Clouds that hide the Earth are like clothes on a lover, aren't they? Whatever soft insatiable hunger drove you to summit this viewpoint so far from the beaten track has been so poorly repaid that the injustice of it rankles. Alone on the mountaintop, you are allowed only the simple opportunity to dream of what might lie beyond your sight. And even so, the clouds roll in. The topography is only a promise that the world cannot keep. And as you slump your way home, what will become of the dream you concocted to hold yourself intact as you threatened to shake yourself apart with desire? Didn't you come here to see a caldera? And the sky has chosen to drape your vision instead. I have no solution for you. Be content with trillium along the roadway and pines that lean down from overhead. There will be no peaks for you today, for the world is bashful of your voyeurism. And next time, check the weather before you carry your binoculars so far.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
4.24
Ajam lived in the steppe he loved: the rolling hills, the warm dry winds.
Zel's love touches Ajam most. She and the land are akin, and he can feel here that way. He feels her in dry dust wiped from his eyes. He feels her in never still air. He feels her in open doorways and horses' manes. Once, her footprints ran to him in the sweep of a rushing wind through the long grass. He watched as her fingers dragged gooseflesh along his limbs before she was torn away by her own momentum.
He can tell you a story, you know, of each time she came to him. Each night in his sleep he would catch glimpses of her out of the corner of sight, always laughing at something he hadn't yet said, only just thought of. Sometimes, she was closer, and she would wrap her arms around him from behind, cold, and then he would close his eyes in the dream, and she would press up against him, warm, and whisper into his ear the language of the winds. He wrote these stories down with knots in string, long patterns of single and double contortions stretching back a thousand memories to his earliest moments. Each time she came to him, he would stretch a length from his pocket, today green, tomorrow orange, each visit a red, blue, yellow, all bright, all welcoming, all reflecting the mood she brought to him.
Ajam built for himself a loom, a thousand strands and more, and began to weave into it his stories and memories of Zel. He wove in September, when the rains came and she was quiet. He wove in October, when the grass froze and cold footprints were found circling the house in morning. He wove in November, when the wind howled against the walls and his father begged to up roots and run to the South. He wove in December and, as his shuttle clattered from its ancient purpose to the foot-worn floor boards, he couldn't hear her anymore. The world was still, and drifts three feet deep had cloistered the family. He gathered the long cloth, delicate with patterns of story-knots, and wrapped it with the last, most recent thread, the only for which there was no place. It was weak and black, and it had a thick, constant wrapping of knots, her name again and again. Placing the bundle under one arm, he dressed for the worst of the winter. He gathered his things and the most hardy pony and bid goodbye to his father, to the dogs, to the house. His mother, she didn't come outside. She had known where he was going for months now.
He knew exactly where he was walking, though he had walked it blind, for he had walked it a thousand times before in strides that broke from hilltop to hilltop, pressing the earth away and springing from it with her grace, in her hands. December broke into January, and still the world was still. And even so he walked.
I, too, have held the breeze. Ajam's story is my own.
Where did the wind come from? Who blew it out?Zel. Her grace surpasses even the brightness of the stars.
But none can say they have seen her and not be found a liar.But they see her effects. The feel of her slips across skin on quiet nights. The men will brag about her visits, but the women are all quiet. They know more. But more than they, is Zel.
Zel's love touches Ajam most. She and the land are akin, and he can feel here that way. He feels her in dry dust wiped from his eyes. He feels her in never still air. He feels her in open doorways and horses' manes. Once, her footprints ran to him in the sweep of a rushing wind through the long grass. He watched as her fingers dragged gooseflesh along his limbs before she was torn away by her own momentum.
Who was she?It didn't matter to Ajam, and as such it doesn't matter to you.
He can tell you a story, you know, of each time she came to him. Each night in his sleep he would catch glimpses of her out of the corner of sight, always laughing at something he hadn't yet said, only just thought of. Sometimes, she was closer, and she would wrap her arms around him from behind, cold, and then he would close his eyes in the dream, and she would press up against him, warm, and whisper into his ear the language of the winds. He wrote these stories down with knots in string, long patterns of single and double contortions stretching back a thousand memories to his earliest moments. Each time she came to him, he would stretch a length from his pocket, today green, tomorrow orange, each visit a red, blue, yellow, all bright, all welcoming, all reflecting the mood she brought to him.
I can't see the purpose of his work.If you can't see it, then perhaps no one can. Let me describe him to you by his actions, for this was the only description he had of her. For once he had assembled his threads a thousand thousand yards in length, each knotted with a story of her, he took them all and straightened them. His mother waited patiently for him to hang them from the door handles, from the bed frames, from the ceiling. He draped them from the roof of the yurt and the long nights when he kept his eyes closed, the dreams in which she would take his hand and run him blind-wise through the hills, these longest stories trailed even to the trough of the horses in the yard. His father was pushed out of the house for a time, told to return with a civil tongue in his head. And still, Ajam laid out his strands, the house a rainbow, his fingers callousing against the delicate work.
