Epistle. To: Mercy Hunt

I like to think maybe I beat it. Beat it at its own game even. I like to think I acted randomly. Down through the years and all that. Not so much from something personal, but something more like looking around and trying to decipher it. Like algebra class. Remember Mister Z and how earnest the man was?  Oh the chalk lines dragged across one's nerves! Algebra class -  like all the rest that we sat through - back in the dreaded school years of being developed for the coming phase of life where we would be all stuck later on as adults. And it was also like spades working against you when trying to fit in was more important than something like having a second thought about it.  But the one good thing from algebra class - other than of course having you as a text-mate to cheat from!  - was getting credit for trying to solve the problem. Even if you didn't arrive at the correct answer in the back of the book you did get marks for your scratch-work in the side columns for pursing the damn thing etc. But it made me wonder. Pursing problems and all that. Ah. The grand scheme in the nature game. The one that doesn't like a vacuum. But to get you up to speed here's what happened. I was riding my bicycle along the Onion Avenues north to south when I got t-boned at Main and the hot dog cart by another bicycle. Some wild and crazy guy flying down Main east to west hit me broad side and sent me into orbit south east to north west. I remember being forced off my seat into a kind of suspended air and flying through some eternal moment in the books. It being totally beautiful to become air born. Like the stuff from where dreams are made. Only now I appeared capable beyond the abstract. I was flying through the air. And I guess somewhere it registered that right now I was in the air - forced against my wishes - but really wasn't that a pedestrian thing we all fear? In the air I flew-  breath taking - gonad tightening - above the curb-scape - a small city intersection with hip hop boys holding skateboards like instruments and music apps stuck in their heads and tourists in bad shorts sweating for ice cream cones. Bare chested hard hat laborers dug in the filth of ongoing asphalt repaving to make the streets simpler to negotiate. I was flying above land. I was a mammal with stock options and a coupon for a free car wash in the next month. And now whoa. A bird's eye of things below more defined than any gods might be since they were already there in the air and that's why they were gods to begin with and not mammals flying through the air.  I was making my own dream. Could this get any better? The beautiful stuff lasted for a few seconds until I slammed head first into the metal sides of the hot dog cart. With impact enough to geyser steamed wieners and the relish trays up into a fountain and then back down in a sticky sweet protein filled mess onto the heads of a group of city councilors out for a break from budget negotiations. When I woke up I was a room. Whoa. Where did the air go? This was not a place where the gods hung out! And maybe waking up wasn't a clear enough description. Had I come around to what? It was explained to me. There was a pause in the manufactured breathing tubes stuck down my throat and into my nostrils where I volunteered something like my own breath and then opened my eyes. This wasn't anyplace to be I thought again and I knew it immediately. Like if you've ever sat down to a poker table and looking around you if you don't see a sucker at the table than brother you're it. Machines were all around and it was like being lost inside the workings of a mechanical forest that stretched to the door frame and then wrapped back toward me around the walls. White whispers spoken beyond a pall of understanding and needle ports rising out of me. Welcome back some gal said looking down into my eyes. Don't even think about moving she added. What was next I thought? Was I going to be told that I was doing fine? You're not doing so well she said. I tried to talk. But I had no voice on the outside. All I had were sounds on the inside. They were like shouts no one heard but me and they filled my ears with equal mixtures of fear and curiosity like a balance point not arrived yet. If I texted I might say WTF? But I don't. All I have is a landline that the telecommunications company of origin keeps embarrassingly updating to the 21st Century until they get rid of me and all the other landline users. I tried to raise my hand. Hoping for the odd calligraphy gesture that by a simple physical act was meant to communicate a need from within and write thoughts upon the air to be viewed. But the bed held onto me. The gal kept looking down at me. I kept looking out. Through something. I was looking out through something. You were dead the gal said. Huh? When the EMT's finally pulled your head from the hot dog cart you had a seizure and went into cardiac arrest and then you bought the farm. Huh? That means you died. Huh? Technically you were gone for a minute and forty-nine seconds. Huh? They put the paddles to you and that banged your heart around and that got you kick started back up. You were quite the mess when they brought you in. Now you're here. Suddenly it was clear. I was in a hospital room. Either that or now I was still dreaming. Either way I thought I'm screwed. But who was this gal? Did she text? And if so did I now have to get an app? Cue the neurons. What can I say? But I liked the way she talked. I liked how it was. I wanted to hear more how it was she sounded. Dead? Well wasn't that the shit... And a thought I then had was - am I still dead and this was just a memory? Cool I thought. Maybe I'm in the Twilight Zone? A syndicated television re-run. Like the one at the bus station. How many time have I see that one? After the Rod Serling introduction some guy with baggage checks his whereabouts but it's pretty clear he's just another invisibility left in the aisles among confused passengers and bad fares and inept schedules heading off into forever - which was really his life repeating again and again - without really knowing anything different because you get off one bus and get on another beneath the big time clocks and black and white postings for tickets. But what if that wasn't it? Maybe I was in the future. The old piss smelling bus station where thieves share the night was no longer there. Instead confused passengers bad fares inept schedules were installed as the old same template but this time around was posted onto a brand new off the drawing board federal grant designed multi-modal-user-transit- sender and the exits hummed like illuminations with different cites imprinted virtually upon the air in brilliant smart phone colors. But wouldn't it be in the end the same old invisibility to contend with? So nonetheless I felt stuck. The fucking present. I couldn't talk. I couldn't move. And naturally I wanted out. Here's the program the gal said. Severe facial lacerations. Collapsed vertebrae. Broken sternum. Your knees look like dog meat. And here's the kicker. There's a piece of the hot dog cart stuck inside your head that can't be removed at this time. There's too much swelling in there to get a clear shot at it she said. And with situations like this there's always the risk of hemorrhage where even if the surgery were a success well if you bleed too much afterward then your brain might blow up she said and so she said there's no point at this time putting you through all that. Plus she said who you need to do the operation is at this moment wind surfing off the coast of Oregon and who if I do read the e-mails correctly won't be back until the last gust calms down. Realistically she said  he'll be back in the office in nine days. It's a problem with professionals she said. Especially the brain surgeons. They get away from the lasers and the scalpels and turn into nature boys. My job here she said is to care for you. I do have to inform you that while you are in the hospital there's always the possibility for infection. Bacteria aren't exactly the easiest creatures to catch she said. She looked down on me with big leafy eyes that seemed like elements on her face. I wanted to say whoa. I wanted to say I can't talk back but I will look up into those greenstone rims and herbal-like corneas until the turn of the century faded away. I wanted to say majestic. I wanted to say this is a fucking nightmare. I wanted to say but what happened to my bicycle? Relax she said and hit a button on an IV port. It's cocktail hours she said. And oh she said. The You Tube with you and the hot dog cart that went viral.        

