and otherwise), ineligibility, ruined food, allergies, illegality, mars, and other.
Before the onset of hunger, travel in space but not excessively in time to a grocer's or other general store in which human food items are kept. Any functional means of conveyance which guarantees your immediate and future safety and reproductive capacity will do. Plan to arrive within the store's or grocer's operating hours. If this information is unclear or uncertain, ask as many people as necessary until the hour is ascertained. Follow all native and social laws. Necessary supplies include sufficient banknotes for the country in which the purchase its to be made to ensure the purchase of no more than an ocean-liner but no less than a sandwich. Also dress in clothes (well fitted and in good repair) sufficient to ensure comfort and safety in the weather and social conditions prevailing at every point between yourself and your eventual goal. Take as many juice boxes as you require for hydration and sustenance.
Upon arrival at the store, establish the identity and safety of the institution. If any alaurum has been raised, abandon and try again on a different business day. Enter the store through the commercial entrance and establish your bearings.
Many types of bread are commonly located together on a shelf in stores of this type. In a language which you both share, ask a store employee where this shelf is located, and follow their directions unless dangerous to your sanity or person. In the event of your failure, yell the words "bread, pan, brot" and various other translations until another employee or helpful human gives you directions which lead you to the bread. Select a loaf or other unit of bread which is easy to access, larger than both your hands, but small enough and light enough to carry comfortably with one hand. If at all possible, locate a loaf which has been machine-sliced. Pick up the loaf, bag, or other container and carry it with you, being careful to maintain its integrity.
Now that you have found bread (be it rye, pumpernickel, french, wheat, white, or stale), it is time to acquire a container of jelly, jam, or preserves. Relocate the previously helpful employee by calling for help in every language you know and/or ISL. If that employee is irretrievable, continue searching until any human directs you safely and reliably to the shelf which contains jam, jelly, or preserves. Mark its location in your memory and ask for directions to the peanut butter or other nut-based spreadable. They might even be within close proximity to the jelly, jam, or preserves. While at the j, j, or p shelf, select a jar, tube, or other permanent container which is easily openable. Find a flavor which pleases you. Pick up this container and determine if it can be comfortably carried in the hand while holding the bread. If not, resituate items until possible or select a different container. When both both j, j, or p, and bread are comfortable in one hand and easily held for a lengthy time, go to the peanut butter or other nut-based spreadable shelf. Pick up Jif extra crunchy. If you choose not to do this or are unable to do so, throw your fragile, empty body upon the rocks, as your life has no meaning.
With a loaf, bag, or other container in one hand with j, j, or p, and Jif extra crunchy in the other, walk safely and carefully through the store or grocer's until you find a cashier, owner, or other employee willing and able to process your items in return for currency. Carefully place all items near the person, or if they indicate their readiness in their hands. When they ask for a specific amount of money, give them enough to cover the bill. If the employee asks "paper or plastic," glare at the person and mutter something incomprehensible about the environment. Then ask for double-bagged plastic. Take your money and bagged ingredients in your hands in a manner which will guarantee against dropping them when the employee indicates that you are allowed and abandon the store with haste by the commercial exit.
When outside the store, re-establish relative levels of warmth, hunger, thirst, self-esteem, and brotherly love. Maintain acceptable levels of these as you return by the same conveyance and route as your journey to the store. If the route has changed or become non-negotiable, find a new, safer route. Don't forget any of your belongings or juice boxes at the store or anywhere along the route; bring these with you. Be vigitant to follow governmental and societal laws, as you are almost to be sandwiched.
When you have arrived at the safety and comfort of your own home, double check that it is, indeed your home. Leave your ingredients in the main carriage of your conveyance. Unlock the door, but if you cannot, feel free to throw a rock or other large object (your sister will work nicely) through a window and climb in without allowing any of your body to come in contact with any of the glass. Move the glass, if need be, by pinching the original flat edges of the new pieces with your index and thumb and without letting any other part of your hand come in contact with glass. Carefully place the glass pieces in your neighbor's hedge. Enter your house through  whatever door, window, or hole blown in the building, without cutting or otherwise harming yourself. Take ingredients with you. Maintain their integrity. You are so close.
Enter the house with senses on full alert. If you detect a threat or other danger, throw the ingredients directly at it and run like a wounded wombat. Youtube this now if you are unsure of the methodology involved. If, however, everything seems safe (barring the obvious destruction of your own means of entrance), enter the kitchen or other room with likely food-related utensils and turn on the light. If the light fails to turn on (perhaps due to the structural damage due to your entrance), abort, as the house is likely far more unsafe than you, cretin, gave it credit. Ghosts live in the dark. Remove all packaging, bagging, toxins, razor blades, or any other danger and hindrance from your ingredients and place them within reachable distance in separate piles, puddles, or globs on a table, counter, floor, or other stable, solid, permanent, non-porous surface. Locate and acquire a knife, spatula, or spoon of any non-toxic, dishwasher-safe substance. So close! If  none are readily available, give up after five minutes of searching and instead use your hand for the purpose. If the bread is not sliced, make sure nothing but bread is under the knife, and cut or roughly break the loaf perpendicularly to the stable surface into slices the width of a finger and the height of the bread itself. Using utensil or appendage,  scoop no more than a handful of j, j, or p onto one planar face of bread, taking care to not choose a face which once was crust. lay bread down on the stable surface in a new pile with j, j, or p face up. Repeat scooping action with gif, but on top of the j, j, or p. Place a new, different slice of bread with a roughly congruent planar face so that the j, j, or p and Jif are between it and the other slice, orienting both slices in such a way so as to make them parallel, or as close as can be allowed. If at any point in the assemblage you are foxed by a quandry, attempt to reverse, outwit, or remove the source of your problems. If impossible, retrieve your sister from her prone place in the windowframe, and have her do it. Sandwich!

