The Dynamics of Hope, the Memory Machine, and Stages of Resignation: 2008, Some Points of Summary (kinda)

And the book says: "We may be through with the past... but the past is not through with us"

____Quiz Kid Donnie Smith










untitled, by Isa Marcelli

____i.
a spot of rain lands on my elbow. i look up from my notebook. A steady rain cools the air and glazes the sidewalk, freshening up fluorescent hues. A large family sit at the table besides me, the children climbing all over vacant chairs and tables and one another. My coffee's already stopped steaming. A teenage girl kisses her little sister on the forehead and walks back to her seat. My headphones are loud so i can't hear much.
____so, 2008, this is how, where, when, you've chosen to end.


____ii.
the last time i saw you was today, a year ago, did you know that? Probably not. I remember everything about you, especially the last page (all of them).
____(finally the hug stops. the car's parked on the most ridiculous incline i feel like an astronaut) She's filled it with all my stuff because i was hugging you and yellow lights and white bricks (and i'm sure a part of me knew it wasn't a 'new(est) beginning' like you said, but the new(est) (final) ending).
____i remember the air and the quiet and Mona's patient face. In the end, as though realizing i'd been holding my breath (all year) i put my hands to my lips and kissed my fingers and touched your cheek. you cried softly, it wouldn't even have disturbed a cat. i got in the car parked vertically. a voiced communication with a space-station somewhere was not heard, and at 3am Christmas Day, we ended something we thought we were rejuvenating.
____a quarter of an hour later, Monz says: how you feeling?
__- just like skin. i left everything that matters behind.
__- ... i'm glad you got in (finally
__- ... i almost didn't.
__- i know. _that's what __why __i'm saying , said ...
_______anyway.
__- anyway.


____iii.
__Gol: Q, just... you have to be patient, really it kills me to-
_ __Q: um, excuse me, i'm plenty patient, i define patience, i own it, i invented it-
__Gol: you're right, you're right, but still Q... i'm telling you, it just feels like a year for miracles -
_ __Q: fu&^ing fu&^ing shut-up with that fu&^ing rant about god-damned screw-themselves miracles. you and monz and you're damned miracle-sighting-expeditions!
__Gol: ... there's a long way to go yet Q. All i'm saying, all i'm saying, keep it simple. look at your feet. plant the next step. leave the universe to the universe.
_ __Q: ...
__Gol: ...
_ __Q: that's good advice.
__Gol: [exhale.sigh]


____iv.
i hang up the phone. i'm quiet. i reek of silence, it emanates from me so Mar and Courtney just stare, What? What?
__- i gotta go
__- gotta... go where?
__- LA.
__- what? no!. Q!, no! you're almost happy. almost happy is a big improvement, you're not-
__- my grandfather passed away.






i walk to my notebook open to the page that my marker's marked, fumble for the pen that i've been kicking around on the carpet all week and write:

i_ am_ too_ not_ r e a d y_ .


____v.
her face turns blue: Q, you said you'd stay a bit longer... just to make sure of... things. __you said you would. __you said. _[i'm scared].
i know baby, but the price difference is over a thousand dollars. just for an extra 2 weeks. it's going to be scary to live alone no matter when it starts... so, let's just say it starts 2 weeks sooner... it'll be hard for us too, no matter when.
__(she cried) ____(mom cries) ____(i look around. my lips are too dry to speak. i repeat fu^& and ya'Baha'u'llapa in various combinations for the next 14 hours trying to find words.strength.answers)


____vi.
the LA sky is always blue. never a cloud. it's eerie. The sun is heavier than any rain. I sit, topless, because mom insists it'll help with my 'depression'. I listen to Mozart and close my eyes and try to disappear. (open?) (damn. no. still here) repeat. Each patch of blackess is a noisy concoction of names . dates . planes . snow . trains . Eman's hug . Haifa . being lost . words . answers . wind . half mumbled prayers/curses (in the same breath) . dreams of death and dead people . did i kill the future? . (o p e n !, god, i can't take that)

____at 4am i finally get out of bed and make myself a bowl of cereal. eat slowly. my step-dad comes out the bedroom.
__'you're up?'
__'never sleep. __what about you?'
__'jet-lag. i'm still on Australia time.'
__(nod)
__'something on your mind?'
__'everything.'
__'is that all?' (smile)
__' everything is alot'

and i walk (with a limp) down the boulevard at 2am with my headphones on. I fell playing basketball, again. I stop in front of of the bookshop and stare at the mannequin-head-installation-art the hippie owner's boyfriend made (she tells me about it 2 weeks later when i finally pop in and buy Stravinsky, a Critical Survery and the second volume of Virgina Woolf's A Common Reader essays). I walk on, hands in pockets. I pass the closed carwash. the mexican food stall. the supermarket that's open till midnight- sometimes 1am. and what is life that i should find myself walking down Santa Monica Blvd. at 2am listening to Russian rock songs?