Epistle. To: Wollstonecraft

How to know what to want, like happiness maybe, or even avoiding pain, is trouble enough. But when confronted by choices like eight different toasters or six different blenders it feels completely default-like to say oh they're all the same. Shouldn't you make a choice regardless? Was it good enough to toss out the extremes? Eliminate the cheapest model and the most expensive at the same time? And if doing so, then what was left? A bow to the way of the bargain hunting samurai taking up a solid intellectual position in the middle? But let's think about it - while half the world starves each night for lack of food or clean water or decent shelter there are eight different toaster variations to choose from. Just for burning bread muffins and bagels to be toped with something that melts and satisfies another whole list of cravings to have. Naturally any rationale can slip out of hand. Looking around just one store, in just one town, one could blow off a whole afternoon and become trapped by exploring the promises of all the gadgets in sight for sale. I needed a toaster. My old one from like fifteen years had shit the bed. But looking at all the toasters had a sudden and an almost violently pleasurable affect upon me. With all this in sight I scanned around and tried my best to stay defensive but truthfully when left to ponder on acres of merchandise and acres of mind I now wanted a toaster. I wanted wide settings. I wanted profanely cheap looking digital readouts. I said to the woman across the aisle -  who studied a large stainless dough mixing bowl with industrial paddles as though she were realizing she now needed to feed multitudes - can you believe this. Perhaps my scars made her uncomfortable. She said nothing in return and quietly made her way off past the vacuum food processing machines and chop-a-matic devices that accordingly turn any meal into a party. Were it not perverse I would say this was magic. I was landed somewhere I had not intended to be. And so feeling the drug-like benefits of shopping I moved laterally to the blenders. I didn't need a blender. Nor did I want one. But I was now certain something different would happen despite what I thought about it. Ah - twelve speeds - crush fruit ice alcohol - the smoothie of unrealized dreams - cocktails like dragonflies hovering in warm summer air - the deeper stuff requires some work even if money does make us strange - and the play on rule was here in effect so I had to continue this with dignity and purpose in a fucked-up world or else leave the store entirely. I've had plenty of toasters in my life and not many regrets about them. But never a blender. And that recognition struck me as odd. I asked the nurse how can I let this go? The nurse looked over the blenders, going over each one with a precision touch that was her fingertips at work in the world. Do you really want more junk in your life she asked? I knew she was right. But that wasn't the point. Look I said. When we were younger all this never crossed the radar. We used to run around like something wildness gave bones to. Clones of time really but believing we were mystics. And maybe we were. Out looking for experience. Longing for great unstated eagerness to haul us away. The nurse held up a blender. Yes I saw it. Like it was a trophy. Or some admittable evidence in court. And so you're trading this she asked? By now I was trying hard to really want a blender. I was trying to come away clean like the air does after a good rain. To do what you think. No I said. There's not much left to trade. Then buy a blender she said. But I didn't really believe it. That was just talk. And I told her so. So she asked? No I said it's like this -  I seem better when I remember. Sure the nurse said, putting one blender back and then picking  up another to inspect, it's all over too soon. Now I wanted everything. I wanted memories as crazy as the fake flowers bursting over in aisle 9. I wanted crappy home appliances that locked me up in retail chains of bliss and let me in on how to  make food like celebrity endorsements showed how. I wanted the sunlight falling outside across the parking lot like a huge dying star slicing suburban cars in two with shadows. I wanted to hear the nurse say again yes she would come by tomorrow while it was still a beautiful spring afternoon today and we were out driving and listening to play lists and throwing debit cards to the wind. Because the future was there - just this side of a lie and just on the other side of honesty -