If all else fails, combine all ingredients in a bag, box, or container. Close the container. Shake mildly. If evolutionists are to be believed, a proto-sandwichoid will appear within several billion years. Consumption is your own problem. Enjoy!

4.13

[I am open to the idea that some things cannot be improved on. I am party to the plea that some things should not be improved on. I just deleted ten minutes' work on an expansion of 1.27, something I want very badly to do. I wrote things, beautiful things, about the weight of the light and the state of the room, but as soon as I touched on her--I faltered.
I wrote the original. I own it, as far as intellectual productions can be owned. I speak for its origins and I alone can attest to my state of mind at its creation. But you must know that I am incapable of expanding upon the point. The story cannot be more than a brief aside in my expanding oeuvre. There is no growth to the story other than to say "so sorry! I've ruined everything by trying to bring this character and this moment back. I have destroyed the mystery and wonder of the original by hacking away at the task with a zeal reserved for killing things.

In any case, I've failed.
Congratulations.]

Birds don't eat worms because they want to. Those twit-based lifeforms eat the lowest of our detritus because it's all they have. They've never done anything different. Am I the bird, or the worm?

4.11

Possible Uses of a Paperclip. Hinge. Needle. Weak spring. Tie clip. Replacement button. Link in chain. Body piercing. Drill. Strainer. Murder weapon. Shoelace. Chip clip. Battery connection. Light source (with enough amperage). Glasses repair. Sabotage instrument. Ring. Trail marking. Art. A way to mark a cup at a party. Element of a model. Tiny manacles. Tiny sword. Pistol grip. Knife sharpener. Escape instrument. Stitch. Element for electrolysis. Oral fixation. Toothpick. Tool for keeping mouth wet in desert. Watch hand. Unit of measure. Currency. Paintbrush (poor). Sandwich spear. Icicle seed. Zipper pull. Pen. BSDM sex toy. Tuning fork. Vise grips. Mounting pin. Clothing pin. Diaper pin. Instrument of self harm. Prosthetic finger. Burglar deterrent. Tool for prank. Pushpin. Torture device. Q-tip replacement. Ice pick. Cheese knife. Enamel remover. Fingernail/toenail cleaner. Nail. Staple remover. Science experiment. Pigment. Hair tie. Wire scrub brush. Symbol of a secret society. Coat pin. Splint. Orthodontic wire. Tooth spacer. Floss. Plot device in a story. Conversation starter. Example of a noun. Metaphor. Example of invention. Chopsticks. Souvenir. Lockpick. Picture hangar. Livestock brand. Symbol. Antenna. Letter in an alphabet. Holiday decoration. Subject of a word problem. Counting tool in a math class. Subject of a documentary. Clue in an investigation. Bookmark. Eraser. Compass (cartographic/geometric). Anthropomorphized document help. Fishing hook. Morse code clapper. Tiny snowshoes. Subject of a running joke. Gastric suture. Stake checker. Paperweight. Fetishistic obsession. Squeegee. Shish-kebab/fondue stick/hors d'oeuvres server. iPhone sim card remover. Router resetter. Lever. Fulcrum. Toast announcer. Butter scraper. Extra finger for tying ribbons. Ribbon curler. Keyring. Subject of a trivia quiz. Glass etch. Coil in an electric motor. Screwdriver. Grade school decoration hanger. Tooth in a comb. String pull. Item in a survival kit. Tool to level a table. Grenade pin. Target of a boycott. Paper holder.

