Together, they are blind with terror. They don’t wonder what is right or wrong, to keep from sinning. You might think the problem is they have too much, but you don’t know them. You don’t want these people without religion.

A man walks with a suitcase, left alone, a passing swing for the curbside, for the light. One drags it by. One stop to look up with a big eye and say, all day? It ain’t no other way. I just think it’s funny how people don’t know what they did, what they want, what they mean, what they say. I don’t like to say it in a way that makes sense; if they can do anything at all with it, they’ll miss. Sometimes I wonder if I’m talking to myself. It used to be the sound of the crows was not quite right. And songbirds, names unknown, would throw a wrench into the field of mind. It was hard to forget. You would try for a while and then just close your eyes. Imagine an itch starts to the right of the spine about halfway down, and you know its face and its name and the horse it rode in on. Imagine you wonder what is right. Imagine you try to explain. My love for you allows me to leverage some kind of wait, some kind of second that doesn’t break the clock. Turning by the church, I decide life has been enough.

It’s isn’t Kansas City. It isn’t the Mississippi. It’s something to do with looking from the midwest toward the plains. It starts at evening, when anxiety is high. It starts with knowing everything will be fine by morning, it can’t wait. One of these days, no one knows why, but people are grown. Sometimes when I spoke to her, she could tell from the sadness in my voice that she wasn’t going to live forever. And then the other cats passed one by one. I think she knew what it was. You know that thing in the bible where it says you won’t be given greater burdens than the strength you can muster? Sometimes it weighs out very close though.

There could lie outside a neighborhood remote from the bulk of brick and mortar commerce. It will have a garage, a store, a coffee shop that serves breakfast and lunch and closes at six, a hair salon, a barber shop, and a saloon. A lot here would hang upon the store, for instance, does it have a rack of magazines. The people walking down my street on a Monday morning with their backpacks on are as silent as commuters in a subway car. They don’t know one another, but they must know what the others are in for. Now we interact more, dance more, tap more keys. I’ve collected the following further thoughts about some things I’ve seen on TV.

By the time they reached the motel a short distance away from Hill House on the night they fled, the father had that little boy singing the song that one day would curdle in his throat: That wasn’t mommy. Even the parents of the slain child forgave her before it happened, saying we understand, it wasn’t her, it was just these circumstances. That wasn’t you, that wasn’t us, that wasn’t her, that wasn’t mommy, that wasn’t Olivia, that wasn’t us. They say there’s no crime to solve, but if that’s the case, then what is Annabeth doing here ages hence, without her cigarette, without her secret smile, without her faith — she would follow you anywhere. Maybe I’ve been spending too much time in the comment sections on true crime, but if mommy’s fingerprints were on the rat poison bottle and big sis saw mommy in the kitchen acting funny right before the incident, then I would say that was mommy. Now be a good child and die as you’re told. And that’s what they did. In the red room at the end, it was just the kids. Nell makes her speech to only the siblings. The couple is in the hallway changing their story. The Dudleys are burying the scraps of their babies. Nelly’s in the red room playing ring around the rosie and nobody else can come in. It’s no grown ups allowed, but you can’t blame them. Justice for Abigail though.

Back in my day, it wouldn’t play out this way. We watched nicer things. Some worried what had happened to Laura Palmer, but other than her name, I knew nothing of her. In my house, we would never. They say art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. We weren’t in it for murder, we just wanted a friend. These were some of my favorites, in no particular order, and for some of the reasons mentioned.

Shelly and Ed. The kids, both just eighteen in season one. Later huddled in the basement in the single lamplight, their eyes innocent and wide, thinking this could be the devil. Or fallen to their knees in the snowbank trying to out-scream the train. Or sitting by the lake in a panoramic picnic of pink and green, trying to find their calling, standing on nothing, waiting on faith.

Maurice and Maggie. I kept thinking, have we ever even seen them in one place? And then they bump into each other in Ruth-Anne’s store above the town archives. The center of commerce. The after-shave, the pickled things, the VHS culture and magazines. “That girl’s got moxie to burn,” he muses, trying to cook up an opportunity, turning the puzzle pieces over like a toothpick between the teeth. Nothing quite matches when you try to strike it up, but surely this thing’s got wings.

Maggie and Chris. My little Northern Exposure pals on the internet have a lot to say about how ill-advised their pairing was, in the end of season six. That’s fine, I never watched that far, they might be right. But from the beginning, I could see it. “There was just no chemistry between Chris and Maggie.” I don’t necessarily disagree, but for me, the best romantic couplings tend to lack what you are calling chemistry. Chris was the only man Maggie liked. They were always in harmony.

Joel and Ed. Who is this bemusing young man who keeps turning up already in the room? A helpful lad who leaves you stranded in the passenger seat to welcome yourself to town, who nails the front door of your cabin shut with a frustrating absence of malice, who lives in fantasy-land with no shame? I think Ed grew on him the way our habits grow, one day without choosing them, we realize who we are. “I wonder if you’ll ever come back, Dr. Fleischman.” A question with a period at the end.

Maggie and Joel. I wasn’t a shipper this time around, but as a foil, all’s fair in love and war, and as a friendship, absolutely. My favorite scene is when she borrows his glasses from the next table to read the dinner menu. The itinerant eye doctor has said her failing vision is normal. Maggie would rather have been going blind from something rare and fatal than going far-sighted from something common and inevitable. She had thought it wasn’t over and then it came to this. Always a struggle. You want to think she says thank you for the constructive feedback, but you suspect it’s just because she’s blushing.

Shelly and Maggie. Maggie never wanted to be a mom, but when Shelly came to stay with her after Holling hurt her feelings, Maggie seemed let down again when babygirl solved her problem and went back home. And when Maggie was lost and lamenting in a booth alone, Shelly understood the assignment, as they say today, or as we would say she read the room and did her best to get a word of encouragement in edgewise, and when it didn’t take, settled for “Can I get you anything?” tightening her apron strings.

Chris and Maurice. Maurice thought he was in charge of this relationship. And Chris knew he wasn’t. And Maurice knew that Chris knew he wasn’t. And Chris knew that he mustn’t let on that he knew that Maurice knew he wasn’t in charge of this relationship. It was gold. Maurice was into worldly riches and power and leverage, but there was a part of him that knew there was a higher power than those with which he was familiar. He didn’t get it, but he knew he didn’t. He stuck to what he understood but didn’t bar the door against what he hadn’t. Friends close, enemies closer, mysteries closer still.

And finally, first and foremost, Adam and Joel. It must be nice. To know someone where, you don’t have to worry about hurting their feelings. It must be nice to know someone who takes your violent impulses in stride and asks about the cumin. It must be nice in the middle of the wilderness to see someone. Rifling through your belongings like they own the place, when you’ve just awakened, away from your bed and stranded in the vastness, but still, they are someone, they are there. At the same moment that I would have feigned or fainted dead asleep and waited for the scary person to go away, why do you get out of the truck and call out, “Hey! Hey, you can rip me off, just don’t leave me here.” No, never mind, I get it. And now that’s what I would do too. When was the last time you saw somebody do something that changed your mind. If you do not go a-hunting, you will not. It must be nice for someone to be curious enough. It must be nice to wrap the debut season up. When you have tried to be a good sport, come to town and find they’ve laid for you a dilapidated story full of spooks and spiderwebs and threats both loud and whispered, it must be nice to find a silver garlic press upon the ground, in the weeds, at the end of a mission to prove something, and to turn around and you are not alone. Back at the lakeside, everyone mingles at an art exhibit; the first afterparty you throw and two people come to it. It’s not bad, just like you said in the pilot. There it is — that’s when we know the show can go on — when we go in search of something and don’t find it.

Today is a day entirely at home, trying to find the basement to do my studies in the town records hall. Smooth sailing isn’t always an option, but nonetheless, we get across the water. They recertify this year in June, and time is getting shorter. Something about backwards, something about double, going the wrong direction to start over, and soon our birthday falls four time zones and eight friendships from Cicely. Taxes are done, but the maps are lacking, and the calendar is off again. One day you circle and immediately everything is dusty. Anything to do with math, everything to do with money, anything you’ve done, do you brag or stash it? Is there some way to turn it, is it flat, is it a globe, can you spin it? I didn’t mean it. I’m so very sorry. Why do you say that? Say what, exactly? Taking a moment to address it. They say go with your gut, but listen, don’t. White knuckle it, it’s worth it. If you find yourself in the same boat, I wish you successful sailing.

(But not in a creepy way.)

The robot summary of this post (also not in a creepy way): The text explores the complexities of human relationships, identity, and the search for meaning in life. It juxtaposes personal reflections, memories, and societal observations, revealing the humor and sadness present in interactions. Through vivid imagery and narrative, the piece contemplates love, loss, and the nature of understanding oneself and others.

Circle round, rosy friends, circle round.
Lend me your nosy ears and close your mouths.
We know not what we say.
I would tell you something
if there was a way.

That’s the step.

That’s what I had been wondering. Like, what is next. All this time, I wanted to stop lying but didn’t know what to do instead. That’s it. The next step is stop lying. It seems simple in retrospect. I had a friend in AA who used to say helping a person not drink is as hard as teaching a rock how to hold still. It should be easy, right, since that is literally all it can do. But try getting a rock to understand that.

It seems to me like the solution to every problem is the same solution: Stop doing the problem. But people want to have a summit about it instead. Make a list of ways to solve the problem and the longer the list the longer they get to keep the problem. And then they want you to participate in it, for or against, and you only have so much time too, and you have your own problems to do. So no I’m not going to get out the money and donate and vote-march and do the work and raise the vibration and do my part just to keep you guessing. You want to have a problem, be my guest.

Guest/Host: Creating The Ghost Relationship
Leave a note
Tell them what time breakfast is
How to get out
How to come back
Where is the fruit? 

Don’t waste your life trying to prove a point, sayeth the Lord.

It’s June, early June, cool June. It looks like the end of the world outside because of the smoke from the Canada wildfires, but it doesn’t feel like the end of the world. I have work later. (I would never.) The news says to stay inside but it’s just a suggestion. This week has been a little different. Today is the 7th. On Monday the 5th my phone was shut off and I’m not too concerned about it. I can use it at home on wi-fi, so I only don’t have a phone when I go out, as in olden times. This week I’ve only had one short engagement each day and a lot of free time. So on Monday I went out for a long journey to run errands and there is a coffee shop in that neighborhood that I always treat myself to when I do that. But somehow I missed the bus from my house even though I had been tracking it on the Transit app. The next one was coming in twenty-three minutes. So I walked across the bridge and caught the next bus on the other side. I couldn’t listen to music because no wi-fi but then on the bus there was wi-fi and I listened to the Weeknd and Chet Baker plus Call Me By Your Name and Take Me To Church. The songs queue up and then I can still spin them after I get off. Spring of ’23 has been a really special season. It feels like fall after the brutal heat of May. It smells like fall with the smoke in the air. A few of my friends and I use this app called Be Real where it sends you a prompt at a random time each day and you’re supposed to take a photo of whatever you happen to be looking at and your phone’s other camera simultaneously takes a photo of you looking at that thing. You all post them and see what each other’s life is like at that moment. I mean, most of the time you don’t see the notification though, so then you can just take the photo whenever you want to, which is like cheating.

I didn’t know Arrested Development came back after Season Three. So I’m re-watching it on Netflix for the past couple of weeks and all of a sudden I realize I’m watching an episode I’ve never seen and everyone looks different. I actually Googled who plays Lindsay Funke in Season Four but it turns out it’s the same person. Anyway I’m into Season Five now and I’m still sort of enjoying it. I like how they’re just walking in and out of abandoned, unfinished, semi-occupied model homes and running into each other everywhere. I can’t keep track of which twin is which. Actually a huge fan of the Tony Wonder storyline. I’ve been writing poems. It’s scary how I can think they’re good at one point and later understand that they aren’t. It’s similar to how cream cheese and strawberries taste like garbage now and yogurt tastes like perfume and the cats’ chicken pate smells like ammonia to me. I’ve been wrong about everything. I want to ask you if you are OK in the smoke but we don’t really talk like that. We didn’t ask each other if we were OK in the pandemic. I didn’t know there was an air quality alert level higher than red but there are two. It goes green, yellow, orange, red, purple, maroon. Last night and this morning we were in maroon. They don’t have any levels higher than that, although I still think they made up the last two last night. But I might as well stop writing this, if all I’m going to do is lie. Right? I tried to tell you.

