from ali : kickstart to the new year?

(shamelessly cutting/pasting recent writing from the personal blog)

I am pecking this out with painfully slow consideration on my aging iPhone, a stuttering thumb war for remembrance on a doll sized keyboard. Each word, too, is jarred by the interruption of a nose thrust into my elbow with clockwork regularity - a wet nose, alternately snuffling inquiry or suggesting with various degrees of forcefulness an alternative activity in the form of a much-loved and consequently tooth-pocked rubber ball.

The damp nose and equally damp ball belong to Chester. They are essential parts of his evening routine, a routine consisting primarily of loose-limbed ambling from one room to the next, broken by sudden spasms of gymnastic, clawing energy aimed nose and teeth first at the unsuspecting ball or an unsupervised pair of rolled up socks or that most treasured of fleeting toys, the stray leaf snatched discreetly mid-toilet breaks or tandem walks. Acorns, too, and fraying bits of stick are smuggled in - and once, nearly, a dried out mud dauber nest - cherished contrabands, deliciously forbidden diminutive playmates to be tucked away innocently between paws and carpet when he raises a self-conscious gaze to meet my silently laughing one.

It is this almost human gaze that surprises me the most, seeing comprehension and strangely familiar emotions now flickering in mute eyes that were once just bright little brown buttons of generic puppy cuteness, as broadly adorable as those on a grocery aisle Hallmark card.  They have become pointed with personality, at times conveying unmistakeable boredom as he throws head down on paws and sidles out a heavy sigh and sideways shrugging glance towards and then immediately away from my deeply uninteresting human busyness; at others, taut with accompanying full-body alertness, following every sway of a toy dangling in mid-air before its inevitable fling across the room or field; illumined with utter unspoiled happiness too in these moments, and always roaming the hope of them at me later, offering the argument with a nudge and peaked eyebrows that surely there is nothing more joyful in life than playing. (About which he may be right).  To be fair, too, they can infuriate me, crackling with unmalicious but exultant defiance as he dances just beyond the reach of a confining leash or reprimanding hand - but when, or rather if, the hand has finally made its point, they are quickly downcast, only tentatively tossing upward the apologetic and heart-melting hope for restored favor... which is of course never slow to follow.

And lastly, the all important look - the one I am getting now, unwavering and urgent and often accompanied with vocal reinforcement if ineffective - the look that says it is time to visit the giant doggie toilet we humans laughingly refer to as a front yard.

"Coming home"

I need help with this. I'm not completely happy with it, but I can't exactly say why. Maybe I say too much? Need to leave more to the imagination? Or is it all too out of context? Thoughts and criticisms are appreciated, I am not a good fiction writer (yet, anyway).

His feet barely rose from the hard ground.

“Stand tall,” they used to snap. “Don’t shuffle,” they’d say. “Lift your steps high.”

But that was when his hair was dark and thick and waving in the wind, when his back was straight and his eyes bright and his heart full of hope and love and promise for the future.

That was years ago. Decades ago.

The old man shuffled slow, now, puffs of dust rising from under boots worn and cracking and caked with the mud and dust of mile upon weary mile. His back bowed under a faded and patched sack, only half full. Strands of gray, thin hair escaped from his shapeless hat.

Now he came to a crossroads, where the dirt road crossed a paved highway. A truck rattled by, breaking the quiet. The old man paused, looking one way and another. He shielded watery eyes against the glare of the midday sun, to where the highway disappeared in the curve of the horizon.

The road was empty again.

“It’s the same road,” he said softly, looking at the ragged-coated dog at his side. “The same road, but it’s not the same, somehow. It’s all grown up…”

He trailed off. The dog whined. But when he looked back there was nothing there. Just dirt and weeds and sunshine and an abandoned stone house, crumbling back into the earth.

He crossed the road.

***

She sat motionless in the recliner in the front window, face turned full into the sunlight, hands resting in her lap. A blanket was tucked around her feet.

A clock ticked loudly from the mantel, beside a framed wedding picture of a girl with straight, black hair and a boy with piercing eyes. The picture was old, yellowed even under the glass.

“I’ll be fixing your lunch now,” the nurse called from the kitchen, but the old woman did not stir. The nurse watched her from the doorway, then reached for the phone.

Still the old woman looked into the sunlight with unseeing eyes, hands folded. She felt the warmth, but long ago she stopped seeing it. But as the world around her grew dim, things far away became clear.

How long had it been since she took up her post in the window, watching and waiting? But she was young then, the boy a child. Always she sat there in the afternoons, watching for him to come home from school, she told him, but everyone knew different. And the years passed and the boy grew into a man and still she watched.

“Either he’s dead or he found himself some far-away woman and isn’t ever coming home,” a young woman told her aunt one summer afternoon when the two passed on the street. “And there she is, still watching. It’s time someone told her the truth.”

But the older woman shook her head.

“He didn’t forget her. Never did a man love a woman the way he did her. Death took him for sure.”

And they did tell her, each in turn, walking gravely up the walk to her front porch. They told her it was their duty, that she was clinging to false hope, that it was time to accept what God had willed.

And she’d listen and nod with gravity and refill their glasses and show them to the door.

And she refused to wear the black of mourning.

But she never told them that at night she looked for him, running over far-away beaches in her mind, searching among the bleached bones half-buried in the sand. She searched through jungle vines, peered into vacant eyes of countless men on crowded city streets. And on some dark nights when her spirit was heavy, she searched lamp-lit homes in case someone had stolen his heart from her, too.

But she never found his bones among the others, and so she clung to hope.

Now she was old, and long ago she stopped speaking of him. But still she watched. Some people wondered if she even knew what she waited for.

But this day was different. Her anxiety was palpable. Even the nurse kept glancing out the window, wondering what the old woman knew.

