two poems, one lonely night

Poem

Today you are a sparrow
and I watch you
flit from twig

girl to girl you are
insufferable
in the spring

the season long
song of a mistake
I keep repeating

Circling, I was in Love

My heart makes
wide circles
like a starved
buzzard

above you
when we walk
together you look
past the clocktower

you say
this grey weather
gets to you
after all

.משפתי.עץ.

יש במרחק בינינו

רק מילים. בתוך

אוזניי יש באז

שלא בא מעצמי

המילים הלוהטות האלה

הן עלים של עץ

שמעבר שורשו מעדנו

וגם הפכנו לבעלים של

הדבר אחת הזה

בפעם הזהה

.house.guest:becca.

Becca

Jan 21 - 23

Becca came up to visit me on somewhat of a whim, buying tickets while on the phone with me only a few days beforehand.
I can't think of the weekend having been any better. I'm serious. We farted under blankets. We leveled up. I cooked her the dinners I promised I'd cook her over half a year ago.
We took an Epic Staycation side quest, and racked up XP like it was December 1999 and my mom was filling bathtubs with emergency water.

****

So I thought that since we watched 2012 last night, we should talk about the Apocalypse and your thoughts on it, and what it might entail.

The only thing that really comes to mind is reading stuff about global warming and how they expect--I don't know who they is, but it seems like consensus is that in the next 50 years, if things keep going as they are, Cape Cod will disappear. So my brother and I were talking about investing in some land in inland Massachusetts so that it would become beach front by the time we're retired.

I went on this vacation with my now ex one time, and it was in the Outer Banks, and we were talking about the same thing: all the houses were on the shore, and we were like, we should just start buying property half a mile in or something.

Yeah.

You think it'll look anything like the movie?

No. No, that movie was horrible. That movie was Waterworld: the prequel.

But Waterworld was good, in a weird kitschy way.

Lines like "I'll put you in a jar" are cool.

I haven't seen it for a while.

Me neither, but my best friend had two movies: she had Biodome--no she had three movies: she had Biodome, Indiana Jones--the young Indiana Jones--and Waterworld. So I've seen those three movies... plus I had two movies at my house: I had Aladdin and Mission Impossible. So those are the five movies I've watched a thousand times as a child, not because I particularly like them, but... they stick with me.

So do you have a favourite movie then? Is it one of those?

No, it's Purple Rain.

I haven't seen that either. I haven't seen a lot of movies, but my excuse is that I didn't live in this country for most of my childhood.

We're going to need to watch Purple Rain. Purple Rain is...

How come we didn't download that. What the fuck.

Because I didn't... it didn't occur to me.

We did watch Sixteen Candles, though.

Which was good, minus the whole... racism

Which seemed to just be this extra layer of

fucking unnecessary

superfluous nonsense. ...So the way you're lying on the couch right now is like some perfect typical Freudian psychoanalysis shit going on.

I could say some Freudian shit.

Yeah? You had to read Freud?

Yeah. I started to, but then, sharing this as someone who personally had a cocaine addiction, when I read Freud, I just see some fucking dickhead who had a major raging coke addiction. And if you have personally had that, when you read his stuff, it just drips bullshit and coke. Like all over the place. You know that. I mean, you see this stuff, and the first thing I thought was, dude, this guy just did so many lines before he wrote this, and that's why he's jumping from topic to topic with so much fucking self-assurance. And he can jump from like little babies to incest to Greek myths to ...whatever. I hate him.

Did you ever have any of these thoughts when you were on cocaine?

No, when I was on coke, I was really into the physics of music: like sine waves really got interesting and I really wanted to talk about them.

Just sine waves or--

A lot of bad things happened too, but at least as far as nerd stuff.

What about square waves?

I don't... maybe? A lot of ...that, is all gone now.

You didn't write it down? You could have been the next Freud, high on cocaine, writing down crazy shit. Is there anything specific, then, that you don't like about Freud? I know we were talking about sex and gender before.

He's just a fucking idiot. I'm trying to think of specifics here. I think he was just whole idea of different stages that you go through, and getting caught in like the anal stage or the phallic stage and whatever is complete bullshit. He doesn't even deal with women.

I feel like a common criticism is that he is very phallocentric and androcentric.

It's just a load of shit, and I feel like it set people back. Although on the other hand, I haven't finished this conversation so I don't know enough. My therapist is one of my favourite people and has a PhD in psychology or psychiatry, or both I think. She says that Freud is pretty awesome and does contribute a lot more than I give him credit for. He did start talk therapy. I just think that as a feminist, and many other things, my bias against him outweighs the good part, and maybe I take talk therapy for granted because it's always been around me.

I guess, because I had to read him last term, and whereas the specifics of perversions and etc. etc. might not have been anything I agreed with, but I felt like he was really influential and he introduced ideas of, like, the subconscious. Everyone talks about the subconscious, unconscious mind now. And so yeah, I think he is a lot more than what he commonly gets pegged with.

It's cool, but then he gets so abstract with some ideas about how superego, the ego and the id interact that... It's like he gets off topic and carried off into his own little world where he's created these three things and when you try to relate it back to a human being you've gone so far off track at times.

Did you ever get the feeling while reading it that if you met him real life, he'd just be this big jerk?

I've never really thought about that; I don't know.

So, if you could meet some now dead intellectual, who would it be?

Damn. .......that's not something I can answer quickly.

That's all right; I'll expect a list later.
I think I've always wanted to talk to you about music, since I've heard you play piano and I'm always glad that I play music first, because then you play and I don't feel like I can touch an instrument for a while. I think clearly there's a lot of ...connection that you have with music. I remember we were talking about something and you said--it was a movie, you said you didn't care about the movie but you cared just because it had a good soundtrack.

Ravenous. Yeah, it goes with this landscape and the music sounds like the landscape looks. It was shot at the base of the Rockies, I think. It's kind of similar to the whole Donner Party story. You know it's going to some cannibalistic hell, but what makes it so scary is like... this music just does it. I can't... I'm not very good at talking, but seriously. Music for me is so much emotion. When I was growing up, my father and mother both played the piano, and I remember hearing my mom playing Chopin's Nocturnes. They just got me so emotional as a kid. And in the summertime, when it was hot out, we always had the windows open because we never had AC, and my dad would play ragtime. And it was cool. I would be on the floor and just hear it.

So did you get into music on your own, or did your parents really encourage you? or both?

I begged for lessons, and lessons are expensive, so it wasn't until I was seven that I started. And they really encouraged it. My father especially. We played together. I think they realized that I had something one night when I was sick. I came downstairs because I was having like an asthma attack and they were listening to some show on the stereo, like some symphony, and I heard it and I absorbed it, and I walked over to the piano and like--it was stupid, but like the last chord, I just hit the same notes on the piano. I just hit them without any touching first and they were like, Oh...man, our nine year old knows something. So that was when they started pushing a little more. Yeah, they pushed me harder to practice, but never that hard.

Well, it sounded like you were really self-motivated.

I was really motivated with that stuff. Not quite enough, but pretty... there. I think I always wanted to be as good as my father was at it. But then when I started getting maybe a little better than him, I started losing a little motivation.

Are you better than your mother?

Yeah. She doesn't practice like she's supposed to.

Did you brother also learn piano?

He played piano, but he wasn't really that into it. He played the sax for a while. He doesn't anymore. He had a problem with the piano because his finger joints bend funny. 

That's actually kind of funny because growing up, I did a lot of rock climbing and your fingers aren't supposed to bend the way you just did with the last joint going backwards because it fucks up your tendons when you put a lot of pressure on them. So I grew up never doing that, and as a result my fingers don't really bend too much like that. But I remember learning some chords on guitar, some of those jazz chords, and you have to do those ...selective bar chords or whatever, and I was like, ah fuck, I wish my fingers bent like that because I could hold down the right strings. I didn't really think of that until I saw someone really good play and I saw that they were doing that. Maybe I need to do push ups on my fingertips or something.

That's why I quit Tae Kwon Do when I was little, because of those push ups.

Fingertip push ups? or just push ups?

The fingertip ones.

How long did you take TKD for? 

Six weeks.

But now you're going to take boxing.

Hopefully. I don't know if it's going to be a reality. I can't find it listed for spring courses.

Are there any last things you want to say? Advice? Resolutions?

