Showing posts with label stream-of-consciousness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stream-of-consciousness. Show all posts
Sunday, November 17, 2013
A Courier Kind of Mood
I am in a Courier kind of mood today. A no nonsense look and feel. But how long can I walk along the straight and narrow; I mean, really? In the end my feet always wander from the path to those glens set off to the side. Someplace secluded, where twisted trees can shield us from the blinding stare of the sun and the too-pure blue of a cloudless sky. Here there be shadows cast, where us lesser beasts seek shelter; bloodied rabbit, severed snake. This is merely shade, though; to seek a deeper kind of dark we must crack the crust, breed new beasts in the belly of the quarry.
Believe in the fickle fiend. I’ve seen him. He breathes deep draughts of air in the pit of my chest. Shuttling from corner to corner, feeling with fingertips the grooves on the wall, looking for a loose nail or cracked board that can be pried loose for escape for use as a weapon, whatever the situation requires.
Come back. Try to find my way back to the fold. Today I was going to pick up the thread of old stories I had begun but allowed to trail off. One is a completely unplanned story where the only structure in place is the geography of the town, Suttersville, and the characters that live there. Each morning when I sit down to write, I walk into town and see what’s up. Throw in an argument here, an affair there, introduce a body washed ashore or the reading of a will that leaves half the town aghast, the other wondering what was really going on between the deceased and the benefactor. Each morning, I settle into a familiar place with familiar faces but something not quite right, and I need to figure out what’s going on.
In my writing, I’m torn between the equal desires of both beauty and brutality. The ugly and angelic. In all of this — what should I call this energy, inspiration? — I seek an untapped oil reserve. I’m drilling through shale and granite. I’m finally feeling something from inside flowing out, natural and untainted. Would my writing teachers advise against this unchanneled method? After all, an untended garden is no longer a garden, but a jungle.
Don’t blame me, where else could I go? Even a simple, straight-lined font like Courier cannot reel me in.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Skull Vacancies
A human skull sits on a corner of my desk. My uncle left it to me in his will. Not his skull, but one that he had come across in his professorial days bouncing from college to college between improprieties. Why did he leave it to me? Just to make me wonder, I suppose. He liked to pose unanswerable questions to me, riddles that he would drop into my lap at family get togethers as he made his way to the food table for a second helping of mom’s potato salad.
Now, the skull spectates on my morning ritual of writing. What a heroic waste of time, it says from the vacancies that were once its eyes. The skull serves as a reminder of how quickly all of me, except my bones, will drain into the soil and transition to something else. What else? Why do I come here each morning to ? Is this merely a time killer? Do I really think I will rediscover my voice after all these years? I need to leave out crumbs of bread to attract the little bird. Or maybe more drastic action is required, a lighted torch and raised pitchfork to flush him from the ruins.
An angry mob gathers at the foot of the the hill where he is holed up, but they lack the courage to drive him from his haven. They cower in his shadow beneath the august moon, in a light that leaves blood the color of oil. He curses the stars and scribbles words into a wrinkled and muddied notebook. Children run wailing from him whenever they stumble upon his huddled form, reciting the words with a voice like a raven caw.
Whatever was meant was left behind, whatever was given was taken, whatever was foul was left to fester. I did not want it any more, could not take it any more than I could leave it, could not make do with what was left, could not eclipse what demanded to be seen. And now when the pressure lets up, nothing comes out. There is a requirement for conflict, a necessity for nihilism, a preternatural lust for the proper and prim. I did not ask for these misfits but bore them in spite; I much more preferred exposed fields and ramshackle huts sinking into the fallows. Is that a word, is that a place, is that a face familiar in the lineup of my suspects? Yes sir, right there; that word accosted me on the night of the 17th, in the cool light of day, may the titmouse be my witness.
He is grinning at me now, that skull; he is having a good ol’ time.