The days keep passing by and now it is the ninth. They say that’s Friday and that I have to be here to receive the people when they come in from the street and to find out what they need and sort them out. For most of the day, I’ll do that. It’s just as well to have something to do today, all I did yesterday was try to arrange a poem for no reason. I would understand if I were a conductor arranging a piece of music for an orchestra to play. But nobody is waiting for this. No one has tickets. What am I doing? I had awakened to my phone telling me it forgave me and thanks for the money. I hadn’t meant to give it so many. I tried not to be dismayed, but the auto-pay had taken the whole outstanding amount instead of the bare minimum to be let back in, and now I was seventy-six dollars short on everything else. Not the end of the world. I still paid my rent (late, obviously, you know what day it is). Then I had enough to buy cat litter and tinned meats for the pets. So I decided to do that, but instead I spent most of the day alternately looking at the smoke and arranging the nonsense. I finally took a dismal nap at six p.m. and woke at six thirty-four to my phone saying the bus will go to the pet supply store in five minutes. I won’t make it, said someone in my head, but we did. After buying the pet supplies, I had no time for indecision because the bus came right back the other way and shipped us home. Then I walked back to where I had seen some things along the route and photographed them.

You’re wondering how to be alone. The key is the stuff. There are things all around you, like yellow bird paintings and pianos. You literally just look at them. And that’s it. The software will take care of the rest. You use your feet to get to them, or you can go by on the bus, but make sure you’re paying attention. By the time I had finished collecting, it was only a couple of hours until the restaurants started packing up their leftovers so I went into the app and reserved something and then climbed up to my apartment to feed the kittens. You know what else is still on? It’s Always Sunny, for some reason. While the kittens were eating their chicken and pumpkin meats, the internet told me the first two episodes of the sixteenth season had dropped, so I watched them while I waited for dinnertime. The characters are doing spot-on impressions of their old selves. I started watching this show when I moved here in 2007. If I were still the same person I was then, I would have thrown myself into the Schuylkill River way before this season. But nothing ever stops changing as long as it’s still going because just this week, Frank and Charlie found out they have a bathroom in the closet and a whole empty bedroom behind their false walls. After the show I took another nap with an alarm set for nine-oh-six. Then put on my shoes and took a night stroll to collect a bowl of grains and greens and toasty pecans prepared by skilled artisans on Penn’s campus and walked home through the warm night nibbling on it.

It’s the spine — the densest
string — that makes things
happen, makes you
wonder
if the sticking in
or not
of it
is almost
not even
a factor.

It is far better to open a poem with No one tells than with It’s the spine. My creative writing professor wouldn’t even approve of the word it’s existing let alone being literally the most important word in a poem. A poem is a strict economy. Still, though, it is the spine. And that’s kind of important. It’s the spine — the densest string — that makes things happen. Makes you wonder. No one tells the dumb sun that lights them that men are not to be looked upon. That’s from the one about subjects and objects. Something about touching and not being touched, and yet. I don’t know whether the part about trash and roses and the ten a.m. sidewalk goes with it. I’ve been saying something and it isn’t good. I’m going to put a clue where you would look. Like a hyper-local, super-specific bottle-episode cold open. That’s from the one about action being automatic, about your mind and what it does when you are doing things it wouldn’t.

Go with the original. Go with God.

I remember how D. used to look forward to the arranging of what she called the pretty words, she always wanted to see them whenever they were done. Maybe that’s what the point of it is. I liked her binders full of candy-colored pen and handwritten names of real people four-thousand two-hundred twenty-nine miles away who were brave and went onscreen and let us see them before anyone else did. In two-thousand-six I remember wondering if it was really OK to put one’s photo on the internet. They say not to write about your dreams. I’m going to tell you one in a minute. In the early 2000s a different H. said to me, “You just need a shady, lazy friend to show you the way.” I remember how M. used to look up songs on YouTube for me to sing and I would sit by his side and get totally lost in singing them. We had some good times. Why is this world so poison to us? Why do the rays from the star that the very planet I was born upon goes around burn the naturally-occurring skin of my body whenever I go outside? Huh? Explain it to me, then, if everything is so normal. If everything makes so much sense.

I had a wonderful dream of snow last night. A blue sky and snow falling and twinkling in the sunlight and snow all over the ground with tire tracks in it and then I was riding in a car through the snow and I told the driver I was usually afraid to ride in a car in the snow and he said he didn’t even think about it because he was so used to it. The driver was someone I actually knew years ago, many years ago. In the dream we were happy to see each other and catch up on what we had been up to since then and I think we were all staying at the same place (but not in the same room, which is noteworthy) because we were all performing in some type of show together. The night before, we had thought we were sleeping in like a closed office building where we were not supposed to be, but by morning it had turned into a regular little cheap sleepy motel. It was the night between June 18th and 19th, which was really last night, and I had worked at my job on the 18th, as I really did, and had to be back there again on the 19th, which I really do. I had been on the phone with my sister and asked her what time it was and she said, “It’s 10:10.” I had assumed she meant at night. But then in a few minutes I opened the drapes, you know how motel rooms have those very heavy drapes, and I opened them and it was full daylight and there was the blue sky and sunshine and the snow was twinkling down. I realized I couldn’t make it to work, as I was not even in town and here it was morning. But it was OK for some reason and then I reunited with all the other people who were traveling together and then came the scene about driving in snow. The internet says a dream of driving in snow can mean a lot of different things, and falling snow means courage toward doing something I’ve always been afraid to do, and that a dream of snow in summer indicates a happy surprise. The dream was so nice that when I woke up I felt like my whole life was different.

I stopped smoking weed earlier this month. Since COVID I hadn’t been quite the same, and I thought if I’m going to be smoking Canada all summer, I might want to give my throat and lungs and a break. I meant to switch to edibles, but I didn’t get around to it, and now that I’m used to just sitting with my depression in the evenings, I thought let’s go with it. That cut down on the amount of snacks I was craving so I thought fine why not cut out sugar too. But I know Elliott Smith cut out sugar shortly before dying of stab wounds, so you want to be careful with that. Then I thought I was getting the flu, but it turns out that’s what sugar withdrawal feels like. It passed after a few days. So this happened easily and suddenly, the same way I gave up alcohol in my mid-twenties, and meat in 2008, and coffee in 2022. As the song goes, so what do you do? Well I go for walks, eat walnuts and berries, listen to Chet Baker Deep Cuts on shuffle on Apple, sing my favorite Tom Petty songs, stare at things. There’s plenty. And then there is always work. Somebody said, “To sustain oneself upon this planet is a pastime, not a burden.” It barely even matters anymore who said what. The robots remember everything except your name. I understand the tendency to be angry at the robots, but I think it’s for the same reason you get angry at anything — you see yourself in them. When was the last time you heard somebody say something and you didn’t already know what it was going to be? I remember one time G. said, “I’m not one of these people who is anti-work.” I replied, “I’m anti-work. [beat] But we might mean different things when we say work.” I had gotten no further than “We might mean different—” when he was already replying with a smile. “Yes, we might.”

“Is it possible that, in areas outside addition and subtraction, statistical regularities in text actually do correspond to genuine knowledge of the real world?”

I have a stack of ten Marble Composition notebooks that I have kept for several decades. When I was young, I would use writing to keep myself in my head and out of reality. When I was older, I would do the same. I thought I might read through them and see what can be done. If nothing else, maybe paper mache. Entire sections of the later notebooks were left blank. I have a plan for what to do with that paper, I thought I might make little books. You know, little blank books with little pages. I have a beautiful gunmetal blue Dahle brand paper cutter, a remnant from the Spake office, and I love to use it. Recently I attended a zine workshop via Zoom and to my delight it got crashed by someone projecting a pornographic video onto our screens. That had never happened to me before, and I started using Zoom at the beginning of the pandemic like a lot of people. The host ended the meeting and then restarted it and then the naked person was gone. The hosting organization sent out an email later apologizing to everyone, restating their commitment to creating safe and inclusive spaces, and promising they were taking steps to make sure it never happens again. But I was there — I saw the nice man in the rattan swing chair reclining on a pile of throw pillows, enjoying himself — and they can’t take that away from me.

I think the truth is in the scriptures but I think it’s just written over and over again in these crazy ways, but I think there’s love there. And I think if someone loves you, you should love them too. And you’ll say yeah but people think they love you but really they love this idea of you that they have created. Yes that’s true, but you have to ask yourself why did they pick you? Yes they think all the wrong ideas about you, but they are choosing you every day to be wrong about, and that’s love, or at least that’s not nothing. It might be nice to ride the same bus along the same muddy road every day and there is someone who gets on who just sits next to you. I plan to spend my golden years taking small bites, chewing carefully, and stepping cautiously because I plan to live alone and do not want to fall or choke on something. Every day is someone’s birthday and Ellen’s is today. One time I asked her, “Ellen, if I ever write a novel, what do you want your name to be?” She said, “Let me think about it, Heather.” Several months later we were sitting at her kitchen counter drinking coffee out of little tea cups on an overcast day, and out of the clear blue sky she said, “Heather, I thought about it. Ellen.”

When you stop smoking weed, you start remembering your dreams. It’s been worth it. There was the dream of snow, and then a dream of my family in the big second-floor storefront apartment with the Delaware River outside and an Orca surfacing under a bridge that wasn’t the Ben Franklin Bridge but was blue like the Ben Franklin Bridge. (Later, I saw it in the news, it was the Verrazzano Narrows. Some fishermen had seen a whale surfacing there which the marine biologists said was normal but the fishermen had found it amazing and I had found the photograph very familiar from my dream even though it was not an Orca. In my imagination, whales are black and white like cats and cows, but that was definitely the bridge.) And then last night, you were back again. I hadn’t seen you since the one where you jumped off the church building. We were kissing in this one, which was just as awkward as it used to be in real life, but I liked it. We had to knock it off though because there was a lot going on. We had arrived at your workplace before dawn. You worked in this big laboratory type of place, the type of place people can get murdered for working at — murdered for like, international reasons. I hoped you weren’t very important there so that wouldn’t happen to you, but you seemed kind of important though. You seemed like sort of a misunderstood genius, like in real life. But not misunderstood by everyone. I met a few other people there, and they seemed to feel affectionate toward you and protective. I didn’t understand your work but I was proud of you. The campus was outside of the city, with little meadows around it with dewy grass and fences. It reminded me a little of that behavioral health facility in the Northeast that I went to that time when I had to do observations for my Master’s Degree. And a little of the West Virginia Capitol Complex in Charleston and a little of the fields where we used to feed the pony when we were children. Inside the buildings, it wasn’t like any of those places. It was darker inside than you would expect for a laboratory, like it was part laboratory, part church sanctuary, part college dormitory. You knew everybody. You were in a great hurry. While I was meeting people, other genius types, you took off somewhere to deliver the results of something. I understood it was important but I was a little salty that you just left me there. I had no idea where we were, even. A girl I was talking with from a different department laughed and shook her head. She wasn’t surprised you had brought a friend out there and then absentmindedly left without them. She was familiar with brilliance. She said she would give me a ride, which she did. I don’t remember to where.

In 2007 I met a Grade A individual who said, “Are they the kind of person who is always… having… an emergency?” I laughed nervously. He was ostensibly asking about someone I was ostensibly complaining about, but slowly over the next decade I went Ohhhhhhhh, oh yes, yes they were and so am I, but I would love to not be. Once you decide to stop doing the problem, it really doesn’t take that much longer to actually stop. It’s the best teaching from Buddhism, for me. Whatever you’re doing wrong, just stop it. Just like literally stop it. From what I understand, in that religion they don’t teach any kind of repentance, they say just leave off from doing the harmful activities, effective immediately, and then just do better things instead from now on. It only works on the honor system, which is maybe why it isn’t super popular in my culture, but what do I know, I do not have my finger on the pulse. I grew up in a parking lot in the snow. I grew up in the hot sun waiting by the road. I grew up blocking the glare. Tell your mom I’m sorry about the cheese thing, but I wasn’t housebroken back then. One of my best friends doesn’t like it when I say things about myself being feral or not being housebroken or whatever, but I mean, I don’t like it either.