I think people should learn to be comfortable with uncertainty. That's about all I got.

.house.guests:james.nick.pat.

James, Nick, Pat 

(from right to left)

Jan 15 - 18, 2010

I've known James for some time now, and not only is he my son, but the co-father of our imaginary child. I was actually considering visiting Columbus over the long weekend for Dr. MLK Jr. Day, but could only find a rideshare to take me as far as Dayton. Not only that, but I would have had to skip some important classes. In a fit of indecision, I called James to get his opinion, and was informed that he, Pat and Nick were planning on coming to Chicago instead. Sometimes things just work out.

**********

Because I didn't have the time or effort to transcribe the half hour conversation the four of us had over dinner, I am instead going to include a link to an audio file that you can download and listen to at your leisure.

I know none of you will.

But for those of you that do, though, you will be treated to a conversation involving space lasers, angry Jimmy John's managers, and how Pat's haircut makes him look like a butch lesbian.

Click here to download interview audio 

Holding East

Holding East
Ruth Awad

I’d never seen my father on his knees except
during his daily prayers, his head to the rug
like a wild dog nosing for foodscraps, hunting
down God, until my mother stuffed her suitcase
full of socks and scrubs, pant leg caught in the lip.
From the hallway I watched my life unclasp:
my father shrouded in his flannel robe as my mother
loomed for a moment then stormed
around the bedroom, gathering her things.

Night swept in like curtains slowly closing.
No light from the stars, useless as snuffed candles.
My father paced the garden, past the wood violet
blooming lavender along the path, past lilacs
overtaking the fence. When he came back inside,
he scooped me in his arms and out to the car.
“A night-ride,” he said, but we circled the town
down side streets and houses of friends, looking
for her. I counted streetlamps that glowed
like little moons over us, my head pressed
against the glass blurred by my breath as we drove
through the night-fog, my father holding east.

.house.guest.interview.1:molly.

Molly

Thursday, 7 Jan 2010
 

I have decided that with enough house guests making a stop on our couch often enough, and with this blog being updated rarely enough, I will start interviewing whatever guests we have come our way. It also gives me an opportunity to learn to use the camera that Amanda was nice enough to loan me. And to procrastinate from doing actual schoolwork.

Molly was a good enough sport to up with some of my ineptness at doing this for the first time. Hopefully these things will get better with time. Happy 2kX everyone.

*********

Alright, so I guess we should start with your name.

My name is Molly.

Where are you coming from?

I'm coming from Minneapolis by way of North Carolina.

And North Carolina is where you live, right?

North Carolina is where I live and hopefully will get back to... soon.


Because of the snow?

Because of the snow, and Greyhound.


So I guess because it was just New Years, we should have a list of either your top resolutions or your top regrets.

I don't do much... resolutions, but I do have one. I feel like my biggest resolution is to not have expectations, fewer expectations and more trust in people.


That's almost like the oxymoron of resolutions. Is there anything that spurred that decision? or is it just kind of a general thing?

I have a friend who makes music and they just put out a cd called "Expectations Shmexpectations" that was great, and I think that was part of the inspiration for thinking about expectations and also like... feeling disappointed in people and realizing that... that's not necessary if I just kind of let bad things go and meet people where they're at, then that's less likely to happen.


You think this has anything to do with being in your last year of school and being tired of having expectations for yourself?


Maybe. Maybe it has more to do with being, having lived in the same place for like 4 or 5 years and wanting things to be a certain way and wanting people to be a certain way.

Are there any regrets you have over the past year? anything you'd change?

I feel like I had a good year. 2009 was ok.
...

No? You don't have to have one. If it was a good year, it was a good year.

haha, I think it was a good year.

I feel like starting with these two things, I want to keep listing things: best of 2009, worst of 2009... If you could count up your year.

My worst place I slept in 2009 was the Loreno airport in Texas. That was at the very beginning: January 2nd or 3rd.

What were you doing in Texas?

I was also passing through, trying to get-- I was coming from Mexico City to Buffalo, New York.

Sounds like a long ride.

It was a long ride. But I was on a plane. But bought my tickets in a way that didn't make any sense and so I ended up having to make a 12 hour layover in Loreno, TX, which is this tiny town, and the airport is like, maybe twice the size of your house.

I don't think I even know where that is in Texas. And I'm actually from Texas.


 It's on the border. There's Loreno and Lo Voy Loreno [sp?]. And I was like, eh! 12 hours, I'll just sleep in the airport; it'll be fine. But apparently the airport closes. And so I had this crazy conversation with the cops there about whether or not I had dead people in my bag and that we finally decided that because I was female they didn't want to just let me out into the world, so I could sleep in the airport, but they would be watching me.

So the airport actually closed?

The airport closed, but I slept on the floor.

I don't know how many airports I've been in that actually closed.

I know, I didn't expect it. That was the worst place I slept in 2009.

Did you actually get much sleeping done there?

No! And the weirdest--perhaps one of the weirdest--parts: at like 4 in the morning, this man who I don't know who he was, comes to me with a hambrger and a Coke, and said something like, "I thought you might be hungry." Haha, ok! It's like 4 in the morning. Thanks. I didn't eat it.


Oh, so the airport was open again at 4 in the morning?


Well, it was unclear. There were always people there. Like it was never totally empty. ...I don't know, it was a strange experience.

Probably not the best way to start your year.

No... but it was a good adventure.

Was that your first time in Mexico?

Mmhmm. Well, kind of. I had been the summer before. In 2008, I worked on the border, on the Mexican side, a 100 yards into Mexico.

So technically..

I had been there before, but hardly.

Did you need a passport to work on that side?

Yeah... No, you didn't. It was still the time where you could use your birth certificate and your driver's license.

Have they changed that recently?

Mmhmm. I think, summer of 2009? or January of 2009? was when they officially changed it so that you needed a passport to get into Mexico and Canada.

I remember hearing about Canada, about needing a passport, but I've always had one, so... I've not noticed if they transitioned or not.
What was the best thing that happened to you in 2009?

...

or are there competing things?

There're probably competing things. One of the best things: I don't really birthdays much for myself; I like other people's birthdays. But I was out in the Arizona desert for my birthday and people always find out it's your birthday, even if you aren't telling people, so everyone knew.

Especially with facebook.

That too. And people are just sneaky and figure it out. And so two of my friends had made a cake. But before that had happened, I had just gotten back from a walk, and it had been storming all afternoon, and I was soaked from walking in the rain. And I got back to camp in the middle of the desert where we were staying, and over the hill, was the most amazing rainbow I had ever seen: all the way across the sky. And it was so, so bright, and there was almost a second one clearly above it. So like a double rainbow that went all the way across the sky and the sky was still like really dark grey from the rain, and the sun was on the hills, and they were like bright green. It was really amazing. That was my birthday.

That's pretty awesome.

And it was a full moon.

I don't know why Emmet [my roommate Josh's dog] has decided now is the best time to be on my lap.

He wants to be involved.

Well, I guess this is the first interview thing, so I don't really have much prepared. Any closing remarks you want to make? One message to depart?

That... I don't know. Probably that Chicago is snowy.

What's one piece of advice you could give anyone?

Uh, don't ride Greyhound in snowy places in the winter time is a good idea for the future.

********

Molly's "top five things I'd like to change in 2010":

fewer expectations of other people-
more art projects-
more anonymous notes and gifts, extra points if they're attached to parked bikes-
prisons all fall down-
the border melts back into the desert and people come and go as they please-
more adventures in the middle of the night-
more surprise visits from friends near and far-
less time in greyhound stations-

.blue.lines.