____vii. (your love will be safe with me)
__you: and... the thing... come up with , have been thinking...
_ __q:__________just say what's on your mind. we're beyond this.
__you: we shouldn't talk anymore.
______not at all.
__ _q: wanna... discuss this?_,_ or have you made up your mind?
__you: _no. __made up.
_ __q: _ok.
__you: __ok?
_ __q: i disagree; _but if that's what you've come up with and-
__you: you brought this on, ok?, y o u . Don't pass this off on me. (your actions)
_ __q: __Yeah. __sure. __ok.
__you:
_ __q:
__you: you'll be ok?
_ __q: _____________... yeah.
__you: ok.
_ __q: __bye. __look after yourself. __be well.
__you: that's harsh.
__ _q: that my dear, was hardly harsh. _(in comparison. __(given the circumstances.
__you: [sigh]
______you'll be ok?
__ _q: yes. stop asking. ___take care.
__you: Bye Qdudus.
_ __q: Bye _ _ _ _ _.

(and the rest is silence)


____viii.
there's a picture of it Ashley took. four of us walking in a line. i have my silly hat on and a half-unbuttoned shirt. Liam has his towl around his neck and he holds it at both ends. Andy stares over and is listening, Em is half amused.

i arrive home smelling of sand and the sound of geological time-frames.

mom opens the door: what kind of friends do you keep who have time to go to the beach at 2 in the afternoon on a Monday? (i smile)

____ix.
Martha's the only person who's heard me cry.


____x.
(i stare for 20 minutes at cars and people passing. At the end of it, under all the dust and smiling teeth: how do you forgive the past?, i can't do it, how do you do it?, how do you do it?, how do you do it?

Telefon Tel Aviv you are the worst thing in the world (for me): (nocturne)

i close my eyes and reach out a hand,
stretch an inch farther maybe there's a wisp of hair i can't see in the dark that my fingertips will find,

eyes straining the car moans its way home, my vision's blurred so the yellow green tangerine bright red lights look like planets as i drift through empty narrow spaces between solar systems

and the other side of happiness is

__ (memory twice removed)


i have discovered hollow emotions - inchoate versions, phantasms of the real thing:
all petal and no scent,
i float through fractions of happiness and loneliness and midlightness and lead-heavy-weighted.ness (and grass is what's left of fingertips that stretched too long and found nothing,

besides me a car passes, with a mannequin that stares straight ahead, drifting shadow of a nocturnal bird too high to see, jagged conjunctions of metal and streetlight and heads tilted just off axis to accommodate dreamtime masquerades and one handed driving,

youth has delivered its true crown at last:
(today's whimpering crawl)

and the mannequin, turns its androgynous head and mouths to me: could this be life?,
and i shake my head in return, mouth back (lipped conversations that air can't touch): how would we know?

(what's that remembering the feel of sunlight with your eyes closed at noon?)
(you are the sun, when the sun has gone away)

nighttime. geological forces press against oceans and caverns and solo-manned bedrooms,
static torque and balanced weights too heavy to count: moments that muster their own gravity (stars slow their jog and look back over their shoulder, occasionally reach out a fired wrist

and then there comes no sound,
no motion,
and dreams spill like clownsuits and droplets of wet oil from rainbows,

and tired eyes find graspless places where fatigue makes no sense, and words aren't wasted to attempt to say what skydives forgot to describe:
(far-away a phase-difference is starting to practice it's artful machination

i have to dance my stone back into beating

________________________(save the last chance for me

2008... an assortment of random thingisms

____I long to talke with some old lover's ghost,

____Donne














david foldvari

____1. confession.

Where there is love, nothing is too much trouble and there is always time makes me mad. it was the argument she always used against me. and i'd say, no dear, this has nothing to do with love, or with time, it simply is not a good plan... it just doesn't add up. see? and she'd say: no. (just like that, she had a way of saying it sforzando, like those Brahms orchestral chords that sound like jabs) no, this is about love and time, because if this is love, nothing is too much trouble (nothing doesn't leave room for your exceptions), and you'll just have to make the time. if you loved me you would. and i'd think to myself: i do love you, but love is not an excuse to do stupid things and justify extraneous subjects and courses... love is not immune to the forces of trouble and time... and i was right. in the end, trouble and time were more always there, and were too much trouble, and where love is is in a vacuum space that alleverything can encroach on. and eventually, no one knows where love is. love is not in a where.


