We learn our names all over again in this world--the tap of fingers substituting for words. That's simple, we know it, it's obvious. There's a magic, though, to your name when you hear it or say it, and the names we make up for ourselves in this world are no different. There's muscle memory there, typing it to identify ourselves, and the tiniest rush of happiness:
This is who I am. This is who I chose to be.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
And I Can't Say What I Want To Say
You. Will. Not. Come out of your house and that is okay with me, I'm not standing on no front porch waiting I'm warm in here. I'm across the street (you're across the street) and we can see each other and wave, looking up from our knitting.
We'll never leave, but one day we'll hold up our arms to show that we've both been working on the exact same sweater.
We'll never leave, but one day we'll hold up our arms to show that we've both been working on the exact same sweater.
Friday, March 14, 2008
No Man Is An Island
He makes with his mind, out of ectoplasm or thought-energy or whatever astral plane BS George Noory is on about tonight.
In his room there are universes after school, places where black eyes fade and humiliation is forgotten and she's there, all of her, the only girl who knows his name.
He hears his dad at the door and everything disappears. He can't know, he'll never understand.
In his room there are universes after school, places where black eyes fade and humiliation is forgotten and she's there, all of her, the only girl who knows his name.
He hears his dad at the door and everything disappears. He can't know, he'll never understand.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Gathered Their Books and Burned Them
I don't know how it was possible for this whole generation to have kept the same secret from each other, but there you go.
See, in the old (ha! what am I, 23?) days, we kept it all under wraps. Sometimes you knew or found out, always in rumor, always about somebody from across town, heard across the bar from friends of friends who knew a guy who knew a guy blah blah blah blah blah. It was always the same story and it was always "us" and "them" and even though every single one of us knew that we were on the wrong side of that equation we all pretended just because you felt slightly less alone when people would still look at you.
And then, then one day, "us" became "me" and it wasn't so much a line as a fence and I forget who it was that first looked up and around and realized:
We all feel like this, every day, and it is okay.
We all came out of our apartments and said it to one another, and the years came tumbling off our faces like landslides.
See, in the old (ha! what am I, 23?) days, we kept it all under wraps. Sometimes you knew or found out, always in rumor, always about somebody from across town, heard across the bar from friends of friends who knew a guy who knew a guy blah blah blah blah blah. It was always the same story and it was always "us" and "them" and even though every single one of us knew that we were on the wrong side of that equation we all pretended just because you felt slightly less alone when people would still look at you.
And then, then one day, "us" became "me" and it wasn't so much a line as a fence and I forget who it was that first looked up and around and realized:
We all feel like this, every day, and it is okay.
We all came out of our apartments and said it to one another, and the years came tumbling off our faces like landslides.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Setting It In Stone
Inspired by this picture, it would do you good to look at it before you read. Kind of playing the home game here to keep my brain from shriveling up from lack of writing things.
----
There are four hundred and thirteen thousand, nine hundred and eighty-six bricks (visible) in the tower. The tower is one hundred and thirty-seven feet and three inches high. The clock faces east-northeast, aligned along 78th Avenue conforming to the regular city grid.
I usually (no more than five days a week, no less than three, Sundays and holidays omitted) stand fifty-four feet from the tower, next to a bench (Municipal Model 394-D, manufactured by Heich Public Ironworks). I am most often positioned west-southwest facing the clock and 78th Avenue.
78th Avenue carries an average traffic volume of ninety-eight cars per minute. This volume spikes at two hundred and twelve cars per minute at 7:32 AM (weekdays). There are three stops for the 78 bus within view, as well as an additional stop reserved for the 78 Express situated out of view behind the tower. The 78 Express departs from its stop exactly on the hour each hour from six AM to ten PM.
The tower bells sound each hour and half hour. The clock is two minutes fast, but otherwise remains accurate. At noon, the tower bells sound a short melody (thirty-two seconds in length), popularly believed to have been derived from a work of Schubert. It, however, is not: the short series of notes sounded by the tower bells bear no similarity in substance or style to any known Schubert composition.
