A certain sort of something, that feels like a fairytale.

On a morning of little consequence, a young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart was walking through the wind and the grass.

Some would say that he was hopelessly lost; but others might politely suggest that for one to be lost, they must surely know where they had been going in the first place. And so it was, with no destination, the young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart strode on. And on. Alone through the twirling wind and the whipping grass, alone on a path that wasn’t much of a path at all.

But winds change, as winds are wont to do; and as the young man walked, the wind turned chill before beginning to howl like a young wolf on the night when it first discovered the moon. Even so, he strode on. And so it was that the young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart came upon a proper path.

Well-tread, beaten through the tallest grass; it was formed of sandy brown gravel, circular stones that seemed far too perfect to have been formed in nature. But they were.

At the head of the path, a grizzled fellow with the face of a deflated toad sat alone, tossing bits of gravel into his mouth and listening to the nightmarish sounds they made against the mortar and pestle of his teeth. When he saw the young man, he spat out a feast of chewed-up stones and grinned.

“Howdy hello,” said the young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart.

“Salutations.”

The young man had not been prepared. No man, no man could have been; for what came from the vocal chords of that speckled little creature that looked as if he’d been flaked off a taller man’s back, what emanated from the deepest depths of that squat-spud’s throat, was the purest, most melodic trill of a voice that one could ever hope to hear. It was a voice that could send a shiver up the spine of a morning. And so it was, that the young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart fell to his knees and vomited tears.

“Er…” said the Toad-faced man.

Eventually, the young man managed to gather his composure amidst the wailing winds, and this time managed to brace himself when he saw the other about to speak.

“You seem a stout chap,” said Toad-face, with the raw power of a thousand arpeggios.

“Aye sir,” said the young man, as he kept his knees from buckling, “Aye sir! I sir, am indeed stout of person -- after all, I’m a young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart.”

The Toad-faced man’s head tilted, as if he were looking for the core of a puzzle box.

“That may be, that may very well be…” the squat-spud Toad-face said sympathetically, symphonically, “But this path ahead, this trodden-spot of sandy-stone…this path belongs to me, young lad. I have little to call my own, but I do, I do have music -- and it turn, I have the path. And in turn, you should turn away.”

Despite the strength of the path keeper’s voice, despite the range of its influence, something began then to rumble inside the young man. The warm air in his lungs began to turn and churn and yearn like a gale, and the firm valves on his heart began to shake and quake and ache like the gaskets of a steam engine. He was angry.
He really, truly was.

“What do you mean?” said the young man, with all the force he could muster.

“I mean nothing,” serenaded the Toad-face, “nothing which is meant as an offense.
“But the path ahead is not one for you, even if you’re boisterous, even if you’re blessed, even if you’re brave -- the path ahead is for those who have music. For those who have suffered to find their voices, who have suffered through the voice itself; for those who have taken the time to sing.”

As this opera came to a close, the young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart suddenly found that he could not help himself. He was angry.
He really, truly was.

The warm air in his lungs grew hot enough to boil his blood, and the blood then surged through the firm valves on his heart, sending the young man forward as if he were an engine, a gnashing, burning, hellish engine that charged toward to the Toad-faced man with a singular sense of purpose. The young man grabbed a fistful of the immaculate gravel and rammed it down the squat-spud ugly fellow’s sonorous throat, which caused him to choke and sputter and fall to his warty knees; what remained of his beautiful tones were all but lost in the howling of the first-moon winds. And so it was, that the young man with warm air in his lungs and firm valves on his heart set forward on the path, finally having someplace to go. And so it was, that the young man found himself hopelessly lost.

For the path was long.

So, so long.

Long, and cold, and winding, and dark.

For even with the warm air in his lungs forcing back the frost during the endless nights, even with the firm valves on his heart keeping him always moving, always forward, charging down the countless turns on the sandy-brown path; even with all the efforts of his breath and blood, the young man still had no harmony.

He couldn’t sing his way through sorrow, couldn’t see his way with sound. The young man with warm air and firm valves had no music. And so it was, that the young man grew old.

The warm air in his lungs had long-since cooled.
The firm valves on his heart had worn themselves down.
Still on that path, with that wind howling ever louder,
Still on that path, with that grass growing ever taller.
Still on that, on that…that same sandy-brown gravel.
Still lost.

Until another morning, still one of seemingly little consequence.
The old man had lungs with no air; the old man had a broken down heart.
And so it was, that he could go no further.

He fell. With the wind spinning around him, sending up clouds of dust from the unknown recesses of the tall grass, he fell to his knees. His hands hit the gravel; the stones were surprisingly warm between his fingers. The old man shuddered. Despite the wind, he could hear the sound of his bones. And then, as if it had nothing left, his body fell. Face first. Into the smooth, warm stones.

Which is when it happened, of course.

The last of his breath -- the last, tiniest, hidden puff of air was pushed out from the depths of his lungs. Alongside that, there occurred the last, the last, the last, shakiest, involuntary flutter of his heart. And so it was that the old man, in his last moment, whistled a pure, revelatory note.

The note sang above the scream of the wind; the note tore through the density of the grass. The note spun up, around, and down, forcing everything that stood to lie flat as if in deference, forcing all that were alive to weep as if in shame. It forced the sky to blanche.

The old man was dead. But even so…he might have heard his music.
It was far too far from being lost.
It was nothing but beautiful.

A symbol of status.

Oftentimes, when you run out of words, you change the way the words are read.

You twist, you turn, you melt. You manipulate. To change the way the words are read, the way that the sentences come across, so that the nubile-minded reader might reach into the Grand Guignol universe of the Whatever-It-Is that is presenting them with the sublime gift of printed text, if only to bring themselves ever so much closer to someone else’s headspace, if only to help people come together, like precious lovers in a movie running across the width of a 2:35:1 frame with so much careless abandon; you -- meaning I -- the proverbial scribbler; we do this when we cannot bring our capacities to manage anything else. We manipulate. I try to manipulate, when I can’t bring my sentences to a place where the main idea could be managed by anything else. It’s cheap, is what it is.

It’s cheap.

It’s also fairly common. And it works, for a time at least. But bit by inch, inch by bit, the people -- the you’s, and the I’s -- start to notice. They start to see through the mechanical nature of our proceedings, and then the take to the streets, throwing fruit that’s rotted through, so that it might freshly bud and blossom on the soil of our only pair of battered shoes. Truth be told, it’d have been a long time coming. It’s been a long time since I’ve -- it’s been a damn long time since I called myself a Writer.

And now, still: It’ll be a long time yet. If ever.

These days, all days (as is the case with the internet) I’ve been making my living doing something else. Something that I like. Something that gives me room to grow, something that will possibly let my fingers dance in a different way than that with which you precious -- so, so precious -- non-existent readers are so joyously familiar. Somewhere with people that I can appreciate, who I can talk to in dire hours; people who I would happily pick up from the airport, with a morsel of delicious muffin at the ready. I like my job enough to not mention what it is, as I’ve no desire to get TOTALLY DOOCED LIKE A DUMBFUCK. I like it enough to keep on truckin’, babydoll.

And yet…it’s cheap.

Even more than the last few jaunts around this tiny block of free webspace, wherein I danced like a silly gorramn clown with sentences hanging from the edges of my lips like churros covered in seasoned salt, dancing, dancing my way into some kind of oblivion while hoping that the precious We of us wouldn’t notice. But we -- you and I -- we noticed. And nothing happened, of course. Why would it?

How often do you wish you could manage proper words?

Constantly, I’d imagine.
“Constantly,” a precious -- so, so precious -- non-existent reader says.

As people who live in the world, we wish that we could see clear enough to let our words -- and consequently, our thoughts -- stand lean and tall, like willows laughing defiantly at roaring typhoons. We wish that they might be able to fend for themselves.
No tricks, no weapons. Skill against Skill alone.

“They get brutalized,” that precious -- so, so precious -- non-existent reader says.
“They always get brutalized,” I say, “But at least they could manage it on real terms.”

The world where I exist, where I work now: It’s a world founded on manipulative things.
It’s acknowledged, it is. To a point. It’s tolerated, it is. To a point. It’s cheap -- so, so cheap -- but I’ll be damnable entity if it doesn’t pay well.

So.
Last week was my birthday.

Here I am, a sweaty entity in the midst of a sweltering world. Not a Writer.
Not as far as we -- you, and I -- are concerned. Because a Writer means more. A Writer writes. A Writer does more than simply fill pages, a Writer does more than try to spin fancies by way of complicated jibber-to-jabber ratios, a Writer does more than simply try to get things down. A Writer writes. S/He just does.

And that, babydolls…that there is a world of meaning.
Here, here, there is a world to see. Perhaps someday I can write it down.

Until then? Until Ever?
A fool -- this fool -- will spin his wheels.

Anon.

A primer.