Your story grows more intricate.As does his own creation.
Zel grows impatient.Ah, you feel her too?
Ajam built for himself a loom, a thousand strands and more, and began to weave into it his stories and memories of Zel. He wove in September, when the rains came and she was quiet. He wove in October, when the grass froze and cold footprints were found circling the house in morning. He wove in November, when the wind howled against the walls and his father begged to up roots and run to the South. He wove in December and, as his shuttle clattered from its ancient purpose to the foot-worn floor boards, he couldn't hear her anymore. The world was still, and drifts three feet deep had cloistered the family. He gathered the long cloth, delicate with patterns of story-knots, and wrapped it with the last, most recent thread, the only for which there was no place. It was weak and black, and it had a thick, constant wrapping of knots, her name again and again. Placing the bundle under one arm, he dressed for the worst of the winter. He gathered his things and the most hardy pony and bid goodbye to his father, to the dogs, to the house. His mother, she didn't come outside. She had known where he was going for months now.
He knew exactly where he was walking, though he had walked it blind, for he had walked it a thousand times before in strides that broke from hilltop to hilltop, pressing the earth away and springing from it with her grace, in her hands. December broke into January, and still the world was still. And even so he walked.
Was this her wont?You know she had never laid quiet before. This winter was different.
I won't ask this question.I wish you would.
What of her had changed?January into February, and his journey led him into the woods, a world of unfamiliar places, where the land tilted toward the sky. I'm sure you understand. February into March, and the new year, and even onward he journeyed. The world broke from its winter, but did not awake. The atmosphere itself had developed a whining tension, and Ajam could feel the foreignness of the wind, even in this place where he himself was out of place. And then, he was sure, as he passed a ridge and looked into the first mountain valley his eyes had ever seen, he had arrived. It was as familiar to him as though he had lived there his whole life. He lept from the pony and slid down the hill, tearing his jacket, cutting his hands. Under his arm, he carried his whole life's work. In the small hollow between earth and heaven, at the exact place where the stars touch the planet, he found her home. He cut the string, the final string of only her name, again and again, and the cloth unfurled around him. It enveloped him, it overwhelmed him, it grew from him like a spreading wave, and yet it broke around two strange feet that weren't there. Two strange hands he couldn't see picked up the riotous cloth and each color surged in its weave. She wrapped herself in his cloth, and he could see the shape of her in his words. She spoke to him again in the language of wind, and clasped him cold in the tightest embrace he had yet received, her body growing warm through the tight folds of cloth.
Did he say what he meant to, when he saw her?Oh, you dear fool. There was never anything to say between them.
I, too, have held the breeze. Ajam's story is my own.
Monday, April 23, 2018
4.23
[Sorry for the short posts and long absences.]
The skipper was straining for the open sea; you could feel it through the steel of the boat, his frantic energy. There was a trawler ahead of us, rolling uncertainly even with its long arms out, stabilizers attached and dragging in the waves. And the boat had begun to develop an awful tip, forward and back. The waves looked to be ten to fifteen feet tall, and the wind was ripping the foam from the crests. His voice came over the speakers, warning us all to hold on. He was going to let us taste the sea.
The Discovery was a lightly-loaded vessel, for all her bulk. Save for her cargo of sixty human lives, there was no reason the captain couldn't plow through a wave or two, ship a few thousand gallons, and still bob like a pleasant cork. But the weight of those lives weighed on him. None of these people signed up for sea-sickness. Not a single person was as excited as he was by the waves. He took three, four, singly approached, engines running slowly against a rising tide. Each wave was interminable. The boat went where the water took it in three degrees of freedom. People sitting down in the cabin, fixed to a single frame of reference, rolled and pitched in their seats. The breakers against the long breakwater kept a monotonous, pounding thunder, matching the long heartbeat of the boat. The engine trembled with the tension of his hand on the throttle. The instruments pinged and sang in the din. The ocean lay ahead, vast and measureless, calling the old salt in his blood to come home.
And, in the space of one long period between waves, he had the boat around again, tail to the ocean, nose to shore. It seemed as though the boat hadn't moved at all, so slowly did it turn on the face of the approaching swell, and somehow without looking up, it was suddenly apparent that the boat was retreating. The spell that had once had its death-grip wrapped around all our hearts had now never existed. The captain put power to the engine and soared on the backs of the waves, barely dropping the nose until the breakwater was secured as a fond memory, the surf was put away in its place, the wind was a friend whose fingers forgot their fierceness, and, finally, the ocean was a sight--and not a home.
The skipper was straining for the open sea; you could feel it through the steel of the boat, his frantic energy. There was a trawler ahead of us, rolling uncertainly even with its long arms out, stabilizers attached and dragging in the waves. And the boat had begun to develop an awful tip, forward and back. The waves looked to be ten to fifteen feet tall, and the wind was ripping the foam from the crests. His voice came over the speakers, warning us all to hold on. He was going to let us taste the sea.
