It was Thursday. A day of somewhat rest for me. Errands and the like. The post office, the line, the waiting. With all the vast speeds of technology, the post office remains in the primitive. No complex computers. But at least stamps are adhesive. I never liked the taste of the rear of a stamp. But even so, that is a memory I retain in my head when I think of how it used to be. The disgust in my face after my tongue brushes across the thin and glossy surface. Disgust. But the very action and nature of my expression allows me to return to past experiences through my senses, something a self tackable stamp will not do. For me, there is a shying away from the touchable world of expression, as memory wanes along our aging paths.

The swirl of the sky found itself a point where the trail of clouds gathered, spiraled, and funneling. It took the unwelcoming appearance of a tidepool, a tornado, an anus. A big hole in the sky ready and willing to shove the painful bowels of the earth into the ether. As the formation moved very slowly across the azure while spinning the slowest of slow moments, I was captured by the emblem in the sky when I woke up to stare outside my window, to inhale a new day of plant oxygen from the suffocation and dryness of the interior air. I was ready. As the panes creeked open, the breath of the jasmine, and lavender elders raised up towards my neck, then curling around my chin and eventually being sucked in by my deep inhale through my nose. My nostril hairs flutter. Then a sneeze, a self defensive eye closure and then the blurring of the world as I recapture my vision for those few seconds. I rub my eyes. I rub my nose. Next to the blinding morning light reflecting on the white building across the street, I happen to see the most beautiful spiral in the sky, curving trailways all centering to a center. And then I thought about it. The death of the earth being swallowed, including myself, granted I have never killed, adultered. Only those two. Soon, the winds slowly picked up, brushing along the surface on the hairs of my face causing a another great inhale of humanity. And then I was invited. Possession is what I would like to call it when the beauty of the world is self engulfing, almost to gorgeous to set eyes on it. Take me right now. No novels to read, no erotic centers to poke. No rejection of the ecstacy. And this gaping hole in the sky growing larger upon the day slowing opening up to see this other world within it. One final breath, and then I immediately step onto the window sill and make a leap into the sky as if being upside down, the world can be corrected, drowned, or incinerated. I live ten stories high, plant-less, in a neutral complex of animal-less state of human companionship. Singles galore. And one by one, I was witnessing all of these lives awaken my expressions, vis-a-vis their own to mine. 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. When I am forced into the opening of the reflected sky from the morning dew on the ground, the last thing I remember seeing was myself. In the reflection of the tinted low-e glass window across the street. A man in his 40’s, salt and pepper hair, spiky from the pillow he slept on, a hnad to his mouth, a dropping of his coffee cup. The slight sound of cracking of ceramic, an inhale that was not my own, and his eyes, gazing on me, skimmed over with morning dew. My last mention of this face, its last call to all, to say goodbye, a simple smile, arms outspread, and asking for the way to the exit. The speed on the way down, my tears trailing, my running nose, my spit to the ground. The hole that is in my head that will never escape me, the tight space crammed with too many dreams and goals, the self centered pool, wet, and untouchable without gloves, half-assed and self deprecating. Breathing is the only source of body movement. Up until now. My favortie color, when excreted from my eye sockets, the color of war, the color of life, the trailing stain, viscous, and draining. The blue sky, the red carpet, Together the green space I will to be relased. A little sight to see as you run out of your apartment to greet me with your skin. You smell like coffee and beard. Your hand compresses my fist. I stare into the reality of the sky above me, the emananting spin of the sky towards me, torturing me, to leave. The puff of air I thought to have inhaled was yours blending uncanny thoughts, letting me feel another’s pain, and holding on the a few seconds before departure. My belly is overgrown, like the hill, old, creased with age from falling waters, undiscovered places in the brush, the tops of trees, and skeletons that lay buried of undiscovered bodies, undiscovered ancient ruins, undiscovered bonding. You give one more breath before the cloud above me changes its shape and form. Changes made, day leaves, and the sound of beeping clocks, coffee pots, dorrbells, car horns, birds, ambulance sirens, fire alarms, and walking signals allowing the blind to live through live as somewhat normal. I leave my windows open and turn away leaving the impression of a Dali painting, melting man over me and the fine ground coffee scent clouding the air of dust and ash. A mental picture of the color that is raw umber. I sit back to stare outside. We sit. We stare. Unaware. Unfathomed. Undiscovered and becoming red.

