May.10th, 2012

We make a short drive from Kassel to Bremen. The Ex are playing a show on a docked boat and we grab two of the final four tickets available. We take a long walk in a light rain, going over a bridge that overlooks the Weser. Two German tall cans on an empty stomach makes me talk. I laugh at the signs that say Moderne Kunst and Aktuelle Kunst. It starts to pour and we run down the streets with opened cans of beer, the liquid spilling over the rim and onto our hands.

We have a short dinner of mediocre schnitzel before heading onto the boat. The Ex are soundchecking and we talk to their merch girl. An old-school punk named Willie introduces himself to us. We speak in broken language about the universal tongue of music. There are roughly a hundred people below deck to see the show. Everyone shuffles to the front as The Ex take the stage. Terrie rocks back and forth all night as if seeking calm from the concatenation of Katherina's syncopated rhythms, the sudden paroxysms of Andy's guitar, and the childlike bouncing of Arnold. I watch in bewildered laughter for most of the set. Never have I felt the ecstasy of music reach such transcendental heights.

The show ends and we hug Willie. Nothing needs to be said. The Ex forged a relationship between everyone in that room that night.

A more lucid explanation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPWcf3U4oHs

Toothpaste

She treated him like a near-empty tube of toothpaste, pressed flat and rolled up to where the dregs of his being remained. He was both insulted and flattered. More often than not she bought a new tube instead of struggling to pinch out what resisted to emerge. In desperate days, however, she returned to him, once again glad that she put him back in the cupboard instead of tossing him away. Their friendship was destined to continue in this fashion. She, seeking his friendship when there was nothing more complete. Him, giving all that he could until he finally ran dry. 

Neruda

It's late and I'm tired, so here's a thought from Pablo Neruda:

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long." from Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines

Dreams 2

We know lots of things at the backs of our brains. The part that touches the tops of pillows, sweating dreams into the fabric. I like to think no thought goes unused, that what I cannot understand while awake can delight me while I sleep. I imagine each pillow contains the threads of different kinds of dreams, so that when I roll and shift in bed I combine the dreams of love, and fear, and the insane. And then I wake up and wonder what it means to kiss some girl I've never seen riding on the back of a rhinoceros in a thunderstorm. And I wish that it were real.

Man

Head slightly cocked and right eye squinting at the sun. The left eye looks right at you. Small, but full of knowing. The decades of his life have eroded the falsities found in photos of those who know they're having their photo taken. This elderly man has nothing to hide; the photo is an offering. His right hand cups a bunch of grapes. They're for us. Generous and sage. His shadow extends long and lean from his feet, and we see that he uses a cane. In this moment, perhaps we imagine the shadow as someone else. A taciturn man with his back turned, not wanting to be seen. Maybe we want this follower to leave, but we know he never will, so long as the sun is out.

Photo by Kristian Jordan

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dawntraitor/8388759438/in/set-72157632543434108/lightbox/

Looking

He started to notice things. The fly that hung around until early winter, drunk in the air and flying slow as a falling feather. Easy to swat. The way his Grandma never says goodbye on the phone, but "bye for now." A reassuring farewell. The way butterflies hit the windshield of a car. Quiet and clean. The way her left eye squints when she smiles, like she's looking at him two different ways. Seeing who he is and how she wants him to be.

Night

The telephone wires hung limp in the calm black sky, skeins of conversation tiring them out. At 2 A.M it's quiet on the street. No sound of cars. No echoes of the day. Just the boot crunch on packed snow. The lamps between houses form dim spotlights on the road. Places to stand and recite the monologues that can't be heard when things are busy. 

Rhythm

The days now only suggest an end. Everything seems to continue in a familiar rhythm. We don't notice much that happens, and we feel that things must be fine. The cold brings a long sting to our faces, but we expect it. The feeling isn't new. And soon the snow will melt and we'll embrace the gradual warmth of spring. Still, I feel we'll stay put, the seasons a frame around our constancy, the colours and temperatures changing as we wonder, without will, how to move.