4.10

Sunstrike glances shoot out from dark curls, silvering the air between with suspended immotile heartbeats. My whole frame shakes with each thunderous clap of ventricle and valve as my body counts the moments until you shift to look at me again: a miracle of chance with no obvious course of capitalization. I want you. I want these argent looks to only always be for me. My only thought is silence. Still, my heart blows me back into my seat with thudding importunity. Don't go. Don't speak. Don't look. Don't seek her eyes, filtered through hair that falls manifold and luxurious, a cultivated unrestraint that speaks to waterfalls and high winds drawn on ancient maps, a curlicue circus of black that serves to frame a fair face. I'm stuck dancing between staring and shuddering, hoping for you to put my name on your lips even as a whisper unbreathed. I would fall, no bounds of constraint, headlong for you.
Whose fingertips filter ecstasy by sliding sinuous along your nape, silver skin soft, hair fallen in their face, a thousand wisps feathered on their lips, sensuous to bursting with the smell of you? If no one, then: I beseech you. Why not me?

4.8

Have you ever had your limb go numb while you're sleeping--maybe you're laying on it funny and it just goes absolutely dead? I have gone to sleep on my stomach and woken with both arms like they were some corpse's, and Dr. Frankenstein had sewed these useless replacements to where my old limbs had been. I have woken on my back in a state of total sleep paralysis, a fear induced by a spiderbite in a dream, a complete inability for brain to excite even spastic movement in a finger or toe. Frustration is not the paralysis. It is the terror that every neuron is bent to this one task, to move a finger, and your entire machinery has commanded your brain, your central control, your very self: no. I will not move. You are left with only the fear that you will never again have control over even the very basic functions of life and that everything you do will be countermanded by your body. That fear and loathing is what frustration feels like. That's what it feels like when the whole world bears its terrible weight down on your will and snaps it like antique glass--not at all, then all at once and terrible and completely.

4.6

People talk about life flashing before them, and I'm envious. I tend to have a very different reaction.
I remember the first time I fell off my new bike. I was just getting back into riding after having taken a fifteen year hiatus, having given up biking after turning ten partially from outgrowing the bike and partially from outgrowing the "cool" factor of pedaling places. Now twenty five, I was re-entering the infancy of my biking skill.
My parents own a fifteen acre farm with a little set of hills rolling down to a creek, along which they have planted a forest of saplings. The driveway is loose gravel and leads down to the road at the steepest incline on the property, and the house is up on the hill overlooking it all. Now, I had chosen the furthest ring around as my route: down the driveway--cut right and along the road--swing up the creek and wind through the forest of small trees--along the fencerow and over the hills--down the driveway again. All told, the route is a fifth of a mile. I could do the entire loop in less than two minutes.
I was very careful on the gravel that scoots out from under the tires. I was very careful running around the trees that reach out and cut my face. But along the road there's a long, low straightaway that begs to be barreled down at top speed. At the turn, I was not very careful. Evening, dew, and madness combined in the failing light to put me in a manic leaning turn that suddenly gave way from under me. The bike continued straight for a heartbeat, leaning even further to the ground, until the pedal dug straight into the dirt, halting the machine entirely. My knee hit the ground first, rolling me over the bike, onto it, and past, my left leg working its way under the falling frame as I went.
My life did not flash before me. I did not see everything in slow motion. I did not have a long moment of self-realization as I approached maximum pain. I just blacked out. One moment, I was flying along, the next, my leg was twisted up with the front shifter and the bike was underneath me. I freaked. I laid my head down again and thought "well, this is the end." That scared me, actually. More than falling off the bike, I was scared that my first fall would be my last, that I might give up on my favorite part of biking (the thirty-mile-an-hour fall down a steep hill with the wind at your back, pedaling madly to gain precious momentum to fly up the next hill and do the whole thing again) just because I was terrified of this moment.
I lept up.
I dragged the bike under me and jammed down on the pedal, but the bike didn't move. In fact, the pedal didn't want to turn under my foot, but I was pinwheeling madly trying to go forward. The back wheel had come away from its bracket and was floating loosely held only by the chain. I feel like this moment is a metaphor for my entire life. Do everything right, run an A+ operation, but when you get knocked down once the whole machinery falls into pieces. Of course, I was able to reattach the wheel and tighten it down again, but I couldn't help but think about my utter conviction while on the ground that I must get up and bike again immediately or I would lose the will to do so--and the bike said no.