The Discovery was a lightly-loaded vessel, for all her bulk. Save for her cargo of sixty human lives, there was no reason the captain couldn't plow through a wave or two, ship a few thousand gallons, and still bob like a pleasant cork. But the weight of those lives weighed on him. None of these people signed up for sea-sickness. Not a single person was as excited as he was by the waves. He took three, four, singly approached, engines running slowly against a rising tide. Each wave was interminable. The boat went where the water took it in three degrees of freedom. People sitting down in the cabin, fixed to a single frame of reference, rolled and pitched in their seats. The breakers against the long breakwater kept a monotonous, pounding thunder, matching the long heartbeat of the boat. The engine trembled with the tension of his hand on the throttle. The instruments pinged and sang in the din. The ocean lay ahead, vast and measureless, calling the old salt in his blood to come home.
And, in the space of one long period between waves, he had the boat around again, tail to the ocean, nose to shore. It seemed as though the boat hadn't moved at all, so slowly did it turn on the face of the approaching swell, and somehow without looking up, it was suddenly apparent that the boat was retreating. The spell that had once had its death-grip wrapped around all our hearts had now never existed. The captain put power to the engine and soared on the backs of the waves, barely dropping the nose until the breakwater was secured as a fond memory, the surf was put away in its place, the wind was a friend whose fingers forgot their fierceness, and, finally, the ocean was a sight--and not a home.
Friday, April 20, 2018
4.19
Welcome to Fortemburg. You'd better listen up and gather 'round, you rotten rutabagas! I'll tell you a tale of adventure so chilling it will feel like I'm pouring ice into your underpants.
Brave Sir Herbert ruled this tiny town;
With enormous muscles and a tiny frown.
Brave Sir Herbert ruled this tiny town;
With enormous muscles and a tiny frown.
One day, Sir Herbert took a little walk
And someone stopped him for a little talk.
"Excuse me sir, but do you not agree
That this old pine is quite a nasty tree?"
The tree had eaten fourteen kids that day,
And "it is nasty, yes," he had to say.
But Sir Herbert found that rushing in
Caused the nasty branches to close in,
He backed away and chose to use his mind,
The only tool he had to beat that pine.
What did he do?
Brave Sir Herbert chose to disappear
With sloppy wig and paint to hide his years.
A knight no longer: now he was a treat
That wretched pine tree thought that it could eat.
It grabbed him up but soon to its surprise
Brave Sir Herbert gained the real prize.
Fourteen children, head to toe in sap,
One by one he pulled them from the trap.
Only when the final child was free
Did the brave knight turn to face the tree:
"How's it feel, you carnivoric pine?
Get out of town, 'cause Fortemburg is mine!"
Of course, he ripped it from its roots with his mighty hands and threw it in the river, and all fourteen children are alive today because of him.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
4.18
I'm a waterfall of jellybeans. I have thirteen noses apiece. I walk without my toes, but you won't find me eating cheese. Why is open not as closed? Who made babies wear their clothes? Why is heaven never here, and why won't here quite yet appear?
Thanks--
One Absurd
Thanks--
One Absurd
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
4.17
Somehow, Susan hears me through the closed office door and pokes her head in while I'm talking on the phone. She has the sort of eyebrows you might find on a caricature chalk drawing at Disneyland, somewhere between a faux-Bavarian brat wagon and an equally fake waterfall over polystyrene rocks. Susan, my word, what could you possibly want? Is it that you heard me in an important conversation with the boss and you don't trust that I have the company's best wishes at heart? Oh, no, that was February and now the intrigue of the month is a constant suspicion that I'm for some reason pocketing office supplies to take home for what--my four-hundred square foot apartment? How many post-its do you think it would take to cover the walls, anyway? Thanks, Susan, for interrupting this solitary moment in which I might have been happy, this single moment in which my employer calls me not for a status update or a change in schedule that totally destroys the work of the last week, please, Susan, come on in and make yourself at home, ruin the five minute interval between last project and next project in which the boss calls (not visits, mind you, but calls) to tell me what a pleasant surprise it is that the work I've been slaving over for months is actually somehow adequate and possibly even good, yes. Yes, Susan, my favorite face to see. Just squeak your way into the office I've worked so hard to get, set your crocked feet down on one side of the couch and your yoga-pantsed junk on the other and just breathe the rarified air of the only walled office on the third floor. Please, Susan. I couldn't think of anything better to do than look at your four-month old roots while I struggle to hear the seven or eight positive words of feedback that are my only payment for my every waking minute since November.
Susan doesn't sit down. She leans in and mimes a plate and fork and arches one perfectly-manicured eyebrow up for a half second or so. I blink like an idiot and then nod. She smiles and I hate how white her teeth are in the brief interval before she carefully closes my door and the boss says "--and that's why we pay you the big bucks," solidly ruining the carefully-manicured sense of self-righteous indignation I was manufacturing and instead soaking me with sudden guilt-shivers. Somehow I managed to just as effectively ruin my phone call reward as Susan ever could. God, when I'm forty five, give me the confidence and bravado of Susan, because who else can so effortlessly be sweet to everyone and wear crocks to work?