Change 2

The change didn't bother him. He was ready to be confused again, to be spun and sent somewhere he had never been, to be cut in half. In some ways he had been wishing for this rupture. Split in two he could let himself spill out, and like a child could search for treasures never known in the streams and puddles left after the storm.

Lips

When he was anxious he bit the skin on his lips, peeled it off in thin strips like removing a sticker from a sheet. He wasn't sure why he did this, but it was difficult to stop. He could feel the inconsistencies on his raw flesh, the changes in texture, the dried pieces that hung on scraping his upper lip. And so he went to work, leveling the surface, creating a smoothness. Perhaps he thought his worries were stuck in his skin and by tearing away the top layer everything would be made okay.

Wheelies

     Disco on wheels. For kids of the 1990's Wheelies Roller Rink was a place to experience a decade we never had. Iridescent and large, a disco ball hung in the center of the rink reflecting colours from the spotlights. Blue, red, and yellow -- luminous ribbons sliding across the floor. Top forty music and cherished hits from years past projected out the speakers, guiding the speed and rhythm of our movement around the rink. The room was designed for the chase of young love.
     But the strongest memory I have of Wheelies is not the pursuit of a girl who stumbled in her rollerblades, but of an evening speeding around the floor with my hockey team. Our skill on the ice was easily transferable to the roller rink and we skated with confidence and powerful grace. Perhaps self-conscious of the juvenility of the outing some of the guys created their own danger. Remember pixie stix? The thin, bright coloured straws full of powdered sugar? One of my teammates had a whole bag, so a couple of the guys went into the washroom, poured out the sugar on the sink and snorted it like cocaine. Then they'd come out of the washroom wide eyed and grinning, hunched over in a hockey stance, moving around the rink in chopped strides acting out their Scarface fantasy. This routine was repeated several times throughout the night. They insisted it gave them a rush. It probably did. It was sugar. I couldn't dispute that. But I never snorted any of the sugar. I knew that if I wanted that cheap feeling of brief energy I could drink the sugar the way it was meant to be taken. But that stuff tasted like shit. Instead, in long strides I skated alone, proud of my ability to differentiate cocaine from powdered sugar.

5

A chimera. The leaning in for a kiss. Unable to transcend what comes to a point at the corners of memory. Immured in a cutting-room of the past. You rode your bike through the labyrinth of condominiums on Summerfield Crescent. I had never seen you before. I don't see you now. Nothing but a form on a bike and the remembered excitement, a moribund impostor of feeling.

Photograph

They face each other, the two of them. I can only make out forms. A Rorschach image. In the middle of a path surrounded by trees smudged together, bushes bonded by dusk. The branches, feint veins awash in a dimming sky. Nothing defined. The residue of truth. In between the figures a glint of light. They look as if they're standing inside themselves, a fainter form, a wraith of their bodies aglow against the living shapes.


Photo by Kristian Jordan

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dawntraitor/8387727227/in/photostream

Rain

When it rains I'm given back days thought dessicated by time's rapacious lips. I don't feel the gentle drops that surprise the shoulder, nor the cascade that soaks in seconds my entire body. The rapping of droplets on car hoods. The thought that you could dodge each drop by running fast. Gone. When it rains I'm five years old on a play structure in a small field surrounded by condominiums. The sandbox flooded, we jump from the monkey bars into a brief suburban sea, the sky's gift to youth on a pastel day. Only when it pours do from her lips come moments thought withered, spit from the clouds and caught running down my cheeks. No longer on the day after rain can I swim in a sandbox in a stretched white shirt, unconscious of the forming ellipsis imprinted by the suck of her lips.

Later

 Nascent and true, thrust into love's mire -- abandoned to ferment in a midden pile of the unusable. Find me a place to store what I cannot feel unfettered. Perhaps in the folds of sulci or the chambers of the heart. Create a memory of the future, a time untrue but in the mind -- anamnesis of this. You do the same. And maybe then, in vacant promised days, we'll find use for what we were forced to forget.

