Spring, an homage

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the
Starnbergersee
With a show of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt
deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the
archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened.  He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.


The Wasteland (lines 1 through 18)  T.S. Eliot

Moon in the morning hangs semi-transparent in the blue sky.  The trains flush in and flush out, getting all where they need to go and never a minute too late.  I watch as smoke billows from an exhaust vent on top of a rusting warehouse and it steams a moisture patch on the brick chimney next to it, long since dormant.
It's a normal spring day, pretty and cool, and I think of T.S. Eliot and his twisted vision of the so-called prosperous season; how the sun  melted and uncovered piles of mangled bodies decomposing like cow dung in the damp, muddy heaths all across Europe; how even without a world war, spring somehow brings me a sense of sadness, just inklings, of how another season has passed and we looked forward to the next, forgetting of the last.
However, it's hard to be sad in the sun and it's hard to be sad in the breeze, but when the rain comes and cries its eyes on the grey-lit Earth one of these April mornings, I'll revisit my thought and find a really sad one to share.

Blood in the Heart part I of II

Broke and traveling to Los Angeles for work.  Missed my flight and now it's storming.  Could've been sunny by now.  The terminal lights reflect white tile floors and matte grey walls all sterile and clean except for a few rogue Starbucks cups and wadded wrappers. There's a kid, maybe twenty-two, with cowboy hat and electrical tape, which fastens little Styrofoam cubes to his forehead and forearms.  He rocks rhythmically to the incantation of his own voice.  He reads with eyes closed from pen-written Sanskrit, which looks to be a pocket Qur'an, four inches thick. Frayed hemp strings dangle from his pockets and I watch out of the corner of my eye. 

            Water speckles and streams down the windows and the sky is so grey that runway and buildings blend right in, blobbing in the distance.  A baby in a green tank and white shorts stares in amazement at the waves of precipitation blowing in, hands and cheek stuck to the glass.  Others, much older, watch out the window with legs crossed on the carpet, phone in hand; coffee in hand.  All transfixed and hypnotized by the ultimate magnet; the derailleur of sprockets lodged deep within their skulls, water is shifting the focus from what is now to what could become and what has been into what we want.  Storm doesn't worsen, but stays steady and true and shuttle buses break through, trailing spray past the window.  My friend rocks, to and fro, back and forth to the hum of his voice and they stare quizzically, searching for answers, but finding contempt and wrinkles for their foreheads. 

            The hub of America; the heart that pumps to more glamorous capillaries, Chicago has a pace attracting even those from the East and even those from the West, all stopping for a connecting flight, whether for work or for play, but to travel; to go; to leave; to depart. 

            Weird, rectangular and geometrically shaped objects pull wagons in the air yard.  And the water pools and ripples and reflects the dead, grey sky.  Big plane of blue and white with monochromatic shading scales in between has its cargo door flung open wide and water streams off the edges.  My mom is worried.  She's working tonight at six.  A big yellow gas line connects to the underside of the plane like an umbilical cord, fueling the machine for its big flight in this big world and only if they'd just put a little more.

            I'm starting to rock with my friend, but it's not to his voice, it's to the thought that I'll never come back; that I'll never speak to anyone again, but not because of a fear for death, rather, the fluttering excitement for the mystery of future.  The rain's letting up.

            And the sky's a little brighter.  LA's a different pace.  You can feel it just waiting to board, or, hoping to board. Most of the minds are in their own worlds living their own lives without any regard or care for the other minds sitting in the adjacent galaxies around them.  It's kind of refreshing.  And all I can care about right now is leaving Chicago. 

            A fat, younger-looking guy shovels three layers of pancakes into his mouth feverishly and without a pause even for air.  He has a guitar with him, but he doesn't look artistic.  He holds his biscuit tight between thumb and forefinger and chomps down on it with crumbs cascading off his lips.  It disappears after three.  Pathetic. I start rocking harder with my friend and he makes me comfortable because he's not afraid.  He's holding the electrical tape tight and it squeezes his hand, making it balloon around the black stripes in bubbles of white.

