I installed a little curtain on my skylight so I don’t wake up at dawn anymore, but there are a couple little cracks that let light in and today I awoke to this miraculous scene which only lasted about a minute. During that minute, most likely, some sort of ancient tomb was opened up or the promise of a generation was fulfilled or something.
July 1, 2009
The man next to me says sorry he had a few beers before I got here but hey, I know how it goes, right? Look at us young people, everything spread wide open before us and we’re just drinking and laughing, oblivious to what’s coming. He tells me he’s 38, can I believe it? He says look at him he’s in his first figure drawing class. 38 and sorry he’s probably not much to talk to right now, he had a few before. Tells me Escher said sound is color at a slower speed. Says the light and the frequencies are all connected. That we are emotionally attached to random moments on absolute spectrums. Says I’m probably not following him, this isn’t his first tonight, sorry for making me listen to him going on. But that anyways it’s the essence of art what Escher said. Says we ought to study the connection between light and sound to know how we react to the days and coming days. Says that’s where it all starts, how we connect it. It’s all over for him though, he’s 38 and look at this picture of his best friend, he’s 52. Can I believe it, 52 years old his best friend. If he would have started young like me can I imagine what he could have done? Spent all these years on the antique shop and now he’s gotta close her down. Back to zero, sticking out like a sore thumb in classes full of people that look like me, people who have it all spread wide before them. It’ll never go back for him now though he says, he’s 38 and
Sorry that woman just smelled so good he couldn’t help but get a full breath. But I’m probably tired of listening to him, he was there a while before me and look at him he’s by himself and quite a few in. Says he didn’t know that Escher was a math guy but see, everything is connected. The more you study all of it from different perspectives the more prepared you are to take in the world and appreciate what time does to us. But I probably don’t care, look at all my friends laughing without a worry about where we’re headed. He’s been swinging hammer for the last year and shit, he probably doesn’t even know how he’ll see it when he’s 52 like his friend and oh look that’s him calling right now. Says anyhow be young while I am young, he’s got to answer this; it’s his best friend he told me about.
June 22, 2009
June 17, 2009
But I forgot to bring my camera so instead of recording photos, here’s a spam comment I got today:
You know so many interesting infomation. You might be very wise. I like such people. Don’t top writing.
And a photo I took at the zoo last week:
Summer’s on.
June 16, 2009
Doug and I are heading over to Petro’s house tonight to try and finish tracking the first song as The Tree Ring. Photos to follow.
June 16, 2009
June 12, 2009
I can’t see you but I know you’re out there (tilt your screen and look closely)
June 10, 2009
They seem anxious for being so sure
I’m too tired to think ahead like that anymore
Being on my way to someplace I already know
Because I saw some photographs in a magazine
Look at me, I know as much as my parents and
Wealthy college professors could show me
Whatever I lived in and whatever explanations
I was told to attribute my worship to
And what, exactly, they said will keep us
From being forgotten or being punished
As much as anybody knows anywhere
And less with each passing day, other than
How much I can gather from Brad’s footsteps
Upsetting the wood floors while I lay in my bed
The taste of coffee on a quiet morning at home
Different from its taste someplace else
The happiness of being with people, as Kafka put it
The way the song “Foreground” sounds on vinyl
And how the turntable sounds like rain
After the needle floats to the center
Laying half-conscious with the blinds closed,
I can almost convince myself that it is rain
The light coming in is still dampened by clouds
Dark and immense beings laying heavy and gorgeous
Like the indescribable feeling behind closed eyelids
When there are five more minutes to lay in tangled covers
Before you risk arriving late or at least unprepared
To wherever it is that you are supposed to be arriving
I’ll be here today
And, as far as I know, probably here tomorrow
Trying to get a handle on the way that I feel
And whether I need to worry about defining it
God we’re blessed with more richness than
We’ll ever know quite what to do with
Being so delightfully insignificant
June 7, 2009
Photographs from a week spent traveling solo to visit people around the Northwest
June 4, 2009
We’ve been talking too much, trying to take a lifetime of sensations and send them across the table. Trying to use written words to send feelings across the sea, feelings we ourselves don’t even understand. From a place behind these shutters that keep our eyes from drying to the place behind someone else’s. A house we drive by wondering what the floorplan looks like. Waving up the walkway to figures in a window and cautiously wishing to come inside but having all sorts of trouble with the locks. Finding again and again that these dusty stacks are ours and ours only, all we have.
Fragile yet unbreakable.
Walking home Gareth was laughing like a madman in the quiet street. The others were back at the corner store buying playing cards and beer and we were talking about a surprise party. Destin was waiting in his truck with Brad. We spoke briefly but enough. It was getting late but we were just getting started. We went through twelve sides of four LPs, flipping and switching between hands. There was talk of old and new, talk of things we regretted at the time but cherish now. Talk of people and only people. We only looked at the clock when it was all said and done and the tired coffee table told its story in cards and empty bottles.
Nobody else has this. Everybody else has this.
June 3, 2009
Jantzi Farm, Oregon
June 1, 2009
I went to first grade in this classroom.
May 28, 2009
From the damp grass
The black silhouettes of cattails
Stretch above a skyline of fir and oak
Also black
Burrowed under the pastel brushstrokes
Of a nearly summer sky
On a nearly quiet night
Only the rustle and call
Of other creatures singing ballads
To green grass and lingering daywarmth
Above me
The leathery whisper
Of a bat’s wings
Flutters over my face so close
One has a hard time not flinching
But I’ve been here enough times
To know now
I need not move a muscle
I can lay here with head in hands
And hands in damp grass and admire
The silvery sliver of moon
Trying to fool us into forgetting
The fullness of her shape
But being given away
By the dusky blues
Surrounding her with nothing constant
But and growth and time
I’ll lay here in peace
Small under the same old stars
That I know but do not know
From here in the same old grass
I’m older now and thus
Less sure of what I see
But sure that the more days I see
The more I understand
That often the anticipation of summer
The wonderful tension in between
Is sweeter than the summer itself
When it arrives unannounced
And lays us down with no concern
For skin and clothes covering skin
That slowly soak in the constant earth
May 27, 2009
We were up and around, but the day had not officially started. The thin dawnclouds still slept low over our street and even lower over the city, and the soggy light from half-open blinds was unflattering on the scratches in our wood floor and the misplaced objects on the furniture. Sounds of footsteps, sinks, doors, and appliances were abrasive in isolation as John and I walked past each other a few times without interaction in pre-work routine. When I finished my patterns and cracked the front door open to leave, I heard Brad throwing up in the bathroom and the awful sound made my eyes shut by themself. With the doorknob still twisted to the right, I softly pushed the door back into place and stood still, looking at the box of records on the floor. I was already late for work but something kept me there. I was thinking about how all emotions are rooted in interaction with others, and that it was just as painful for me to wait knowing there was nothing I could do to relieve his pain as it was for him to wait while his body violently rejected whatever had been taken in. The knob was still turned and I could feel the unsureness of the door in my hand. I felt terrible and at that moment I wanted a lot of things that I had no control over. I wanted to at least do some writing. But I was late, so I had to leave everything as it was and get on with my day.
May 22, 2009
