for those tired of being a creepy child

Spring is finally poking its cute little Japanese cartoon head out from the snow-clouds. It was shorts weather today and I finally got my bike fixed (shorts weather means it was mid-forties or so) so I went for a ride around town, did some people-watching, and found a beautiful shrine and temple with a cemetery. Strolling through, I found myself a bit anxious. I hadn't locked my bike at the entrance. I could read the signs phonetically, but still had little clue what they meant, so I wasn't sure if I was allowed in or not. I had gone in anyway, but I often find myself a little anxious that I am doing something offensive, just because I don't know the etiquette. I resolved a while ago to be a bit more adventurous once the weather approved, but now I find that I am not used to venturing on my own.

I didn't take a camera with me because I wanted what I saw today to be solely mine, difficult to recall later, only appearing in flashes when the air is just right. Every time the weather changes, I begin to recall. The first truly warm day takes me to San Antonio, 1997. A Sunday afternoon touch football game with the Oak Hills folks at Marshall. Chris Pruski punched Jeremy Karney in the throat instead of tagging him. Bret Halbert was a force of nature, as always, on the line. Tiffany Potter and I sat on the hood of my black RX-7, and then danced in the parking lot to some song I had playing.

I've been editing stories. I'll be sending five or so off for rejection soon. It's been a long time for me with the trying to publish thing. Hopefully I'll get in the habit, but don't anybody hold your breath on that front. Editing and submitting seems to only occur during a kind of manic phase I go through in my compulsive writing behavior.

I'm completely not caught up on the basketball happenings in the U.S. I hear the Lakers look dangerous, and that the Celts are as expected. And SA fans are as deluded as ever about their aging team's chances... though I do hope as well. But I have seen nothing. Baseball just started here. I think I'll go to a game. We'll see. There's a team in Sendai that hasn't been very good, but they apparently just picked up a few good hitters and a superstar pitcher.

Coffee.

we are all buddha's creepy children

among things we visit by the water

There is always a way forward.


Pete Yorn sings a version of New York City Serenade. I started to learn it in Texas, and found the lady who brings down walls. I drank whiskey and my fingers itched. The e string sweats and expands faster than the b.



And sometimes I would sit in the lawn and watch the oranges disappear like the sun.




I coughed up blood once or twice trying to recall a name. I can remember the letters, just not how to pronounce them. [cross-cutting in a dream sequence] The actress helped some with the vowels, but I would roll over in my sleep and elongate them.



Plastic bottles and crumbs and wrappers accumulate on long drives. Even those taken to the ocean.




And men develop rough hands and can stand firm anywhere, unless they are on the land. I wonder would I continue wobbling long should I find myself on solid footing again.






The signs on the highway show the distance we are driving away from Sendai. 193 km. We are driving towards distance, nothing else. 200 km. More.




The forests are disappearing like oranges, bundled in piles next to the rusted tin roofs that burn with salt and sun.



Someone is cutting down the trees, and I am tempted to snort in disgust. But I love to think what it might be like to sit with her near a fire, reading comfortable books in a comfortable voice until she falls asleep.

The less I look to the planets, the more I feel their gravity. And they reflect a scorching light that does not waver in the atmosphere.




Steadiness. It is a recurring thought today, along with conversations I should like to have back, we might summon a lawyer and renegotiate the past, have it notarized, and pretend to start again.




But if a lawyer knows things about love, they become cold. Quiet. Remote.





There is no soul in such revisions. What remains is a space between the necks of lovers, even as their faces are joined together.

I sometimes dream her, and always forget what she has said

She advocates sitting with tea near dreamtime, equating a morning silence with something mystical.

He is beginning to accept that he is set in his ways: routines do not suit him. He prefers the edge of a circle, a banana with a vitamin, eggs rotting slowly in the refrigerator.

Perhaps, he thinks.

He spent a month tracing the contours of the word mystery, this without tea, but in the end produced a film about mustaches and geese, peppered with the old external acting, in the style of Charlton Heston and Richard Chamberlain--the only way to know that a man feels is if he is screaming it into the sky, the rain, the sea, the sea of monkey faces.


Responsibility is a word she counters with moral vision. She bandies it about town, but will not tell how much it cost her.

I have grown tired of the sound of my own thoughts, and women always cry in dreams.