Now, the skull spectates on my morning ritual of writing. What a heroic waste of time, it says from the vacancies that were once its eyes. The skull serves as a reminder of how quickly all of me, except my bones, will drain into the soil and transition to something else. What else? Why do I come here each morning to ? Is this merely a time killer? Do I really think I will rediscover my voice after all these years? I need to leave out crumbs of bread to attract the little bird. Or maybe more drastic action is required, a lighted torch and raised pitchfork to flush him from the ruins.
An angry mob gathers at the foot of the the hill where he is holed up, but they lack the courage to drive him from his haven. They cower in his shadow beneath the august moon, in a light that leaves blood the color of oil. He curses the stars and scribbles words into a wrinkled and muddied notebook. Children run wailing from him whenever they stumble upon his huddled form, reciting the words with a voice like a raven caw.
Whatever was meant was left behind, whatever was given was taken, whatever was foul was left to fester. I did not want it any more, could not take it any more than I could leave it, could not make do with what was left, could not eclipse what demanded to be seen. And now when the pressure lets up, nothing comes out. There is a requirement for conflict, a necessity for nihilism, a preternatural lust for the proper and prim. I did not ask for these misfits but bore them in spite; I much more preferred exposed fields and ramshackle huts sinking into the fallows. Is that a word, is that a place, is that a face familiar in the lineup of my suspects? Yes sir, right there; that word accosted me on the night of the 17th, in the cool light of day, may the titmouse be my witness.
He is grinning at me now, that skull; he is having a good ol’ time.
Friday, July 12, 2013
Shock that Draws
These images from the dark are like piercings of a needle beneath my fingernails. It is an addictive pain, a shock that draws one in, that exposes a whole other animalistic level to the self and to the dark. As a teenager, I crossed town on foot to the railroad tracks and the devil house behind the trees to seek the mystery of the unknown. Now the dark is much closer to home, small but necessary, an ebb and flow. The dichotomy of micrology versus macrology is merely due to the fact that each stares at the other through a different side of the lens.
I want to stop. I want to drop. I need to roll. Put the fire out. Crawl baby, crawl on your hands and knees. Sprawl to the needs. Drawl with the feeds coming in across this satellite haze.
I want to stop. I want to drop. I need to roll. Put the fire out. Crawl baby, crawl on your hands and knees. Sprawl to the needs. Drawl with the feeds coming in across this satellite haze.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Getting My Land Legs
My creative funny bone has not been smacked in quite some time. How do I get back to that place inside my head, how do I find that playground of my youth? My lack of inspiration is evident even in the storyline of my dreams. Now, when I feel bored, I reach for the cheap escape of “Desperate Housewives”, or catch “Sherlock Holmes” at the discount theater, or I play hours of solitaire on my iPhone. I search for high-priced gadgets to distract me, while what my soul really requires is something as simple as pen and paper. We compromise: an hour on my laptop for a little stream-of-consciousness. The lowest priced effort for the would-be writer.
Out of the morning mist emerges a tea house, about a hundred yards from the docks. Inside gather Harajuku girls, professors, grandmothers. Drifters slink to the shadows of the back room, sipping their oolongs and nibbling dried scones like the rats down at the pier.
In the front room by the portrait window, huddled in overstuffed chairs with their feet propped on footstools, the silver-hairs click their knitting needles and unravel infinite balls of yarn. I sneak down the back hallway towards the store room, riddled with crates of tea. There’s a cracked cellar door leading to the basement, where century old wine casks lay broken amid the cobwebs and dirt floor, the stains of their contents still discernable on floor, or is that blood? In the center sits a small round table with the melted stub of a candle where the tea shop owner escapes from the bustle of the shop to read through his wife’s diary.
I leave through the coal chute and head further inland. Dogs bark all over town, lunging into the dark but snapping back in mid-leap as they reach the end of their leashes. Dark clouds roll in, electricity in the air, green skies ready to hatch. Children on their bikes pedal hard for the hill from which to watch the storm pass. One giant lightning rod, that hill. They don’t know the danger in which they put themselves. Twelve years ago Sally was struck and lived, followed by her prolonged hospital stay with her fried nerves, muscle twitches, blackouts. People plied her for visions embellished on her through the lightning bolt. She waited for supersensory abilities, but no such magic came. She told them that the rare honor of being struck by lightning and living was like a steel rod being pounded from the crown of her skull through her spine and out through her heel bone, and that was all, yet people still asked her if she could pass on a message to their dead mothers, what day of the year they should plan for their wedding to ensure a lasting marriage, or where they could find their car keys. In frustration she started to make up answers. She was right almost every time.