My father was struck and killed by the eastbound 78 bus (2004 Model D4500CT, manufactured by Motor Coach Industries, operating number 1034) as he crossed the street. The bus was traveling twenty-four miles an hour. His body flew seventeen feet after the impact, taking six seconds to return to earth. Emergency personnel were dispatched from the nearby Presbyterian General Hospital (paramedic unit 8, responding EMTs Allison Marshall, Joshua Smith, and Eric Seydall) and arrived in three minutes and twenty-eight seconds.
Doctor Phillip Miller pronounced him dead on arrival.
He died one hour and fifty-six minutes after we had met for lunch at the Sandersson Deli (corner of 78th and Banks, closed Saturdays). I had the reuben, no dressing, soup (chicken noodle). He had the turkey on wheat. The total was twelve dollars and ninety-three cents, including tip. He wouldn't let me pay.
As he left my company, he pointed to the inscription on the tower.
"Be a good kid," he said. "Make me proud. Fly from evil, you know?"
He laughed, then.
I don't understand laughing.
What exactly is evil? I'm...I'm having trouble quantifying.
----
There are four hundred and thirteen thousand, nine hundred and eighty-six bricks (visible) in the tower. The tower is one hundred and thirty-seven feet and three inches high. The clock faces east-northeast, aligned along 78th Avenue conforming to the regular city grid.
I usually (no more than five days a week, no less than three, Sundays and holidays omitted) stand fifty-four feet from the tower, next to a bench (Municipal Model 394-D, manufactured by Heich Public Ironworks). I am most often positioned west-southwest facing the clock and 78th Avenue.
78th Avenue carries an average traffic volume of ninety-eight cars per minute. This volume spikes at two hundred and twelve cars per minute at 7:32 AM (weekdays). There are three stops for the 78 bus within view, as well as an additional stop reserved for the 78 Express situated out of view behind the tower. The 78 Express departs from its stop exactly on the hour each hour from six AM to ten PM.
The tower bells sound each hour and half hour. The clock is two minutes fast, but otherwise remains accurate. At noon, the tower bells sound a short melody (thirty-two seconds in length), popularly believed to have been derived from a work of Schubert. It, however, is not: the short series of notes sounded by the tower bells bear no similarity in substance or style to any known Schubert composition.
My father was struck and killed by the eastbound 78 bus (2004 Model D4500CT, manufactured by Motor Coach Industries, operating number 1034) as he crossed the street. The bus was traveling twenty-four miles an hour. His body flew seventeen feet after the impact, taking six seconds to return to earth. Emergency personnel were dispatched from the nearby Presbyterian General Hospital (paramedic unit 8, responding EMTs Allison Marshall, Joshua Smith, and Eric Seydall) and arrived in three minutes and twenty-eight seconds.
Doctor Phillip Miller pronounced him dead on arrival.
He died one hour and fifty-six minutes after we had met for lunch at the Sandersson Deli (corner of 78th and Banks, closed Saturdays). I had the reuben, no dressing, soup (chicken noodle). He had the turkey on wheat. The total was twelve dollars and ninety-three cents, including tip. He wouldn't let me pay.
As he left my company, he pointed to the inscription on the tower.
"Be a good kid," he said. "Make me proud. Fly from evil, you know?"
He laughed, then.
I don't understand laughing.
What exactly is evil? I'm...I'm having trouble quantifying.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Broken Down
They…they tell you that it’s always been that way-—or that it always should have been that way. It’s not right, you say, it is different and it cannot be quantified and it is somehow wrong, a pure, invisible wrongness spreading out in front of you like the sun just decided to rise purple.
Keep moving.
It’s not so bad, they say, and although you are to be commended for pointing out that particular flaw in the system there are a team of technicians on standby and they are entirely focused on planning for the resolution (preparing to plan for the resolution) and you really don’t need to concern yourself with technical matters when there’s work yet undone, do you?
Keep moving.
I understand, they reply—-with a distinct lack of courtesy this time-—but your unsubstantiated concerns, as worrying as they may be, are standing in the way of the Plan and may even be construed to be anti-Plan, as much as I hesitate to use the phrase. We certainly have done the best to foster a certain spirit of discretion among your team but one wonders if we haven't done too much, hm?
Keep moving.