She couldn’t see the robins scratching at the soft earth after last night’s rainfall. But now she saw him in her mind. And now she watched his slow progress, watched him pause at the crossroads, watched his foot catch on a rut in the old road. And with each step she willed him forward.

And when he turned off dirt road and his boots crunched on gravel, she stood, her feet following paths worn deep into her memory. She stepped out the door, down two steps, along the narrow walk, out onto the road. She stumbled forward, arms outstretched. The sun was hot on her face.

A car swerved around her, someone laid on the horn. And now the world around her was intruding, and she couldn’t see him anymore. She wavered, legs trembling. She couldn’t remember which way to go. She felt the tears come; she was too weak to stop them.

And then she felt his presence, smelled his sweat and heard his footsteps. And the old man’s steps were lighter, when he took her arm in his and turned her back, toward the old house.

“I told you I’d come home again,” he said the words soft.

***

The son walked quickly through the kitchen, to the front room where she sat day after day.

But her chair was empty and the front door stood open. And on the old porch swing he saw them, the old man’s arms wrapped around her. Both were smiling, and the years had rolled away, and he recognized his own face in the old man’s, and wondered how he missed his mother’s beauty all these years.

“Mother?” he asked, but she did not speak again.

“What did I tell you?” the older aunt asked her niece, now graying herself, at the funeral. “Such a wedding that was, years and years ago. I was just a child but even I could see the way he worshiped her.”

And when the sod laid back over the fresh-dug dirt and the chairs packed away and the flowers moved back to the house where he had played and grown, the son stood alone at their grave, reading words scrawled across pages of old and faded notebook paper, on the back of receipts and envelopes, on drawing paper and blank-paper books with the spines cracking: Words that told of a lifetime of coming home.

That gate was meant to protect...

We bring her to a new house with new corners to explore and a whole pile of boxes perfect for hiding and a rug rolled tight into a tunnel for ambushes and sneak attacks, and all Vesper wants is to jump the low fence into the kitchen, where appliances hide death motors on their dark undersides.

All she saw was the dark coolness calling her, a sort of tunnel her instincts told her to seek out. I saw the motors, the fan blades.

I spent all evening near the fence, pulling her down time and time again, a short-term solution to a long-term problem. I tried distraction; I tried scolding. But the only place she wanted to be was the one place I said she couldn’t go.

My husband said he thought animals must have sin natures, just like us.

And standing there against the wall, watching her obstinate attempts to cross to a place where I knew injury or death was waiting, I thought of all the times I blindly flung myself against a closed door to get something I was convinced I needed.

And I wondered what was on the other side that I couldn’t see; and what dangers lurked in the shadows of what I thought was good.

“Do not be like the horse or like the mule, which have no understanding, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle, else they will not come near you,” the psalmist writes.

Or like a ferret, also without understanding, who runs headlong into death.

Sometimes God puts obstacles in our paths to grow our strength, so that in fighting through them we become stronger, more battle-ready.

Other times it’s a closed gate to separate us from disaster.

I just hope I’m in tune enough with Him to know the difference. And that he keeps pulling me down from the fence when I get too close to the edge.

My Business Papers

I separate the discipline of writing, and the art of writing, and I set them like two irons out to the horizon, to the inconvenient northerly direction of colder moneys. It's been a while since it was my job to write at work, but I find myself again pondering the keys as my fingers linger over their printed plastic concavities. Clicketty-clacketty, the keyboard goes, and I am a train running over the rails. Not one, single, wooden railroad tie is important in itself. Or perhaps each is, but I pass them, take them for granted.

This is business writing; I make business papers. I leave nothing to the imagination. I run everything firmly along the bolted ground. Are these clicking letters noteworthy? Why do I line up these words, like miles behind me, in neatness, in rows, toward a distinct end? They don't make someone think; the thoughts are all had. They can make someone notice but can't make them see. The information is placed here, to go directly there, without mystery.

Is this my creative time, when my words may go where they will go? No. Will more destinations be opened up to the mind than the number of places I am refusing to let it go? No. This is the time when I must write linear thoughts into rectangular formats, bolding the main words, and adding the figures together, till there's nothing left to be thought about, on the subject, no hope but to change the subject to something entirely more interesting.

It takes all the art I can muster not to create - not feel around for inspirations - not grow, not change. Stick to the rails,

clicketty-clack, click-clack,

for the rails go only one

(click-clack)

direction, only one

(click-clack-click) place.

Clicketty-clack, click-clack, click-clack,

and that's my reader's destination,

click-clack, click-clack,

and I will put him to sleep with the swaying (click-clack) of the rectangular four-walled boxcar, with its right-angled, locked doors, and its dusty, uniform furniture.

When my passenger wakes he will wish to step down to the platform and stretch his legs, and thank the sky and the air for still being merely there in every explorable direction. He will want to do anything but ride on a rail. He will seek any activity but reading.

But till said arrival, necessarily, I will clicketty-clacketty-clickingly tick out and away to the hard iron skyline of my business papers.

Of wild mint and berries, a bouquet of grace

It’s hot, and I’m hot, my gray tank top is clinging to my back and my calves are spattered with mud from the water-logged trails of the forest I just left.

It’s cooler in there, under the countless leaves of countless trees, where ferns grow thick and moss clings to bark and stone and sunlight falls in patches. But I ended up on the wrong trail and it dumped me out here, on a winding road in the hot sunshine of a July morning just before noon, still blocks from home.

I have to hurry, which just makes it worse, because I have $2 left of this week’s grocery allotment and I want to spend it at the farmer’s market behind the bank; it closes at noon.

And I’m frustrated because I had so many good plans for this morning. I was going to hike up the ridge behind my house, find a bench or boulder to rest on, and commune with God surrounded by His handiwork, then head back down to home before the morning was gone.