Out of the morning mist emerges a tea house, about a hundred yards from the docks. Inside gather Harajuku girls, professors, grandmothers. Drifters slink to the shadows of the back room, sipping their oolongs and nibbling dried scones like the rats down at the pier.
In the front room by the portrait window, huddled in overstuffed chairs with their feet propped on footstools, the silver-hairs click their knitting needles and unravel infinite balls of yarn. I sneak down the back hallway towards the store room, riddled with crates of tea. There’s a cracked cellar door leading to the basement, where century old wine casks lay broken amid the cobwebs and dirt floor, the stains of their contents still discernable on floor, or is that blood? In the center sits a small round table with the melted stub of a candle where the tea shop owner escapes from the bustle of the shop to read through his wife’s diary.
I leave through the coal chute and head further inland. Dogs bark all over town, lunging into the dark but snapping back in mid-leap as they reach the end of their leashes. Dark clouds roll in, electricity in the air, green skies ready to hatch. Children on their bikes pedal hard for the hill from which to watch the storm pass. One giant lightning rod, that hill. They don’t know the danger in which they put themselves. Twelve years ago Sally was struck and lived, followed by her prolonged hospital stay with her fried nerves, muscle twitches, blackouts. People plied her for visions embellished on her through the lightning bolt. She waited for supersensory abilities, but no such magic came. She told them that the rare honor of being struck by lightning and living was like a steel rod being pounded from the crown of her skull through her spine and out through her heel bone, and that was all, yet people still asked her if she could pass on a message to their dead mothers, what day of the year they should plan for their wedding to ensure a lasting marriage, or where they could find their car keys. In frustration she started to make up answers. She was right almost every time.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Eleven Years Ago Today
Every now and then, I’ll think I’ll post a past entry from my journals – one, five, ten years ago to the day. Like this entry, March 11th, 1999:
I am so good at deleting, better than at writing. I just wrote several lines about a coworker, then turned back and deleted them because it was so much telling. I realized that a true writer would have painted a picture of this person and let the reader make judgments like "he was awkward in social situations." Why not write the scene of him standing at the foot of my cube, looking over my papers, standing with that poker face of his, not revealing a thought or expression, just a stone wall face with the sharp cut of his nose and standing there like a guard before the gate.
Where's the creativity, hiding back there in the shack at the far end of a field gone fallow? Back when I was ten or twelve, my friend and I would run out across the tall grass to a wooden shack. Pull dead weeds and sticks and stuff them into a coffee can, then strike a match and watch it burn. The smell of burning grass, the sudden crackle of the flames, the smoke chugging out of the can like the smoke stack from a steam engine. In the shack we would find wrinkled clippings of naked women from Playboy magazine, the clippings handled so many times by grubby adolescent fingers that it'd grown soft, almost like cloth. Out there we also stashed away the compass and hunting knife that I stole from my dad’s top dresser drawer.
I pause, stare into the art prints on the walls of my den, music softly playing, the flickering of the candle on the desk, staring off into space and realizing that theme and meaning in a story must be drawn between the actions, must be plucked from the observances and the events, and I look off into all the shapes around me and try to depict the patterns, and wonder if any can really be drawn, wonder what truths I can really claim to see. I realize after a while that it is a waste of time. Why try to write, when I know that I don't have any truths for my readers. Perhaps that's why I don't have any readers. The act of writing has become merely masturbation, a self-absorbed indulgence of my sensibilities.
Bang! The starting pistol goes off and I launch myself out across the field, past the shack and over the smooth waters of the pond and up into the air above the woods. Then dive down into the dirt and the grubs and the Indian burial stones trod on by the tennis shoes of boys out to find beer cans in the weeds. I drank beer out in the woods until I was thrilled with liquor and stars, wavering in the rings of friends, crushing cans and tossing them away and grabbing another. Then off into the night in our cars, creeping down quiet suburban streets, past the darkened houses where the girls we loved slept.