I started college here years ago, moving for the first time to the big city. Well, I had lived in cities before, but there is a difference between cities and cities. There is an inescapable sense of claustrophobia that either destroys you or keeps you scurrying about like a rat in the walls.
I lived in the dorms for the first quarter, having no other choice. It was the school's policy, and I think it was their desperate attempt to make sure the students wouldn't shoot each other by the time winter rolled around. It's kind of the opposite, I suppose, of how you're not supposed to give names to your livestock; the nominalized go on to haunt you after they're gone.
After that first quarter, though, which had passed by in the time it took an orange leaf to fall to the ground, I moved up to the north side. Dorm life had been a little miserable, having had to share a room with someone that watched TV until 4 in the morning. And it wasn't even that I really had a problem with; I mean, I stayed up until then my fair share of nights, shooting zombies, and Nazis, and sometimes Nazi zombies. I guess I really just didn't like him all that much. It was easy then to blame it on his being an Engineering major.
My new apartment was a small studio in a neighbourhood where few people spoke any English. My landlord decided that we didn't need a lease, which worked out fine by me. I had no intention of being bound to him, never thinking that the same thought was most likely going through his head. I assumed he had not wanted to go through the trouble of drawing up a contract in a language he hardly understood, much less used.
I took the blue line train to class every day, and at first it was somewhat exciting. My journey to class was something different. It had transformed and even matured into a real trip. I watched the city go by like a movie. It was if I was here in person now, but still watching everything go by on a screen, out of reach.
Eventually, as could be expected, the scenery became predictable: the same skyline, of course, but the same church with a homeless person asleep on the sloop, the same library under unending construction, and the same people in transit, crossing the blue lines of their to do lists. Of all of those people, there was one man in particular that I recognized. He was largely nondescript to be honest. He wore a bowler hat everyday, and that alone was enough for me to recognize him. He got on the same stop as me, but got off downtown, where he presumably worked. Me, I had at least 20 minutes after the downtown stop just to get to campus.
I didn't talk to him at all my first year.

It wasn't until my second year of school that we interacted at all. I had briefly mentioned him to my then girlfriend once, and it was one evening when she was coming back up north with me to hang out at my place that it happened.
It really wasn't anything spectacular. It dawned on Stef who was sitting down the car from us after a few stops. The bowler hat! she whispered to me with a certain ferocity and enthusiasm I couldn't quite place. And before I knew it, she had gotten up and walked over to him, introducing herself.
Their conversation was brief, and Stef looked somewhat disappointed as she came back. She was surely expecting some gruesome tale, but it turned out that Ethan Moreno was just a close to middle age acupuncturist that worked downtown. His pea coat said his practice was stable enough to afford Brooks Brothers, and his business card, which he had handed Stef, sighed in a thin sans serif font that he was bored with his life.

That year, I went skiing in Europe with Stef's family for winter break. It was my first time, and I certainly didn't win any points with her parents, who were content to bomb down the slopes without me, only waiting for me intermittently in hopes of convincing Stef to scream down the family favourites with them. She seemed a little torn, and I told her I'd just meet her at the bottom.
After returning my borrowed equipment, I tried a legit Italian cappuccino at a cafe. I realized that I didn't have any Euros on me too late, and tried to explain to the girl at the counter, hoping she'd understand. She smiled and told me not to worry about it; she would just say that it was her free drink for the shift. I thanked her profusely and went to go sit down and wait for Stef and her family to get back.
An hour later, there was still no sign of them, and I had finished the last English periodical that didn't offer fashion advice and sex tips.
"How was the cappuccino?"
I looked over to my right and noticed that it was the girl from the counter that had helped me earlier. I told her that it was great, although stronger than I was used to. She laughed more than she should have, and I wondered what European humour was like anyway.
We talked for a little bit and she finally said that she had no intentions of hanging out at her workplace when she wasn't on the clock, and asked me if I wanted to go back to her place for a bit. I told her I was waiting for my girlfriend and her parents, but she was insistent and said she just lived close by. I finally gave in, figuring that it had been almost 2 hours since I had left Stef and her family, so why not.
We walked out and before I could protest, hopped on a bus, where the girl spotted my fare. A few stops later, we got off and went up two flights of stairs to her small apartment. And long story short, I'll go ahead and say that we made small talk for a bit before proceeding to fool around a bit, before a sound downstairs caused her to jump up with a start.
"You have to get out of here. My boyfriend's home," she said quick and low.
"You have a boyfriend?"
"Yes, I don't have time to argue. Go. Take the back stairs."
"But." And I wanted to say that I didn't know where I was, or how to get back. And on top of that, I still didn't have any change for the bus. And yes, I did want to know what was going on.
"Look, you tourists think you're here to enjoy us. But you are here for us to enjoy you. Ok?"
I ran down the back stairs and onto the streets. Without money, and with the sun having set, I finally managed to flag down a police car, giving him the slip of paper the address of our hotel was on.
When I finally got back, there was a new air separating Stef and me, and I could tell she felt it too. They never asked where I was, and I wondered if they had seen me take off with the girl.
In any case, our relationship was never really the same after that holiday, and we ended up breaking up by March that year.

By that time, my grades had started to slip a little bit, and my mom called to tell me that her and my dad wouldn't be able to help me if I didn't pick up the pace a bit. I declared a political science major and decided to start focusing more on my studies.
By the time summer rolled around, I got a call from my older sister, who lived a state over. She was going through a bad divorce and needed a place to crash for the summer while she worked things out. What could I say?
She came in mid-June, after I was done with finals, knocking on my door holding nothing more than a camping backpack, a small duffel bag, and her pockets stuffed with a hodgepodge of new and used wads of Kleenex. Turns out she didn't have a car and I had to show her the ropes of how to get around the city by trains and buses.
Judy had never been on an elevated train before, and compared my familiar blue line to the monorail at Disneyland. I told her to stay away from the Goofies and Tinkerbells around here though.
I pointed out famous buildings, important stops, and when I saw the familiar bowler hat of, what was his name?, I pointed him out as well. I even introduced him as a friend of mine, just so I could remember his name. Ethan Moreno. I'd remember it now.
He looked a little confused as I introduced my sister, and I thought he would ignore us completely. He had that look on his face where one expects a candid camera to be in someone's purse, and everyone to suddenly start laughing at you in unison. Once she mentioned her divorce, however, he was trapped, and did his best to strike up small talk with us.
"How do you know him?" she asked me later.
"I just met him on the train." I didn't mention Stef. "He's an acupuncturist."
"Oooo!" Judy cooed.

I ended up being rather depressed that summer, still a little hung up on Stef, and decided to spend most of August hitchhiking across the country, trying to make it to my friend Dane's house in Portland. I told Judy to watch over things for me, which she was glad to do, if only to have her own place, somewhere to herself, even if it were mine.
"I guess you can sleep in my bed too," I conceded. "But no sex on it."
In the end, I caught a ride with a trucker who picked me up out of concern more than anything else.
"A boy like you: in school and with no goddamned sense. Standing on the side of the road where anyone could nab you," he muttered to what must have been a mysterious intangible third person in the cab. He was driving all the way to Sacramento, it turned out, and my month-long hitchhiking adventure turned out to be little more than a 5 day-excursion, having caught a ride some touring band from Sacramento to Portland. They didn't tell me until afterwards that they expected me to pay for gas.
By the time I got to Portland, I had three weeks to kill, since I still wasn't ready to head back home. I ended up sitting in Dane's living room playing video games for three weeks before finally just catching a Greyhound bus back east. I knocked on my own door with nothing more than a small backpack, a gym bag and a pocket full of receipts, feeling as if I had gotten nowhere in the past month, and that any self-discovery I may have made creeping west across the country was erased like a name written in sand as I crept back east.

It turned out that Judy had started acupuncture sessions with Ethan, and was feeling better as a result.
"He's cute," she admitted, "but he's gayer than a unicorn in a speedo."
In the end, she moved out, thankfully, halfway through fall term of my junior year, moving in with some friends she made at yoga class. She was becoming a bona fide new age yuppie. She told me she finally felt in control of her own body through yoga, and that meant she was in better touch with her own spiritual needs and development. She encouraged me to come with her to class, but I pointed out that I had my International Law class during that time.

I continued to see Ethan Moreno on my train rides to school, and even with our mutual connection, it seemed that he didn't feel very compelled to make conversations with me. To be honest, I didn't feel like being buddy buddy with him either, but out of guilt, told him one day that I liked his new shoes. His aloofness sublimated into the air as he thanked me and smiled, but it was still clear that he had no interest in starting a real topic of conversation.