Art

      People romanticize the "tortured artist"; I do too. There are times when I wish that my life weren't so easy, so normal. But then, when I feel the slightest tremors of sadness and pain, of shame or embarrassment, I become paralyzed and helpless in my ability to develop these feelings in an artistic, or even a palatable way. I seem to require distance to be thoughtful and creative, at least when attempting to forge beauty from bleaker times. Yet this seems counter-intuitive to producing truthful and powerful art. Once the feeling ceases to exist in any substantial way does the possibility remain to transform or represent that feeling into anything more than a cursory recollection?  Perhaps the issue is fear. A fear of discovering or finally understanding how you feel about something. To make yourself vulnerable to yourself is an oft avoided action. It's safer to remain ignorant to the sources of feeling, but it's also emotionally and creatively stifling. Giving a voice to what has so far been silenced can induce a necessary cathartic shock. Much will remain in confusion and obscurity; that much is certain. But I feel that an artist, or anyone for the matter, owes it to themselves to take the risk in navigating the morasses of their minds and hearts.

Storm

     When the next storm came he drove out of the city and parked his car in the middle of a field where no one seemed to live. He unbuckled his seat belt and reclined his seat. The rain pelted the windshield with such force and frequency that he felt he was looking at a smeared oil painting.
     He loved how the sky sounded during a storm. The ceaseless chatter of the rain. The argument of the thunder. He liked to imagine that sheet lightning was the flash of a giant camera, capturing the scene from a privileged vantage point. But there was nothing that excited him more than fork lightning. The sudden stabs of light, nature's knives splitting trees and starting fires. A violence he felt safe from in his car.
     When the storm ended he drove back into the city where buildings blocked his view and people liked to talk.

Gone

     "I feel so far from everything out here." True, she was miles away from all that she knew well, but the distance she felt was something ignorant of physical space. At home, curled up and held by familiar arms she felt as alone as in this quiet town where the people looked down as they walked and the muted sky caused the ringing in her ears to remind her of the stalking silence.
     He told her that he missed her too, but that wasn't what she meant. After she hung up the phone she walked out on the balcony of her second floor hotel room and stared out at the road below. A streetlight flickered and buzzed and the sound made her wonder if someone was sending her a message in Morse code, something urgent that she couldn't decipher. And so she stood there leaning over the balcony, staring at the failing light until it no longer stammered in its speech and finally conceded to silence in the ever quieting night. Still, she stood, waiting for something she hoped would come by morning.

Dreams

     He never got into an unmade bed. The tangles of the day were enough without the twisted sheets and wrinkled patterns of the previous night to compete with. An unmade bed is a welcoming beginning, a place to willingly succumb to night's wonder and trickery in hopes of a pleasant voyage to a place without consequence. He wanted to dream all night, to be taken to places he wasn't allowed, to see things that could never happen -- to love people he never thought he could. Sleeping, he lived with the reckless play of a child, a life free from the miasma of foresight. There were nights when he wished never to be woken up, nights where the quiet desires of day were enacted behind his eyes. Always, though, he woke up. And he wondered where the truth lay. Did he really feel the things he felt in his sleep? Sometimes they hung around for a long time, casting doubt on his days like a shadow. He felt like his silhouette was the part of him that lived in his dreams, forever beside him, yet impossible to fully reach. A suggestion of who he might be, following him forever in the judging gaze of the sun.

Change

     In spring the remaining snow patterns the field like fallen clouds. Blades of grass, smothered for months, begin to unfold themselves as they dry in the sun. Wet streets are covered with gravel. Cars make a sound redolent of a fire’s crackle.
     As winter unclenches her fingers in a slow release from her dark grip we begin to see again. The hours are less confining and the sound of the sky changes. There’s more to hear than the lonely wind. Leaves flutter and birds bring back their scattered tunes.