I pause. When I write, I write for myself. My children play outside the door to the den, trying to draw me out to play, but I am playing here, in the space just above the keyboard, where my fingers dip and weave through the air like a dressmaker or a potter or the baker kneading his dough. It was something in the beauty of the words all scattered across the screen, forming shapes by the paragraph breaks and the curve of the letter "c". The languor of the dipping letters and the crossed T’s like a lifeline on the palm of one who had died too young.
I am so good at deleting, better than at writing. I just wrote several lines about a coworker, then turned back and deleted them because it was so much telling. I realized that a true writer would have painted a picture of this person and let the reader make judgments like "he was awkward in social situations." Why not write the scene of him standing at the foot of my cube, looking over my papers, standing with that poker face of his, not revealing a thought or expression, just a stone wall face with the sharp cut of his nose and standing there like a guard before the gate.
Where's the creativity, hiding back there in the shack at the far end of a field gone fallow? Back when I was ten or twelve, my friend and I would run out across the tall grass to a wooden shack. Pull dead weeds and sticks and stuff them into a coffee can, then strike a match and watch it burn. The smell of burning grass, the sudden crackle of the flames, the smoke chugging out of the can like the smoke stack from a steam engine. In the shack we would find wrinkled clippings of naked women from Playboy magazine, the clippings handled so many times by grubby adolescent fingers that it'd grown soft, almost like cloth. Out there we also stashed away the compass and hunting knife that I stole from my dad’s top dresser drawer.
I pause, stare into the art prints on the walls of my den, music softly playing, the flickering of the candle on the desk, staring off into space and realizing that theme and meaning in a story must be drawn between the actions, must be plucked from the observances and the events, and I look off into all the shapes around me and try to depict the patterns, and wonder if any can really be drawn, wonder what truths I can really claim to see. I realize after a while that it is a waste of time. Why try to write, when I know that I don't have any truths for my readers. Perhaps that's why I don't have any readers. The act of writing has become merely masturbation, a self-absorbed indulgence of my sensibilities.
Bang! The starting pistol goes off and I launch myself out across the field, past the shack and over the smooth waters of the pond and up into the air above the woods. Then dive down into the dirt and the grubs and the Indian burial stones trod on by the tennis shoes of boys out to find beer cans in the weeds. I drank beer out in the woods until I was thrilled with liquor and stars, wavering in the rings of friends, crushing cans and tossing them away and grabbing another. Then off into the night in our cars, creeping down quiet suburban streets, past the darkened houses where the girls we loved slept.
I pause. When I write, I write for myself. My children play outside the door to the den, trying to draw me out to play, but I am playing here, in the space just above the keyboard, where my fingers dip and weave through the air like a dressmaker or a potter or the baker kneading his dough. It was something in the beauty of the words all scattered across the screen, forming shapes by the paragraph breaks and the curve of the letter "c". The languor of the dipping letters and the crossed T’s like a lifeline on the palm of one who had died too young.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Expeditions in the Cold
Arctic air slid down off the iron range and pooled around the Twin Cities. Each morning I woke up with my steaming pot of coffee and turned on the radio to hear the latest temps: -19 degrees, with a high of -5 planned for later in the day. It was warm inside, the furnace almost never turning off. I went down to check on it, touching one of its aluminum vents, and quickly drew back my singed fingertip. At least if I burned down the house, I would be warmed in its glow until the fire died out, and who cares what happens after that? The wind chill would carry me off to someplace else.
In the evenings, I drank brandy and escaped this place altogether. From my den, with snifter in hand and a few good books spread around my lazy-boy, I could dip in and out of various novels that had somehow escaped me in my youth; “Treasure Island,” “A Wrinkle in Time.” Sometimes Jung would interpret the symbols of my dreams. When I really stretched out these nights, I picked up my pen and that handmade little notebook my sister had given me years ago. I wrote down the string of words that came from who knows where, telling me things that I always had trouble understanding. If I was lucky, the ink would dry quickly enough to freeze the feeling to be deciphered later, but more often than not the dry air evaporated all essence from the ink so that I was left with a bunch of unintelligible scribbles.