But then I had three paths to choose, and I knew the left one went home but I’d been there before so I took the center – and now it was late and I never found that boulder and my own silly head narrated every step and made the silence loud.

It is the flowers that I notice first; white and lacy and, while common, pretty in a simple way. I pause to pick first one, then another, trying not to bruise their stems while I break them off, trying not to crush them with sweaty palms.

Then I see the berries, mostly red but some black, sweet with the taste of childhood summers spent fighting the fire ants and green brier for dewberries along the fence. I step further into the ditch to pluck one, and it was the smell that caught my attention this time.

The entire ditch is growing mint, tall and spindly but so aromatic as I crush the leaves, taste one, and feel the heat recede at its freshness. I’ve been dreaming of mint ever since an enterprising organic farmer handed me a leaf at an organic farmers’ market in Pittsburgh. I’ve been dreaming of planting it against the house, where nothing grows except weeds because it’s rocky and the water pours off the roof and beats down anything that tries to grow up.

And the rest of the way home I’m happy, steps lighter, smell of fresh mint added to my small bouquet giving me energy I didn’t know I had.

I’m still not sure how something as small as wild mint and fence-row berries could make my day, but they did. I spent the rest of the walk home dreaming of chilled white rum poured through crushed berries and garnished with mint; planning future visits to gently pry a few of the plants out of the ditch, carry them home; wonder how many cups of berries that one bush will give me, if there’s enough to freeze or just to top my morning yogurt-and-granola.

Now I’m still dreaming of that drink – I had to head in to work this afternoon and it wouldn’t do to mix those – and I’m also thinking how even though I’d failed to spend any time with Him this morning, anytime reading that Bible I carried through the woods or even talking with Him while I walked (my head chattered too much even for that), He still gave me the little things to make my day beautiful.

I think that’s a little piece of grace, don’t you?

(Photo credit: by me. The nectarines have nothing to do with this post, they just didn't want to be left out. More of my forest adventures are detailed here.)

The Baker Hotel

On July 4th, Taylor, Ryan and Ali broke into the condemned

Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells, Texas.

The following was inspired.

Mistress

taylor

Fingertips placed gingerly on the rim of his glass he looked up at the bartender who appeared as formal as his freshly pressed tuxedo. He imagined that his head would topple off were he to loosen the bow tie for him. He took a final, deep swallow of the whiskey sour. Nodding once when the bartender glanced his way he stood, turned with an over pronounced elegance, and made for the ballroom. He spotted her across the vastness of the room. She felt his eyes on her but would not meet what she knew all to well to be his solemn gaze; a gaze lacking invitation, deep wells of regret hidden behind a stern grey assurance. Regaining his composure, slackening the tightness he felt at the temples, he crossed the luxurious Oriental rug with an air of royalty. He brushed past her without a word or side glance and approached the lobby's front counter.


"I'll have a room for the night," he said in a rich, careless monotone to the clerk who promptly presented him with the correct key in a correct manner of submissiveness.

She was waiting in the elevator when he stepped into the compartment, languidly dangling a cigarette from her thin fingers.

The operator, in a cracked voice, asked, "Which floor sir?"

Her limpid eyes locked on the key in his hand for a moment and then onto the elevator attendant.

"Seven," she answered for him.

Her voice contained a hint of laughter, was so smooth and sweet that the operator almost overlooked the mocking sneer that played on her lips briefly. Theodore looked at the key in his hand and back to the numbers changing above the sliding doors as they slid quietly past the five floors that separated the lobby from the room. As the lavish compartment shuddered to a halt the young man announced the seventh floor and prompted the shining doors to open with a few well rehearsed flicks of his wrist. Theodore exited first, tucking a crisp, rather large bill in the pale-faced operator's front shirt pocket. She snickered softly under her breath at the tip as she crossed the threshold onto the rich carpet of the hallway. Theodore trembled with an anger absent in his face's unshakable demeanor and marched with military formality towards the room at the far South East wing of the building, his building. At the door he turned to face her for the first time. She smiled and took her own key from her handbag. With apparent fatigue he followed her into the room, modest in size but exquisite in its decor. He sank into a rocking chair of glossy oak and plush brown upholstery. From the side table he lifted his reading glasses and a newspaper.

She cleared her throat and lit one of the cigarettes she kept in the drawer of the nightstand. Refocusing strained attention from the column he had been pretending to read, his gaze fell on her leaning back on her palms, her fingertips pointing away from her, the cigarette dangling from the permanent smirk she wore when they were alone. She crossed her legs and assumed a sloppy pose made enticing only by the cut of the black dress she wore with absolute confidence.

"Why do you keep this up Teddy?"

"I couldn't tell you really. I've been made a fool and I've been controlled. Truth be told I loathe you. You make my skin crawl. The air is thick with some sort of evil when you're around and though I cannot for the life of me reconcile the wrong done when I'm with you there's some latent terror of what would happen if I broke it off and sent you packing."

The corners of her mouth turned sharply upward into a smile that revealed both her overly white teeth and her malicious intent.

"I've broken you. One day everyone will know that you gave to my every whim. They'll know that I owned you."

She rose quietly with unmatched grace from the bed and seemed to glide to him.

"Mr. Kennedy is even lovelier in person than on the television. Don't you think so?," she asked returning to her innocent tone, and settled into his lap.

He cringed as she kissed his temple, her lips brushing against the frames of his glasses. She removed the spectacles, taking note of the lipstick smudged on the arm, and proceeded to set them softly onto the side table as she leaned forward to lie her head on his shoulder. She felt him quiver with unease and smiled inwardly at her ability to make him do so.

"Get out," he said suddenly, "it's done."