What is going to follow is something that I did not write, written by a somewhat forgotten whirlwind of talent that probably didn’t agree with the opinions contained within this speech in question. But they resonate with me -- they stand as true within the feeble confines of my life. So I present them here as a sort of primer; something to give you footing, so that I might elaborate with my own thoughts on the subject at a slightly later date. If that doesn’t do it for you, then let us call this a taste, a notification of something that you should be aware of, something that you, gentle strangers and friends, should take the time out of your time to stop and read.

So then.

From The Sunlight Dialogues (1973):

He leaned forward, glaring, and for a moment he couldn‘t speak. The room filled with the sound of the rain, a rattle like a river going by. He said at last, quietly, driving the words out by intense pressure, “What did you expect us to be? Are you a grown-up? Is Dad? How do you think it was all those years, listening to you two bitch, the same old sentences over and over, neither one listening for a second to the other, like a couple of deaf idiots shouting at each other in the dark? Every word he said was moronic, according to you, and any fool could see what you said was moronic, not that the Old Man didn’t trouble to point it out. And you were the people we were supposed to listen to! -- take orders from! Jesus, I’d sit there in the living room hearing you blather at each other out in the kitchen, the Old Man sitting there fuming at the table with his bib tucked under his chin like a baby’s, and you slamming around at the sink saying clever things like some brat to her mean old papa. Talk about childish! And then you’d go to bed and he’d come in in his stupid damn nightdress and beg you like a kid that can’t have candy, and you’d sit there wide-eyed like an outraged little virgin. By god it was an education! Prepared us for the world, that’s a fact. The great university, for instance, where the stupidest people you ever saw in your life get to teach you. You don’t know what it’s like. You’re so stupid you believe them -- or some of them, which is stupider than believing all of them. It’s the truth. Listen.” He suddenly stood up, as if afraid she would cut him off. “They’re like chickens, big fat stupid chickens. They come examine the inside of your brain like chickens inspecting the inside of a clock. I had an English teacher, he had us buy an anthology and then he got a different one, and every question he asked, the answer was there in the other book. There wasn’t was single thing he knew! Not one! But Jesus what a show that horse’s ass put on. He had all the gestures. He knew how to make his eyes light up just like a human being. And oh was he kind -- to fat, dumb girls. And he would lecture on what trouble they used to have getting snow cleared off the sidewalks at Hahvid. Yeah. With diagrams on the board. And another one. He taught us how to find symbols in novels. Like this blue parachute that comes down in Lord of the Flies. ‘Blue,” he’d say. ‘What does blue make you think of?’ He looked like Dylan Thomas, but with yellow hair and pink cheeks. He was in Counter-Intelligence during the War, which is why the fucking war took so long. ‘Blue,’ he would say. ‘Think now. Blue.’ Some fat dumb girl with blue pimples would say ‘The Virgin Mary?’ and he’d say ‘That’s it! That’s IT!’ Sweet Jesus please us! One class I was in, the lady brought in a World Book salesman. I swear to God. He took half an hour giving his pitch to the whole fucking class. And then the math classes. Man would spend an hour writing out on the board the same explanations you could get in the book, except the book was faster and clearer, and he knew it. He cut class maybe twenty-some times in one semester. But history! Jesus!”
“Stop it,” she said.
“Let me finish.” He was leaning on the mantelpiece now, pressing his hands to the sides of his head. “Everyplace you looked, children. You’d see them in the cafeteria primping and preening and puk-puk-padokking, speech-making at each other, some of them, and the rest of them nodding, very solemn, as if it were all oh so interesting, talking about books nobody past the age of twelve would read all the way through except to punish himself, yammering about Communism an Capitalism and the Good Lay, and back in the dorm all the baby professors would do imitations, learning the gestures and the Right Quotations, prattling about Tillich and Bishop Pike and Mr. Fromm, and relaxing their minds in the great American way with talk about baseball and football and cunts, and the brave stupid ones would talk about defending freedom in Vietnam and the cowardly stupid ones would talk about How We Had No Business There, and if you fled to where the intellectuals weren’t, it was as bad as anywhere else, cooks, bartenders, ushers at the show, talking talking talking, or standing around like mutes because they hadn’t even the brains yet for their kind of talk, not human, kids, not even grade-school age yet, big as they were, or the med-students, the real true anti-intellectuals, with their contests over how many girls they could screw, parties where everybody screwed everybody, eight, nine in a bed. Fun? Christ’s hair. But they were great stuff, they thought -- all of them, med-school children, bartender children, professor children -- they were all somebody; thought they were cops. If a movie came out that was supposed to be Art they all sat solemn and said Look at the Art; if it was supposed to be funny they all went Ha-ha, if it was supposed to be sad they made crying noises; if they were church types they preached at you, if they were atheist types they preached harder than the others. They kept falling in love, and it was like one huge chorus going up in the park, a thousand voices all howling ‘She’s different!’ But I was ready for it all. I understood. They were children, horse’s prick children dressing up. And I was one too, right -- the grouchy one that wants to play some other game, because he can’t play this one -- but say what you like, at least I wasn’t fooled. There are no grown-ups. There are only children and dead people. So I quit. Bon soir, mes enfants. For which I thank you.”
“Are you finished?” she said.
He laughed. “Am I finished. Eschatologically speaking, I am finished.”
The glass was empty, and she went to the kitchen to refill it. When she came back he was sitting bent double, his eyes clamped shut. She was glad he was in pain.
She said, “Even raving Communists believe in something.”
“All foolish people believe in something.”

That was the irreplaceable John Gardner, speaking on my behalf. Even though he wasn’t, obviously. In truth, the man himself was a professor, in his tenure teaching the likes of Raymond Carver and Charles Johnson. But he said this, once. And that can count for something.

So just let it sit.
We’ll get there.

A sullen series of segmented snippets.

First…

The air was crackling, electricity flying through it carelessly, as if it belonged there, not looking for any grounding. It crackled alongside the rain that fell, the two of them locked into each other through some kind of bizarre symbiosis, mutually giving each other purpose, purpose as well as life. They were both alive, both always moving, one falling, one flying. Neither cared about anything else, only seeking to continue their carefree existence. It was in this place, that the men had fallen silent.

…and then…

He was trying to make it work. It was hard, suffering through mornings. Wading through people and their stares. He would try to say what he thought should be said. He did alright. Some of the time. He didn’t know about other times. The person would walk to the bathroom. Or outside. He would get there and look up at the ceiling or the sky. Didn’t matter which. Then he would spit out all that he could. He’d hoped that no one would notice this. If they did, no one told him. He would hack it all out and then walk back into their world. He was home in the dead of night.

…followed by…

His eyes were bad, but he tried. He would lean back as if trying to appear relaxed (for the benefit of anyone who might have casually walked on by), while in reality his muscles were as taut as those of a moonlit tiger; both of them waiting, waiting, waiting for their moment. Milton only wished for things that soared across the sky.

…continued with…

I force myself to remember those things. Sitting here on the hilltop, looking over at my friend Walter, shivering from a cold that none else can feel, but all can understand. Remember those times when the world thought it was wallowing, wading through a knee-deep refuse of horror and discomfort, problems with the air and the water and the feelings and the lives and the people. People snapping down their freshly delivered morning papers, spouting off lines about the abuse and the mistrust and the anger and the deception and the real, honest to golly truth. Mothers marching down the streets, holding signs up in the air, shouting that their children are under attack by the vagrancy and the lies and the vulgarity and the depravity and the hatred. I force myself to remember. But really, I remember the children themselves.

…interrupted with…

P.S.
You can also be kind of a cunt.

…resuscitated by…

“Do you trust me?” Her voice was clear. It didn’t waver.
“Of course I do.” My voice was dry. It crackled out of my mouth, sounding as if I’d been gargling buckets of sand. I didn’t want to sound that way. I wanted to sound like I was standing tall, a man to be counted on. I’m not normally that way, and I’m usually ok with that. Usually. She was looking into my eyes.
I couldn’t look away. My face was locked in, focusing on those two tiny little dots, finding that center as easily as one might trip and fall. And fall I did, I couldn’t help it, my mind falling right down, losing myself simply because she wanted me to.

…connected to…

She was a journalist, you see. A journalist, fair and true. Not one who stood before a cameraman, feverishly checking her hair only seconds before informing everyone on a nationwide network that the building behind her, clearly burning to the naked eye, was on fire. No, she was a true journalist, in every sense of the word.
As he would learn over the course of time, she was a person who had known what it was like to be cast to the icy cold concrete floor of some godforsaken shit-hole of an African schoolhouse, all in the hopes of finding the words of the current insurgent military leader who had been holding his armaments in a house built for learning. If you knew her well enough, you could ask her to tell you a story, and she could then paint a portrait of the time that she had spent with one of the worlds greatest living authors, watching a great man wither away physically while listening to the sound of a once tightly wound bag of thought being torn apart at its innermost seams. And if you had the stomach to listen, she would eventually tell you how it felt to hold the hand of someone who was falling, falling, falling, until the very last moment where his thoughts finally burst open like an already wounded animal splitting apart on jagged rocks. She had felt him go. And she had only let herself cry once the story had finally been done.