____2. q music awards

Best albums of 2008:
For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver
Invol2ver, Sasha
Lupe Fiasco's the Cool, Lupe Fiasco
Oracular Spectacular, MGMT
Cove, A Weather
Third, Portishead
In Rainbows, Radiohead

Best single songs of 2008:
Re: Stacks, Bon Iver
Kids, MGMT
Destroy Everything You Touch (Sasha's Invol2ver Remix), Ladytron
Oh My Stars, A Weather
Videotape, Radiohead

Album from 2007 that's still most cool:
23, Blonde Redhead
Silent Alarm, Bloc Party


____3.
whatever this is, this life of starting work at 7am, and cut hands and bruised knees, and working till 8-9pm... this life of coughing up sawdust and dreaming (literally) of angles and gyprock and circular saw techniques, whatever it is... could this be happiness?


____4.
i have little to write about these days. it is not writer's block, so much as... writer having found himself in a state of bland whiteness where nothing presses itself as a need to be written. social contact has all but disappeared and is limited to my one friend, with whom i sit and watch whatever episode we're up to of Weeds, and since i cannot write (or read), sitting at the Starbucks at the corner of broadbeach and shamelessly people watching for no more than 45 minutes because at that point i start to feel lonely and leave. and yet, this beautiful, pale sense of nothing.whatever.ness that makes everything so ok it's simply... not even a thing anymore. i am desiccating life.


____5. (at the hardware store:

__Q: does this silicon dry translucent?
lady: whahuh?
__Q: um ... transparent, is it see-through
lady: oh. see-through, i had no idea what you were saying
__Q: yeah. translucent is a word that means see-through.
lady: why don't you just say see-through?
__Q: because see-through is a phrase that people who didn't know about the world translucent invented.
lady: oh. well, that includes me then doesn't it?
__Q: yes. it does.
lady: this silicon will dry... transparent?, what was that word?
__Q: translucent.
lady: what's transparent then? why invent two words for the same thing? hey?! Hey?! (feeling smart)
__Q: actually, a transparent substance you can see clearly through, you'd be able to see disctict images. translucent substances allow light to pass, but any images will be blurry. so it kinda lets some light pass through. i just used transparent as a rough synonym because i thought it might get the idea across.
lady: ok, i have to stop talking to you, you just said another weird word.
__Q: yeah. i definitely need to move.
lady: huh?


____6.
dear people who read this blog whoever you are:
in the next bracket of time, i anticipate further trouble coming up with writing ideas. so. should you have a topic you'd like to see me treat, or... want to collaborate on something or whatever, email me, comment, get in touchy touchy. send me essay topics. send me words or quotes that might trigger something. blah blah blah. if you don't, i'll eventually sit down and (losing control) will say everything it is i have to say about the year 2008 (think of it as a closing address). here's an abridged version: mother-fu*&ing die! die! die!. so. save us both from that.

3 dreams of my dead mother, and other tales

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in his fingers while she talks.
“Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands”;
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.”
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.

____from Portrait of a Lady, Eliot





1974, pierre wayser



____1.

i like rooms like this. dark grey walls, it's slate i think. a hard bench in dark wood, with moderate sized slats and empty spaces in between. a simple rectangular shape. several of them. i sit amongst people in fitted black trousers, and oh-soo-elegant cocktail dresses. we are huddled together on these benches, people facing to their left or right, no one straight ahead. my field of vision is encased in somebody's head, so it moves and i see everything from the vantage point of eyes. it is a strange place to be. (the reason your own voice sounds strange to you is because of the interference that comes from your cranium's vibrations when you speak. it's a feedback mechanism that makes the way you sound different from the inside). there are lights, but i can't tell where they are located. there is popcorn. the head i am stuck in is in the kitchen. the head moves towards the right, out from behind the kitchen-counter, but not back towards the group straight ahead. it walks keeps walking, and there, a square shaped room with one wall made entirely of glass, through the glass i see my grandfather, 10 months (now) dead, sitting like a patient in a waiting room. his arms are not crossed - as he was accustomed to doing in life - they are by his sides. he wears the same bland khaki pants, grey plastic jacket. his hair little curly ringlets. he looked as he did when i was 8. 9. 10. (he looks as he does when i dream of him). i see him and freak. freak. i (consciously) get excited frightened uncertain... i haven't seen him since february. i've only seen him once. though asleep my body tightens. within the dream i fall to the floor and squirm like an animal, saying mom mom mom, it's your dad. there is no response to my excitement.