Do you consider yourself, they ask, a patriotic man? Of course you do, who doesn’t? Knowing that, one must wonder at the level of attention you have paid this particular matter. It certainly seems contrary to an acceptable love for one’s fellow man to worry so much over this one trifle, doesn’t it? Don’t the stakes demand that you concede to authority? We’ve been trained and equipped for this situation, all the best classrooms covered in precise technical drawings describing this situation were made available to us from a very early age and I assure you, sir, that this is all entirely under control.
Now.
I feel that you have put me (and the Plan, no less!) in a rather difficult position, but I must this moment demand that you either return to your duty and keep moving, or formally refuse to serve-—and I am exceedingly sure you are aware of the consequences of that particular choice.
There’s a good fellow.
Don’t worry about it stopping outright, mind you. That’s a difficulty best left to our sons.
Keep moving.
Keep moving.
It’s not so bad, they say, and although you are to be commended for pointing out that particular flaw in the system there are a team of technicians on standby and they are entirely focused on planning for the resolution (preparing to plan for the resolution) and you really don’t need to concern yourself with technical matters when there’s work yet undone, do you?
Keep moving.
I understand, they reply—-with a distinct lack of courtesy this time-—but your unsubstantiated concerns, as worrying as they may be, are standing in the way of the Plan and may even be construed to be anti-Plan, as much as I hesitate to use the phrase. We certainly have done the best to foster a certain spirit of discretion among your team but one wonders if we haven't done too much, hm?
Keep moving.
Do you consider yourself, they ask, a patriotic man? Of course you do, who doesn’t? Knowing that, one must wonder at the level of attention you have paid this particular matter. It certainly seems contrary to an acceptable love for one’s fellow man to worry so much over this one trifle, doesn’t it? Don’t the stakes demand that you concede to authority? We’ve been trained and equipped for this situation, all the best classrooms covered in precise technical drawings describing this situation were made available to us from a very early age and I assure you, sir, that this is all entirely under control.
Now.
I feel that you have put me (and the Plan, no less!) in a rather difficult position, but I must this moment demand that you either return to your duty and keep moving, or formally refuse to serve-—and I am exceedingly sure you are aware of the consequences of that particular choice.
There’s a good fellow.
Don’t worry about it stopping outright, mind you. That’s a difficulty best left to our sons.
Keep moving.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Serpentine In Body And Voice
There was an oracle in Nacogdoches, or so we heard--Robert and I made the trip over spring break, disguised, hoping to hear what she had to say...
I had a dream the night after we crossed the state line. I was in love with a blind girl, beautiful as anything but no sight to speak of. I remember it being tough, she'd always kiss my shoulder and I'd be forced to wonder if she was actually kissing my shoulder or if she had been trying to kiss my face or chest but had somehow missed.
She was always surprised and alarmed when I tried to get to second base. I guess you'd normally have a number of visual cues that something like that was coming.
Like I said, it was tough.
I'd always feel really self-conscious about her in the dream. Like it made me seem somehow less, like people would be talking behind my back about how I was only getting a girl as beautiful as all this because she was blind and couldn't see how--I'm not ugly, okay? I'm not, but I'm no Matthew Broderick or anything.
She was always wearing a tank top that said "Breathe" on the front in white letters. I think.
I was quiet the rest of the trip. Robert told me later that he'd had a dream that I would and that he wasn't supposed to say anything or turn up the radio real loud, even when his favorite songs came on, and I have to credit him with that. That's why I asked him along. Most people don't keep from blasting Duran Duran out the windows just because they had a dream that their best friend needed some thinking time and didn't want to know exactly how Hungry Like The Wolf Simon Le whoever-his-name-is is.
I needed it, the driving and the time. I had to pull the blind girl back out of dreams and into memory. I had to frame her, name her, because I knew that loving her in the dream meant something and I didn't know what and I knew that's what I had come to ask the oracle of Nacogdoches even though I didn't know it until just now and I kept wondering what she'd say if she'd name names or just bullshit me like all those other oracles or if we'd even find her or maybe we'd go to her house and her son would walk to the door and tell us she died three years ago and get off my lawn thank you very much and what if what if what if
Breathe.
The theme from View To A Kill came on, there was a marathon on the Top 40 station in town, some sort of 80's thing.
Robert sighed, and clicked off the radio.
