SIDEWAYS EIGHT PROJECTS

 

Both of Us (Wigler Year One)

 

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred first dates,

 

How would you measure the first calendar year?

 

In kisses, in convos, in collabs, in random road trips

 

More substantial that a hundred miles? In expressing fears?

 

How many times we’ve been able to hear sirens off

 

In the distance wearing seasonal styles, saying “cheers“.

 

I’ll go climbing with you’s how it started as we worked hard at

 

ivy mount, imparted time to each other, and kept climbing outside

 

Because the gym felt too crowded and we wanted to be as loud as a

 

Crowd that was out proud at night to delight in an astounding

 

Evening leaving nothing to chance or absence.

 

And, I’ve been glad since I met you, that I met you,

 

And I bet you knew that I won’t forget you saying,

 

While laying on the floor playing in playing way,

 

That we may or may not be flirting in a different manner,

 

With the banner of Heaven above us and a love as sweet

 

As the wine spilled below us. All I know is the broken

 

Frazzled edges of this puzzle fit.

 

I still remember our first walk to work together,

 

After getting coffee and somehow losing your hat,

 

We were delicately stepping into fall weather,

 

Together we were jumping without much of a net.

 

Painting pictures with words and autumn leaves

 

We spoke to each other under covers after others

 

Had gone to sleep or at least able to keep quiet

 

Flying at night like a pilot with only the horizon in sight

 

Seeing a riot below unable to quite hear it or see the details,

 

Or smell the smells because it can’t touch the peace we’ve

 

Felt in each others arms.

 

Whether that homeward spark has flared up in Rockville

 

Or Takoma Park, we’ve managed to bed down more than

 

Once below or above this country, in the middle as we

 

Fiddled a little bit of time with Chris in the bath tub in the

 

City of Brotherly love, after our Thanksgiving dinner, a bit of

 

Laughter that rocked us inward, trying hard to each maintain

 

The open mind of a beginner.

 

You introduced me to the Avett Brothers,

 

And strongly encouraged me to Phish.

 

I introduced you to my younger bigger brother, and my mother,

 

Father, and tried to fulfill your New Year’s Wish.

 

Our on again-off again relationship with vegetables and meats,

 

Out late night attraction to a foursome with Ben and Jerry’s sweets.

 

The only thing better than the fun we’d have on Saturday night,

 

Is the following morning at the farmer’s market eating our bodies right.

 

Learning how to drive a stick on the way to Niagara Falls.

 

Racing around in the car like a pinball in the machine that is DC.

 

Music is broadcast through the windows and down the halls,

 

And for an instant in that middle of the gloaming as we’re roaming

 

We can be free.

 

Homing in on St. Mary’s after Dogfish Head in Stokar’s car,

 

Six of us went to the point to anoint the past and polish present,

 

Walking out on the sand bar, to make human pyramids under stars,

 

The water, which was familiar to you, looked iridescent.

 

Naked romping, almost grape stomping, it seems the

 

Singing and bringing of gifts never ends.

 

We make it an adventure void of censure,

 

Welcomed into the circle of friends.

 

What other two go to Montreal on a relative whim,

 

Both of us spent our earliest years near the pacific rim.

 

Free parking unhindered, a romance kindled, two couples

 

Spent time with wine and a fry plate leaving our appetite

 

Swindled.

 

Stone Harbor, New Jersey for the site of the wedding

 

That had as many bridal showers as we did first dates.

 

Twenty two solid in an epic weekend setting

 

The tone for a shared life to anticipate.

 

Out in San Fran with Sara and Ned and the new little man

 

Shay cooing in his own unique way. That “Oh no, here we

 

Go” smile you had on your face hoping for a little one of your

 

Own someday.

 

We’re headed to the farm in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley.

 

Listening to Cali Love, gallantly galloping anticipating waiting,

 

On our conversations going end over end suspended ended up,

 

On our feet with our heads up, as long as I end up with you.

 

Belize and Guatemala, going to Tikal to listen to howler monkeys,

 

And the whispers of the Mayans. Both with screeching eerily similar to

 

Ryan’s. Amidst Carcassonne drama, my Caribbean Mama,

 

Had time to dream of alpacas and llamas, and my best birthday

 

Was more than just fine.

 

Now with you starting back to school, and me working with Jake,

 

We try to carve out quality time with each other from the moment we wake.

 

The grass is always greenest where it is cared for in the moments we make.

 

Our first year dinner at Ray’s classics, the free dessert,

 

And the candle for my Candle next year.