            Big grey plane crosses the air yard, must be going far.  Rain is streaming lightly now, but it's still somewhat speckled.  The men in the yard are wearing neon green-yellow jumpsuits and they scramble to throw luggage on rolling wheels of conveyor systems.  The baby in the green tank screams as the water lessens, but maybe that's not why.  In the distance, it looks like it has stopped raining, but up close you can tell it is still sprinkling.  Little brown girl with dark hair and black eyes stares and fingers at the speckles of water dotting the glass.  Her brother in the green tank stops screaming and does the same.  His eyes widen in fascination when he realizes that he can't touch what he sees and he smoothes over and over, every so often searching for moisture. Their mother comes over and picks up the boy.  She's a pretty mom with eyes that look deep into the distance and she rocks the tank and his curly head falls. 

            Dorsal fins of large planes stick over the dock extensions, which look like accordions.  Black man shovels pancakes in his mouth like his friend and coughs every two or three minutes.  Every grunt breaks my mood and I want to bury my fingers in my head.   Thankfully, after four minutes, the black man's fat white friend comes wobbling back to the gate with the large guitar case sprouting behind his head and he explains that their flight is ten gates down.  So, they gather their things and breathe hard down the hall and I exhale and let my shoulders fall.

            And I look at my friend who has tucked away his electrical tape and neatly closed and banded his important text and his eyes meet mine beneath the black brim of his hat and we exchange a half-smile and a quick look away and that was all that was needed to make the connection; to understand and to comfort.  As I stare at my feet, I feel relaxed and composed with the energy to do anything, like all restrictions have been dissolved.

            Just need to get on this plane.

            Rain still patters but the streamers are slower and speckles are hanging on for dear life.  The grey sky opens to show some blue and a tiny plane rises slowly to meet it.

Here, I sit in a cove of a Long Beach harbor, the sunset pink and orange, all palmy silhouettes and fishermen in casual clothes wipe down the cabins of their boats, carrying poles to the deck.  It must be night fishing.  An open condom wrapper sits next to me, half-buried in the sand… must be night fishing. 

            There are a lot of birds swooping around the sky with one grey pelican gliding softly over the water and another one curving high.  The water is smooth, but still ripples a bit.  Half of the boats have American flags hanging and the moon sits directly above a lighthouse.  A woman takes photos of it.  In the distance, a helicopter hangs motionless in the sky with a flaming red beacon for a tail, pulsating like the lights on a heart monitor.  And I resonate, feeling my chest rise and fall with the red gleam. 

            The harbor is pretty much empty and I'm in complete awe of its beauty.  No longer does it matter that my wallet is flat, but I guess you can attribute that to the fact that my company is paying for every meal that I devour in the dim lights of the hotel bar every night.  The other side of the harbor has many more masts and with all of the hanging white lines, it looks like a dead forest.  Not really, though, just a bunch of white poles and ropes hanging from them.  I think I like romanticizing sometimes. 

            The pelican flies low again and the helicopter hasn't moved in a good fifteen minutes.  I'm leaving for Big Sur in the morning so this will be my last night in the LAX area; an area that, much to my chagrin, I have actually enjoyed.  My dark-rimmed eyeglassed friends built this city up to be hell on Earth and despite the fact that the jeans are loose and the shirts and are even baggier, it has been anything but.  The hipness competition is nonexistent.  Thus, I don't have to listen to anyone preach about the cleanliness of the food industry or the atrocities on the other side of the world or the best hole in the wall bar in the coolest uncovered neighborhood in the city and it makes me breath easy to not see another soul in the entire three-mile square of the harbor.  Exhale.

            The sun is leaving and in its ever-growing absence, neon lights replace it; blue ones circling the edge of the water and red-orange-yellow ones lighting up restaurants and Ferris wheels.  There's a decent breeze and it hisses through the palm trees.  I love how still the harbor is and how quiet it feels.  Very relaxing.  Not like Chicago.  Less bustle.  More freedom of movement.  And as I look around, the helicopter hasn't moved and the boats sit still and the people have gone home and the birds and pelicans glide around effortlessly reflecting dimly off the smooth water.  The skyline is a series of hotel buildings and fishermen fumble, firing up their engines and the sky darkens as they retreat into it.  And I walk back home to the hotel, smiling at no one at all.  

Fallen Winter: Cover

Here's the cover to my zine of short stories.  Obviously, still on drawing paper, but I've decided and this will be it.

Spring Ukrainian and Things to Come

I'll be releasing a zine at Quimby's on North Avenue within the next few weeks, named Fallen Winter.  It will have some of the short stories from this blog as well as some of short snippets, accompanied by some personal illustration (still in progress).  The above is... right, Owl, and is just a prototype.