They were already telling stories before I was born, how this or that meant what to them. They taught me to fight their battles and not my own. I can’t keep falling for this online. The power was out just before 2 a.m. In fifteen minutes, it came back on, but I was shaken and dressed and ready to run. In here, we depend on the window machine. Without it, the room is an oven. Before bed, I had watched the news. A man outside Cincinnati had killed his kids, believing sinfully that they were his. Seven hundred and five people that we know of had died at sea. I cared but was supposed to care differently. Since my Dad died I have terrible claustrophobia. I used to take elevators and subways and ride the Megabus through Lincoln Tunnel, even rode in airplanes a few times, but I can’t do those things now. Flying in a plane is like watching TV. It’s unbelievable. You must be famous. You must be rich. You must not be terrified of naturally terrifying things. You must be thinking of something else. Billionaires are God’s, children too. Whether you ignore the apostrophe or the comma, brother, that’s on you.

On days when there aren’t any outs and you have no idea and the birds are doing their shouts along the wet sidewalks like children without schedules, from the corner of the room comes a whirring. From the center of the room, a blinking. From around the corner, a plunk. Early in the morning, beaming. Nell could walk on eggshells by the time he learned to walk. No one wanted to hear about it, so he was slow to talk. He wandered, somber as a zombie, not a thought, not a head in sight, but listen — there is no reason to be hungry tonight. All that glitters is art. The first moon is a quarter, but all moons are full in photos. You’ve been saying something and it isn’t good. I’m going to put a clue where even you would look. But I ain’t tellin’ nobody nothin’. If they want to know what time it is, they can stare straight at the sun. Pretending for fun is fun, unlike most of the pretending anyone actually does.

At least in ancient places they used to put the rumors in a bowl. So the more they would say about you, the more you could hold. In the beginning, God made you and me both. And then he made a different sort of girl because he saw you needed one. He didn’t make me one but I was not forsaken. I simply asked him not to burden me the way he did to you. How could you think there’s no trick to it. Buy happiness, they said, it’s less materialistic, but when you get down to the bottom of it, you can see the object. If they don’t respond to the arrow, you’re supposed to leave them be, but she doesn’t always. Sometimes she uses her teeth. No par for the king. Visitors will be toads. Cruel world as a punchline. Symptoms as far as the eye can see. Jobs in the real world and school in dreams. Leverage without hinges and engines without itches and bottled breaks with broken stops, unedited as expected. 10 AM roses and trash in the sun, concessions and carousel tunes, but you got it all wrong. Horse music goes around, comes around. The roses are growing. The dark morning with the full moon stands outside our house. Can we come out? Circle round, rosy friends, circle round. Lend me your nosy ears and close your mouths. We know not what we say. I would tell you something, if there was a way. 

I’ve long been dreaming of the day when people would commonly start their statements with “As a language model–” and now they finally are. I’m not sure it means the average person is fully aware that they are a language model and that everyone they know and have ever known was a language model too and nobody is the same model and emojis don’t look the same between Android and iPhone, but maybe, as SEPTA used to say, we’re getting there. I tried to put my username in but the Swipe wouldn’t take it and I ended up saying:
Heretofore, hearthstone, heartbroken,
Heathrow, hedgerows, heatedly,
hatchetfish, bathrobe, hardheaded,
Haverford, heterodoxy,
Hagerstown, bathroom, hedgehogs,
hereditary, heresies, heartthrobs. So if the whole herd ran off a cliff, would you? Of course not, but I will if they don’t do it soon.

Still it’s June. It’s Pride Month, which I guess is not really meant for me as a cisgender female heterosexual lady who loves men, but the gay community has been very lenient with letting everyone join in. You don’t have to be gay or bi or trans, you can be pan or demi or sapio or litho or cupio or ace or auto or queer or even just quirky. No word is too dirty, no dirt is too wordy. I guess my sexuality can best be described by the 1955 short story Of Missing Persons by Jack Finney. The protagonist, by coincidence, finds a secret and unlikely way to get to the people he has always wanted to be with. It would change his life to be with them. But then he doesn’t act right. He doubts himself and others, and the door slides shut, and the man behind the counter at the travel agency — although not an unkind man at all — must pretend to never recognize him again in order to protect his loved ones and their way of life and the whole structure and functioning of the unmarked path to paradise. He gives him his money back, looks him in the eye and says, “You left this on the counter last time you were here. I don’t know why.” And I look around because I hear the startling sound of sobbing but to my horror I realize it’s me.

They’re everybody’s favorite / they live across the hall /
they aren’t quite romantically palatable /
you know who they are. / It me. / Maybe it you,
but not probably.

God, such a beautiful dream of one of you last night, and when I say one of you, please know it isn’t that I can’t remember which one. It was a beautiful dream of one of you wonderful beings who I have been blessed to know in this lifetime. I won’t say your name in case you have waking complications. In the dream I went to visit you, still living where you used to, on the fifth floor of a large, historic apartment building. It was only later after waking that I remembered that isn’t where you lived at all. In real life you lived in an apartment in a small row house, but in the dream I was going back to the exact same place where you used to be and there you still were, but the building was half remodeled and some wings were under construction. Your apartment and hallway were undisturbed but seemed modern so maybe that part had already been done. Something happened. We were lying together in bed just reminiscing. It seemed for a moment as though something else might, like it does in the movies. But then I went out for something, for breakfast or to get coffee for us. I don’t think I did a good job explaining where I was going, or that I would be right back. And I wasn’t, because I got very mixed up. Upon returning to the apartment building I couldn’t find your floor again because now there were half-floors too and the staircase was not central but separate flights of stairs leading up or down from different corners of rooms and different ends of hallways. In some places, the lights were out. I met the manager or owner of the building. A tall and refined and imposing woman with long dark hair, she was somewhere between the ages of fifty and seven hundred and fifty, and she was very beautiful and she knew that. She had no patience, but she had manners for days and answered my stupid wayfinding questions with the utmost grace. At one point I was up on floor seven before realizing I had gone too far and started looking for some dark corner stairway that would lead down but they only seemed to go higher which I knew couldn’t be the right way. I have to go down from here to get to the fifth, so I focused on it with all I had. Five, five, five, five, five, floor five, I have to get back to floor five, where the lights are on and the windows are big and uncovered and the daylight is shining in and nothing is dusty, and you’re wondering where I went. I didn’t mean to leave you, I can prove it if I can just hold onto your coffee until I find you, but do I even still have it? Where did I set it down? And then I go through some modern metal fire door by pressing on the bar and finding it surprisingly unlocked and when it gives way and the door opens suddenly, there is the carpeted hallway and the elevators that were there all along, and I knew the way to your door but when I reached it, it was open and the apartment was empty. I began to walk down the hallway and started hearing your voice from the room at the end. The door was open there too and there you are on someone’s bed, talking, and someone’s lovely legs are just in view. I hold my hands up in apology just as you look up and see me and I step back before anyone else notices. You get up and excuse yourself politely, nodding to me that you’ll be with me in a moment. Then you join me in a sitting area in a little lobby by the elevators across from the big windows with a view of what looks like the rooftops of Old City, and it turns out I do have your coffee, and I explain that it was hard for me to find your floor again and you acknowledge that the building is under construction. We sit and drink our coffee and I can’t remember what you’re saying. You’ve shaved your head now, like I used to do, and I’m sorry to see that because I really liked your long hair but it really doesn’t matter, because I’ve remembered your coffee order, and you are relieved to see me. There’s another part of the dream, featuring a vanilla ice cream cone. It’s later and we are outside in the sun and the ice cream is melting and you are not acting like yourself and just letting it melt all over the place and you’re smiling and talking and showing off for your friends and glancing over at me and I wake up grateful and glad to have this new dream, at least as beautiful as all the rest, and I will treasure it and you forever and ever. Amen. 

We are just past the Ides of August. These blog posts can never decide if they want to make sense. Should I tell you about my day or these other things? Next time we’ll talk about money — how easy it is to make and how much I love it. And going to Elizabeth City — how I spent a summer there as a runaway, among other things. Also those vague memories and how to find them — dreams is one thing, but what about—? It will be soon enough. Stay in tune. Stay touched.

In the morning I’m not depressed. In the afternoon I’m a little depressed. In the evening I’m depressed. At night I’m asleep and I enjoy my dreams. In the morning I eat nuts and berries. In the afternoon I eat yogurts and salads. In the evening I eat pizzas and hoagies. At night I don’t eat and I enjoy my dreams. In the morning I keep my clothes on unless there’s a drawing club session. In the afternoon I go for walks with or without guests with questions. In the evening I keep my clothes on unless there is figure painting. At night I keep my nightclothes on and enjoy my dreams. There’s always stuff to do for a living in the morning. There is often something to do for a living in the afternoon. Sometimes there’s something to do for a living in the evening. There’s stuff to do for a living at night but I don’t do it because I’m asleep enjoying my dreams. I go out in the morning for errands and walks and work. I go out in the afternoon for walks or work. I don’t go out in the evening unless there is work. At night I stay inside and enjoy my dreams. Do you need that one friend who your other friends don’t know? Where you don’t necessarily have to be you? That can be me. Come see me in dreamland.

Then the Lord answered me, “Write the vision. Make it clear on tablets so that anyone can read it quickly.”  (Book of Habakkuk 2:2)

Mission Statement, National Association of Christian Ministers, found one morning while I’m researching online ordination options

I had a dream about you last night. It was the second one this week. In the first one, you jumped off the roof of a church in my hometown. It was a church where two friends of mine had been married years ago and I hadn’t attended their wedding because of a snowstorm. It was a short fall and you seemed fine upon landing, but when I called 911 I accidentally said to them that we were “in the parking lot of Waters Funeral Home,” which is not where we were. And then last night I dreamed a different dream of you. We were at a fancy function and you were dressed in a tuxedo and all the girls were dressed in colorful ball gowns and I was the photographer at the event. Your two lady companions, one in a blue dress and one in green, each wished me good night and I wished them each a cheery goodnight, and you said nothing, even though there was a space where you might have said good night too, and in return I said nothing to you. I woke up still in the dream and was in my room sobbing and sobbing and trying to find a contact in my phone to sob to, when I looked toward the wall that I share with my neighbor and I could see light coming from under the wall, as if the wall were a door. I could hear the neighbor in there crying and saying ‘she.’ Then I knew he too had just had a lady refuse to wish him good night, because I recognized the pain in the sound of his crying. Then I felt a little more calm. Then I woke up for real. At first, it was more distressing to me when you refused to say good night than when you had jumped off the roof. But at the end, I found that there was a light under the walls of my cell, and the pain of rejection would be survivable after all. Upon waking I realized how much better this dream was than the other.

I don’t know how to tell you this. You have to find a food source that is close to your house. That is the most important thing, not what is served or how much does it cost. The important thing is that you get to it each day so that what you have bought does not spoil or crumble or attract pests. Whether you go to a soup kitchen, diner, grocery store, or garden, you must get to it in the ordinary course of your movements or else it is not a good source for you. But you do not know everyone’s situation and we must each do whatever works for us. Yes of course. Why have you come to a blog to see where to go for food? Haven’t you a map? A phone? Here we are on a rainy Sunday. When I came to this city, I was only twenty-eight years old. That is a fully-grown adult, and yet. I had no idea anything was wrong. I knew I cried a lot and didn’t have friends, but I mean. The problem with the blog is it keeps not making sense. Awfully convenient — if the author is a liar — isn’t it? I like authoritarianism, because they tell you what to do instead of manipulating you into it like democracy does. If you’re going to control me, do it yourself, don’t force me to spend my own energy controlling myself for you. Say: Stay in your house. Don’t say: Safer at home. Say: Get married. Don’t say: You’re nobody ’til somebody loves you. Say: Hey, I got a little job for ya. Don’t say: Be all you can be. Just tell me what to do, it’s not like I care. Then I realize, who am I talking to?

