A-L

And that's how I see her -- fading into everything. She makes the intimidating sky familiar, and imbues a well-known room with the energy of chance. Spaces conflate, and I never feel anywhere but with her. The peak of a pine tree; the threshold of a den; the mercurial land above us -- your love blends.

Photo by Kristian Jordan: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dawntraitor/9232333467/

Tooth-Fairy

Alan had misheard his father when he first told him about the Tooth Fairy. He had heard "truth" instead of tooth. This led him to believe that truths, rather than teeth, were taken from him during the night and replaced with money. As he grew older he wondered what specific truths were swiped by this mystical barterer, and if the absence of these truths was worth the pocket change that he had received in exchange. "I'm not lying on purpose!" he would say to his dad after getting into trouble. "The Truth Fairy took that one from me!" Alan's father didn't find this amusing, and scoffed at what he considered mediocre word-play. Alan spent many nights awake, well into his adult life with a dollar fifty in his hand, waiting for the Truth Fairy to appear, ready to bargain for the truth back.

Winter

Winter is by far the oldest of the seasons- Gaston Bachelard 

I'm at my most nostalgic during the winter months. Darkness squeezes out the light from the sky as the cold air sends us inside the house. True, our homes are shelters, but they are also, in the winter especially, spaces of confinement. The freezing temperatures force us behind doors, while the diminished day-light steals our sight and we're made to look elsewhere, sent to search inside ourselves for things to see and do, for outside the world is dim. I find myself thinking back to past winters. As the season brings us indoors, I cannot move forward. I'm compelled to reflect on how the wind whipped my cheek that year, or how I chased a young love through the hard months, only to have her feelings thaw and dry up when the warm weather came. During the winter nature does its best to hold us hostage. We feel safe in the warmth of the home, but we miss the freedom of outside space. Instead of exploring nature, we retreat into the confusing cavern of our minds where memories peak out with glowing eyes, shy, but ready to be seen.

Waste

He wished that there was a way he could collect everyone's wasted time -- a technique to trap life's misused and discarded moments before they were lost amidst the day's coming attractions. "Well, that was ten minutes I'll never get back," people would say, disappointed by their use of time. He wanted to profit off this negligence, to take their time and spend it better. A scavenger, he swung in like a pendulum, hoping to save what seconds he could. His home became a landfill of squandered days, a midden of missed chances and regret. There was so much that he could do with this extra time. He could repair the broken moments, filling the cracks with imagination, the holes with vigor. Soon there would be so much time. "I could give it all back," he thought, "give everyone another chance." So he opened all the doors and windows in his home and let all that fixed-up wasted time back outside where it could be found waiting in a conversations and parties, lovemaking and celebrations.

Car Crash

There are two memorials in Winnipeg that I drive past regularly -- a cross with flowers by a set of train tracks; you can see the flowers dead above the snow in Winter. The other is a tree where the bark has been shaved off for people to write their names and notes. I know the stories behind these shrines, but there are many similar displays that I see on highways across the country that have no meaning for me but to alert me of the tragedy that now owns that stretch of road. Are the memorials erected for the deceased or for the mourners? Likely both. But what about those that wander by, unconnected, yet curious, even bothered, by the roadside shrine? Driving always bears the possibility of death, and these markings only reinforce such thoughts. A stare into the prairies is interrupted by a highway crucifix. Other people's tragedies are sad distractions on the way to where we're going. Are these spots the places where lives were taken, or the final place where life was lived? Perhaps the flowers, candles, and crosses provide a seal to this space where grief ripped through. I don't want to understand the tradition. Still, the memorials are forever seen by us all, and we always know what they mean. The vagueness of the symbols to a stranger's eyes ignites the worst skills of the imagination.