Epistle. To: Bernadette Wild Garden

I remember it was mid-January and on into what appear culturally to us most as long bleak days lost in winter. The holiday season was over. Color was gone from front porches and no one felt like getting together for dinner. Why everyone needs a break mid-January remains an odd quantum equation. But nonetheless, looking around one evening I saw the day stretching. Dozens and dozens and dozens of crows heading across the sky flew off above the windows like a single crazed motion. A black winged rodeo. A folk lore anthology refers to multiplies or crows as: a murder of crows.  But who or what was riding that stirrup? Not that I saw where they came from. Or even where they were going. Suddenly they filled the sky in the window. What to do but  step outdoors... be closer to what was happening above as though I were somehow kin to it all along. Snow began falling. Falling in mists at first and then heavy flurries and soon after there was a storm whirling around. And it was below zero cold which made it seem so easy. This was the time - to have one foot outside in the snow like weary mammals looking into the cold and dark and the other indoors in the pipe line heat of our urbanite hermitage - for vegetables cooked in a stew like winter demands - dark bread with sweet butter fat - alcohol spirits that chase troubles out the door but never solve them - but no one was around. But looking it up later on the weather channel what intuition said was a gimme was confirmed with information from satellites. The days were growing longer, if only by seconds. Why count? Ah, but that's the thing. Time - the life long habit we make - being in the drift of forever - starts taking an express. What to do then? The calender day may be longer. But the further out we go the more that calender day runs out! I remember walking on the frozen lake one evening and you said I don't know if I'll be coming home soon. The crunch of snow underfoot - clean sounding - direct - and the more you walked the more you needed to hear that sound - as though snow underfoot spoke for the world and was not simply another silence in winter. The sunlight had long settled beyond the white nests of the high Adirondack peaks. A fishing shanty began to glow behind a dirty plastic window in a gas lantern but otherwise the other ice holes were vacated for the night. Yea there were stars that formed. But that's all. Way out light in the distance. But today - like a fulcrum - remembrance springs eternal - one self as its called though we should constantly doubt it - is impossible - without today and the reverie - they both have to be somewhere in the same place for us to exist - so forgetting about the present today I painted over an old painting. And I had a sudden feeling or maybe an exchange of feelings that I was erasing some part of the past. In a way that was probably so. But was it the painting - or the times - that is memory - associated with the painting? Again what? A sort of perky melancholy in the abstract that held a breath of life to itself? Or was it literally something I would never see again? Frankly what I needed were the materials more - the physical fact that was the canvas and the already built up surface with layers of paint - than I required the image on the canvas despite the sentiment or even the technical value involved. And outside the snow was falling. A fine light snow covering up the old crust. And maybe what I was doing was also snowing. Covering up a storm of record with something different. Maybe the new painting will be called the snow of attraction. But that sounds too stupid to do. But anyway I was relived. Like I was no longer someplace else but present. In the studio. With music on. A pot of soup cooking in the house. Watching the snow fantastic falling in pressures and twilight lost in the build up.            

Epistle. To: Lady Kimono Clan

Been over two months since I've had a proper shower. Pesky wound and all that. What you can do though with a sponge bath and dumping a pot of water over your head! The silver lining thing and all that. And each time I run that wash cloth around like some flag of surrender I think about swimming in the lake. After a day on land - isn't it usually fucked up or some otherwise arrangement - don't know why that is but that seems the nature on land - when you dive in and splash suddenly it's like things be gone. Maybe it's the floating body ripe for discovery. How the word buoyancy stands out like a second thought. The complete way - a Taoist sensibility -  water takes the feet out from under us and gives us fear of drowning-  but once over that - water becomes the  world -  waves to negotiate and sunlit reflections. And I know all that is dreamy. But that's what I'm thinking about despite all the tricky footwork. To be caught up in a dream. And not the dream getting caught up. So let the world fold us over. What would the point be having a life anyway? Remember the floating grave sites? And the trail maps? Pot luck for the dead with free music! Those were the days when distribution mattered. Old school paper clues. When you could throw announcements from the backs of trucks at people and everyone got it. Anyway there's not much real swimming these days. Unless you count walking outside the door into another rainstorm underneath a massive gray sky. The nurse said maybe there's a cloud in your future. I miss barbecues I said. I miss the innocent visions that go along with a plate of potato salad and sweet pickles and green beans. Green beans are mostly tasteless the nurse said until you kill them with salt.  I'll make them Italian style for you I said. Par-steam them and then soaked in ice water to retain their color and then patted dry and sauteed in olive oil with garlic until they darken. Turn off the heat before you think you need to and don't burn them to a crisp. Served with noodles quickly shaded from a bath in a light red sauce. Black and green olives scattered about for accent and tang. Hard wicked sharp cheese in peels. And bread. The gods have ovens I said. And they bake bread. Unfortunately though - forget the legends - someone has to make it - bread does not drop out of the sky. The nurse said I thought M&M's were the food of the gods. Well they are I said. But the gods do dabble about. And I'm not sure about the cloud and all that. Or even the future if you want to try and put a mark on it. But the nurse asked do the gods dabble about with paintings? Why so I wondered? Look at that cardinal in that tree she said. That would make a painting. And it was there - or there it was - like a heartbeat outside the window. This was not a recognizable time to quit I suggested. You can rest later she said. I'm always afraid that I'll just stand around empty handed. Forever taking leave... stop she said. And she was right. Being around her made me feel that way. Like what comes to the good -  or the bad - who knows - was measured all around in strange doses. Do some red paintings she said. And there was the cardinal - like song itself in the heavies and a rush of color in damp overcast -  hanging on a branch against the willow's creamy green leaves. And it was a red concentrated to imagine and to conflict, like a spiritual energy that flipped itself inside out and was now visible in eyes beak and wings. Forget that idea over a sunny day she said. This was getting to be a habit and one I should give up enjoying. Since time -  in the cliche-  heals all wounds-  and that in turn meant I lost the nurse. But we all lose. If there's a given then that's it. But I've found no less in the extremes. Being a fool in love did make you a sitting target. But why not just go out and lose? I don't really know - was it simpler that way? Loss. Making things with your hands and then placing them within the viewfinder of the world. But what happens afterwards is something that has frightened me from the beginning. When loss is celebrated different expectations arise in sets and take on a pattern because you're now the record of fact for others to see. Why does it have to be that complicated the nurse asked? Just do some red paintings. The last show was fine and she added you made cash.          