Rear View

I am a disheartened soul who travels along lines. On roads, on streets, to destinations of work. In my mind I am goal oriented. But I am stranded most of the way. Guided only by a desire to finish the day. To watch the sun disappear as I drive back to where I started, between dusk and headlights. I simply go with the flow of that which is reality. For fear of what I may become. Or not. All work. No play. To be bounded only by passion and imagined only to love that which I am learning to see. To touch that is true reality. For dreaming of that world which I cannot see, to trust and cross the line of change. To move on. And behold my mirror. That which I see reflecting back to me facing the double life I lead. One foot to the pedal, the other soaking. Rushing to qualities and being reminded of uniqueness, and quality, and undefined as moments bounce around in my mind of other’s work and managing real time deadlines. I see many things, inspect and reflect on ideas. I am rumored to be on many a minds. And I think I am here, somewhere between you and me. That is a line I still need to cross. To write it down on my to do list of things ordered and busyness. But one which has no order except the rhythm of my heart, and beating myself in so many ways that I lose direction, mapless, and daydreamed to stillness, silencing the real world of roads and streets and shoes and headlights. I have to choose that moment. For this reality waits for no one. Sun rise Up. Moves on.

Why I like this film.

“Barbed Stars”

A boy sits alone awaiting on the edge of asphalt and crab grass; standing, statued, stoic. Looking beyond what he can reach is a fence, five heights his length, barbed, and untouchable to his gentle hands. A border between His world and Theirs. A thin line splitting love and death.

In his back pocket, a ham sandwich layered w/ a lettuce leaf, holey cheese, smashed between a roll he secretly made. He does nothing wrong. But be a child. For his friend behind behind the fence is thin as the lines that separate the two, and if touched, would be his end.

As he peers beyond the horizontal lines of repetitive barbed stars, encircling an unfamiliar site. His ideas are innocent. A farm? Farmers? Famine. There is nothing but stripe wearers in this cattle-ing of Others. A glimpse of nothing he knows. And knows no one. Except for his little friend, who hides under rubble in fear of the unknown, who wears stripes all day and all night long, yet his sleep is untold and unheard, but a smile is his thoughts clear of anger, hate, greed, and power. Never existed in young hearts. Only the sound of a trembling growl in his pouch of a stomach. These things are just like him. He sits, waits, lonely. His grin pulled downward. Looking upward above the horizontal lines of barbed stars. Smoke from a towering stack. Smell begone.

Looking downward, eyes adjusting back to the familiar brightness, his little friend arrives slowed and shrinking and sunken. And sits vis-a-vis with his friend.

Hello. Hi. Hungry? Yes. Here. Thanks.

A hand touch, a glassy stare, a saving moment. And Only this moment.

Under this sky, on the surface of grass and dirt, Love hides behind, away, and untarnished. Two boys. Play games. Curious on Two lives. In search of each others’. Hand in hand to find one’s Loves. In Death.

Smoked sky screaming souls.

When I am gone, he will not remember me because I wasn’t able to marry the person whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Someone who would be my equal and confidant. My best friend and comfort. My love. When I am gone, I will be forgotten because he whom I want to marry will not be there to speak of my worth or the kindness that I have shared with the little children who I help raise, or the elderly whom I drove to their hospital visits to, or the fostering of the cats from a shelter, or the teaching of students about critically thinking about architecture, or the music I wrote, and the songs I have sung. Or the drawings that hang on my wall. What about all of these? Is happiness not a requirement for life? Has happiness been removed from the hearts of man? Is money the only reason for living these days? Just because two women or two men cannot bear their own offspring, does not mean their existence to love each other does not exist. We are used to comforts. And fear is best suited to those who refuse to educate their lives with the richness that is the human race. The race of many colors, shapes, and sexual preferences. At our most primitive beings, we are simple creatures who all fight for our desire to survive on this earth. We eat, rest, work, and play. There is no other difference among us. Except money, greed, and power. Then the equality equation simply is removed abruptly. And it is destroying the culture, both young and old, especially the old. Because old is just that, old. No man is an island, unless it is your lonely heart. “Out with old.” And a change is going to come. As we see it today, the tides are changing. Economy wanes. I suddenly feel the world is my stage, and everyone is watching. With intensity. the truth will be told. And the new world order will rise up. With clarity, I will find no rejection. With truth, I will discover strength. With numbers, I will see community. And with love, I will find him.

Without love, there will always be hate. Without hate, there will always be love. If you are hated upon, then you are not loved. Stop the hate. Don’t discriminate. In time you may see your faith and your fate, Negate.

It was in the late 1920’s when I remember it best. The pace of life on the surface was calm, pollution was minimal, and leaves fell silently on the pavements of humid days and windless nights. The black and white photographs, yellowing, fading faces, and bent memories reverse me to childhood expressions of cross eyed, tongue vibrations, and encircling thumbs pressed in ears.

“Find me if you can!”