Day

He sometimes wondered when a day was done, or if it ever could be. He knew that in some northern cities, there were months when the light never left the sky, and months where the days were mostly dark. The sun gets stuck in the high up places. Some days never finish, and others never begin. How can they sleep, those northern people, with the light pressed against their eyelids? Time is not felt the same in every place. We judge the passing of seconds, minutes, and hours by the brightness of the sky. But the sun never rests; it just leaves to go somewhere else. A slow, beautiful exit that makes us stare. And then, our weary eyes bring an end to the day. Far away, other people's eyes are pulled open by hooks of light thrown in through bedroom windows by the same sun that has left us.

Time

He wanted to believe that he never desired to "grow up," that he never wished for time to accelerate and flip forward to the "fun parts." The speed had blurred his memory. It was like the trance you enter when driving down familiar roads late at night. Suddenly, you're where you're trying to end up. You know that you passed certain streets and buildings, that you slowed down at the blinking yellow traffic lights, but you don't feel the distance. The past is always moving backwards in a slow shuffle, kicking up dirt as it looks you in the eye. You're backing away too, engaging in some kind of reverse stand-off. He was sure that he couldn't have wanted his childhood to end, not the way he felt now. Now, he wanted to participate in time, to feel the seconds drip off his skin like beads of sweat or tears. Maybe it felt too fast, living. Remembering, reminiscing, recounting. You control the pace with those things. You can see them when and how you want to. He decided that he wanted to live in the seconds, minutes, and hours of before. He felt that it was the only way he could be present.

Night

The clouds lay split in the sky like a group of ice floes being pushed by the wind. The moon, a lighthouse, a place of rest for travelers to dream.

Dead

I'm in a car with my brother. An impression of a man is at the wheel. The end of a chase. We're pulled over. I see a body get out from the car behind us in my side-mirror; I open my door and step out onto the shoulder of the highway. A harvest moon spreads a thin orange layer over the evening sky. I smile. I'm not upset getting caught. He's holding a pistol and looks like nothing. I kneel at the edge of the ditch and the man walks towards me. He puts the pistol against my head. I clench my teeth, and when he fires I feel only the cool metal leave my temple. No pain. There is no sound. I crumple forward into the ditch, my ear to the soil. Not much is different dead. Maybe I'm not there yet. An ant crawls in front of my eye carrying a crumb. I feel a weight slam against the back of my legs.

High Windows

People on the street must look small from the windows of top floor apartments. Never lonely. They don't stay still long enough to seem alone. I want to be in every room of each apartment building I walk by. Seeing the windows and not being able to look inside, I miss the people who live there even though I've never met them. And when it rains I know that there are people in the rooms, maybe sitting by the window, maybe wondering where I'm going, and never yelling down to me, asking me to stay. I'm so small down here. You're so unknowable.

Crying

Ben saved up his sobs and spent them on a big bawl. No use crying over small things, he thought. Years of tears from banged shins and extended family deaths dripped behind his eyes like water from a loose tap, the levels rising up into his throat until he could taste the pain. "I'm not only crying about you," he said to his wife Jill as she told him they were over. "Les Miserables was so fucking sad! And my cat died last year!"The bedroom was flooded by this point and Ben began to swim in his own tears. He had never been to the ocean and realized that this salty duct-water might be his only chance. This only made him cry more, and propelled by the convulsions in his chest Ben swam for hours. When he had finished crying he sucked up his tears with a sub-pump. He was parched of feeling once again and ready to store up for the annual winter wail.

Night

The shadows of trees lay like cobwebs on the street. I rode through them, and managed not to get caught and consumed by the night.

Summer

He felt fenced in by the construction din. Summer -- the season of repair. The roads redolent of cracked winter lips, all moisture drained. A new layer of asphalt glues the roads together for now; they'll shrink next winter, splitting again in late spring from the waves of heat that hover close but are unreachable in front of our eyes. Everything holds for awhile. Not much is meant to last. We emerge from the cold dark into a few months of loud preparation for what will eventually come undone. So I stay awake and watch the hours of lingering daylight that don't exist in the winter, and I listen. For awhile, the surgery stops. The streets make space for sound in the summer; the hum of silence does not get stuck in the thick snowbanks. We stay still. There's nowhere to go. We're all a little worn down too. In the day's final hours we think of how to fill the gaps in ourselves.