Huh. Interesting. Something is forcing me to remain here writing. I keep trying to go on the internet but get failure messages, pages that can’t be found, proxies that can’t be bypassed. This is good; I’m excited about this news. Somebody is sabotaging me. At least something out there is listening, a paramour of the other side blitzing my motherboard, sending binary critters to rewire my router to guide me down a different route--to here: another empty page, but with words poised at the ready.
The cold even gets to me here, in a room puckered dry from a space heater. I make believe this cold comes from arctic winds howling around a science outpost, a circle of tents huddled on ice-flats at the tip of the world. We are beyond the rim of the sun’s route. There is hardly any sign of life on these stretches of ice, and I would never have realized, without having been here, that this also results in a lack of death. I have always mourned the lack of death; it leaves nothing for contrast. We have come in search of oil, at least that is the mission of the team that has allowed me to tag along to report on their progress. I come in search of something completely different, something captured in oracular visions, in hieroglyphs that modern words can’t translate, and by a side of myself I let few people see. It is only within the arctic circle that I feel safe enough to explore it further.
That is, until the brandy runs out, and the candle sputters down, and I fall asleep in the chair. I wake to the radio forecast: a warming trend is on the way. Finally. I wonder what a thaw will bring.
In the evenings, I drank brandy and escaped this place altogether. From my den, with snifter in hand and a few good books spread around my lazy-boy, I could dip in and out of various novels that had somehow escaped me in my youth; “Treasure Island,” “A Wrinkle in Time.” Sometimes Jung would interpret the symbols of my dreams. When I really stretched out these nights, I picked up my pen and that handmade little notebook my sister had given me years ago. I wrote down the string of words that came from who knows where, telling me things that I always had trouble understanding. If I was lucky, the ink would dry quickly enough to freeze the feeling to be deciphered later, but more often than not the dry air evaporated all essence from the ink so that I was left with a bunch of unintelligible scribbles.
Huh. Interesting. Something is forcing me to remain here writing. I keep trying to go on the internet but get failure messages, pages that can’t be found, proxies that can’t be bypassed. This is good; I’m excited about this news. Somebody is sabotaging me. At least something out there is listening, a paramour of the other side blitzing my motherboard, sending binary critters to rewire my router to guide me down a different route--to here: another empty page, but with words poised at the ready.
The cold even gets to me here, in a room puckered dry from a space heater. I make believe this cold comes from arctic winds howling around a science outpost, a circle of tents huddled on ice-flats at the tip of the world. We are beyond the rim of the sun’s route. There is hardly any sign of life on these stretches of ice, and I would never have realized, without having been here, that this also results in a lack of death. I have always mourned the lack of death; it leaves nothing for contrast. We have come in search of oil, at least that is the mission of the team that has allowed me to tag along to report on their progress. I come in search of something completely different, something captured in oracular visions, in hieroglyphs that modern words can’t translate, and by a side of myself I let few people see. It is only within the arctic circle that I feel safe enough to explore it further.
That is, until the brandy runs out, and the candle sputters down, and I fall asleep in the chair. I wake to the radio forecast: a warming trend is on the way. Finally. I wonder what a thaw will bring.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Figurines
Once in a grand ol’ while, I see flowers burst from the carpet, blue skies wash across the ceiling, birds alight on the stems of reading lamps. Grasses, fields, clover, goldfish swimming in the candle pillars. Light the candle. The goldfish flicker and flutter. Dream of angels, devils, the wash of sacred water between my toes. I grew jungles out of potted palms, bayous in the turtle tank. The turtle spoke to me, “Mr. Wood, you’ve neglected me for a while. Don’t get me wrong, I can live off of two meals a week, but look at my paltry legs. Look at the thin reed of my neck. Where once there was strength, now there is decrepitude. The Barrister is coming today to have a word with you. I’ve asked him to be kind, as you have been to me over these last dozen years or so. But today is a day of reckoning, and the balance of owner vs. tenant, pet vs. man, slave vs. master will be pitched on its head. So I leave you with that forewarning, and for now, good bye.” The turtle withdrew his head into his shell, tucked in his legs so that only the tips of his claws peaked out, and curled his tail against is hind leg. How I wished I could have a shell.
