growing daisies

It is dreary, dull outside of James's window this morning. Two stickmen walk in opposite directions: one approaching and one departing: a wry cosmic insistence felt like the peck of a kiss on the second cheek: it is not affection, it is custom. And neither stick fellow quakes or shivers or pauses so we will see nothing here this morning.

Of course this is not true. One need only look and something will be seen. And eyes can be closed if that is what is needed to improve the picture. The mind has so many windows in. Yes, even more than the fifty six James has on the first floor. But I am guessing here. Not about the fifty six. They have been counted.

The vacant lot is no longer vacant. And it is wrong to label it a lot - it is much larger. Two full city blocks. Plus maybe a little more. And this morning the vacant lot is no longer the scorched earth referred to in an earlier post. It is no longer an affront or an assault. The grass is full and the terrain almost rolling. It is open, without the clutter of benches and sidewalk, so children might run and play and fall and roll around and giggle and laugh. An older gentleman could walk his dog easily across the expanse, plenty for the dog to sniff and discover, a decent enough oak waiting in the southeastern corner for shade or to lean against should the gentleman need pause.

Yet the grass appears greener than is natural come December. There is some withering, some pale blotches, some concession to the cycle of cool cold warm hot. But it is not my imagination that this lot is greener than most, almost bursting with green. Such a spectacle, contrasted against the dreary dull gray backdrop, the almost foggy skyline. The pale charred buildings and lifeless pavement. The occasional tick of life nothing but a crawl, less than a crawl, like the most languid insect. It seems as if today the Great Usurer has decided He will have the settings on Low. And then He decided on lower, for good measure. His humor in these matters exquisite as always.

And so I am left to think: whatever came before this lovely green lot, whatever was knocked down and excavated - such excavation that yes, I was grieving not so long ago, railing against even - whatever was lost, was fair price. At least by my measure, at least this very morning. Tomorrow may return a differing opinion. But right this very minute I question whether I ever might feel more enthralled with such ordinary scenery.

Forgive me but I just now realize what this lovely green lot most reminds of: cemetery, sans tombstones. Of course. That would explain the unnatural greenness, which, even though now exposed, I remain fond of. Perhaps more fond now than before. Even if it is trickery, so what? Trickery does not fully define this lovely green picture any more than vacant defined it before. It remains green oasis amongst all of this unnatural death and desolation, among this forever frightful black and white cartoon, this insistent gray horizon. So the green is appreciated. And as much as I piss and moan when feeling slighted, I have to admit it is damned decent of the Old Fuck to drop my resting place right into plain view. The less than subtle reminder. Is rejoinder better? Enjoinder? Genius, Sir. Pure fucking genius. Maybe I will start referring to Him as the Great Comedian. The (hysterically) Funny One. So many choices, but for another time. Look out the window. Look. Each look more enthralling. My green. My green place. My lovely green cemetery. Oh, my.

 

spent sent

The Stegner application got sent out on Sunday night. December 1st, the deadline. I putzed with it all weekend. Rewriting. Revising. Lopping and chopping. Adding a bit here and there. Fretting. Reading and rereading and rereading. I was very tired come eleven o'clock Sunday evening.

What I take from the experience:

The work I sent was good, very good in spots. But likely not good enough. I'm okay with that. The Statement of Plans that I sent them blew. Absolutely blew. Surely they will sit around in a circle and read the worst ones they come across and just as surely mine will make that cut. I would bet money on it. A considerable sum of money. Every time I rewrote that thing it got worse. And I hadn't thought to save the pre-edited versions until I was on about the 15th revision. So it got exponentially worse to a degree I can't even fathom. What is so fucking hard about saying "I want to do X because of Y, and oh btw, here's a bit about me"? Will somebody please remind me of that next November?

But come Sunday, deadline day, I did go at it very hard. I pushed. And pushed on and through the noise and fatigue. Part of me was okay with just calling off the dogs, but no, I decided I wanted this, so I fought through, I competed. Yes, I competed. I have truly forgotten what that felt like. It used to be second nature, a daily occurrence. No more. It has been a long time since I have tried for something.