He pushed her off his lap and stood straight with newfound courage. The part of him she believed to be broken stood snarling before her and she knew that very moment that she loved him this way. When he stood for something he was a god. When he approached life like he approached business, with a raw masculine ferocity that swallowed up any pretense of calm and the storm began in his eyes, he was the image of Ares before trembling masses. He was rigid with decision and his eyes were merciless. She tried once to meet his contemptuous gaze with a submissive glance but found that she was in fact broken despite her best efforts. Rising to her feet with all the dignity she could muster she said goodbye and leaned in to kiss him. Theodore side-stepped her attempt and strode to the door, swinging it open.

"Get out. Now."

She, without gathering her belongings, walked, crestfallen, through the door and faced him for the last time as he slammed the heavy oak panel in her face. Shame and fear washed over her as she stepped back onto the elevator.

"To the roof please Jim," she nearly whispered to the operator.

"Here you are ma'am."

She quickly and quietly removed her earrings, a gift from Theodore, and slipped them into Jim's front pocket with Teddy's tip. As she stepped off the elevator crisp air hit her face, streaming with tears, and she wept openly. She stared out over Mineral Wells perched on the edge of the cupola bathed in midnight moonlight.

World Enough, And Time

ryan

Viscerally

ali

Sixteen stories of stately brick call us back to an abandoned alley for a couple quick glances tossed across the shoulder before a deft scramble over the wall with its mute NO TRESPASSING frown, running low through weed-eaten courtyards and graffiti-streaked tunnels to lie bellies flattened against the cement spine of its bridge as a siren wails its presence by. Light foot dash forward to shimmy up a column and - pause, dangerously poised, before - jumping over the teeth of a locked iron gate, to squeeze through the slip of the top of a doorway, finally boots-first through a broken window, the kaleidoscope of dismembered glass and full-length mirrors and heavily sagging ceiling shifting underneath tenderly-placed steps into the unknown dusk of what we later learn was the once-swank Brazos Club.

Layers of unbelieving understanding starting to unfold as we creep reverently on past a forest of strangely sobered arches, through dense carved doors in a segue to the soar of the lobby, its chandeliers still swinging like a first loose tooth by one frail nerve, drapes still swooned across windows slicing light into mote-thickened arcs, rugs still smooth as a lick of pomade against the span of its echoing stretch - we fling our voices out in glee and pull them back in whispered awe.

Outstretched hands and feet now feeling out the staircase, pocket knife first, up by one swirl to the lobby's upper ledge, emptied out beside the blinded eyes of iron-lidded elevator shafts dropping silently to stomach-felt depths.

Rooms petal off by function only dimly hinted at, here by a densely rust encrusted typewriter in a jumble of otherwise unidentifiable machinery, there by glass doors folding inward for all the eye like phone booths, us gingerly pushing with our toes at a pile of chairs, running our fingers through the dust icing fitted marble counter tops, casting our questions up at the globed dome of what must have been another ballroom.

With our hints we gather artifacts, typewriter keys tucked in pockets and ashtray bowls carried under arms, the crowning find a lone rocking chair of scrolled arms rolling into curled legs holding straight the perfect line of a brown upholstered back - letting ourselves out the window, histories clutched tight to the chest in a shifty gait past the pit of the pool across the naked stretch of the lawn, our car and triumph a short leap over the chainlink fence beyond. Dangling precariously along the edge of discovery when a car turns the corner, slows, windows rolling down and heads popping out flinging questions - parried to find them harmless observers, envying our bravado and eying our treasures, parting with a word of warning.

Five minutes later sliding into a dinner booth, still dusted with asbestos and exultation -

"Do you know anything about that abandoned hotel around the corner?" we ask the waitress with barely veiling innocence.

"Oh yeah. It's famous around here... people are always trying to break in, but they have someone watching it all the time. It's automatic jail time, if you get caught."

We smile, and order our drinks. In the parking lot, in the dark, a chair rocks slightly.

Prometheus


Oh life -- forbidden flower
by destiny compelled
to grace our mortal bower
so near yet still withheld.


Too long thy dancing feet have fled,
oh all elusive bliss;
ensnared -- when man thy hand has wed
and tasted of thy kiss.


By arts profane and sacred
your secrets are revealed.
Your love shall meet our hatred
and we, in turn, be healed.


Now captured in the moment,
enshrined in walls of time,
your light, our hallowed sacrament,
albeit Adam's crime.


Once flowing through our fingers,
now held within our hand,
your setting ray but lingers
above our radiant land


and tarries o'er Olympus,
whose crimson shoulders rise
drenched by years of living death
where Prometheus dies.

History

There is but one science

There is but one art

There are a multitude of muses, but there are no other mediums

Form and function by our ability to remember

Meaning by our predilection to forget

A Truly Joyous Jumble

Fifteen miles into a bike ride through the country and my knees stop aching. Ten minutes into a swim when the scrapes on my shins quit stinging. Twenty-two years into a lifetime and my soul starts truly yearning for a God that's forever present. Three lines into a blog post and life seems a wonder.

Staring off a monolith into a valley of sticks and greenery. This is where I find myself the weekend of May 29th. Flash forward less than two weeks and I am sitting below a florescent light, at my desk, dreaming of cliffs and clear, bluish-green water. Escaping into the yellowing pages of a Hesse novel is no match for total immersion in water lapping against a rocky shore of a small, hill country community.

The days have grown much longer and the expanding schedule for each day is, surprisingly, not burdensome. Each dip in the city lake, every sunset reminds me that He is rolling out beauty in every direction. Warmth from a fire crackling in the 'rocket ship pizza kiln' consumes doubt and apprehension. This life is for living and it's time to get busy doing so.

"I don't want to be a fair weather fan caught in a trough drifting again. When the tempest comes, and we know it surely will, I hope we ride the wave and learn to sit still. Life isn't poetry. It ain't a book you read or a movie you've seen. It's not the fickle flesh or the drugs that make us feel the best. It's the culmination of faith and the guiding light that leads through the pitch of night."