4.4

Sometimes, he snorks in the night. I roll over and look at the little dog bed on the floor and watch his feet do a slow windmill or two. He heaves a huge sigh and there's the smallest whine in it; he sounds like he's having trouble breathing. Poor pooch. He's allergic to household dust and dust mites. I can't vacuum enough or take good enough care of the house to really fight that. I'm moving. In fact, I'm afraid he's getting worse. Every time I move a piece of furniture, I vacuum underneath it. Every time, there's a huge billow of smoky dust in the suction chamber.
The specialist vet, when she pulled up the paper to show what he was allergic to, pointed out his extreme allergy to dust, dust mites, Johnson grass, and moths. She was trying to save me from knowing. She was trying to save me from this fact: household dust isn't just dirt that drifted in from outside and settled on my bookshelves and fan blades and range hood. There's not that much dirt from the air. The dust in my house is me--my skin. Watson is allergic to me.
He still lays down on my feet. He still licks my hands. He still snuffles my hair when I'm tying my shoes. I don't know if he's made the connection yet--that I'm the one making him so sick--but if he has, he hasn't let on. He chooses me.

Happy birthday, Watsbutt. Congrats on surviving to two years old.

3.29

Please don't shuffle me back into the folders you've so carefully arranged by chronology. Put me in my proper place, at least: at the head of the pack, your latest failure, the last great attempt before the cabinet rolls closed with a loud creasing sound of metal and paper.
I want what I deserve, at least. Give me that much dignity.

3.28

Sampson shrugged his clothes off a piece at a time until, nude, he slithered into the kitchen. He stood in the musty cold air that drifted out of the open fridge and laced itself around his toes until he finally selected a delicacy. He ate standing up in the living room, staring at the empty wall.
"I've really got to finish unpacking," he said out loud.
The wall appreciated the sentiment.
"I've got to get my act together."
The fridge was exceedingly grateful.
"I've got to grow up."
Well. Let's not get carried away, Sampson.

3.27

He made direct eye contact with her as she walked briskly from table to table. Her speed didn't carry itself up from her feet, though. Her face was serene and settled, like a mountain over a pressure point, a fault line. She looked his way and for a moment saw him looking at her. He looked away immediately. She was just trying to wait tables, and the young man had been examining her face, waiting for her to look at him, expecting it but not wanting it, because it would mean he would have to glance away. Just then, she walked straight to him. Soft panic.
"I noticed your loyalty card. You'll get that discount when I total your bill."
"Oh! Thanks."
"Of course!"
Oh--there it was. He had been waiting for it. She smiled at him, and it sort of broke across her face and shook through her the way you would expect an earthquake to ripple through the crust of the earth. She turned away, and he kept looking at where her smile had been, and he fell for her the way a house stands through the initial quake and slowly slumps over in the aftershocks.

3.24

Chocolate milk at one in the morning is like a tryst that produces an illegitimate child who you love better than the children from your wife, howling shrew. The sweetness of the chocolate, sugar, and cream have a tenseness and a depth that pull you up out of the seat of your battered old BMW and into the driveway of that child's mother. I can confirm that despite it tasting better than any other thing while you drink, it leaves your teeth tasting like regret and humiliation and holding the baby and realizing that your entire life is designed explicitly around never being discovered as this child's father, and unless something goes painfully wrong, this beautiful bastard will live without you forever.

2.23

I didn't fall asleep yet, because I wrote something I hated today. I wrote it while falling asleep at a tiny desk with my fingers sometimesddddddddddddddropping onto the homerow and justssssssssssssstaying there. It didn't make me happy and I didn't like it, but as I read its meanders and holes, I thought to myself: this must be what bad writers feel like when they read what they've written: like the whole time they were fighting a nap that never seemed to take them, and now that they've woken up, their writing is really bad.
I have more sympathy, and less.