in the morning, i brush my teeth. feel comforted that my grandfather came around to check on me, even if he was as quiet in death as he was in life. (and that's when i realize it. it was my mother's funeral).


____2.

grass at dusk. that muddy mercury color. patchy like old men's hair. a tall high swing. three bodies, shadows, only partially filled in with matter. one on the swing, one pushing, a third off to the side (that's me).

inside an amphitheater. lines that are cut boldly, and shadows that inhabit their spaces and are too disciplined to move off their shapes.

outside, as the sky grows a demon-blue, then a soothing shade of black, then darker still. a cement bench that copies the color of the sky. i cannot sense its cold, or its hardness. i cannot sense anything other than i am sitting there.

voices carry in the amphitheater. i haven't a clue what they're saying.

outside, there's speaking.


____3.

i'm left with my sister. she has to pee. i have to get her to a bathroom. this is not uncommon. it is not uncommon to see me running through shopping centres and wedding parties and airports pushing my wheelchair as we both laugh (and are concerned).

it is dark. there are soo many bridges joining these buildings. for a while (as i think through sleep), i figure i am on a university campus at night. it is perhaps an open-night. when i was 9 my parents took me to see a cultural show at Moorepark College. my dad was a teacher there. perhaps it is there. when i was 10, we went to UCLA. i remember only the shape of the outline of the tree's shadow on the grass i had my lunch on. to me UCLA was the shadow of that tree. But for now, it is night. and i run, pushing my sister.

now with dad and Sahar. we are in an windowless house. there are sheets covering some furniture. an old piano that resembles a mean old lady and i won't go near it. my face has a sneer glued-onto it. it is dusty. dad is there. it is his dust-heap. sahar is there but i can't see her. an old wooden wardrobe goes high up towards the higher up ceiling. there's an old sound system up there, mummified in its own dust.


____(morning)

reza's standing by my bed. when i open my eyes i see my light-green-and-white-striped pajama pants. he's saying something but i don't hear him,
- i deamt that mom died.
- what?
- i dreamt that mom died.
- ... uhm
- three nights in a row.
- ... it's not necessarily a bad thing ... it ... could mean your relationship is changing ...
- [it's made me feel really lonely. and a little uncomfortable. we're a team. a team. we've faught wars together. see?
- ... blah blah blah blah blah (etc)
- [and, why do i feel soo lonely? i'm happy when people die. happiest
- ... and recently you're soo focussed on what you want and you're own life and so maybe ...
- [but this feeling ... and this last one ... it was like dad was raising us. also, he wasn't. i was raising us. and then dad. and then me. running across bridges looking for bathrooms. and then moving through dusty rooms looking at yet more dusty boxes, and that thick carpet that moulds around your feet like sand
- ... so i wouldn't really worry about it, to answer your question, no, i haven't had any such ...
- [but all we've gone through. i don't make sense to anyone but mom. not even she gets me, but at least she gets the history of it ... not really, but she was there for half the wounds, and she gave the other half, and even Sahar can't fathom it because half the wounds come from contorting ourselves to manage her
- ... also we have the electrician who might come today, but he might come tomorrow, but we have to be on the lookout
- [i always thought i'd be really happy for her, but... i'd be devastated. i never knew i would be. but i would be.
- ... and since they're emptying the construction bin out the front, maybe we should remove all the carpets too - oh, and with the pool, what was the size of the tile we've
- [when did we become a team?