Bathroom Mirrors

A bathroom without a mirror is unsettling. There is already a strange, concomitant embarrassment that one feels when being seen exiting a bathroom. An absence of a mirror only heightens the anxiety. While what happens behind those doors, with their condescending "Ladies" and "Gentlemen" signs, is shameful, there is also the chance for the reevaluation of one's appearance, an opportunity to mend or mold whatever has fallen apart during the day's tests. Without a mirror we wear a look of diffidence upon our return. We push open the door and leave with our heads down, feeling like we ought to apologize to those who see us. A mirror tells us when we're ready.

Reading

For years Beth had been told by friends that she was an "open book." Until recently, this designation had never bothered her. Now she had all sorts of questions. What open book was she, and what page was the book turned to?Was she a novel, a comic book, an encyclopedia? She felt such paranoia when she thought about whether she was the kind of book that people finished, or if she was shut after a few pages and shelved forever -- left to rub shoulders with the classics, but never loved nor included. After weeks of panicked speed-reading in hopes of understanding who she was, Beth went to the city penitentiary in search of a group of illiterates whom she could befriend. She knew that they might all judge her by her cover, but that was fine for now -- she could write herself and teach her new friends how to read her.

See

I looked up from my seat on the porch to see a hornet's nest hung like a paper lantern in the crook of the supporting beams of my balcony. The bugs shot in and out of the opening of the funnel -- an ostentatious display of pride. I thought about how I had never noticed the building of these creatures' homes. One day they just exist, as if the bugs had cast a spell to distract me from looking up at the chosen corners and tree branches, or down below where ants flow out of hills. Perhaps we just never bother to take the time to look at things, to actually see them happening. And so the sting on my wrist is a reminder to twist my neck and open my eyes -- the world builds all around us.

Jungle Crows

In Japan, Jungle Crows make their nests out of coathangers, those familiar household things made of thin metal that support and display our appearances for the days and weeks to come -- waiting without a whisper in closets like the clouds that dress the sky. The crows construct their homes out of the placeholders of our daily roles. They steal the readiness of our costumes, leaving a pile of clothing in the wake of their theft --we must get down on our knees and dig through the wrinkles and creases, the slumped shoulders and folded knees, to find who we want to be; they sleep on a tangle of wires while we look for who we are. 

Prairies 3

     A small house was sunk into the ground near the edge of an abandoned field by the highway. Strange, how nature could look that way -- deserted and forgotten, unapproachable to the endless scatter of travelers passing by -- all of them asking why these relics were left to erode away, and wondering where the people went.
     The slanted, wooden roof of the sunken house made a peak on the flat field like a stunted mountain desperate to be seen. Or perhaps the house wasn't sinking at all, but poking out from some subterranean world, adding further mystery to the prairies -- offering another reason to step out and explore that laconic land.

Lake

He lay in bed staring at the dead mosquito that was still stuck to the ceiling six months later. The buzzing had kept him up that night and he had chased the bug around his room for minutes before standing on his bed and flinging his hand against the ceiling as the mosquito took a rest, failing to draw blood from the plaster, instead dying from its reckless hunger. He remembered sitting with Elizabeth the other night, her eyes red and tear tinged as she lay on his chest, telling him about how she was scared to be without him. He held her close and listened to the leaves as they sighed relief in the refreshing sweeps of the summer wind. He heard a loon's quivering call and thought about who or what it was for, what it meant. A mosquito landed on his bare thigh, itching his skin with its legs as it wandered, trying to find a place to draw blood. He didn't kill it, or even brush it away, but kept his arms around Elizabeth and listened to the cries of the loons.