Forward

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The Queen of Refuse

I found your mix in my car, tucked near the back of the CD Wallet of Shame that I should probably throw out.  Thing goes down as maybe the lamest way to say "I'm sorry" in history; a gift I sent which was rightly returned to me because, really, who makes amends to someone by UPSing them a black rubber CD case with a capacity of 64?  (This was around the time I thought I had Asperger's, but I've learned that is not a good excuse.)

But the mix, now.  That was from you, and I won't throw it out, though with you my screw-ups abounded.  The date on it is a year after the fallout, after words had been harsh and silences harsher.  Then forgiveness, but a fragile one; and then, these songs.  They are of their time, and of your taste.  I remember liking it enough, playing it through several times but then, moving on.  

Five years later, driving home in the throes of a recently mustard-gassed romance, I was feeling incredibly and senselessly victimized, and then this disc showed up and took me back to when I was the killer. I didn't kill you, of course; what an arrogant thing to suppose. But the "it" that we stumble upon with people, the thing both awaited and unexpected ... I snuffed "it" big time.   And I have no business demanding that "it" to be there for me that way again, like the white ribbon you get just for participation.  Not like we haven't all done it --- let someone down, broken something up ---but doing the deed changes you, especially if you do it all small and shifty, and for no other reason than you don't want to be loved for you, because you're hoping to find out you're someone else.  

Now I'm someone listening to a mix you might not even recognize.  And it may seem like I'm regretful, but that's not quite the feeling.  You are so beyond fine you don't know this is about you.  Nothing should be different.  I guess I'm ... grateful?  That I found the CD when I did, so I could get over myself and all this "it" supposedly dying on me.  "It" is as dead as Tom Sawyer watching his funeral.  It's stupid and alive, hiding, a little stunned at the needless grief. And it'll crash through the ceiling one day and piss me off worse than ever, but maybe come home with me, too.  

Oh.  And it won't be a 12-year-old boy, in case that imagery got too solid.

If so, that was an excessively long rebound

and I'ma do a hook shot with my eyebrow.

PRANX!

We run a tight ship here, Fetus.

Sendings

The 19th century Baptist church in Thomas, Rhode Island now houses the city's history museum and a cluttered library of colonist biographies and handicraft how-to's.

You can find love letters there.  A new one every few months, except ... they are not new. The paper is thin as spider silk; the ink is more etching than paint. One at a time, they appear, folded and wedged into the architrave of a small window, hidden from view by a "natural wood" Ikea shelf. As you peruse a study of Wampanoag cooking ... reach your hand back and to the left ...

"Dearest Madam,

You gave a lovely performance again this evening.

Every night I see it, you change a little thing here, pause in a new moment, laugh when before you had shed a single tear.  And always, there is the light that shines, not on you, but from you. I am not the only one who feels it, I know, who hopes that beacon beams secretly for them.

But I am the one who will tell you this: stop it.

Forget your lines. Put away the props. Climb down from the stage. Be still and show me nothing.  Give me no clues. Do not create another word, smile, or gesture until I have found you. These are the distractions that others mistake for the truth, and you let them believe it. You leave them talking to your shadow as you run far away. They think they hold you, but you cannot feel it. And when the light fades and they lose sight of you, you lie to yourself that you are lost.

I will find you."  

Brevity.

On the 1-10 scale (1 = suck, 10 = The Rapture):
A). Rate how much you love hearing someone clear their throat twice every three minutes, followed by a string of shouted expletives, into a microphone, for six hours a day, four days in a row.
B). Rate the Franklin Mint Jimmy Carter Gold Medal.

Subtract B from A.


I know, right? Nothing is helping.

Delay Jose

A gentleman bought me a sandwich in the airport ... an older gentleman, born in Honduras, raised in New Orleans ... who shined shoes and slept on the streets ... who served four years in Vietnam and came back a wreck in every way ... who had a three-year courtship of correspondence with his wife of 44 years ("whatever you believe of heaven, she is going to be there" says he) ... who loves to go out dancing, who can't stand to be idle or indoors, who has had three bypasses and now has prostate cancer and can't drink water comfortably, who will work until the day he dies ...

"I've never met a stranger," he said.