____(evening)

i looked at your photo for a little while. it was there i looked. also i kind of thought it might be there, and so made sure to peek through. it was (there). i looked. i feel like i can translate your smiles better than anyone. maybe i can't. maybe i have an outdated dictionary. maybe there's a new edition of you out i don't know about. no doubt. i can't hold you up to the light to make sure, but i sensed a translucence. watch out for that ok?, first its translucence, then it's outright transparency. if you can't be a shadow there's nothing else but a cloud. i liked the feel of you in my hands, try to maintain some hold on matter. i don't know what you're fake-smiling about. but i feel like i do. history has its own makeshift mythology for everything. we kid ourselves into believing our Aramaic. i can't sense anything of you through this picture. it is like looking at a lake, why do we do that? (we do though).

i'll be honest about this too:
i think alot about when we meet next. how it'll happen. there's no doubt it will. people keep taking apart sections of the world and folding them up real tight and jamming entire continents back into the same cardboard box. it's getting smaller and. it's just a ticking machine thing before we do. bump. see. again. which is fine it's fine, i just wonder if i can stand up straight when it happens. whether i'll be half-formed or fully formed. whether i'll have developed a spine and fingertips and language by then. embryology takes forever.

i always feel like your life is better. like... it always just worked.works.will work for you. there's a glamour to it. an ease. life misfits sometimes. it's an awkward dress on some. doesn't quite make sense. like me. always stumbling onto buses and trains, beads of sweat on my forehead from the stress of being late. going to the mall unshaven and messy hair and my thumb still bleeding from the hacksaw blade. caught off-guard. not sure what to say back. carrying too much laundry in one basket so my uncool slightly-pink underwear is falling out everywhere. if the air is hot and humid i have a rash that comes. i suppose magazine cutouts never can work with


____(later evening)

i sniff the air trying to sense the vibe. i'm no shaman, nothing makes itself known to me.
i'm scared to sleep i just lay here and read the Ikea catalogue.

i haven't felt this lonely in months.

Doppelgänger

In the vernacular, "Doppelgänger" has come to refer (as in German) to any double or look-alike of a person. The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. They are generally regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. In Norse mythology, a vardøger is a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance.







Lichtzeichnungen by Andreas Nicolas Fischer


q. __(#1.) __(screw up your courage)
i never left haifa. i woke up that morning. i got dressed. i sat by my bed and looked at my bags all packed and ready to go. i tapped my knees together. then i stood up, unzipped my blue bag (that because of this, would no longer break in Prague a year later) and took out a few socks. i made a little mound of them in a corner. i took out my black notebook, turned to the first page, and ripped it out. i walked to my pin-up board and pinned it up. the first page; __not the last.


q. __(#2.) __(run Orestes, run!)
i left Martha's key at the hiding place she showed me and walked into the city. i sat at the crumpet shop with a refillable mug of gourmet earl-grey tea. i stared at the pink neon lights of the strip club opposite with my eyes out of focus, so it could have been Las Vegas or toxic flamingos i was looking at, wouldn't have made any difference. i payed the $1.37 i owed, and walked out. boarded the train, asked for the farthest stop. when i got off there were few tall buildings and it was windy. i walked over and asked for a bus somewhere. they said i was at the wrong stop, had to go back into the city, go to the bus terminus and go from there. i shook my head and started walking away, for no reason, in no direction at all. i kicked a white rock for 45 minutes to pass the time. i carried my brown leather overnight bag on alternating shoulders. an hour later a car pulled up besides me, asked me if i knew where i was going. not LA i said. why not?
- my grandfather died. there's a funeral on.
- isn't that a reason to go.
- no.
- why not?
- because in my notebook i wrote i am too not ready.
he nods when i say this.
- i'm going to Carrick, ya know where that is?
- no.
- it's -
- don't tell me __ doesn't matter
(i'm getting in the car as i say this)
- what'll you do when you get there?
- try and get as far away as i can.
- how long will you keep that up?
- till it's silent.


q. __(#3.) __(gatsby)
i am ___that's ____if i see ___________need _____ __bear (to) _____ _please.
un ___ _why __ _ _you . ___ ____ __ __more _______bare ________ _please.
(still)_ _ i worry ___i don't : __ ___ ____time __ __ ___open ears _ _ ___please.
sure. _ _ ____ __ _ be not a failure ,still) _(all say that)_ to willing sirens. _ see?


q.__ (#4.) __(the wasteland)
he didn't say much at the airport. he looked thin. i took him to eat, he nibbled a little and forked his food around a lot. finally, he looked up, and worriedly said that he couldn't stomach much more. i said it's good to have you home son, he smiled graciously. thanks he responded. when he walked in, he stood in place and stared at the piano for a while. finally he nodded at me, walked into his room and shut the door behind him. he hasn't been out in over a day... i'm not sure what to say to him, and the thing is


q. __(#5.) __(the Eumenides)
2008 ends.
and what did you do in 2008 Mr Naohkart?
i ran and ran.
where to?
i'm not sure yet.