 

Whether I’m the lesser and you’re the better,

 

Or I express with the gesture of this letter,

 

And we clear the air that’s hot or wet or,

 

I say I and love and you, handle this ramblin’ man’s

 

Plan, rub my fuzzy chest, and end this text here.

          Sent between the myth of a different time and the way in which a wool clad lad gets stiff in the climb, and I’m interested in this thing we haven’t figured out yet.  And I’m about dead, in the sense that I feel numb to the universe except the couch I sit upon.  How fast is this life seemingly moving?  Am I just figuring out ways to get THROUGH it?  Am I just trying to endure it?   Is everybody just trying to get through it.  Constantly rushing to places we don’t necessarily want to be?  That could be the negative side of things. 

              There is always another side to the equation.  Our collective job is to isolate the variables.  What do they signify?  These letters and numbers, I ask, what do they ultimately mean?  I feel this creative need to reach out, to speak out, even if its only in my porch, and I have the house all to myself.  I’m pretty sure that I do.  I don’t believe any of the roommates are home, and I feel a bit freer, I must admit.  It is like I am a fishy and I have a larger aquarium all to myself.  Should I sing?   Should I cry while watching a deeply moving indy flic?  Should I post on my blog?  Yes. 

             Writing to resonate with the cymbals in ears that make them clang in a good way as if to accept something instantly unequivocally.  Words to heal wounds.  Is it possible?  Of course it is.  I am the only proof I need.  I have been moved by others words.  Moved perhaps to stirred words of my own, but words nevertheless.  And since, I have been moved by others, my words can at least potentially move some others to who knows what.  What with a period after it looks like it should have a question mark.  Just sayin’. 

              My mind desires the time to write and have it be inspired.  When inspiration is lacking, so is the writing.  However, I must push through the edge of this envelope.  I must mail myself to the stars with the chance that they’ll white back.  How long can a candle go left unattended?  For it’s life if it is housed or founded by.  I can’t help but have certain images roar through my head when I listen to “Someone like you”.  I can’t help that I’m a romantic.  Actually I can help it.  I choose not to. 

               If I forget my roots then I cannot truly appreciate and understand the craziness that is my own recess of mind in the form of my leaves.  Search that for content.  It is rich.  I do remember.  I do project.  I do live in an isolated fashion at times even though I may be calling out to the darkness.  Know simply that I try to love the best I can given my circumstances, and I bare the weight of falling short everyday.  I attempt to give that weight over to the Cosmos and God if he or she or they will have it.  Hear my words.  Forget them if you must.  But, above all, be MOVED!  Be present.  Be aware and beware.  Not a threat.  Just sayin’. 

                I form sentences in my mind shortly, as if instantaneously, they flow through my fingers to this screen.  Desiring to take the time and send a hand written letter across the country.  However the hand written letter carries with it the weight that the medium now possesses.  It is so much easier and convenient to post to a blog, send an email, send a txt, send a comment on facebook, etc. than it is to sit at a desk and try to think of something weighty enough in my life to write about.  Perhaps that is exactly the issue.  My life all-too-often feels as if I am simply enduring it.  There is always a glimmer of that spark.  However somedays I feel as if my spark may have run out and that I have already peaked in every way.   That thought scares the hell out of me!  I can’t accept the idea that I have apexed across the board, and yet I find myself lazily wasting away on my free time which isn’t much between work time, trying to sleep time, and trying to cultivate a formiddable relationship. 

                 It is like I’m waiting for my movie moment.  That knowledge in the moment that it is in fact my moment.  An opportunity of a lifetime of worldwide implications.  This is all I have.  I give it to you now.  Some where in it is a poem.  An unfolding life.  A positioned witness to many cloisters of life.  Sick in the wave.  Wanting to hang in for the ride.