So now I must wait for my visit from the Barrister; how shall I waste my time? Books wait on the shelves; Plato’s Republic, Machiavelli’s Prince, Winnie the Pooh, but instead I reached for the etch-a-sketch. Such confines of control, only left or right, up or down, and the illusion of a curved line which is really only miniscule right angles traded off, one for the other. I drew a mountain, a palm tree, and a little house in the foothills. Then I turned it upside down, gave it a good shake, and it was all gone, mostly, swept by a sand storm.
How many figurines do I have in my room? Not pictures, but actual shapes? They come out of the woodwork, stretch their heads, blaze their colors and shake free their loose feathers to drift upon the floor. The parrot of the golden breast and fiery wings. I’ve waited a year for him to utter a word, but he only sits deep in thought. Across the way from him, the sullen Eeyore with droopy ears and eyes, a little tuft of black hair perched on the peak of his head like a bird’s nest, though surely not the parrot’s; he would require a more noble homestead to prop up those heavy thoughts that plague him. Then across the way, a naked man sitting on a rock, pitch black skin, great strength of limbs but weak of mind. We move on to the upper bookshelf, with no books displayed but only the artifacts I’ve gathered over the years, like my Grandmother’s English tea pot, two Japanese tea cups, a pipe that was a gift when I turned thirty—but back now to figurines; floating above these artifacts is a porcelain fairy with delicate lace wings, a halo of golden curls, with delicate and breakable features still intact.
There are more figures coming out of the fog. Three Grecian women with clasped hands encircle a pot, with no plants inside, only empty space. The bronzed faces of a man and woman, pitted at opposite sides of the room. And lastly, a rubber iguana perched on the window sill; I stare at him for hours to catch him moving, but he doesn’t even blink. Until I look away, at which time he scurries across the room into the palm fronds.
There's a knock at the door, and the turtle comes out of his shell. It must be the Barrister.
So now I must wait for my visit from the Barrister; how shall I waste my time? Books wait on the shelves; Plato’s Republic, Machiavelli’s Prince, Winnie the Pooh, but instead I reached for the etch-a-sketch. Such confines of control, only left or right, up or down, and the illusion of a curved line which is really only miniscule right angles traded off, one for the other. I drew a mountain, a palm tree, and a little house in the foothills. Then I turned it upside down, gave it a good shake, and it was all gone, mostly, swept by a sand storm.
How many figurines do I have in my room? Not pictures, but actual shapes? They come out of the woodwork, stretch their heads, blaze their colors and shake free their loose feathers to drift upon the floor. The parrot of the golden breast and fiery wings. I’ve waited a year for him to utter a word, but he only sits deep in thought. Across the way from him, the sullen Eeyore with droopy ears and eyes, a little tuft of black hair perched on the peak of his head like a bird’s nest, though surely not the parrot’s; he would require a more noble homestead to prop up those heavy thoughts that plague him. Then across the way, a naked man sitting on a rock, pitch black skin, great strength of limbs but weak of mind. We move on to the upper bookshelf, with no books displayed but only the artifacts I’ve gathered over the years, like my Grandmother’s English tea pot, two Japanese tea cups, a pipe that was a gift when I turned thirty—but back now to figurines; floating above these artifacts is a porcelain fairy with delicate lace wings, a halo of golden curls, with delicate and breakable features still intact.
There are more figures coming out of the fog. Three Grecian women with clasped hands encircle a pot, with no plants inside, only empty space. The bronzed faces of a man and woman, pitted at opposite sides of the room. And lastly, a rubber iguana perched on the window sill; I stare at him for hours to catch him moving, but he doesn’t even blink. Until I look away, at which time he scurries across the room into the palm fronds.