The next couple of years flew by, and I wondered how it was ever possible that it took an entire year, an eternity, to move up a grade in elementary school. I was finding that it was harder and harder to fit in everything I wanted to do. And that wasn't even with regard to non-school related projects.
I had gotten more serious about school, and the time to think about what program I wanted to be in, which department I wanted to be a part of, where I wanted to live after graduation was already upon me, showing up like an older sister in distress. And I could only hope that it would resolve in a same way, with inner peace and flexibility.
Stef had gotten into Stanford for a PhD program in Linguistics, having texted me enthusiastically when she found out with "fuck this snow!". We were friends again, after having not talked for close to a year. There was no animosity, but we had realized that like the brown line and the red line, we shared paths for a bit, but were soon to diverge in our own directions.
My mother even came to visit, and my sister came with us to the famous Mexican restaurant right outside of downtown. She seemed at peace for the large part, but was still concerned with whether or not I knew what I was doing with myself. I told her I was visiting PhD programs over the next month, and not to worry; I was on top of my shit.
On the train ride back, Judy and I noticed that Ethan Moreno was sitting at the back of our car, but we didn't say anything, and didn't point him out to our mother.

So now here I am again, on the blue line, not heading to class nor my studio apartment, but the airport. I'm flying out to look at some schools on the West Coast. Dane says I can live with him in Long Beach, where he moved a few months ago.
And I know I'll be back in a week, but everything already starts to look alien to me, as if the city knew I was deserting it. Something was receding, like newsprint peeling off of the paper, and I couldn't tell if it was the city doing it or something inside of me.
Ethan Moreno sat across from me, as usual, and more than ever, I realized the obvious fact that I had seen this man for almost four years now on a semi-daily basis and we had no idea who each other were. I was comfortable with this fact, and clearly so was he. In fact, it had never even crossed my mind until I was here, on my way out the door. Ethan Moreno had been here poking holes in people long before I cracked my first book spine, and he would clearly be here for long after. In all this time, I realized, we hadn't travelled anywhere at all, but it was, rather, those years with all of their passengers that had click-clacked through us, leaving nothing more than a concrete platform and enough metal thorns on every horizontal surface to prevent even a pigeon from setting down to rest its wings.


********
Don't forget to read my Top Ten Albums of 2009 list if you haven't.

***********

.ten.albums.of.2009.

My current top 10 of 2009 (which is a little biased, I suspect, due to recent shows), also in no particular order, with my own notes:

1) Thao with the Get Down Stay Down - Know Better Learn Faster
**This album didn't immediately jump out at me like Thao's earlier stuff did, but I trust her, and in the end, it paid off. The production is a little slicker on this third full-length, and the songs a little bit more mature, but the things I know and love about Thao come through nevertheless. I suppose the one disappointment I had with this album is I felt it was lyrically weaker than her previous work, though, that is to say it is still echelons above anything I can pull off.

2) Do Make Say Think - The Other Truths
**I just saw them play at the beginning of the month. It was probably my 4th or 5th time, and they never disappoint. It's the hardest show for me to leave, because they are so good at creating an atmosphere, a world, a whatever, that by the time it's over, the mere thought of having to re-enter the real world is mortifying and reprehensible. I'm always surprised how this band can constantly refine their song on each album, exploring a new texture and new blends of genre within their own genre of 'post-rock': their last album seemed to me to really delve into a folk sound at times, outright rock at times, and the constant genius bass work of Charles Spearin, who comes from a background of, among other things, free jazz. He pulled out a 6 string fretless bass at the last show. Just sayin.

3) Years - Years
**A side project of Do Make Say Think, guitarist Ohad Benchetrit's solo work is perhaps not quite as solo as one might be led to believe. He opened for DMST at the show, and of course, Charles Spearin finally pointed out the obvious that even though there were three bands on the bill (the third being Spearin's own side project), it was really the same band coming on and off stage. That being said, Ohad's guitarwork, recognizable immediately to any DMST fanboys like me, has a nostalgic quality to it anyway, veering on the path of folk at times. But the whole project begins to deconstruct his own guitar abilities, with a more electronic, glitchy feel than DMST. Two BOSS RC-50 Loop Stations strong.

4) Norberto Lobo - Pata Lenta
**This may have been my own most important discovery of this year. I'm not even sure how I found him, but Norberto Lobo is one of the most blistering yet graceful guitarists I've ever seen. All his work is fundamentally solo guitar work, so you can imagine the normal influence that usual entails of John Fahey and American Primitivism, but the crucial difference here is that Lobo is Portuguese, and one can hear the traditional folk influence of his native land rampantly growing on top of the Fahey aesthetics. As if listening to hours and hours of gypsy jazz didn't make me feel enough like an incompetent guitarist, Norberto Lobo is out there to remind me that I'm outclassed pick or no pick, standard tuning or open tuning.

5) Tegan & Sara - Sainthood
**Well, I don't know what to say about this. As a male lesbian, I think I'm obligated to put Tegan & Sara down on this. I know some of my other lesbian friends don't like this new album, but something about it really grabbed me, and caused me to rediscover all my Tegan & Sara. This newest album has something of a darker, more urgent feel than their older stuff, slightly less of an acoustic sound, and more of a controlled cold growl of distortion that I expect from bands like Metric. But then, seeing as Tegan and Sara Quinn and Emily Haines would form the trifecta of lesbian wet dream awesome, I suppose that all makes sense.

6) HEALTH - Get Color
**Similar to the Tegan & Sara album, I have friends (primarily in noise bands, of course) that were not fond of the newest HEALTH full-length. I personally love it all the same, as long as I remind myself not to expect quite the same HEALTH as from their self-titled first full-length. The first thing I noticed off this new album is that BJ's virtuosic drum pounding, with the full ferocity of an entire warring tribe, has been toned down to little more than a 4 to the floor beat at times. It's as if the successful Crystal Castles remix of Crimewave and the resulting HEALTH//DISCO remix album got into someone's head, and they decide to make noise rock album that was more danceable. That being said, the signature guitar tones with all their asymmetric square waves are still there, and you don't realize how much you need those haunting mechanical sounds until you try to find another noise band that is that good at experimenting with tonal qualities.

7) Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day
**For those of you that don't know Julie Doiron, I'm sorry. If you have any love for Feist in her pre-iPod days, Julie Doiron provides a wealth of introverted emotional ephemera. Whereas her earlier album Woke Myself Up was up for some awards in Canada, I think that this album has done more for her here in the US. I suspect it's because it was released after her collaboration with Fred Squire and Mount Eerie that put her on the radar of all the Mount Eerie fans. This album seems to take off from the same point of departure as those two earlier albums I just mentioned, with a more upbeat sound, whose sound at times threatens to unhinge, reminding you that Julie is a nice person, who just wants to talk to her kids on her birthday while she's on tour. Anyone that gets a chance to catch her live, do it; you'll be in for a treat as you listen to Julie Doiron haphazardly relate 10 minute anecdotes between songs that remind you that despite what you may think, there is plenty of warmth in Canada.

8) Mika Miko - We Be Xuxa
**Mika Miko was the band that re-instilled my faith in punk rock. And it's a pity that they are breaking up, or have already done so, this year, but that's the way of punk bands. One should be surprised, I suppose, that any punk band lasts as long as it does. Mika Miko has the stripped down guitar work and driving beats you expect from this genre, but with the testosteroney male aggression defanged. That is not to say these aren't some tough ladies, and I find myself describing Mika Miko as a (post)-riot grrrl band, whatever that even means. The vocals are a bit of a departure from typical punk, and are much more in the style of noise rock. It's a pity they aren't playing shows anymore, because they seemed to consistently have the best artwork for their merch.

9) Beach House - Teen Dream
**I don't even know if this album is getting released this year or next, but I managed to get a hold of what is probably a transcode, since the torrent was pulled rather quickly. In any case, I've always liked Beach House, but was never blown away. And normally I'm not really enthusiastic about bands becoming more well-produced, but it seems to have worked for Beach House this time around. Their dream pop has gotten dreamier, like when you know you shouldn't eat those pizza and donuts at 3 in the morning before you go to sleep, but you do anyway. Well, minus the stomach-ache, anyway. The new single, "Norway", (which is available for free on their website, I think) has been the song of the month or whatever for me; I can't stop listening to it. Highly recommended whenever it finally is released for real.

10) The Bell Orchestre - As Seen Through Windows
**I have some friends that say that they can't listen to music without lyrics, and that generally speaking, they need vocals to focus on, even if they aren't in English. Well, if any of you are like that, I hope I don't surprise you with 4 instrumental albums on my list. The Bell Orchestre, from their inception have been in my sights. They follow a similar formula to Do Make Say Think with their 'post-rock with horns' formula, but they pull it off without going the jazzy direction that DMST does (which may just be because DMST has two drummers as well). In fact, I get this general feeling from this Canadian band when I listen to them like I'm going on a fox hunt in the middle of winter, but instead of finding a fox in the thicket of the woods, I find myself in Narnia. This album seems overly appropriate for the new snow and is certainly going to help me make it through the winter.