q. __(#6.) __(new years)
rest in peace our son, who fell asleep at the wheel, and with limp resting body joined silence, translucency, and eventually: transparency - since his eyes were closed, his last memory of this earth will be ... whatever his dreams had led him to. blackness. blackness and silence.

a long december (na na na naaa)

____If you think that I could be forgiven...
____i wish you would

_______Counting Crows







2 December 2008, Amy Sahba
courtesy of Every Morn and Eve

it does seem to curve back onto itself like a wave, doesn't it? december 2006. december 2007. december 2008. like folding a piece of paper so the edges meet. put a hole through it, there you are. can't tell one from the other. the numbers drift away, you're left with the ostinato: december december december.

today is the 11th of december. i didn't realize it was december until today. december 12th 2006 was the worst day of 2006. december 15th 2007 was the worst day of 2007.

the worst days of 2008 are already behind us. i sit here almost the same man. (the gash on my thumb is healing. when i look at it, i can't see into myself anymore. i can't see the redness of my insides, like having cut myself a new eye throat navel. i had hoped to grow tulips and midwinter mornings and first-kisses out of it... but it appears the shaman sold me the wrong potion). i wear thick Ray Ban reading glasses, that's changed. the faulty eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg.

i fear less. hope less. expect less. demand less. speak less.

i am lonely in the same quantity. i worry the same amount.

i am more stoic. more certain of uncertain things. more moved by music. my hands are more scarred. even more homeless.

*___*___*

dear 2009,
i would like to assume i've paid my dues for two-years now, and you must be something brilliant waiting to happen, but that's a naivety i can't afford to cling to. years are not good because antecedent ones were bad. years are years the way rocks are rocks. certain and simple and plain and are their own nature. you will be whatever it is you were made to be. big or small, meaningful or not, decayed and rotted on the inside, or full of humid tropical days that make everyone but me smile. i simply don't care about you. you go on and roll the way gravity drags you. (na na na naaaa),
when you arrive, don't say hi to me, we're not gonna be friends. you're just gonna be in the same vacinity as me. but you're only for one year, and i have to live with your memories forever after. that's what i hate about you. you come, make a mess, and leave the world to clean up after you. i hate your kind (seconds and minutes and years and moments and fractions and heartbeats) (i like things that alleviate you, or momentarily pause you, or mess with you, like love-making, which is putting you in a wheelie-trash-bin and rolling you down a hill, or driving too fast at night with the windows down so you get dizzy and can't tell sunday from inertia).
whatever. see ya when you get here.

q.


*___*___*

i sit and watch rain hit the ground. i'm more concenrned with how it changes... the geanology of puddles. alterations of sound. i am alone, resting my hands, which burn, and my muscles, which occasionally spasm. outside there's lightning. spasm. more rain. the pitch of the sound changes a little. (burning). lightning but no thunder, just a single strobe effect. an epileptic driving home holds his breath and pulls over just in case. (spasm) (i think of it as a misplaced heartbeat. a little contraction in my bicep instead of my right ventricle. i'm all mixed up inside nowadays). the puddles have built up nicely, now i see ripples in them. there's one that's growing slowly brown. the others haven't assumed colors yet, they're still phantasms. i spend a few moments thinking if i should self-incise myself, and empty out all the old luggage while i still have time. lightning with no thunder. i look up. boooooom. oh. there it is. i listen to the rain, see if it has anything to contribute. no. not right now, she's reciting her 12 times-tables. i hear the grinding of a machine come to a halt. it is the overture, it's still only the 11th. then i realize, it's the tractor, they're done for the day, the rain means they have to stop. we're done for the day mate, can't work in the rain someone says to me. i ignore it, the rain is singing Orfeo ed Euridice, i am trying to decide if i should look back or not. memory, my sweet Euridice, which if i turn back for, i'll be lost forever for. (the sound of boots through mud as the workmen start abandoning their beasts to recline in mud and wash their faces with open-palms. (in Africa, it rained once, we couldn't go home, there were floods. we sat in a small elevated hutt. the other children stripped and jumped in, it came up to their chests. they sang and used little plastic buckets to splash each other with yellowed muddy water. i looked at my dad who was squatting. his eyes said no. cholera. i nodded. a child's sadness knows no bounds. i watched the other children play.
______i realize i'm looking at Euridice, i turn away, look back at the tunnel's end up ahead. mumble a few words to myself, and kick the rocks lining the path out of Hades. i saw you look back kid i hear behind me. Eff you, no you didn't. (i kick another rock). (play it tough, that sometimes works) (i hear a violin). i'm not sad, but i can't retain so much of it without it sometimes slipping through.