And I realized afterward: when did I stop competing? when did I decide it was okay for me to be just another guy? an ordinary guy. a listless go nowhere lame ass mofo. when did I decide I wasn't good enough to get anything I wanted?

And I realized afterward: I like the old me much better than this other one. I must compete again.

a not so grim Ouroboros does feast

It was her idea to take a walk. It was late evening I was tired and would have preferred just sit. But I saw her look of expectation, exploration, and I quickly built some enthusiasm. Sure. Let's walk to by the Alamo. By where we used to feed the pigeons? We used to, she said. We.  And we + activity. And this she remembered. Fondly. And now wishing to revisit. Me lately feeling like a phantom, a shadow, those words pleased. Me lately walking unsteadily between  is   was   might be. Me lately feeling a constant drain, a siphon, and thus the inclination to rest, to sleep, because of the toll of such roads just listed. And then, Where we used to. Such a rush.

Too many memories move away from me. They lose distinction, detail. Diminished vibrancy. Imprinting new ones has become difficult. A chore. A task. I fear friends think I do not listen closely because I often can't recall a detail they gave me a month ago. A week ago. Yesterday. I appreciate the kindness when they choose to just tell me again. But there do remain those memories that bring pleasure. A great fondness. This point in time was Real and it was Good. Such memories have become inviolate. A grounding of my existence. It is possible I visit them too often to the detriment of now. The miser always stacking and arranging and admiring his coins. I am not blind to this possibility. But I must have them.

I find it jarring then when my memories of times with others have faded for them. They recall vaguely. Sure, they say. Politely not saying, What's the point? Why do you bring this up now? The vacant look that compels me to question have I even existed to them before this moment? To make me want to flee from them, or retreat from the whole world of people and forgetting. Quit this uneven game. To complete the forgetting before I start to count all of the times I must have disappointed to receive such zero in return. All things in balance. It is the only certainty.

I remember sitting with N at the coffee shop that used to be at Bitters and West Avenue. That place gone so many years now. We're sitting at a little table on the tiny patio, maybe three or four little tables total, the choice of outside a concession to my smoking habit that she despised. "I just can't wait for the other shoe to drop," she tells me. "The pain of the wait is so much worse than the result of the drop." I had never heard such a thing before. She explains that she would rather knock the shoe down herself than endure the suffering of waiting for its inevitable fall. All shoes fall had been her experience. In this particular scenario she had recently decided to end a relationship, by all accounts a good relationship, because she was just too terrified of him leaving. Or him changing, becoming a dick. This lesson of dropping shoes she taught me too well that day. Later I would be the one to knock the shoe down. N's shoe. A deep and full regret. How can I ever overlap memories with N now?

"Do you remember all the pigeons here?" She didn't say that when we made it to Alamo Plaza but I don't care because I could tell by how she looked around it was familiar to her in a way that pleased her and thus pleased me.  She remembered me and her and this place and equated it with Good. We may have been equally pleased with our reminisce. I was happy, in the moment.

The first story I wrote was called Mr. Kindresol. It was born as much as written and none since have ever come out like it. I had gotten my first writing desk maybe a week earlier, from Goodwill for twenty bucks, and it just sat there in my bedroom with its vast writing surface and its drawers that I had populated with pens and pencils and notebooks. I was still in the process of looking for a deal on a typewriter. And then one night, about 3 AM, I woke and said to myself, I must sit at that desk and write this story. I had work the next day and needed the sleep but the pull was so strong I could not in good conscience ignore it. And I knew I would be unable to fall back to sleep. So write I did. Got it all in that one sitting. Boy, was I pleased. So pleased I didn't know what to do.