Sometimes there is some of this. Be savvy, find a deli to live over, and stay out of where it doesn’t want you. If lost, if broken, get back into the Christmas episode. If you see something, say I told you so. Quiero verme en el espejo pero no puedo. It’s hard to imagine looking at a word and not even knowing what it means, but in almost every language, that is what happens to me. It’s sort of harder work pulling the bigger numbers of the backlog, but everyone likes the show already and you haven’t seen it yet. What happens to him? Just a little bit. It’s exciting about the little pages. I guess. It feels so incredibly wrong to say this. My cat studied for fourteen years to be a fourteen-year-old cat, she’s really good at it. She has never started over, she was on the first track the right time. When the anger is done, you see how old you are, you go from there. You turned out to be a forty-three-year-old. What does one do? That is where age-appropriate considerations come in, it’s not something you would be familiar with unless it had happened. It’s funny how the exact same gates are there with the exact same latches. What kind of poetry do you write? Just abstract and stuff like that, please don’t worry, I’m not asking. I don’t have a favorite, but it’s me, not you. I don’t suit up without the proper haircut, anyone so very wrong could see that. The sun is what goes first and then you follow. Games are good but sometimes there is something more to do. Evade each angry plane diagonally sounds like an acronym for something, but it’s rude to decode things. A small dozen fell during the evening. I don’t know if everyone was on the same page. Blue luxe lunch tickets were tucked in pencil cases. It’s only a small amount of house, there won’t be many burglars. Roxie cooks burgers. Tina sells posters. We’re supposed to believe only some people are in charge and not all of us. If he is in charge, I am told to defy him. Awfully convenient. The thing about religion that makes it work is you have to tell it to yourself, not others. It is for practice, for starters. The sets are locked. The real film is taken from outside the gates. It comes from hours and hours on end of hearing a series of words and stems. It’s a syntax like amino acids, you can fill it in without understanding. It’s an equation that balances with or without apples. Like DNA. Like a dozen eggs for cooking, throwing, counting. We are all a little more hearty now with our youth fountain. Buy happiness, they said, it’s less materialistic. When you get down to the bottom of it, you can see the object. That plane up in the sky made it night again even though it’s almost six a.m. The sound of it tore through here like tractor trailer brakes on a distant highway. The city bus brakes make a little vox in the middle of the street. Does it have to come out from under the night? Do I have to know exactly where we are in space? Nobody believes a word you say, nobody blames you for anything, nobody takes you seriously. And then there is the fact that I kept telling them everything and my life kept going down and down and then one day, and that day never came and that’s the way it stayed. You can even cross the waves. Reality under a magnifying glass is blazing hot but once and again and again is this not it? Do you not remember the desperate and how to go about? There was time instead of pens you had lit cigarette. Honey? What are you doing? Was it ever said? Who was left to answer to besides the questioner and me and you? The easier the answer, the less was written. Don’t you think someone would ask? When you are afraid, you look like a scary thing. Constantly I’m worrying whether I should be eating or writing or making money or calling someone. Have I forgotten? Am I still up? Is it past time? Women with clean houses, I am one. As long as there are trash humans, I will be among. This looks like a person’s house. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Good enough. We agree whatever you want is what you should be in service of. Like your love, like your love, like your love. It is so easy to go out and be back and by midnight be done, but imagine having to explain everything to someone. Where two or more are gathered, you are wrong. It looks bad, she said, but you would know. Where is the shelf where we keep everything — where we keep everything that we can’t keep down low. You have to hear the words that come to you and process them and move on. That is all. It’s a game worth a million points, they told me to tell you. They said there would be an ear on the side of your house. The number of years between magnetic and nuanced is negligible in real life but not on Earth. I’m sorry, dear, we needed you here so long.

Sorry about that. That’s what he said. Ba dum ching. No but I was going to say something. It isn’t important though. I’ve been trying to train myself to be ready to listen to you. If you have said anything before, I have not heard you. I’ve tried some different religions to see if they can help me. Ultimately I come back to Christianity. I am more or less unwilling to follow any of them to the letter, and if I’m going to bastardize something it should be something that belongs to me. I was raised in the midst of Christian churches in West Virginia, and not only churches but on TV and on the money and in every apple tree. And so, with no other religion seeming superior, all being approximately the same to me, I become a Christian woman. I care what you are, but I will state arrogantly that I do not mind whatever you are. I hope that you likewise don’t mind me. You are my true belief. No man is my enemy. Nor any dog, or bird, or lady. What does she mean? Please don’t worry. My novels are named The Somewhat Welcome News, Let’s Say I’m You, and There’s No Crying In Whatever This Is. I have not written them. My poetry collections are called Jesus Is Lord Over Summersville, W.Va. and Circle The Animals. I have written the poems but I have not collected them. They have been edited, one by one. (Shocking, I know. “She was married to a baron. Oh-oh-oh, good for her-er-er.” “There is some evidence that she did edit her work.” Yes, we have brains, not that different from yours.) I started my writing career in community radio, so I’m always thinking about the audience. This person is driving in their car, or sitting in their armchair beside the radio, or working in the barn, and whatever I’m about to say is coming out of nowhere. It needs to make sense almost instantaneously and be pleasing to them, because they don’t have to listen. They are floating away. I can only keep them by saying something of value. You can tell from the minutiae in the animated jazz ambience videos what people really care about. Look at the level of detail in the rough blacktop edge along the sidewalk in front of the coffee stand, at the bottom of your screen. Look at the hard shadow the bucket of straws casts on the side of the trailer and the soft shadows cast by the leaves in the breeze. Look at the fine print on the sign on the parking meter.  Look at the winsome smile on the barista as he polishes the same cup with the same cloth lovingly forever, yes, but look also at the sunlight falling on his elbow, look at the wrinkle under the arm of his gray t-shirt under his burgundy apron.

To walk
By the road
Is to go
On a show. Everyone 
Wants to know
Why.

They know that as a human, you will crave the development of human potential. They won’t be able to dissuade you from wanting it. It’s an innate drive, the bedrock of the pyramid of your needs. So they make a show about it. There are extraordinary individuals who develop human potential right in front of us. They’re called celebrities. Representation matters because each one of us needs to see our own potential reflected back on the stage or screen or in the boardroom or at the podium, or else we will get restless and want to become something ourselves. Because celebrities fulfill a bedrock need for you, they are essential. So essential that they can afford no time off and no parts of themselves that are off-limits. It is widely and vehemently understood by the eldest and the toddler alike: Celebrities have no right to privacy. Because so many folks would perish without access, celebrities gave up privacy when they became everything to us. Otherwise we can’t keep everyone fed. This is a matter of ethics. Given that what they do matters so much more than anything else, we must hold them to a higher standard. Thus, we must each become a higher stan. We must stan the celebrities who will take human potential in the directions we would collectively like to watch it (from our seats) go. Human potential cannot be left to the whims of individual celebrities, artists, and other assorted assholes who think they’re better than us. As our birthright, human potential is something we all have a right and a need to control. Our right and our need are sides of the same token. Hold it in your hand, even if you’re scared. When it’s time to vote, drop it in. It’s your time to shine. We’re all rooting for you, safer at home.

~published on Facebook and Patreon dot com slash Campfire30, Valentine’s Day 2021

Something’s up. The starlings are having a bread crust party outside my window, screaming and hopping and fighting between bites. I wonder if we could talk, and if so, about what. It’s been four years and a day, so I call you up and say “Hey, I didn’t grow up in a normal culture like what you see on TV, but did I see you on 4th at Something’th near the Something House? I thought I did. It was October 3rd.” I used to cry at family gatherings. Not my family’s, other people’s, mostly those of significant others. They would bring me in for Christmas, nobody likes to see a girl out in the snow. And then, in front of my eyes, the lights on their trees would blur. So I just thought. But maybe it wasn’t you. I saw a video of a lion cub on a tv show set trying to snatch a human toddler out of its mother’s arms while the animal’s trainer calmly said “no” and untangled the youngster from the lion’s grip. The baby was unabashedly terrified but all of the adults stayed calm for the cameras, apart from a momentary scream from the mother which was quickly stifled and replaced by an awkward smile as the trainer regained control of the scene. Watching the video I notice that before the attack, the baby had started to scream. The baby was aware that a predator was right there. The trainer had come to show the tv audience how well the lion was trained and how nice the lion is. The tv crew was there to make a show. The studio audience was there to be entertained. The lion was there to be a lion. I’m not sure why the baby’s mother and the baby were there, and the baby didn’t know either. Let me play this through again. All of the adults were delighted by seeing a trained baby lion on a leash. The human baby was the only person on the scene who was aware that a predator was among them. It responded by crying to alert the adults that it needed to be rescued. No one moved to rescue it and in a moment the lucky lion had the smallest member of the herd caught in its inexperienced paws. After a bit of commotion the baby cat had lost its prey and the baby human had clutched its red lollipop in its little fist throughout the ordeal and was clutching it tightly still and wailing as the animal trainer tried to comfort the infant and mother while remaining cheerful for the audience. There was a lion trainer, a mother, a baby, a tv host, a co-host, a camera crew, and a studio audience. The infant was the only person who knew a lion was there. Something’s up. All those hours of promise of life in the future told in the form of messages in raindrops on tops of cars and headlights shining through raindrops hanging on window screens. All those cold nights when the frost on the grass foretold steam from the subways. All that neon on TV. It used to be event city and you would sit around on a folding chair on the aisle to get out easy or by the wall so no one else would have to contend with you. All those event nights of standing around outside. All those evenings arriving on time and leaving immediately after, no wonder. Look at this cock-eyebrowed sass boss, she can get it done just like any counterpart, look it up. Look at this plucky-eyed wildman, he is on a whim unstoppable, an unstuffed shirt, a sincere twinkle. We have been carving out this blog since mid-spring and out of it we have gotten only one small cave that does not even have a sea in it. Something is up. So this is going to be the last thing I’m telling you that doesn’t make sense. That’s all you get.

WE ARE ADVOCATES OF THE GOOD LIFE! We want to be competent, to be proficient, to be cooperative, to love our fellow man, to appreciate, to be humble, to be honest, to be moral, to live positively, to be what we profess.

Universal Life Church, Modesto California (a separate ministry from ULC Monastery, may God bless them both)

When I ended my last blog (The Somewhat Welcome News, 2004-2012), in the final post I said something like it doesn’t take a genius I guess to see why I stopped writing. I didn’t say what the reason was but I remember very clearly thinking the reason was that you have to be honest in order to write, and I was not willing to do that. I was generally unwilling to look at, find out, or god forbid speak the truth. That post was made in 2012 but I hadn’t written much on the blog since 2008. I had gone crawling back to it four years later only to find out that things don’t sit and wait patiently for you after you leave them. Sometimes you have to earn your own trust again.

Yesterday I heard someone say, “I want to get a sense of what everyone’s hunger level and desires are.” She was planning what to do next with her tour group. It was a treat for me to hear, but unless I wanted to mess it up, I couldn’t really thank her. And I knew the prompt was not for me to answer, as I was not a ticketholder. It’s the kind of rain right meow where you can go for a walk in it as a whole activity, without meaning to go anywhere. It’s warm, the air smells good, traffic in the streets is light. It’s midmorning. The rain is falling hard. I’ve come back from the store. On the way home, I noticed the other two fireworks flowers had bloomed and were white, not purple. So the math in my previous post is wrong. There’s a cord in the top drawer that I can plug into the Neo and I can get you some things I’ve written in there lately. Here is the actual footage of me not doing that. Sunlight is nonchalantly falling into the room in a white June-ish after-the-rain way. It’s early afternoon. The fan is blowing cool air from the kitchenette toward the window. On the other side of me a bit of muggy heat swells into the room from the window. There is a parking lot across the street where an orientation seems to be happening. A woman explains how something will go and then counts down slowly and everyone is laughing. After a few other sounds and orders, it’s a man and he counts down and now they scream in unison in a resolute tone. Then a car pulls over on my side of the street and the door opens and a conversation takes over the audio, between the driver and a woman on a porch below my window. They seem to be in agreement between them but opposed to a third thing they are referencing. The conversation wraps and the car swooshes away. The orienting party across the street, hidden by the leaves on the big tree, is clapping, bouncing a basketball on the wet blacktop, and calling out letters. The sun has gone behind clouds again.

It’s a curved thing. You can trace it with your eyes from where it went in to where you think it will emerge again, but it won’t exactly. After work she started to walk but the map was of the same concept, which didn’t stop her from moving north. Soon she walked out from under the cloud and wasn’t where she thought. The arrow is curved. The beauty of it is that you don’t know which photographer will pop up. When she does, she looks like someone you wouldn’t have believed in when you were young, with looped ears, swinging robes, a directness surely born of being brought up by wolves. You sweat your nametag out of your pocket and try to put it back on. When it doesn’t stick, you lick it, but still nothing. She’s looking at you like she’s seen one of you before but not for a long time. “May I take your photo?” You check your hands for what she wants but you’re holding nothing except the defunct nametag and then it hits you, she means take a photo of you with her camera. The lens is curved. Again and again you set your own table and serve what you do not want. Again the cinnamon instead of cardamom, again the bus ticket to where they thought you were going, again the apartment you can afford. It’s only sad because you keep doing it. You could stop. Must be nice to think that. It is though. Why are your windowsills always dirty? Because they always have been. Did you know it would take less than ten minutes to literally wash them? And today is not your funeral, so you’ve got time. Isn’t that nice? She seems inclined to pry, poking around your apartment peeking at things on the sly. Where is her camera? Hidden somewhere in her robes? She seems to have it only when she wants it. Maybe she can teach me that trick. I like to keep the romantics as my clients. Can you teach me that? But to these questions, all she ever answers is Click.