3.23

I need time to process white noise. Sometimes, I sit and stare at fans and lightbulbs, trying to understand which vibration, exactly, is making the burr-like softness of a tonal hiss I like to call white. And what use is it to me that I can understand exactly that noise? Why do I take the time to examine fuzzy minutia? None. I gain nothing. I just lose time. More clock-defined seconds than you could find in a single day; these I swallow with my obsession. I spend my whole waking experience trying so despondently to fathom a useless phenomenon. I gain nothing.

3.20

I told a friend about my poetry, last night. He didn't lean in and shiver, the way I do when I hear tinsel phrases drift ethereal through a roaring crowd. He didn't look away, either. He just listened, as I recited line after thudding line in increasing panic, praying for something to strike him. My memory failed in places and the drumbeat faded across the still waters of the Aegean, the oars of my intellect hanging, dripping. He always sat in silence for these. The clearer part of honor/is the organized defeat./You start the war in dignity;/you end it in retreat./But when you run away from me,/you've lost your only friend,/dear, for/when you pick a fight with me/it's your life that will end. He was unmoved. Perhaps I should have expected nothing less, because I wrote the lines for him.

3.19

I woke up again last night after falling asleep folded over on my knees, suspended in air by a clever arrangement of ropes and fabric. I woke up again with my face pressed against the nylon sheet, my toes pressed up uncomfortably, my head full of blood. I woke up again last night shivering because I underestimated insulation. It's too important and my body is too cold to keep going. I dip my toes toward the earth so I can curl up on the couch underneath the cat.

3.16

Just recently, I decided to ride a bike from Massachusetts to California. Actually, come to think of it? I decided a long time before that. But recently I realized I could finally do it.

When I was in grade school, our teacher read from a book at the end of every day. I don't know how he chose these books, but he seemed to choose things that got at the very soul of being alive, somehow. I know that sounds hopelessly romantic, but unless you're in sixth grade and hanging on every word of Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place, you don't know what I mean. In between books about a boy on a farm and a woman in Southeast Asia, he read a book that hangs with me. A young man took his bicycle and some camping equipment and set off to ride across the United States, long before it was cool. On the way, he found friends, jobs, and a dog. That dog--I grew to love that animal without ever having met it. He and the dog travelled together from Virginia to Mississippi until, without warning, the dog died. I think I cried. In class. I lost the love of the story, and our teacher switched books on us.
I can't find that book anymore. There are so many stories about people bicycling across countries and continents that it's been forgotten by everyone but me. I've looked online, but fruitlessly googling "man on bike rides across America and his dog dies" gets really sad, really quickly. Yet that story itches right between my shoulder blades. I can't get rid of it.

I bought a touring bike last July, and I got perhaps the last 2015 Salsa 3 ever sold. The store rep, Ben, who laughs at his own jokes in the most infectious way, phoned around trying to find out if anybody had the bike in any size but this one. My wife, Delight, wanted to see if she could have the same frame as me. No dice. She bought the more expensive Salsa 2 and crowed at me about how smooth it was to ride. Honestly, I make the whole process sound so easy, like we walked in and purchased some bicycles, like normal people. I'm lying to you. The first time we went in, we barely even looked at bikes, just wandered around reading about what kinds of frame styles there were. We had a two hour conversation with Ben spread out over three visits that led, almost magically, to the most emotionally charged purchase I think the two of us ever made. I named my bike Jalepeño. I turned it over almost immediately after I rode out of the store and gave it the first ceremonial scarring all good machines need before they feel broken in. I hopped right up and gave it another go.

The actual second time I rode my Salsa anywhere, I was on the city's most well-trafficked bike trail, the Katy Trail spur; it's a path towards the state-spanning once-railroad turned state park. Delight was spinning happily behind me, trying to figure out her gear changes on a new bicycle. I was just trying to avoid the middle-aged joggers and the young couples on a romantic stroll, when a tremendous bang nearly stopped my heart. I stumbled off the bike, nearly dropping it, nearly falling over. My front tire was entirely flat. I was two miles from where we had begun. Honestly, I was mad, but I laughed it off and just hefted my Jalepeño on one shoulder and took off towards the car. You never truly appreciate how sturdy the Salsa frame is until you're underneath it, not on top. They do not play when they make a frame out of steel. Delight rode back to the car to drive it closer, and I had a lot of time to think as I pushed my finger into and out of the gaping hole in my front tire and tube.

