That Instant

magic glances against real life and you hear yourself drawing the spell "focus, streamline, simplify" instead of "streamline, simplify, focus" and understand what you were about to embark on was going to be as destructive as a fucking godeye laser when the latter spell you could've swore you were making generates a map and you hear and know the difference between the two in Kelvins.

Revisiting Battlefields Gone Silent

How many years has it been?

Revisiting and rereading them (Bits For Flames) for the umpteenth time I see and edit them in ways I could not before.  I still have so much to learn.

I do believe my resolution for the new year will be to rewrite every single one of them that I felt fit enough to publish back then with the knowledge and practice I have now.

Rereading them now, these pearls and machinations that I knew were not perfect, but deft enough to force upon other ears, they dance like puppet shows.  Telling too much and not showing enough.  Stilted.  Awkward.  Wooden.  Produced with what was the greatest understanding of the sweet science of writing and the cold magic of emotive sorcery that now reads like remedial math.

I used to set my goals to things I thought much higher.  Quitting smoking!  Learning and training to dunk a basketball!  Mastering the art of throwing knives and being able to defend myself and hold accountable all who dared to cross me with martial perfection.

In the background I plugged away at how a conversation is made.  How to engage someone actively.  I worked on my translator software and my lens and tape.  I listened to playback and learned how to speak with greater efficiency and economy of words.  The war was not multi-tasked.  Multitasking is a myth, we all know this.

After 10,000 hours I convinced myself I arrived at the best I can do.  The best I have done is a lie.  I can do better.  And I will.

The emperor will wear new clothes before I turn that engine.  First things are first and we have been waiting quite some time for the new design.  What we have is a goal.  What we will do is place the pen to paper once more and see what shakes out of our new branches that have borne fruit uncut just yet.

The blender awaits.  The knife is ready.  The cutting board is clean.  There are no attachments.  It is time to explore the old body and build a new one.  When you can get everyone at the same table at the same time you can rearrange the workshop and factory floor plan.  New weapons, new tools, new methods.

"...in the foxhole / where I hide..."


/// Hershey Kisses Bells

That Instant

you slip and skate in place before catching yourself on the bathroom sink because you forgot to stand on the bathmat while slathering yourself in baby oil and vaseline to protect your brown skin and you laugh in the mirror and wonder if there're white people doing the same thing in the thick of Winter.

That Instant

you realized what you wanted to do was write.  Not necessarily the sound of the future, not the sound of the past, a sound.  13 years ago, an idea started to bloom and you did everything you were supposed to do to avoid it and embrace it in other ways.   I went through dark times and bright times.  I shifted blame and the blood edge of the knife and the adventures and the lens.

I switched who could be the protagonist and the anti. I prayed on it and asked for direction and gave up my soul to whomever could be and believed in math and science, chance and luck.  I gave up and forgot and danced like a rhinoceros in the breeze until I couldn't.

And I realized I have a passion for creation.  All paths lead that way, by fire, by ice, by leaf, by wind, by void,  moon & sol, stations & interstellar sea.

you realize I have the misfortune to live at an insterstellar gate-

counting droplets of blood in zero gravity.

That Instant

you realize the definition of intent is when you deliver torque to your wrist to your metacarpals to your knuckles to the strike to shred the dive of physics equation into other and not a moment before, if ever, and you understand everything else is pawing and rehearsal. 

Dear (_____)

Dear Sugar Cubes,

Is the sole purpose of your existence to be a reasonable portion and unit of measure for sugar?  Were people getting that crazy, that messed up, getting that wild, with their intake that some caste of higher society decided that the only way to separate themselves from the gentry and the animals was to show that they only took their sugar in cubes?  I mean, how ridiculous were those swinging days of loose sugar?  Were there news reports: "another five dead at a suspected coffee and sugar orgy in the suburbs of East London today."  I mean, how exactly did you come to be, oh innocent sugar cube.

