5 images of contentment

Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties

____Chopin








water fills the room, nikola tamindzic

____1.
the math and physics club
prepares you for just about any calculation
__(except not needing one.)


____2.
i feel soo far from you.all.everything
(a distance not measured in times or lengths)
(a slowly blurring dream, coming apart at the edges)
(slowly losing weight like a punctured tire
__or the elderly skin of a deflating balloon)

"i can turn right or left, makes no difference"

____(he smiles)
i feel soo free.


____3.
the air abuts my skin perfectly, a perfect join
(i can't tell one from the other)
and my internal movements flutter away
like aquatic bubbles,
and i can't speak, and would rather not anyway:
i am soo close to the moon, one quick move
and it'll spring away.


____4.
besides me a couple gropes for something to talk about.
opposite, a table full of too-attractive young girls scheming.
(a father and daughter walk past, the father gesturing wildly
with the hand not in hers) (they almost bump into a bevy
of tourists too interested in uninteresting things).
an odd family of alone-mother and children, all with a
characteristic swollen noise, sit and people watch, while drinking
identical slushies. they stare at me sitting
by myself. uncoupled. unfriended. unfamilied.
and i delight in my hour of wordless solace.


____5.
later later, right now think about this:



____(ah, so refreshing)

naiveties I can't.won't give up, a List:

____1. that 10 years after, when my future.wife and i have discussed everything, we will sit in complete quiet and carry, in eloquent silence, that conversation that won't end.

____2. that in the very darkest parts of the very deepest oceans, terrifying giant squid still exist that can snap submarines so easily into two.

____3. that my future.baby.boys will be born with a genetically pre-programmed predisposition for neckties.

____4. in those alone moments when i sometimes think of you, and know nothing about you-now, and where you are and what doing and who with, but i whisper a little prayer into the car window or wall or bedsheet besides me and hope the universe is kind to you, i hope that is enough, and if you think of me, i hope it is in the same way.

____5. though i've never discovered it, that there is a better place.

____6. time left to myself weathers off the rough edges.

____7. people prefer honesty. the world needs more.

____8. a good (wo)man in a bad system is still better than a bad (wo)man in a bad system. in other words: our actions do matter.

____9. that i will see most of you again.

____10. there is a building somewhere that eventually i will call 'home' (and mean it) (and i'll be there long enough to have a cat.dog called Archmides... or Plutarch. or Wordsworth. or Humbert Humbert) who will sit on my lap quietly and ponder in cat.dog-analogous terms: that there is always time.room for beauty and beautiful things.

____11. closing my eyes when i run is almost the same thing as flying.

____12. when i make love my soul slips out of my body and into hers like two clouds coalescing.

____13. picking the right tie for an occasion ensures things will go fine.

____14. i'm ok. i'm enough.

____(15. next time things will go better)

____16. it's crucial that i learn more 'stuff'. i don't know why, it's just important that i do.

____17. everything i need to know about life is encrypted into the sound-patterns of falling rain. if i listen long enough i'll learn to decode it, and it'll tell me everything.

____18. 2008 wasn't all my fault. some of these things just needed to happen. in other words:

____19. there is a God. (S)he mostly likes me, is merciful and just in a combination that is individual to each soul in ways i cannot fathom. that my life is a meaningful rat-race-exercise: and i'm doing ok at it (so far).

____20. my future.baby.girls will look beautiful(delicious) in their dance(ballet) tutus (and will not grow up to resent me for all the pictures i took of them dressed that way)

____21. eventually, (in the end) it will all be ok.

____22. precise, accurate communication improves all relationships.

____23. when i meet her, we'll work the rest out.

____24. i'm not as alone as i (usually) feel

____25. writing things down helps. my writing's not that bad. (even if it never gets published - except in Gol and Anjie's books: thanks guys!!)

____26. synergy was a way cool word that's now irredeemably tarnished by self-help catch-phrases and DIY BEST SMALL-BUSINESS MANAGER IN THE HISTORY OF FOREVER(EVER!) books.

____27. she appreciated the novel i wrote her. she hasn't thrown it out. she still has it somewhere, crammed and hidden. it means some(any)thing to her. that is enough. i'll be happy with some(any)thing.