I sit and wait for these moments to envelope me, as it happens reopening my archived life w/ its gummed corners of black triangles holding on to ghosting impressions. The sheen of the images retain. Beyond the creases and peeling upturned edges, I look closely to detail. But it is difficult to see faces. There is more landscape than bodies. Thin families. It is minimal. Without saying.  In the few images that exist with people, expressionless faces stand and stare into the camera with a deep sadness spoken in their eyes and layered on their hands. They look at me asking for help. And forgiveness.

“I wish I could have given you more in life, my child.”

It is difficult to look back at them. Because I know they tried. I see the rail thin figure next to them. Me. I was a such a little kid.  My figure would rarely show up in the pictures. I would fade into the background like an amorphous cloud in the vast open fields. Clouds change. My parents stood next me, hands to their sides, and waiting for their command.

“Work hard. Be good. And Eat.”

Primitive words. But,

“Do you love Me?”

Without saying. Deepening faces, recollecting difficult upbringing. With a half grin, I take the last page and return it back to the beginning. My mom, my dad, and me. An only child. The only child. The lonely child. I press my hands together then compress into a fist. I tense for a while and then let it all go. The family photo album. It lays on my lap for moment before I stand up and put it away. In a closed drawer. Away from my thoughts. Out of sight.

I turn around and wipe my eyes of its grip. I reach for my camera. I set the timer. I rush into the picture and stand in front of my one story house, light gray, standing tall, and forget to smile. But, I am in focus and the detail is clear. All too clearly. I am who they made. I am why I am. And I hear them always.

“My hope to you when I am gone, is that you knew where you came from.”

I found you in an old shop of old furniture and old clocks with an old smell symbolizing an older place in time. I passed the old man sitting behind his old register. Still the tarnish on your surface did not deter me from wanting to touch you. There was something I could see beyond the cracked glass, the squeaky hinges, the bent metal parts, and the rusted holes that is eating away on your corners. You telepathically send a message of your past. And how you were held so eloquently high above your master’s shoulder. And riding through the village on horseback glowing in the atmosphere of a cold and misty night, giving light for those who desired escape from what was to come. A destruction awaiting, your light revealing its far presence. You saved me. I remember it. So long ago.

I am much older now and I am glad I have found you once again. Let me pick you up and take you into a new world where the light of others will shine a path like you did for me. I was the child  who esscaped the burning town.  Who became blinded during the chaos. Who was lifted onto a horse and was carried of. Whose arms embraced the horse rider’s neck and glancing one final stare at the flames spreading along the horizon. I closed my eyes and wept, you flickering above me, in the cold and misty night.

An apartment dwellers guide for substituting a trash can for a compost pot while growing avocados.

10. STOP throwing things away! Or at least try to compost items such as fruit scraps, plant shrubs, eggshells, and seeds, for starters.

9. Buy a HUGE pot.

8. Buy potting soil with worm compost.

7. Buy mesh screen to place on the bottom of pot.

6. Buy pebbles and place on top of the screen.

5. Fill up the  soil halfway in the pot.

6. Throw your fruit seeds in there.  Throw your crush eggshells in there. Throw your plant trimmings in there.

5. And then throw your avocado seeds in there. Press these deep into the soil.

4. Keep the soil on the top surface moist by leaving scraps on the surface.

3. Water it enough so the soil is moist. I don’t water it too much. Just enough so the soil retains the water and no water drains from the bottom.

2. In no time, avocados will sprout.

1. In my one pot, 4 avocado seeds are growing. Can you see them?

My love for eating avocados has grown into my ability to plant and make new ones from the seeds I have been collecting throughout the year. Do I have a green thumb or what! Every time I throw a seed into some potting soil, avocados would sprout in a few months. Since this began to happen I decided to buy some pots and potting soil w/ worm compost, and plant a seed in each one. Lo and behold, after a month or two, all the avocados started to grow, and all at the same time! The right is a picture right before the haircut.  The left picture is my  trim since they were all over 12 inches tall. You should be pinching the tips off when they grow new buds in order for the plant to become fuller by having more branches sprout out, but I just chopped them down to their stalks.  In my experiment, I wanted to see if more branches would grow from the stem. Good sunlight should cause the growth spurts to occur, which can be seen in the middle picture. And thus….This is green capacity to the fullest! What you bring into your home, stays in your home. And also, introducing, my soldier of the bunch!

Why I am drawn to this.

10. Because I drew it.

9. For a friend who has a friend who has a child.

8. The child has leukemia.

7. She asked me to draw her an angel.

6. but I didn’t think angels would lift her spirits.

5. Because angels represent an end to something.

4. And I don’t want this child’s life to end.

5. So I remembered the movie “The Golden Prince.”

4. About a Golden Statue and a swallow.

3. They both helped each other give riches to the poor.

2. Unfortunately,  the swallow died in the heart of winter, and the golden statue was taken down.

1. Only love and death bring us closer to one another.