    We hope some things survive the ache of the thaw and emerge waiting to greet us. Things too far to reach in the cold. Things we waited the winter for. Damp and shivering before us we bring them close, feeling their tremble slow until they're still in our arms -- perhaps for the first time.

Taxidermy and Other Stuff

     I saw a film earlier this year that contained a scene of a man performing taxidermy on a duck. The bird was killed only to be torn apart, emptied, and sewn back together. Primped and mounted, the taxidermist makes death beautiful. Now the bird is displayed in a museum or hung on some hunter's wall as a reminder that in the battle of fowl versus firearm the gun wins every time.
     I look at the duck with it's glass eyes, posed in the act of a futile takeoff, and wonder why we don't preserve people this way. Why don't we gut and stuff our Grandparents and nail them above the fireplace? Then they would never have to leave us; we could see them every day dressed in their best clothes with smiles forced on their faces, their kyphosis corrected, always willing to look us in the eye.

Travel

No time for pleasantries in a place where wondrous nights fleet with the hungover haze of the fast approaching morning. No time to talk about anything but everything. Desperation lingers in every word. Strong relationships are formed in hours. Expensive vodka is bought. Music is shared. Everyone hugs and I fret for days about never learning the last name of a girl named Mara. In a place so unfamiliar, you seek to know people. Not meet them, but know them. And so you open up, you tell them how they look beautiful in sweatpants, and how they live in a paradise you wish you never had to leave. And they tell you how different cultures deal with death, how they dream in English, and how American men stare at them when they walk down New Mexico streets. And in the bathroom mirror at a bar in Den Hague I see myself smile. A smile conjured by this mysterious comfort and love for beautiful strangers.

Then the morning comes and you miss the people you've just met. You know that the hours you've spent apart will increase until you've lost count and they've forgotten your name. Still, you feel that you know them, and that they know you, in ways no one else does. And so you get out of bed wondering who you'll meet that evening. And you feel okay.

Grandpa

On April 30, 2003, my Grandpa died. Spring had broken through the thick winter, and only small heaps of snow remained, hidden under the shade of trees, melting with each ray of sun that poked through the needles and branches--a slow disintegration, quiet and unobserved. My Grandpa too, began to disappear, and my hope for him was measured by his body weight. Each pound that he kept or gained was another day of life.

The scattered snow didn’t fool us. We knew winter was over.

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    At noon the day my Grandpa died my dad dropped off my lunch at school. I asked how Grandpa was doing. “Not well,” he said. I had heard many times that year that my Grandpa was not doing well. Each time though, a few days later, he would be doing better. This time, better never came. My Grandpa was dead when my dad came by the school, but I wasn’t told until the end of the day. I had kissed a girl after my dad dropped off my lunch. I’m thankful he didn’t tell me the truth. It would have marred the kiss with grief, or prevented it from happening at all.
    No one close to me had died before. The etiquette was unclear. I thought I should be alone, so when I got home I went into the basement, sat down on a couch, stared at the carpet, and then at the TV. I tried to cry but I didn’t know how. I could understand the loss, but couldn’t feel it. When I came back upstairs I looked out the window and saw my mom walking up the driveway. Grandpa was her dad. She tread softly on the concrete--uncertain, as if she didn’t want to get anywhere, as if she had nowhere to go. Nothing offered distraction. No chair to relax in. No taste to the food. The house provided no comfort. In grief, everywhere feels the same. Everywhere, there is a lack. 

I went to a birthday party that night, but I don’t remember anything about it. Just staring at the black TV screen and seeing nothing but my reflection. Searching for sadness. Angry at the lack. Relieved, too.

