When I close my eyes and listen, really listen to intricacies of the falling notes - I can see, I can smell warmish days walking the back hall of my father's office, bounding steps down a slight hollow/hallowed incline.

I can hear this winding story play in the courtyard outside, full of flowers. I can hold his hand in mine. I can travel through time to see it all again.

I had thirty years in my pocket to spend. I have no time left. Those remaining days wasted in fear, clawing for understanding that took so long to find. Captive.

But closing my eyes today, he is there. Sitting in his small office lined with shelves, pictures by the Impressionists crowding his wall, stained glass, blank spaces and his warm eyes. To hear his voice again I would give anything. I would give anything.

Last summer, I walked the streets of that small town. I met souls that he touched. I saw remnants of his gifts. He was still there in traces. I could almost hear him. It might, it should have been...so much more.

His home away from home as a child, then our home, for which he bartered - fertile farm land for warm memories and a chandelier - had now decayed in our absence.

We had fled. My family fled this land so long burned in to our blood. The life from that house, it's remaining heart had fled with us.

I close my eyes and can see his face. That dear face, gone from this earth, three years ago.

Your name now lies under a tower of letters, a dream and fifteen days to say return. You said less than nothing. Your light eyes under hooded lids, your typed word an empty bit of electric ink, your silence a lazy sinking shy note. You have left it all behind. All of the loud brilliance. All of the heartfilled eccentricities. In boxes. In rooms. In darkness.

nobody's here

I recall a sliver of a moment on a darkened road. You are by my side. You are quiet, hands swinging as we walk, breathing in the cold, puffs floating above. My fingers dig at frayed strings in the pockets of my jeans. I cannot speak. I walk. We step in time. Why do you? Why do you stay? I turn my head, surveying the moonlit edges of flat fields and I imagine that you stop short and turn to disappear into the night. I would flow forth, against winds and winter, against the silence, steps no longer amplified by your echoing gait.

collaboration/:\fabulation

Hardwood floors and flimsy fabric. I lie here so long, one leg tucked under the other, that when I stretch and turn and lean to touch a foot to the ground there is nothing. And I have not the courage to leave. What is this day, the weight of it, the magenta hue? The shivering starkness, the realization that there is nothing else.

Bonaparte
1. Turning. 2. Tumbling. 3. Driving. Stop. Fumbling. Falsify. The circling. Fake. Circling back. Fantastic. Oh. Did you know? Did you? Once more. More. And more. More. Gripping. Silence. Circling. Stop. I stop. I stop.

The rooms were stacked one upon the other. The rooms? Rather the frames, the skeletons of rooms sitting on wooden pallets along the road. Highway 40. Bluff City. This patch of growth in the prairie. Below the bluff the fields stretched for miles, flying, leaping across small rivers and over sad decaying structures. The rooms, the frames, were stacked upon one another sitting in the middle of this tiny village, across from the house with the white picket fence and the sealed attic room. I was told that they were hotel rooms left over from a tornado. And every time we drove past them I could see the swirling air and hear the screeching train of storm pulling them apart. These thoughts were frightening and comforting at the same time. If this sort of horror happened to something so close by it would never happen to me. Yet it seemed that every spring and autumn, as the weather so drastically changed, we spent at least one evening sitting at a card table in our candle illumined basement listening to the battery operated radio. In that span of time, while waiting for the all clear, I imagined those shells of metal waiting to be swept away once more.



http://www.cocteautwins.com/

Neighboring Sparrow

ASTW Presents: Four In The Wild | Ruby Kato Attwood | Sparrow from A Story Told Well on Vimeo.

You were two, three, four steps in front of me. I could not stop staring at the backsides of your shoes, peaking out from the your frayed and darkened pant hem. I could not stop staring at your bobbing, careless gait. We trod, stumbling, stamping, tramping through small hills and valleys, through the thick trees on the backside of the creek, balancing on the banks, tiptoeing around darkened holes in the ground, jumping across fragmented portions where the rain had eaten away at muddy bliss. The roots were beginning to show. The undersides of the overgrown walls which lined this stream were stacked with stones and sediment. We'd wade into pools calf deep, rolled up jeans, feet steadfast in soil, toes wiggling and searching in the ancient, lovely, squishy sod.

