Archive for the ‘Piece of Mind’ Category
One more love letter in the canon with the others that got no response. The words were put down for the one that got away, and she still gets away, swimming faster from the bottle corked with your message inside. All your words pass under her eye (you’re lucky they get that far) and after the first reading, she’s finished. This world has become so unromantic and immediate – it’s a bottle of wine two, three years old, no more. You take a pull straight from its top, alone on the couch first, the bedroom next (too depressing), back to the living room on the same sweaty cushions as before, and finally the bottle dumped in a fresh trash bag – a hollow drop to the bottom – finally back to bed for the night, this time, and the memory movies play over and over. Oh shit, this is just the beginning. The stale letter crisping already in her hand and the small paradise you’d hoped to build flaking to the floor. Let the pieces spread. Let the next woman come along, but this time don’t tell her you’re a writer. Then maybe she’ll be impressed in the final moments when you can communicate so clearly, so emotionally. If she knows you’re practiced at the craft, the words will mean a lot less.
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Tags: Letters
Table
Monday, July 6th, 2009
Backed into a table, we sat by the French doors eating Spanish food. The cafe had gradually filled with lovely office workers from the low-rise buildings on the mid-town street. The area had been made over recently, but the sidewalks were still cracked and the fire-plugs covered in layer after painted layer – alternating in yellow and red paint bubbles from where it dried in the sun some other summer afternoon. The sun helped itself to the ice water on the table shinning through the limbs from the trees rooted in the bare spots along the cement. The whole cafe felt like stepping into a mirror: while people side-stepped between the rounded tables more bodies passed by the glass, some on bicycles, others with mouths loosening from cigarettes to breathe a few cloudy words that would look profane to an amateur lip reader. In this see-through spot, it felt like the whole city was staring in to see if its hair was straight, which made it hard for me to surrender anything – to make any ground with her.
She came in late after sending a polite message to my handheld device that I’ve taken to carrying with me after pledging not to. The light fell slanted on her the whole time. Off-balanced, she shifted in the light, kept up the conversation and kept interested. But still, I couldn’t give anything of me away. We talked about the light-hearted topics that you talk about on a first meeting after some time has passed. Then, once you’ve asked about the last few years, their career, their family – once the first few drinks are down and the table has been cleared, the meaningful material comes out, or it doesn’t. (more…)
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Michael Jackson was definitely an icon. With a few musicians, I’ve had moments when something in one of their songs impressed me so much, I thought, “Wow, I have to listen every single song this person has ever recorded.” That happened to me the first time I heard Bob Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue, The Who’s Bargain, and NWA’s Boyz in da Hood (yeah, I’m on board with gangsta rap). I suppose that inclination hasn’t been limited to musicians either – I experienced this after reading Kerouac’s The Town and the City, his shot at a Thomas Wolfe, family-themed legacy novel that is far from his best work – I found something in it for me, though. But the first time I was blown away enough to decided to follow someone’s entire output was after hearing Michael Jackson’s Human Nature.
The Thriller album was a smash hit for virtually every song on it, but to me, Human Nature was something new. There is a sincerity about the human condition in that song that can’t be faked. It’s a gorgeous singing performance – almost a whisper, really – and I think in many ways it’s as close as Michael Jackson ever came to recording … him. I don’t know how the song was captured, but I’ve always wondered if he sang parts of it in the booth, alone. (more…)
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Tags: Music
“You know, I like pretty much everything you write.”
“Is that right? Pretty much, huh?”
“Well, there was one story of yours I read … ” She shakes her head. “I just didn’t understand it. It was about tacos or something … some girls took you to dinner … I just didn’t follow it.”
“Oh yeah, some friends of mine took me out on my birthday – with all that was going on, I wouldn’t have had a birthday last year if it wasn’t for them – and we went to Manny’s on Southwest Boulevard. They’re all really beautiful girls and when we pulled into the parking lot, some working guys in a window really took notice of them. They were staring and pointing. One of the girls who is really tiny but gorgeous stopped and stared back, then sort of jumped at them. When we got inside, they wouldn’t look at her. They wouldn’t say a word. Here was this itty-bitty thing, frail arms, purple high heels, and she’d beaten these guys back with a little body gesture. I thought it was a profound victory for her – an example that beauty can be a burden.”
“Yeah, I didn’t follow it. I like it better when you write about your kids.”
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Tags: Conversations
Surprise has been the common reaction to my work lately. Given the inevitable end to my marriage, as much as I would like, I can’t deny that my work has been impacted. Writing is thinking, as far as I have learned in the long hours I’ve spent holding hands in public and under the table with the written word. When something happens to you that changes the way you feel about people and the way the world comes to you – let’s call it perception – then it’s bound to show in your creative work.
I guess the nature of the posts here have always given away what’s going on in my life. If you know me or you’ve read material here before, you know writing is my way of dealing with what happens to me – and I usually do it with absolute honesty. I’ve done less and less writing the last few weeks. I’ve thought about taking this blog down, not for privacy sake, but because the subject matter might present me as depressed or distressed – a dark contrast to what I’ve written before. A fear I have is that a potential client would look through this material and a person who was once a talented writer has turned to venting online about all the shitty things that have happened to him. (Once there was a certain grace I expected of my work. As recent as three months ago, the word shit would have never appeared on this blog. Some posts might be considered shit by some. Who knows? But it wouldn’t have been me posting it outright. That in itself is a change.” (more…)
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Tags: Vent
