All Is Continuity

“She could have been yours.”

“So I’ve been told,” I replied speaking through my teeth.

He was smiling. From ear to ear, as would be expected. In fact, he hadn’t stopped smiling since he’d met her. He looked over his shoulder at her as she shook the hands of departing guests, smiling from ear-to ear herself. Oh my God, I thought, that smile is contagious and my brother is right, it’s rather extremely nauseating. “Good luck with her,” I said to him, intending to make my exit.

He turned his head back towards me, “I’m sorry, what did you say? I was distracted.”

“Oh, nothing, I’ve just gotta get going.”

“Ah man, thanks for coming though, glad you were here.”

“Uh-huh,” I replied nonchalantly.

I walked towards the door, smiling and waving goodbye to her with the best fake smile I could muster. She quickly excused herself from the guests with whom she’d been chatting and skimpered over to me. “Leaving without saying goodbye?!” she said out of a half-smiling mouth.

“Would you expect anything else from me?”

She slapped my left arm.

—– —– —– —– —–

Almost six months ago, I’d grabbed two ice cream sandwiches out of the freezer. My younger brother and I walked out to the front yard and lay down facing the sky.

My brother sat up. “It’s rather nauseating,” he blurted out, referring to my friend’s constant smiling. That made me smile. He’d only just turned five, and his observation had been so succinct and matter-of-fact, it was as if he was twenty years older. “How come girls like to hit boys?” he asked.

“They’re just teasing.”

“How come boys don’t slap back?” he’d inquired, desperately trying to eat his ice cream sandwich neatly on the steamy July afternoon.

“Politics,” I replied, trying to keep the explanation simply adult enough so he wouldn’t continue the conversation.

“What’s tolipics?” he said after he’d licked up dripping ice cream running down his right forearm.

My thoughts momentarily wandered. And then without giving so much as a thought I pondered aloud, “It’s how adults complicate life.”

“Ohh…” his voice drifted silent. “My hands are sticky.”

“I see that. Let’s go wash them off.”

We’d walked around to the side of the house and I turned on the spicket. My younger brother walked up, bent down, and stuck his hands under the cold, running water. He turned his head to the left and squinted his eyes as he looked up at me. “This isn’t so contplicated, is it, Ronnie?”

He saw her by chance. One of those occurrences where you look away and then back again and, if with another person, ask if they see what you see. By the time he had convinced himself it was her she’d already begun to walk towards him through the crowd.

He saw it in her face. She looked…disappointed. Her lips in a straight line like a heart monitor, eyebrows ever so slightly scrunched as if bringing thoughts together in preparation. And then he saw her hands. They were glued inside her jacket pockets.

He had a sudden urge to back out. Run, even. But he couldn’t move, making the wait for her to close the distance between them all the more dreadful. Just before she turned her eyes up to speak, he blurted out, “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“What’s that s’posta mean?” she replied, insulted.
“Nothin’, really…jus that the only reason I came here was ’cause I assumed you wouldn’t be here.”
“You’re an ass, ya know that?

They both looked down. He was nervous. She wasn’t sure how to proceed. “I don’t know who you are anymore,” she began.

He looked up, nerves suddenly gone, angry perhaps, that she would have the gall to tell him that.

“You used to tell me everything,” she continued.
“Used to,” he mumbled. “I never thought I was obligated to continue telling you everything I thought. It gets old you know, ” he found himself saying. It’d come out without his mind knowing what his mouth was doing.

“I thought you didn’t care what other people thought,” she said, interrupting his wandering thoughts. “So why the hell did you just, I don’t know, start caring?”
“I guess ’cause we’re older now.”

She didn’t understand. They’d known each other for close to ten years and they were now only in their twenties. She knew he wasn’t going to explain and so pushed him. He stumbled backwards into the fifteen foot wooden post on top of which hung a public loudspeaker. She always pushed when she was angry. He knew it wasn’t her anger this time. Something felt different. Cold. It was a cold push.

“I’m tired of people assuming things that aren’t true. Whispering behind my back even though they know I can hear what they’re saying. I hate…”
“Hate what?” she demanded.
“I almost hate you for it.”

She was caught off guard again, dumbfounded by his cold intentions. She took a few steps back shaking her head at him. He put his hands in his jacket pockets. He always did that when he had nothing left to say.

A strange road that knows no curves. An even stranger road that knows only the same curves. Maybe I’d like to know. Does everyone travel the former or the latter? I know which I travel upon. The stranger road it is. The stranger it becomes day by day.

A strange sky whose sun always shines. A strange sky whose sun never shines. Maybe I’d like to know. Does anyone find themselves under both? Because I find myself under both.

Angels might carry me along the way,
watch me as I look up to the sky
and somewhere the moon is full
and if I were there I might say
I’m not tired, anymore.

But I am tired. I walk a strange road under a strange sky. Though strangest of all: I swore I’d never walk this road under this sky ever again.

Italics:
mxpx angels

Indescribable.

Like premonitions. Or intuitions. Something that feels like you know who is knocking at the front door before you’ve even opened it.

Untamable.

Like earth’s forces. Or solar eclipses. Standing in the front yard under eerie daylight which touches everything, yet at the same time, touches nothing. Like an invisible shadow.

It was indescribable.