____28. the reason i feel closer to god when i listen to Bach, Brahms, Arvo Part, Eva Cassidy, Nina Simone etc. is because i am.

____29. dance is self-exorcism.

____30. my sister is god's gift to m family - for which we owe everything we are. eventually, the real her will be unwrapped, and i'll be able to measure her wingspan properly. i'm convinced that that moment will make this life posthumously worth it.

____31. no one will complain that half of my funeral will involve people siting silently in their seats listening to music i'll have chosen in advance - things everyone should hear once before they die.

____32. love is not everything. but it's reason enough.

Things Ashtree C(Sh)ould Write About, a List

untitled, shesaskeleton

____1. there is dust everywhere. when i walk my skin is covered in a thin film of white. i am a moonwalker. a dustmite. a limestone creation. sometime soon this dust will coalesce into a moon in my own backyard. (gravity always wins the day). do you know anything about my new moon?

____2. dance danse danz

____3. this morning when i woke up, at 7:23am, i stood waiting for the water filter to notice my cup and fill it. i was holding 15 tissues because my eyes are watering, my nose is running, my face is numb and my sneezes via butterfly effect are altering the course of light rays coming from distant supernovas) i heard next door, the early-rising children already laughing and running (on imagined grass my imagination colored a perfect green), through the intervening walls and fences, their sound was muffled. a sort of high-pitched gigglaughter that sounded as though it was moving with definite precision from one place to another (i think living room to trampoline outside). i was overjoyed for reasons that did not make themselves known to me.

____4. there is water here:

________all these pieces, black and swift
________are moving through themselves

____5. - why are you not where i am?
__ ___- what does that mean?, what kind of question is that?
__ ___- maybe it was rhetorical i don't know.
__ __ _- don't say things you dont' know.
____ _- distance is a bitch.
__ _ __- yeah. ____(what kind?
__ _ __- huh?
__ _ __- what kind of distance?
__ _ __- how many kinds are there?
__ _ __- [she smiles sadly]

____6. New York. (which has become soo many intangible things in my head, for reasons i am cognizant of) (and which scares and thrills me) (and has all the illusion of the other trophies that gather dust in boxes)

____7. (I'm always happy)
yeah, but the baseline for you is like 7-8, so we want you to feel 9-10. if you're a 6 we worry. whereas with me, a 6 is like the best day ever.

____8. funerals. i attended one on friday too. i wore my grandfather's tie. i felt selfish because i couldn't concentrate on who i was supposed to be praying for (i didn't know him, i know his family, and they cried alot). and i had no seat, so i concentrated on my shoes in front of me, and felt the back of my suit stretching (which i didn't like). i felt beads of sweat from the consistent sun. i wiped them always right to left (in hopes of not disturbing the part in my hair). there was a young woman who looked very familiar standing to my left who kept staring at me when i looked away. more crying from somewhere inside the chapel. god i'm thirsty. i'm intimately conscious of the contours of the soles of my feet. i feel a centimeter above the ground. is that enough?, i don't know. (i check my watch again, it keeps going, on and on, but i know once it's all done, we'll wish we'd had a little more time)

____9. but this doesn't make any sense. why is everything about you, how can i write about you?
you don't. write for yourself. we all experience the same things anyway. just with different names, and different dates and the trains i remember have yellow handrails and your car is silver and trees sound almost the same everywhere. see?

____10. who? ____what?

________(yes, exactly)

notes

1. quick quick, before i fall asleep, let's just get this all over and done with, i'm zoning out already, god i'm tired
   
