(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)

Solitary company living at an arms-length reach.

Keeping watch on the sunset beads, tricking out the minute creep of another evening's horizon (line). The landscape swifts by me, shifting shape and color before our uniformity. Sketch of darkness still unremembered by the lake-front shores beneath Scott's Bookstore, not bound for our Seattle. No underground cities here, no. No mystery save that of a fallen night's moonless sky, shining of its own accord.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (3/31/10)

Frequent dragon serpents, secreted away on crimson support beams.

Flit frightful underground, fret falling through the floorboards atop the vast (expectation of) below. Stay low and be hollowed of all air when the fire comes a-raging. Feel its gentry wind of breath whisper conspiratorially against the eavesdrop of your neck. (Don't tell me where we're going.)

"Frequenting dragons temper, my light is the light of a door as the wind and rain create stained glass on my heart!" (-M. at the drop of a line, sagely.)

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (3/30/10)

Nation's flower fumes orange-pink.

The bite precedes the writing, and follows it too. Waiting as excuses do, on the far back of your tongue. "Only Monday", like it hasn't come before, or won't come again. But none like this. (Ever, nor never again.) Granola blends with yogurt hoarding ripe slices of banana, and the weather looks mischievously in at the weather channel: snow-covered palm trees; sun shining (some) rain (on) down.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (3/29/10)

Zen-talk.

No sense "trying" to BE. The flow of the words counter-intuit the words if the words are speaking silence. Not right, but true. And natural in the most open sense of the WORD. MY words look a certain way, even when they think/try to mean something altogether different. La otra arte. The other art. El arte del otra. The art of the other.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (3/28/10)

...

BRIGHT AS LIGHTNING TUNNEL DIMS / VISION SWIMS ALONG THE FRINGE / dream of tasting lovers' whim / grim gaze designates the end / ENTRANCE SWALLOWS NOT ONE DISSENT / DESCENDS BEYOND SHY MOCK RESENTMENT

revved up and reviewed! - an email.

I wish there were more words for 'love', like 'tilt' or 'stellar' or something that vibrates your fingers like music playing right through the keyboard as you type. Like 'evol'-ving into this timid poetic rhythm of a heartbeat, filling a chest like a symphony...

And then the night was almost over, but all it meant was that the morning was waking up, so i never had a chance to grieve. And anyway, maybe grieving's beside the point, or mistaken, or already been done. Or there's always tomorrow night, too, if all we've ever needed is an excuse to cut loose. And dance the friggin' macarena.

My eyes would love to look into yours. They've been complaining relentlessly, but are of course also easily distracted. Hence all the casebooks on this side of the country. There were these scenes in this movie, where they'd dance and just look at each other, and how does that seem so impossible to me? I need to learn how to make eye contact without thinking, especially of what to say next for the excuse to break it. So scary--but why? Too much riding on it? Too much to hide? Hopefully not, I'd like to just think that that's usually what you see in the movies, and so it's hard to break the habit. That is, of looking down and smiling, rather than looking up expressionless.

[w00t! Well, that was a whole lot of random gibberish!]

I feel like my feet miss you, and my rib cage, and my exposed back at night. I feel like my hair has fallen slack out here, so my goal is to not let my smile fall down with it, silly. And since my mind's the only thing about me that has no fear of forgetting, all i have to do is think of you--and there my lips go curling up again. Every time i breathe i mean to be disloyal to my misery, and its temptation--cuz frankly, it never did send a get-well card to either of us, now did it, love?

Love. My tilted head, stellar at sprouting your smile--like so many flowers in my mind, and all singing their sunshine vibrato.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (1/21/10)