Epistle. To: Berlin Film Actress

The old magazines had to go. As did some fucking old catalogues that I never bought anything from anyway. And books that now seemed worth more in trade at a used book store than they were for the ideas I once wanted from them or any memories I took off their pages. And there was a CD with a band's label but with no music on it when played, like that was the story on that. What you find when you move a bookcase from its place on the floor was not only dust from the last century and many dead bugs but also the obvious question - why has this stuff been kept around for so long? Maybe it was a zen riddle. Who never gets off the ground? Something aloud but with no answer. The answer being the form in question but the form in question requires you to have a take at it without ever coming around to it etc. So what you have is no answer worth printing. Dirt caught in spider webs. Monologues in shadows. Endless loops so what you end up doing is clean the bookcase. Odd though to see all the old magazines and catalogues with your name on it. And I thought what's it been like to be apart from that name? Was this like fumbling across some garage version of Gone With The Wind? Frankly I don't give a damn! But I know that's not it. But I also know I'm not like that Russian money guy who spends millions on a calender year in the hope he codes his DNA for future use after he dies. What for? So he can live again? To hear him tell it once he's gone there's an evolutionary right for him - to stay on as an idea - because he can afford to do so -  and more importantly he said there was someone else in the business willing to take his money and tell him yes sir of course and more so in the gross vernacular they were willing to grease his jizz. Maybe. But I also know what happened when I saw that name. Funny isn't it how buying something can seem like a ticket to a thought. Just as it's impossible to have only one direction home. What I guess I'm trying to do is to not mistake one thing for another, trying not to misplace reverie with nostalgia, and so stand on my own and not so much with a willingness to stand apart. And stuff like that was never but linear even in a practical way. So I look at an old book. And then outside the kitchen window two cardinals build a nest in the rose arbor. One reminds me about walking in the mountains, alive and young, steering the world through emptiness and all that. The other I simply stare at.    
      

Epistle. To: Wollstonecraft

Hummingbird speed would be cool. As though you held different parts and those parts were different types of scales that entered in and out. And when you look at hummingbirds it's like why hold onto a branch? A refresher course in the finer arts of empty thinking. How would you paint a hummingbird I asked the nurse? A few scratchy lines like a blur? Are you using a solid ground or not she wanted to know? I didn't know and that threw me. So I asked do you think birds have any idea about breakfast? Oh birds completely understand about breakfast she said and laughed. Besides she said what can happen overnight? She had fine gray green eyes which made them easy to look into and then feel lost without regrets. The thing is you settle in for a time and then it changes. Much of the day these days is spent in idleness - taken from an old Chinese world view - a lazybones word for a spiritual posture - and from there one can only ask further questions. When the sunlight  is out I do a good imitation of the lizard king routine and sit in a plastic chair on the deck sipping a ginger ale for a thrill. Face up to the radiation and getting a dose to warm the blood in springtime after a long fucked up winter. Do you imagine falling asleep is medicine? And the lake is way high over normal stages. And I read that for every foot of lake water above flood level it takes twenty days for that extra foot of water to drain down and go away. Naturally I have water down in the basement which I cannot do anything about. The lake is like two feet higher than what it should be. And when I get out on that deck chair and have a couple of pain meds - to lose that sorrowful blueprint left post-surgical - and then nod off - like Marge does in the front seat of the land rover  in Who'll Stop the Rain as the agents and the husband she left close in - she left whatever it was she had behind - both for the Vietnam heroin she now loves and the anti-hero Ray who provides it - but whom she still wants is still the question - what is it that she wants? -  everything - she wants the dope the husband the lover - but then the agents close in - and I open my eyes suddenly and I'm like two feet higher too! The nurse said well don't expect so much. But I said if you can't believe in movies what then? The nurse had wavy auburn hair that shook down in curls around her shoulders and was like the color of a flower pot you might pick up at a tag sale for a song. But I said why not believe in the miraculous overnight? Why not forget about time as a marker? Because the nurse said you need to toughen up. And that is not magic. It's day after day she said. And when she said that something hit. It was Friday the 13th. I had an opening that night. A swank retail establishment where a painting was altogether another consumer good up for sale. And did I need a payday!  Life was filled with chances we never take anyway - hanging on thin air waiting for us to recognize - so I asked her. Would you like to come along? It seemed innocent enough- but hey nothing really is -  and I think she understood that. Maybe I just feared. Where does the love come from? Where does anything like help come from when you're no longer hurt and don't always spend the waking moments so to speak looking over your shoulder? Maybe I simply wanted to walk into an evening with someone else as a look or a combination. The nurse said I have my doubts. Yea it's funny that way I said.    