2. and the cat, damned cat; i really have to stop going over there, i always leave an hour later panting for breath and unable to see straight and i drive home with the windows down gasping and gasping and watery eyes barely open
3. on the mud we danced. i was exhausted, it had been a long day, but stepping into the crowd, some russia-doll-hidden, younger, brighter-redder-eyed me woke. i dance with my eyes closed, a habit from my methamphetamine days when with eyes open my mind would rush to analyze.think.scrutinize.ponder.reassess.judge.conceptualize, and so i found, eyes closed, i was lost in a cocoon no one could penetrate. a strange sensation of movement outside yourself that you can sense but not see, your own movements that release energy.worry.stress.angst.fear without your having to see them, or be embarrassed for them- the catharsis from yourself, and of course, the movement, that in the dark (and soo loud, soo loud, louder please, yes, louder still, still louder, i don't want to feel my heart beat for a while) manages to illuminate all those parts of your body that hidden and jammed-in cannot usually hear. covered in sweat and up to knees in mud, and lost and found and trampled and 
4. Destroy Everything You Touch (, today, destroy me, this way,) 
   and as the vocoders wore off, i opened my eyes and thought, no no no no no no, i'm not ready, not back yet, no no no no, and Richard said: it's ok q. at least now you remember who you are. we'll be back soon. (that was two days ago) (i'm scratchy under my neck and i have the music in my car on too loud, trying to regain that sense of music as a physical entity that vibrates through my body - and animates me, and loosens me up, and reminds me i'm 25 and not (as commonly believed) 55. 
   (the title of the blog post that was to deal with this thoroughly was to be called: the man like... or; how q managed orgasm and regained his youth. (needless to say, fatigue and lack of time have prevented me from writing it)
5. i have alot of good writing ideas. but when i have them i don't have time to notate them. later (like now) i'm too tired. (quick quick quick, your eyes are getting scratchier by the second)
6. this damed house won't build itself. my hands are sore, and  i am constantly fingering the bruises on my palms. the slices at my fingertips are the worst. they're almost invisible but they sting hardest. there is only sawdust and plaster in the air to breathe. i am turning slowly into a masonry-man.  when it happens, someone remember to plant a tree besides me ok?
7. finally, i can recall what a life you're happy to be living looks like.
   (now i'm dead-anxious to start constructing it)

fragments

____I.

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And tender churl mak'st waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

____Shakespeare, Sonnets





untitled, Brett Walker


i counted, sixteen roses are as sweet as your toes,

and forgetting my age, in class today, i jumped up and down like a bunny rabbit!! like a bunny rabbit!! with three little-people the size of possibility, which is to say: infinitude

while outside and all around and for all time it rains and grows shades of dark and darker(still)
which proves the queer axiom that winter beds do grow larger and lonelier than summer ones,


___(1)
pouring tea after dinner
i suddenly missed Martha's tea.
and the sound of the wind as,
wrapped in blankets,
we sat in silence and
made no-sense of all those things
that are clearest in streetlights' view
(time,
history,
loss,
love,
circumstance)

and finishing my apple,
she doesn't look at me,
but i hear her say:

ok

(and i feel better,
knowing it's ok,
we made it through
another day
longer than the last
longer than the rest)

time to go in.


*___*___*

i close my eyes and mumble to myself the moments i fear i may start to forget soon... on Father's Day, i had Subway with a homeless man named Rolphie, because he approached me (outside) and said: man, can spare some change?, i'm soo hungry
___- i'll tell you what, how about we get you some food, yeah?
___- man, you serious?
___- sure i'm serious, wanna sandwhich?
___- Yes man, you are nice, thankyou!
___- no worries, you'd do it for me.
___- Yes man, yes man, i wasn't always this way, no sir, was not was not always this way
___- i hear you brother, nor was i. ___what's your name?
___- huh?
___- i'm hungry too, mind if i join you?
___- man you serious?
___- if you don't mind, no point us sitting alone at different tables
___- Rolphie. was a veteran, i have the card, let me show you
___- it's ok, i believe you,
___- no no no, i want you to see it it's important you see it, then you know i'm tellin the truth

my hands hurt soo bad. three of my fingers won't really move. my thumb's swollen, cuts across all my fingertips, my palms sore and red and warm. people seem to think it's from removing tiles and scraping cement. i know better. this is what happens when you stop touching people.


___(2) (nocturne)

dear future wife,

dear unbalanced silence,

dear collapsing universe,

dear unfathered children,

dear damaged palm-lines,

dear unfathomable infinity,

dear miscalculated past,

dear myself, called the nicknames only you will think up,

dear untaken breaths,

dear damaged lungs,

dear undisturbed time,

dear alleverything,

sleep softly my dears.
sleep, and let me sleep for once, too.


