(The day of the changing of fates, easily.)

Passive aggressive tendencies. Uncomfortable. Un-fucking-fortunate, really. The writing on the wall was done in invisible ink, and now everyone's paranoia is unnamed but not undone. Undecided, still it wanders in and out of everyone's eyes, searching for something unknown. Finding it. The idea of the day is the thread that strings the stories together, as though there were one. Knotted something awful, unarguably possible, but hidden beneath the transparent surface of people's pretenses. Pretending not to exist, successfully, still cannot fool the seer of these hidden things.

The writer. Feigning fiction. Somewhere in the back of mind, knows there's no such thing. Stringing the stories together, as if they weren't already. We're suddenly in a familiar place, unknown still for its sudden timing. Here now, accidentally almost. As though we believed in accidents. The bike with the missing front tire, tied up two feet away; the sound of the typing echoing unkempt and reminding of how to type, always just one more key; the needed time to be extra, to feel as though on top of expectations, as though not already all bonus; nonsense written down and given voice, filling in the confusion with forced--with forced understanding, somehow now coming naturally. Gray warmth tickling the bottoms of feet, partly calloused, partially tender as ripened plums or palms. Where are the stories if not everywhere?

Think of the names of the folks who'd dare disapprove. Then don't think of them at all anymore, taking their power decisively because they never had any over you at all. Looking around at the stories: nude watercolor painting, whose?  That triumvirate: model; artist; financier.  Who the truer devotee?  Projects left unfinished or awaiting invocation, forming the lines of trellis and...and straggling wooden undreamt of dreams. A claypot, not quite home-made, but made-somewhere nonetheless, we realize in the back of our minds. Dying and hanging plants, making home to flourishing weeds, waiting to be promoted into appreciation. Wind chimes, somewhere other than right here, but near enough to merit explanation, & questionable. My heart not two doors down, downing coffee and water in search of balance in more ways than one. His shoes, having walked him so far and long and hard, they wear holes like a warrior wears battle-scars, presenting them with the glory of not overcoming, but ever defiantly so. Where do they go from here? Not much use for the fate they let befall them, so up in the closeted shelf at best; out in the covered garbage can at worst. Still journeying, just now to a fate chosen for them. No matter, because how is the difference discerned anyway? "There certainly are parallels, aren't there? But then again, all of existence could be one big coincidence..."

That invisible thread again, something stringing along, sometimes pulling us with the weight of every fate found accompanying. Accidental? Turns out not left to interpretation at all, when suddenly meaning definitively departs. Close the door behind, double-lock with the strength of irony and conveniently forget the indifference of flame. Tendencies: passive as faith pretends to pretend; aggressive as we are not. At our best. At our worst. In line with the whim of translation and depending upon the best guess at situation. Never emergency circumstances except when hit with the dullness of moments, succumbing to this halting description. Really, it never stood a chance--anymore than these words did to explain. Something? Whatever the fuck was meant by them. And nope, we never gave a shit anyway. Here now, or so we're thinking--and who could ask for more? ('Not I!,' said the cooling coffee cup; 'nor I!', said the bursting bladder.) "Full as a day is with sun, on a day not so gray as today." As we say.

Faretheewell folks,
-Talthea (4/24/10)

The Book of Undone...

Don't you know half the best stuff your life's memory has to offer will be cut? Your mind might edit it out a week of dingy life later, or even chunk-fashion with a bout of amnesia, lobotomy-style, some time in your early seventies. The trick of time may be to ignore it, then, or to avoid it like the plague. 'Cuz the secret sense of security it plays out to give you now? When it fades it takes the best stuff away with it anyway.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (4/5/10)