I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.

love.

another night, stumbling from image to image. white buttocks and shadowed hallways and two puppies in a basket floating down a river. the distinct sense of reaching out, like walking through a foreign house at night, arms in front of you, hoping to reach fingertips or lightswitches (either will do) ... the distinct sense of wanting to cough, but not ... can't ...
____and i don't know how to say this, but, after having sat at the bustop we agreed on all night, i stand in the morning, and realize you changed your mind. i walk out onto my patio where the 6am air stares at me but doesn't ask for an explanation. i kick at a patch of overgrown grass.

it's probably best you didn't come by this time.


time.

the steam and smoke of our tea & cigarette conversations has by now reached Horologium Oscillitorium, where it is too quiet to tell our stories, and all the rocks we kicked burn standing upright of their own accord,

white jasmine petals that fall unexpectedly out of small books, and all white dust reminds me of white mountains that are impossible to look at at zenith, and birds of prey and giant spiders and my own body's scars tell

there is no getting around this hillock that grows a foot for every step you take, the seconds that

splintered images of death's twilight kingdom, of snow, and trains cutting across white fields (your skin grown so vast; all the ocean's just your whispers, and the clouds cover the whole sky so there's not a sun or a moon, but a glow of light that slowly creeps down from the sky like haloed bird-kisses or frozen fireflies or secrets swollen into muted-words (if you breathe them in you'll hear truths and all the things i don't know to say can be said


fear.

how?. how will i?. i can't imagine it. i don't know what i'd do. i really don't. i don't know what to do with it now. and now is not then. and when then happens...


god.

dear alleverything. dear giant-creation-machine. dear c# minor. dear circumstance. dear the-time-i-got-drunk-and-ended-up-in-my-underwear-running-around-the-boat-that-was-anchored-just-offshore-wet-and-chuckling-moremoremoremore. dear love-letters. dear star constellations. dear flight-from-Prague-to-Chicago-i-cried-through-mumbling-prayers-to-myself-the-whole-time-so-that-the-lady-besides-me-thought-she-was-sitting-next-to-a-madman. dear forgiver. dear departed grandfather. dear cement walls. dear miscarried fetus. dear forgotten childhood promises. dear Haifa. dear distant silence. dear ecofriendly automobiles. dear slowly-dying-cells-of-my-body. dear inescapable existence (once started, impossible to abandon). dear mistrust. dear piano-wood. dear fatigued eyelids. dear 3am paranoia. dear self-loathing. dear honesty-month. dear mistaken identities. dear person-i-will-one-day-be. dear misunderstood happiness.

how __can __i

(say the rest?)


loneliness.

stumbling out. it was 3am. you've been abandoned, left alone to face the taste in your mouth. why aren't my footsteps lining up?, what have you done - you moron, you don't even know the way back. follow that light, there, that one. it was that way. right foot. left. right foot. yes. yes. who are you? you are not this man. not this. god, someone speak to me, distract me. this is not a thing that happens in my

and we drove in my blue car. he looked out his window, i looked out the front windscreen. the hours passed and we had on loud music no one listened to. finally he looked at me and said: this is bullsh&^ you know that? and i nod. yeah, it is. it really is.

and after i awoke, realized that you probably sensed me on the other side of your eyelid, knocking, but didn't hold out your hand i thought

at 4am, finally, i clumsily walk to the kitchen and pour out some cereal. the milk spills half on the table but i don't bother cleaning it. i stare at the refrigerator that's stained like yellowed-teeth. the refrigerator hums a midnight lullaby made up only of curse words. for a minute i consider standing up and slamming my stool into it 14 times. i crunch the first spoonfull, i misjudge a little and some milk dribbles down my chin; my right hand tightens around the spoon so it hurts. a moment later i exhale. sigh. rub my index finger into the spilt milk. it's cold. you're right. it is. it really is.

no. i'm fine.