Splitting Wood on a Cold Day

He had buried the dog as deep as the frozen ground would allow three days prior, twenty five yards west of a silver pond.  He stared down the snowy canyon at crystal reflections of powdery evergreens illuminating off the surface and he tried hard not to feel remorse.  In fact, he felt kind of silly for feeling anything at all when he thought of how his father shuffled through dog after dog during his childhood, never allowing himself any emotional connection; merely enjoying their company for the time that they had to breath and run and shit on this earth. 

            The wispy winds echoed throughout the canyon and, alone, he stood with black and red flannel, staring through cold brown eyes, as flakes fell slow, catching on his beard.  That image of a black-bagged mass with glossy moonlit reflections disappearing into the broken earth intertwined with the white draped coffin of his father and the heavy weight on his shoulders as he, too, dropped and disappeared beneath shovelfuls of moist clumpy dirt. He followed a bird circling in the sky and remembered the hot tears slowly streaming down his brother's puffy red face, mad at the world; mad at the weight on his shoulders; mad at him; mad at everything; mad.  And there, at the edge of that cold canyon, he stood, shrouded in white emptiness.

              The stiff canvas of his jacket purred when he walked into a snowy meadow off the back of his house.  He carried a smooth handled ax, which rested on his shoulder and a heavy iron wedge whose imperfect surface caught the threads of his brown cotton gloves and barbed out a few strands.  He glanced behind, almost expecting her to be trotting in his wake, but the deep boot imprints were lonely and filling with flakes, which fell slow and steady, the size of golf balls. 

             Ahead lay a fallen tree, fresh and uncovered aside from little mounding lines trailing across the frozen, antler-like branches.   He rested the ax against the trunk and looked back at the house, which was barely discernible through the speckled snow.  One golden window glowed bright at the back corner of the house where their bathroom was.  His eyes watered in the wind and he breathed deep lung-filled hot air into his gloves, warming the tips of his fingers. 

             He had sectioned the tree with a chainsaw earlier in bright morning, cutting the trunk into three-foot parts.  The saw dust was already lost in the snow.  He bent down and rolled the heavy trunk out of its comfortable sinking placement in the earth and, gripping the rim of its strong bark, he hoisted it upright and with one hand he buried the shimmering blade tip in the middle of the trunk.  Far to the left where he had just walked from, a snowy top heavy tree bowed to the canyon and he kind of smiled at it because it symbolized how he felt, but then, in the same moment, he let his dry-lipped frown return and disregarded it because it was just a projection from his own thoughts begging to be construed in the natural world. 

            Refocusing on the task before him, he removed the blade of the ax and replaced it with the wedge, tamping it in a bit with the blunt side of the cold iron.  And he thought why he must always be alone and why it seemed everything escaped him.  His father had disintegrated and his brother was away and his lover lived in another city and his dog died and his mom cried for him in hot summer nights and in cold winter days and he looked around that snowy canyon again with squinted eyes.  This burning feeling began torching his heart and blazed low, but hot, working itself up his esophagus, getting lodged in his throat, finally heating his brain and with a grunt he raised the blunt head of the ax and slammed with all his might on the tiny wedge, splitting the salmon colored, healthy wood in two.  The wood splintered and the wedge fell out of sight in the snow.  He fished it out, knocking the snow off on one of the split pieces and placed it back in his pocket.  Then, repositioning one of the halves, he quartered it with the sharp edge of the blade, swinging like he was trying to bury the stump rather than split it in two. 

            After he split three of the logs a steady drip of sweat beaded and fell from his nose.  He walked to the edge of the canyon and bent down, resting on the backs of his calves and he took a deep breath, staring still at the pond. 

            Fantastic golden memories began flooding his brain and the landscape changed from its icy desolation into a warm, fresh summer day with flies buzzing and cicadas screaming.  Bright green shoots of new growth swayed in the breeze across the mountainous valley, reaching for the sun, and in a path that weaves through the rocky crags, he saw a shirtless man with a glistening back, red bandana tied around his sweaty head, followed by a tank-topped girl whose shoulders were pink and whose white shorts were dusted a redden brown.  Finally, after the two had disappeared back into the shade of an evergreen, a brown and black dog came gliding past, accelerating to catch up to the man and woman, and they finally popped out of the shade and into the flat brush by the pond. 

