I am found in scraps of paper
Between pages of history and fiction
Beneath the lines of theory and analysis
Written in lead and ink
I form in the margins
Erased and effaced
Notes form breadth and body
Sketchings and etchings faded
Amassed into a collection of memory and me

...better left on the shelf

Confronting mortality is not pleasant. It is strange to discover that as we age so do others. No one lives forever. The characters in stories live forever in people's memories, but people don't. We can pray our voices have had an effect on others and that we are not negatively represented through time, but once the last breath is exhaled, there is no point to worry about such things.

A certain someone has recently died. It was suicide. I am sad and yet knew this was coming though I did not know this person very intimately. In fact, in the view of this individual, I find myself in the dark and hellish background of his/her existence.. Never spoke to him and yet I knew this person was an intelligent and incredible character. What must have driven said person to this end is beyond me. I don't know what causes men to fall off cliffs or point needle to flesh. Escape is all I can think of. Freedom is all I know worth dying for.

Spirits are not meant to be boxed in these bodies. For this we sing, we run, we write, we speak. There are some words, some speeches, some sermons, and some lectures that will never leave me.
So, for suicide friend, I love moments of your existence. Your words cut through into the reasoning of my life and reaffirmed me.

We write in praise of the moments we may yet create. We sing for moments of exultation or in grief. We create because we are all doomed. Celebrate the moments! All endings are sad if we read long enough and that is why I leave some books unfinished.

a different point of view

She’ll come back. I know she will. She always comes back. She goes in that thing with wheels. Sometimes I go with her too. I stay in the back cuz she won’t let me in the front. I get the whole seat. I get to look out the window if the moving-thing, or a car, is not going too fast. I like it when the window is down. I can smell better when the glass is down. I bet it smells better from where she sits. I bet she sees more too. She messes with the wheel and pedals. She knows where we go. I never know, but it doesn’t matter. I get to stay with her. I usually get to stay inside and sleep next to her. I like that. It beats the hard and dirty pillows.
Once she took me to the waves. She took me to this hot sandy place that touches this big water. There was so much water and it was so loud. She took me up to the water and then ran away. She went back in and she fooled me. The water was cold! I loved it! I ran back and forth until I had to chase a shirtless man. He went away. That was good. He didn’t belong to me.
I remember she was there to hold me when I was learning to kick the water. I’m not scared of the water. She always held me when I was scared or felt sick. No one could hurt me with her holding me. She takes me away.
There were nights when we were alone and she put me right next to her. She doesn’t do that often. It must have been really cold that night, or too dark. It was comfortable.
She also gives me a whole bunch of treats. I know she has a box of treats in this one drawer. She keeps our leashes there. We don’t really go for walks, but if she takes them out, that means that we go somewhere. We go to the big water,or see friends, get more treats. I just like being with her. She gives me the treats and she plays with me. She gets me toys and I go get the toy and I bring the toy back and she throws it again. Then she has to chase me and we play tug at it. I let her have it every once in a while, but then I have to get it again cuz she throws it again.
She’ll come back. She leaves every morning. She comes back at night. We eat, she eats, and she sits at a table and stares at nothing and plays with me with her feet. I chew and I sleep. I miss her. She’ll come back. Just keep waiting, Pete. Even if she doesn’t come back at night, she wouldn’t leave us forever. Others leave, she doesn’t.

my human condition

People are like characters. People go through this journey of life as their very own story. The stories of people in everyday life are not always written and some people write one out that really shouldn’t be published, but nonetheless we all live our very own story. And like stories they are full of characters that come in and out of our lives. Some leave by death and some through a parting of ways because the relationships just don’t work. Others ebb away through distance and time. Some come back and step in for those short scenes. And yet others, like in my own story, leave for no apparent reason at all.
It apparently is not good writing for characters to just fall out of the story. It leaves more questions than answers and really, that is the truth of reality. People leave and everyone wants an explanation despite the fact that none exist. Characters are present for a short time. They live and they die and they disappear within the pages. They have their own story in a book meant for one.
My story is full of faces I remember and never see again. I see bits and pieces of their lives go in and out at a very far distance. It is not for lack of love that I move one way and they another. It is only the simple reality of a person’s story. It happens.
So, when my characters begin to disappear with no explanation, people can say it is bad writing, as some have done in the past, but I call it truth. It happens. It has happened to me and there is no way to uncover or recite the truth in a way that anyone really likes. Usually fiction is supposed to suspend reality, but then that also hinders the human experience and the human condition. And after all, I can really only write under the conditions I have experienced.

