as i pick through letter on the large screen with my fingers

I can see the easel. now placing fingers delicate. The glass surprising and coarse. To make. A canvas to make. Things… whichever things. My things. Stolen things. Misappropriated things. Beautiful things. To dreaming transfer possession waking find them yours. To discern. To mistrust and deride. To bury me with the content of my own words. To read aloud at parties ironically, half the room protesting their boredom. The other half sharing in the quiet pleasure of pretending empty and casually ridiculous. To leave. To encase yourself in. I don’t dare love you.

things that go in places (are the best things in their time)

I have lately been scouring the interweb for a desk, a bed, some things to sit on and things to eat off of. I have found some good stuff for relatively cheap, but any suggestions would be welcome. Apparently Amazon is a good source.

Also wrote a new song. My fingers hurt and I am out of practice.

The restaurant is wearing on me, but will soon be done with.

And even coffee, it seems, cannot help me today.

and i was mapping (a draft before leaving)

lifted is taking on some life, I am getting a sense of the characters beyond their simple origins. And there is an imagined world belonging to Satomi (our heroine) that I must inhabit for a time. I have to get a good look around it before I can start moving her through it.

I am afraid of not finishing the piece. I think the trick is to learn the difference between patience and procrastination.

I remain, as I promised, bent on that page. My goal is to have a draft before leaving.

coffee place blues (i need yet another jazz change)

It was an innocent suggestion, or so I imagine. There are more birds. There is shade. There is the comfort of years spent in those chairs, with coffee, argument, dissertations composed, walls of reason built and destroyed. There is comfort in history. And I have been stealing that history. Or at least writing a chapter of absence into that coffee place's history. It is time to return.

Why not? I have not considered what made my decision to refrain necessary for several months.

Twice now I have been back, and it is like visiting the scene of a crime. One which I have committed, no less.

There is at first the anxiety. A realization of where the things of life might have gone very differently, should I not have been caught in the act of such ... suchness (and if you know my particular recent story and the importance of coffee place within it, you will understand the suchness, and if you don't, you can always ask me, but I feel an obligation not to write it down here).

Following is the paranoia. The watching of each deep blue car that pulls into the lot. As though expecting the detective to show at any moment, again, to formally charge me with the arrogance of loves long deceased. It is true: there is no statute limiting the prosecution of foolish love. I look for crevices into which I might shrink, should my presence be noted.

Then there is the reassurance of friends. Your crimes are forgotten. You cannot ask yourself to live this way.

But I was asking nothing. I simply did not want to return. I never barred the establishment, only expressed a preference to take our business elsewhere, if it were agreeable. I did not know this was making waves.

Indeed. Indeed it was, young Alan.

But I am not so young as I let on. These histories are now older than I, and they drag my heart with them.

Careful how you use that word, "heart." It lends itself to overuse and unbecoming hyperbole.

Would you prefer "soul?"

Even less.

Then I am at a loss. It is my very self to which I refer, which is entangled in the mass of brokenness I have begun to resemble and at the same time to despise.

You have always wrestled, Alan.

Then perhaps you ought call me Jacob.

I said nothing of Angels, Alan. And we can't very well call you Jacob Collier. Think of the head your initials will give you. Each lost love will be a martyrdom all its own.

That was not my intent.

Yes, but when you wear a name long enough, it alters your person. Don't you think?

And at this point I stare off at another car, this time not even blue, but I am convinced that it is her driving, and say nothing. I know, despite myself, that it is not.

Finally, there is the departure. No dramatic appearances, nor accusations, came to pass. It was an ordinary coffee. And perhaps this is more upsetting than any of the possibilities we have been imagining.

We no longer yearn for those things past, but they remain with us. They teach us to love those who cannot hurt us. And we wish that such lessons would soon unlearn themselves.

Years having past in those wooden chairs, only a few months away and now they've been replaced with comfortable black metal ones. Changes in such an absence always seem greater than those made in our presence, no matter how drastic or not.

as per request

I've been told I need to update more often. So I'm updating:

The lease for the new place in Boulder is speeding its way to me now. I am so looking forward to signing it. My parents were kind enough to put me up these past months,but I drown in the suburbs, and I shrink away from others in my space. It will be nice to have a space that I have chosen again. Not since stoop days has that been totally possible for me. I also loathed my apartment in Japan, but at least it was mine.

If S. is able to drive up with me, we'll get a truck. If we get a truck, I will probably purchase a few new things to fill it out. Otherwise, I'm not sure where or on what I will sleep when I arrive.

I have met some interesting people while in SA. And by that I think I mean I have met one interesting person. But one's a good number, whatever the song says. She thinks I think she is boring.

Shot a film recently. Post begins soon. Hopefully we can get it finished before we all have to leave this summer. I'd like to attend the screening.

And I was given The Artist's Way to work through over the next couple of months. I have started and it seems in line with what I want to do, so I will stick with it.

Both C's continue to be sorely missed. The E's are not in contact. One a little.

I want to climb a mountain.

I had a dream...

... that Conor Oberst was a dick to me for singing along with one of his songs under my breath.

So I sulked. Then went camping.

Even in the worlds of my own making, I am out of place.