****
some other honourable mentions:

Charles Spearin - The Happiness Project
Le Loup - Family
Micachu - Jewellery
The Most Serene Republic - ...And the Ever Expanding Universe
Team Teamwork - The Ocarina of Rhyme [no, I'm not shitting you; a Zelda-rap mash up that is genius]
Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
Matt & Kim - Grand

****
I probably forgot some, so correct me if I'm wrong.
Also, if anybody feels like they need something, send me a message.

.a.missed.connection.to.my.sexually.incompatible.crush.

[this is a draft of something I'm submitting for a zine Stefanie Murawfsky is working on for a gender class. Everyone should read it whenever she's done with it!]

******

a Missed Connection to my sexually incompatible crush


We met at the Tegan and Sara show last week, when a mutual friend introduced us to each other. I was wearing pants, a tshirt and shoes, maybe even socks. You had hair shorter than mine in an asymmetric style and a half sleeve. You were also wearing a plaid button down shirt. We joked about how nice it was that you were so tall, because you could see over the teeming crowd of teenage girls holding hands. I made a joke about how it's convenient that lesbians don't seem to pay much attention to their partner's height, but I think the applause was too loud for you to hear me.

We found out after the show that we had both ridden our bikes to the show, and that we lived in the same direction. I had gotten a flat tire, however, and upon realizing this, you nimbly flipped my bike over and replaced my inner tube with a spare you had, all in under five minutes.

We stopped by a 24 hour donut shop, commonly frequented by vampiric philosophers (the kind whose postulates and polemics fail to materialize at any other time than the dead of night), and sat down for a late night snack that ironically did not consist of any donuts. You ordered a shawarma, and I ordered a basket of fries. You offered me a bite, but I told you I'm a vegan, and you simultaneously voiced your admiration of my morals and your love for meat, and your addiction to tacos. I laughed and put a small limp french fry in my mouth.

At about 2 in the morning, a bunch of drunken girls stumbled in for donuts. They were loudly singing the latest Lady Gaga song, and looking as if they might have also been competing for a look alike award. We talked about how much this 'girl power' ethos has devolved into pure camp, and that we both missed the days of riot grrrl. We couldn't agree on whether or not Huggy Bear or Bikini Kill was better.

You invited me back to your place to hang out, since neither of us were tired after having gulped down midnight coffee. You had Fallout 3, and we powerfisted the inhabitants of post-apocalyptic Washington DC in slow motion into the early morning. I noticed that there were a lot of clothes around that were far too small for you, and you told me that it was your ex's stuff, and that she still hadn't picked up yet since the break up. I asked you when that was, if you didn't mind sharing. Your break up had only been a month ago. I'm sorry to hear that (I'm really not); how long were you guys together? Three weeks. She took custody of the cat.

There was a slightly awkward silence and I asked if you played the piano in the corner of the room, hoping that it wasn't also your ex's. I said I had learned a song once from my brother. You seemed to perk up and pulled me over to the piano and asked me to play it. I fumbled through the first few bars of Erik Satie's Gymnopédies No. 1 before giving up. You gave me some encouraging words while holding my hands, remarking that I had long nimble fingers and that I had potential as a pianist. Then you sat down and virtuosically hammered out Piazzolla arrangement, further highlighting my ineptitude. The neighbors stomped on the ceiling in annoyance, and you had to end the piece prematurely.

We both dozed off on the couch after having put on the Buffy musical, and I dreamed about sinking my teeth into you, abruptly waking up with trepidation about the morning light. You were already up and taking a shower to get ready for work. I decided to make breakfast, which worked out because you had faux sausage in the freezer, which I guess you liked better than the real thing anyway. You seemed pleasantly surprised at having been prepared breakfast, and even more pleased after having eaten. Apparently you don't usually have time to eat more than bagel before work, and on top of that, you joked that you thought I was such a great cook I should cook breakfast for you every morning. I almost choked on my orange juice, but it may have just been because there was more pulp in it than I am used to.

Well, I have to get going to work, you said. You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like, and eat whatever you can find; just make sure the door locks behind you when you leave. I asked where you worked and you told me at the Valvoline downtown. I laughed and said that I might bring my car in, since the tire alignment seemed to be off. You have me an amazing hug goodbye and you must not have been wearing a bra because I could feel your nipple piercings through your shirt.

Anyway, I misplaced your number and thought it might be creepy to just show up at your apartment unannounced. Our mutual friend is traveling in Thailand right now, so I can't get in touch with her either.
There's a Peaches concert coming up, and I was hoping you'd want to go. We don't have to call it a date. That might imply something! But we can also call it a date if you're cool with it. Whatever works, right? It's not like I'm buying you dinner. I already bought an extra ticket for you. We can also get dinner beforehand if you want.

I think you're really great.
I'm sorry I have a penis.

.regressions.in.listening.

These confessions of ours
hardly seem to be able to, can only scarcely
beat on our over-taut eardrums. It's a familiar
rhythm, and all we can manage is
to push some air around, as if it weighed
more than you and me put
together. Put
in, out, away.

Hands, once together, clasp
wildly into the air, warding
off the last warm whispers that summer
left us with. White knuckles
grasping for those patches of
colour traversing the open spaces
from brittle branches to their brethren
mashed into the cul de sac.

If we have missed one
beat, we have missed several.
If we have climbed one
mountain of air, we have fallen
through many more. If
we could only remember
the melody, we could whistle
the tune. But we are left with nothing
more than refrains, an empty
chorus we can't place ourselves in
anymore.

.tree.trunk.arithmetic.

eyes diverge, gaze diverts
swooping fates scratched and
carved, like tree trunk arithmetic,
onto parting palms

.the.smouldering.season.

Why is it that plants get to take in all this sunlight, turn it into food even, and the three of us are sitting here absorbing nothing more than various shades of burning, possibly even cancer? Black black cancer, that acrid charcoal. I could tell you all about it, and how we're never going to find a cure because we all know somebody with cancer, and god help us if medicine isn't the fashionably late stranger to the party. My ex called me a cynic. My father was a smoker.

"For chrissakes, Mara, you're burning up!"
Nina decided to bring her girlfriend today, and for once, I wasn't the palest one, the one peeling bits of skin off my shoulders by the end of the day. Watching Nina apply sunscreen onto Mara struck me as something less than the lesbian fantasy captured within frat house posters, and was rather a fairly eerie process. It is like when you watch actors taking off their make up backstage, wiping a ghost off their faces and shaking them back into the air of the theatre, to be resummoned and reapplied for the next audience.
Well, I suppose it was like that in reverse, watching Mara's white skin smudge whiter.

"I don't know, maybe we should all get as much sun as we can now. And then we'll have that nice burn to keep us warm when the rain hits on Thursday."
"It's going to rain on Thursday?"
"All through the weekend."
"Ah! No shit, I have to run to campus on Thursday to drop off a paper. Maybe I'll take the bus. Are you sure it's going to rain, Thomas? Where did you read that?"
"I think Ted told me at work yesterday."
"I saw it online too, Nina."
"Well goddamn, summer's really over then, isn't it?"
"It's been over for a few weeks now, hasn't it? Isn't it the twenty-first or something when it switches over?"
"I think so."
"Screw the calendar; you can't tell me that this is autumn sunlight. And who goes to the beach in the fall, right?"
"Well, I guess that would be us."
"And this isn't a beach. It's a lake. You can't have a beach unless you're on the ocean."

The last time Nina had gotten sunburned was when she went with her family to Sri Lanka. In fact, it might have been the only time she got burned in her entire life. There is a sneaking temptation to make a joke about her people being bred to be immune to the sun, but for one, I had already made that joke this morning, and for two, I had the realization that it was probably a little less than a joke. My only inheritance was scuffed up Honda, bestowed on me as encouragement to pack my belongings and move somewhere to make something of life, and have it make something of me.
I lived in that car for a month and a half trying to get there. And when I was halfway to where I was going, I made a phone call to an answering machine and doubled backed, making a beeline for the start of the story, towards the happy hand holding, the first tentative kisses that are felt out with the lips, before we could taste on each other's tongues the sustenance that keeps us alive. She must have tasted on me that black, acrid decay of a bummed Parliament Light before she flung herself across the continent, tasting, herself, ever so slightly of cheap strawberry vodka.
-I know my mom is an alcoholic, she said, and I shouldn't be saying this, but your dad died of lung cancer. Do you really want to be smoking as well?
-Fuck off. He was an alcoholic too, I said as I finished the bottle.