My mother is losing her mind over this idea of riding across the country. I can understand that. If I were a mom, I would be worried about me too, and not for the normal reasons that most moms worry. There's more to worry about: My wife left me a few months ago. That feels so bad to just vocalize, to say out loud like it doesn't rip at me every time I open an old drawer and see her jeans all neatly folded, forgotten in her frenzied rush to leave. I think about her every time I ride up the first big hill near my house. She hated that hill. In addition to losing a wife, I've decided to quit my job and go to graduate school, and in between to ride the byways of the nation on the Jalepeño. Mom has her worry work cut out for her.

For Christmas, I bought myself some ludicrously beautiful black hammered metal fenders from Velo Orange. They didn't fit, and now I have squeaky plastic top-of-the-line maddening replacements. I have a rear rack, and clipless pedals, and some chamois purchased for half price. I'm slowly building a tolerance to bouncing thirty miles an hour down gravel hills. I'm essentially ready with everything I'll need, but for one thing. Me. I remembered from the book my teacher read that the hardest thing about the bike trip was just getting used to being on the bike for hours every day. The farthest I've ever gone was forty miles, and by the end, my sit-bones were pushed up into my lungs.
Now it's spring. I'm preparing myself. Today after work, I rode sixteen miles on a course I created so I could look at the creeks that run past my house. It's a route I've taken before, but never with this level of optimism. The precipitous drops lined with golf-ball gravel didn't stop me. My cold toes churning in cold wind didn't stop me. The waning light didn't stop me. I'm going to ride across this whole country. This sixteen miles is just an appetizer to a main course that might take me months.
When I pulled up to the end of the long leg jutting from my loop, I stopped to watch the sun go down. My whole life up until this has just been an appetizer of books that spawn dreams and marriages that dissolve, leading up to a main course that will last me, hopefully, a long time yet.

My view from the corner of Highway E and Benedict.

3.14b

The tips of my fingers are thin. My skin is ragged and torn. The edges lift and curl and peel back. I chew the edges I chop the sides I tear and tear and tear.
Maybe I'm nervous today, but I've done my laundry, the dishes, the chores, so explain that.

3.14a

[Welcome back. I'm going to try situps and pushups and blogging every day. The first two will get me in shape for the MR340, and the third, for life.]

Gyres are my constant mode, circling close and banking swiftly to stay in the rising air. I hope to catch the current as a participant, floating without effort to a higher plane. I'm terrified, though, that I'm losing altitude, so I check the ground on each mental beat, ticking like a metronome between flight and floor.

3.2

Stare at a sunset.

Wait for light to fill your eyes;

Flow over your lids.

Drink a volcano.

Tip the damn thing back and draw

a mouthful of self.

Hold your breath, dear one.

The surface is miles above;

The floor waits below.

Drink hemlock, eat lead.

Trip gaily from high cliffsides.

You’ll be eternal.

2.22

I flinched when your fingertips brushed my skin. I don't find you repulsive; I'm sorry. You're just so like me. I know I'm supposed to say you're foreign and exotic and alien because then, at least, I would have to chase you. But you're not hot to my cold, brazen to my shy, fast to my slow. If opposites attract, you make me flinch instead. I don't mean to dissect, but at the Christmas party at Ned's place, when you picked up the hors d'oeuvre with your fingers and knocked it back and laughed with a loud horse laugh at a joke I made and I laughed, myself, at my own joke. We talked about the stupid mistakes we'd made with pride and we ranted about past lovers. We're too similar.

You know that people say when you meet your unknown twin self from an alternate reality, you really only have two options if you want to truly take advantage of that moment. You only have two choices you can make that are once-in-reality possibilities. You've got to kill or sleep with yourself. It's the only way you can truly live. Well, that's why I flinched. You're too like me. I'm still deciding.

2.19

Fingers twisted through hair, pulling away from the roundling skull: sensuous slow is what I want. The heady rush of two hips aligned untouching, magnetic, suspended. The hot, dry heat of skin close upon skin upon skin, folded rolling pinched up skin in a tortuous disaster of desire, longed for long before I knew you true. Why this assonance of souls, a tonal resonance that mocks its owners with surety long before the words reach truth of meaning? We feel in love, surely, but it's the baby love of children. Touch, primal, the first and king of all senses, which yet infants feel keen. What is our distinction from these? We are circumspect eclectic derelicts, circling each anon abed, unable to love consummately, unwilling to leave consequently.