…passed on with…

There were trees, where we were. More trees than I was used to. It felt like we were driving down a stretch of classical Americana, Mary-Jean singing silently to herself as she adjusted the wheel with casual, subtle motions. She held her cigarette close inside the car, afraid that she might toss it out onto a patch of incendiary leaves. What a shame that would be. I can just picture it: A single glowing spark from that little tube glowing just a little brighter than the rest of its brethren, its soft orange light hot enough to ruin a patch of the world. Dry leaves, resting for a moment before the next gust of wind carried on with their journey down the road. That single, hungry spark. I wonder what it would be like, driving down this tranquil lane, if all the world were heat and fury.

…and so…

The sheet of darkness covered me, black as the face of perdition.

…anon…

But now, for all that were there to witness it, there was only silence.

…so that’s something.

Right?

A call at any hour.

There is a call I will always take. No matter where. No matter when. I could be raging down a stretch of the loneliest highway, feeling a weak car rumble from going just a bit faster than it ought to; I could be sitting down on an empty curb, at the tail-end of getting dumped by a person who could see clear and bright. That person called, and I answered, those times. Any times. Rain or shine, light or dark.
So far, I’ve always been there to answer. Whenever that call has been made.

I wonder why she calls, sometimes.
After all, there’s no majesty that blinds the darkness. No amazing sort of answers, hewn down from thick trees into little splinters that manage to wheedle their way into secret sorts of places, finding out the things that most cannot know. Nothing that fancy. No words, no sounds. Nothing built by grand designs. It’s just me, here.

Me, myself, and all within my grasp. Fool on the Planet, looking out at all that I know, trying to find a piece that will generate peace of mind, if it’s needed. Looking out over uncertain futures, and muddled pasts. Wondering how to be, who to write, why to say. Trying to ford the waters of our world. Trying to be some kind of a man, when those times comes when I ought to be. We are beings of uncertainty, that much is certain.

I wondered why she called, tonight.
I answered, because I will always answer, and she and I talked a little about the way things come to pass. It was simple, and quiet, and lovely, the way that it often is. But still: I wonder why she calls, sometimes. If she wants advice, I wonder what I might say. If she wants laughter, I wonder what jokes I might tell. If she seeks solace, I wonder how I might use my gravel-toned voice to pat her on the back. I wonder.

I wonder more, when the line goes dead. In an instant.
It’s rare that the line will come back after such a thing. And I’ve tried to bring it back. Believe me, I’ve tried. All it does is ring. It never seems to stop, even when it clicks over, and I can hear a real voice for yet another instant in the center of mechanical drones. It still feels like it’s ringing, while that is going on. It might still be ringing, even now. It wouldn’t surprise me. It wouldn’t confuse me. It would just, still, make me wonder.

I wonder about the person coming through the rings. The person that’s supposed to be me, supposed to be I; the person who gets the call, who answers whenever that moment comes by. The person who will help, somehow. How to be, how to be, how to be. It’s hard to figure, even on the drive home, a silent move through the darkness of a town that’s usually as dry as a shimmering desert. Yet it’s not dry out, not this night.

No. It rained. On me. Reign o’er me. Rain on me. The rain was falling down through the sky, while I sat inside a cold metal shell listening to the ringing that has never seemed to stop. I was driving through it, and I saw the way that it began to storm upon me. And I couldn’t help it: I started laughing, really, really laughing. And crying, a little bit. I parked the car while still trying to return the lost call, the way that I had been the entire way home. It was there. It was coming down on me. Reign o’er me. Rain on me. Even in the midst of that dismal ring that never ends, with uncertain futures and muddled pasts, all of sudden the sky breaks apart. All of a sudden it’s a beautiful, wonderful place to be.

The rain comes, and at last I feel real. The rain -- it’s real.

It’s really, really real. It streaks down and I can feel the way that it makes me, carving my features out of soft limestone, breaking me down and finding me, choosing me, knowing what I will be. And yes, I walk through it. Holding that stupid, contemptible, unreliable phone in my hand like some kind of pointless-yet-meaningful talisman, I stride through the thickened droplets, chanting like a madman in the middle of the street. Not caring who sees, not caring who hears. I can feel myself alive, I can hear the wind. I can look through it all, and see the face through the rings.

I’m soaked and I’m cold and I’m just a wee bit gassy. Wondrous ones, I’m incandescent.

I will always take that call. When the person on the other end is sitting quietly in the dark, I will take that call, and I will speak whatever words that I can manage, whatever they might be, however they might be formed, they will be there. They will be there. They will be there.

There’s pride in that, for me. Knowing that, trusting that. Believing that sometime in the future, that someone across the land can call. Believing that whenever they might call they will get an answer. A touch of certainty, amidst the rest. Being a part of the world. The real, live world.

They say that in this world of hours that is our world, you cannot trust in things like this. That entropy collapses all the things that we know and love and trust, that things are the way that they are, and the way of the world is Chaos and Choice. One and the Other. Uncertain futures and muddled pasts. I can see them all, in this world where I have a friend who wishes to talk. To me.

I see those things, those things that break down. I see them clearly, with eyes washed clean by the force of that lifesong that I've long been waiting for. I look out, and right here, right there, write this, I know: I will answer that call, because that is the kind of man that I wish to be. That is the kind of world I wish to live in, where a dear, dear friend will answer, no matter how hard it might be. The world that I live by, in the midst of the real world. I live in the world. I live the way I think I should. She calls, because she wants to. I answer, because it's good.
Just like that rain. It's falling.

I know it is. I can feel it coming down right now, even though the torrential madness that flowed from the heavens seemed to stop after but a moment. It’s come back to us, back to the world. Like it always has before. Like it always will. It will be there, when all is said and done.

After all: It’s real.

A resting place.

Another night.

Here we are, basking in the warmth of our cathode ray tubes (that are not, in fact, cathode ray tubes) on yet another summer night. Looking for things to do. Things that have been said. Hopes that had been made, some time before.

I’ve got something for you, intranetts.

Something that was conceived as a shot in the dark.
It was a little bit of an attempt at getting out there in the world, utilizing the means of the MACHINE OF DEATH Anthology. It was a shot.

And as is so often the case, my shot in the dark got swallowed up by nothingness. No harm done, no big deal. But still…

I want to lay it to rest. Somewhere other than here, within the humming confines of my extravagantly screened laptop. I want to give it somewhat of a sending off, so that I don‘t feel quite so sad about its humble passing.
It’s a story.

I told it, and it sparked away into another night.

And now it’s being told to you.
One hopes that you might find something to like.

--------------------------------------------

What’s to say about it?


I don’t know. I never know anymore. Just a soft flurry of images drifting ahead of me, ones that I can reach out and grab with narrow outstretched fingers, like snowflakes in a fall. Out there, they stand unique, their own little design made of encapsulated time; and they turn to water in my hands. At first, I didn’t know.

She didn’t tell me. Not at all. And so I went on with my living, not having a glimmer of suspicion of the things that would come to be. The things that would grab my silly little world, and shake it with a thunderous sense of violence that I doubt I can ever truly comprehend. Nor would I want to. She had known something.
She? Jill. Her name was Jill.


And she was my love on this Earth.

Anyone would have told you that she had a certain sort of something on that night I first saw her. At least, when they saw her. I for one had spent the majority of the evening rooted to one spot, staring at the frozen eyes on a statue of a classical Roman. His eyes hitting with a terribly, terribly expressive nature. They made me shiver, those eyes. And then…I saw her, her indescribable presence, and all else was stricken from my memory. She made me quake, back then. She still makes me quake now.

Still. Nothing about her was still, her existence being one of omnipresent motion, one that swept up willing little me into a series of a separate-yet-connected life moments, in a manner of such grand immediacy that to this day, I’m still unsure of how I found such a presence in my arms. I was never much of a…I was never a devastating man. Never the sort that brings someone to stand casually in a doorway, enticing growls building in their throat. She saw something. In me.

So it was that she graced me with that feeling of her omnipresent life. Dances built on park benches and soft footfalls across dewy grass. Sharp ideas and murmurs in our sleep. Quiet whispers and dreamlike sweat in the night. Sitting close together on Sunday mornings, eyes glancing over Times headlines that announced things like: “BLESSING OR CURSE?,” or “PRIME MINISTER TO DIE BY WAY OF ‘INSURANCE FRAUD’: Public Demands Explanation”. Headlines of the sort that occur even now, this very day. Back then, we would disregard and discard such announcements, while we giggled and pulled in for an achingly soft kiss. God…that softness.