*___*___*

TITLES &/or FIRST-LINES (for Anjie)

- hello?
- this bastard air of this bastard life,
- (no help from )
- this future's not what i paid for,
- Gossamer
- (and at night, the toxic amber of streetlights hold my hands, leads me out of bed,
- these are not dreams that lead me away, these are not dreams when i drive home
- too late to
- screw up your courage
- (once again)
- and he knew as well as anyone love was all there was worth
- and if you haven't stopped breathing, mumbling fuckfuckfuckfuck quietly to yourself as you reach across for a prayer book, hands trembling and resembling tree-branches, not knowing what else to say.do.be, then you haven't been dead enough to know what life is.
- please?
- the shifting gravity of entangled lips,
- anti-alacrity
- when we lost the keys on our second date, and we walked in the cold and your stilletos probably so uncomfortable and we found them again and accidentally proved a false-axiom: out of tragedy there is great victory, we were led astray, and all our crying afterwards i blame on those bastard keys for showing up.
- catastrophist
- professional people watching, quiet loving, omellette eating, silent seeking q.
- untitled.
- untitled 2.
- fish, curled to suggest: home.
- the misunderwritings of qdudsu hcialme hankotra
- your head, leaning on the taut seatbelt, you slept almost the whole way to seattle, and we drove through the prettiest parts at night, i remember only the moon and the white specks on the black water, the rest of the forrest absorbs everything we throw at it, moonbeams and prayers and middle-of-nowhere-one-in-a-million-please-gods, while you slept i drove almost 22 hours. finally, while you mumbled more nonesense to me, i said: q, it's getting ridiculous now, let's just stop somewhere and sleep for the night, to which you replied: mmm,yeeahh, sure sure, agree... i agree, yyeeahhh___ wwha?
- and nothing is sadder than distance.


i have no idea what i'm writing about.
i'm sorry for wasting all your time(s).

fragments

1. i have no titles. i do not know titles. names are beyond me just now right now just.
   
2. i'm listening to Paul Oakenfold's Southern Sun, the last time i listened to this song, i fell asleep at the wheel 5am, New Year's Day, 2003, and drove a little blue hatchback full-speed through the intersection of a main road and a 4-lanes-a-side highway, taking out a traffic light and a palm tree. the palm tree later died. i did not. this continues to give me some sense of pleasure (that the palm tree died). (but i occasionally would be happy to trade places)
3. i know no-one likes to leave comments on posts where i swear, or talk about sex, or people in the nude, but i know many of you secretly like it because it's true-stuff that true-people say and true-people do and true-people fear and true-people want and the things that cause almost all true-people pain,pleasure,awkward isolation,consummate love,entice hatred loneliness fear self-loathing; and at least a few of you are true-enough-people. that being said, she's wonderful isn't she? she's intersting and fiesty and completely self-unaware, and doesn't give a lick about any acheivement but being human and that's the one she has the most trouble with (like me). (but in my novels, everyone is me). the more i get to know her, the more i like her. the more i find with her the world is a war that never ended. and she's soo soft, and soo simple, and soo easy, and, as i read once in the introduction to a book on Lacanian Psychology: the logic of the female is like an underground current, present and certain and ceaseless, and finds its way through any obstacle, and just when it's ready, springs to the surface; no one knowing where it started, how it got there, or why - but knowing its paces were deliberate and certain and the outcome exactly as it should have been. (i have paraphrased the whole thing entirely from my memory of reading something once on a bus in 2002 with dim lights - which is to say: i probably made the whole thing up)
   
   i am saying all this because: my novel grows. slowly. fingertips. eyelids. slowly features are made clear to me, parallels, things interlock, and i continue to embue it with more and more of myself until i can't distinguish me from the plans in my head - and then, only then, it without warning starts to spill itself onto a page. and then we begin.
   
4. i am tired. i have no good ideas to write about tonight. but it's raining, and in order to communicate effectively with the rain, it's important i make a tapping noise, she likes it when i contribute. (I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
   And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
   That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
   Darkness there, and nothing more.
   
   

this is her. say hi.

So to cut a long story short, when her mother checked into rehab, she checked out of her mother. It all happened so quick, she never thought to offer an explanation; only that there seemed to her to be some ignoble mistake in alteration. She'd grown accustomed to her mother - actually liked the fact that she sat in her Max Mara summer dress, nails hair and eyes done, smoking out on the lawn, the ice of her drink melting.