(posted 2021 on Patreon dot com slash Campfire30)

“Are you a performer?”
“OK, I’m not offended, but we prefer ‘circus freak.'”

On my clipboard today are items related to de-listing merchandise and getting it ready to donate. I’ve already fished out a pair of pants and decided they weren’t as ill-fitting as I’d thought and now I’m holding them up and thinking well I’ll get a belt. They are dark blue denim but thin and soft, so soft. They have pockets but if you put something in one, they’ll fall off. They were listed for like twenty-one months but no one bought them. Only the pants thus far have been de-listed. When the leaves are off, you can see the laundromat from here. But it counts as going somewhere, because somebody runs it, other people will be using it, you pass by people on the way there. People here greet each other as if all our lives depend on it. In their tone I hear a point that is hard to answer. I never know what to say besides hello good day and such but I understand that is not quite enough. They mark each attempt regretfully as failed, growing more and more resigned. I know I’m almost out of time. On my last day in my last neighborhood a man came up to me and said you look like you are in the wrong place. Yes, well thank you for your grace in letting me walk away. I will try to remember and do the same for you someday. Sometimes we go down and walk on the strip. There’s a few different places. We use the computer to order something from each and then we walk down the row and pick them up. The pizza grease makes it hard to hold the bubble tea cup. We run out of beverage while the samosas are still too hot. We live here for a year and a half, but we never figure it out. Sometimes the safety instructions are stay down, stay down. Sometimes that’s just an instinct.

Like the odd duck in the rainbow slick, just when you get your fins kicked in, they come along with Dawn and scrub you. Here we all are, trying not to be that blue. Where do you live? A boat? Does it not rock? Does it not lift? Float the notion of a boat, rescuing fish out of water. If your conclusions are real, why must you draw them? Here you are, bleeding, like a person who could still go shopping. The fair starts at four. The fair starts with parking. It starts hot and gets hotter. The numbers from his imagination are stretched like taffy. The ones from life will cast hard shadows from the wash. It’s OK not to answer any questions with your clothes. What are yours? Someone will take an interest. There are opportunities in rain — as in, done that way, like, cast in it. Nothing like a cake. It starts with too many things, whatever it is a number of. Anything that can be used to mark time, like a dozen eggs, or a pair of new, then progressively older, sneakers. There’s a beam of light that shines features on the head of a pin, but the audience never fits it in. Only time can tell these types of stories. In the meantime, what is there to eat. I’m the one who set the cat, and I’m the one who wound it. You don’t know why you’re on the doorstep meowing. Oddly just then someone came knocking. A guest with a domino-print luggage tag on his suitcase, coming from Madrid, who paid an extra day in cash and didn’t speak much English.

Electrical work is sort of like auctioneering. Hard to find anything to eat out here on the highway with all the businesses with all the buzzing lines zipping and the poles blistering hot and splintering. It’s hard to get what you mean. It’s hard to find what you want to eat. And mostly you just want to go to sleep. On waking there’s always windows framing things you weren’t expecting. Going back to sleep, at least there’s maybe next time. But how long can that go on before you reach the state line? On waking there’s always that question, and some loyalty to getting the story back on track. At first it’s easy to repeatedly give up, but periods of lucidity last longer and longer, and continuity becomes more stubborn. Eventually there emerges a constant hunger. You begin to remember the phenomenon of signs on the horizon. Gradually you realize that’s what these are. They keep zipping by until finally a decision is made among them. Your legs are shaky when your feet meet the solid ground of the parking lot. The air is hot and you realize the car had been cooled and you are not dressed for the weather.

A child’s occupation is to do their activities. A child has business to attend to whenever they are awake. Investigations, comparisons, experiments and reports. The significance of reports to a child’s work cannot be overstated. Reports must be given. They must be received. The results and consequences of their receipt must be analyzed. Reports must be generated regardless of where if anywhere they will go. I know I didn’t get all of mine done. There is a loose end swinging somewhere over my head. I grew up in the itty bitty tiny little town of Philadelphia, PA. Anyone who tells you different is a slanderer. It’s like you keep saying okay, okay, here’s the real story, and then starting again. Giving up and giving up and giving up, letting go and letting go and giving in. Nested surrendering that never ends, exhausting like falling up stairs in a dream. It’s not that I decided not to go home. But when the stillness started to grow, this is where it found me. Things will change if you get hungry. They made those flower beds for us. We grew up and went to college, and at the college they had breakfast and computer labs and flower beds, fountains, and couches. It was all a lot of work. I leave the lights around the corner in the kitchenette on when I sleep because I like to imagine I’ve opportunely happened upon this out of the way cot to take a nap on. Let’s say a meeting is in session and I’ve slipped away. Or let’s say it’s a workplace and a workday. Or it’s a party and here is an empty bedroom, or it’s an art gallery and upstairs there’s an empty studio with no door and someone left a cot here with a thin mattress and a throw blanket and a beanbag pillow. Now I’ve lucked out, I’ve found this dim, unoccupied and quiet spot. Around the corner, the lights are on.

I liked the one where Elaine dates a Poor Person. Seinfeld premiered when I was ten and ended when I was nineteen, but I didn’t watch it until my twenties in reruns. I shouldn’t have been so impressionable by then but I was, and the episode reinforced my suspicion that nobody was poor except for us. The regular characters found it a shocking and unpalatable characteristic for a man to have, even worse than being married. There’s another one where Elaine finds out her boyfriend David Puddy is a religious person, a Christian who programs his car radio to Christian rock stations. That makes him somewhat less palatable to her, but that made sense to me at the time. It’s good to watch these things again. It’s only in the present decade when I begin to understand what Kramer did for a living. There was this long running thing where Kramer didn’t work and so we wondered where did he get his money for his apartment and expenses and things. And then there was another parallel long running thing where Kramer was always up to some wacky business idea that made no sense and nobody really listened to. Now I understand he was an entrepreneur who was making his money from some of those same business ventures he was always literally talking right out loud about in English. It was never a secret.

Dorothy always has a smile on her face, love in her heart, and horror in her eyes. Those are the best kind. Kind, so kind. The materialists have to do everything. Thankfully, they can’t mind.  I found an alley with this doorway where I could slip up. It gives us a place to arrange our stuff. Inside our rooms, one wouldn’t even know the weather was hot. Out in the alley the puddles are still and reflect straight lines. Luxurious sun twinkles on black streets after the July rain, and despite the dappled shadows of trees along the sidewalks the heat is starting to hiss upward from the ground again. We are lucky. I have gone out to pick up lunch and come back. I have brought vegetable sushi, swiss cheese cubes, and muffins. On the counter, the tea is ready to be iced. In the tiny freezer are plastic cups saved from fountain drinks now filled with extra ice cubes from the mini tray. Every day is some day, but someday is today. I came back weeks later to read this, and I thought it said the heart is starting to hiss upward from the ground again, which of course it is.

She says it’s lost. Sounds bad. Did you check the car, she said. They say you will spend your life looking for it, but take that with a grain of something. You can see she’s from the future by the pearls. But it’s not. Look under the streetlight by the chain link fence. You both remember how it went down the night you went out. Look for it. Help me look. I told you, it’s not gone. Item One: Did the streetlight go out in the preceding story?

Oh what a loss! They bought him a round. He can’t remember any of it. It’s unclear if Never Paid For It is a secret or a brag. If they go out into the night or to the AM. If there is an apple in the backpack or there isn’t one. A subtle sink or swim to the bottom. See, this is where the rage comes from, you do this. You never lose because you never let the game end. It doesn’t feel like a win. We have your pennant on the wall only because it’s a big draw on camera. Like luxury snacks. From any small grocery in Manhattan. Family reunions are nasty when you know what’s going on. The little ones don’t. That’s funny. She was never in the real Hollywood but this new kind, they get there when they want, they don’t even need a car. On the one hand, what they need is never advertised for sale under rippling flags, it grows at the bottom of one hill at the end of the footpath in the hollow under the tree roots by the stream. On the other, you’ll find it, that’s the thing. You’ll never be able to trust yourself again. Some people get stuck there and never leave.

The ashes and the fishes. You made it sound like a birthday party. You made it sound like a bible story. We get here, the kitchen’s not even open. They were rattling breakfast plates in twenty-eleven. I feel like, when a hand stamp reached fourteen dollars, that’s when we had entered the next age, and that was around when? Still the nineties? We knew those would be hard years. The babies had been up all morning.

You need someone to protect you. I know that. You said you would do it, but then you just left. Ran off to Atlantic City and shacked up with some random and then moved out of town for good. You’re the worst protector I ever had. I pretty much died on your watch. Somebody just died on this show and I don’t even know who it is now thanks to you. You know they used to cast for face shape, now they can do that with computers, now it’s all about the utterances. They didn’t get out ahead of it, which ended up being good for us. Anyone with backstory had the edge. They tried to workshop it for a minute, but nobody believed them and nobody went. They all stayed home to listen. With no one looking, the stage fell out of it.

We understood early that taste was up next. He had almost found his kitchen. You were planning to die with the reels and we knew it. He had his tongue down. You didn’t. In 2007, you were told. We caught up with you at lunch on the downtown mall after we attended his graduation. We told you this was the only thing you needed to focus on, this was your mission. You took it in some kind of esoteric way, and we didn’t have all goddamn day to discuss it, he needed us back by that evening. You wouldn’t imagine we’d stay long in the Velvet Rut and you’d be right. We knew even if you struggled for the longest, your assignment was like falling off a log and ultimately — with Gravity — you’d get to it. Listen, we said. Listen. But it was always a vision. We didn’t feel like we really wanted to watch or listen anyway and from what your roommate said, we didn’t miss anything.

She complains you skip the best pages. But she’s young. Why a rattling from the kitchen, why a sound? That isn’t what comes out. It’s the scrap that gets thrown to the street. Along with the square of light. I don’t buy it. It’s free. Be quiet. Why a rattling from the kitchen? Can’t you smell the cooking?

(posted on Patreon dot com slash Campfire30 on July 23, 2021)

Nested surrendering that never ends, but eventually you have to be honest. I keep coming back to that. There is never any way around it, no matter how many different ways you start out. OK ok here’s the real story! Here it is, you caught me! I’m going to tell you the truth now. And then you begin. Again. And again. And again. Nested surrendering that never ends. At some point, you have to be honest. At some point, you have to get serious. I said, How can I get people to take me seriously? I think I really wanted to know back then, and to be sure, I really didn’t. He said, Be serious. He knew exactly what I meant. I knew exactly what he meant. After years of knowing nothing, this was it. And I said, What shall I do if they laugh? And he said with confidence, Just don’t laugh too if you’re not joking. Now what if I declined all of this knowledge and common sense because he wasn’t very kind to me. I could. I could go to the council and say we don’t associate. Exhausting like falling up stairs in a dream. To be honest, it’s easier just not to know everything. At some point, you stop asking Who am I? and start asking What’s all this? People have asked if there is a political meaning behind shaving my head. People do not ask if there is a spiritual one.

The heart pavilion hallways are always full of a million frequencies from machines and worries.

I photograph written matter that no one ever meant. Evidence of things being said that weren’t. People are meanwhile at poetry readings performing legislation and maybe someday it will all be ruled upon but no one’s certain. I would do it again, but you can’t stand twice in the same sunbeam. You only exist in the world for a while, hence the heartbreak. Anybody writing about the present is unreliable. How can we standardize their upbringing? That’s easy, we’ll give all their parents the same TV. There used to be some talk of intervals. There were dailies, there were weeklies, there were monthly magazines. One day, someone made a digest, the first one. My theme is love, but so what. You don’t know what everybody means by a lot.