Curiously yours,

a tea lover

I Know It's Going To Be A Rough Day and That's Okay

I've been trying to arrest my emotions for two days and here we are at day three.  I can't allow life to seize up and die.  This morning, poking the tines of my work into the middle of a sunny side up egg on a piece of medium tough toast with a shake of a salt and a dollop of syrup beside it, I am afraid.  I used to call Annie, I used to call Alexis, I used to call my psychiatrist, my therapist, myself, when fear gripped me.  I haven't been able to eat willingly so I am preparing to chop up an egg into a little toast and see where it goes.  Maybe we will cut up a clementine into quarters and have that in lieu of juice.

My emotions are still all over the place.  Stitched together with some will and a little self motivational glue and a little music.  I know I am going to cry today and I won't be able to stop it, but I will make myself go to work as best I can.  There will be a lot of difficult exchanges of conversations today.  "You look awful."  "Are you okay?"  I know and no.  Walking through hardware stores and to the bank and to the grocery to buy more food to force myself to eat.  I cannot allow myself to curl up and die.  I cannot allow myself to see people.  I have to turn everything inward to generate enough power to keep my sun from collapsing into a singularity.

Hysterical laughter tearing through my lungs and tears staining the floor between my boots while I stand in lines.  Eyes red and sunken and lips cracked from grinning and grimacing.  Doubling over in hacking coughs and dry heaves that will not stop.  Questioning, screaming, begging the snowy sky why there is no magic pill, but there is a magic bullet.  It's not going to be easy.   Please don't talk to me.  I know I am a mess and nothing will help more than time alone.  Thank you for understanding.




///Philip Selway - "Coming Up For Air"

That Instant

your cat is biting you and you muse about how it has 5 pointy ends, the sixth its tail, and you enumerate your own being human and the count comes back sharp and blunt solid 43 and you know it's just trying to say hello as best it can to a fortress.

Dear (______)

Dear Key,

I know one day you will bring on nuclear Winter.  I know it will be the greatest sunrise my eyes will ever see.  I am in no hurry and will enjoy Sol's fickle and thorough rays and the ways it cuts through the atmosphere on Terra.  Without you and your threat Sol would just be another light bulb, granted a few miles away to say the least and a lot warmer than a piece of tungsten with current through it.  You are in my pocket and so the last sunrise too.

with joy,

The Watchmaker

That Instant

you understand you have to keep fine grit sandpaper on your person for rolling cigarettes because something happens in the cold air that causes the lines and valleys in your fingerprints to contract enough to turn them into things that cannot move paper with doable friction and they must be scuffed anew manually.

That Instant

you hardcode override self destruct sequences through the panels via green lit switches after flipping the red caps and know that sometimes dual keys are a fools errand and are built in through practice for a different you.

Dear (_____)

Dear Spark,

you will never leave me.  I will never leave you.

Sincerely,

Bass That Shakes The Windows of My Apartment

That Instant

you understand the symbiotic relationship you have with the deletion virus and call it by a more appropriate name because it is a living creature inside of you and it needs you alive as much as you need it and everything must have a name aligned to what it does and "virus" is well off the mark.

That Instant

you realize the recursive imperative to stop relaying a thought through words two sentences sooner (brought about by the writers of Futurama) and go with what you have after the subtraction to aid communication only works when there is no capacity for self editing.

And then you realize the recursive imperative is also a deletion virus that will reduce your verbal exchanges to single building blocks as though you are a tourist, no matter the landscape or indigenous peoples.

And then you realize you've been standing in one place for 47 minutes staring into space after you said hello and introduced yourself.

And then you realize you started your own deletion virus 28 years ago when wrong answers had painful consequences and every question or answer spoken extended miles through trees that grew instantaneously from the strike of word to ear, rippled and color coded.

And then you realize why that episode of Futurama was so funny.

And then you realize conversation will never be your forte and why.