Epistle. To: Bernadette Wild Garden

Went to the movies yesterday afternoon. Got lost for a couple hours in take away fictions and big sound systems. And walked there in a rainstorm which seems the course for the earth locally the past few days. We've become a citizenry of umbrella wearers. Water piled up at street intersections. The storm drains in the city - a facet of civil engineering if not politics - were not exactly in the best shape.  For the most part they were placed at higher grades than the streets themselves. And it doesn't take a genius to see the problem here. The rain once it collected downhill from the university heights behaved like rivers in floods will do and sought their own gravity. As such with no adequate drainage pattern the rain storm heaved in directions back around corners where it came from and sloshed over curbs where if you were a pedestrian with a short legged dog the dog would be swimming on its leash. Design is a good thing when it works. But was this actually thought out? It was like standing in awe- watching the water hit the rim of the storm drains and then go around every which way but down like crazy. And it was a good sized crowd for a matinee and suddenly in the dim light finding a seat in that movie going mingling while feeling alone I had this slap in the head. Almost like I was trying to impress myself. Lazy and sanguine and walking in the rain. Inflated intentions even. But the hiss you hear are simply your thoughts evaporating into the air. If this were a bar scene and whomever was pouring the drinks and then having to listen the bartender character might say yea, whatever, now drink up and go home. We look for thrills. We look for love. Instead the dull drift of life runs amok around the storm drains! And settled into the movie house. Ah the quiet between the ears implicit while the eyes were stranded in images. And really that's not too much to expect is it? But like the song says - if it's not asking too much - that whole mental clearinghouse never got off the ground. Trouble was sitting in the seats in front of me. A couple of over the hill nimrods. It was like they were harpooning better days now that their salad days were about over and as such wanted everyone else to know. And at a freaky volume. Were they trying to blow out the neon exit signs?  Checking their phones and then yelling gossip from one seat to the next that was personal enough to not amount to shit among strangers. Checking their watches and then arguing data. Presence it seemed was their paramour. Chain swallowing a box of twizzlers and a tub of popcorn while worried out loud over the calories in a diet soda? Yelling out wrong answers to the trivia quiz before the feature. And then yelling oh damn it I should've gotten that one!  Like that might have changed anything. And I do know. They were just having fun. But even so. Remember as a kid doing stunts in the playground and yelling to whatever disinterested adult who had surveying duty at the time look at me! If there were questions of silence - like in a movie house - they filled it with enormity. And if I could read minds - which I can't - I might want a box of twizzlers. Even so it went - through the feature - chomp - phone buzz - loud satisfaction - oh look there's a train crash!    

Epistle. To: Lady Kimono Clan

Don't you always want a little extra when you go and get the mail? Old school mail that is. The snail version. Hand delivered by someone walking in the neighborhoods. Something that's a complete surprise? Something otherwise tremendous that might be there amidst the usual junk and bills? Maybe that's a problem. Each day trying to imagine what could be there even though you know the odds are against it. Maybe that's a problem. But some item arriving from outside that you did not expect. But if it's there it's like a crazy hope to flush out the day. Maybe a postcard. Or some super coupon with your name on it and as you hold it in your hands just the touch of it is such that whatever else happens from that moment on you'll be enlivened by having it. Maybe for kicks - because that's what we're talking about - I'll put some cash in an envelope and mail it back to myself so one afternoon when I look and it's there I bingo and prove illusion is the truest behavior we have. Isn't release a consequence from having? Today I got this halcyon sounding letter asking me as a citizen to participate, "for pay", in a five hour project to evaluate presentations from a real lawsuit. The intention etc. is to come to a decision etc. in a project "where virtually everyone who has participated reports them to be extremely interesting, enjoyable, and worthwhile." Light lunch and refreshments were to be served. First I thought what were they serving and second what were they paying?  Light lunch seemed to a euphemism for meaning they're going to pull the buffet table away quickly and so in a pack of hungry fake litigants who needs that?  What does it mean  if you can't go for seconds and snag up some rolls or carrot sticks for the next day? Also I needed no expertise or qualifications. And they're paying for that! I did need to be able to listen and have a willingness to be fair. Well that's gonna cost extra! The money was okay but not great. You want my loyalty then there  should at least be a choice. Burger and fries and beverage preferably with malt. Crispy crab cakes and a hefty garden salad with fresh made croutons and a lemon squeeze. Grilled fish with couscous and bitter greens or killer stir fry with the onions just caramelized and those delicate spring rolls or those tiger rolls with hots and cream cheese or way deep fried egg rolls with a sweet sour tamari or blast your sinus mustard dipping sauce and not from jars bought by the carton at Home Despot. I'm not trying to be difficult. This just seemed like a weird professional exercise in trolling. In that you're supposed to be satisfied for the chance for having kicked in your two cents worth? Except to imply that having your own brain was something special but we know about that!  Don't get me wrong. But didn't we all get one? And wasn't this having a brain business just a credit anyway? I mean what do we have? We're living onward in an evolving world and a success at it because we're both dumb and smart simultaneously. That can't be a bad thing. It's kept us alive for millions of years. I showed the letter to the nurse. And she said well you're not going out of the house for that long anyway! And there it was. But she did have this idea. Tell them you'll do it for free she said. What's the point? Maybe they wont bother you she said. But what about the lunch I asked? You're not eating that much anyway she replied. I'll make you dinner some evening I said. And as soon as I said it I could tell the whole thing sounded coded. Like all the mathematics people behind the scenes use to drive all the social networks to bear fruit and that you on the receiving end never know the depths of the system you're using. She laughed. There wasn't the time. She had too many clients etc. But I said it's nothing really too bad to have your head in the clouds. That's how we are. Last night I said. What she said doing that great thing with her touch to a line of packing gauze soaked in bleach. A crater in the emotions maybe. Don't be silly she said. No I said I was lying in bed reading and listening to the music that seemed right in the windows upstairs but was drifting outdoors across the city and traveling from downtown. I thought about going. She frowned. Yea I know I said. But what if there were never another time? What if there were never another chance to go downtown on a Friday night? So what she said. What did you miss? A crowd beer and food vendors? Yea I said something like that. I felt left out. A portfolio of sighs. Sad thing she said. I don't want to be a ghost. Like hanging out in some former version. Earlier I said I watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Maybe like in the movie I was now a replica grown from some weird bubbling pod and the old body was nowhere in sight! But you know as long as there was music playing in the windows and as long as I didn't close those windows I was safe from being taken over and I knew that. But it really is tough to say at those moments tomorrow comes and forever in those moments you still doubt what you just said.                  