During those times her fingers would somehow always find mine. And I can remember…I remember how they would quiver. Gentle and firm, like a babies’ heartbeat.
Those were times when I could feel the world.

But even then, I suppose there were traces. Moments when her touch turned cold, where her terribly, terribly expressive eyes grew dead and distant, like the eyes of that Roman statue from a time before. I can still see her, the image locked in my thoughts. One of those moments. Her gentle and firm fingertips teasing the nearly invisible hairs across the surface of her belly, her voice echoing across time: “Found things still have a way of getting lost. Sometimes.” Sometimes.

I’d thought it would be alright. I’d thought it was just a trace of the world as it was, as it is; a side-effect of people as a collective coming to terms with their own mortality. After all, look at any street corner, any face in the pale gray of the morning. Look, and you’ll see it. We’re all more somber, these days. Still, I was happy. Happy with her warmth, happy with my life. She had been around longer, had experienced far more. And she, Jill had chosen me to be the one she caressed under moonlight, the one she whispered to during warm summer rains.

It was a cold winter storm when I found her at my door. Before then, we’d had countless days of wonder and joy. Yet this night was different, its existence drenched by that raging symphony of angry rain. Water beading on the surface of her coat, water clinging to the thin strands of her beautiful amber hair. She had a look on her face. Such a look. Her arms found their way around my waist, and she gripped me tightly.

She held on for dear life as we fell into the dark. I gladly let her grip her way towards safety, and I can clearly remember the way her fingers tensed on the small of my back. In the warmth of my arms, Jill gently fell asleep. Her hair was still wet from the rain.

Still wet, but not from lack of drying. The warmth of her body and the room caused the moisture to evaporate, slowly, but it was definitely there. My eyes moved over the thin haze that shrouded her head, and I couldn’t help it: It looked like her, a part of her; a part of her was trying to leave. As if any and all of her doubts were manifest above her head, pulling her away into the fog, a solemn funeral for human emotion. I could feel the concept of that, of Jill leaving. It was almost as if it was in my skin, trying to scrape its way out from inside of me like living sandpaper. The sound of that dragged across my eardrums, a terrible, jarring sensation. I didn’t know how I could do it. How I could slake her thirst. How I could make her doubts towards me go away. There was nothing. Nothing at all. So I tried for the only something I could manage. I leaned closer to her ear and whispered, “Tell me how to be in love.” She didn’t answer.
“Tell me how to be in love.”


That night, I had a dream.

I stood amongst a council of grand humans. Gods, even. Standing alongside them, my body covered with heavy armored garments that spoke of me being one of their own. In that place, in the air, one could taste a sense of stability and understanding, a feeling that these beings held on to their world with strength and ferocity of intelligence, with conviction and destiny. It was also only a moment before I realized they were all afraid. They and I.

Before us stood a creature unlike any nightmare. A wolf, yes; but bigger, stronger, angrier, uglier, yet with a kind of beauty realized by anything designed for a single, unwavering purpose. This creature felt rage that this place could barely contain. Its rage was a song in its eyes.

So I watched myself as I walked up and put my hand in its mouth. My colleagues moved toward it, slowly wrapping the creature with a binding that appeared be nothing more than a silken ribbon, thin and long. All while my fingers soaked in the hot saliva, which ran like the broadest river from the glands surrounding my hand. The beast was fettered; the beast fought his bonds. First with arrogance, then with rage. But his thin binding could not be broken, staying smooth and cool as it dug into the cursed flesh.

It wasn’t long before I went blind with pain. Lost in a world not my own, blood coloring the landscape with a disgusting flourish. I didn’t think I belonged. Not in this place, where truth was writ in blood on stone.


When I awoke, I was alone.

It felt like just another morning. Except after I had walked into the kitchen, if only to watch the last vestiges of the rain drift through the wind outside my window, I felt something. A stinging in my hand, as if a malicious insect had attacked during the night. When I gave it a closer look, I saw a miniature speck of red, staring me in the face and daring me to question its tiny world. So I squeezed it. The action brought out a single, gleaming ruby of blood. I swear that I saw it sparkle. It might as well have, anyway. Nothing else did.

Nothing. Jill didn’t bring herself by. Not that day. And certainly not the next.
So the days fell into the nights, and the nights wrapped over the days, mixing themselves until they got softer and smoother, more uniform the longer they went on. They all became the same, those days. Those nights. Those mornings. Those evenings. My useless sense of time.

I would go and stand outside, watching people drive home from somewhere and sit in their cars for a few moments before finally going inside. I would take care to observe the look on their faces, which was often just a touch of weariness after a hard-won day, but sometimes, sometimes, sometimes…it was more. A look of singular, genuine fear. Fear, and wonder. It’s the kind of look you see a lot these days. More and more, I find it hard to take. So more and more, I look away.

Instead, I found myself staring at the back of my hand. Looking over a majestic landscape of miniscule scars. As hard as I tried -- and believe me, I tried -- I couldn’t remember where they came from. None of them, not a one. Not a single memory tracing the outline of their smoothly curved backs. But this one, this new one, it stung. In her absence, it stung. It stings. Like the rain of that winter storm, darting at my face, hurting my eyes. But I stood there, and I endured. There was nothing else. Not from that day on, nothing else to give me a sensation of the moment when she had vanished. No matter how much it hurt, the pain was some kind of something, built out of the nothing of her absence. I stood there, alone against my elements, my own pain and confusion and loss. And yes, I endured.

Except I was breaking apart.


It was a bright Thursday morning when she returned to my door. She came alongside a cool breeze with a touch as delicate and light as a silk scarf. It moved around us as we stood, cold and immobile in my doorway.

I hadn’t a clue how long she’d been gone. My Jill-less world was nothing more than worry and regret, and now she stood there, close enough to touch. Her heartbeat fingers, right within my grasp. I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to say.

So, I was endlessly grateful when she spoke first.

“Sorry,” she said, “I’m sorry. I’m -- I’m so, so sorry about this.” Her soft voice couldn’t conceal a solemn need for tears. But still, she didn’t cry. Not a drop was spilled.

“No need for sorry.” My voice was pale like milk. And it was real. Whole. My voice in that moment was all of me, everything I had ever thought and felt, all jammed together with a single, uniting prospect: I just wanted warmth again. Warmth. Skin. Her. Sinking into me, faint traces of breath with a touch so gentle, they almost couldn’t be felt. But I could feel them. Right then, I could feel them. Almost as if they were a part of my own body. “No need for anything else. Not now.”

“Not so sure about that,” she whispered.

“Hey…” I moved in closer, dreaming of touch. But she would have none of it, her body suddenly quaking like the heart of the Earth, a fearful movement from the very core of her. That was a bad thing, that day. There was a terrible all-encompassing silence as she composed herself, as if even the breeze that had flowed between us only moments before was in service of her whims. She looked up, her eyes suddenly frozen and clear.

“I did something.”

Out of the periphery of my vision, I saw her movements flow with a certain deliberate pacing, one that seemed, so, so, so…unnatural. For her. It was wrong. Despite the way I had yearned for a reunion, hungered for it like a dog whimpering in a dark corner, it was then that I found myself stricken by fear. Fear, and wonder.

It was a fearful man that watched her reach into the back pocket of her well-worn jeans, watched her fingers come up with something small and thin. It was a rectangle of paper, about the size of a business card; the surface of it colored a mottled gray, like smeared ashes on the last-standing wall of a burned down house. I knew what it was.

These days, everyone does. Oh.

“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”

“I gave it your blood. I gave it a piece of you, because I needed to see.”

Oh. “Oh.” The stinging on my hand suddenly intensified, as if the beast that had taken hold of me with its world-ending jaws had finally tightened its grip, preparing for the true end. Its mouth then opened, wide and quiet, calm as the gaping depths of an ocean crevasse. My feet gave way and I tumbled into that limitless darkness. All while staring into it, looking deep with terribly, terribly expressive eyes. What had she done? To me? To her?

Jill’s hands came together and brought the scrap of contemptible paper closer to her, cradling it against the white cotton that was pulled down over her belly. Her interlaced fingers, still firm, alternately grew tense and relaxed in a series of even, steady pulses.

“What is this, Jill?” my voice cracked as I spoke, “What the hell kind of end?”

“It’s not…”

“Jill.” My voice was bone scraping on concrete. I had to know.

She breathed in. She breathed out. Again and again, as if building up enough rhythm to pull what was needed out of her, like it were latched on somewhere deep inside, someplace hard to reach. She spoke. She had to speak. “I’m still sorry,” she said, “For all of this. Nothing is ever supposed to happen this way. It does, though. Believe me.

“We’re all gonna die, I know that, I know that much. All of us gone, some…sooner.” For a moment she paused, a look on her face as if she might vomit; but she stoned her face and jaws, and made as if she were going to once again look me in the eye. She didn’t. But she came damn close. Seeing it then, I hadn’t a trace of doubt in my mind: There was effort here. A lot of it.

