When I am quiet, you recede; when I speak, your lingering is more a ghost

On that Saturday evening it seemed the walls of every house had vanished, leaving only the candles placed in the windows at Christmas-time, glowing in that green country like fireflies in the summer.


And how our words will keep--as if we had them in jars.

Cedar Days

I had a few allergies that acted up in Furukawa from time to time and so I thought I understood what I was in for with the mountain cedar in San Antonio. I was wrong. It's been awful.

Finally finished applications. I am going to shower, then shave (first time in several days), then head to the post office to express everything out to where it belongs. Then begins the waiting.

I owe time to some other projects and people, best get those tended to quickly.

And it's time once again to focus on some meditative and contemplative things. I have been out of sorts since arriving home, perhaps even prior to that. Much more writing and reading are in order. Debts to pay. I should eat. I've been thinking about the past a lot these days and, while reflection and rumination are sometimes advisable, the present requires me.

Life is good. I shall probably even smile about it.

Colts vs. Jets

... (sigh).

great game. why did indy take that timeout? probably still woulda lost.

go pats

Slumps and Spurs

I have been back in San Antonio for nearly two months. In addition to some difficulties in my personal life, which have more or less settled now into the broader background of discontent, I have yet to get a handle on how this place works. Reverse Culture Shock, I think it's called. Food, transportation, language, just the aesthetics, everything. It is familiar, I grew up here, but I find myself looking at the familiar things and feeling neither comforted nor put off. I am blank. When some event or other ought to spur me to action, I see little point. Perhaps a depression, a feeling that I am trapped. Most frustrating so far is my lack of desire to break out of this.

And a ghost haunts me here.

It's my hope that, simply by putting it down on electronic paper and sending it out into the universe, I will begin a change in my attitude.

I watched the Spurs play in Indiana last night. After two tough losses in a row, they seemed to drag their asses, get to their spots just a little late, wouldn't take open shots, tried to lose all through the game, and in the final eight minutes or so were able to kind of pull it together just enough to squeak out with the "w." It's hard to feel great about a win like that, I'd imagine, but they've stopped the bleeding at least. Perhaps a recovery under such circumstances can help a team or a person regain their bearings.

This is what I'm hoping.

An Uncertainty in Delight

I told the troublesome poet that I'd never felt so foolish as when I was truly happy, nor so wise as when I was blanketed in sorrow.

She crossed her legs at the table and I pulled at the end of my cigarette. I am not happy, but I am at peace, I said. The sausage and beer came

(I tried to start smoking cigarettes again recently, but it was too much work. Made me feel ill and I couldn't get to sleep.

And the clippers I bought are like sheep sheers. Heavy. You can't hear them cutting. And so I am, for the moment, clean. Cleared away of some stupid vanities).

I then spent several months whirling around in circles making airplane noises and giggling whenever I had careened off center and crashed into a wall, or offered the wrong smile at dinner, or colored with the children, naming everything after my dizziness.

But it was not a foolishness. Only an uncertainty I hadn't the inclination to examine.

In this manner, I began to draw maps of undiscovered lands. I gave them the qualities of the other places I had visited, the street names were those I had grown up learning. Some wiseguy tried to tell me I was doodling fantasies and I slammed the book shut, rolled up the loose papers and hid them under my bed. Later applying for an apprenticeship under the captain of such a vessel as is as likely as any to stumble upon such places as those I have designed.

I am unwavering in my resolve to prove that my maps--upon my having made them--did in fact cause those places to be real. And there is one in particular I should like to find.

I crossed my arms on the table and lay my head down to rest it. I am listening. It's just that I am also traveling. It can make a body weary.

Post Script

a note on form and quality (it seeks out recollection)

It is the way one melts into the other. A sofa. A car seat. Walks by rivers. Tents near oceans.

That day I believed I owned a particular drawer.

And we will consider the way the gods continually transform into one another. Aten, by analogy, becomes Yaweh. Bes becomes Horus. And so too in this mortal frame do many things mingle.

The touch of one lover is the same as another.

I think it better, then, to utter their specific qualities, but will not.

To the form of mirror. The form of love. The form of chair. For each, should there be a perfect version somewhere in the aether, I already know the names.