I hang up and grab my coat. It's lunchtime.
Susan doesn't sit down. She leans in and mimes a plate and fork and arches one perfectly-manicured eyebrow up for a half second or so. I blink like an idiot and then nod. She smiles and I hate how white her teeth are in the brief interval before she carefully closes my door and the boss says "--and that's why we pay you the big bucks," solidly ruining the carefully-manicured sense of self-righteous indignation I was manufacturing and instead soaking me with sudden guilt-shivers. Somehow I managed to just as effectively ruin my phone call reward as Susan ever could. God, when I'm forty five, give me the confidence and bravado of Susan, because who else can so effortlessly be sweet to everyone and wear crocks to work?
I hang up and grab my coat. It's lunchtime.
Monday, April 16, 2018
4.16
Something strange is seeping from your pocket, a smell perhaps of the last ancient sour patch kid you put there to save for later. It has eaten through your pocket and adhered to your skin and I swear you've never taken these pants off in your life. Why do you do this?
--Me, to ten-year-old Philip
Good luck. It gets better.
--Me, to ten-year-old Philip
Good luck. It gets better.
Saturday, April 14, 2018
4.14
Somewhere downhill, there's a vast noise, and you can't quite make out what it is. Maybe it's an angry crowd, or an enormous machine with grasping claws, or perhaps a thousand thousand insects eating. You're not sure what it is, but it gives your stomach a turn. This is the end. You can't stay here any longer.
Friday, April 13, 2018
Thursday, April 12, 2018
4.11
Abecedarian was in the thesaurus, but love was not. Asperge was in the dictionary, but bind was not. You were in my house, but I was not. What kind of a world is it that we live in, anyhow, where life can be so contradictory and unlikeable even at the selfsame moment that it shakes you by the shoulders and screams in your ear "Love me!" in a voice that echoes, reminiscent of your late mother, God bless her soul, who once told you to not let the perfect get in the way of the perfectly good, advice that you perceived yourself as having followed perfectly, that is, until you met me? And now look what we've done.
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Songs for a Neophyte: 2015.25
One Man Can Change the World
Big Sean (featuring Kanye West and John Legend)
Why have I been struggling to fit
I have planed down my edges until I'm slippery smooth
What is this continuing bad trip
I thought the effort would be worthwhile at the end
Just where have I been trying to get
This opening in the universe wasn't designed for me
Is it over? Is this it?
I'm on this side of the membranous veil of heaven
I'm stuck.
Lyrics
What is this song? I have trouble keeping up with the perspective shifts. I've needed to read it twice, and I feel like I'm only just grasping the edges of the words. It's big and valuable and not my story.
I feel loose. Words are difficult. I've written and deleted more sentences than I've left. I'm restarting the song after I already re-read the lyrics. I feel guilty. This song doesn't entice me. My heart--is that true? I said it. It must be, but how is that possible? Big Sean has reached out to me with his heart in his hands, offered me a story about his grandmother, offered me his pain and his perspective, offered me a door into his life. But I just don't see through into his life. I don't want it to be my privilege. I don't want it to be his disorganized storytelling (I could criticize his lyricism where the words seem slapdash in places). I don't want it to be the sleep I'm not getting. I want to be sharp as a knife, to cut through to the heart of the song and to peel apart the muscle fibers to see why they work.
I was fascinated by my psychology class in Freshman year. I read books like the Five Love Languages and took the author's confidence for an absolute truth. I thought I understood humanity. But every new person I meet tears down my idiotic, youthful idea that humans can be understood. Certainly, Piaget's phases of development describe the general human arc. Certainly, Freud's theory of mind advances an explanation for internal thought that fits human behavior. Certainly, the old theories of the countless psychologists I've never heard of are all serviceable in their way. But humans are always more complicated than the picture we hold in our mind of them. I have never met a person that couldn't surprise me even after years of acquaintance. My mother still surprises me. My brother is new every time we talk. So why do I have the slightest hubris, thinking I could understand Big Sean's reverie?
After I had learned a touch about how human minds work but before I realized I'm an idiot, I went through a breakup. I still don't understand everything that happened to me when Kayla left, but she dropped every cliche in the book on my head. Did you know it's not me, it's her? Not only that, but she was taking a break from men, and for bonus points, was going to focus on God. Perhaps we could be friends in the future, and so on. Honestly, she did her best in a strange situation. I was not going to handle it well no matter what she said or did. She needed to break up with me and I hadn't made it easy. I thought I knew the correct way to act, the formula that would build our relationship and secure it, the futureproof method. I followed a logical sequence of events that would guarantee the us that still existed, and three days later there was no more us. I struggled for a long time to understand what had happened, and to be quite honest, I'm not sure either of us knew. She couldn't have explained it better if she had wanted to. But looking back, I can tell (at least) what happened to me. I learned that no matter how many spontaneous fruit smoothies you buy for your sweet, no matter how many caring texts you send, no matter how many small moments you carve from your day for your someone special, it won't change anything if you're already 99% broken up, when the only thing standing between you and the lonely road is the word relationship and nothing else. I learned that I don't and can't understand other people, and maybe I shouldn't try.