“But now, it feels like -- like I’ve killed you. Even though I didn’t do it, it wasn’t some decision that I made, it feels like I’m a part of it. Your death is in me.” And again, we were draped with a limitless silence.

In that space of time, that little world, I knew that I wanted to say something. Something important, something that might have made it just a tiny, tiny bit better. I’d had it right there with me, the thought in my head, the words in my throat. But for whatever reason, I couldn’t speak them. They lodged there in the base of my gullet, like some tiny animal, heart racing with fear at what might happen in the radiance of the sun. Here, now, I haven’t a clue what it was that I would have said. But it would have helped. I’m sure of it.

“I can’t stand this. Living like this, seeing you like this, knowing that it’s coming.” Jill’s fingers finally stretched themselves out, flat and open, the miniscule expanse of wispy gray standing out as a blight against the glow of her skin. “Could you?”

She looked at me, forcing her presence upon me in a way that I had yet to experience, even amidst all of the life that she had struck me with before. Her eyes grabbed hold of me, One. Last. Time. Those eyes. That hair. Those fingers. That voice. Those memories. That taste. Those feelings. That life, dancing within her. And in that very instant, I felt it all get pulled away. Moments being tugged from the very core of me, heartstrings pulled free and clear; and I knew. She was done. Gone.

Long gone. I stood there, alone, for twenty minutes, cool breeze still bringing the sounds of the world to my ears. It wasn’t until after I turned to open the door that I noticed the card in my hand. Pale gray, this proclaimed death. And hell followed with it.


What else is there to say?
I can see it. There it is, sitting on the edge of my bedside table, a heavy coat of dust nearly camouflaging it against the surface. Untouched by my hand, not since that day when I laid it there to rest. Nothing left to go on. No ground left to tread.

There are times that I find myself coming closer to it, looming my height over that tiny thing, as if I thought I might scare it away. Any time I get close enough to touch, my thoughts turn to ashes and my body falls apart. This won’t do, not at all. I know that much. Now, I know that much.

I can’t bring myself to look. Face-down, the information of me locked in between its own disgusting back and the smooth surface of my own fine oak. I can’t do it, I cannot bring myself to, will myself to, force myself toward a final decision. I don’t know what I want to do. Not since I’ve been left standing alone, just another pillar of salt waiting to return to the Earth. No motion to my moments. Just me and it, waiting for that day to come. And I know it will. I know, as she knew -- the day that I look will be the day that I die.

When I see those words, stamped onto that paper, that will surely be my end. It can’t be anything else.

I couldn’t stand it any other way.

--------------------------

Requiescat In Pace.
And all that.

A blank page.

~open~

Picture a book.
In this book, there is a man.

A bit tall, a bit thin, a bit too concerned with things that he cannot really control.
He’s sitting quietly off to the side of his world, nestled gently within a nook that he’s claimed as his own. He isn’t doing much except for enjoying the state of a day that has yet to begin. Yes, it’s quiet. Quiet and still.

He takes a moment to look outside of the window. It’s an overcast morning, the sky swirling in place like a spoon stirring the milk left over from morning cereal; and the man wonders what his day is going to be. Puzzles out the possibility. Looking out at that sky, the one that stretches out farther than his fingers ever could, there might very well be a promise of things to come. He knows this, and he knows that it’s alright.

He does.

It’s when the man hunkers down with his sciencentric Roast Beef hoodie wrapped around him for warmth against the server air that he discovers it. The thing that will change his day. The thing that scratches its fingernails down the length of his back, leaving deep scars that make a game of tic-tac-toe when combined with marks of a time long since gone by. It hurts.

“I’m blank, today.” he says.
There isn’t a thought in his head.

This shocks and confuses him, a flurry of tangible nothings within his head that wither and die the instant they try to connect with anything, delicate butterflies falling dead onto the frozen ground. Blank. He’s blank. And within that nothing, he finds that he is afraid. The fear rip-roars through his body with a strength that makes him feel as if his very life is being torn from his bones, fire-gnashing thunder-crashing dynamite machines destroying all he has ever hoped to be.

“Where am I going, where have I been?” The question echoes throughout the space around him, and his eyes widen when he sees the space that he occupies. No longer is he nestled in that quiet nook, body surrounded by humming fans and light-streaked blinds; no, this time he sees the page. He sees the book. He sees where he is. In this book, there is a man. And the page he’s on is blank.

Blank.

Is that a good thing? Hard to say. Thoughts should be running through his head. Right here, right now. Right here, right now. Right here, right now. Thoughts. Right here, right now. Ideas. Right here, right now. Plans. Right here, right now. Dreams. Right here, right now. Thoughts. Right --

Damn.
Nothin’.

So much nothin’. So much that it overwhelms him, his body now heaving, an all-encompassing motion that gives his body the appearance of the need for vomit, but with the desire comes nothing else, no splatter of sickening color to give the space some cruel-but-welcome sense of definition. The man cannot figure it out. Figure anything out. So he does the only thing he feels that he may manage -- he tries to outrun it. He tries to run away from this nothingness, to bring himself to a place where his hand can touch a pureness of thought that grants meaning to this empty world, filling it with colors that will spread like light across a night-stained mountain. So. He runs.

Runs into the edge of the page, heaving himself against the edge of the world. HEAVE. HO. RUN. TO. Forcing himself to try to change this world, running his fingers along the edge, trying to find a new beginning, a different theme, a chapter title, a place with definitions beyond that color of uniform white empty that hurts his eyes, hurts his eyes, hurts his eyes hurts his eyes --

The page turns. Blank again.

Damn.
Nothin’.

Nothin’ except that same feeling. His heart undulates in his chest like a gasping fish; but not icy cold, no -- burning hot. And oh so warm. It’s a good thing, that warmth. But where…where did it come from?

“Where indeed?” The voice comes from behind him, like a splash of water exploding over the back of his head. The man whip-turns around, his eyes blurring, trying to pull focus on the thing that sits there amidst the blank, the new thing that might. Give. Something.

It’s a woman. She’s sitting there, quietly munching on a slice of French toast, a hot cup of coffee throwing delicious steam into the air before her. She’s calm. And she smiles.

“Hi.”
“Hello,” the man speaks, his voice cracking slightly, “who might you be?”
Another smile. “I think you know.”

She reaches behind her back, and produces a tall coffee mug as if from nowhere, one that the man regards with a twinkle of recognition in the corner of his eye. It is -- it was -- an old sort of friend. One thought lost, once upon a time.

“I -- where did that come from?”
“From you, I suppose.”
“Really?”
“If you want it to, honey.”
“I -- I think I do.”
“Then why not? Let it be. Have a taste.” Her small hand reaches out to offer the steaming cup to his not-yet-ready fingers. He hesitates, but…not in a bad way. His eyes wide, his head steaming in a manner similar to the liquid in the colorful cat coffee mug.

His hands reach out, and take the mug from hers. Their fingers touch, for but a moment, and he’s embarrassed to note that his hands are cold. So cold. But she still smiles, and lets forth a quick and welcoming laugh. It’s enough to make him tremble.

The coffee transfers its warmth into the surface of his fingers. And then deeper, and deeper still; penetrating down to the bone, like nutrients seeping into the surface of the Earth. He raises it to his face, and warms his lips against the cup. He tastes.

“It tastes like --”
“ -- it tastes like sunrise.” The woman walks closer as the words escape her lips. The man merely nods, then gulps down another swig of burning, watching her movements. His mouth goes dry. He tries to speak.

“Build me, make me,” his voice shakes with traces of long-lost hope, “make me something good.”

Her voice responds, the soft coo of a turtle dove:
“I don’t need to, baby. You already did that yourself.”

And suddenly, they, the pair of them, are back in the nook, the sounds of their advancements muffled by the continuous drone of the servers. And the man, the man, the man…he can feel thoughts. Thoughts in his head, rushing about like rapids crashing through the rocks. Definition and depth, swirling about with a frothy sense of its own self. It’s a good thing.

Outside, the sun rises.
It's bright.

~close~

A feeling.

I had to.
I had to do it, that very night.
I had to do it, that very night -- I had to wander around that town, out in the night, out in the cold. Stopping and scribbling and hastily scrawling on white sheets of notebook paper, my fingers trying to outrun the cold that was grabbing them by their roots.

When I felt like I might stop, I moved.
Started again.

It happened a few times, more times than I can even be bothered to recall. And so, I do not bother. I focus more on the other things: On the frigidness of the air; on the light borrowed from unattended windowsills, creeping up to them as if I were tackily stealing a cooling pie. I focus on that which I had to do.

It got done. It really did. I felt something inside me that had been crashing around my subconscious for far longer than it ever should have; crying with a sound like the hollow echo of an incarcerated man, running his tin cup over the bars of his frigid cell. Keeping it trapped nearly ruined me. So I, I, I set it free. I had to.

