Salvaged Lumber

These bits are salvage from "Brain Lumber" (R. I. P.).

Strangers Again

It was something in the way she said "you're funny, but you don't always make me laugh" that caused me to wonder if I was wasting my time or if I was being challenged. I'm usually funniest when I don't want people to know how extemely cynical I can be at times. She's seen that cynicism in me a time or two, but I honestly don't feel like she remembers. Maybe she does, though. Maybe she just doesn't want to see it again and that's why she's challenging my wit. The next time I saw her I tried too hard. The connection was lost. It happens that way more often than not for me. I saw her a few times here and there after that, but we were strangers again.

The Voice of Love

Wind blowing through the hollow place between my building and the one next door makes me think of the first time I got a note out of a bottle when I was a kid. Perhaps it was then that music got its grip on my soul. I always thought it was because my parents are musically inclined - my mom's beautiful alto voice is ingrained in me like breath; my dad's affinity for playing the guitar and singing folk songs makes me want to cry some times. Or, maybe it was when I learned to play the recorder in the third grade. The piano in the dining room could have done it, too. It was all of those things. It was and is every single time I hear a swimming melody, a heart-breaking vocal harmony, a gut-blazing rythm. As I have grown older (and, I hope, wiser), it gets harder and harder to distinguish between the welling emotion brought on by the touch of a lover and that which is gifted me by the passing of sweet sound through my ears and into my soul. I suppose this is how I have come to call music the voice of Love.

Haiku

low clouds are for snow
high clouds only for grayness
such is winter here

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weak winter sunshine
warms not my skin if only
my heart inside out

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coffee on Clinton
street all through the morning we
parted warmly though

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get thee on thy bike
make for yon volcano then
thou shalt be warm-ed

Cats and Buttered Toast

It has been long and widely known that a cat, when falling from a height, will land on its feet. Similarly long and widely known is the notion that buttered toast, when dropped from a height, will land buttered side down. Now, what would happen if one were to strap two pieces of buttered toast - buttered side up, of course - to the back of a cat and drop the whole bundle from a height? I posit that the cat and toast conglomeration would simply fall until it neared the ground where it would then stop falling and proceed to spin in place on the axis that bisects the cat's feet and the buttered side of the toast.

I do believe I have just solved the world's energy problems.

I failed 6th grade and don't think I didn't!!!!

"You didn't fail at all. Your lowest grade was a D in math, and reading went from B to C. In both of those subjects your teachers had negative comments on your calsssroom behavior and "missing or incomplete assingments." The real problem is that you ar not TRYING at all. You're not putting anything into it. You come home from school and watch TV for hours and say you don't have any home work when you do.

You accuse me of wanting you to study "unitl my brain falls out." In the first place, you don't even know what it means to really STUDY. You can pass without trying because you're a very intelligent kid. I don't think you have EVER studied hard.

In the second place, it's not studying that's going to make your brain fall out, it's watching so much TV. Unless I crack down, you spend more time watching TV than any other activity besides ["eating" crossed out - I was a fat kid] sleeping and going to school.

I love you. I really don't want to see you grow up with nothing in your head but sitcoms, gameshows, and cartoons. I'm gonna clamp down hard on TV. I see what the stupid, mind-numbing television is doing to my son and I want to smash the TV. What else can I do? The damn TV is alientating you from all the rest of us."

Dad

[The title of this post is something that I wrote on a piece of notebook paper and taped to the wall where my dad would see it. I wrote it after he came down on me about a particualry dismal report card that I received in the 6th grade. The body of this post is what he wrote on the paper after the fact. Tonight is the first time I have seen this paper since that day nearly twenty years ago. Was it catharsis for him? Maybe. Whatever puting his thoughts on this paper did for him must have done something for me as well. I was never a good student. Bright? Yes. Intelligent? Yes. Able to learn? Better than most. Could I show for it then? No. Can I show for it now? Yes. TV was never the problem. My learning style was the problem and nobody recognized it. There is nobody to blame; not my dad, my mom, the schools, or even television. I just fell through the cracks. Now, though, what matters is that I as an adult am as well off intellectually as any other student in my class twenty years ago who could out-test me - more so even, I may add. No, Dad, TV was not the problem. You were not the problem. I was not the problem. I have succeeded. Smart is as smart does. Thanks for wanting to beat up the TV, though. I do appreciate that.]

A short fiction

She was always the same person whether she was humming tunelessly while painting in the studio upstairs or at one of the many exhibition openings she had each year. She never showed anything less than her true self and nothing more than her heart's deepest joys and yens. I am sure that there were several people who met her, saw her work, even talked at length with her who never really knew why they felt so good after parting ways with her. That is how I felt the first time I met her; the first time I saw what she could do with her creativity. Even now, after such a long time of knowing her, I still catch myself in a slight bemusment when I hear the front door thump shut behind me on my way out.