Nina was in the water, treading about with nebulous intentions, deliberating on whether or not she wanted to swim or stand, keep her head above or below, billow up with the passing waves or meet them stiffly like a Dutch dike.
"You don't swim, Thomas?"
"Rather, I swam too much: swim team. The problem is I don't know how to do anything else. I forgot how to really enjoy being in the water a while ago."
"How long ago were you a swimmer?"
"Oh man, I don't even know. High school? I just haven't gone back to the water since then, really."
That was a lie. I had gone to the beach, the real beach, courtesy of Estella's family after graduation, where we had had White Russians in the condo and listened to Elvis Costello. We didn't change our clothes for the entire week.
"What about you? You not a big swimmer either?"
"Hm, I guess I haven't really thought about it too much. It doesn't appeal to me, but doesn't really bother me either, I guess. I didn't bring my swimsuit today though."
Estella and I were busted by the beach cops for skinny dipping at 3 in the morning. They warned us about the riptides pulling out seasoned swimmers and the moustached one gave me a buddy-buddy nudge as we ran back to the condo. We went straight to bed naked and slept on the wet sheets for the rest of the week.
"I think they dump all sorts of trash into the lake as well. It's kind of gross."
"Yeah, I heard about that. I keep telling Nina she's going to get some horrible disease from being in that water, but she doesn't really seem to care."

I had humoured my parents before my dad died, by going with them to the Phillipines for their 25th anniversary. It was the dead of winter and all I had on me were the books and printed out essays I needed for my research paper. My mom had a somewhat disappointed look about her, but must have decided to not let it stop her as she spent the rest of the week drinking rum in the giant sandcastle she commissioned some 8 year-olds to build her, and eating at the various Mongolian barbeques by night. My dad gave me some cash, which I spent at the poorly-ventilated internet cafe writing disjointed emails half a day into the past.
I finally gave in to my mom's insistence that I try the terrific fresh seafood halfway through the trip, being utterly fed up trying to explain vegetarianism to the vendors, who had learned only enough English to pander to the tourists on the island that outnumbered them a dozen to one. As expected, I got not quite deathly ill, but I could make out death on the horizon, it seemed.

Nina was drying off her hair and changing out of her swimsuit, attracting more than a few glances from a Hispanic family down the shore, as well as an elderly Asian family feeding some seagulls.
"Have you ever realized that this beach is usually totally the ethnic beach?"
"It's not a beach, Nina."
"Whatever, babe."
Watching them kiss made me wonder if Estella and I had ever been that sincere. I don't know it was just us or not, but I don't think I was ever as natural at it as Nina and Mara were. It's like they had it all figured out, and knew how to make it count, or if not, were willing to overlook the dark alleys of their doubts, and walk under the bright streetlights of the time they had together.
"So who moved in with who?"
"Ha ha. We still have our own places, thanks."
"While Nina's finishing up school anyway, right?"
"Oh, way to give the game away. So yeah, yeah, we'll be the U-Haul lesbians, but I'm allergic to cats, so don't count on that."
"And I like dogs better anyway."
"No dogs either! It's too close to having children."

-You're burning up, Thomas, my mom said as she put a damp hand towel over my forehead. God knows where she found a thermometer in the Phillipines. Her hands felt soft and cool against my skin, despite the callouses from playing the cello.

Mara's recital was in a few weeks, and it was her big fall performance, the last proving ground before her college would relinquish to her her due degree. Nina had nearly gotten fired from her part-time job trying to get that evening off.
-Aw, damn the man. You know I'd go even if they fired me.
None of us knew if Mara was going to get her visa renewed after graduating. Nina joked about her screwing up on purpose, but I suppose that it is some seriously bad juju to talk about that kind of thing. And in all honesty, Mara was good, too good to force herself to underperform. The first time she had played for us in her living room, it was if each wavering note had trickled down our ear canals and set fire to the kindling in our chests.

Summer was burning itself out, us smouldering along with it, leaving blackened husks to wait for its inevitable return the coming year, complete with new ultimatums of reigniting myself or finally collapsing inwards into the tarry darkness of my heaving lungs.

.where.do.you.find.a.dolphin.frame.

"Mr. K and Ms. S cordially invite you to attend their wedding on the 16th of May"

The invitation was pretty, I suppose, if not decorated overzealously with dolphins, which S loved so much when we were together. It looks like some things never really change. She certainly sat in his lap as they stared at the computer monitor, sifting and sieving through images of dolphins, deciding whether or not they should go with a gracefully submerged s-shaped posture, or the exuberance and raw energy of a bottlenose exploding from the water. Jesus, did they actually consider getting those cheesy entangled dolphin rings as well? or matching yin and yang dolphin tattoos? She'd never be that tacky, of course.
Don't get me wrong, here. I don't have the kind of emotional stake in this whole thing in the way you might imagine. I'm over it. Seriously. I'm seeing someone too, and she comes over every Tuesday and Thursday and spends the night, usually. I try to make it over to her place on Fridays when I can, but in all honesty, she tends to go out more than I do, and after spending a few nights alone in her bed, it seemed a little easier to make plans on my own.
Actually, most of these plans end up being lonely nights in, trying my best to churn something out of the piano. She plays the cello. Not S, that is, but Kaela, my current partner. We actually met at a city-sponsored free opera event, where we were shushed by the teeming ocean of white people indulging in high white culture. We laughed about how we were setting a bad example for our respective stereotypes. It didn't matter what they were, of course, so long as we were browner than the rest of them. She told me to fart behind a particularly stuffy collar as we ditched the concert mid-aria to go throw pebbles at the small sailboats in the harbour. We fooled around on a park bench before she straightened her jacket, looked for the earring that she had just lost, before finally deciding that she didn't have time before her cello lessons.
Last I heard from S, she had made it back to school like she had wanted. She was working on her masters now, if I recall correctly, in child sociology, in particular something to do with the legal system as it applies to minors. And the funny part is that we had always talked about how we hated children, or at least the prospect of creating any. I wonder if K is bringing any children into the relationship. Common sense says no, but I never thought S would go back to school either. I never thought she would give up eating meat again, and I figured it must be K's fault. It always seems to go one direction or another with those kind of dietary relationships. I must have corrupted her for that year and a half, when she reintroduced into her body the disassembled flesh of once living animals. She vomited the first time she ate the sushi we had picked up on a whim. I was caught off guard, and when I realized what had happened, I told her that we could have at least made an event of it, rather than mediocre take-out sushi in front of Star Trek reruns on my living couch. I thought I could handle it, she said, I didn't want to be the girl that orders the salad all the time.
I put the wedding invitation in the top drawer of my filing cabinet. It's where that sort of thing goes these days: invitations, birthday cards, ironic July valentines from Kaela. Below it, I keep folders of various photographs people send me. I think that my diploma might be tucked away in that drawer as well. And finally, the bottom drawer is where all the letters go. I have lost some of the envelopes, and a few of the letters met sloppy fates with saucy meals, but everything, for the most part, is still fully intact.
Frankly, I never even read anything, and hardly even look at the photographs, although I had always promised S I would find a good one to frame. Kaela doesn't seem to really mind, and suggested that I should get the photo inside an elaborate dolphin frame. Do they even make those?
The more I think about it, the more S fills up most of that cabinet, and some days, I really just want to lose the key and throw the whole thing into the ocean, walking away without ever seeing whether or not it sinks sleepily into the murky depths or surfaces for air.

I'm sick of hearing about the goddamn wind. I want to sink my teeth in a poem already.

.echoes.on.the.line.