It was in that action, that I remembered.
Everything.

I remembered who I was, in the words that clawed their way from me as if they had some manner of demonic compulsion. I gave those words everything, shoving my whole body into that unassuming collection of seven pages, the pages that were wrinkled and cold after the song of the night.
But still -- they shone.

Brightly.

Days like that are a wonder.

I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility to say that sometimes, every once in a collection of whiles, we all have our days like that. Days of being wild, days of living in a way that doesn’t exactly burn a hole through the Earth, but still -- you know. Days that mean more, because they’ve done something. To your life. To your thoughts. To you.

One of those days might have occurred. Now.
Here, in this place. It might have occurred. It’s hard to know for sure, without the clarifying passes of time gone by to truly let me know. But right now, I’m in this scratchy chair, with John Danielle and his Goats of the Mountain crackling out of tiny laptop speakers; right now, I can feel it. I can feel wonder. The wonder of the day.

And for whatever reason, despite the way that things tend to happen, despite the way that people usually feel…the day appears to have continued, to have gone on. And on.
I wonder if I can feel?

I can.
I have to.
I have to, because, because…
Because something might be happening.

Something is happening.
To fuckery with all of the times before, when I didn’t know what was going on within myself, with all the times where the world seemed clear but was really lying through yellowed teeth; to hell with the lines that past experiences have drawn in the sand.
It rained, today. I laughed, today.
Something is happening.
It has to be.

I can feel it. I can feel the same twinges that happened within me that very afternoon, when I knew that I would have to stop my life in the evening, if only so I could find something new in the world of graphite and wood pulp. That day, I knew. I knew with such madness, that I could drive myself towards being the kind of man that I am today. Before then, I’d wanted it. That day?

I felt closer to it than I ever had before.
From the heart of that wonder, I found something in me. Something that I liked. Something that in a way, is alive, even though it’s invisible to the naked eye. Something that meant a change. Something that still means the world.

Yes.

There is wonder, here. And if you see wonder, wonder that you can hold with your hands and hear with your ears, wonder that crackles like a fireplace in a winter household…then you might not be able to do anything but let it warm you. When you feel like you might stop, you move. Let it start you again. Whether it be noon, night, or morning.
It’s beautiful to be in morning.

That’s where we are. We’re in a day that feels like morning, sun barely peeking over the edge of the horizon, clouds across the sky suddenly shimmering gold. You can look at many things, so many things in life. You can make a lot of choices. You can see a lot of things occurring everywhere. But when you see this this, you cannot deny it. It’s shining.

Brightly.

There’s a life to be lived here. Whatever that means, whatever that brings. Whatever the future holds. Something right now is happening, and that cannot be cast aside. It’s a beautiful thing.

A bolt of lightning strikes my heart, and I shiver as it leaves me cold.
But still -- I’m warm.

A slight beginning.

Well.

-------------------------------

To die is a privilege, granted to those who deserve respite.

It was I who said that. I remember it. I remember it clearly, because I remember everything clearly. Too clearly, some (including me) might say. Memory is often known to be a well-worn patchwork quilt, made of generational hands quietly sewing in tiny bits of history with love. With care. With anything, really. The incidental and the coincidental, all in that collection of individual memes, forming something that can be looked back upon with a sense of personal wonder. Not all of it can be seen. Not all of it can be regarded. But it’s all there. All of it. And when people remember, they often remember things of pure wonder. Not so, with those like me. Those who remember everything. Everything. Those who tend to wonder: Would the world, my life -- would it be better if I could forget?

I remember where I was, the moment that I spoke those words. But more importantly: I remember why. Because before I was sitting there, aside the best friend that I can manage in a place that I continually waste away my days, I was somewhere else. Somewhere cold.
Standing on a muddy hillock outside of Glasgow, staring at the corpse of a simple, stupid man. Watching his semi-long brown hair stand up, frozen in my eyes, although in the space of time it was probably whip-cracking him about the face, as if attempting to punish him for the foolishness that he had just partaken in. His face locked in a quiet mask that mingled an overall look of contentment with the slightest beginning of a grimace. His name was -- had been -- Daniel. And quite honestly, as stupid as I knew he was: he looked as if he had been a nice enough man.

Decent.

At least…he had been. Before only a few moments ago, before he found himself laying in a pile of half-frozen mud, his body formed into a position that made it seem as if he had been made of soft elastic. The blood on his head still moving, in all probability. Still fighting for its warmth against the conflicting desires of the gale. It flowed from a wound that would have been surprisingly small, had I not remembered an infinite multitude of wounds that had come before. As always, the man was dead. But he was not alone.

It was for her that I had come.

-------------------------------

There's more to it. More written down than these simple paragraphs, more spun than these initial ideas. There are places where this can -- where it is going to -- go. Places utilizing myths and fantasies, the roots of stories that we as a people have held close to us over the period of generations, ones that we used to explain and enlighten; ones that we used simply as an excuse to feel good. About something.

And like those stories, the ones manipulated by the vestiges of time -- I hope it may come primarily from a place of memory. If bits and pieces of the myth drop off and change, if only ever so slightly, well then...isn't that how they're supposed to go?

But even so, this moment isn't quite the time. Not yet.
Not yet.

Not yet.

A pursuit of beginnings.

It’s gotten to the point where I miss the sound.

The sound of my fingers on this keyboard, giving that slight but momentous sensation of bringing something into the world. The individual letters shining with the traces of oil from my not-always-clean fingers. The sound of a beloved mechanical pencil making scritches that are only minutely audible. The side of my hand, sweating with effort, smearing the lead all over itself.

The sound of writing, writing, writing as the day grows dark; when the night rears its beautiful head, creating a new realm where the thoughts burgeon anew. Where the sound doesn’t stop, where the fingers keep sending out signals of thoughts that aren’t even truly thoughts, moving far too fast to be anything beyond the electrical impulses. Darting from brain to page, with nothing as a buffer on the in-between. Writing that middle -- that’s a feeling unlike anything else.

But to find that middle, you first have to begin. Have to commit to some kind of initial path. Have to find a place where the words suddenly take root, letting everything else naturally grow out of that tap with the purest spirit of springtime. It’s the point where it all begins to work. And also the part where it might very well go wrong. So there, that’s the trick, the point where most kindly folks chew their hands down to the bone with the utter frustration of it all, the point where thoughts spasm with seizures hard enough to break their insubstantial backs. It’s the point where I am now.

Sitting in a place that I haven’t been in quite some time, waxing philosophical about nostalgia; all while desperately, violently, hungrily trying to begin.

Because I want to.
I want to so, so much. So much so that I find myself here now, desperately clawing at the face of beginnings, letting the rough surface tear off my fingernails without my boorish resolve allowing me to care. Force of will, force of thought. Needs to an end. Needing it not to end. Because this is the place where I need to be. The very nature of writing is in here, in this moment, in this place of frustration and tragedy. Writing hurts. It always does. Beginnings most of all.

It’s here where it all works.
In words as in life, the passion of beginnings is where the world comes alive. They have to. They have to. We have to. I have to. I have to find a place I can call home. Where I won’t let my words down. Because words, contrary to certain opinions, can never fail us. We’re the ones that fail them. We’re the ones that spit them out in formations that aren’t as bold and uncompromising as they could be, should be. We’re the ones that can’t find them when the time comes, even though they sit right there, waiting to be used in a way that makes them glow. Waiting for a time when they might mean something, if only for the split-instant when they’re read aloud to someone worthy. When we fail our words, you can feel them scream.

And it is for their sake -- those vicious masters that I love so much -- that I don’t want that to happen. Not ever.

I’ve been trying to start something.
Someone, somewhere has declared that this month is a one of words. Words, in multitude. So I’d (I’ve) decided to use this as an opportunity to begin something. To find that sound again, by forcing myself over that astonishingly painful first summit, enjoying the hell out of the agonizing scramble for a true and proper beginning.

I tried once.
“I hate sleeping.”

I tried twice.
“My life has always been on the outside of humanity.”

I tried three times. Four times. Many more times.
Some seemed all right at first glance, and some made me want to sucker-punch myself in the labonza (a term which needs to see more use, come on). Some were alright, until I realized they were touching upon a place that was far closer to me then I had ever intended it to be. I had liked it. It felt right. But it wasn’t right for what it was meant to be. It was merely right for me.

And so on.

And so forth. But still -- the words must go on. And on and on and on. And on again. It’s in their nature to be with us, to inspire us, to make us feel a way that we didn’t know we could feel. And they might even help us to begin something else, which in turn might help the previous thoughts begin anew. After all, writing about an inability to write is a beautiful contradiction; and it always manages to ring true. If you believe in it, as you would believe in anything else.