We navigated a maze of stucco and streets named after saints I was sure didn't really exist but made mental notes to look up later. We had to go to the library and look up the address on the internet, eventually, after three solid hours of prowling residential districts we weren't welcome in.
As the sun was setting, I found her door. I knocked timidly. She answered the door. Everything was different.
I've been to every oracle within driving distance of the tri-county area, and some that weren't but came highly recommended. That body of experience had prepared me for a crone with a crock full of chicken entrail--oracles are nothing if not true to the stereotype--and by this I was sorely unprepared for 25 and gorgeous.
"Come in," she said testily. "I've been waiting since you crossed city limits, and I've got appointments that won't wait for some dream and his best friend who wants the lotto numbers."
"How'd you--" Robert began, standing behind me awestruck.
"Twenty-eight, thirty-four, twelve, seven, fifty-six, nineteen and no I'm not giving you the powerball have fun with your hundred grand and shut up I'm busy," the oracle replied, leading me by the hand past a beaded curtain and into the back room.
"Now," she said after we had sat facing one another across a card table, "this girl. Obviously, she's a representation. Duh. I might be able to say what of but that's going to take some time which kills my schedule for the night which means that this is going to run into serious money. Ten thousand dollars," she said, with all the ceremony of somebody asking me to go pick up a case of Coronas.
I was crushed. To come this far for nothing but a dream I couldn't interpret, it felt worse than nothing. Of course I didn't have ten thousand dollars, and said as much.
"That's the talk of somebody whose best friend didn't just get lotto numbers from me," she said, grinning fiercely. "I'll expect the check two months from now."
I looked up at the ceiling and whistled. This woman was something else, putting on loopholes like lesser women wore earrings.
"Go for it," I said.
She took my hands and I felt the room fill and shrink and change somehow, everything close and far away at the same time, contradictions blooming to life and dying out and coming back again faster than I could blink.
"She comes running," she said, eyes closed, "a full and true Daughter of God,"
"Wait."
"What?" The room died.
"Aren't they all?"
"All what?"
"All Daughters of God. It's the same as calling someone 'girl' or 'woman'. He's omnipotent, right? They're all His daughters."
The oracle smiled, not at all kindly. There was menace in her eyes, and the flash of a fresh memory.
"That is something, my dear man, that the majority of your gender seems to forget at the most inconvenient times. Now be quiet and stop asking questions."
After a pause to re-center herself, the oracle began anew.
"She comes running, a full and true Daughter of God, blind-eyed and mad from exhaustion, running up to you in your weak strength to take shelter from the sirocco. Your world will become hers, your beautiful words painting color into her blind eyes. You will write her the stories that tell her what the seasons are--you will name for her the trees and oceans. The words of your mouth will become her sight, and the strength of your shoulders will become her direction."
As the oracle slowly opened her eyes, I slumped back in my folding chair, trying to drink it all in. Looking impatiently at her watch, the oracle was the first to break the silence.
"This is prophecy, Tobias. We write this stuff down."
I did, and I carried that sheet of notebook paper folded in my wallet all the way back home, telling Robert everything. He was my best friend, after all.
When we got back, he took some of his powerball money and threw a kegger so he could invite every blind girl in the tri-county area. That wasn't what the oracle was talking about per se, but God bless him for trying.
I had a dream the night after we crossed the state line. I was in love with a blind girl, beautiful as anything but no sight to speak of. I remember it being tough, she'd always kiss my shoulder and I'd be forced to wonder if she was actually kissing my shoulder or if she had been trying to kiss my face or chest but had somehow missed.
She was always surprised and alarmed when I tried to get to second base. I guess you'd normally have a number of visual cues that something like that was coming.
Like I said, it was tough.
I'd always feel really self-conscious about her in the dream. Like it made me seem somehow less, like people would be talking behind my back about how I was only getting a girl as beautiful as all this because she was blind and couldn't see how--I'm not ugly, okay? I'm not, but I'm no Matthew Broderick or anything.
She was always wearing a tank top that said "Breathe" on the front in white letters. I think.