It goes much deeper than that, but tonight I'm not willing to weep. Big Sean didn't grab my heart, and I'm not going to dig it out for him just because you're reading this.
Stephen
You're right; the story is about family. And even though you're right, and Big Sean is begging me to reevaluate my closest relationships, to place them in a sacred space and remember them every day, I'm not interested in spilling that out, ink-blood running on the digital page, not tonight, not tonight, not now. I have work in the morning and sleep called an hour ago. I have too little to say and too much to lose.
I wish I could have met my grandparents as an adult, but that's not the hand I was dealt. I'm glad I knew them when I did.
I wish I could have been peers with my parents, but there's no knowing if they would have me as a friend.
I wish I could live closer to my siblings, but the things they accomplish are too big to be compact like that.
I wish I could bring you, Stephen, into our family. But you're already here, so what's the use?
So. I'm fifteen from the end. Am I going slowly enough for you?
Big Sean (featuring Kanye West and John Legend)
Why have I been struggling to fit
I have planed down my edges until I'm slippery smooth
What is this continuing bad trip
I thought the effort would be worthwhile at the end
Just where have I been trying to get
This opening in the universe wasn't designed for me
Is it over? Is this it?
I'm on this side of the membranous veil of heaven
I'm stuck.
Lyrics
What is this song? I have trouble keeping up with the perspective shifts. I've needed to read it twice, and I feel like I'm only just grasping the edges of the words. It's big and valuable and not my story.
I feel loose. Words are difficult. I've written and deleted more sentences than I've left. I'm restarting the song after I already re-read the lyrics. I feel guilty. This song doesn't entice me. My heart--is that true? I said it. It must be, but how is that possible? Big Sean has reached out to me with his heart in his hands, offered me a story about his grandmother, offered me his pain and his perspective, offered me a door into his life. But I just don't see through into his life. I don't want it to be my privilege. I don't want it to be his disorganized storytelling (I could criticize his lyricism where the words seem slapdash in places). I don't want it to be the sleep I'm not getting. I want to be sharp as a knife, to cut through to the heart of the song and to peel apart the muscle fibers to see why they work.
I was fascinated by my psychology class in Freshman year. I read books like the Five Love Languages and took the author's confidence for an absolute truth. I thought I understood humanity. But every new person I meet tears down my idiotic, youthful idea that humans can be understood. Certainly, Piaget's phases of development describe the general human arc. Certainly, Freud's theory of mind advances an explanation for internal thought that fits human behavior. Certainly, the old theories of the countless psychologists I've never heard of are all serviceable in their way. But humans are always more complicated than the picture we hold in our mind of them. I have never met a person that couldn't surprise me even after years of acquaintance. My mother still surprises me. My brother is new every time we talk. So why do I have the slightest hubris, thinking I could understand Big Sean's reverie?
After I had learned a touch about how human minds work but before I realized I'm an idiot, I went through a breakup. I still don't understand everything that happened to me when Kayla left, but she dropped every cliche in the book on my head. Did you know it's not me, it's her? Not only that, but she was taking a break from men, and for bonus points, was going to focus on God. Perhaps we could be friends in the future, and so on. Honestly, she did her best in a strange situation. I was not going to handle it well no matter what she said or did. She needed to break up with me and I hadn't made it easy. I thought I knew the correct way to act, the formula that would build our relationship and secure it, the futureproof method. I followed a logical sequence of events that would guarantee the us that still existed, and three days later there was no more us. I struggled for a long time to understand what had happened, and to be quite honest, I'm not sure either of us knew. She couldn't have explained it better if she had wanted to. But looking back, I can tell (at least) what happened to me. I learned that no matter how many spontaneous fruit smoothies you buy for your sweet, no matter how many caring texts you send, no matter how many small moments you carve from your day for your someone special, it won't change anything if you're already 99% broken up, when the only thing standing between you and the lonely road is the word relationship and nothing else. I learned that I don't and can't understand other people, and maybe I shouldn't try.
It goes much deeper than that, but tonight I'm not willing to weep. Big Sean didn't grab my heart, and I'm not going to dig it out for him just because you're reading this.
Stephen
You're right; the story is about family. And even though you're right, and Big Sean is begging me to reevaluate my closest relationships, to place them in a sacred space and remember them every day, I'm not interested in spilling that out, ink-blood running on the digital page, not tonight, not tonight, not now. I have work in the morning and sleep called an hour ago. I have too little to say and too much to lose.
I wish I could have met my grandparents as an adult, but that's not the hand I was dealt. I'm glad I knew them when I did.
I wish I could have been peers with my parents, but there's no knowing if they would have me as a friend.