Epistle. To: Wollstonecraft

It was like something out of Hitchcock almost if what happened weren't so literal. I was walking down the street minding my own business - right here I know you're skeptical - but that's how those movie lines get off the ground! - when a crow dive bombed me from a maple tree. A dozen other crows were up in the tree and making noise enough like some experimental sound band gearing up for a show. What emotions do crows have? Were they pissed off? Or just sonic? And what do you do if a crow hits you in the head? I kept thinking about the dumb guy at the gas station. In the movie. He's like totally unaware but that's his part. He's like huh and then drops the match and then blows up in a fireball. I should have had one of those new cop cameras mounted on my shoulder. Captures things like transgressions and assaults and drunk knuckleheads in real time all of which flails a point and helps with litigation down the road. But also on the underside of things happening there's a giving up of random indefinite space for the finite lens. If it's on film it has to be so, right? The courts of the future will hear your case on You Tube! Who would believe me? Who would believe that a crow tried to hit me in the head? And yelling at a crow was foolish. But I did it anyway. Because it felt like the right thing to do. I wonder if the shoulder cameras are tuned for the natural outbursts of R-rated language? You fucking crow! And after this potentially explosive You Tube incident, the other crows were up in the tree going on with the noise. As a metaphor if not overworked yea they were hanging on a limb and laughing at me or at least checking the film credits. At least the rains had stopped and the afternoon was there to be had if you wanted it in these flood stricken times. But it's been like that. Lately the days have been less than reliable than reading about them in the forecast. What good's a daily newspaper if the captions we're given can't even get the weather close? Yea it's a difficult science. But so are the fucking crows! I have a friend whose family has a farm deep in time in the Catskills. His cousins shoot crows the way someone else might pull weeds. And they've been doing it for centuries. Not that it's like that at all here. If I tried to shoot a crow I'd get the whole thing backwards and end up shooting myself. I have nothing against crows. I just don't want to be hit in the head by one. So I kept yelling at the crow. Trying maybe to reason with it. What is up? But I got no answer. Didn't seem to work. They kept on laughing. Maybe I should give my friend's cousins a shout and start a range war. Maybe if I had my shoulder mounted cop camera - attached on me like what a parrot (?) - I document this and place it somewhere in the halls of evidence against crows. And they don't fly off. And I stand there looking up for a while. Like they're trying to figure out if I'm related to Tippi Hedron...  Maybe sun. Maybe not. Maybe rain. Maybe not. Didn't this happen just like this last week? And so what you do is you wait around waiting for rain. Isn't it curious why we don't wait for sunlight? Because the way everyone talks it's the rain. That's the pause. A woman later at the park said oh this is just awful... a series of tough looking clouds moved in across the sky... thunder in contrasting light that sounds like a bad plan to be out in the open... but then nothing happens and the clouds are blown on and away... like some existential joke because you can see more clouds gathered up further away in posses of atmospheres and threats to become. Was it a question or not?  My response is to wear sunglasses all the time.

Epistle. To: Berlin Film Actress

Coffee. Ah. Dark bitter liquid made from parts new morning with demolished night. How it takes hold and then makes you up and before you know it you've slipped from a yawn into something like a smile the gods might flash. Second cup. Now you can think. Past stations narrow as love and hearing the landscape worker across the street starting his car. With no rain in the sky the sky fills up with a tired faraway light that enters the windows through broken clouds. I'd like to think it advantageous to run from dreams and leave them hanging but that would appear an impossible thing to do. Who runs the racket anyway when your eyes are closed and the grid of what's possible can sometimes paint you into a corner?  Spider webs caught before the light and etched with dew between the brown limbs of the rose thorns. The trees leaf out like old silent characters tuned to some invisible wire reaching across the earth in hemispheres and on a cue we don't know yet deeply enough about they break dirt according to what season is facing where. The nurse yesterday said man you have a lot of movies! She was looking at a pile on the desk that a friend dropped off the yesterday before. They pass the time between our appointments I said. Or rather they create a flush to live within, an anti-time, a couple hours where not much else matters. Wow John Woo she said. Ballet I said. Gunplay and a hyper-crowded Hong Kong introspection with as many cigarettes smoked as bullets are fired and family or business ties that doom the hero to logic and somebody else always lies dying and somebody else always does the talking. John Woo she said. Yea I said. Then it was all saintly professional hands at work, stuffing a bleached soaked gauze inside the damn hole and then patching me up for another day for another go round. Thanks aren't enough to offer I said. She was too smart to say it's just my job. She took my vitals and filled me out on her laptop and dumped all the necessary medical shit into the waste can. Ah. Where's time when you most need it? But she would be back. As long as I had a wound like a small pet attached to my sternum she would be back. And we've gotten to it already like a correspondence because she doesn't even call to schedule. She just shows up and I'm ready. Too bad things don't really exist. Too bad she had a job and I was just a client. Maybe she had a husband but I didn't see any ring. Maybe she had a boyfriend she didn't talk much about. Maybe she was gay and that would be the total hole in the fence that surrounds us. None of it mattered.  I needed to get somewhere and she was trained to help me. But still. Who doesn't imagine when someone else looks inside you and sees the flaws that aren't healed? It's what you remember I said. Like counting on any thousands of locations where you might be. What she said. You need to climb through to some other side and maybe I don't know what but maybe run away and be someplace else and maybe be somebody else. She sanitized her hands for the last time from a squirt bottle that made the day bed room smell like a death vapor for germs. Germs I  said - when I hear that word - it's like that routine from a Three Stooges comedy where the guy goes nuts when he hears the words Niagara Falls and loses it like he's hypnotized or something - sorry I said. What I remember I said was looking out over the rooftops of the hospital. I touched the window. I wanted out. I was locked in a climate controlled room. In a building where there were climate controlled rooms were the sole option. Where scores of machines beep in the dark like small frogs calling in some fertile night air - the incessant clatter and bang from carts being wheeled around crowded halls and crashing into whatever happens to be in the way in a crowded hall - toilets flushing at all hours no matter what time it is - the IV stands like guardian angles assigned to everyone as a kind of personal help only digital numbers and green lights to live by watching over restless laments and bad television shows  and the stunned beds of those waiting on the cusp to leave this shit behind one way or another - I'll see you tomorrow she said.