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    My Grandpa was tall with wiry muscles. He loved to garden, and he hated squirrels. He’d lure them into a cage with peanut butter and drop them off on the highway, or squirt them with a high pressure water gun. Whenever my family visited he’d give me and my siblings a caramel Werther’s candy and I always looked forward to it. Sucking on the candy made it last longer, but crushing them filled my mouth with the taste. I never had the patience to enjoy their full life.
    My family moved into my Grandparent’s house after Grandpa died. We keep a dish of Werther’s candies on the desk in the front hall as a reminder and a tribute. My friends fill their pockets. I never take one. They were special when he gave them to me. Now they’re too available.
    When we first moved, the wallpaper in the house was a lustrous silver and gold, patterned with Egyptian hieroglyphics. In the den were cabinets of brass animals from trips around the world. Elephants, birds, and bulls. Years passed before I noticed the armadillos having sex. In the center of the living room is a wooden table with a glass top. Underneath, three dimensional and whittled from wood, two iron clad female warriors ride with knives and bows through a town lined with trees. The main floor of the house looked like an antique shop.
    The most important items in the living room were a velvet, olive green couch, and a grandfather clock. My Grandpa and I would sit on the couch and talk about hockey. By moving my fingers across the nap of the material I would write my name on the couch, erase it, and then write it again. Easy to bring back, but easier to wipe away. My mom told me that my Grandpa would do the same thing. The grandfather clock worked back then.
    We waited a few years before we stripped away the wallpaper and got rid of the couch. The walls are brown now and don’t glitter in the sun. The new couch is a darker green and made of leather. There are no hidden shades or secret colours, no places to write your name. We kept the grandfather clock. Sometimes it works and the bells chime on the hour. Usually it just stares with both hands stuck at twelve, as if posing in eternal prayer. 

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    Vestiges of a life. The way he looked. The way the house looked. Conversations all too vague in their details. Like the hidden snow and velvet nap, what I can recall returns only to disappear again.

Sparrows

     For a second they formed an archway over the highway. A flock of sparrows. Each day I drove by the birds emerged from a field of sunflowers on the right of the road. They would greet the sky together, suspended at their apex for a time so short it couldn't be counted, only to drop down between the thick stems and become hidden. Rising and falling as breaths. A living parabola. Light and graceful like leaves thrown up in a gust.
     I took comfort in their reliability. I knew that the sparrows likely made the short journey across the highway several times a day. That didn't matter; they were there whenever I drove past. I looked for them every time, watching the unfettered beauty of their movements for the second that my car drove past, and looking forward the day when I'd drive by next.

Apartments

     On the morning of my first day in Germany I sit in a rented car parked on a cobblestone road beside a small restaurant. To the left is an apartment building. The same as any other. Full of people I'll likely never meet. Some rooms have the blinds drawn. In others I see bookshelves, the edges of sinks, the rings of a shower curtain. Teasing peeks of stranger's lives.
     Apartment buildings make me lonely. I see the light of a lamp -- familiar until a woman's shadow is cast on the wall. I wish I knew what was happening in each room, if the people were happy, if they were in love. I wonder if they see me in the car window and think of who I am.
     The shapes of bodies continue to move in and out of the window like aimless actors, missing their cues and never knowing. Not caring, for they don't know they're being watched and thought of.

     Apartments are reminders that we are petals in a field -- noticed, but never known. Beautiful, but never truly seen.

Town

The final line of Richard Buckner's song "Town" is a question that I have never directly encountered before: "What will you miss when things are fine?" Strangely, I feel that this question is one that has tugged at my thoughts for quite awhile. Understood rhetorically, the question serves the purpose of prompting further questions. What does it mean to be "fine?" Does being fine require one to miss someone or something, or are you only fine once you cease to miss anything?
     I feel that the subtext of the question suggests a satisfaction or necessity in the feeling of missing someone/something. In some way, we like to miss things. That familiar aching pulse that spreads through our stomachs, though painful, is something we crave. The feeling is a mark of value, a reminder that we care for or about someone or something; it's a way to hold on to the irretrievable and intangible.

So, if there had to be an answer to the question, "What will you miss when things are fine?", I would say: "Lots."

There is much more to say about Buckner's question, so this post will serve simply as a starting point.

Here's a restrained and beautiful performance of Buckner's "Town" to make things better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFbnjsUcZ-M