I will never forget the time I unwittingly came upon her in a quiet, yet full weep. It may have been the first time I saw her cry. She had phoned me earlier to ask if I would stop by her studio. It was not unusual for her to invite me over for no good reason other than to just hang around. Sometimes she would just disappear into her studio after letting me in and I would end up reading a book off the shelf, cleaning the kitchen, or cooking dinner. This time, though, I couldn't shake a sense of uneasiness that she passed to me over the phone. I arrived not long after we spoke. I knocked, waited a moment for the telltale shuffle of her house shoes. No sign of her coming to let me in. I let myself in. I hulloed softly once or twice. No answer. I checked the back yard - it was spring time and I would often find her hunched over the vegetable patch next to the garage, cursing and digging. Not in the yard either. Though it was unlike her to be inside (even in her studio) on nice days, I had to assume she was upstairs working intently, deep in her place of making where sounds and visions are often deflected. For reasons at the time unknown to me I climbed the stairs quietly, almost cautiously as if I was trying to not wake anyone who happened to be sleeping in one of the rooms off the hall. Later I realized that my tentativeness was due to my hunch that something was wrong. Her studio was just off the top of the stairs. The door was half open streaming a brilliant shaft of the truest daylight into the barely lit hallway. I came to the door with my chin at my chest and my ear to the opening. I could hear her ever so faintly sobbing. Faint as her sobbing was it still made her old three-legged stool she used for easel work creak in a weary rythm. Pushing the door open just enough to get my head through I could only make out her shilouette against the sudden flair of light from the large bank of windows opposite the door. Her back was to me. I could see that she had her head in her hands with her elbows propped on her thighs, feet high up on the rungs of the stool; the slight heave and shudder of her sobbing more palpable than visible. Then, I heard - no, felt pass through my mind it seemed - a voice saying "I can't paint her. Why can't I paint her? I can't remember what she looked like." It seemed so far away, so sad and full of pain. It sounded laced with anger and resignation. The sound of those words encased in such rawness shut me down momentarily - an emotional brown-out.

"I can't paint her. Why can't I paint her? I can't remember what she looked like."

It was her voice. Finally able to say, in her way, that she was gone.

Patriotism

I don't consider my own self a patriot by acceptable standards. I appreciate and try not to take for granted the benefits I receive as a taxpayer and a fortunate heir to a fairly great experiment in nation-building. However, I am not proud to be an American. I am not proud to be associated on any level with a great many (if not most) of my government's foreign and domestic policies. I am not proud that politicians and their puppeteer corporate interests have divided the population of this nation so severely and with such abandon of morality. I am not proud that the middle class of this nation is more or less at sea. I am not proud that the current powers that be in this nation have taken it upon themselves (while riding on the shoulders of the people) to dominate the world by means of forcing upon other independent and sovereign nations their maliciously mutated form of "democracy". I am not proud of a great many more things about this nation - the decimation and near annihilation of the native population through policy, war, and disease; the blatant and regressive protectionist policies regarding elected and appointed government officials that have been written into the law over the last several decades, the massive and nearly all-pervasive influence of soulless corporations and their unscrupulous peddlers.

I am not a patriot.

I am tolerant.

Patriotism: Another Look

I don't consider my own self a patriot by acceptable standards. I appreciate and try not to take for granted the benefits I receive as a taxpayer and a fortunate heir to a fairly great experiment in nation-building. However, I am not proud to be an American. I am proud of those who fought and those who continue to fight for the protection of the land, air, water, and creatures of this nation. I am proud of the people who struggle daily just to keep themselves and their families fed. I am proud of those who stand boldly up against policies and laws that benefit the few and leave the many awash in the consequences. I am proud of the people who rail against the complexities of convenience for the nobility of simplicity. I am proud of those who deny the pull of mindless selfish consumerism. I am proud of the people who have broken their backs, hearts, minds, and souls to further the causes of change and social progress. I am proud of every single individual in this nation who is blessed with and possessed of the self-awareness necessary to understand that though we may be the richest, the most powerful, the most influential nation in this world, we do not own it. Nor shall we ever.

I am not a patriot.

I am tolerant.

Green Shirt

It may have been the very last purchase I made at Gap way back before the turn of the century. It was supposed to shrink like everything at Gap. I had half way forgotten about it. It's been hanging in my closet since I moved into this apartment in January. It's always been just a little bit too big, so it didn't always seem to fit right each time I wanted to wear it. Extra large is a little too big and large is not big enough. If there could just be a size in between, I would be set. I've been wearing Blue Shirt all week. I thought I would give it a rest, but most of my other shirts had already been worn, and some worn to the bar. Opening the closet door would yield some choices of shirts long overdue for a break from the hanger. Even though I knew every shirt in there would not impress me (that's why they live in the closet), I thought maybe something strange and wonderful would happen to them - or, perhaps me - when I opened the door to see. No such luck. Or, rather, Green Shirt seemed to exude an air of wearability that I wasn't quite expecting. I pulled it off the hanger, put it on over my white tee, buttoned-up, and tucked in. Still a little too big and long in the cuff. Then, I recalled all of the compliments I have never gotten on this particular shirt and I grinned. Although I have never received a specific compliment on this shirt, I never seem to escape at least one compliment (or voiced recognition) on my eyes. Green Shirt is the same color as my green eyes. Even at work - a place with people who are notoriously sub-human when it comes to relating to others on a personal level - I have been blessed (cursed?) with befuddled utterances like, "I didn't know you had green eyes", and "are you wearing colored contacts?" I just stab my finger at my own chest and say "Green Shirt". See, although my genetic crap-shoot rolled up a set of recessive traits, there weren't quite enough chips on the table for the real jackpot - eternally toe-headed with eyes the color of backlit emeralds. Instead, by virtue of the wonderfully dominant traits of my family, my head got a good dunking in the dishwater and my eyes got lost in the forest on their way to the emerald mine. I like it that way. Just as much as anyone, I find brightly colored eyes appealing, even alluring when set in a beautiful face. For me, though, I like that the color of my eyes is kind of like a secret message written in the wallpaper. You see them all the time but never notice them. It's when you do finally notice that you find yourself staring down the double-barreled canon of my personality. Stand clear and plug your ears. As I am thinking about how well Green Shirt does at giving away the secret in my wallpaper, I am tempted to wear it more often. But I think I'll hang it back up in the closet for another six months or year. I don't want anyone getting used to it. . .especially me.

Good. Things.

mood stabilizers
moleskin notebooks
knowing how inertia works
windstopper fabrics
family
friends
braised pork
45 degrees outside
48 degrees in the bedroom
patch kits
sleep
dreams
love.