2.18

----turn, we, in the night of a snapping black hoarfrost----
The rime of our skin we shake off, it crackling of sugarsweet memory. The impression I have of your hands in my sun-stripped skin sinks deeper before falling away. The trees around me groan under your weight as I stretch and shake. Their branches snap and weep; I imitate them and myself, breaking each quarter inch further toward nakedness and despair. When did this weight fall on me when I drifted among the clouds? I spent so long within you that when the chill fear lifted from me, I couldn't remember when I was so rooted to the ground. Clairvoyance and premonition fail. Memory and constitution despair. I cast my mind to earth, expecting a shatter, yet I hear only my arms flex within their icy expectation, confined, retrained to silence and composure.
The winter around me is still. The forest is silent. The last sound I heard grows to infinity, greys, retiring and modest, aged, ancient, dead. I miss the sound of your voice, and all I have is the silent fall of powdery ice, solid prison of self harm, into the snow that remains.

2.17

He's so small. Normally, don't you wish to protect things that are smaller than you? Where's that paternal feeling that I'm digging so desperately for, or do I even have it? No, for this tiny troglodyte, all I feel is rage. I wish I could lift him by his lapels and thrust him against a wall hard enough to loosen his teeth. I wish I could knock him down and set a foot on his chest and sneer. I wish I could slap him right across the cheek so hard the welts would last for days. I could do it. I'm enormous; consequent of eating my vegetables and having good genes. I'm too tall.
But I don't. I save my wrath for a different solution and I let him insult me and lie to me and disrespect me again and again. I use the tools I have and I make his life increasingly strictured and constrained until he realizes, suddenly, sitting in the corner with a single pencil and piece of paper.

2.16

I find myself constantly to be a new Sennacherib, a builder of means and stature whose hypothetical mind palaces soar graceful, swirling minarets and towers in a bloom of stone and woodwork. I paint the lines of a fairer sort of future. Art and mind meet and meeting, nice distinctions between word and meaning a fete of undiscovered promise. The country I rule loves me, and I it, because the grandeur I promise is the hubris they crave, to reach for the stars and pull them down to strike our foes with.
Yet I am filled to fat with the taste of boasting, of courtiers who froth at statue and monolith and fresco and column. I desire an older, more moribund ochre to my day. I wish not for victory and ardor, but for death. Cease the building of palatial accoutrement; I wish for tombs.

2.14b

[Haven't had cause for a letter for a long time.]

I submitted Scarmarella a long time ago to the Legacy, the annual publication of the English department at Southern. It didn't get in, not least of which reasons was that my best friend, the editor, didn't like it at all. I didn't submit my heart-strings because I needed them massaged. I expected and deserved to be turned down. I think I did it to feed my persecution complex, but I do know this: if Scarmarella had been committed to paper, left in the unforgiving reality of ink or toner or oil paints or balsamic reduction or whatever marks make permanent stains, I don't think she would have fared as well as she did in my heart. It's a half-poem, at best. The imagery is muddled and the rhythm owes more than half its weight to Gerard Manley Hopkins, but I love it. Spin, Scarmarella, and don't stay too long. You were always better when I couldn't see you well.

2.14

[Once, I wrote a post about crying in a stairwell.]
That was inspired by a girl who broke up with me nine months after I asked her out, accidentally, on valentines day. I suppose the accident was asking her out at all, but at the time the accident was not the girl, but the date. She broke up with me in a formal nine-month stillbirth, our relationship dead though we carried it so well for so long. Why do I still mourn that day? Not for her, the mother of a could-have-been sentiment that lives in my past, but for the boy. I mourn for the boy she left, who couldn't see his dependence on having a someone was actually an addiction of the highest order that drove him to push his boundaries aside, to deal in dalliances after good folks were asleep, to consider extreme destructive cataclysm for a chance at one-more-time. I mourn his loss, because his shambling corpse still roams, moaning its broken memories and half-remembered nightmares, seeking a fix. That boy can't seem to live, but he's just too tough to die.