No excuses, my mind lets loose as I try to explore the caves in the recesses of it.  The one who no more behaves feels the stresses in a fit.  Blowing past the idea that anything is impossible.  Staring out the window evening before last, she spots a raccoon approximately twenty feet away on a broken off limb at eye level in a tree.  She draws it to my attention.  I begin to wonder if I can open the windows, and pelt it with a rock from my collection.  We have a stare off.  I open the window.  She is scared and thinks the raccoon is going to get us.  He assures her that it has no way of getting onto the house from where it is, and that it couldn’t get in the window anyway.  She seems panicked.  He gives up the plan to chuck a rock at the raccoon.  He appears bummed.  She feels bummed that he feels bummed.  She says “go ahead” but then quickly says “close the window more” because she is still scared.  He assures her again that the raccoon is atleast twenty feet away from his visual approximation.  And he tells her that the window shouldn’t be closed at all because he doesn’t want to break the window with his throw.  She acquiesses.  He goes through his rock collection and decides upon something that isn’t even technically a rock.  A broken worn section of durable tile is selected.  Approximately half an inch thick, maybe three quarters.  He will throw it with the same hold as if he were going to skip a rock in a wide river.  He assures the raccoon verbally that he is going to get him or her.  The raccoon does not move from his post.  He squares himself at the window.  He places one foot (with shoe attached) upon the lime green couch which was left by the previous tennant.  She does not approve later, but he is focused on making the one throw count and doesn’t think about his foot.  His footing is sure.  That is his focus.  One last stare, and then he lets it fly.  Whammo!  Right in the head.  Thinking he would knock him out of the tree with the surprise factor and the velocity behind it, he is amazed to see the raccoons ability to be whipped around to the bottom of the limb and still be able to hang on.  Perhaps the raccoon will be back.  Perhaps it won’t.  The throw made it.  For an instant he was an NFL quarterback in the Super Bowl.  For an instant.  Back to life.  Back to reality.  Back to the Pay Pal account that we purchase random items through.  When I lay in Shangri-La, dreaming of playing Carcassonne on a nice wooden table, I exhale loudly to hear my own voice, and feel my own breath.  I need reminders that I am actually alive sometimes.  Sometimes I run short distances for no reason other than a brief burst of energy and perhaps some mild laughter from the crowd.  Sometimes I do things just to make myself laugh.  Sometimes I cry until I laugh.  Sometimes I laugh until I cry.  Sometimes I think the world would be a better place if I had never been born.  Sometimes I think I should have gone into the FBI.  Sometimes I want to be a travelling writer for National Geographic.  Sometimes I wish that poetry didn’t interest me so much.  Sometimes I wish I would die saving someone elses’ life.  Sometimes I try to grow organic vegetables in small pots on our rooftop deck balcony.  Sometimes I remember firing my rifle into the river in Montana.  Sometimes I think about moving to Bolivia.  Sometimes I get so angry that I can feel my whole body shaking.  Sometimes I just want to die.  Sometimes I feel young.  Sometimes I feel like an old soul.  Sometimes I resent politics, big business, the entire body of armed forces, and most of the state of Texas (not Austin).  Always there is a love for exploration of the landscape and mindscape.  Always there is the idea of one life imprinting upon another.  Mostly there is a desire to love and to be loved.  Evidently, all you need is love.  Da da, dada da.  I will keep sending smoke signals into the leaves of the trees of autumn soon to be falling for Bareilles again and her Winter Song.  What wonderful moments we can have when we stop wanting to die, and start wanting to live.  Where am I right now?  I’m trying to figure it out as I go along.

Multiply my hours.  Lengthen my days.  But, keep everyone else in the chamber where time stays the same.  With all of the powers vested in you by your name, may you keep the evil at bay from my frame, paying infinite dividends in extraordinary ways.  I sit back in the tiny room that is hidden from view.  A curious mind asked what was behind the panelling to the left of the bookcase.  One may have assumed that it was merely a side panel access the the bathtub in the room next door.  However, the crawlspace opens up once it passes the bathtub into a room large enough for two comfortably in meditative postures.  The room has sage green paint up the walls to the vaulted roof line which, at its apex, is almost tall enough for a six foot tall male to stand up in.  With a humbled head and neck, one such fiend would have a substantial enough standing space to be moderately comfortable.  A candle adorns the corner nearest the hole in the wall that still needs to be covered.  A red bic lighter adorns its side.  My girlfriend’s “Five Good Minutes in Your Body” book helps hold down the hard wood floors who love their fresh dusting and inclusion in nighttime activities.  May the passion continue to flow in your veins.  And, if your community experiences brain drain and it causes multi-generational pain, let me just explain in a plain manner what it is that I am saying.  Everyone needs that comfort room.  That den.  That place where it is safe to be comfortably silent.  That place where you can be content to stare at a Candle’s flickering flame.  Where you feel at home.  Away from the vast nuances and loud noises of the boisterous excited life.  At the center of all that is creative and  contemplative.  At the core of what it is to be human, and to be able to empathize with a whole host of characters.  When the fan circles, and each of the separate bulbs at separate ages, and therefore, different shades of white, approaching mustard yellow, and they hit the bottoms of the wooden blades just right, I feel as if the whole house might lift off of the ground and fly off to Venezuela.  Ah, how my heart flutters when it thinks thoughts like that.  Beneath the venetian blind, but before the glass, there is a microcosm.  A separate climate distinct from the room and the outside.  Up against the outside, separated only by a thin piece of glass.  At the edge of the inside, only able to look out, due to the blinding blind.  One of a kind we each are.  No one will ever quite be us as we were in the here and now.  However, that is not enough to be remembered.  In order to be remembered, one need be great.  One must win.  But who is winning?  What is it to win?  Someone’s idea of winning might sound like losing to someone else.  And children, little though wise, scoff at the idea of one winning forever.  They want to be firefighters, and cowboys, and angels and princesses.  They want to explore, and put on dresses, but not together in the midst of messes.  Not persay strictly from the guest list, or even the best one of your guesses.  Moreso the one invited in because of time spent together in a different life perhaps when they were both cats.  I sit on the edge with waves at my back.  I peer over, careful not to lean too far forward.  I close my eyes, and I can see that candle in my room.  In the corner, fighting back at the dark.