-evergreens

from ali : grabbing the light

So for all its sense of present longevity, I never can recall a past summer - attempting to fight that this year with some sort of rapid written restraint on the day. Will be recording it elsewhere, but wanted to share the undertaking and a sample here in keeping with the ideal of accountability inherent in the Tortoise.


We are carving out a corner in this forgotten jumble of scrub and cement: brined in sweat and sun, the ant-infested red earth streaking clothes and arms, hands and knees bug-bitten and shovel-blistered. I haul small slabs of asphalt and stone, building a wall at the open mouth of the rocketship pizza kiln to protect the dry thicket beyond, Ryan simultaneously shearing through its most obtrusive bulk by machete. We make it safe, mostly, so steady flames fill the kiln with heat and smoke but only a few slight sparks loop their way beyond its yawn. Ryan disappears in search of food - left alone, I eye night creeping closer on the firelight's failing circle, grabbing the machete to hunt out more kindling, stripping small branches and cracking thick pieces, darting a hand into the fire to stir up its embers and reassemble long logs that halved in the heat like a broken bridge. Proudly observing my handiwork, when he returns with meat, oranges, a jug of water - we squat on our haunches facing the smaller end of the kiln, turning the bratwurst-heavy spokes and watching them fester to final perfection, wiping the after-grease off on pants or just licking fingers clean.

Sated and rested, so over the potholes and out to the dock, a terrified tentative examination of the lurking nighttime lake. The first jump - Ryan - now bobbing in the black water, yelling urgently for me to follow so he's not a lone target, I strip off my boots and make a leap for it, splitting again the shocked calm that's shaking itself awake, now both of us striking out in shoddy speed for the barely discernible center dock. A perspective shift on people when the cluster of high school boys, obnoxious by daylight, show up as gladly welcome company in the night, fellow and further barrier of humanity against the water's stretch. Pale-legged floating beneath the wood through India ink pools and wan moonlit puddles, head craning back at the sky through the dock's gap-toothed grin, stretching my hands upward to grip its slats with my body struggling graceless but stubborn behind.

We part ways with the usual namaste, and me back to my snug little house, the lovely full relaxation of a swim-spent body and wet hair in loose dry clothes, drinking hot tea with milk and honey, carefully consuming Naguib Mahfouz's sparse Egyptian story and nag champa's blanket heavy scent. Some humming barefoot housecleaning alongside the washer's throaty murmur, then a gradual drift to sleep, loving my life & youth.

The Eye of Naturalism

A brilliant sun, shining through a hazy morning sky lights the tossing leaves that, by natural decree, don the translucent vibrancy of life. The wind is cool, but hardly cold. A vivacity of strength and newly discovered being seems to emanate from nature's every move. Through the narrow grid of the old french doors that let in the sunlight I see the world beyond. A poorly kept hedge, a gravel path, and an old country road that disappears into steep mountain trails. Beyond, the great sweeping course of the valley stretches towards the horizon, dotted with villages, towns, cities, and, just beyond the edge of sight, a glimmer reflected from the sea.


As night approaches, lights, like a luminous forest spring up among the shadows till, between the dark arms of the surrounding hills an illuminating river runs from some hidden source to the edge of the Mediterranean. There, the void of thoughtless infinity begins. On land, the last holdout of day stands, against all odds, to face the force of all-embracing night. Distinct, a million pin-point lights combine to fight reality. Then, as if subdued by an unseen hand, the lights go out. One by one, thousand by thousand, a chilling wind lays to rest all human breath. Alone, travelers pour along the roadways in a restless consciousness that, albeit unwillingly, remains to defy the call of mother nature. Passing -- ever passing -- soon they are gone. The night is cold. Above all else, the cynic's question resonates throughout the emptiness of time: "what is truth?"

Dromophilia (Love for the Road)

I will never end my affair with the curves of her California highway,
a strap casually hung over her spring green sundress, I-880 north.

Grassy laces that ripple with the breeze,

Bouquets of liveoaks cascade from her knees

She lies in the baby blue indigo sky,
Her hips and soft elbows rise on both sides,
And each bright white cloudlet is her whisped, loving sigh.

If she would oath never to stray, then by my oath, neither would I.

John Ballard 4/29/10

{ ed. note }

I originally wrote this spontaneously last Thursday while driving I880 N toward Sacramento. Downside of that is that I had to try to funnel my inspiration into a text message, while driving, that I intended to save as a draft. Carefully I word-smithed, with one thumb, glancing down frantically every half-mile, and pressed "Save as draft." My phone replied "Draft Box Full" and my poem was gone. I tried to recreate the moment through dictation, as a sound file on my phone, which was a terrible failure. I am afraid I am not a fan of my own speaking voice. So in truth this is a rewrite, not the original. But it is very, very close, and the differences are more in the articles and conjunctions than the adjectives, verbs or nouns, which my memory preserved nicely for me. So much to say, the spirit of the moment remains intact. It was one of the most beautiful days I have ever seen. Old friend Mr. Paul B.D. McNiel was my Sacramento airport arrival, and can corroborate the previous statement. ~J.G.B.