It occurs to me that I can't recall how you sound, the voice that crept over me for so long. And we have all these great analogies and images for how it's like watching a silent movie, or hitting the mute button on the remote, but it's a little more eerie than that, I think. It seems that - with the absence of subtitles in my memories - the words are preserved, but given breath by other voices. So I suppose we can modify that metaphor a bit. We can call it a dubbed film.
Is it a big deal? Probably not. I tend to shy away from the phone anyway, and at this point, both of us having taken flight to opposite ends of the continent, drawing open like curtains the vast expanse of land in between us, there is little chance of actual contact. We would have nothing to say to each other.
It's bad enough for me having to call customers while I am at work, and I spend most of the time hoping that they won't pick up, allowing me to leave a message wherein I will trip over the same inevitable consonant clusters. And for all the typos I ignore in text messaging, as I spread grease all around the tiny illuminated keys on my phone, no one is expecting more than a few words. No one is really expecting my voice.
So maybe you don't remember what I sound like either. We could have an anonymous phone conversation from two pay phones, and talk about all the things that have been going on, and we can imagine the voices and stories coming from the mouths of strangers. If we could free ourselves from memories.

My phone rings, and I scramble as I always do to pick it up.
She's calling me back!
I answer the phone, my tongue ready to walk a tightrope of the right steps and sounds. For a moment I can almost recall your voice as she says my name, but as she continues speaking, the memory recedes back to being nothing more than an unplaceable humming along to this new refrain.

Fever

Your skin is a fever under
my fingers. At night when
thunder beats like a drum
against the house, we shield
our bodies in blankets.
I feel like a new moon
rising over you, far away
but seemingly near.
Let me love you from here
where it's safe, where
it's easy to lose.

Illinois

Come over; eat cereal with me.
I want to be poor
with you.

But then I don't. I don't
want what my parents had,
their food stamps and their love.

This morning
two slugs drug across my porch,
one half on the back of the other.

I sizzled them with salt, what else
was there to do?
It is a fool's thing to die alone.

.history's.hooves.

"
It's the old Gestapo headquarters. They're digging it up, researching the past. I don't know how anyone of my generation could accept that --Gestapo crimes neutralized by archaeology.
"
-Ian McEwan, Black Dogs


We are the walking, breathing past, not come to life as in the movies, but refusing to submit to rest. But not all of us. Don't flatter yourself; you may be as old as I, and although the stampede of history tramples us all, rarely do the wildebeest deeds of our lives make eye contact. Rarely do we come close enough to feel the breath from hot history's nostrils.

My two-year old nephew comes to visit me today. I told my brother that I would watch him while him and his wife went on a date. They are going to the same restaurant they were in eleven years ago when he proposed to her. I remember him asking me about it, if I thought it was wise, if I thought she'd accept, and what could I say? Would they have enough money? How did our parents do it? I had half a mind to follow him to the restaurant that night and watch from the corner as he sweated in his new collar, making small signals to the waiter.
And after they got married, our parents kept asking when the grandkids were coming, as if they could think of no better way to elbow their way into our lives any further. My brother and his new wife said they weren't ready yet; they were both still in school, and wanted to have enough money before bring a kid into the world. I wondered if there were some stupid book of these conversations that normal people memorized, quoting and playing the part with lack of gusto when the scene was set. 'And what of your brother', they asked him. 'Tell him to stop screwing around. He's the oldest son and he still doesn't have a girlfriend, much less a son to carry the name.' Where do they get this stuff? My brother sticks up for me as best he can, but it's a losing battle.
By the time that Jonas, my nephew, was born, my parents were in the ground and sea. My mother wanted to be buried, returned to the earth and all of that business. My father wanted to be scattered into the waters of the Pacific Ocean, presumably to make the swim back to his homeland. Even to their deaths, my parents were of firm, if not stereotypical character. How is it that my mother wished to be reunited with that great natural mother of all of us, while my dad thought he could still conquer the vast expanse of azure wilderness? I'm telling you, if there is some guidebook to staying in character, I did not receive one.
My brother tells me maybe I can start Jonas on the guitar early, haha, and maybe he'll be great musician one day. Like I never was, my brother is mindful not to add. And technically the guitar is partially his, as he lent me money to buy the 54-year old guitar, money which I have yet to pay back, though he has long since forgotten about it. I have not touched it in at least a month, to be honest, but probably closer to six weeks. The strings, no doubt need to be changed. And what the heck, why was I even considering all of this as if Jonas was actually going to sit down and play the damned thing, which sits, older than both of us combined, in its humidity-regulated case more often than not.
Jonas is dropped off shortly after Angie gets off work, as my brother swings by on his way to picking her up. I eye his slick black car, barely a year and a half old, and wonder how long it will be before they decide they need an SUV, or a minivan. Or maybe they'll have enough money to keep the date car, loaning me the minivan when I need to run errands.

"Thanks for watching Jonas, bro."
"No problem," I say, thinking of whether or not he was welcome.
"We'll probably be back before midnight, after the concert."
"Oh, a concert, too? Who's playing?"
"Oh, I don't know. Nobody you'd like. Angie got the tickets. It might be an orchestra?"

He sped off down the street, and I could picture him straightening his shirt, and delicately playing with the spot on his nose where he had a mole surgically removed when he was 24. It messed up his mojo, he said. You still got it, old man? he joked with me. I told him I hadn't had a date in six months. He laughed and told me maybe he'd try to set me up with someone he knew, maybe someone in his program. I don't need a green card girlfriend, I told him. He laughed again and drove to the hospital.
I never had the nerve, or desire, to renovate my face, but I held no qualms when it came to my house, an old duplex my parents had bought so I could have a convenient home while I was in school. They had rented out the other side, but since they died, it sat vacant while my brother and I circled around the idea of trying to rent it or sell it. You could move in with me and Angie, he said. I told him I could probably fix it up a little and then we could play it by ear. Sure, let me know if you need help.
So it began over three years ago, and I am still in the process of knocking down walls, replacing flooring, repainting. I stayed at my brother's for a week while I was working on the plumbing, but Jonas had just been born and I suspected I wasn't truly welcome. But he had promised, and with the prospect of the duplex being sold, if not collapsing beforehand, he was probably figuring out what he'd do if I actually moved in with him. After all, we were both raised with the unbreakable tenet of family first, and it'd be sooner than later that Mom would rise from the dirt and Dad's ashes would stop midstroke and turn right back around if we were to violate laws of family. 'Do you know how much we went through and sacrificed to give you everything? You wouldn't even be here if your father had gone to school for playing guitar.'
I think, really, I just enjoyed seeing change. I liked seeing the rooms change size, location, the walls change colours, the doors tentatively experimenting with which way to swing. We were told that if there were to be another earthquake, like the one that brought my parents' house down over their heads, we were to try to hide in the bathtub or underneath a door threshold. And why not a bathtub under a threshold, I joked. The lawyer tried to muster a chuckle before getting a papercut on his ring finger from some document or another my parents had prepared in case of their incidental demise. They were ready for everything, I suppose.
Anyway, that was the uninhabited side of the duplex, of course, and despite my satisfaction at the constant and complex rearrangements of structural skeletons, it was a relief to sit down on my couch and be entertained by Jonas. Jonas despised television, which I imagined was something of a vestigial trait from our parents, who bought a TV as a status symbol and consequently banned my brother and I from watching it for more than an hour a day, maybe two on weekends. The first time Angie had tried the electronic babysitter, Jonas burst into tears at the garishly coloured puppets on the big-screen TV, expanded to unnatural sizes. It could have been worse, but Jonas was rather well-behaved, a Golden Child all of Angie's friends joked, before relaying the last post-natal catastrophe. Jonas seemed pretty content to sit around and practice walking and running around most of the time, so long as someone was there to pay attention to him.
Eventually I decided to relocate to the porch, so we could watch as the setting sun painted the sky like an Easter egg. And with the outline of the buildings etched into the horizon, I thought about my little neighbourhood, this small town actually being inside a giant Easter egg, waiting to be found by someone, to be held by new hands, and examined by new eyes.
The librarian girl that lives down the street is walking her dog and stops to coo at how cute Jonas is. She knows he isn't mine and doesn't bother asking. I tell her that her dog is also cute, to which she laughs and says, 'Oh, this old fart? He is far beyond his cute years.' We talk a little longer about the weather and Kurt Vonnegut, before she starts to continue with her walk. 'Before old Woland here decides to crap on your yard,' she smirks as she tosses his ears around. 'Woland?' I ask. 'Oh yeah, I got him long ago right after I read The Master and Margarita and just thought it'd make the perfect name.' 'Ahh. I think I may have just gone with Margarita, personally.'
I would have asked her if she had liked to make some margaritas had I not tried asking her out to a movie when she moved into the neighbourhood. She agreed, but had decided to bring a friend of hers along as well. We had a good time hanging out, and I couldn't help feeling like that Steve Buscemi played in the movie adaptation of Ghost World. They would no doubt talk about how I was an old creeper after we parted ways that night. She would then think of various ways to tell me I was too old for her. She never did.