            He closed his eyes and breathed deeper and deeper.  He forgot about the cold air stinging his cheeks and when he reopened his eyes, a grey-eyed girl with little amber halos around her pupils was standing in front of him with a slender smile and a sweating red forehead.  He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and dabbed her forehead, grasping the back of her neck and kissing her deep.  Her body leaned into his and he wrapped her tight, holding on like it was the last time he'd ever see her.  They sat in front of the pond, the surface glimmering gold, and the dog nosed under his dirty hand waiting for him to rub her ears, which he did in slow circles. 

            Never did they speak and never did he feel like they had to because everything was simple and everything was digestible in that one moment. And she leaned her head on his damp shoulder and closed her eyes and he watched as she breathed softly and smiled like there was nothing in the world more that she needed other than his shoulder and the sun which beamed bright on her tanned legs. 

            His heart was full and his throat was kinked when he reopened his eyes and saw that barren canyon and that still frozen pond.  The snow fell steady and the sun was clouded grey and his hands were frozen solid, buried deep and clinched on the cement-hard ground.  He stood up again and wobbled, trying to find his footing in the snow and once he did he turned around, hoping that that beautiful comfortable image would return, but it howled silence and filled slowly, like a dripping bathtub with the plug stuck deep.  That burning feeling torched his heart and ran up through his throat and for the first time in what seemed forever he bent over and cried, sobbing grunts and dripping mucous, soaking his gloves, which were stuck to his face. 

            Pulling his head up, he turned and ran back to the ax and picked it up with his right hand, high on the neck, close to the blade, and he swung like a railworker into the side of the trunk, burying the blade deep enough to get stuck. And he continued to cry and pulled with all his strength to remove the blade, but it wouldn't budge.  He plopped his boot on the trunk and pulled again, feeling the muscles in his arms tense and close to tearing, and letting go he fell back into the snow and lay still for a while, staring at the sky.  Breathing as deep as his lungs would allow, sucking flakes with every few breaths he closed his eyes as hard as he could hoping to get his mind back to that image of the grey-eyed girl with little amber halos around her pupils.  But the harder he tried, the only image he produced, was that glimmering black mass of a garbage bag in the moonlight of a subzero night. 

            Pulling himself off of the ground and brushing off the snow that stuck to his canvas jacket, he walked back toward the house, leaving the ax sticking out of the trunk at a forty-five degree angle, pointing toward the hidden sun.

            When he opened the door and felt the warmth flush his face, he saw on the counter, a sweating low ball glass of amber liquid.  It had long been poured and was warm to the touch, with a sweaty reflection pooling toward the edge of the stainless steel counter.  He took off his jacket and removed his gloves, stripping all the way down to his cream colored long johns, which were sticking to his back and legs.  Pounding down the hall toward the bathroom, he opened the door and steamy warmth released from the swing. 

            She sat low in the tub with her hair wet behind her ears and didn’t look up when he sat on the edge.  She mechanically grabbed her glass and pulled it to her lips, sloshing cubes ringing as she drained the last sip, setting the glass back on the floor next to the tub.  He pulled off the last layer of his clothing, balling the long johns and tossing them on the floor.  Then, dipping his frozen toes in the warm water he sank deeper and deeper until the wet heat touched his chest.  He breathed in the longest breath of his life and exhaled slow, with eyes closed, and his face red.  The room was lit by candle and was golden on the backs of his eyelids and he tried once again for that comfortable image to reappear, but it evaded his conscious and the harder his mind ran toward it the faster it seemed to escape.

            As he was looking at the girl, lying in between his legs, she finally opened her grey colored eyes and closed them slowly once again.  Then, sighing on the exhale, she stood out of the water; dripping drops cascading over the curves of her body, and grabbed a towel next to the tub and began drying.  She whispered that she was pruning and left the bathroom shortly with a towel wrapped over the top of her head and another around the top of her chest.  When she pounded down the hall, getting softer with each step, he submersed his head in the water and screamed.

Owl

Perched in darkness with golden-green eyes glowing and head shifting silently, three-hundred-sixty degrees around, because her neck can do mysterious things and because unlike most, she can see, the owl waits.  

