illumination's struggle

Summer has hidden its brilliant face.
The trees argue. Back and forth;
trying to decide what message to deliver, whether to tell me
t-shirt or jacket
Inside or out.

This morning, the fighting has stopped.
Most of the trees are silent.
Others, roll over lazily to peak open an eye and ignore my presence.
Regardless of their final conclusion,
I'm already wearing a sweater.

The day looks promising
and the morning is perfectly new.
By the time I drink my raspberry leaf tea, I may be in short sleeves
but for now I push the future out of my mind.

In the present, sunshine has creeped onto this page;
like a starved man in the desert, it drives fingernails into line,
trying to reach the the mirage that is book's end, ahead.
Suddenly the light stops, rests. Exhausted.

The page--halfway illuminated, half in shadow.

It's difficult to see such brilliance struggle.
I could move two feet over
and leave the page engulfed in light.
Yet I do not.

Illumination's struggle sounds like a good name for a religious text.
But these words are recreational, a different type of worship.
A striving.
A hope.

At times, a desperate clawing to day's end--
blessed because my eyes remain open.
damned because sometimes, with no apparent reason, no lack of sleep,
no sign of illness, I shut them.

Refuse to allow vision. Thought. Feeling.

And so I just float.
Away.
Fearing what I've already heard.
Dreading what I've never seen.

i never claimed to write perfectly but i hope to write often.

There was a man in my stairwell that I had never seen before. He tipped his hat as I passed by and told me that my step mother was a block away, buying oranges at the corner store. I do not have a step mother, I replied. And if I did, she would not like oranges, I added. But he, he was persistent.


This did not happen to me. It never happened to anyone I know. But it popped into my head.

One, because I am a strange boy. Two, perhaps I will never understand.

I never claimed to write perfectly but I hope to write often. I certainly never claimed to write purely non-fiction.

tragedy

It is 7:15 am. August 25th.

My best friend's wife, Catey Smith Warner, is on the sidewalk en route to the bus stop to start the first day of her last semester of college.

She dances. She is a dance major. She teaches ballet to young children.

Remember it is 7:15 am.

Before she arrives at the bus, a truck going 35 mph, swerves off of the road and strikes her. The driver is under the influence of heroine and other drugs.

He is 22.

Jeremy Warner, my friend and her husband, awakes to a phone call from the police. I awake to his phone call; to my best friend crying.

Catey breaks her nose and bones in her face, needs staples to close a head wound, and shatters her knee.

She is a dancer.

He is a drunk driver.

an illumination from the past

July 1, 2008

Unfortunate and disappointed do not have the same meaning.

It is unfortunate to finish going to the bathroom before realizing the toilet paper is out. It is disappointing to realize the person you love, does not love you back.

It is unfortunate to stub your toe. It is disappointing to borrow your friend's favorite book, read it and not like it; knowing you will have to be honest when they, bright eyed like a child, ask for your thoughts.

August 24, 2010

Today's realization: disappointed is often too weak a word.

the reason for this blog's existence. to remember or to discover and not forget.

“Tom,” he said, “you and your statistics gave me an idea. I’m going to do the same, keep track of things. For instance: you realize that every summer we do things over and over we did the whole darn summer before?.. That’s one half of summer, Tom.”

“What’s the other half?” “Things we do for the first time ever… Thinking about it, noticing it, is new. You do things and don’t watch. Then all of a sudden you look and see what you’re doing and it’s the first time, really. I’m going to divide the summer up in two parts. First part of this tablet is titled: RITES AND CEREMONIES.

The first root beer pop of the year. The first time running barefoot in the grass of the year. First time almost drowning in the lake of the year. First watermelon. First mosquito. First harvest of dandelions. Those are the things we do over and over and over and never think.

Now here in back, like I said, is DISCOVERIES AND REVELATIONS or maybe ILLUMINATIONS, that’s a swell word, or INTUITIONS, okay? In other words you do an old familiar thing, like bottling dandelion wine, and you put that under RITES AND CEREMONIES. And then you think about it, and what you think, crazy or not, you put under DISCOVERIES AND REVELATIONS. Here’s what I got on the wine: Every rime you bottle it, you got a whole chunk of 1928 put away, safe. How you like that, Tom?”

-A quote from Dandelion Wine by the great Ray Bradbury.