Why don’t you dangle on the edge of insanity?  Give them answers to the plans that they had to be.  I understand if you are mad at me, but I am just so sad to see myself in this state of affairs.  Systems of dares and carefree attitudes as if every thing really is gonna be alright, and not to worry about a thing.  But the jury might be out on manners this devout, that the powers might put themselves in a sling.  Bring me your best, your worst, your sweatervest that was cursed at, the middle, the top, the bottom, and inside.    Bring me your perspective on the worldwide.  I am hiding behind words, trying to keep stride.  I’d rather be in central or south america on a relentless trail at high altitude.  Significant sources of input and filling me up are absent in my life but for the presence of a few brave individual soldiers who enter the dark territory of my mind and sally forth with confidence.  It pours then it relents.

My mind is sick, and I’m getting worse.  I am kind enough to take a lick from the debting curse square on the jaw, fall on the floor, and get back up.  But, I am upsetting my rehearsal of things I once saw.  Be it a daydream, or a stage scream that I once heard out of the way from a team of banshees in the wings of the auditorium.  They made me applaud, but I got it before they begun.  You’re right, I could’ve put began there, but begun sounds better with the flow, and you know that is the plan of care that is in place for the residents in attendance.  Dead presidents in the bank, for each and every sentence.  Like Dickens but more modern, like Tolstoy but less character.  Like a roman soldier, a bad mime, and a salty english barrister.  The combination wants this nation to rise up from its ashes, from the 39 lashes and be great again.  However, determination is one thing, and ambivalence is yet another.  We cleverly bring intonation to expatriation which is something of an ambulance if we even bother. 

The sickness is expecting more while receiving less.  The sickness is truly caring.  The sickness is the quickness with which decay for believing in words others have been saying.  My lids are heavy but the mind needs release.  The sickness is that the words won’t cease.  Stories come from nowhere, sentences of thoughts on trains.  The sickness is being unable to live with no care until only this generation remains.

What does that mean when I say that?  How can I mean to repay that?  The words I choose flicker across my lids nearly as fast as I can type them.  Faster than I can type them.  But close.  Rows and columns and cells and prose.  Shows and volumes of a true tale that flows.