D, the singer/poet/song writer had me come over and read it to him. In my excitement I butchered a couple of spots and he didn't hide his displeasure. "I certainly wouldn't pay to hear you read," he told me. His voice was exquisite - rich resonant kind firm worldly - and I would have paid to hear him read. "Write another story, right away," he told me when I finished reading. Huh? You like it, right? WTF. "Look, I know lots of guys that wrote a story once. Or a song, ten or twenty years ago. Or they wrote a poem that they can recite to you at the fucking bar when they're getting blasted on any given lonely night. Write another story. Right away. Don't get attached to that one. Don't be that asshole at the bar."

After the coffee and N teaching me about the weight of suspended shoes we went to Slick Willie's. She was awful in pool but insisted she loved it. I humored her. To me it's no fun when the objective is fun. Excellence is the only fun objective. N didn't see it that way. And after pool we sat outside on the parking lot curb, the coffee shop had closed, and she went over story number two line by line, her reading it aloud a sentence at a time, then pausing to offer praise and criticism in the most gentle manner I have ever known. I was so uncertain about the reaches I had taken in that 2nd story that I had been afraid to show it to anyone. But now, watching N read it so slowly with such care and concern, but then erupting into laughter, so full and outlandish, so genuine, me not understanding but trusting, having to trust, who could think to invent this? We sat under the street lamp on the curb for more than an hour. N devoted to my words thoughts ideas feelings. My art. How is it possible to grasp the suddenness of experience, the newness, the absolute mind fucking blowing shock? So, quite obviously, after N gave me perhaps the greatest hour plus of my life she turned into a shoe.

For a long time I thought I could write her back into my life. If I wrote something smashing enough then the writer in her would compel her other self to forgive me and then she would come back. It would be awkward at the first but then we would pick up not far from where we left off. Well, we can't know about how well that might have worked because the smashing part hasn't got done. But, in a manner, she has come back. As other memories retreat, recede, fade, she by default is pushed ever closer. More to the front now. More properly displayed now. Prominent. And I remember now her voice, the frankness (she loved to say, Fuck, not for the shock value of the word but for the sound of it; the abrupt ending pleased her almost to hysteria when she was in one of those moods). And now she reminds me that she's been here the whole while. Do you remember the coffee place over by Bitters and West, at the very end of the strip center, I ask her and before the words are even out I regret giving them voice. I don't want to know her answer. It will just kill me if she doesn't remember the night I resolved to wreck everything.

Finishing Stick Man

So the stick man stood at the intersection and demonstrated a noticeable unease. Something like an exaggerated twitching. Maybe an elongated twitching would be a better description. Either way, it was quite obviously a signal of distress. And so sudden. One moment the view outside my window is as it always is, the movements approximating serene in their predictability, the continuous uniformity in all of the daily variations. So these aberrant movements of the stick man, while admittedly small, were quite jarring. Almost unnatural. Foreign, at least. This distraction, if converted from optical to auditory might compare to the telltale clicking a poor card mechanic makes when dealing from the bottom of the deck. Listen, not watch, is the best way to catch a card cheat. In fact, it is the only way if the cheat be any good. And then you must listen with such an intensity that it will be clear to the cheat what you are about. You may as well announce your suspicions at this point. And you should also know that the cheat has been waiting to fall across one like you, one who hopes to listen well enough. He may go weeks and weeks, months and months, robbing game after game after game and finding no one, feeling nothing. Or feeling only listless, mechanical. Feeling the chilled solitude as if of a different species. And this is the truth of it. The card cheat is of a different species, and predator can not commune with prey except through feeding.

So a short burst of listening will suffice. The cheat will be delighted.  He will smile more fully now. His chatter will improve. Watch how he now sits more upright, almost fully erect, and moves his hands from his lap to upon the table. Engaged. Listen to the pitch of his voice rise. And, should you be interested, in his excitement he will reveal some of himself. Full drops of authenticity left among the practiced conversation. Your mere acknowledgement, your very small effort, will act as a trigger release, flooding him with such sweet memories, sending him awash in reminisce.