Where was I?


Your shoes sat on the bank at this point. Socks rolled up, shoved in and forgotten. We took large sticks and made pictures in the sand. We skipped back and forth between flat rocks protruding between banks and stepped back into the water once more, proud of our Summer day balancing act.

Jordache Jump

Dear Dreary Monday,

I spin around in my chair. I cross my ankles and close my eyes. I try to imagine a periwinkle sky or the bright spectre of a Spring sunrise.

My headphones have become a headband, a musical, whimsical, and stylish work accessory.

SECRET: They are a portal.



When I walk down the hall, my heels twist out in a little dance. The taupe walls pulsate and the fluorescent lights flex and fumble along to the beat.

--------

Pat Jordache (whom James refers to as a drunk Canadian version of New Order. I would say more Orange Juice than New Order, but it's all relative...and it's all awesome.) has a new record (Future Songs) out on Constellation. Enjoy.


Pat Jordache - Phantom Limb from philip a karneef on Vimeo.

Cover

The morning starts as if a dream, with downed trees and misty silence.



Thoreau and I tramp down uneven cement and stone. We turn through brambles and glide over patches of green.

What is this day? Where did everyone hide during the storm? I spent late last night pacing the floor in my pajamas and peering out the window, watching the wind and rain sprint and then gust/gush down Jefferson Avenue. I waited for the end of the siren's piercing wail. I would not call this fearless moment. James checked the weather online and when the siren did stop, we calmed Thoreau and then slipped back into bed. As I dropped into slumber, I could hear the ever-fading voice of James telling me where one should go in case of a tornado. I dreamt of water pouring through a cracked window and the dark, musty corner of the basement of my childhood home. We sat at a card table with an emergency radio, playing cards by candlelight.

intention

For this small space in time, sitting, ankles crossed and toes curled, I feel the weight of those pints and cigarettes, that shoddy conversation, my fake smile.

The elastic curve of my forehead draws up and my breath skims and shakes. Why do I even try to pretend? What brings this flourescent light to my eyes? What blocks out each corresponding memory?

people is place

Your thin lipped, toothy smile, surrounded by grizzled, tan pallor. Your Jeans, too short, hanging loosely around your minuscule frame. Your spindly fingers grasping the bar, cutting elbows jutting behind you. Bottles line the wall. Posters blanket the ceiling. We are enveloped in the smoke stale air. The fan turns and I am alone. This darkness, this dirty dreary edgy hole. No window. Light floods from the small stage. Light lingers around the bar. Light peeks from the top of the soundboard. Stacks of chairs line one wall, the wall covered in posters and shimmering spectres of the past, thousands of staples. Thousands.

I once had a dream that I was compelled to remove those staples one by one. Hours of bloodied knuckles and splintered wood rewarded with a tetanus shot and a cold Budweiser. As I drained the last drop from the bottle, the walls of the bar started to crack and then crumble. Each in turn fell backward...leaving only the roof above us and beyond it, the starry sky brilliant.

Would you?

Swing, swing, skip, step into the dusk.

no new enhancements

but so much more. I've not posted much over the past two years. Sporadic strange descriptions of cloudy, drowsy days, a few favorite videos, mentions of local activities, small bits of news. I plan to write more, Dear Hearts, for this small gathering of friends. No expectations. Just truth through the dusty frames. Just moments of here and there. Some music. Some memories. A few small hopes. And many plans.

10

I find myself surrounded by wrinkled, sad laundry and warm air and evening light. I am serenaded by Mark Kozelek's ACDC covers and the whirring hum of our new bronze toned vintage-looking oscillating fan. What is this time? What is the time? And where are you? Days and hours and minutes away, in a solemn room, in a neighboring country.