Planet

Adolphus and Slungman discover that hills have two sides

Nothing has been left barren. Spring is in full swing. The days have been warm and after the sun has set the air becomes chilly, swaying silhouettes of trees to and fro on winding country roads. A storm left branches scattered on the road and the twigs scrape against my hands as Conrad and I go for a late night bike ride to stretch our limbs, expand our lungs, and escape the cabs of cars or the sterility of office buildings. A scent of honeysuckle on the wind and the lowing of cattle in the fields accompany the whirring of tires as we drift over the asphalt. I feel released from some imagined weight as we glide down hills, the sweat from pedalling hard to escape yard dogs drying as quickly as it came. The chain clinks slightly as I push the pedals back, positioning them in anticipation of the next upward slope. Everything is more beautiful when you can be a part of the scenery that you're passing through. Twenty-three miles of open sky and wind swept fields on either side; it's a painting that you soak in and appreciate, a panorama in which you are not the primary subject. To feel small like a speck of color on a canvas is to feel a sort of freedom. Stress from the week's work melts away at every mile marker. The strain of calves and thighs dissipates as we lean against a fence pole in want of water and a cigarette. A blanket of star speckled blue stretches further than imagination reaches. There was only the last stretch of road on the return home and that unfettered liveliness rising in my chest. It wasn't a song but the first movement of a symphony.

from ali : updating, and questioning

A handful of shifts at the Chateau and I'm getting a grasp on its rhythm, which is at times energetic and at others exhausting, but always interesting and educationally all-encompassing: I'm learning everything from tactfully handling disgruntled clientèle (comp the ticket, give them a free creme brulee, and smile them right out the door) to honoring restaurant code (soups must be 140 degrees, minimum) to tossing a salad properly (with your [clean] hands - anything else might bruise the delicate lettuce). Biggest challenge? Empty tables. The Chateau is inconveniently buried off a farm-to-market road in Emory, with minimal traffic exposure for any city folks who might be passing through and an intimidating aura of high-brow reserve to the locals, most of whom seem to be missing the majority of their teeth.

So. That brings me to the question part: Elle has asked that I not only dip back into my now-dusty experience writing restaurant reviews for local publications and whip up some words in the promotional vein, but also help her create and implement a more aggressive marketing strategy. There are endless possibilities, from a much-needed design overhaul (menu, website, and advertising) to generating awareness by realizing her dreams of cooking classes, a wine club, private parties, etc. IDEAS. Rack your brains, and creative resources, for how to first let people know about the Chateau, and then get them inside its doors.

P.S. Pictures from my own kitchen - because experimenting with food and photographing it is what Sunday afternoons are all about

Evergreens Re-Do

...and one day we'll be evergreens.

We'll outlast Winter and breath in new life. We will bloom in Spring and lift our hands to hope and wisps of feathery clouds until Summer creeps in, washing the land in light, darkening our exteriors while brightening our disposition. The sun will bare down on open fields and the wind will be welcome to beat against moist necks and damp hair. The Autumn phoenix will again dance and burst with color before the coming onslaught of grey December days short and icy. So the seasons circular track goes and the years overlap as hairlines recede. Youth - for now under appreciated to the point of being virtually overlooked - will slip from groping hands and age will settle into our hearts and joints. Sometimes I feel the aging process when I tug at my beard and remember the thinning spot on my crown. Exhaustion sets in well before midnight and I battle for one A.M. to prove I'm still youthful. Will we welcome death and join our maker after deep sleep and the cessation of memory or struggle to grasp the life we once led? The last breath should be exalted and prayers whispered in earnest. Our final exhalation should be spent giving thanks for the time here and praise for the eternity to come. And one day we'll be those evergreen on the hillsides, those reminders of endless life and the vision of hope to those lost in the barren Winter.

Oh, I've been in a way

i've been in a way these past few days,
and since i've not much to say,
i'll continue on my way, in way, of continuing to sway,
for swaying is my way, today, delay, then sway,
though it's not much of a way, i'd say,
so avoid my swaying way,
but if you say, hey, to sway i may,
then sway, and sway away,
but when in the star's bay the moon does lay,
and your day is swayed away,
you will bay your foray of the sway,
and cease your swaying ways

True Stories I Just Made Up #1

I find that it is a lot easier for me to write vignettes, moments stolen from a bigger picture, but that I rarely sit down and attempt to tell a story. This series, therefore, will be about telling stories with beginnings, middles, and ends; even if, as is the case today, the story is told in a "vignette setting".

My goal here with the first story was to be at least 50% comprehensible, for that is, after all, the very first among a writer's goals: being understood. Nothing really intensely inspired this story, I just got a visual and ran with it as an exercise.

Celestial navigation

The truck, the old man and the boy would have seemed sorely out of place to anyone driving by the lonely cotton-field that night. The witness might have squinted her eyes and stepped off the gas in an effort to answer the question inherent: "Why so late, on this june night, would two persons be traipsing around in the dark?"

But as it happens, not a soul passed by and the "question inherent" was left to the contemplation of a lone raccoon crossing the county road.

The field had been in the old man's family for four generations. The Hendons used to own half the town, but now the field and the farmhouse was all that was left. The old man had been explaining this to the boy on the short ride over to the bumpy stretch of land he had referred to as "Sendow's Point".

The boy, 16, but tall for his age, was, of course, the old man's grandson. He was not, however, a Hendon; in fact it had only been that summer that he had met his maternal grandfather, or even passed through his mother's hometown. Throughout the duration of the ride from the two story farmhouse he had nodded along with each detail the old man had pridefully put forth, the big overzealous nods people use to express acknowledgment without words.

The truck, a seen-better-days Ford with a "made in america" sticker carefully applied to the bumper, was a sort of faded teal color, save for a white hood that had been recently, relatively recently, replaced. There was barely room for both of them in the cabin; if the boy was tall, it was very possible he was tall because of his grandfather's genes.

Eventually the truck quit the fight, the jostling in the cabin subsided and the two figures stepped out into the night. June nights in Oklahoma are the temperate result of two extremes. Without shade, the field had been baking in the furious summer sun all day, so come nightfall the cold North wind whipping through the cotton stalks was met with the release of the ambient heat stored in the tight-packed sod. So it was that night when they ventured out. It was several hours after sunset when at last the old man laid out the blanket and retrieved the thermos from the dashboard.

"Grandad, you said we were out here to see the stars right?"

"That's right Simon."

"I don't see any stars."

