Fireworks

The explosion is rattling old windowpanes and the dog will not leave the corner. 

Relentless, like I imagine a battlefield to be the bursts of light cut into what could have been a sky preparing itself for stars. Present position is crouched, shirtless and still feeling the thinnest coating of sweat from the hill. At the keyboard but face continuing to be drawn to the window where I can see the fireworks quite well, all things considered. I'm still trying to justify walking away from you.

There's a U-Haul truck parked outside my door. Somebody's moving on.

The dog and I walked the deadliest hill in town to get a more remote glimpse of the show. I'm early to everything, and the sun was still blowing kisses to the horizon from below. I stopped at the stone wall outside your college apartment and you slid out in flip flops to check the skyline too. The dog wanted to jump on your face; I could tell you missed having a pet. You smelled freshly smoked. We spoke about California and dogs. The fireworks teased us with some low fliers, out of view. I said "Well it was really nice talking to you" at the first sign of awkwardness and absconded. 

If I had stayed, we would have confirmed that you were an undergraduate student at the university, probably studying economics or public health- whatever- and that I work full time. You like Ithaca and don't really miss the west coast. We both play guitar, how funny. We talk about literature and you confess you never have time to read for fun anymore and I assure you it gets better. I would study your profile a little more in depth. You light a cigarette. The fireworks start with an echo that has built the sound to a cannonball blast from the lakeside. The dog starts panting, but sits well. We watch in silence for some time, maybe for the duration. After its over maybe we would finally offer our names. Run into you soon on the hill. Who knows. We all learn something from one another. 

But I tapped out. Watched the fireworks begin as I rounded the block to my apartment. You smoke anyway, and that just wouldn't do. 

We were right about the dog. 

This is what they call the grand finale. I'm going to bed. 

Brick on Easter Sunday

You’re carelessly cast but

you clean up nice,

your family laboring to

look uniform but merely

warred and weather-torn:

the row of you disjointed from

crumbling mortar and chipping corner.

You know, trying to stay together

despite appearances.

But you seem to wear your ruddy best,

bathed from last night’s rain:

pumiced and porous for scrubbing and respiring

or for keeping a bit of that

holy water

that beat you into rapture

while the sky opened up

in thunder.

S H Best

I think Heidi looks around my apartment when I'm away.

The first thing I learned about Heidi Best was from her (our) front porch-- a giant pink sign facing the street urging everyone to "KEEP ABORTION LEGAL." Adjacent, a sentry to the screen door, stands an almost life-sized ebony statue of a naked woman. Her mailbox bears a gold-lettered "S H Best." I signed a lease the same day I saw the second floor apartment.

Heidi has two cats. She used to have sixteen. Heidi is in her sixties, missing some teeth, and when she does speak to me she forms loud statements with a precedent "Hun." Otherwise she leaves notes on my door in a looped, teacher-like script. Her niece used to follow my college band. I suspect I am her only source of income. I suspect I am her only consistent communication.

We pad around our separate floors in synchronized time. I hear her coughs and smell her meals, all the while wondering how long she has lived in her way—rarely does she venture outside, never welcoming a visitor. There is no sign of a partner in her past or future. At first I thought her a widow, deprived of whoever the "S" was on her mailbox for a great number of years. A glimpse at the lease revealed the initial to be for an un-favored first name. I then mused that she may be just another aging gay woman, bearing down her romantic frustrations upon social reform and politics. Her collection of feminist bumper stickers supported this theory until my own sister's adorable androgyny convinced me otherwise. Meg's buzzed head held a smile with one arm outstretched in greeting but my landlady would not shake her hand. It's one of those moments we both cringe at in recollection. Heidi talks to her cats.

Late into the night when I hear the blue buzz of Heidi’s television I wonder how many years, how many solitary meals it takes before a mailbox bears only my name.

"Hun, you do have friends, right?" She asked one day.

"Hah, yes-- yes of course I have some friends!" I replied truthfully but I also couldn't help feeling defensive. How could she accuse me of being alone in the world? Her own face has carved a tired gaze from decades of solitude as she knits in front of her television, social interaction now as discarded as her first name. I wake at dawn and witness the sun rise as my neighborhood sleeps. I listen for the waterfall down the street. I rescue beautiful leaves and pieces of wood and clean every day. I have eight stacks of books. I used to have two. I talk to my dog.

Sometimes when I return home it feels as if the air has solidified around a different shape. I imagine Heidi entering and wandering through my meticulous minimalism-- touching hand-crafted canvases, strange photographs, furniture with a war-torn elegance, type-written correspondences. I imagine her leaving discreetly, leaving confused or leaving affirmed. I walk through my rooms to find nothing misplaced save a much-needed sense of sanctuary, but that is easily recovered with the next silent dawn.

While sitting outside a coffee shop with a companion I saw her sail past across the street toward home. Her long stride and head high advertised determination, but one induced by detachment or erected as a bastion. She was alien on the sidewalk, weaving through families and clusters of children. She did not notice me nor did she turn her head in observation or recognition of anything but stepped deliberately onward, pulled by a collected force strengthened over decades back to familiar walls. I gave her a second of reverent silence before facing my friend once more.

What's going on

This is what's going on.

I got this new job that kicks me in the shins every day with "Look how sick the world is" and I leave it feeling emptied like a balloon after hours with a small leak. I spend my days breathing life into people who are mostly more than willing to let me do it for them but then there's the one who says thank you, the one who cries when I tell her she's smart and the one who realizes this stuff matters.

I got this dog who wakes me up with a paw to the face and when she's excited can't handle her jumping and tries to kill squirrels but I see her moments of instinctual clarity when she knows to be still as a flock of geese fly overhead or on a clear night when she almost seems to be looking for the same astral patterns as my human eyes.

That's what's going on, I guess.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

My Halloween Costume.

Wisdom

My patina is showing.

Big Day

Big Day. Biiiig day.

I went to grab some groceries during my lunch hour and was recruited to buy new lithium batteries for our panic buttons at work.

Yeah, I work where we have a network of panic buttons. So after a quick grocery stop I head to the hardware store where there are no sales associates to assist me, as per usual and I'm wandering around aimlessly and staring at the wrenches and finally, traipsing through Guam I find Quentin from Lumber who calls Duane from Electric and all three of us discern that the batteries they have are not the right ones. Walmart it is.

I'm in Walmart where I become more lost by the second, also a typical thing, and wander into electronics where I find the right batteries. I walk to the register and wait behind two non-English speakers who were really into buying only a case of Poland Spring and the cashier tells me I can't buy my batteries tax exempt without a "little gray card." The card can be apprehended at the Service Desk, about a half-mile away. I reach it and wait for the hipster couple to return some used clothing and am told that my agency already has a "little gray card" but they can make the sale without it in a moment.


That moment the earth moved a 5.8 scaled quake.


I thought I was passing out from the strenuous contact with consumer culture, but sure enough when I looked up everyone was as bewildered as I was, though no one said a thing. A minute later someone said,


"Was that me?"


And everyone spoke at once, about how it must have been the building, they thought they were getting dizzy, they thought they had touched the counter wrong, etcetcetc. I get my change and blink into the parking lot, people are milling around like a disturbed ant colony and walk to my car and, just before opening the door, A tiny old lady appears and says


"They've really gotta stop moving my car on me while I'm in there!"


Ladies and gentlemen: Perfection.

I followed the fire trucks to State Street and felt very small.

After work I packed up my life as I knew it and picked up Cricket, the best thing that's ever happened to me.