You want to go the movies? she asked, as she was sitting alone in her apartment. Yeah, I don’t know, I guess. And she went on the internet and found out about it, what it was, and how to get to it. It’s like having a lot of little friends, I think, they are all your cells or petals or something. I know they are many because I hear them clapping and cheering together when we win. When we wake up and find that the shelves have been dusted. When we eat something very nutritious for breakfast. You remember going to the supermarket and buying little things to use to try to make a go of it. I remember the packages never being opened. You remember trying. You’re looking back at it. I’m looking at it from above, and I’m telling you, that’s not what you were doing. In the middle of the night, out a red dirt road, with a bright moon and very little vegetation, with a black and yellow striped barrier and tire tracks beyond it, that’s where we went. I can’t tell you more than that. Maybe we were in a truck though. Maybe someone was. We had gone to find retrieve or escape someone. We got away or we didn’t catch them. I wanted to run and I wanted to listen to Bruce Springsteen on some headstrings from a portable music thing because that is what that girl in that movie had done and that is what I thought I would do if we moved to the sea, but I was young. An urge like that is never done. 

Six of eight purple Fireworks Flowers along the brick sidewalk had burst. The other two were buds. The stems were parallel approximately, reminiscent of the sculpture at the bus stop on Frankford. I was temporarily awake thanks to a cold peppermint tea. Who would you say this to, because you certainly wouldn’t say it to me.

How about this. There’s a rug store named Minimal Chaos. When I hear the name I begin working out how much chaos this place is known for. On the one hand, I think, Minimal. So, there’s a small amount of chaos, not a lot, right? On the other hand, it’s a rug store, so they didn’t even have to bring it up. So the fact that they did means there must be a greater than average amount of chaos when compared with other rug stores. Right? It’s a rug store characterized by a minimal, and yet oddly non-zero, amount of chaos. Yeah that’s the sort of thing you would tell me about.

What if the categories are more simple. Like, tops, bottoms, one-pieces. Underthings, outerwear, loungewear. What if I use photographs. What if I cut the list apart so I can physically rearrange it. What if it’s paper dolls and outfits with paper tabs. What if there’s a chart, with information represented vertically, horizontally, and by color coding. What if I get a label maker. What if I learn calligraphy.

What if you tell me a story? What do you want to know? What happens at the fair? Kid runs away from their family. Why? I don’t know. Oh it’s going to be a present-tense situation? Yeah. Actually, great idea, yes. And I know it gets cold later, but starts out warm. I know the parking lot is big and grassy. I scouted a location for it the other day, it’s perfect. It’s not grassy in the same way but the pavement is busted up and it’s overgrown. Is this a true story? No. He finds out it’s not his family. And he’s not sure where they’re going when they leave here. He must have very much not wanted to get into that car. He’s fifteen, being on his own is very scary, almost like being afraid of the dark again. There’s going to be an adult who helps him out. But let’s give him a few nights and days on his own before they meet up. This is a story about that window of time. The fair has food and jobs. It’s a great place to run away. A lot of temporary, unsecured shelters.

Plus it’s a place you never want to go home from. Like the hospital. The baby likes the beeping and the lights and the blankets at the hospital. She likes the window blinds for cutting the light of the city into such thin strips and laying it so parallel. She likes the shine on the floors. She loves the voices. At least, she loves the voices in the daytime, of nurses and visitors and the cheerful sick. She likes the cooing of the other babies, but the other voices in the baby wing are not so nice, some of them. Even the nice ones are frightening. The nice ones are sad and the others are angry. The first night, she knows that somehow. The next night, it’s all just sound, but the uneasiness remains. From the second night on, she feels like she’s forgetting something.

The boy forgot his jacket. That’s what they call it on TV when a kid doesn’t have a jacket. Forgot it. It’s summer so he wouldn’t need it if he wasn’t going to be still outside at dawn, but he will be.

I don’t even know that this is the night you are born. Most of the great reveals in history are not noticed by anyone. I’m staying up late watching TV because tomorrow night there might not be any. I haven’t made up my mind but I feel like I’m not coming home.

Do they look for him? I mean, I would think so. Any chance the baby gets left at the hospital? No. She’s going home. Do they wonder why he ran away? Sure. Do they ask? That’s a good question. It seems obvious. What kind of people wouldn’t?

They let me take a Chemistry class last year. I wanted to be in there because when I sat at the table in the back corner of the room next to the emergency exit door, I could hear something. Not a voice but something that other people couldn’t hear so I guess technically it was in my imagination, but I’m not sure. It was the sound of the stars. And it was like a faint, unpunctuated ringing. Like jingling but more uniform, less syllabic. I liked it.

And he can hear that again at the fair?! Shhhhh. Maybe.

What if you lived in a hot hotel room and you were eight months pregnant and you lived with your boyfriend in a small town and then your boyfriend got picked up by the police for questioning regarding a homicide. But he had an airtight alibi and not much information and they let him go right away. But he felt pretty bad to find out about the deceased person. He had thought of them fondly. But I mean, you would still be more focused on getting some air-conditioning. They said friends and family said she lit up every room she walked into, but I mean, most people do. Usually the light switch is right near the doorway.

Who do you think helps the boy at the fair? Is that person part of the story? For instance, this pregnant couple in the hotel room with no air-conditioning, with the deceased acquaintance, are they involved with the boy? With the boy’s family? Will their baby turn out to be the baby at the hospital? You told me an adult helps the boy at the fair. Who do you think that is? Do you think it could have been the Baxters, or one of them, or somebody associated with the Baxters? I don’t know, I mean there are other adults in life besides the Baxters, or so I’ve heard.

Emerald and Foxrose Baxter used to be Emerald Baxter and Fox Rose. That was so long ago they are like legends. Like it’s two completely different people than the ones everyone knows now. Or like it’s your grandparents, who you’ve only seen photos of. Everybody knows Emerald and Foxrose, but everyone else is so much younger than they are that their earlier lives seem like part of a different era. Nobody who is alive now could have been alive then, but Fox and Emerald were. Nobody else had any suspicion that they themselves would ever become as old as the current version of Emerald and Foxrose. They were an anomaly. Two people from the previous lifetime who had somehow stayed behind when the rest of their age had died out, who were still here when the newcomers arrived, and who had become accepted into the present day as if their existence were not impossible. People were glad to have them around. People thought of them generously, as Something We May Not Understand. There hadn’t been anything like that in so long.

It’s natural to think the Baxters are involved in anything we don’t quite understand. And of course, you would want the boy at the fair to be taken in by them. But would he risk associating with someone with a high profile, given that he was on the run? I just don’t see that. A scared kid might associate with anyone who was kind to him. I guess. But I don’t know if this is all that scared of a kid.

Who are the people in the hotel room? I don’t know, but it’s summer and they are expecting their baby in a month. The fair takes place the first week of September. I think the baby is in the hospital when the boy is running away from home. So that is the same baby? Yeah I think so. I think that’s her.

The thing about a city that makes it work is that it took a long time to get that way. Like Philadelphia, for example, somebody planned it out, right? But when you look out your window today, William Penn didn’t design the house you see across the street. And if he tried, he wouldn’t know how to connect the gutter’s downspouts to the pipes running their effluence into the present-day storm drain system. Once upon a time, the implementation of that system was planned and carried out in budget meetings and council votes. Once upon a time, somebody picked out the color of the rain gutters to complement the palette from the concept drawings of the mixed-use development where the apartment house stands. There used to be a different house standing there. One day, somebody moved out of it. One day, somebody tore it down. For years, kids played in the empty lot where it used to be. Just before five p.m. on the day before a meeting, somebody finalized the concept drawings of the development that would be built on that block. We don’t even know those people. We don’t know what month their babies were born, or whether they spent any time homeless as a teen. They didn’t really plan to grow up to pinpoint the exact location of a downspout, but somebody had to. Somebody went to art school. Somebody went to the police academy. Somebody majored in biology. They had reasons myriad and unrelated. Sometimes you don’t know where things go.

Google search history: Name of pipe that carries rain gutter runoff underground, what is a trough drain, what is a trench drain, what is a downspout, what is a standpipe, does a downspout on a house rain gutter connect to a standpipe, what connects the downspout to the underground drain, effluence definition, what kind of storm water system does philadelphia have. And then there is the YouTube tab and then there are several tabs that seem to have been opened by someone in a different session: When did baz luhrman’s romeo & juliet come out, episode of seinfeld where elaine’s boyfriend has same name as a serial killer, when did seinfeld episode the masseuse air, simpsons coincidences.

There’s a big sculpture that I look at out my window. It’s a short box sitting on top of a very tall rectangle. People come out of the box and wander around on top of the rectangle with drinks in their hands and lean on the railing at night. In the daylight the whole shape and each part of the shape are stacked very still up against the sky, which in this case is kind of an underwater blue. The sculpture is impressive from here because it’s looking incredibly huge relative to the largest possible backdrop imaginable. It creates a reassuring effect in the viewer. Meanwhile, the sun is marking down shadows on the intersection with a heavy hand. Stop signs, power lines, residential trees. Next to the Edificio sculpture there is a gap and then begins a row of connected houses running four homes to the north, then another grassy alleyway and the side of an apartment building that faces on the intersecting Avenue. It is out of the side door of that apartment building that the paramedics this past January carried a young woman screaming that she was sorry and loaded her into an ambulance and flashed away into the first hours of the year. Other than that, mostly what we hear out there are fender benders from when people driving on the cross street thought oncoming traffic had a stop sign too but it doesn’t. We tell them, out the window, but quietly and they don’t hear us. And other than that, the neighbor works on his car night after night and talks on speaker phone with various people who have grievances with which he sympathizes. Then he covers the car with a tarp and leaves town for a week. Sometimes on Friday and Saturday nights we hear people who drove this far north of the bar they were looking for to find parking. Then we hear them much later in the evening returning, slurring, chattering, claiming that if something something they would’ve brought their coat.

After the fairway closes. The lights on the still rides are still on. The food stalls are still serving. Paper fry baskets and hot cups warm people’s hands as the night cools. People walk to their cars, where their jackets are. The house is fifteen miles from the park. The park is brightly lit, the house will be dark. The food stalls are still serving fries and burgers and coffee and soft drinks. At the house, I will be hungry. I have money. But now we’re all walking together toward the parking lot. Soon we will be outside the gates. That’s when I slip away. At first it feels like a small thing. Because I just stopped walking so I could have simply started again. I might have stopped to tie my shoe. I could have caught up unnoticed and had a story about the time I almost slipped away. But this is different. It’s hours later and I’m cold. I finished my burger and fries hours ago and had two cups of coffee before the vendors closed. Now what?  

I’ve been making a list of my clothes. It seems very compelling each time I begin. I go, Big Yellow Corduroy Sweatshirt, Black Jumper, Seaside Hoodie, Marine Layer Long Sleeves, Love Sweatshirt, Big Red Pants, Rainbow Long Sleeves, Gray Cropped Long Sleeves, White Lace Dress, Blue and White Print Short Dress, Blue and White Print Shorts, Short Denim Shorts, Mint Green Short Shorts, Black Work Pants, Comic Pants, Guess Sweatpants, Gray Dansko Pants, Black Hearts Sweater, Pink Cropped Sweater, White Cowell Neck Sweater, Yellow Cashmere Sweater, Van Gogh T-Shirt, DKNY T-Shirt, Gray Deconstructed T-Shirt, Green Gloria Vanderbilt Top, Old Navy Ringer Tee, Red Sparkle Tank Top, Rainbow Stripe Sweatpants, Taylor Books T-Shirt Dress, HyStyl Black Rainbow Stripe Mini-Dress, Maroon Elephant Long Sleeves, Button Down Parrots Short Sleeves, MTV T-Shirt.… I’ve done it in pictogram form, and I’ve done it in words. I have lists in my notebooks going back at least two years. My clothes are clean today. Woke up this morning with that feeling of hey something good happened what was it? Oh yeah, life is easy. It will take me two seconds to get dressed today. I have two gigs, one at noon and one in the evening.

So then I was at the gig, I was talking with a lady about my favorite thrift store. Decided to go there afterward. Found this raincoat and this cashmere sweater. The evening gig was outdoors and rain was in the forecast. My other cashmere sweater is a pullover, my other cardigan is long and shaggy, this was a short cashmere cardigan and it had crystal flower buttons. So now I can write White French Connection Raincoat on my outerwear list and Black Cashmere Cardigan on my sweaters list. Looking forward to that mucho.

Woke up this morning like, oooooh raincoat. My raincoat is still hanging up in the bathroom on a hook where it dried from the rain last night. The sweater is on a velvet hanger in the wardrobe.

On my clipboard in the top drawer, there’s a new list that I started last night on glossy brochure paper with black illustration felt tips. This morning I got out the fingerprint inks.

