801-900
801-810
To hands entwined in a frantic mass, the strings pull up from dirt. The rising force pushes out of the earth, through ages and times to the knotted now. What is the ultimate weight? A stone, a core, memories encumbered by roots and bones. Entangled in graves of dogs and cats in cradles, hard candies in glass dishes, homemade cookies in jars. Holidays in sepia memories. Sunsets and rises alone and surrounded. All in line. Pushing up from deeper, from the mass accumulating upon mass. Burdens of pains and joys inherited like beads strung from forever ago to bound hands.
811 - 820
It’s cold outside and there’s storms. The earth is shaking and the air is poisoned. Even looking outside is a struggle. Even considering what it would be like to take out the trash, bring in the mail, is terrifying. The world outside myself is a hellscape hunted by nightmares and monsters. Inside is pleasant. I am soft and cuddly. The temperature is always perfect, humidity acceptable. Inside is warm tones and soft sounds and predictability. I’m swaddled in reinforcing views, curated information. I’m too soft and gentle for out there. But try to drag me out and I’ll gut you.
821-830
The same stories retold, rewound and cued up exactly as before. The joy isn’t in the memory of the event, but in the performance of retelling it. The eye-rolling at the well-worn punchline. The showy impatience of the protagonist and/or victim. The added flourishes of the old witnesses. It’s the retelling that nourishes, not the memory. The thrill of a new, invested audience invigorates the well-tread words. Always prepared. Always perching above common conversation. The facts are irrelevant. Points of view have melted together. Rituals aren’t recitals but engagement. There’s patter and purpose to reconnect through a shared family script.
831-840
The nest is often decorated with brightly-colored shiny objects. It has been observed that even when far from home range, they will carry a particularly appealing bauble or piece of shiny trash back all the way back home. It appears the only use is decor. The assumption is that this helps select mates. They will often also raid abandoned nests or rummage through piles of discarded objects from others. The creatures are highly covetous and some nests have been nearly encrusted in doilies, paintings of baby animals, garlands of glass and plastic, and lighted signs of the regional sports teams.
841-850
Lose the spikes and dips of chemical imbalance. Level out the variances and settle into a universal baseline trap we all strive to find ourselves caught in. Forget greatness, fury, righteousness, fame, and we’ll all happily settle into the something we all want - ease. We’ll all happily sacrifice struggles for success in exchange for basic comfort. Not pleasure, just comfort. The simplest form of complacence. It’s not a negative. For most people it's aspirational. Simply being comfortable in our own bubble. Isolated in our individual simplicity. Being at home within yourself. Being basic and at peace, whatever that means.
851-860
The smallest indication of peace. A light smell of home cooking coming in from a cold day. Caramelizing treats in the oven. Spices on the stove. A welcome back from where you were to where you belong. An open door to where you should be. Comfort for its own sake. A gentle shore. The forest green. Fog-set fields, the autumn moon full and bright. A restful place within yourself that fits only perfectly against the soft known voices and conversations. A known squeaky floorboard, floating from scene to scene, room to room, swimming in the unsettled narrative of just being.
861-870
“Oh come on,” she said with a much too obvious wink. “Let’s splurge.”
“There’s no way two of us can eat that.”
I heard her heels dig in. “We can have it for breakfast.”
She'd never eat that for breakfast.
“Just live a little.”
I'm adventurous enough, but a five-tier tower dripping in seafood and dry ice is a little past normal living. “You don’t like oysters.”
Her eyes and attitude snapped to me, “I will eat the oysters.” She leaned back, choosing unbeatable logic, “I’m going to order it because its not the thing that matters, but the want.”
871-880
Shit. What was I thinking. What was the reason for being here? It was in hand. In mind. Intent. A vision pinned to purpose and aligned with clearly linear progression from the lost to found. I had it contained. Tumbling round in grit and worry to refine it into... what. What was i thinking. Did it slip out the floppy pockets of my metaphysical sweatpants? Is it dissolving into an incoherent mass in my rhetorical cargo shorts? Shit. I’ll have to scrape it out of the lint trap and i’m too tired to figure out what that’s a metaphor for.
881-890
I invented words for you, but compared them to others and let them go. They were too young. Unburnished earnestness with no patina of nuance. They meant what they said, so i had to send them away. Don’t feel bad, they need time to grow. This isn’t a safe world for innocent words. They need to harden, find poetic friends to smoke with or erudite terms to sniff whiskey. Maturing into coyness and entendre. Otherwise they’ll get lost. They may find their way to you, but we'll never know. Since they’ll no longer be the words i made for you.
891-900
In the open fields the ice fog blinds. A dense lattice of hoarfrost air. Pass the thicket of icy briars into the woods and the air unlocks. The quiet trees, in kumbahka, between seasonal breaths. Windfall cracking and surging in evening freeze now relaxing in a slow morning thaw. The stream locked tight to a slow, secret flow. These are quiet days. Resting days. Days to forget and remember. As the creek flows from room to room, the jack frost coats the wooden chairs. Cabinets shudder and collapse into an exhaled thaw. These are the days to hold and release.