I wish I could live closer to my siblings, but the things they accomplish are too big to be compact like that.
I wish I could bring you, Stephen, into our family. But you're already here, so what's the use?
So. I'm fifteen from the end. Am I going slowly enough for you?
Monday, April 9, 2018
4.9
[I try to not write about myself. So I won't.]
I can feel the dog's hot breath on my calf. The covers are painfully constricted around my legs, almost bound there by his weight and yours. I have to get up. I have work in an hour, and breakfast, and a shower to take. Your arm is so heavy on my chest, and I'm burning up from the heat of it. I can twist my neck and see the clock. It's six, almost. I've taken too much of the bed again, almost driven you off. You've stolen most of the covers again. They're half laying on the ground, I bet. I blink once or twice and I remember. I'm awake in the smallest room at a week-rate hotel. The dog and you are a thousand miles away, and I still can't purge the memory of what I wish were true. I'll try driving further tomorrow.
[Why are all my stories sad?]
The phone is lying there. It's six. I pop the plug out of the wall on accident, pulling on my phone, and the charger skitters across the floor. I'm distracted. The dream is still in my head, and I'm not sure I read the text right. It's from you. It's a picture of the dog. Things are normal. You must have gotten my letter. Maybe I have enough gas in the car to--yeah. I can be back tonight.
I can feel the dog's hot breath on my calf. The covers are painfully constricted around my legs, almost bound there by his weight and yours. I have to get up. I have work in an hour, and breakfast, and a shower to take. Your arm is so heavy on my chest, and I'm burning up from the heat of it. I can twist my neck and see the clock. It's six, almost. I've taken too much of the bed again, almost driven you off. You've stolen most of the covers again. They're half laying on the ground, I bet. I blink once or twice and I remember. I'm awake in the smallest room at a week-rate hotel. The dog and you are a thousand miles away, and I still can't purge the memory of what I wish were true. I'll try driving further tomorrow.
[Why are all my stories sad?]
The phone is lying there. It's six. I pop the plug out of the wall on accident, pulling on my phone, and the charger skitters across the floor. I'm distracted. The dream is still in my head, and I'm not sure I read the text right. It's from you. It's a picture of the dog. Things are normal. You must have gotten my letter. Maybe I have enough gas in the car to--yeah. I can be back tonight.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
4.8
I tried to write a metaphor of you, but I failed. I never fail at metaphors. I think it's because you're too big, you're too much. How could I reduce something that touches the stars and sinks into the sea? How could I outline the hunger that has emptied my ribcage and pulled the fibers of the muscles from my bones? How could I possibly propose a timepiece or a mechanism for marking the vast eternity I have spent in the minutes you held me? What feeble idiot am I, to create such a metaphor? And what patient fool are you, to listen so well as I struggle?
This one is me, I think. I cannot know if it is you. Sleep well.
This one is me, I think. I cannot know if it is you. Sleep well.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
4.7
Solipsism
I've felt guilt about breaking your favorite mug for seven years now. I know perhaps you have forgiven me, Karen, but I just wanted you to know that now I am forgiving myself. It was my fault, I suppose, to not listen to you when you warned me about the coffee's temperature. And though I should have inferred the shock to my mouth and mind, I couldn't have prepared myself for the sudden overwhelming taste of your garbage carob coffee. And honestly, it was very kind of you to offer me your actual favorite mug, a gift from your ex (I guess), I can't understand allowing someone else to use such a thing. Put it in a glass case if it's that important to you. Anyway, Karen, I know you've already stopped reading this in a rage, but I wanted you to know I don't feel bad anymore, as of today. I throw off all guilt. There's no reason for me to get so twisted up over something that doesn't even actually affect me. So, thank you, and you're welcome I guess. Here's six bucks for a new mug.
I've felt guilt about breaking your favorite mug for seven years now. I know perhaps you have forgiven me, Karen, but I just wanted you to know that now I am forgiving myself. It was my fault, I suppose, to not listen to you when you warned me about the coffee's temperature. And though I should have inferred the shock to my mouth and mind, I couldn't have prepared myself for the sudden overwhelming taste of your garbage carob coffee. And honestly, it was very kind of you to offer me your actual favorite mug, a gift from your ex (I guess), I can't understand allowing someone else to use such a thing. Put it in a glass case if it's that important to you. Anyway, Karen, I know you've already stopped reading this in a rage, but I wanted you to know I don't feel bad anymore, as of today. I throw off all guilt. There's no reason for me to get so twisted up over something that doesn't even actually affect me. So, thank you, and you're welcome I guess. Here's six bucks for a new mug.