when will villagers see an ending to their plight, when the dilligent start befriending the idea of an end in sight.  The new world order that certain powers that be speak of, get lost in the shuffle of rhetoric and slight of hand in the weak glove.  Eyes atop pyramids waiting for the shift, unable to know when the foundation will lift and rise up to surprise even the most cynical.  We’re all in this together in song, but we’re in this all forming a path and a way.  The wrath of today is the same in the shadows of Plato’s cave.  We made those slaves fear the outside, and have their own way of simplicity and division free thinking that subjugates novel ideas.  Ideas that could circumnavigate the energy crisis, and help us fight this battle from the saddle not from the ground or beneath the hooves of cattle.  Where is it headed?  The secrets and mysteries that are promised at the highest levels maintain their elusive nature as one climbs into the upper echelons and shakes the hands of a skeleton framework.  The same work the villagers do is being done in huts, and along rivers, near tundra and gift givers.  The seals and symbols, winged portraits and hidden passages, wanting to be part of something larger and never ailed.  These are the calling cards of stalled labor yards and clever nails.  Whichever way the lever sailed, the wind blew the other.  The silence falls, and I miss my brother.  Jumbled words spoken from incomplete towers that are replicas of ones that have far greater historical significance.  We sally forth unaware of any shame and indifference to indignance.  Lubricants could be far more efficient.  Batteries could hold a charge for twice as long.  As long as the masses fight over what is and what isn’t, remain confused, and pirate movies and song.  The eventual demise of the empire should not seem as a surprise.  It has happened before, and will continue again.  Many people claim to know exactly how, while fewer claim to know when.  I want to learn how to fly fish, and grow strawberries.  I want to learn how to silently wish and adapt to what varies.  My eyes remain open, and my heart struggles for the same.  I cannot shake the feeling that I am a part of some twisted game.  My mind carries at nightfall, and my words are somehow short and sweet.  My inmost thinks of a poem, and my right hand contorts to compete.  Should I abort or complete.  Salty or sweet?  Break bread or meat?  Hands, eyes, or feet?  This body of mine is tired but wanting.  This mind of mine wanders but busts.  This heart of mine has been broken too bad, but somehow it still dares to trust.  We will all gather some sought after truth through the pain and laughter.  It will be hard fought, bloody, teary-eyed, and unpleasant.  But the villagers will sing arm in arm, and the lyrics will hold hands with the peasants.  Bridging the gap of existence that’s been in the mist since we came to our own end to meet it.  We nap while we should be running and flinging open the doorway to greet it.  My own letters forming words that form phrases, that sing of praises hidden within the field.  A nomad from carcassonne opens his hand, and only a flower it yields.  Peace like an arrow shoots into the dark.  Love like a cloud rains down on the desert.  I am too much of a coward to howl and bark.  Neither the greater or lesser.  The clothes in my dresser possess the idea in their fabric to become threads of a different quilt.  My nonsense on stilts is experiencing guilt, and in its pride is still waiting to get served.  It is I who should be the first to serve at the Super Dome.  It is I who should slow down in my lane.  It is I who should be at home wherever it is that I roam.  It is I who should not speak of my pain.  I remain, so there must or might be a purpose.  I’m sure this ending might not look as I see it.  I believe I have found a love, to live for, die for, and try for.  And now I must attempt to be it.  But, I fall on my face and others laugh.  I look at myself and shake my head.  I lose my quilt, I get frozen by guilt, and am left holding the end of a thread.  If a loss of order is on the agenda, and pain is a precursor to glory.  The conflict won’t be as short and sweet as splenda or a friend to the enemy at the end of the story.  Insert laughter here before the campfire.  The before and after show the lamp’s desire to shine upon the intertwined as well as the chaotic.  My life is showing right before my eyes, and I may just stop writing to watch it.  Live it.  Be it.  Own it.  The fan is on in the dark room.  The light from the screen meets my eyes.  No magical possession, or intercession, rather a removal in time of the disguise.

The beltway will melt away my heart if I let it, or if I set it in motion without a goal as to devotion.  Once it is written it is done.  Capitalized, underlined, neutralized, undermined.  No more within the recesses of the subconscious.  Plaguing the mindset of ambivalence until it too screams in the dark.  Using a raspberry sucker to stir a drink with a decent amount of rum.  The sum of the days events do not warrant the cost upon my soul in everlasting wear and tear.  This writing scares me into being awake when I thought I was two minutes away from dropping off and dropping out.  Netflix documentaries flitter and flutter across my eyes with open shutters trying to soak in the research and development of minds more creative than mine.  My lack of R.E.M. sleep has detereorated my creativity.  The synapses are not firing as crisply as they used to.  I try to develop my brain in such a way that others cannot continue to cause me pain.  However, the heart finds ways to feel frustrated that often exceed previous imagination.  Full belly.  Empty mind.  Calm hands.  Calm body.  Tired eyes.  Suspect spirit.  Good intentions.  Bad planning.  Spontaneous eruption.  Sad delivery.  Happy stance.  Happenstance.  Sitting on the lock of dismay.  Wasting time.

Falling through the cracks, looking down for the ones trapped, hands that are big enough to catch them all when the earth seems hungry, ready to open up and swallow, the fire burning inside, each night that we’ve cried, that our pride was left hollow,

What are we sorry for?  What do we regret?  When the landscape ground is found to be arid, are we the ones to spare it and wet?  Are we parched and dry as we are marched to die, or smiling and singing refreshed?  Do we avoid the stress of worlds meshed and the collisions worldwide?

The impression that we leave can slowly rise to reach its original surface.

