This isn’t considered waiting, it’s not. Not when you are perfectly occupied with counting the heads of those in line behind you, matching hats with coats, and styles you thought went out years and years ago, and you have got warm hands in your back pockets.
There is no malice in my bite, these days, there isn’t. Not when the strength has been sapped by toothpicks and fingernails and sitting in the backseat taking pictures of cars following along the curves of Bald Hill Road, one light out more often than not. Got those same hands around the wheel. One tickles the Maginot line down the center of my back beyond which I will break easy and surrender. Got no bite at all.
It can’t be called recovery, because it is not. Because there is as much regret in clarity of mind as there is in hazy details. I have photographs like forgotten childhood homes sitting in drawers and digitized, and what technology can do is feed some new kind of addiction, of being preoccupied with retracing all these missteps. I have taped footprints onto the tile, and I can dance along to the tinnitus. Got those hands in mine, now that I can lead again.
These are pictures I guess I took. I guess I was sort of relegated to the back seat. I guess I was two bottles of wine into the afternoon, as it was a workday. I guess it was on our way to my daughter’s birthday party. I don’t remember any bargaining. It doesn’t feel like begging when it’s you. What wouldn’t you give yourself if you needed it, no less kindness than you’d show to strangers. You certainly wouldn’t bare your teeth or mince words. I remember cars full of laughter, old Chevrolets with vent windows.
I remember trying to find an unfamiliar songbird in a Pacific Yew, searching every branch until the only reasonable conclusion was that it was the tree singing. That’s what I miss.
8 comments:
Trees sing. In the forest. And there's no one around. And it makes noise. How do I know? Because I was there. (This is why I take the "no one around" part personally. That's nice?)
It's so tree.
You know how things are blurry because you don't have your glasses? Things aren't really blurry, then. You just don't have your glasses. Sometimes I feel like that. Sometimes I know things are really clear and I'm just not properly equipped. Sometimes I read your posts here. I always like them. Always. Seriously. Always is a lot of the percentage of the time. It's pretty good.
New cars should have vent windows. Manual ones. Ones with bad seals that whistle.
Hello, Brandon.
Incidentally, I love the name you're using for your blog these days. "The Penis Mightier?" Brilliant.
Hello again.
According to Def Leppard, love bites. Love bleeds. It's bringing Def Leppard to its knees.
Also, why does Scott want to put a whistling seal in his car? Can you even train seals to whistle? Or do anything outside of looking cute and getting eaten by whales? Actually, if I could train a seal to whistle The Battle Hymn of the Republic, that would be awesome. Great idea, Scott!
all's i can say is teaching a seal to whistle is a lot better than blowing a seal.
Well, I was going to say something really sweet and sincere about your writing. And then I read your comment about blowing a seal, and I hesitated. Unless you meant the kind of seal that is like a gasket, in which case it isn't dirty at all.
Anyway, I love the singing tree.
Also, when I read this part: "retracing all these missteps" I read it as retracting, instead of retracing. Wishful thinking, I guess.
peevish, that is of course what i meant, that one you said. and i occasionally forget to cross my Ts, so don't give up the dream.
Zipperina? You lost me. No particular accomplishment that, though, I guess.
Anyway... I knew that there were Screaming Trees, but I've never heard them sing. So what I'm asking is, can I have the wine you're not drinking?
shari, non participants at tequilacon do not get any wine at all from what i hear. as if our suffering were not enough!
Zipperina is the title of that first photograph. Because I am pretentious enough to title my photographs. I have earned it from years of being semi-pretentious. I am ready. I was born ready. I'm also handsome and disease free, relatively speaking.
Post a Comment