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
4.3b
There's a point at which idiocy becomes obvious even to the person whose decisions are idiotic. Sometimes, it's the screamed epithet in the children's bookstore, a panicked mother suddenly blanching as the moment of passion passes and she realizes that what was once an unbearable day has suddenly turned on her and become an unforgettable scar. Sometimes, it's the gravel lining the corner of the road, a man confidently stomping the brake pedal and finding, to his horror, that the tree he thought impossibly out of reach was now wrapping his passenger door in a loving embrace. Sometimes, it's thinking you could drive across the country to see an old flame and discovering in Nebraska that they didn't actually want to see you after all and, to your everlasting mortification, you only misread their last email and "Why not?" didn't mean "yes," because it meant "I'm trying to be polite, trying to leave you space for your dream to breathe without having to dash it to the ground myself." But Charles knew all this and still found himself in Omaha with a stupid look on his face.
4.3
Her head snapped up, suddenly fully awake, fully alert. He was still there, next to her (it wasn't that; she never doubted that anymore) but it was something like it. What's this feeling wrapped around her suddenly wakeful mind? She asked herself a diagnostic set of curiosities to determine what it was that kept her moving with him. First: what is right with the situation? Second: what is wrong? And you'd better hope you find her on a day when the first list supersedes the second.
First:
Love had finally done the hard work of preparing itself for her. The old house of dreams she had built was finally pulled down to the foundations. It was always a house for the before man. Now, someone else had come in and couldn't quite fit the shape of that old log frame. In fact, this new someone was probably never the right shape for her meticulous mind-bending arts. She wasted nearly a year with him, measuring out the edges of what she thought was his shape, only to find that he had edges she didn't—no, couldn't know about. No amount of bending would ever fit him to the dream she had once held. And now, together, they had cut the old logs apart, examined what she once had thought perfect, split her young opinions into eight (nine, [ten!] beautiful wedges. In her mind, they had abandoned the old dream homestead and ranged far into the woods. He pushed her to think new thoughts and old, things she hadn't touched in years, or thought she never would. And each time, for warmth almost seemingly, he would (without thinking, without knowing its value or even that such a thing was possible,) burn another log that used to shade her face from the cut of a young dawn sunbeam, used to hold off the outside wind. He just . . . burned it. No ceremony. No old familiar habits to hold together the strange memories she used to cherish. Finally, she had found something good, even if she knew she would never understand it.
Second: she could smell the smoke of his savage and unintentional deconstruction of the dream house of memories and now-subverted expectations, and the smoke of it was giving her a headache. No, actually. She was far more awake than that. She knew the smell, but couldn't find its source, knew suddenly, chillingly, it wasn't inside her head. This was real. There was smoke fingering its way across the ceiling from the door on the opposite side of the room. She could see it in the dim light from the bathroom, its cold blue nightlight driving a shaft of revealing light across the creeping particles. She sat, watching for a moment, entranced by the momentary beauty of it. Then she touched his shoulder. God, was he warm. He stirred, saw the smoke, and without speaking rushed from the bed. He levered the window open and began chucking clothes from the floor out onto the ground below. She walked to him, so slow and delicate, and when he turned, he found her standing there with a hand outstretched. Neither of them said a word. She backed out of the window, him holding, muscles strained, as she lowered toward the ground a story below. He clambered out, the light from within the room changing temperature, warmer and warmer, illuminating the edges of his skin with blue to yellow to orange light, and he dropped to the ground just as she saw the flames licking the bedroom ceiling beyond. She stepped away from the house and he walked briskly to her. They held hands in the buff, circled by mismatched clothes crumpled in the dew, watching her house burn down. Not the dream building, but the physical world.
First:
Love had finally done the hard work of preparing itself for her. The old house of dreams she had built was finally pulled down to the foundations. It was always a house for the before man. Now, someone else had come in and couldn't quite fit the shape of that old log frame. In fact, this new someone was probably never the right shape for her meticulous mind-bending arts. She wasted nearly a year with him, measuring out the edges of what she thought was his shape, only to find that he had edges she didn't—no, couldn't know about. No amount of bending would ever fit him to the dream she had once held. And now, together, they had cut the old logs apart, examined what she once had thought perfect, split her young opinions into eight (nine, [ten!] beautiful wedges. In her mind, they had abandoned the old dream homestead and ranged far into the woods. He pushed her to think new thoughts and old, things she hadn't touched in years, or thought she never would. And each time, for warmth almost seemingly, he would (without thinking, without knowing its value or even that such a thing was possible,) burn another log that used to shade her face from the cut of a young dawn sunbeam, used to hold off the outside wind. He just . . . burned it. No ceremony. No old familiar habits to hold together the strange memories she used to cherish. Finally, she had found something good, even if she knew she would never understand it.