2.3

I always wanted to be famous, to have my letters bound in books and poured over by future historians who were only curious to see exactly what my life was like as they wrote my biography (a national phenomenon and on top of the New York Times bestseller list for fourteen weeks). So we bought journals and wrote back and forth, passing the letterbook to each other every two days or so, always with a new letter inside.

january 23

Today, I skipped homework to hang with Jordan and some other friends. I hope you don’t mind that your boyfriend is a slacker who will never get into college.

february 8

Whenever I go to lunch, I’m always looking for a new group of people to sit with. I’m not sure why you always seem to get there late, but its fun watching you walk in circles like a nervous dog. And somehow, you always find me.

march 16

It’s so nice outside and you’re right next to me, but you still deserve a letter. I’m looking at the shades of your hair as they fall over your face. I think you’re asleep, but every now and again a bug will land on your skin and you’ll twitch.

april 30

Oh, My Gosh. One weekend away and you’re like a totally changed man. Where did this spicy hispanic lover come from with a rose in his teeth? I’m in shock! Did you really miss me that much?

may 14

I wish you would stay in town this summer. Your grandma seems really dope, but she’s not as cool as me. For example, I can make pies too. I can knit, badly. I own at least three ceramic angel figurines. But you’re going away, and you left the book for me to write in while you’re gone. I’m not sure what the point is, but you said you’d read it like a desert survivor drinks water.

june 2

So you’ll be thrilled to learn that when Chuck came by to do his brother-in-law magic on me, I did not die. The boat he put me in (against my will, mind you) did not rebel, as I assumed it would. Instead, it was Chuck who behaved unexpectedly. Chuck cried. In the middle of the lake, totally silent, just a wet face and a soft, huffy breathing. He didn’t talk, and I didn’t talk either. Not for a long time. I was just thinking of you, and I’m sure he was thinking of Melli. In the end, I think I worked more magic on him.

july 22

You haven’t told me whether I should mail this to you so you can write in it every once in a while. It’s really starting to fill up with me blathering on. Soon there won’t be much space for you to respond at all! I’ll have to start using — gasp! Economy of words. That’s unlike me.

august 16

You called today. You didn’t stay on the line for long enough. I’m really getting pissed, but I’m not saying it anywhere but here. Why did you say you love me?

september 28

I’ve been holding on to a lot of emotion for a really long time, but I’m ready to just explode. I came home today and just sort of melted into the carpet. I cried, you know? Like big sobs, uncontrollable, and just yesterday you said you loved me. People who’ve got love don’t sob until their whole face is a swollen mask so puffy as to be useless for facial expressions like rage or fear, which are what they’re feeling, of course. That’s me, there, on the ground, trying to think of reasons to keep going without even a visit from you, or a call, or anything. But I love you, and I want this to work, so I keep pounding away like a clockwork man, hoping against hope to get a heart out of the effort. I just want your heart. I just want your heart. I’m tired of my own; I just want your heart.

You never came back to finish the book. What would people think?

1.30

Time is a taskmistress to whose lash I do not fall, and yet her weals never grow less tender except that I forget them. My mind is growing numb with all the pain it has been has been forced to misplace. The thoughts of her slide from me each time my consciousness happens to chance upon them and misplace them, deliberate, to protect itself, each welt and bruise more tender than the last not for actual pain but for the suddenness and surprise of the encounter.

1.27

“This isn’t what it looks like,” she said.

It looked bad. I didn’t exactly know what was going on, but as my fight-or-flight reflexes slowly uncoiled themselves from the throttlehold they had on my windpipe, I finally started seeing. The scales littered all around the tiny bathroom were making small shuffling noises in the breeze from the open window. A few floated up and got stuck on the sidewalls or nestled in among the haircare products in the shower. They seemed delicate, like the thinnest shaving of wood left on the floor of a craftsman. That’s what they were, too; detritus from a transformation of gnarled oak into velvet-smooth wooden figurine. Her eyes were big and luminous, filled with some emotion—I couldn’t read her face to specify. It was too alien to me, too far removed from my slight experience. She reached out and shoved me away, her hands almost too-soft and yielding, the fingers bowing out from the pressure. I stumbled back into the hallway of our shared apartment space as the door slammed shut.

She, panicked, yelled “I’ll clean it up! Just give me a minute.” Scales billowed around the crack at the bottom of the door.

I picked one up, and it immediately fractured in my hand. I let it drop and picked up another, more careful this time. I held it up to the light, and I could see my fingerprints on the other side: a slight oil signature I had never thought about before. The surface of the little thing seemed to bend the light into vivid rainbow patterns, prisming the result into exactly her shade—the one you would name if you knew her long enough, knew her right down to the deeps and people asked you who she was, and they’d look at you funny unless they knew her first.