Want To

I really want to.

I want to hear people stop over explaining things because the people on the receiving end may not be that stupid. If they are, no amount of fine detailing will help them understand. If they aren’t, they’ll want to run into traffic due to you explaining the same thing repeatedly, just like I want to.

I want to kick people in the shins with a steel toe boot when they get flustered and speak with a strained throat at a higher pitch to amplify their frustration. I want to tell them that their dramatic voice choice doesn’t help make their case.

I really want to breathe in space. There could be absolutely nothing in my lungs…vacuum. That would be immensely intriguing so I really want to do that.

I want to swim wearing a belt made of bricks every time people ask banal questions like how was your flight? after a trip or and how are you feeling? after a death in the family or how are you today? every time you show up to work. For once I want someone to say nothing about my flight, perhaps nod in acknowledgement of a family death or just throw me a high five at the beginning of the work day. If they did those things instead I wouldn’t swim with a brick belt, I’d swim with the lung fulls of vacuum I took in space.

I want more people to vocally hash tag things because 94% of the time it sounds pretty funny.

I want you to read this. If you agree with it we’ll talk because I want to.

I want to hear what her eyes see.

I want to run with my bare feet all day or with the shoes that simulate bare feet because the pain in my calves afterward is so true and progressive and accomplished that it is euphoric so that’s why I want to.

I want to rip money lengthwise and arrange them to look like = then staple them to walls and billboards and glue them to windows and magnet them to fridges and everyone would think it means something but I’d still hate money. I think I hate it because I want to.

I want to flush away the stacks of things in my skull they just compress and make me busy behind my eyes and that static is very daunting. It isn’t enough to complain about, as with 99% of things people do complain about, but the busy head is an unwelcome friend and I want to make it gone. Then I could focus because I want to.

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Photos On Phursday: Thanks October Deux

In the midst of stumbling through that month I continued snapping up some eye grips of the places around me (I took some pictures).

Thank God that’s over.

HOTEL

Hotels are the loneliest places on earth. On Sundays their hallways are empty except for glum business men and the stale air of the weekend.

Broken Legs

In the morning…and that ambient ring…and the grey scent of the marine layer…tones of cynicism…dull weariness…after effects or regret…harmonic breathing…some one is with me…the bed is empty.

That’s how it went when the air was freezing. At the beginning of the end of the world there became two birds singing. Lest I find two people conforming. So I jot down the letters of a nihilist groaning.

When in line for coffee we all are waiting, the ins and outs of insecurity show. Fumbling and fidgeting. I pull at the bottom of my shirt, lean out my shape. She uses a palm-like mirror to adjust the fall of her hair. He pulls up his pants from the belt loops. Another says to another something about their accomplishments just loud enough for us to hear and we feign the faces of being impressed.

Building’s bricks sit quietly while me and someone admire the patterns. Do they mimic synchronicity?

With wide eyes, jets tear jagged exhaust lines across the sky, we admire. It’s nothing short of opportunistic, the way the catch our attention. That network becomes a painting in the low evening, yellow, pink, purples.

In the evening…broken legs…a weeks worth of clothes…tinges of opportunity…clever angles…laws defied…promised bubbles of air in the veins…clean eyes.

All These Friends

And I said “You’re thunder is always on.”

He laughs this wheezy type of laugh. We always appreciate these nonsensical scraps and the esoteric humour they possess.

“How many times did you live today?” he asks me.

“Seven” I answer.

We both laugh about this. Generally, both of us are quite stolid but with the complete void of seriousness that these absurdities employ we are free to laugh carelessly.

“How’s work going?” I ask.

“Yes” he answers.

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At 3:13 am we share the middle of the road on an impromptu walk under a purple summer sky. The previous day’s heat fills the air with a firm solidity. We don’t joke because that’s not what we do. He asks me questions he’s asked every other time and I try to tell him that I cannot offer up any more advice as it usually goes unused. He lists new indiscretions, things against his current long time girlfriend. He wonders aloud about letting her in on facts. I kick at stones in the road and the trees are still and my hair is standing up on the back of my neck. The world is charged, about to spark blue and white arcs and rip the power lines from their poles. He’s talking about a drug he tried and pleading his case for sparse usage. I’m starting to fade. Did I turn off the television. Who’s awake doing this somewhere else. Why do my calves hurt? He asks if he should move out west and I say if he moves far enough out west he’ll end up back on this exact same road. He calls me an asshole.

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She has thin limbs, wears a summer dress to the beach. She’s reading a good book.

I picked her up and she hugged me in the morning kissing my cheek, her lips lingered just a fraction of a second too long. She carried her own bag to the car.

I dig my feet in the sand and find her buried heel with my toe. Her palm slaps my arm, it stings of a young burn. She finishes her page and passes the book back to me; it’s my turn. It picks up mid sentence “…why do we exist? I don’t mean how, but why.” It’s a beautiful way to start my page. We do this at the beach when I’m not swimming, we pass books back and forth reading one page each. At the end of the chapter we fill in the blanks.

That bright, burning star has bronzed her exposed skin, so I’m peeking over the edge of the book cover and she notices and grins semi-mischievously. It reminds me that we kissed three summers ago and it fit very well and it couldn’t happen again.

She rests her wrist on my shoulder, the tips of her fingers ghostly touching my collarbone. I pass the book back to her, my page complete, she takes it with her free hand supporting the spine so that her hand can float where it is on my shoulder. I feel thankful.

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He calls me on my birthday. He e-mails me a week before to ask what day my birthday is.