Epistle. To: Wollstonecraft

Ah finally a springtime afternoon to have. Radical sunlight and a fine breeze. Easy walking weather and so that's it, up one street and down another, like not actually caring about anything or I imagine what it might be like being timeless if that were something we might ever know. People around tend to their small gardens as in a fever, fussing over designs for stone footsteps and arrangements of new bought flowers, you might think it all was a manner like in a grand English landscape and not a precious bit of earth turned over at the end of a lawn on Catherine Street. Moving slow like some clumsy monster on the loose and having first steps. If this ever was just a taste of life then give me more. But can you appreciate anywhere present unless you've been someplace else in the past? What is that accord that has us to remember? When I contrast - this walking about - with being held in a hospital room just last week- the experience seems to travel from one to the other and back around as though these moments were partners in bed together and pain and pleasure were united for all the influence. Like waking up in the recovery room and suddenly playing over what the knock-out doc said about the anesthesia he would administer - we're going to put you to sleep etc. - but no that was a medical sleight of hand - and I told him so -  no what you're going to do is place me inside a chemically induced coma so let's just do it like that. Alas nobody listens! To digress is to live in the first place! And woke up - really the stuff is fantastic for taking a load off your head - and was attached to so much hardware it was difficult to find either place or time in the most basic decent sense.  EKG machine - blood pressure cuff - oxygen lines in the nose - oxygen meter taped to left index finger - a pair of tubes wrapped around my legs that on rhythm every few minutes would inflate and squeeze my legs   for blood flow like hands belonging to some fiend - even still had the surgical cap on - everybody looks terrible in those anyway - and what was like a ton of blankets smothering the instinct to be up and away - And of course the IV where streams of synthetic dope ran down from the headwaters of a computer terminal and gathered in my blood and like clockwork once a button was pushed washed me away time and again. I tried to imagine I was in a crime movie. And soon other members of the gang would burst into the hospital, overpower my captors, and spring me out to the door to a waiting ambulance that had been stolen for the occasion. Sometimes it all seems so literal. That you are trapped in a space until something better comes along. Ah. This walking about. A pretty foolproof system. Clouds building from the north. Cleaning the garage on Howard. Demolition of a garage on Hayward. A woman weeding her flower bed with tools scattered on the sidewalk, and a red wheelbarrow - so much depends on it - in the way. Certain obstacles for me in the slow bound lane. Kinds of expressions or even a joy for her. It's the differences which unite us. She looked up at my sunglasses and ski pole tapping the sidewalk and said oh I'm sorry I didn't realize you couldn't see. That's how it goes. The misunderstood. The beautiful. I'll just step around this stuff I said. There was a small musical device she was listening to in the tulips. And a dog who looked up at me and I swear he winked.

Epistle. To Bernadette Wild Garden

All day long these big big winds slammed against whatever was in the way. That may sound stupid but there has to be resistance. And sustained like that. Looking across the lake was like staring into a continual white out from the park over to NY state. Amazing the trees don't break off. An old question: how can something you can't see become so dominant? Relentless as a thought out of control. Apple blossoms fly through the streets and cover parked cars like a snowfall. Blue recycling bins roll in numbers like tumbleweeds in a ghost town. Another old thought: there's trouble here. Even put in some temporary stakes for the tomato plants for the day so they'd wouldn't blow up over and away. Thin bamboo pieces with twist ties.  I'd put the real stakes in the ground but but I couldn't hammer them far enough without maybe like blowing out my stitches on the inside. Talk about a mess! And consequences! Thought about it. But then had a picture in my head what it would be like and so was voted down. Democracy of the body in action. Wound over mind. And maybe it was settling for less just to plant a row of beans and a row of beets? Not really. Though did almost lose the seeds to the wind when I opened the package! Each time I bend over to do something it's as though I've taken something into account and then have to sign a registry. And each time that happens there's a little dance step-like motion, a more refined position in recoil that says hello don't do this. Ah - it's like the nurse said - your body does not want to lie to you. It's the expectations that get us and in the end make us fools. But if it wasn't going to rain then fuck it. There was a time to get something in the ground and this was it. Alas - as ever - I do seem incapable to learn even the simplest points of the day. The tiny motions that go with dropping a line of seeds into the dirt can bring about a kind of anatomical dope slap that when all's said and done you have no control over. If you're going to play with fire as they say there will be disquiet and pain afterwards unless you're agile enough to get out of the way.  But does that makes us tragic? Romantic even? Or as I implied just plain stupid? Probably speaking I settle for a taste from all three. Yea I know. Be like the trees. Bend but don't break and all that. But I'm not a tree. I'm a relatively  average circumstance processing mammal with a geared up nervous system. And I'm not sure about any of it. But you can't blame me if everything happens at once.