"No, I don't suppose I do either." He paused, exerting the effort necessary to lay out his old bones across the blanket. "But let's wait a while. Sometimes I come out here and can still see a few, scattered about."

They waited in a silence broken only by the occasional slurp of coffee from the over-sized thermos. What is only 15 minutes can seem to a youth like time upon time, and to a man closer to the grave like a precious fleeting breath, as fragile as a childhood memory.

Again the boy broke the silence.

"So why did you call this place Sendow's Point? Is that someone in your family, like that I'd be related to?"

"No, no." The old man almost smiled. "We weren't related to Sendow. Not in any sense of the word." He looked at the boy again, and his half-smile faded into the quietest, but most complete expression of disappointment. "I proposed to your Grandmother on a night like this one. Many years ago. Before the highway came through town, you could actually see a thousand different constellations. I was hoping we could see a bit of what I saw that night." He scanned the sky from zenith to horizon. "Even a tenth", he said with a sigh.

Instead, what he was seeing was the yellow artificial glow, incommensurable to anything in nature, that swallows up skies observed by all who came before; street lights every ten feet, and empty parking lots illuminated continually, who, without the slightest pause or reservation, undo epochs of wonder, purpose and beauty. It can only be surmised that throughout his life the old man had seen the town grow, and the sky shrink, and that now he held onto a fool's hope of sharing what this place, what his life, had been.

The warmth that the ground had stored for them was quickly being carried away and a more persistant chill filled the air. Perhaps he knew that this was his last summer, or that the boy would understand, or that some stories aren't stories until they are told, but on that night the old man spoke of what he considered the axis, the days upon which the rest of his life was secured.

"They saved my life once, you know", he started, tentatively.

"Saved your life? What, the stars?"

"Saved my life, I'd be dead. You'd 'ave never been born. I would've never married your grandmother, you'd 'ave never been born." He was gaining a bit more confidence now, as details rushed back to him across the sweeping wind-torn fields, across oceans dark and deep, halfway around the world they sped and told his tale:

" After December 7th, a bunch of us, my friends and I, started feeling real strong-like. We joined the army, every single one of us. We were patriots, and we were shipping out to basic within the month. Left your grandmother and I with no time to plan a wedding, no time to do it right. I wanted to do right by her, so I told her we'd be married the day I got home, but that we would plan it all out really nicely in letters and that everything would be perfect. I still have all those letters, in the attic.

War is a confusing thing, and a lot of what happened in that year of my life I don't understand. I ended up on a boat in the Pacific, a communications officer, when my unit was disbanded. I was only supposed to be on that boat for a week at the most, but, like I said, war is a confusing animal; I was on that boat for 3 months and 12 days. For 3 months and 12 days I wrote letters that I had no way of sending, I was miserable and alone, save for the one tolerable man on the whole crew. Private Sendow was our gunner, a mountain of a man, and a hell of a poker player. We worked a lot of nights together, floating around in the middle of nowhere. Jon was a college man before the war, he was going to be an astronomer, taught me all about how the seasons change the constellations around, and how I could always tell where we were going. We never really talked a lot about home, or about our families, our girls, but we spent a week's worth of hours staring at the Pleiades, at orion."

The boy was watching, listening carefully, to the old man. It seemed to him as if his grandfather's entire physiognomy had been bathed in the yellow artificial light and dissolved, leaving a face bare of wrinkles and a mind free of the weight of the years.

"Three months and eleven days into my time on the "saber", that was the name of our cutter, we passed by an archipelago to the south that was supposedly in hostile territory. Our Captain thought us unprepared for conflict and we headed out into open waters.

I woke up the next morning to sirens blarin' and fires blazin'. The Saber had been attacked, and our Captain was right, we weren't ready for conflict. I was almost overboard before I knew what had happened and after a few more wet, confusing minutes it was over. The Saber lie at the bottom of the pacific, the japs had made off, and I was left alone, a soldier dying a sailor's death."

The old man stopped for a while. A particularly cool breeze had rustled through his whispy gray hair and brought him back for a moment. He closed his eyes and described what he saw.

"I had a life-vest. I had a life-vest and that was it. I never have felt as small as I did then, tossed around, alone. For a while it was more than I could take, I closed my eyes and waited for it all to end. I was a coward, I wouldn't let go of that vest. I was waiting for fate and force to finish me.

For 16 hours I was lifeless, worthless chaff in the sea. The daylight burned out in a fire that consumed the horizon and then I was alone in the dark. I yelled for a bit, maybe a half an hour. I sloshed about and gnashed my teeth and was left with the fact that this vastness was going to swallow me one way or another. So I decided to let it.

I let go of the vest, and laid out, floating on my back. Then I looked up.

Then I opened my eyes and looked up.

I saw across stretches of space that make the whole of the ocean look like a step through a doorway. It was the exhaustion surely, or the onset of shock or the hopelessness I felt, but my eyes were lit. Every star, the whole sphere of the heavens, was visible. When I closed my eyes, they followed. I couldn't help but recognize the constellations Sendow had taught me to look for. Andromeda, the big dipper, Aries, I knew a sky that had order, that I had made have order, if you can possible follow my meaning... Well, it got me to thinking about your grandmother, about that night I asked her to marry me, beneath the same stars which were then nameless to me. I thought about all the things that had led me to that boat, of all the twists and turns of fate. I thought on all of this and felt something start burning in my chest."

The old timer opened his eyes and stared thoughtfully at the spellbound youth.

"Well I got this crazy idea in my head that I wanted to live. Not just that I wanted to survive, but that I wanted to get home, marry Celine and really live. I wanted a family to teach the names of the stars. I wanted them to guide me on a thousand journeys home.