One would think that the cheat should shortly snap out of it. Perhaps he should. But he will not. His present trajectory suddenly has been reset to the beginning. His senses are heightened now. His shuffle and deal crisper, more fluent, poetically so, mathematically perfect with maybe some silly flourish added only because such exuberance demands expression. Who knows what to do with such exuberance when it finally appears? It must be put somewhere. So for this lingering time, this advanced creature will entertain in your midst, revel and reveal, while himself feeling fully connected to his origin, his source, to himself of course, himself at the beginning, himself in solitude, hour after hour, no clocks allowed or needed, shuffling and dealing, first with a quarter deck because the proper grip is hard to master, and then a half deck, pulling cards in front of a mirror on the desk so the eyes can properly scrutinize, life and death business someday with what the eyes can see, and no sounds allowed in the room but those of the cards being moved in his hands because sound is everything in this game; and that first realization that he could channel his mind through his fingers, forge a superb physical skill  only an elite athlete might understand; and that moment the resultant arrogance surfaced and declared that the money, all of  the money, on the table or in the various and countless pockets, belonged to him and no one else but him, and, of course, the spectacular absurdity of that moment, and his decision to embrace it and all it encumbered, knowing full well that such a path of excellence and insistence would be lonely. And because you have brought this reverie on with your careful listening the thief will settle upon you in the way a Lothario might settle upon his Calista. And all the while he will steal with more might and more precision from you than all of the others at the table combined, and do not be hurt by this, and do not be confused by this, because conquest can never truly be conquest unless properly labeled such.

So stick man did not stagger, as suggested two months ago. But no deception or subterfuge was intended then. Hopefully now you can understand how his unease and twitching might have felt like a stagger to one tasked with watching. And, as reported then, I did encourage him to DO IT. Mouthed those exact words. Why not? I've plenty of stick men outside my window and his twitching was distracting and annoying and aberrant. And remember, the great Player of Games had adjusted the settings outside my window. Everything was moving faster. Too fast, truth be told. Blurrrrr. If the stick man stepped into the traffic and got broken then maybe the traffic would stop. Maybe the settings would be put back to normal. And then maybe I would stop feeling the urge to open a window wide and see if I can fly.

I thought I would feel guilty after encouraging the stick man to DO IT. But I didn't feel a thing, except some increased impatience. I didn't want to wait all day on the stick man. Do it or don't do it.  Then I felt guilty that I didn't feel guilty so I got up and opened two windows, figuring if I was going to encourage stick man to step into traffic, I at least ought force myself to listen to the messiness. That felt equitable and calmed down my guilty feelings, which had started to tug at my stomach. So I opened the  two windows I could most easily get at while the stick man continued to waver and twitch. I don't know if the smell hit me first - stale, like baked pavement, and rubbery, lifeless, foul - or if the heat hit me first, but the splash of heat, easily been one hundred degrees outside, felt like it sucked the moisture right from my face and arms, almost instantly.  I was shocked by how easily the heat reached through my pores and extricated my little moisture.  It felt like an assault. And a base one at that.

Before I had recovered from the assault and before I even could sit back down the stick man made the move. One moment the stick man was still wavering and twitching, such a spectacle of perpetual torment and indecision, and the next moment this odd creature is in full motion, stepping from the center strip of the island into the innermost northbound lane. The lane of traffic that faces my window, faces towards me. Thump! Have you ever thrown down a fifty pound sack of potatoes in anger? That sound. The vehicle was a black late model SUV and it knocked the stick man a good twenty or thirty feet and into the center lane of the northbound traffic. Centrifugal force had its way, bending the shape of the stick man's body like a V. When the body landed it slightly spread out again before an older model sedan took its turn and knocked stick man forward a few feet before engulfing the carcass. The stick man managed to get stuck to the undercarriage of the sedan that then dragged the body past my window and out of sight. A few cars slowed. A few screeched tires to stop. Gawkers. Some curious  pedestrians. I set to closing the opened windows and by the time I was finished normal traffic had resumed.

Best I can tell he took his ending like a man. Not a peep from him.