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She moved away for school. Her voice comes out of the holes in the telephone, it talks to my ear. She is experiencing a pang of homesickness, but I remind her about what we call home. She asks how my trip to the beach was and I tell her about the book I’m reading with my friend. She says it sounds like something from a movie and laughs not at me. She asks about my roommate and I tell her one of our jokes. She doesn’t get it. She thanks me for giving her a ground, I thank her for letting me hear her voice. We say “I miss you”.

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At The Cottage

At the cottage the windows in the living room are squares setting the lake like frames in a second of film. Walls of wood. The air smells like forgotten tastes. The rain makes the black water glassy. All of the docks are in the water but useless; there are no boats now.

Across the channel the trees are green and green. Deciduous fingers claw at the sky. Dying needles are orange fire. Ages paint the backdrop hazy and blue as the shore stretches away. A fog hugs the surface of the lake, now just a noisy old monochrome photograph. The white disc of the sun becomes a feathered glimmer behind the spectrum of a thousand grays. Through the grain the shapes of the woods and rocks are phantom silhouettes. Small ripples show fractions of a wind. Misty sounds echo across the face of the water.

Evening clouds stack atop each other, heavier and heavier. Layered like a colour of paint subtly darkened by increasing amounts of black. Light fades like a fifty year love and the cottage becomes a place of quiet, aging reverie. Faces and songs, places and old sayings sink in the sand of the bank, the waters washing them away.

With a lit candle I sink into a wicker chair under the canopy of a stilted porch. There is no temperature this evening, only the wafting heat from the flame above my hand. The cottage is an empty shape behind me, not creaking or breaking the sound of a crying evening sky. Slowly, the fog walks onto the shore profiling the pebbles and ferns that compose the lake’s end. My feet feel the weathered wood, retained moisture, stories from the ground to the sky. Infinite drops of water perform percussion on the leaves.

At the cottage I’ve escaped the rapture. Here, I’ve destroyed the necessity of company. It is me and my skin and my eyes and the wood of a hundred dead trees that house my sleep. Tonight the sounds of a dying or living world don’t reach me. And I want to hum like the mountains did a million years before me. I want to chant like my hunched ancestors that felt the breeze of a thousand miles of landscape unbroken by buildings. Heathen rituals. Painted rocks, to wash my hands in the river, colour it. I want my bare feet to grow strong from the yield that falls from trees, the stones that crawl from the soil.

At the cottage a distant light steers through the sub-night. It is a yellow ghost, silent and small. Intrigued, I pull a sweater over my head and negotiate the slippery moss and dirt in my naked feet. The ground is wet, cool and agrees with the shape of their arches. With my candle in hand I step into my row boat, securing the waxy light on the bench across from me. The distant light blinks with the shifting fog as I push out onto the dead lake. My oars cut and carve the surface like the tools of a carpenter. The yellow light is a sign of life, but I must turn my back to it in order to row towards it. After minutes as years in limbo the density of the fog diminishes and I shoulder check to see that the light has become a sharper circle, still miles away. My shoulders ease and the oars go unused for a break as I drift towards the beacon, one I’ve assumed to be an invitation. And far faster than it appeared the yellow light vanishes to the tenebrous forest coast against the night. The candle sways and I keep my head twisted toward the other side of the channel, waiting for a spark. In the darkness I hum like the rivers that spanned ancient valleys. Fingers in the water, numb. Handfuls of a frigid nothing.

At the cottage I am a truth. My bones are my own. In this row boat I’m an island without roots. I feel a depth below me, a depth within me. The fog has blown open and the shape of my cottage rivals the black legs of a thousand trees. Mans imprint on the world. Of a structure within structures. And that mystic solitude cannot be undone. So I blow out my candle.

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Photos on Phursday: Found Art

I found this in Texas. It found me in Canada.

Split Eyes, Basement Doors

When I’m alone my chest splits open and little birds of time land on my bones. Their tiny feet cling to my skeleton. So I sew myself back up again and their feathers tickle my insides. All of their wings flap days hidden at their breast and when they try to fly away from my heart they birth hours and hours of questioning. They are birds because I’ve never understood the human desire to fly, so these minutes that are called time have to become something. If my time swam through my body like a thousand little fish I would embrace these passing increments without measure and get old very quickly.

April 3. In the backyard we are burying notes to ourselves in the future, warnings of things from the past. We figure, bury our mistakes and let them grow into trees. In this way they will be fixed in place as a large reminder but not one to carry on our shoulders. Their roots could spread and, if strong enough, ground our mistakes forever. But we’ll do this for a whole summer and fear how thick the forest will be the following year.

Now my eyes split open when you’re very close and your breath gets inside. So I sew up the seam and when I see it’s always foggy. I don’t mind because you’re the reason everything is blurry.

Like basement doors. They’re the same as every other door in the house but I’m anxious at what’s behind the subterranean ones. One day I’ll go to the laundry and when I open the door there will be a shadow in the dark. There will be a breath in the silence. There will be a dodging shape in the corner of my eye, then I’ll look and it will be an empty corner of the room.

Maybe we’re drifters. Yes, we are and we’re bouncing like hot atoms at the core of a sun. Or we are universes apart but some fabric of energy keeps thoughts in transmission. We are two people in a room the length of our lives grasping at congruency. Our shallow minds cannot fathom that our desires are already living out compatible days.

What this is

now this is a testing ground.

just a place to put up some words, maybe pictures, and more words.

it isn’t really a place anymore…more like limbo for practice.

www.extremenonchalance.tumblr.com is better