Epistle. To: Lady Kimono Clan

It's like a base urban legend - yea I know you all live at the foot of a mountain and conduct operations from there - and it does matter where you live and what you make - yea I know you love the  country and the trees with blossoms and the old roads that have been there since time became a blink - but those landscape paintings you sent - I felt kind of wonderfully lost looking at them. Maybe I was even there  where they came from and was tucked inside them somehow like being at a movie and alone in the dark but still with a feeling all encompassed. But you can't make something from nothing. There's no mystery in creation. Even if the gods are going to pat us on the back, isn't that because the gods recognize we all already belong to a long line of thieves and characters whose cash words have always been well let's bend the truth a little. The good trick is finding it. Accidents - there are materials at hand - we enjoy getting our hands dirty - a sideways glance at the marvelous even - and even though living remains as burdensome as ever it remains deep and satisfying to poke around outdoors - all the stuff we need is right there without us. And that should be like a telling point in the mystery. Everybody else lives so far away. And it's not like they are required at the moment or anything like that. But they just live far away.      

Epistle. To: Berlin Film Actress

Yea of course the rapture didn't happen either. And after all that advertising.  How do you face down the end of the world anyway? Despite the advance publicity - and ahem a world wide following of millions  - yet here we are as the world keeps right on going. Did you ever think that maybe god is laughing? Or even the text we're presented with is nothing but laughter? It was a bad enough movie back in the day. Maybe Mimi Rogers was just trying to get over the break up with Tom Cruise? Forget that business with the white horse with wings as the jail breaks down... I'm glad to call in and say that the tulips are fine and am having a meal with fresh asparagus from my neighbor's backyard garden. There's nothing to do about it. Wouldn't heaven just confuse you anyway? Why believe in hell other than a sick bedtime story to scare the pants off you and so you developed a fondness for horror movies later on? And as ever - tempting the fateful strings of this life - I scratched around in the garden yesterday. Took a pain med and fuck it let's see what happened later. A lovely hot spring afternoon. Slowly, back and forth, a zen-like rake though by no means was this an attempt to establish credentials. What I really wanted to happen was to go deeper. With a shovel. Turn upside down what was the low dirt in the vegetable box and move it up closer into the air. But it didn't happen that way. For obvious reasons. I keep reminding myself.  Even though I dislike having a self to be reminded about, it's still fun to do it! And pushing the surface back and forth was work plenty. It's still the wound and all that. I try and do stuff before a calamity sets in. An experience really. A fall back moment where engagement stops and a little wire in the brain sends out a warning signal that begins to echo oh-oh in the ears. This is like being reminded what a fool it is to have a body. And speaking honestly - well maybe just this side of a lie - wouldn't want to fall into a habit one way or the other - but having a thought about the evening was enough to have me stop. Pain in the future is a big enough suck anyway. If this were a spy thriller there would be coded language to decipher and it would read abort mission. Not that I'll ever get the girl in this script but hey! But hey - despite fear of the future - and the future does not exist but it is here anyway like a twister puzzle in the back pages of a comic - what was happening was so entirely pleasant. The sunlight - the dirt - the pain med - someone across the street was strumming a guitar - figuring out for later which plant goes where and so on - was like being swept into a lost afternoon - was like having shangri-la tossed at your feet - well maybe for only an hour or so just this side of honestly. That's the problem and the beauty. Even though living was as burdensome as ever it was I can say it was deeply satisfying to be poking around outdoors. A sideways glance at the marvelous even.    

Epistle. To Bernadette Wild Garden

Cool damp morning where the trees look heavy from all the rain. Are we in that place once again? Where it's another time, another time between storms where the norm becomes looking elsewhere? Trimmed the roses yesterday in a rare moment of sunlight. They way they looked they needed to have all that dead material lost, the brown canes sucking energy and not giving anything in return. And not much in the way of rebellion from the wound. Perhaps I should name it and give it a personality? But on second thought I don't think so. And it's odd, not to hear anything electronic not mechanized. No cars on the street and no planes in the sky or any land lines exploding in open windows. Only the birds calling back and forth like sounds in the woods. No human voices either. It's like a science fiction quiet, where at first you don't realize what's happening. But then as the quiet settles in.  And you find everything else on the human side has gone and you're alone, in what a script maker has decided this sounds like the end of the world with just you listening. And on cue a fog settles in among the trees. Then to disprove theory a truck rattles over on Caroline Street. Ah, too much introspection brings back the rain! Soon there will be a mad rush as ten thousand soccer parents look for parking in the neighborhood like a bunch of mantis in SUV's. Today is supposed to be part cloudy. Tomorrow is supposed to be part sunny. Where's the line? Should you plan on something if it's going to be a part sunny day? And should you just give it up and forget about it on what should be it's opposite the part cloudy day? And I had this coupon. It was worth some much off per gallon of gas and up to twenty gallons. Having things like that can spur you to action. But no one explained I had to pay inside the store. I swiped a card like everybody else and paid outside. There's nothing I can do a woman said. I told her no one told me I had to pay inside. She looked at me like a zombie and began eating a sandwich from a plastic bag hot out of the microwave while she was selling lottery tickets and a bottles of Sprite to other customers pushing me aside. And it sounded so feeble - and  this was it - no one told me I had to pay inside. Now I have a full tank in the truck and an unused unfulfilled coupon due to expire next week. And since I'm not driving a lot these days there is no way this side of Hades-town I will go through that full tank in time. In time to get back that due from the coupon. But maybe I should get enterprising. Maybe try and sell that coupon at like half price to a soccer parent. If you need to park so far away from the field and go bitch and balls about it - like half a block! - then whoa I can make this trip partially worth you're while! But I never do those things. Maybe there's an authority to petition. Hey fuck this I've been sandbagged! But I imagine you should be smart in situations like these. And as ever it's situations like these that leave me baffled until they are explained more better in full. Maybe it was just a bad day for coupons. Maybe I'll drive around all day and drink up that gasoline. Then start over and go to a different store and truly be able to use that coupon because now I know you need to pay on the inside. Thunder up in the heavens. Banging across the forecast. For sure I'm going to plan on nothing.