   

Photons taking shortcuts in vertical temperature gradients

If you have been to visit you know that I have lots of windows. Fifty six on the first floor alone. Big healthy windows. Some smaller but still sufficient to offer a good look at the city. West, southwest, and southern views can be had without effort. Just look. A southeast or east look requires a stretch of the head, maybe even an open window. So how is it I have come to only look out of a one of the fifty six? A fixation now on a one that provides a directly southern view. A low southern view to be more precise. I have heard it said that if you look too far south you will surely find Hell.

There is little to see. A cleared lot the size of two city blocks recently appeared, almost front and center. Like a taunt. What existed before now removed. Cleared. And there is no new construction. No one treads, nothing moves. On the periphery streams of automobiles move in diametric directions. Barely audible. A few veins of trees separate and surround the asphalt and the occasional pedestrian. Presumably for affect. Like a frame, a border. A suggestion of normalcy. It feels as cruel ruse. Insult.

One morning finds the cars move faster than is typical. As if the great Player of games has adjusted the settings. Now they move as if they are on a highway and not a city street. Constant acceleration. Blurrrr. Or perhaps I lack the discipline necessary to properly integrate the imagery. Their sudden insistence defeated by my indifference. Or vice versa and I will not argue. I don't particularly care. I did not ask for the settings to be adjusted. Just so you know I would have the street be emptied, entirely deserted, rather than populated by lifeless things that move faster than I care to watch. I can no longer scrutinize. Blurrrr. They all are as good as dead. I struggle to imagine. This inanimate world outside my window gives me nothing.

A stick figure of a man crosses closely in front of the traffic. Too closely, I think. A bit cavalier. A bit aggressive, almost assertive. He makes it halfway across before the light changes and so he stops in the center island - a thin strip of pavement in the middle of four divergent streams. He looks drab from this distance. He is drab. Too drab a fellow to scrutinize. But he wavers, almost staggers about, in the center island for a long moment, his unsteadiness jarring amongst such certain scenery, such predictable movements, and I wonder if he feels tempted by the thought of extermination by automobile. It is thrilling to consider and then I realize I must quickly consider my response - will I avert my eyes if he chooses to step in front of the onrush? No, of course not. I will watch. I do watch, intently. Stick man's gallery of one. And I urge him to DO IT. I'll hear nothing. His finish will be a silent one for this audience. I need not worry about the unpleasant squish of busted flesh, the crackle of shattered bone. It will be entirely visual and visceral.

I have been silent ten days now. And counting. The last person I spoke to looked out my southern window and smiled deeply. We all hate adverbs but I choose deeply because it seems the smile originated in a place out of reach to most, certainly I could not reach it, and her smile also contained a loveliness quotient that I do not adequately know how to describe or quantify. If I possessed more courage I might label it as blessed. The night was warm, almost hot, and as we had just returned from a long walk, so were we. This was a moonless night and so of course somewhat dark. But lots of city lights interrupted, a few headlights, the deep breathing of a double decker tour bus. She stood and looked and she liked what she saw. Deeply, as I said earlier. For an uncomfortable while I watched her watch. Eventually I touched her shoulder, turned her head away, towards mine. What, I asked. Tell me. What, I repeated. Tell me what you see.

moody limerick

Ever stoop with a fellow named Cracon?
We'd drink whisky then fry eggs and bacon
We'd argue this and that
He'd insist thin be fat
Now he all ganja like a Jamaican

again

I did not work today. And after yesterday making words to The Man. Magical words. Describing a restoration or a re-imagining. Visions painted. Only noise. Blah Blah Blah.

I sit at a coffee place in a suit and tie and type. Earlier I read. I am neither contented nor ashamed. I saw glimpses of John earlier and now I feel neglectful. A gray man sitting across from me smells of decay. He frightens me and I hate him but I'm also grateful for him sitting there.

This morning I was doing my breathing stretching exercises and there was a short moment when my mind was not wandering and I was not chasing after it. I felt a lost stillness returned. I will not call this revelatory or grand or lasting. But there was a moment, a slice, that I feel correct in labeling peace.

They were supposed to send people to wash and polish my floors today. I think I can go home now.