She cried on the flight - that's when it started - strange bodily reactions she couldn't grasp. On the pull-out tray in front of her, her fingers tapped their way through the first book of the well tempered klavier, the stewardess thought her neurotic. - can i get you a drink dear? - no thanks, just a cup full of ice will be fine. and carried on with the D major fugue.

at the beach in santa monica, she couldn't resist writing on the sand in huge letters: FU&^ YOU, which made a little girl cry. She'd used black nail polish on her fingers that morning, and felt beyond the reaches of etiquette. her apartment was a mess before she even got to it, but decided (that same yearning for the pristine states of things) to keep it as it was; just as she never threw out the picture of her dad in her cot, singing her songs, with his hairy legs sticking out all over the place. she'd brought the picture with her, used a magnet to put it up on her refrigerator, the white of which had grown yellow-tinged, like smoker's teeth. at night, not knowing anyone, she'd taken to drinking herself past the first three vestibules of loneliness and she'd practise being her mother by wearing summer dresses, and stumbling barefoot throughout the house calling her father's name ALLEN! AL-EN, fu^&ing Allen where'd you go? while giggling between shouts so that her downstairs neighbours would later swear that a nice couple lived upstairs.

after she'd spent enough lunchtimes sitting looking lost in the public library, one day she walked to the informationd desk, where a homosexual African-American man asked her why do you think you'd make a good library assistant? to which she smiled and answered fu&^ that, but i'll paint your nails a new color every week, deal? to which his stern (heavily oppressed) face cracked a well-meant smile, honey, it's clear to me you're the right lady for this job. After which she took her lunches out on the grass with a hippie, a homeless drunk, a homeless non-drunk, and an estranged husband who had committed to memory the first 50 Shakespeare sonnets.

three months in, still drinking herself to sleep, she. in a fit of (unexpected) rage, ripped a silver dress and hurled a black heeled shoe across the room screaming at the top of her lungs: i love you i love you i love you and proceeded to empty an ashtray, wash the dishes, vacuum the floor, and put away an army of clothes back into drawers and wardrobes and laundry baskets entirely in the nude, the whole time hoping whatever djinns had taken over her would find it easier to escape her that way (like she'd opened the window for the flies to get out).

once, in the street, despite the black rings of her eyes, her newly shortened hair-length, and her staring conspicuously in the other direction, a too-perfect-for-life blonde girl called after her, i thought it was you!, gosh, i haven't seen you since... since... the New York eisteford, you played the Busoni transcription of the A minor prelude and fuge right?
- hmugh. ___yah.
- i'll never forget it, it was... it was... soo good! what are you working on now?
- now?
- yeah, more Bach i bet right? you're like... Glen Gould or something!
- i'm not working on anything.
- what are you doing?
- forgetting.
- what?
- what. what. ever. forget this, i'm outta here.
- hey -

and when she was far enough that Bridget (that little bitch) couldn't see, her body began leaking again for reasons she couldn't understand, but she fantasized that the tears were a perfect rythmic representation of the opening prelude's chromatic descending subject, and then after buying a 50 cent softfrink from the 99cent store she went out back tipped over a shopping trolley and kicked it for 5 minutes straight, threw the drink at it, kicked the can away (it's black puke.blood foaming all over the place) and walked away huffing and puffing in a mad rush to get home, get drunk, get naked, and clean out her oven.

finally, one day, someone came into the library humming the rondo of Beethoven's Tempest sonata, which made her go to the bathroom (preempting any funny surpises), wait to see if she'd cry, then, coast-being-clear, walked back out, walked straight up the man, and said:

i'm the best pianist you've ever met. if you find me a piano, i'd be your friend forever and i'd play for you whenever you asked.

to which he replied:

i'm a terrible pianist. but if i had a piano, i'd be a better person.

when she went home that night, she wondered why she wasn't in love. she got drunk, picked up the phone, rang her mother's house (which was vacant, on account of her mother being in a plush spa-retreat somewhere getting sober) and shouted at the answering machine:

i. fu&^ (love) you! i. fu&^ (love) you! i. fu&^ (love) you!

only that by morning she'd forgotten having done it, and because her sister had already called that night and left a 25 minute (equally) drunken message about her own wedding preperations, no one ever heard the rhythmic syncopations of her passionate outburst.