In a way, you could say she's preying, over a moonlit forest floor; praying for movement or anything to evaluate and perhaps lash out upon, rip apart and mangle to feed her growing appetite, but in a way, you could say that she's not even interested in satiation, rather the hunt; the idea of the hunt.   

Critters will scurry and their easiness isn't appealing, because she knows that they can't see her and in one swoop it could all be had and the hunt would be finished, and what a messy finish, she thinks, her feathers neatly arranged below those pointy tufts.  

So, she sits silently and calmly, on top of a snaky cage of branches, bursting out in right angles. And it sways at a calculable crunch from the steady pace of the elk, who is the vessel, unaware of her furtive, light presence, just searching for a clear stream and some brush to nestle in.

The Horse Capital

And there I was in horse country with a couple friends when it was bright outside and the horses were running fast that day, glistening muscles in the sun.  We decided that we had lost enough money and went "downtown," which was essentially a few main roads crossing in diagonals; all one-ways so as to clog traffic as often as possible to give the impression that it was, indeed, a downtown.  Jim looked at his watch often, praying for his time to be up so he could go home and not have sex with his fiancé and Jason had that look in his eye like he knew he was going to take advantage of some rich architect's stupid, beautiful daughter and Erik just left because he was too drunk and figured he should just go ahead and drive home.  It was a pretty normal Saturday afternoon in horse country.

            We walked to a pub from Jason's apartment where they had tables set up outside and eight dollar double bourbon n' gingers.  We drank the cool liquid and it warmed our eyes and half way down Jim decided it was time to go home and sit with his fiancé on the couch and watch interior decorating shows and comment on how they were going to arrange the apartment after they got married.  Jason returned from the bar with two more plastic cups full of the amber liquid and we both knew that it wasn't right to drink bourbon out of plastic but because we couldn't take glass onto the patio we had to make a really tough decision and the breeze was too enticing so we sat with shades on watching the people smile and spill drinks.  We were having a decent time, but of course that void of not having locked down a pretty girl still weighed us down and made us a little crazy and we didn't even really talk the whole time, but searched for prey to hunt and there were tons of ladies and they were surely drunk enough after the races, but that goddamned sun seemed to stifle any motivation. 

            "I'm dyin' here," Jason said finally.  "I'm telling you Daniel, I'm fuckin' dyin'."

            He took a long drink and removed his shades.

            "Yeah?"

            "Look at this place, it's wide open." He pointed at a few girls leaning on the brick wall of the bar.  "Let's just start playin', I'm tired of sitting around wondering whether or not I'll be jerking off tonight."

            The girls laughed and had those fake tan legs and flowery sun skirts just fluttering in the breeze and their hair looked shiny clean with thick healthy strands flowing. 

            "Well, okay sir.  Let's do it then."

            And as we stood up to walk toward the squeaky clean white teethed brown (but still white enough) beauties, a team of polo wearing large armed gel haired sunglass wearing bros stepped in and made the engagement and started with the classic manly grippings of the plastic cups and continued with uproarious laughter and complete brain-washed manipulation and the spell worked as the girls each one by one at different intervals of the show that was being played for them reached out their delicate arms with clear white tipped fingernails and grabbed the round arms of each of the guys and that was it.  The engagement was final.  They were set in stone and at such a miraculous speed too. 

            "I wonder what they said," I lamented lightly, turning on a heel, wheeling around back into the chair.

            "They didn't say shit. I mean, what could they have said?  You don't have to say anything when you're arms blow out the ends of your shirt and you just had your teeth whitened with a nice looking watch and Ray Ban sunglasses.  That's what they said. That's all they said and that's all that anyone needs to say around here."

            "Sounds easy."

            "Psh, you have to sell your soul to be that fucking stupid.  Look at em'! There's not one thought running through those meaty skulls.  You wouldn't do that.  I wouldn't do that.  We're more about the soul, that unattainable center."  Jason drained the rest of his cup and crunched it in his fists. 

            "They don't have soul, who the hell are you kidding?  We're not in the right scene.  We've never been in the right scene.  Unattainable center?  It's plopped right there under that skirt and it looks like it's far from unattainable."

            "That's what I'm talking about, man."  Jason stood up and went to the side of the bar where two drinks were poured. 

            I watched the group continue the bullshit and then walk away tossing the empty cups on the pavement.  They walked under the pavilion and disappeared into the breezy street.