I haven’t gotten there yet. The story is outlined (somewhat). The characters exist (somewhat). The ideas are as crisp as they are ever going to be. But even with that in place, with conceptual guidelines having been in consideration ever since the waning days of that dismal place downwind from the Budweiser -- even with that being the case, the beginning still hasn’t been overcome. The sound isn’t consistent, and the fingers, they do bleed on. It hurts. It terrifies. It matters not.

Writing is a process, when all is considered. All of it matters. Not just the moments after you've written, when a smile burns its way across your face like you lit a line of gasoline. Not just the moments when your fingers fly with the grace of a Heron crossing the path of an orange sun. All of them. From the puzzlement, to the hatred, to the moments when everyone in their right mind seems like a sworn enemy to the purity of your ideas. Such formless madness. All of it, a wonder to behold.

Despite their difficulty, beginnings always come about, someway, somehow.
Beginnings exist everywhere.

And in some interesting sort of way -- endings never really come.

A simple exercise.

Here we be. Here I am. And now, there might be something that can be done. Something that I could say or do. Something that I could think. Just talk. Don’t think, not this time. That’s all you need, just to start with a beginning, letting your feet get just a little, just a little, just a little damp. Just enough to know where you are. Give you a solid ground of liquid, a fair bit of, “My feet are wet.” Just enough to put you someplace where you know you have someplace to go. So. Here you are, you brainless git. So talk. Talk to someone. Or with someone. Or perhaps, even about someone.

Anyone.

There’s a girl, one who just walked into this place, shirt slipped off the surface of her shoulder, giving the quiet establishment a fair glimpse of her fair skin. Probably caring about the 80’s style implied by her dress, but not talking, not looking at anything other than the pale yellow of her cup of tea. The light of the world is shining on it, that cup. It glows with the certainty of a new day. It’s lovely.

She’s alone.

There’s a man, hair tousled either by design or by long nights where sleep had become nothing but a distant memory. His lips move, a reaction, oblivious to anything other than the words that emerge from the face of his tiny laptop, neither knowing nor caring that he telegraphs his words to the outside world. He might be watching. He might be typing. He might be reading. Whatever it is, it’s clear to all that the man wishes to think. It’s a noble endeavor if there ever was one. With that, I wish him the best.

He’s concentrating.

There’s a woman, jaw working with the undulations associated with chewing a piece of gum. It’s a free sample, one that came attached to the label upon her coffee sleeve, one that she probably didn’t realize would make her mouth move up and down and around, a person with her cud. She should learn to chew with her mouth closed, some might say. I’d be among them. But she won’t stop. And she won’t notice, even if she’s told.

She’s reading.

There’s a man, one who walks with the small-paced swagger that reminiscent of fathers and grandfathers, men that you grow up with. Men that sometimes, you wish will pass you by. His graying beard and cheery smile seem out of place. He looks like someone you would see walking down the street in the midday son, whistling some bygone tune, not thinking about buying tea in a coffee-joint primarily frequented by pretentious fucks. Myself included.

He’s gone.

There’s a cashier, hands making noises that sound like porcelain, moving in places that the eye can’t manage to see. Working quickly and efficiently, not quite having reached the point where the day since passed hangs from the neck like a weight, every movement redefining “sluggish.” But still, she looks out the window with an interest that recalls freedom, even as she smiles at all those who sit within the world that is currently her realm. The smile might be genuine. It might just be another lie.

She’s energetic.

There’s a new man, one who looks over the ridge of his thin, metallic frames, giving the people among him a glare that suggests a bored sense of superiority. He has work to do. At the very least, that’s what he thinks, as he prepares his laptop for his business with a languid pace, practically sneering at anyone who chooses to look his way. His hair is short, his clothes are neat.

He’s a prick.

There’s a woman, with a man. They sit close together, their backs facing this pair of prying eyes, not giving a face to the lack of a name. But they’re close. His hand placed against her right shoulder, massaging it with firm circles, her neck moving slightly in accordance with his efforts. They move in sync, action with its reactions, the pair of them keyed by the same glow that affected that cup of tea. And when her head turns, I can finally see her face.

She’s happy.

And then, there is a man. Or not. He’s male, that much is certain. But he moves with steps not easy enough for his height, jerky movements that telegraph nerves and disunity with the world at large. He might be a boy. He might be. He might be an adult on paper, but his face looks onward at this place as if it doesn’t have a clue, glancing from person to person without knowing who anyone is, as if he were trying to accomplish something. He wants to be a man. Maybe. Maybe he’s just waiting. Waiting by passing the time, letting this space waste the day, letting his movements waste him away. And that might well be true. But he might also be waiting for something else. Inspiration? Life? Love? Dreams? Existence? Nothing. Knowing nothing. He’s hoping for so much. For everything, even.

He’s…well, I imagine you can guess.

A fuggered up something or other.

My head isn't clear. Can't think straight, can't think right, can't think clear, can't think anything.
So I'll do something else.

So I wrote some fiction.

Maybe it will help?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------



Margarine stole my shoes.
She did, I know she did, and they’re all asking me to prove it. They’re asking me to look at the words of the most cunning liar ever douched out of the crevices of Eva Braun’s demonic cunt, to sit and stare at the whore who took my precious leather shoes from me as I slept under that bridge that one time, stare at her and prove the crime, while all I desire is to cremate her ass, to baptize her with the fires that she was born of, putting her back in her rightful place.

“What’s up with those eyes, you think?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

Need proof, these days.
But there isn’t any proof, none at all, not a scrap of evidence to indict her of the crime that everyone and his Grand-Aunt Sally knew that she committed, right under my snuffling nose when I slept under that one bridge that one time. That’s probably why I couldn’t smell her, that has to be the reason, because my nose was damn cold, damn frozen, damn ruined by the nature of that night, that night under that one bridge that one time. That has to be it.

“So…do you know how we handle something like this?”

“Me? Hell no.”

She’s evil.
Pure evil, not a doubt in this crafty ol’ fuckin’ dome of mine, which is how she could slip around like a creepy specter and thanklessly take the things from me, the things that I want and I need to share with people the most, those shoes that I found, but they were given to me, even though I found them, pure nice leather, really smooth, feeling good all the time as my toes wiggled just a little, just a little too big, just like proper leather shoes should be. I miss them.

“But you’re here to break me in! Because I’ve only been on the job for a couple weeks, and…”

“A couple of weeks? So what? I’ve been on the job three years. Doesn’t mean I know how to handle something like this.”

Evidence?
How? How do you get evidence of some filthy demonic apparition, one who doesn’t have the decency to leave someone’s private residence alone, not treating the place as sacred, sacred like it should be, instead giving us all a scared heart because we don’t know when the hell that bitch is going to be coming by, slipping through our vision like the creepy sleepwalking skank that she is, getting ready for her nights of deception and thievery while the rest of us bother with breathing. I have to stare at her and give them the proof.

“Okay, man. You don’t have to get angry, I just figured that you might know. More experience, all that.”

“More experience? I’ve spent almost every day of my adult life filing paperwork.”

But where?
Where can I get the proof? Where am I going to look to send that bitch back to the place she was made, that greasy little slime bucket, trying to make me look a fool, well I’ll show her, I’ll show her but good what I’m made of, I’ll figure all of this out without even breaking a sweat on my brow. I haven’t broken a sweat on my brow in a while, actually I can’t even remember the last time that something like that happened to me, it’s probably a sign of something, something else that I have to figure out alongside this.

“Paperwork?”

“Yeah, paperwork. It’s most of the job.”

That’s it.
That has to be it. It’s connected, the nose and the shoes and the sweat, all of it coming down to that one time I was under that bridge, that has to be the connection. That’s how I can figure this whole shebang out, by tying them together with that common theme, leather and snot and drippy drippy, exactly, no problem, there we go. But now that I know that, what exactly should I do with it, it isn’t exactly the easiest problem in the world to solve, but that’s okay, that’s what I got, that’s what I can use to my advantage in this whole deal, I can salvage my pride, get my shoes, show her, shoe them all, learn to walk again.

“But mostly paperwork? For two whole years?”

“Three years. And yes, that is how it’s been working out. So yes, this is kind of new to me. I’m sorry, but it is how it is.”

So.
So I’ve got to figure out how I figure into all this. I remember that day like it were three years ago, even though it was last week, even though I spoke to that whore Margarine this morning, I think, yes, that’s right, this morning, I think, it has to have been this morning. What did I have for breakfast, do I think that she did something to it, something to keep me for speaking clearly to the people who want me to prove what it was that she did when she did it, so that we can get to the stake through her heart, putting my misery out of its pleasure, saving me from her and all her vile misdeeds. Jesus Christ, walking with me.

“Jesus Christ. I can’t believe that’s what I’m in for.”

“Hell, I don’t know. Might not go the same for you.”