There's a knock at the door, and the turtle comes out of his shell. It must be the Barrister.
Friday, January 02, 2009
The Sacrosanct Flamingo of Christmas Past - 2003
Christmas day in the year of our lord, what’s his name, 2003. December 25th marks the Birth of the Unconquered Sun, Sol Invictus, per Aurelius the Greek, heralding the first day upon which the sun hangs in the sky a little bit longer than the day before. What better place to celebrate the sun than in Florida, in my mother’s villa in her gated retirement community in Lake Wales? Her back yard butts up to the ninth tee of their country club golf course. The day rang in with the ping of fat-headed titanium drivers and Titleist golf balls soaring towards the immaculate green.
Leave it up to a mother to take in her wayward son on Christmas, so soon after my divorce and I have no place to go.
I sit in the sunroom waiting for sunset, palm trees silhouetted against a pink sky. For twenty minutes I watch the shifting reflections on the windows, revealing a sallow middle-aged man from the north. Despite the tropical surroundings, I know just where I’m from. But reflections can be deceptive in the shifting light of sunset. The glass reflects what is happening here and now, but I choose not to see it clearly. Instead I see what might have been; Christmas by the fireside with the wife and child that never were. I don’t blame myself for filling the vacancy in the glass with imaginary things.
Reflections are not limited by time or place. This dayroom is now an atrium in a Roman hall, and I see in the glass a woman reclined against my arm. She smells like Gardenias. Dark hair falls in ringlets down her back. Face pale, lips like ripe plums. We lean comfortably into each other, eyes heavy, smiles of contentment just starting to creep into our faces when the sun dips a little further below the horizon, and she’s gone. The window shows the dark outside.
Time for a walk. I pass down Tumescent Lane, dodging the mass exodus of golfers in their cavalry of golf carts, beating a retreat from the fairways to their homes, barbarians of social security waving their clubs, drug induced disciples of the goddess Medica. I walk long and far, out to the edges of Phase 2 waiting to be transformed from swampland into villas, out where the sky opens up like a great black cavern and stars ricochet off the road. This swamp is my church, these stars my epistolary, far more so than the dismal Lutheran church we attended earlier in the evening for Christmas service. The congregation sang boastful praise of the strength and awe of Jesus. I didn’t know the words to sing along, but they sounded too much like rap music, a cocky gang banger adorned with gold and bling, slinging rhymes of his fame, strength, power, and riches.
I turn back towards my mother’s house. How can I question where He is leading me when I don’t believe in Him? But I do believe in something. Something expansive. Something all knowing. Something that scattered the stars into the sky, that programmed the cells of the human body, that molded the brain and left it as vast and unknown as the ocean floor. Maybe I believe in the Roman’s Saturnalia and a topsy-turvy world where I’m 36 and sleeping in a pull out cot in my mother’s spare bedroom. Maybe I believe in the imaginary characters I cast as understudies for the people I’ve chased off the stage, and maybe I care more for reflections of the sun rather than staring directly into it.
I do believe in fairies. I do believe in fairies. I do believe in fairies. I do . . .
Leave it up to a mother to take in her wayward son on Christmas, so soon after my divorce and I have no place to go.
I sit in the sunroom waiting for sunset, palm trees silhouetted against a pink sky. For twenty minutes I watch the shifting reflections on the windows, revealing a sallow middle-aged man from the north. Despite the tropical surroundings, I know just where I’m from. But reflections can be deceptive in the shifting light of sunset. The glass reflects what is happening here and now, but I choose not to see it clearly. Instead I see what might have been; Christmas by the fireside with the wife and child that never were. I don’t blame myself for filling the vacancy in the glass with imaginary things.
Reflections are not limited by time or place. This dayroom is now an atrium in a Roman hall, and I see in the glass a woman reclined against my arm. She smells like Gardenias. Dark hair falls in ringlets down her back. Face pale, lips like ripe plums. We lean comfortably into each other, eyes heavy, smiles of contentment just starting to creep into our faces when the sun dips a little further below the horizon, and she’s gone. The window shows the dark outside.