I was quiet the rest of the trip. Robert told me later that he'd had a dream that I would and that he wasn't supposed to say anything or turn up the radio real loud, even when his favorite songs came on, and I have to credit him with that. That's why I asked him along. Most people don't keep from blasting Duran Duran out the windows just because they had a dream that their best friend needed some thinking time and didn't want to know exactly how Hungry Like The Wolf Simon Le whoever-his-name-is is.
I needed it, the driving and the time. I had to pull the blind girl back out of dreams and into memory. I had to frame her, name her, because I knew that loving her in the dream meant something and I didn't know what and I knew that's what I had come to ask the oracle of Nacogdoches even though I didn't know it until just now and I kept wondering what she'd say if she'd name names or just bullshit me like all those other oracles or if we'd even find her or maybe we'd go to her house and her son would walk to the door and tell us she died three years ago and get off my lawn thank you very much and what if what if what if
Breathe.
The theme from View To A Kill came on, there was a marathon on the Top 40 station in town, some sort of 80's thing.
Robert sighed, and clicked off the radio.
We navigated a maze of stucco and streets named after saints I was sure didn't really exist but made mental notes to look up later. We had to go to the library and look up the address on the internet, eventually, after three solid hours of prowling residential districts we weren't welcome in.
As the sun was setting, I found her door. I knocked timidly. She answered the door. Everything was different.
I've been to every oracle within driving distance of the tri-county area, and some that weren't but came highly recommended. That body of experience had prepared me for a crone with a crock full of chicken entrail--oracles are nothing if not true to the stereotype--and by this I was sorely unprepared for 25 and gorgeous.
"Come in," she said testily. "I've been waiting since you crossed city limits, and I've got appointments that won't wait for some dream and his best friend who wants the lotto numbers."
"How'd you--" Robert began, standing behind me awestruck.
"Twenty-eight, thirty-four, twelve, seven, fifty-six, nineteen and no I'm not giving you the powerball have fun with your hundred grand and shut up I'm busy," the oracle replied, leading me by the hand past a beaded curtain and into the back room.
"Now," she said after we had sat facing one another across a card table, "this girl. Obviously, she's a representation. Duh. I might be able to say what of but that's going to take some time which kills my schedule for the night which means that this is going to run into serious money. Ten thousand dollars," she said, with all the ceremony of somebody asking me to go pick up a case of Coronas.
I was crushed. To come this far for nothing but a dream I couldn't interpret, it felt worse than nothing. Of course I didn't have ten thousand dollars, and said as much.
"That's the talk of somebody whose best friend didn't just get lotto numbers from me," she said, grinning fiercely. "I'll expect the check two months from now."
I looked up at the ceiling and whistled. This woman was something else, putting on loopholes like lesser women wore earrings.
"Go for it," I said.
She took my hands and I felt the room fill and shrink and change somehow, everything close and far away at the same time, contradictions blooming to life and dying out and coming back again faster than I could blink.
"She comes running," she said, eyes closed, "a full and true Daughter of God,"
"Wait."
"What?" The room died.
"Aren't they all?"
"All what?"
"All Daughters of God. It's the same as calling someone 'girl' or 'woman'. He's omnipotent, right? They're all His daughters."
The oracle smiled, not at all kindly. There was menace in her eyes, and the flash of a fresh memory.
"That is something, my dear man, that the majority of your gender seems to forget at the most inconvenient times. Now be quiet and stop asking questions."
After a pause to re-center herself, the oracle began anew.
"She comes running, a full and true Daughter of God, blind-eyed and mad from exhaustion, running up to you in your weak strength to take shelter from the sirocco. Your world will become hers, your beautiful words painting color into her blind eyes. You will write her the stories that tell her what the seasons are--you will name for her the trees and oceans. The words of your mouth will become her sight, and the strength of your shoulders will become her direction."
As the oracle slowly opened her eyes, I slumped back in my folding chair, trying to drink it all in. Looking impatiently at her watch, the oracle was the first to break the silence.
"This is prophecy, Tobias. We write this stuff down."
I did, and I carried that sheet of notebook paper folded in my wallet all the way back home, telling Robert everything. He was my best friend, after all.
When we got back, he took some of his powerball money and threw a kegger so he could invite every blind girl in the tri-county area. That wasn't what the oracle was talking about per se, but God bless him for trying.
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