Oh not to paint with, I got them out to play around with fingerprinting because I had been watching detective stories on the YouTube. Not detective stories but surveillance video from interrogation rooms. There’s a lot of stuff on there, they even have Alec Baldwin. I haven’t watched that one, it’s long. I have watched some of the longer ones though, if it starts playing automatically and then I get into it. I like how the detectives are. My favorite parts are when they sound normal and chatty like everything in the world is going to be alright. By that time, things already went wrong. I know they’re doing it for a different reason but it still sounds the same. It sounds like all they want to know is how you take your coffee. I would like to be married to a detective or a behavior analyst, so they could just know what I meant.

But that isn’t the case, so I have to do this. Meaning, I have to use words. The reason for my anxiety right now is that this is a long block of time in which I am in my studio and have nothing else that I am even supposed to be doing. This is it. YouTube is playing a jazzscape rooftop scene. The cats are sleeping. The clothes are clean. I don’t have to pack, unpack, move, sort, or go through. I have an evening gig, but it is afternoon. I am not sleepy. I went for a walk, I got exercise and fresh air, sunshine, and groceries. I have watched all of the shows. I’m taking a break from my detective stories because of the emotional toll of what they keep discovering. When they would come home, I would ask them how their day went, but they would know exactly what not to say.

Everybody asks how you take your coffee. Nobody asks how you take your cake.

I’ve been off of Facebook since February. I had gone off of it before but this is the longest time so far. I enjoy people in real life and didn’t enjoy people on there. This clue, once isolated and pondered long enough, suggested something was off. With Facebook deactivated, no one is blocked. Once in a while I wonder how someone is doing, and I write and ask them. They reply only with things they would say to me.

My favorite part of the detective show is how they have to pick the moment to turn the conversation, from sitting there being on the person’s side, to accusing them of lying (among other things). Once defined on some level as an ally by the other person, they have to willingly redefine themselves as an adversary. It is often a moment of masterful Band-Aid ripping. Other times it’s like a deeply flooded basement that you notice once it’s already done.

Sometimes when I’m taking a break from the detectives, I listen to Carl Jung. He says there are these different stages that you go through, but that you won’t necessarily. You will only if you do. He says the first two should normally be pretty much finished by midlife. I feel as though I’m beginning the second stage at forty-three and grateful to have made it. I don’t feel regretful or ashamed, as I realize it’s a blessing and a gift. So I guess, my apologies to anyone I may have previously interacted with. Although, given the vulgarity of public apology, I say this only tongue-in-cheek. Whenever one of us is misbehaving, I’m just grateful if it wasn’t me.

Woof, I’ve been working my ass off in April. I saw a sign in the subway that said “1. I have something to say. 2. I know what happens next. 3. Nothing is going to stand in my way.” It was trying to teach little kids how to be writers. There’s another one with the same graphic design but it says “Take turns. Keep spying.” I didn’t pay as much attention to the context on that one, maybe it was for Social Studies? I know the schools have been closed off and on for a while. Have you ever thought about how close the word atlas is to the words at last? I have, but I can only make this claim as of like one moment ago. Do you remember the thing I wrote where it says: There isn’t time to spend musing on what the poets meant / They’re dead, and you must– / Run! Do you remember? It was in one of the Tiny Letters. It doesn’t say “They’re dead, and you must run.” It’s never said that. Information is like that sometimes. Sometimes you remember it differently. Sometimes you didn’t read closely. There were a lot of line breaks and stuff in it too, just to make the lines end with certain letters, I think, but that’s not relevant. To this. That had to do with magnets. Anyway, now I’m reading that post again, and I’m asking why she had tiles. It did say that, and it still does. Now I’m wondering what it was that interrupted them. Also, they must what? And I’m trying to remember which local college it was near, where I found those concrete letters dumped in the woods. Was it Haverford? Is there such a place? What was I doing there? I’ve been working way too much this month.

I found a pendant on the sidewalk while I was walking to the subway to go to a gig one evening. It’s a round silver locket with a tree carved into the lid of it with cutouts all the way through, so like if you put something scented into the locket, you would be able to smell it, so you could put some dried lavender or something, for a little portable aromatherapy when you need it. I put it on the same chain with my two hearts. It’s pretty heavy but I only wear that chain on windy days anyway. This is where I claim I got the locket. You don’t know though, I mean someone could have given it to me. I could have bought it with money I never said I had. Someone could have left it over at my house last time they were there. There’s a flea market down the street today, maybe later I’ll claim that’s where I got it. You simply don’t know. It’s no reflection on you. It doesn’t tarnish what we have.

Maybe we’re back in business, but I doubt it. I guess I have to take my blog posts over to the library and print them and staple them together and mail them out to you through the postal service, or whatever is left of it after it’s been De-Joyed. They’re trying to keep us apart, you do know that, right? The internet is not a big truck, it’s a series of tubes, it’s magnets, I’m not saying it’s aliens, but. The upside is, if you’re reading in real time, you get to wait for each sentence to be posted one at a time. A photo will pop up and you’ll hit Refresh Refresh Refresh Refresh waiting for the caption. But the caption might be a lie. I thought the secret was that if you had previewed your post then you couldn’t get it to post live, but now I think the issue was that the post needs a title so that it can have an address. But I digress.

I’m writing a story about a kid who runs away from their family at the fair. There’s a lot of French fries in it and other food. Hot chocolate and such, as you would expect. After the fairway closes the food stalls serve a last half hour of styrofoam cups and paper baskets. As everyone makes their way to their cars, where their jackets are. The night has cooled. I’m not too sure how to handle narrative progression though, as you might can tell from the wrestling required just to make this post.

What if I retype it again from scratch?

God didn’t feel like typing it up. I know how the fuck God must have felt.

So it says they find her/it with Not Going Home written on its shirt. I know the shirt, it has the neck cut out of it. It was a Blue Medium. It has a graphic from a local organization for girls. In the story, it was just a white t-shirt but then in Black Sharpie it ends up saying — scrawled — Not Going Home. I don’t know why. I don’t think anyone meant anything by it. (There’s some truth in everything everyone says…. Sshhhh please for once and for all, stop saying that.) You know what I mean, it was just an artifact that later got misinterpreted. (As they all do. That’s not even a misinterpretation, that’s literally the way artifacts are read. Ssshhhhh please.) I mean the writing referred to something mundane, but then it ended up meaning more than that. I just forget exactly how it happened. Like, you know how if you’re sorting things and you might have piles labeled – literally labeled, with sheets of paper taped to something – Keep, Toss, Sell, Donate, etc.? So it was for some reason like that, they ended up with a t-shirt with the words Not Going Home written on it. But she somehow ends up wearing it. It will make more sense when the story is all written, I promise. And honest, I would wait until then to post it, ‘cept uh, you know how WordPress is.

A key protects its scratch with an exact jag. There would have been something about the keys to the truck, because that’s where her jacket was. Does she have it? Can you see if she has it on? So if she took it with her, then she must have known. Or so you suppose. But maybe she was just cold earlier than anyone else was, or maybe she thinks ahead, maybe she worries. Maybe it’s like a security blanket. What if I type it again from scratch? A key protects its scratch with an exact jag. A coin is worn. Yeah, she does wear a coin, on a necklace, a nickel with a hole through it. What’s special about it? A buffalo? A rare stamp? A deformity? And how would she know? (Dummy, a coin is worn. What, so it’s really old?)

A guest the other day asked me if I was an art historian. He wasn’t fucking around, he was tying to find out. I told him I was just a person, I wasn’t sure what to call it, but I mean, I was friendly about it. An art historian isn’t really a good guess, although it was, under the circumstances. But in general, I would more likely be a detective. Like, I would run a lost and found database of things you’ve heard of.

Predictive text poems are satisfying to write but sometimes they also turn out well. I have a video on YouTube where I read some of them. I liked the collection, I’ll try to find it and link it later. I feel like it might have been last June 23rd, I’m not sure. I think I was going to pull it together and call it the June 23rd Generation, if that turns out to be the date when it was generated. Anyway, I notice Cupid was trying to figure out predictive text in January 2020. That seems pretty late. Ghosts don’t always know what year it is. I’m just saying.

The leaves on the tree across the street started twinkling earlier this month and now they’re nearly full and pale green. I turned forty-three on the seventeenth. It was one of the three days this month that I took off work. I watched some reality TV on YouTube – cheeky British mini-documentaries about people hunting for antique treasures in their long-forgotten storage units. On the same day, my mom and sister were clearing out a storage unit that my dad had. They ended up finding a treasure that was an exact object I had once said I wanted. Neither of them could remember having seen it there before. So that was neat. Mom is sending it to me. I have to go to a gig. I’m going to wear the copper bells, not the tree locket with the two hearts, because it is not windy and because recently my step has been light enough that I frighten fellow pedestrians when I pass, so I thought, help them out with a little jingle of foreshadowing. A spin of the ol’ At Last Of Tomorrow gives us number thirty-five, the Historian. I’ll post it here without comment.

Four years ago today, I did this reading on South Street. About three blocks away from 1028. I turn dates into numbers, like if you were born on April 17th, like I was, then your birthday number would be 417. If you were born on August 31st, then your birthday number is 831. If you were born on May 3rd, it’s 503. So 1028 is October 28th. That ended up a few years later being the day my dad died, which is not really relevant to this story.

I have to leave soon for a storytelling gig, so I’ll have to save this. You should begin by listening to the reading. You do that while I go to my gig. You need anything from the store? OK, sit tight, I’ll be back in like three hours. Don’t go through my notebooks. Actually you can.

I’m back. A small, quick story: One of the group leaders accidentally gave me the tip they apparently had intended to leave at breakfast tomorrow. And usually I receive a twenty from them, so hopefully that means there’s a waitress somewhere in the city who will get a twenty tomorrow morning instead of a ten, and it will be dropped on her table in an envelope with a single word scrawled on it in ballpoint: Ghost. If you hear about that let me know, I think that would be a cool coincidence.

So I listened to the reading from 3/22/2018 earlier this evening. I hadn’t listened to it in a while. Today I was working on my website and, while embedding this video on my writing page, I noticed the date was March 22nd. So I thought let me listen to it and see what was up on this day in 2018. The reading was at Wooden Shoe Books, which is about five three blocks away from the mosaicked mural on the east side of 1028 that reads Philadelphia Is The Center Of The Art World.

Time out, think about the fact that I have in my possession an envelope with ‘Wed. Breakfast Philly‘ written on it. If you were going through my apron pockets and you found that, wouldn’t you think I’d been somehow involved in a breakfast situation on a Wednesday morning here in the city? And if you asked me about it and I told you there had been no Wednesday breakfast situation involving myself, and especially if I furthermore told you that it’s only Tuesday night right now so I can prove it? You’d not fully believe me. You’d think back to Wednesday of last week and try to remember what time you had seen me. You would know something was up. And nothing would be up. Information works like that sometimes. Sometimes you don’t know everything. Sometimes you’re wrong.

I said time out, but it wasn’t out of nowhere. The reason I thought of that is because this story is about murals. I’ve made an outline of another story about murals, years ago. I was sitting on Race Street Pier about to go over to the story slam at the new Fringe place. I outlined it in case they picked my name out of the hat to tell a story that night, so it would be fresh in my mind. They didn’t, and to this day I haven’t told the story. I kind of forgot about it. And then I ran across the scrawled outline when I was throwing away notebooks a few weeks ago.

It was a painting of a rabbit on the side of an elementary school. I’ve never visited that school, but I worked at the high school next door. I don’t remember ever noticing the rabbit mural. I think I threw away that outline but I definitely remember the story, just not how to tell it. It’s hard for me to tell because I’ve never understood it. I’ve never understood how it happened. And the way I remember it, it’s not something I ever would have told. So I must have put some bullshit version in that outline, which is probably why I threw it away. Good thing they didn’t call out my name.

Here is a small poem about rabbits to help us understand more of the reasons why we’re talking about rabbits. I wrote this poem in September 2021 while walking north on 35th Street.

Even if you are not alone
in them, waiting
for your ride home, there
are expanses of uniform grasses

between highways and churches
in new construction, where
one or two
rabbits are pausing.

A few things: Try reading the 1st and then Last lines of this poem, followed by the 2nd and then Penultimate, and then the 3rd line and the 3rd-from-last line, and then the 4th line and finally the 4th-from-last line. Then read it back in order again. Also, for your ride home, there and in new construction, where. And also, where two or more are gathered in my name + churches. I don’t know exactly what is up with the expanses of uniform grasses, except that it has to do with the new construction. That’s why it’s uniform, but my only remaining question is, there must be more to the word uniform.