something beautiful

My favorite color is the morning. I see it in the morning in my room. I can’t help but smile when I know it is there before I open my eyes. When I see it, it is like the loveliest sounds to wake up to. I wake up to my favorite color glistening off the walls of jungle green, over forest green carpet and green garland that surrounds my room. I fall in love all over again. I have surrounded myself with colors over the year, bold and shocking, until I find myself in love with gray, and they all become gray.
Gray was for every other day, but there were days when I would wake up and the color of happiness would peek in through the reflection of morning sunshine off of the house of the next-door neighbor and peel onto my walls in soft light.
All the shelves of fairies and unicorns next to pirates and samurai next to vampires, masks and cherubs return to little girl dreams not yet drifted away. The color returns and morning happens.
The blur of my eyes in the morning fades and I look up from the most comfortable bed and see a cascade of color falling from the ceiling where the plastic stars have faded. I see the dust shake in the light fall. I see pale shadows hiding behind figurines. I see the stuffed animals smile because we both had dreams. I see the light continue its journey along much loved walls where calendars welcome the next day. Shadows of hanging roses dance with their dusty partner over a cluttered dresser where memories mask the surface in pictures of friends.
Such is my favorite color that I see it fall over everything in my room. I turn to my side and I watch the light play on my boyfriend’s skin. I could hear music in the morning and see it in the light that has entered like a spirit that hovers over the place and makes the morning magic. It is as if I am the only one that sees it and I wonder why he doesn’t wake up. I wonder why he doesn’t notice how beautiful it all is.
The shades of light come in like dust. It is this small and delicate spider web of light caressing all it touches. It touches the desk and the lamp; it touches posters on the walls as it touches Japanese souvenirs. It touches the bible and the clock. It touches me and I watch it all around me.
It falls on his exposed shoulders and I want to touch what is not truly visible. I touch only his skin and the pale shadow of my hands dance with warmth upon his back. I let my hand touch the length of his arm. I push myself up to reach his hand on the other side of his body. I touch it. I block the light of the window and it is darker where he faces. He hasn’t seen the morning like I have.
I touch his lips with my finger. I touch his cheek. There is a scruffy shadow on his cheeks and chin. He warms to the morning that I bring him, but he doesn’t open his eyes yet. He sighs and puts his arm around me then turns to hold me. He faces the morning, but his eyes have not opened and he doesn’t see what I see.
I’m in a warm trap where I am on my back and I see the ceiling and all the light that embraces my room. Everything is warm.
This whole morning is so lovely! Why doesn’t he wake up!
I push myself up and his head lies on my chest and his arms wrap around my waist. I lean back and I sit. The light drips on his arm and he pushes his face into the folds of my arms as if to hide from the day. Light falls on short light brown hair. He says it isn’t blonde. I could make out the special freckles that dot his arm and the angel hair on his arms.
He seemed to linger to the dark side of the night before, pulling away from the light of the morning. He skin was lighter than mine, but darker than the morning. He clung to the sleep that was still dark in his eyes.
I didn’t understand that morning wasn’t his favorite color. I gave up. I had my morning masterpiece, now I had the rest of a lazy Sunday to do with as I wished. I also realized that maybe his favorite color was the dark beneath his eyelids, the shade of sleep not yet shaken in the warmth of blankets and me next to him. He didn’t want to let go of the blankets or me, and he didn’t want to open his eyes.

Roaring!

Upon arriving at this new place and setting up camp so to speak, I find myself hindered with what seems like trivial matters but weigh heavy in a grand scheme of things. I find myself blocked from the world by a great hulking behemoth of necessity and luxury. I call it a monster blunder while others may call it HDTV. I see the difference, I just don’t care. My eyes have suffered through blurry and flurry visions while tinkering with antennae and wire hangers. While TV is a luxury, and so is HDTV, it is really not as necessary as high speed internet. These two media dumping and flashy eye fixers should really work together. Many companies offer a deal for that and even phone, but no…I did not choose one of those plans. I tend to avoid the cheap road for some reason. Somehow I think that it will actually work better this way and yet her I run into a wall and make the choice about which is more important.
These dilemmas, while they won’t exactly happen in my stories, the feelings must transcend to their predicaments. It may be as insignificant as which road to pass knowing full well that both roads offer great benefits while simultaneously sucker punching all wayward travelers. Really, it is the cliché predicament of being between a rock and a hard place, Scylla and Charybdis, or even the road less traveled. But really, continuing with these tried and true phrases, how do I keep my cake and eat it too? How can I give up one thing for another?
The answer to this is that neither can be cast away, both must be saved. No longer dilemmas they are personified. They are the two toys I cannot do without despite their being left to the dust in the closet and no longer played with.
Here is how I see their survival and wonder if it is in me to overcome this hurtle as heroes must. It starts first with a voice. No, heroes do not speak politely, they speak loudly. No, heroes scream! They roar!
They complain until they are speaking with a manager using all the tools in their killing arsenal until the company is appealing to your needs and appeasing just so they save the last vestiges of their hearing, their heart and their life. They work for a corrupt system and should know better. Heroes are out there. Listen to their cry!

first steps

My first step to becoming what I want to become is really one stumbling accident after another. I tend to see life in modes of epics. If all of life is a story, I look for the patterns and signs that foreshadow an inevitable success or failure of my endeavors or those of others. I tend to see a lot of tragedies because people, myself included, make many mistakes and continue in error after error. It takes a huge jolt to jump out of the sad cycle one has dug oneself into. My journey however, takes so many holds that I find myself without a choice now but to finally move forward.
This journey begins, coincidentally with a move. Due to events outside of myself really, I move to this southern desert of California. I wear tank tops and sweat on morning mountain walks in the middle of January. I walk the dusty trails and think of the tasks before me and my characters. I believe as I develop they must as well. With each step I take up that hill, with each rock I trip over, and each dusty dry branch I break beneath my steps, I constantly find my characters stranded and walking that upward journey as I do now.