'Maybe you'll have better luck than me, Jonas.'
He wasn't particularly paying attention to anyone right now, and was playing with plastic ring etched with bite marks. I thought about how terrible plastic was for the environment, and how it would outlast both of us, and this house that we were sitting on the porch of. And yet, it would never receive the baton of history from Jonas, or his potential children, or their potential children. It will remain well-trampled, and utterly ignored by history stampeding by. Looking at Jonas, and the librarian girl disappearing down the block, I felt truly like walking, breathing history, and how we all have our turns to catch the eye of time's wildebeest, before being relegated to nothing more than ink to be written into the memoirs of those following us in the kicked up dust.

.eskimo.rolls.

With compulsory athletics, you don't end up having too many options until senior year. Until then, it was boys beating on boys in intramural house football - the oldest full-contact football league in the United States, I read - and then lurching into the drudgeries of winter and spring sports at which only the occasional sub-talented, or too lazy to try out for varsity, boy would attempt to lead his team. That was me with volleyball in the first month or so of winter term, and soccer at the start of spring term. Perhaps the best memory I have of how house volleyball played out is not even my own, but rather that of the duty master who coached our volleyball antics towards, and hopefully over, the net. It was some point during one of the games, when a boy on the other team happened to be standing on the court with his hand - and this is a bizarre trend I have not seen, thankfully, since my high school days - crassly down the front of his athletic shorts. He was neither fondling himself, nor was it cold, and the duty master (who we were all convinced had been a spy, and had a Chinese wife who barely spoke English) looked on with disgust, remarking dolefully that it was his personal volleyball that we were playing with. And does that cretin even realize where his hands have been and where they currently are?
It goes without saying that sophomore and junior year were a nightmare of competitive apathy.

So by the time senior year rolled around, the leashes were let out a bit, just taut enough to remind us of who was in charge, but just slack enough to earn our gratitude for the slender mercy afforded us: an extra hour of parietals (though I never really had girls in my room anyhow), an hour chipped away from study hall, and allowing the senior Upper House to become something of a quarantine colony for those with quick onset senioritis. And clearly, there is enough mayhem and debauchery in those extra hours to fill out page upon page, chapter upon chapter of epic stories. But my school, which I will perhaps keep unnamed for a while longer, has more than its fair share of lore in that manner, the kind of unspoken lore that garners a sly hint of a grin from the housemasters' mouths if they deem you worthy of such exclusivity. For the record, I never quite bought into the whole system of house competition (and as seniors, who were we fighting anyway?), and consequently suffered something of a rebuke from the housemasters. You have to figure that anyone living with their family in a house stuffed with over a score of teenage boys has to be looking for something they didn't get enough when they were stuffed into the plaster-walled rooms. They are curators of vicarious past ribaldries. They are the fathers that try to incompetently play Nintendo with you, and then refuse to drive you to your friend's house. Old boys and older rules lorded over the brick buildings of those dorms.

But in any case, with no one else to compete against - the senior boys were all packed into one enormous dorm - the non-varsity or JV sports for us were a hodgepodge of whatever activities the teachers that abhorred athletics wanted to do. Well, of course. You know that not all among those intellectual bunch had forgotten the days when they were humiliated by poor endurance and an anemic sense of coordination. So as it were, one of the physics teachers and another teacher I can't remember taught and sponsored - babysat, really - senior kayaking, the refuge of those of us looking to escape not only gruelling physical exertion, but also the confines of the 800-acre campus designed by the infamous Olmstead. There's never enough space when a wall is around it.
The first task was to teach us not to drown. We were taken to the swimming pool, where we then provided with kayaks, lifejackets and paddles, maybe even helmets. As we were instructed on how the skirt worked, and where the handles were, and how to bail out of the capsized kayak, I came to the realization that I was going to have to get wet, something I had reached a plateau of loathing for after having been forced on the swim team for 7 or 8 years of my early life. And whereas I appreciate the broader shoulders now, which I have received compliments directed specifically at (leaving me speechless, as how do you even respond to such a remark), there has ever since been a sour taste in my mouth for those chlorinated rectangular bodies of water. Eventually, we were all taught how to eskimo roll as well, which I think was taught to us more so to boost our self-confidence than anything else, as I don't think any of us were ever able to successfully execute the maneuvre in open water.
But finally, they thought we were ready to pile into the van and make our way towards the Delaware River, the very same one that George Washington brazenly crossed in a painting somewhere. The noble posture was a little compromised when I realized that the water was no more than chest deep in most parts I paddled about in.
At first, we didn't do anything fancy; we just took a leisurely kayak canoe trip down some side stream, where, to counteract some of the boredom of teenagers being surrounded by nature, my classmates began to compose a theme song for my roommate, who had somehow acquired the moniker of Robot Astronaut. I think that may actually have been my doing. It was partly because at some point in time in the van, we had been discussing a bass guitar, which Will heard as a "space guitar". It was also partly because we all enjoyed harrassing Will over his large head - though it could have just as well been a slender neck.
Eventually, the instructors decided we should tackle one of the waterfalls on the river. I think everyone was a little excited and anxious over the proposal, envisioning grandiose waterfalls from fiction and photos alike. Not to mention that one scene in The Last of the Mohicans starring Daniel Day-Lewis where he makes out with some girl behind an Indian waterfall before diving down the toppling water (I think that that particular film was watched a disproportionate amount in high school, and still sticks to the inside of my head to this day).
Of course, when we arrived at the waterfall, it was a gurgle of rushing water with the ferocity and grandeur of rainwater swirling down a sewer grate. Our physics teacher was clearly more excited than he had been in weeks, and was eager to get us all to 'surf' the little waterfall. We willingfully complied, paddling a few times in the rushing water before turning around and floating downstream a bit until we could make it back to the wooded bank of the river.

And one day, as the fall days got inevitably cooler, and the river correspondingly dropped a few degrees, we found ourselves more than a little disgruntled at the prospect of getting wet on such an overcast day, the kind that has the odor of unprepared for midterms and college essays. It was another day tackling the great waterfall and we could practically see the field lines and vectors of excitement radiating from our physics teacher's face.
We all took our time trudging down to the ater, dragging our kayaks on our shoulders (I swear they got heavier as the season wore on). By this time in the year, we had resorted to wearing the waterproof nylon jackets provided to us, possibly the most uncomfortable thing I had to wear all senior year. The wet nylon was one thing, but the elastic fitted cuffs and waistline made the whole thing near unbearable for me, and I even decided for a day to forego the thing altogether and just deal with the cold.
But if anything was a sign that none of our hearts were really in it that day, we were ignored. The results were almost comical, really: as we each took our turn, one by one, to try to surf the falls, we each, one by one, capsized immediately. Every last eight of us in less than ten minutes, swept downstream by the current, and unable to do an eskimo roll taught to us over a month ago in the placid serenity of the swimming pool. We all abandoned ship, which had been the modus operandi anyhow, as none of us were really capable of anything except saving ourselves. Except this time, I wasn't able to grab my kayak and paddle after I emerged from underneath the water. I began to focus, instead, on my swimming training as a child and started taking some decisive strokes toward the river bank. If anyone was watching, they might even be impressed enough to ask me where I learned how to swim like that. As it were, I took approxiamately three strokes before I realized I could stand up in the water, which came up somewhere along my thighs.
When I made it back to the bank, with all my other wet and shivering friends, I told the teacher that my school-provided kayak and paddle were floating downstream along the Delaware River somewhere. I could see my physics teacher's expression collapsing, like Rome in flames, becoming nothing more than a defeated resignation of an old white-bearded man by the time we all piled back in the van.
But for the moment, as the two teachers chased my kayak and paddle down the water, we were left on the bank of the Delaware River, shaking our wet hair out, with at least two hours before dinner at the dining hall and miles from campus. For the next 15 minutes or so, we were all free, free to be swept away by the fiery leaf-bearing currents of brisk autumn air before we too were hunted down by grizzled old physics teachers.