So, I had no actual involvement with the rabbit mural. In fact, that’s the whole story. Once upon a time, there was a rabbit mural that I didn’t know about. The end. But later on, after the endpoint of that story, I did look it up and see a picture of it in Google images and that’s when I find out it was a rabbit. Not even a bunny, like, it wasn’t fluffy, it was this sleek and pensive rabbit sitting up tall and looking at the sunset. I got curious. The article on Google didn’t say much about the artist. I found him on Instagram, he’s got more stuff with rabbits and a bunch of other non-rabbit-related art as well. The elementary school mural fits with the rest of his style. I don’t know what else to tell you.

The rest of the story is that once upon a time I had a romantic partner who was convinced I was having an affair with this mural artist who I never heard of who made this rabbit painting I’ve still never seen in person. It’s not a very good story. But this isn’t a storybook, it’s a blog. So it never ends, it just goes on and on.

Wednesday morning, I’ll have breakfast in Philly, for instance, fulfilling the prophecy of the envelope. I might even spend that very ten. Probably on South Street, in fact, but that’s only a coincidence, unrelated to either the reading at Wooden Shoe or the mural on the side of 1028.

When I’m out on South Street Wednesday morning, some blocks from literally everything I’ve mentioned, while east-facing things are glittering in the sun, at home in my desk drawer will be an envelope labeled for Wednesday morning, already torn open. There won’t be any connection.

So you can see why it’s so hard to tell stories, with all these facts lying everywhere.

(featured image: mosaic by Isaiah Zagar, photo my own)

“I’m Delores. I love to shop. But I’m out of control.”

“I’m Jan. I’m from a small Texas town. My house is a disaster.”

“I’m Jan and I’m an artist.”

“I’m Joyce. I’m very embarrassed, OK?”

“I’m Rick. I’ve got some problems in my life. You know, I’m trying to play with the hand I was dealt, and maybe I don’t always deal with it the right way.”

“I’m T’Resa and I’m a mother, and I love almost every minute of it.”

“I’m Carol. I’m 48. I have two jobs, and I’m a mother. I definitely would say I’m a hoarder.”

“I’m Laura. If I had to pick a yes or no for whether or not I’m a hoarder, I would say no.”

“My name is Carrie, and I’m a hoarder.”

“I’m Susan, and I’m a truck driver.”

“I’m Debra and I’m a medical lab technician. I have five kids — four boys and a girl. I’ve worked third shift for like 21 years, and I haven’t been able to keep a house for many years.”

“I’m Karen. I’m a first grade teacher. I always have children’s best interests in my heart. I would hope that none of them go home to a house like this.”

“My name is Deborah. I’m 49 years old. My hoarding problem started when I had kids.”

“I’m Patty, and in the Bible it says you should confess your sins, and my first sin is hoarding.”

“My name is Dee and this is my secret life.”

“I’m Mary. I’m retired from 25 years in the military. I love to collect everything Victorian.”

“My name is Millie and my addiction, without a shadow of a doubt, would be flowers and plants.”

“My name is Kim. I’m 44 and I’m an optometric tech. I am single now. I’ve been married twice. And yes I would say I’m a hoarder.”

“I’m Debbie, and I’m a hoarder.”

“My name’s David. I’m 55 years old. I’m a handyman and lawn care specialist. And I have a disorder with order. I’m a hoarder.”

“I’m Tim and my houses and properties are full of junk — 52 years of junk.”

“I’m Nora, a retired medical professional, and I’m a collector of everything.”

“I’m Meryl, and I’m a hoarder, a saver, a squanderer.”

“I’m [Z. or Zeke] Cobra, pro-wrestling manager extraordinaire, Classic Championship Wrestling. My life started to spiral out of control and it’s still spiraling out of control, and somehow that spiral got in my house and it’s like a tornado. It’s just ripping everything up. I deserve to get the gold belt of hoarders, OK? I’m a sick individual. You don’t ever wanna climb into my mind and walk around, ’cause you ain’t coming out sane.”

“I’m Augustine. I’m 68. I used to be neat and orderly, but not anymore.”

“My name is Forrest, and I have a deep secret. I have stuff. Lots of stuff.”

“I’m Eric. I’m a retired journalist, flight attendant, electronic technician.”

“My name is Andrew, and I’m nineteen years old.”

“My name is Bob. I’m 62 years old. When we first moved in here 29 years ago, actually, you could walk around, you could do things. Things were pretty well kept up.”

“My name is Dennis. I’m 61 years old. And I’m a retired Cleveland police officer.”

“My name is Judi. I’m 66. And I’m a recently retired technical writer in the I.T. arena.”

“I’m Richard. And I collect things for antique shows and flea markets.”

“My name is Jim. I’m a retired construction worker.”

“I’m Maggie and most people call me Grandma.”

“I’m Ann and I’m a skin care specialist.”

“I’m Lonnie [last name]. A kid from a small town who made it big in a big town.”

“I’m Nathan. I’m 34 years old and I’m a collector.”

“I’m Leza. I’m a fortune-teller.”

“I’m Linda and I’m retired and I’m a hoarder.”

“I’m Mira and I’m a retired nurse. I think that yes, I am a hoarder.”

“I’m Vula. I’m 72 years old. I was a house wife and I’ve raised two sons.”

“My name is Lisa. I am 31 years old and I teach elementary school. I kind of live a secret life as a hoarder.”

“I’m Judy and I’m a former food service worker.”

“I’m Dale, a retired general contractor.”

“My name is Margree and I’m 69 years old.”

“My name is Dawn. I’m 45 years old. Before we moved in here, I had very little stuff.”

“My name is Linda. I’m a retired schoolteacher and I’m working in retail part-time.”

“I’m Dennis and I am a retired architect. I’ve never thought of myself as a hoarder. But I am hoarding, I know that.”

“My name’s Tami. I’m 51 years old and I’m on Disability.”

“My name’s Annie. I take care of my disabled husband.”

“My name is Theresa and I’m a retired state worker.”

“My name is Julie, and I’m an activity leader at an elementary school.”

“My name is Alan. Occupations, I wear many hats.”

“My name is Constance and I live in a small country town. They say I’m a hoarder, they say I’m a redneck. I’ll say you’re darn right.”

“My name is Carol and I’m 50 and I’m a homemaker.”

“I’m Doug and I’m a survivor.”

“I’m Anne, and I really love Christmas.”

“My name is Arline. I’m 66 years old. I am a retired case manager for the state of Hawaii. I define myself as being nit-picky, perfectionist, and if someone were to see what was in my house, they would seriously doubt it.”

“I’m Carolyn and I’m a home health care assistant. I am definitely a hoarder. There’s no question about it, I’ve let it get completely out of hand.”

“My name is Ruth. I’m retired. And I just like to shop, I guess.”

“I’m Ruthann and I’m me, and I like me.”

“I’m Jill. I’m 46. And I am a dog groomer.”

“I’m Tra. I’m 40 years old. Firefighter, EMT, for the City of Houston Fire Department.”

“I’m Roxanne, a former model, a makeup artist, and a mom.”

“My name’s Patty, and I’m 48.”

“My name is Bill [last name]. I’m 66 and semi-retired.”

“I’m Shannon and I’m a stay-at-home mom. And I’m trying to put our lives back together.”

“I’m Ray. I live in a big old house in a beautiful city.”

“I’m Terri. I’m a private caregiver, an artist, an antiquer, and I have collected way way way too much.”

“I am Linda and I manage a storage unit.”

“My name is Jim and I am a beekeeper.”

“My name is Jim. I’m a retired construction worker.”

“I’m Susan. I’m 67 years old and I’m retired.”

“My name is Gerri and this is my house.”

“I’m Roger and I’ve been living in this house for over 50 years.”

“My name is Claudie and I’m 58 years old.”

“My name is Jeri and I’m an administrative assistant.”

“I’m Billy Bob and I’m a retired creative director.”

“I’m Jean and I am retired.”

“My name is Julie. I am 45 years old and I’m a mom and a photographer.”

“I’m Shannon. I’m 39. I have four children.”

“My name is Teri. I’m 47 years old. I am a registered nurse here in Hawaii.”

“I’m Barbara. And a lot of people call me Santa Barbara.”

“I am Lydia. I am a homemaker.”

“I am Andy, and I am a handyman.”

“I’m Shania. I’m 14 and I’m in the 8th grade.”

“My name is Belinda. I’m 37 years old and I am disabled.”

“My name is Kevin and I’m 52 years old.”

“I’m Barbara and I’m totally disorganized.”

“I’m Richard and I like pretty things.”

“My name is Lisa and I love cooking.”

“My name’s Norman and there’s a lot of different things that I collect.”

“Hi. I’m Patricia. I’m a former emergency department nurse, and I have a lot of stuff.”

“I’m Linda and I’m not in the best of health and neither is my house.”

“My name is George. I’m 63 years old. I’m a registered nurse. The house itself is clean and normal, but we have a couple of rooms that are just pretty well filled with stuff.”

“I’m Karen. I’m 47. And I used to be a practicing lawyer. The situation, the house I live in right now would be what I suppose you’d describe as a hoarder’s house.”

“My name’s Randy and I am the world’s foremost collector of amusement park memorabilia.”

“My name is Vicky and I’m currently unemployed.”

“I’m Ray. I’m an electrical engineer. Many people regard me as an inventor.”

“My name is Loretta and I am leading a double life.”

“I’m Kerry and I love plants.”

“I’m Michelle. I’m 59 and I am a retired sales clerk. I guess I have to admit that I am a hoarder.”

“I’m James and I’m a retired policeman.”

“I’m Paul and I am a retired interior designer. And I am an avid collector of a lot of things.”

“I’m Carl. I’m 77 years old. I’ve been a hoarder all my life.”

“I’m Phyllis and I’m a certified nurse assistant.”

“I’m JoAnne and I’m a retired autoworker.”

“I’m Janet and I am a retired visiting home nurse. And I’m definitely a hoarder, yes.”

“I’m Nancy and I’m retired from the phone company and I think I’m a hoarder.”

“I’m Carmen and I’m a retired data management specialist. I now consider myself to be a hoarder.”

“I’m Cindy. I’m a former model, actress, real estate agent, insurance agent, and I collect a lot of stuff.”

“I’m Sandy and I love books.”

“My name is Len. I’m a retired steelworker and yes I’m a hoarder.”

“I’m Eileen. I have six boys, four who are living here.”

“I’m Judy and I work part-time at a local radio station. I’m a mother, a grandmother, a wife, and a hoarder.”

“My name’s June and I am 28 and I’m a full-time student and a social work assistant.”

“I’m Martha Jean, a retired secretary, and I am a hoarder.”

“I’m Betty. I am 68 years old. I was the garbage man’s daughter.”

“My name is Jake. I’m 21 and I’m unemployed.”

“My name is Carolyn. I’m 29 years old and I am a part-time school bus driver and full-time university student.”

“My name is Ingrid. I am 58 years of age. I am an administrative assistant in personnel administration.”

“My name is Roi and I’m on Disability.”

“My name is Clare and I am a retired millwright.”

“My name is Megan. I have three children.”

“My name is Stacey and I have a lot of animals.”

“My name is Kim. I’m in my 30s and I’m a pharmaceutical sales representative.”

“My name is Jennifer and I’m 27 years old.”

“My name is Linda and I’m 51 years old.”

“My name is Steven and I am 48 years old.”

“My name is Laura. I’m 47. I consider myself to be a writer but I’m disabled.”

“My name’s Mary Lynn. I’m 53 and I’m on Disability. I live in a house but it’s not a house.”

“I’m Kathleen. I’m a retired teacher. My house, it looks like a bomb went off in a warehouse.”

“I’m Andy and I’m a rebel fighting for my freedom.”

“I’m Becky and I’m a housewife.”

“I’m Becky and I’m a turkey processor at a local plant in South Dakota.”

“My name is Becky and right now I have too much stuff.”

“I’m Michael. I’m 58 years old. And I am a hoarder.”

“I’m Peggy and I am a hoarder.”

“I’m Tiffany and I am a hoarder.”

“My name is Verna. Yes I am a hoarder.”

“My name is Lloyd, and I have become a hoarder in my lifetime.”

“OK. Here we go. I’m Margie, and I’m a hoarder.”