The imprint that we have may breech the security of the surface and permeate forever.

Take the necessary precautions.  Rituals cannot save you.  I once read that salvation is rooted in the idea of becoming whole.  Routine, can offer shelter, but it isn’t a roof, or a wall, or even a foundation.  It is a spirit that blows through us like warm wind and rain, and through the pain, I’ve felt her.  I say she because Our Fathers have too often not been present.  Showing up is an artform on the canvas of becoming whole.  On this day of saturday sunshine and a warm breeze blowing through me, all seems well and tidy amidst the world of chaos and confusion.  Amidst the world of conflict and delusion.  I am waiting for the veil to be lifted, to see the world as it is.  But, her idea of order and beauty does not mesh well with his.  These pronouns and portraits we create, trying to make sense of the divine.  We write our chosen paths down in pages hoping it is all intertwined.  We may perceive an emptiness beyond the earth’s surface, an abyss for those who have fallen through the cracks.  But we all fall through, need to be restored anew, let go, and relax.  There are hands large enough to catch the ones running head long through the rye.  They are cupped, and sealed enough to catch the tears that we cry.  We rain upon the ground, and it sifts through to reach the core.  The bookmarks in our lives make the distinction between our now and before.  Kids in cells have fallen through, and and clinging to life on the other side.  They may have touched lives, had children and wives, or perhaps no one will know when they’ve died.  Photos may exist in shoe boxes in attics gathering dust.  Snapshots taken of love and trust.  Can and must war over opportunity within a life.  Incense fumes within stark rooms hidden away from major roadways.  I lay awake at night, dreaming of ways to explode days.  I may reach out my hands to catch a few, hoping to be caught as I fall.  My words may echo in the ears of nobody new, and I may not even hear the call.   

A walk in the woods can do me some good.  Others who have fallen through, may pop out on this side.  So long as there is peace in my step, and love within my stride.

Morbidly hot.  Heat index increases.  Water down the hatch with soda and tea.  Sweat releases.  Peeling myself out of my car, to re-adhere myself to the couch.  My legs go numb.  My lower back starts to slouch.  I imagine what a little joey feels like in his mama’s pouch.  Then I think of Australia.  An entire continent that now upsets me.  Let it go.  Let it flow and let it go.  Beneficence becomes even the bald men.  Especially the bald men perhaps.  Thich Nhat Hanh is bald.  Gandhi was.  Charlie brown is.  The Dalai Lama is.  Buddha was, most likely.  Come to think of it, I am in relatively good company being bald.  Except for the neo-nazis.  Not so cool.  The front yard is shaded enough to make me want to remove myself from the couch, and lie face down in damp soil.  Rich damp soil with pumice stones and firm edges of roots from larger trees.  Breeze on my face.  Television is off.  Birds distantly complaining about the heat make me want to fly to the Potomac and jump in.  This area must have been nice a hundred and fifty years ago.  Less crowded.  Easier to get around.  Easier to enjoy.  The country might actually have to face its debt in a month.  That is when China will come to reclaim what is rightfully theirs.  The simplicity that my heart searches for is slipping away quickly, and laughing as it flees.  My mental typewriter collects aphorisms throughout the day of mockery and complacency.  My children understand me better than my fellow staff, though they could never prove it in court, because they can’t speak.  Harry Potter is about to be finished, and I can’t say that I honestly care.  Maybe I will watch the entire series in a weekend five years from now and then read the books, but I doubt it.  I can’t even bring myself to read what I write.  That’s a lie.  I read it to understand what I was thinking when I wrote it.  What was I going through?  How was I hurting?  What was I longing for?  How was I inspired?  What keeps me going?  How can I tell?  If I laugh in a silent crowded room, will anyone simply know why without asking?  Why do we think things that are essentially weeds (bamboo) in other countries are cool enough to dress them up with polished stones and colored water?  I wish I knew how to work on engines.  Will the scar on my right knee ever completely disappear?  Why does Subway feel the need to release a pulled pork BBQ sandwich, and why haven’t I had one yet?  Oh life of mine, release me from the heat.  Release me from my own mind, and this life of mind.  Let me go, and let me be.  Let it flow and let it be.  Forgive.  Forget.  Drink a lot.  Go to sleep.  Dream of greener pastures, and cool watering holes with large polished rocks nearby, and bamboo growing from the cracks.  Put one finger on the globe and spin it.  Begin it anew with a fresh mind.  Type.  Read.  Send.  Repeat.