Time for a walk. I pass down Tumescent Lane, dodging the mass exodus of golfers in their cavalry of golf carts, beating a retreat from the fairways to their homes, barbarians of social security waving their clubs, drug induced disciples of the goddess Medica. I walk long and far, out to the edges of Phase 2 waiting to be transformed from swampland into villas, out where the sky opens up like a great black cavern and stars ricochet off the road. This swamp is my church, these stars my epistolary, far more so than the dismal Lutheran church we attended earlier in the evening for Christmas service. The congregation sang boastful praise of the strength and awe of Jesus. I didn’t know the words to sing along, but they sounded too much like rap music, a cocky gang banger adorned with gold and bling, slinging rhymes of his fame, strength, power, and riches.
I turn back towards my mother’s house. How can I question where He is leading me when I don’t believe in Him? But I do believe in something. Something expansive. Something all knowing. Something that scattered the stars into the sky, that programmed the cells of the human body, that molded the brain and left it as vast and unknown as the ocean floor. Maybe I believe in the Roman’s Saturnalia and a topsy-turvy world where I’m 36 and sleeping in a pull out cot in my mother’s spare bedroom. Maybe I believe in the imaginary characters I cast as understudies for the people I’ve chased off the stage, and maybe I care more for reflections of the sun rather than staring directly into it.
I do believe in fairies. I do believe in fairies. I do believe in fairies. I do . . .
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Beware the Fireflies
He didn’t know anything about writing anymore. He hardly even read. So why did he sit down every morning at the laptop and pretend like he was going to write? Foolishly optimistic. Maybe he could just stream-of-consciousness write:
No matter what, whoever you may be and wherever you go, you will find little monsters hidden in the brush. Green emerald glossy eyes with sparks shooting from them when they see you stumble into the grove. The smoking embers of last night’s bonfire still curl skyward, unstirred by wind or bird’s wing or buzz of insects. He falls to the weeds near the ashes, lies on his back, looks skyward and watches the slow stream of smoke dissipate into the dirty blue, and remembers.
We piled up pillows at the bottom of the staircase and jumped. That wondrous sensation of falling from the sky and landing gracefully in a mound of silk pillows imported from the Orient. The darkness that fell when you closed your eyes, and the warmth when you reached out blindly with your hand and took hold of your friend’s arm to pull you up, there in the pillows with you, her eyes also closed and the sound of her playful giggling in your years, and you fall back into greater darkness as the memory fades.
There. A pinprick of light in the black velvet curtain. Help him. Pull him out of it with a yank on the arm, maybe even something whispered in his ear. He won’t look, won’t open his eyes, won’t betray with blush in his cheeks, but you will feel it against his chest, the rapid drumming of his heart in its cage. Shit, cliché’s come out after dark like fireflies, so pretty, so tempting to chase out across the fields.
No matter what, whoever you may be and wherever you go, you will find little monsters hidden in the brush. Green emerald glossy eyes with sparks shooting from them when they see you stumble into the grove. The smoking embers of last night’s bonfire still curl skyward, unstirred by wind or bird’s wing or buzz of insects. He falls to the weeds near the ashes, lies on his back, looks skyward and watches the slow stream of smoke dissipate into the dirty blue, and remembers.
We piled up pillows at the bottom of the staircase and jumped. That wondrous sensation of falling from the sky and landing gracefully in a mound of silk pillows imported from the Orient. The darkness that fell when you closed your eyes, and the warmth when you reached out blindly with your hand and took hold of your friend’s arm to pull you up, there in the pillows with you, her eyes also closed and the sound of her playful giggling in your years, and you fall back into greater darkness as the memory fades.
There. A pinprick of light in the black velvet curtain. Help him. Pull him out of it with a yank on the arm, maybe even something whispered in his ear. He won’t look, won’t open his eyes, won’t betray with blush in his cheeks, but you will feel it against his chest, the rapid drumming of his heart in its cage. Shit, cliché’s come out after dark like fireflies, so pretty, so tempting to chase out across the fields.
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