I looked around for my vest, and found it to be, miraculously, a few yards away. Remembering that there had been a chain of island to the south, I used the techniques Sendow had taught me to divine which way I should be swimming. A queer thing, a thirst for life is; it'l fill you with a second wind. And thank God the current was with me that night.

I swam and paddled for hours, and the rest of the story must be no surprise for you. Here I am. I got to the islands and waited for a week and a half, but then I was on my way home. What a home it was. I married Celine, we had your mother and your uncle Stan. For a longer time than most, we were happy."

He stopped again, and again his smile melted into troubled reflection.

"One shouldn't complain when one has been blessed for so long, but after the car accident it was just me and your mom. I felt like those stars had lied to me, like I should have died that night, alone in the Pacific. I didn't see what I had left. I was so caught up in the unknowable dark, I lost sight of the bright points of light. I pushed your mother away from me, we lost touch, I lost touch. I gave up on finding my way home. I stopped looking up at night, and eventually they stopped coming out at all.

But that was many years ago; Time has a way of smoothing over bitterness, hearing he ain't got long left has a way of changing a man, and hearing he has a grandson has a way of softening the heart, making me remember why I am here. So here we are, trying to catch a glimpse."

He had never told his story before, never even written it out, so sharing all this was like letting the largest part of himself go. He was greatly disturbed. Turning away from the boy, he spent a moment collecting himself, banished the whole ordeal from his wiry frame with a heavy sigh, and announced: "We won't be seeing much of anything tonight. No I don't think we will".

***

The boat, the man and the urn would have seemed sorely out of place to anyone standing on the sandy shores of the lonely island chain that night. The witness might have squinted his eyes and stepped out into the water in an effort to answer the question inherent: "Why so late, on the night in july, would a sailboat be passing by this out-of-the-way archipelago?"

But as it happens, not a soul passed by and the "question inherent" was left to the contemplation of a lone hen, escaped from a nearby village, wandering the shoreline.

The boat, a 26 foot yacht, was a brilliant white form against the water. It had been painted recently, and though it was of an older build, thorough maintenance kept her sailing smoothly. Nothing was out of place inside the cabin, and a clear, uncluttered deck betrayed the orderly manner of her captain.

The man was, of course, Simon: the boy grown up. At 24 he stood even taller than he had that June night among the cotton. His features defined, his jaw set, he scanned the dark waters before him with the eyes of an experienced sailor. His three itinerant years on the water had taught him many lessons and so he employed his wits and strength with the vigor that the sea demands. His searching eyes met what they were looking for, and he dropped anchor.

The urn was a humble porcelain home for what remained of the old man. No etchings or painted patterns adorned the exterior. Simon liked to think that his grandfather would have appreciated the lack of what he might have called "frivolity". Simon liked to think that he knew what his grandfather would have thought about certain things. He often thought back to that summer in the fields, going out every night to Sendow's point to fruitlessly search for constellations. They had become close in those days. They had worked and lived together and Simon was there the day the old man died.

He had promised himself he would make this trip, and to him it was the most sacred and real commitment he had ever made. Here at the pivotal moment however, he felt no great stir in his heart, no sense of completeness, only a practical knowledge of what was left to do. Once the yacht was completely still he grabbed the urn and unceremoniously scattered the ashes into the water. It was done.

The man uncorked a bottle of wine and drank deeply straight from the bottle. With a pause to wipe his lips on his sleeve, he set about pulling up the anchor and rigging the sails. He was halfway through the process when he realized that he had not yet set a course.

"Where to now?" he asked aloud, half expecting a reply. He went through the motions of grabbing for the navigational unit in the cabin, but didn't have the heart to open it, for he knew in the deepest pit of his chest where he was bound. And he knew that there was only one way to find his way.

"Where to now?" he laughed as he put away the laptop.

The man hoisted the sail. Then he looked up.

Summer Feelings & Flora

"Are you like me? Is there just no such thing as too hot a day?"

"Oh yeah, there's just something about being miserably hot."

"I know. Like no matter how hot it gets, it just fills me up with energy."

"You know one of those days where you're sticky from the heat, you get in your car and it's even hotter so you turn on the a/c but for the first few minutes it's just blowing hot air. Like I said, there's just something about it."

"It gives me so much life."

"I swear, every year I look more forward to summer."

"Yeah, I mean just look. You have all these different shades of green already starting to come to life. And that purple stuff, I don't even know what that is."

"Me neither. I've always thought that it kind of looks like upside down Blue Bonnets."

"Yeah it really does. Look at that Post Oak. It's funny, a lot of people wonder why they're called Post Oaks, 'cause when you see them in someone's yard they just look like any other tree. But when you see a bunch of them together they grow straight up just like a post."

"I didn't know that."

"Yeah. It's all about competing for sunlight. When there's just one alone in a yard it gets all the sun it wants. Its lower branches can grow out wider and get sun too. But in a forest, it has to grow tall, the lower branches get blocked out by other trees and die and fall off. That's why all the tallest trees tend to grow in the most dense forests."

"Oh, so that's why when you see a random tree off in a field all by itself, it always grows really round and wide."

"Exactly."

from ali : on coming home

“[Home] is the center from which we define and understand

the nature of everything we encounter in the world.

The home . . . is not one thing among many in a world of things; nor is it merely the product of a culture.

Rather, the world of things derives its sense,

and a culture its significance,

from their relationship to the home.

Without the home, everything else in the world or in a culture is meaningless.”

- David Patterson -

For the past four weeks my primary creative project has been piecing - and at times pulling - together a living space, and the process has me thinking about homes, about their all too-frequent lack - of the sprawling several thousand square feet structures passing through my office with vaulted ceilings more conducive to admiration than comfort, formal dining rooms designed to entertain rather than embrace. But as criticism is bloodless without conviction and conviction fruitless without action, I'm striving to start in my quite literal backyard, and struggling to grasp the essence of what a home should be when so many have become just another place.