Like picking up tools not used in years. Your hands remembering what to do as if not one day had passed.

We raised our hands to the sky as if our lives depended upon doing just that. Grasping for something, anything in the sky, we pulled down what each of us needed.

And since then, our lives have not been the same. She once told me there’s a glint in my eyes that speaks of something uncontainable.

I’ve spent hours staring into mirrors looking for what she sees but I’ve found nothing as of yet. She says it’s there and I believe her but I often wonder otherwise; Sometimes, though, I catch a glimpse of something resembling a reflection in her eyes, I’ve never told her.

I am awestruck.

We Know What’s Right by Whitecross.

One of my all-time, top five favorite songs. In my humble opinion, it contains one of the best blendings of lyrical content and musicianship.

Happy Easter, everyone.

Centuries-old buildings sigh. Contentedly, of course. That is the only way old buildings know anymore. They lean this way and that way, never fully settling, but then old age makes them restless.

A juxtaposition of sorts. And that’s okay.

It’s the way hours of wet weather lets them know they’re bleeding mortar. Temperate climates are death sentences but they are okay with that. Content, even.

If you listen closely enough when the lights are off after all the boys and girls and men and women have left for the day or week or summer, you can hear stories. Clichè perhaps, perhaps not. After all, they are bleeding mortar while new homes are erected across the street, and most of us tend not to notice.

Another juxtaposition of sorts.

Old buildings tell their stories and then they sigh once more before settling in for the night. It’s going to be a long night, after all. The weather men practiced their magic and this time the invisible spirits proved them right. It’s going to be a long night because it’s still winter and this never-ending rain will only become colder as the world darkens.

Did you hear that? The old buildings sighed and fell asleep for the night. Careful not to wake them. They need their rest.

They are bleeding mortar, after all.

He looked up from his giant mug of plain, black coffee.

“I hate it that you’re so nice. And how you never really say what’s on your mind. You’re not normal, you know. I hate it that people assume. They assume but we’re not even anything. I hate it that you’re so nice. You never tell me that I’ve said something stupid or demeaning when even I know I was wrong. I hate it that people assume and I don’t even know what either of us wants in life…I hate it that you’re so nice.“

He looked up from his giant cup of plain, black coffee. But the words didn’t budge from his mouth.

She excused herself, stood up and wrapped her scarf around her neck haphazardly. The words still stood glued in his mouth. She walked out to her car and drove off.

He looked back down at his coffee. He didn’t even like coffee. He’d ordered it more for that aesthetic coffee-shop aura than anything else. The shop’s name was artistically painted onto the top half of the window to his right side. Looking out, he noticed she was waiting for the town’s only stop light to turn green.

“I hate it that you’re so nice.”

Hide & Seek by Imogen Heap. This is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.

Spring is on the doorstep. Waiting for company on the porch swing. I think the season is like young beauty. Arrayed in new color and the expectation that anything is possible. Anything at all. Mae’s first album was named Destination: Beautiful. Maybe they were thinking of Spring?

What is anything? A compound word; a pronoun or a noun or an adverb. Or a concept. Maybe it’s a just a word we say to tell ourselves that figuratively closed doors are really open. A way to steer ourselves in directions we wish to go, instead of just waiting.

I think waiting becomes easier the older we get. Because life passes quicker and so what we wait for comes quicker as well. Children want the world and they want it in an instant. Old men who are lucky realize they have the world and it only took a lifetime.

Is life too short? I think the half-empty glasses and the half-full glasses are equal in number. But put them together. It’s the full glass of both halves that represents what life is.

Lazare Ponticelli was 110 before he died. Is this too long? Is it too short? Did he pass in his sleep with a smile from the dreams swirling in his mind? He was a boy long ago. And maybe he was a boy again in his old age. We tend to live in a circle and adulthood is wasted by many with worry as we age from children to adults, back to children.

Circles are beautiful. Maybe we come to our ends with a beauty that took a lifetime to behold.

And that’s beautiful.

I’m thinking.

I remember.
That I used to
think I’d fallen
behind. Like
the tortoise.
Everyone else
was the hare.
And I remember.
I used to stumble.
Like a drunkard.
Feet entangled
in themselves.
And all the world
was a daze.
Spinning around
in dizzying manner.
And I remember.
These things will
pass. Some slower
than I’d otherwise
wish. But they
will pass. And I
remember. I owe
you a white summer
daisy from the field
in the park where
we used to spend
so much time.

I’m done thinking.

© 11 March 2008
t.m.d.

I’m not in Ohio anymore. At least it didn’t look like I was. Everyone is pretty sick of snow out here. I’m loving it.

Somewhere between six inches and one foot of snow fell between Friday and Saturday. My summer boss was plowing the campus I work at for half the night last night. Yesterday was the first time in over a year and a half I did not use the trash golf cart for the garbage run. Amazingly I was able to pack three buildings’ worth of trash into only eight bags, stuffed them in my car and cruised through the campus to dispose of them. When I came back to park, I threw the steering over to the left, yanked the parking brake, and slid into a parking spot like a stunt professional.

I love driving in the snow.

Speaking of which, since almost no one was on the road today, I ventured out through the area for a few pictures. A couple of them I had stopped clear in the middle of the road to snap the picture.