That’s the ticket.
Try to remember. Remember it all, back to the first moment I saw her, saw her by that fire, where she was standing trying to keep herself right, right where she knew she belonged, and of course that’s the key, the clue, how all of this works, isn’t it, it has to be, I knew it was, I know it is, that bitch, that whore, that slut, that demon, that skank, that walking curse upon the planet Earth, the one made from Hitler’s blasted seed, or something, probably, I haven’t figured out the origin yet. This is getting side-tracked anyway.

“But you just said that it’s what I’m in for! I wanted to be a part of something, you know?”

“Hey, this shit works in different ways for everyone I’ve ever met. And besides, just because you’re not engaging in foot-chases every day doesn’t mean the job is worthless.”

What was that time?
It was. It was about five years ago, on top of the bridge this time, that time, as opposed to the other time, and I think it was where I met her, where the pair of us shared a bit of something something, and I talked for hours about the dog that I had left behind that night that my father decided it would be best if I went back to school, even though tough fellas like me never needed it. Showed that one.

“I can’t believe this.”

“Not hard to believe.”

Ok.
So the clock said seven-thirty. At least it would have, if I had a clock there, but I didn’t the only thing I had next to me keeping me warm and safe was the thing that she stole from me, the one thing that I needed next to my bosom, my arc d’ triumph, my goddamn prize whore of the Ganges, a prime export of my me that I needed to keep myself thinking right among all the other things that the world tries to pump me full of on a regular basis, and now I’m stuck here whimpering like some twirptich robot fucking loser asshole pap-smear, and I know exactly how I got down here. Exactly.

“Not that, I mean the guy. Look at him.”

“I know. Never saw anybody twitch like that before, ‘cept in the movies.”

I know.
I know it. I know how I got here but without my shoes keeping me free and clear, I can’t figure out how the how works, putting together the vapors of that evil ones existence into a tangible enough gathering so that the people around me will know what to do about it, being able to handle it in one fell motion swoop from the heavens, cleansing fire, wave of immolation, the new world of our new world order, where patent-leather shoes are given to the saviors as a symbol of their righteous path. I can do this.

“So…am I gonna have to field the paperwork on this guy?”

“Well, you probably should. Experience and all.”

Concentration is the key.
Force it, that’s what I have to do. Blare a path through all the bullshit and the distrust and the mistrust and the antitrust and the prototrust and the clear trust, a path so clean and virtuous that this mission that I’ve been given to steam-clean that slant-brained cunt wash off the face of the Earth, the way that it was all meant to be, all those times before, I just have to know the right place to looks and it’ll be so easy, so easy to fine it all, beyond everything else, beyond good and bad, righteous and evil. A new path.

“But how can I know what to file if I haven’t done it before?”

“Okay, come on. That’s not fair, you know how this works.”

That’s it.
I’m free, aren’t I? I’m free to choose the way that I make myself move, free to do this thing the way that I see fit, made free by the heavenly spirit’s the way that they made me free all those years ago, the first time that I was put on a crusade for the right of way, the time that has drifted away because there is too much confusion, I can’t get no relief, not without my shoes that keep me warm, except for the snwuffles I had that evening under the bridge, where I was sleeping because I had been put there, and now I think I know I think I know I understand what it is and what it was, all of it. All of it.

“Right, right, right. I’m sorry about this, it’s just…”

“Don’t worry about it, kid.”

So here.
Here I am, ready to work, ready to move. I just have to focus and concentrate, look into myself for that evidence that I still need, still need the proof, but I can get it if I focus, that much is certain and clear and right, no problem-o, all the way to the end, straight down the line, and you know, I think I might even be able to have fun with this one, fun with this charge in a way that I haven’t felt since back when I was still deceived by Margarine’s deceptive ways that had me dancing around in her clockwork web of cursed ways, making me the Rommel to her fucking Fuhrer. That bitch.

“No, I really should apologize about all this.”

“Experience is one thing, expectation is another. Don’t beat yourself up, you still have a chance to get your moment. You never know.”

You never know.
Not at first. Not when the pair of you are standing together, doing what some would call laughing with that pussy-ass joy of the moment, making your way towards a place where you might even call yourself happy, anti of the sad, making your way towards a different freedom than the freedom I just found. I thought I had almost found it that time. With her. In there. Over there. Where was I going, what am I doing, what did she do to me, who was she anyway, before I knew what SHE WAS AND WHO SHE WAS WHAT SHE DID WHAT I DID WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE. No.

“Sure, pops.”

“Don’t call me that. I’m like six years older than you.”

Don’t get crossed.
Keep it all together. All the pieces, the fluctuation and the interpretation, all that meaning that you just fixed together even though you didn’t have your pieces quite right, don’t let the lies of the past mess with the future of the path, just make sure that you know your enemy, remember who she is, who she came from, what she what she what she did to you, don’t forget, have fun with the thoughts remember what she did to you, the hurt and the pain and the lust and the evil, that slobbering mongrel of a horse-faced concubine, ruining your peaceful life with her entrance, sopping up jizz with her eyelids and not letting you think straight. Make it right.

“You called me kid.”

“That isn’t the same thing, and you know it.”

Not hard.
It can’t be, it won’t be. Making it right will be the easiest thing in the world, know that you’re back on track, keeping everybody focused, moving around through the air just like Margarine did when she wisped about and took what you needed to beat her, or so she thought, but I’ve you’ve we’ve gotten around that little technicality, and now all we have to do is stay cautious, keeping our sights locked, and we can have more fun than a cracker barrel crammed full of horse heads, the way we were meant to with this thing. Oh yes, it’s gonna be sweet.

“Whatever. Eight years is enough to make a difference. Plus, there’s all that experience you have.”

“Six years. And we just talked about how much that ‘experience,’ is worth. Hey…”

It’s time.
Time for it all. Time for the bridge where I spent that night that one time, time for evidence and justice and all the things that make the world sweet, make it alright for the children and the puppies and the Christmas carols to flood the air whenever the cock they please themselves, ready to wear myself out with enough action to get it done, whatever’s in the way, isn’t in the way, not with the focus, not with the drive, not with that SCREAMING CUNT OOZING HER WAY INTO MY PORES WHEN I DON’T THINK HARD ENOUGH, time to work, time to play, time to rock around the clock, time to fucking move. Right.

“What?”

“Did he just…”

It’s time.

“JESUS CHRIST!”

“SON OF A BITCH!”

HAHA!
Here we go! Here’s the motion, here’s the action, here’s the fighting, here’s the moving moving moving moving moving on to destroy the way I see the ones she sent and that’s alright I’m gonna get them these Nazi Gestapo pissSacks don’t depress me don’t scare me I know what I have to do and I’ll be damned if I don’t do what I gotta do gotta get where I’m going and to go where I’m getting they gotta get gone. Not my WAY!

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Which way did he…”

“South! He went south. You hurt at all?”

Gotta move.
Gotta move. Gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move gotta move

“My arm’s cut pretty bad. But I’m okay. WHICH WAY IS SOUTH?”

“It’s right behind…good god. Are you seeing this?”

Gottomove…
GOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVEGOTTOMOVE

“Jesus fucking Christ. That’s disgusting. And WHERE THE FUCK IS HER HEAD? It is a her, right? RIGHT?”

“I dunno where the head is. Calm down, kid. Where’s your piece?”

Stop.

“It’s right, uh, it’s right here, I got it, I got it. I’m fine. It’s cool.”

“Okay. Go to the car, radio backup. Got that?”

Can’t let this go.
Can’t let those Gestapo fuckpants ruin all of this after the fact, can’t let them. I won’t let them, it’ll be ok, be alright, be fine, they’re in my way, they were in my way, that makes it fair, makes the mission clear, makes it right. You heard that, Margie? You won’t get me.
You won’t.

“Yeah, backup, okay. Right, uh, pops, watch yourself.”

“Don’t call me that.”

You. Won’t.

“Right, right, sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Just get to the car.”

YOU.

“Okay.”

“Alright. Don’t forget he went…”

WON’T.

“…South, right.”

“Oh Shit.”

Can’t stop me.
You can’t Margarine. You wisp and you move and you try as hard as you can and you could but your ways don’t stop the purest of us and that’s me baby that’s this one right here. Can’t stop me.

“”

“Oh shit. Oh shit.”

Fuck me, fuck you, fuck it all.
I’m not depressed, I’m crazy, I’m going to rape your face and shove you in a hole that I dug in my backyard. Sixty feet deep, a hole that lets the dirt smear all over your skin, covering your angelic features with the revulsion that’s been boiling inside my gut for these years and months and days and minutes. Fuck. You. Enjoy your days of green. Enjoy your dances and your songs. Enjoy your concerts, enjoy your social gatherings. Enjoy your love. Because I won’t. I’m going to sit and watch, festering like a colossal boil that lives on the underside of all that you know, all that you fucking trust, you pisspigs of the world, uniting to spread your moronic message of living and dying. Ugh.

“”

“You can’t do tha”

It’s all mine, all of it.
Because I’m free.

“”

“”

Wait.

“”

“”

What was I doing?