Second: she could smell the smoke of his savage and unintentional deconstruction of the dream house of memories and now-subverted expectations, and the smoke of it was giving her a headache. No, actually. She was far more awake than that. She knew the smell, but couldn't find its source, knew suddenly, chillingly, it wasn't inside her head. This was real. There was smoke fingering its way across the ceiling from the door on the opposite side of the room. She could see it in the dim light from the bathroom, its cold blue nightlight driving a shaft of revealing light across the creeping particles. She sat, watching for a moment, entranced by the momentary beauty of it. Then she touched his shoulder. God, was he warm. He stirred, saw the smoke, and without speaking rushed from the bed. He levered the window open and began chucking clothes from the floor out onto the ground below. She walked to him, so slow and delicate, and when he turned, he found her standing there with a hand outstretched. Neither of them said a word. She backed out of the window, him holding, muscles strained, as she lowered toward the ground a story below. He clambered out, the light from within the room changing temperature, warmer and warmer, illuminating the edges of his skin with blue to yellow to orange light, and he dropped to the ground just as she saw the flames licking the bedroom ceiling beyond. She stepped away from the house and he walked briskly to her. They held hands in the buff, circled by mismatched clothes crumpled in the dew, watching her house burn down. Not the dream building, but the physical world.
She felt him looking at her, and not the flames, and turned to him.
"Well?" he said.
"I guess so," she said.
First: what is right with the situation? We're both alive, and we have each other.
Second: what is wrong? Well, the house is on fire.
Today, the first superseded the second, and she was satisfied.
Monday, April 2, 2018
4.2b
She was all out of breath from climbing and she still lost her breath looking at the sunset on the rocks. Her hat was fashionable for the desert and her camera bag was slung around her elbow. She looked like she fit. We were sitting with our backs up to the rock, still warm from the day, but made cold from the wind, and I turned to her as though to say "This sight is big enough for both of us," but all I said was "Hello!"
"Hey," she said. "It's so beautiful. Is this it?"
I could see a man climb up behind her, impatience slapped slip-shod on his face, no true attempt to hide it. "This is Delicate Arch."
"Oh, I know. I mean--is this sunset? When is it?"
I looked down at my watch. 7:35pm. "We've got about five or six more minutes until the sun is really gone. You're welcome to share our vantage point." The pink rocks below were really being blasted now with a violent red light from across the sky, and the arch itself was cutting a thin shadow through the light. I pulled out my phone and took a third picture, a fourth. I put my phone away again. And then, the scene shifted. Everyone was standing just where they had been, the mountains behind were just as they were before. But our little alcove of wind-shorn rocks was suddenly less sharp than it was before, the colors lost where a breath ago they had been brilliant. "Ah!" I said. Then, quieter: "That was it."
Weston turned to me. "What was?"
"Sunset." The scene from our view was losing its luster--the crown of the continent had abandoned us and moved on further West, a thin strip of brilliant sunlight playing across a thousand miles of dying day. Ours was now a dusk beauty of pink-rimmed clouds and foreign desert noises coming awake.
She had her phone up, taking pictures. He touched her shoulder. "I guess, if you say that's it?"
"That's it."
"Well, it's been nice meeting you." He took her elbow and guided her from the unknown arch, the secluded keyhole that pokes through the rock just opposite the most famous uncut stone structure in the world. No one else intruded. Why would they? The view had moved on. Yet we stayed, to look for a time at nothing in particular, to sigh and to wonder just what else we had missed that night.
Every choice leads to but one moment. Every choice is death to infinities more.
"Hey," she said. "It's so beautiful. Is this it?"
I could see a man climb up behind her, impatience slapped slip-shod on his face, no true attempt to hide it. "This is Delicate Arch."
"Oh, I know. I mean--is this sunset? When is it?"
I looked down at my watch. 7:35pm. "We've got about five or six more minutes until the sun is really gone. You're welcome to share our vantage point." The pink rocks below were really being blasted now with a violent red light from across the sky, and the arch itself was cutting a thin shadow through the light. I pulled out my phone and took a third picture, a fourth. I put my phone away again. And then, the scene shifted. Everyone was standing just where they had been, the mountains behind were just as they were before. But our little alcove of wind-shorn rocks was suddenly less sharp than it was before, the colors lost where a breath ago they had been brilliant. "Ah!" I said. Then, quieter: "That was it."
Weston turned to me. "What was?"
"Sunset." The scene from our view was losing its luster--the crown of the continent had abandoned us and moved on further West, a thin strip of brilliant sunlight playing across a thousand miles of dying day. Ours was now a dusk beauty of pink-rimmed clouds and foreign desert noises coming awake.
She had her phone up, taking pictures. He touched her shoulder. "I guess, if you say that's it?"
"That's it."
"Well, it's been nice meeting you." He took her elbow and guided her from the unknown arch, the secluded keyhole that pokes through the rock just opposite the most famous uncut stone structure in the world. No one else intruded. Why would they? The view had moved on. Yet we stayed, to look for a time at nothing in particular, to sigh and to wonder just what else we had missed that night.
Every choice leads to but one moment. Every choice is death to infinities more.
4.2a
I cracked a rough, brown egg into a glass bowl this morning. I whisked it hard with plastic forks.
I opened doors up to the sun this morning. I guess I missed going to work.
The apathetic mood I'm forming is a mockery, a sport.
The world is larger than before this morning. If I will finish eating, I should start.
I opened doors up to the sun this morning. I guess I missed going to work.
The apathetic mood I'm forming is a mockery, a sport.
The world is larger than before this morning. If I will finish eating, I should start.
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