Dark liquid, as if derived from near Earth’s core. Bitter, hard-hitting high notes, lingering long after, like an aroma carried by smoke.
Bird Man
The Bird Man is on the move. He’s wearing a sweat jacket and a ball cap because it’s cold. It’s 38 degrees this morning, and typically, such as during summer, the Bird Man will wear only an old white T-shirt that you and I might demote to rag status, as well as jeans that no longer can stay put around his pot belly.
Today the Bird Man looks more dressed up than usual due to his navy blue jacket. It seems to be in fine condition and looks warm.
The Bird Man is removing the rocks from the small plastic Tupperware lining his cement wall like battlements. He is emptying the backwash and refilling the vessels with a cheap plastic pitcher of water.Continue reading “Bird Man”
White lies
Sugar-coated almonds at a wedding. You bury the bride in her white dress. While they are nice to look at, you cannot bite on pearls. For instance, I do not need to see an ivory piano on which Mozart played. Or if the piano were situated in a jewelry box, raised up as if on a dais, the otherwise dreamy notes would sound contorted, as if reflected in a funhouse mirror.
Tiny bits
Last night I got up during the wee hours to write the following in my journal, using the glare of my iPhone:
falling to pieces —
the oxford dynamo
in a nutshell.
***
How long does it take for a flower to bloom? Depends on the flower. I sit down and Rachmaninoff plays. I pour an espresso at dusk and crack open my journal in the hopes of writing.
***
I am currently reading Alan Watts’ Become What You Are, as well as Allen Ginsberg’s Planet News, Yrsa Daley-Ward’s The Terrible, Gertrude Stein’s Tiny Buttons and the latest issue of Rosebud. I am rereading Wayne Koestenbaum’s The Pink Trance Notebooks, which are essentially like witty tweets.
As I read Watts earlier, I thought that I could die as I’ve already lived this, if you wanted to get technical. Tho I don’t mind eating the same cake over and again. Maybe there is just not enough icing to sicken me.
7 quick truths
- No one who truly likes to read would organize books based on their color.
- Those who use the term “It’s all good” are most likely masochists. This is perhaps a result of institutionalization.
- If you’re the type who backs into a parking space, then you are not living in the now. Practice presence and pull in front first.
- Sentences of doom many times start with, “By the way.”
- “By the way” is a passive-aggressive conversation segue.
- When innocently uttered, “By the way” is just lazy or tactless.
- The phrase also can be perceived as conversational efficiency.
Numbness and flying
I’ve always thought it would be nice to be placed under anesthesia before a plane ride. That way, you don’t have to fret over the prospect of crashing or face the slow-moving hours of flight.
Before you know it, you’re in Thailand.
Flying is like having surgery, anyway. After liftoff, the matter is out of your hands. You must rely on a tiny crew, with a single soul at the helm, and you must pray that they know what they’re doing.
You feel woozy at first (when gaining altitude), but then you just go numb, due in part to boredom — and maybe also desensitization. Meanwhile, the wings cut through the air like blades.
Hours later, you descend from the clouds and back to cold reality. Most likely you are feeling groggy and hungry. Or perhaps nauseous. As soon as you land, you call friends and loved ones to announce that you’ve made it through.
Some notes
Schubert’s notes softly coexist. Variations like an energy field. Potentiality, then sonata eighth notes. Piano — universal life field. Bionetwork notes. I am a C major w/ tendencies of D minor. Do C major and D minor exist beyond the piano or any other instrument. If a note rang out in the forest and no one was there to listen.
Hanging to dry
My favorite blue towels hang to dry, and I see they are next to threadbare. Over the rack, they seem to have personality (or at least life.) The upshot is there’s still some drying left in them.
After a shower, I get dressed and go to work. I walk across the long street to my office, tired. Back at home, the towels dangle over the rack.
I had mused earlier that the scattered, solitary threads clung to the fabric like jungle animals avoiding a fatal tumble. The threads reminded me of monkey tails. There was also the more disquieting notion of worms on a membrane.
There really is a Godot
For the longest time, there was construction @ the Jones Blvd./Russell Rd intersection, but t’was a mystery as to who the new tenant would be. Time wore on, and work trucks pushed around the cat litter that is characteristic of vacant lots in Las Vegas. Eventually, the structure began taking shape.
A car wash, I thought? A Jack in the Box? My less cynical side considered the possibility of professional offices, since there were pockets of those in the vicinity.
Finally, a sign recently announced the new occupant in large letters: 7-Eleven COMING SOON! So after countless months of waiting, everyone was pleased to know that there really is a Godot.
