Morning Glory: A Short, Short Story

Milton ate his oatmeal with a dirty spoon. The undercooked clumps stuck to the roof of his mouth like flaky barnacles. But he didn't mind. He just added more syrup.
"Finish your breakfast," Milton's mother shouted from the next room, "we have to get going. And don't you dare mess up your good jacket."
Milton regarded the spray of sugar and milk on his trousers with a worried grimace. He didn't like making his mother mad. Especially today.
He cleared his unfinished bowl and milk-streaked glass then rushed to the bathroom where he locked the door and began furiously scrubbing at his black cotton pant legs.
With every scrape of the damp rag soggy oats mashed into the fabric creating larger and larger stains.
There was a knock at the door. Milton's mother's voice came thundering through from the other side.
"What are you doing in there? You're making us late."
Milton began to cry. His mother's voice grew louder.
"What's wrong with you? Open this door!"
Hot tears ran down Milton's cheeks and joined the smeared cereal on his pants.
"Milton! Open this door!"
Milton undid the lock and trembled as the door swung wide to expose his mother's reddened face.
"My god! Look at you! You're a shambles!"
Milton fell into a mess of choking sobs.
For a moment his mother stood over him, prickling with a palpable rage. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the inevitable slap.
He felt his mother's body kneel down near him, her arms encircled his shivering form.
"It's okay, baby," she said, broken, "I miss him too. But your brother wouldn't want us to be late to see him one last time, would he?"
Milton's swollen eyes peeped open and he saw his mother's tear-marked cheeks right in front of his own.
"I'm sorry, mommy," he whimpered, "I'm really, really sorry."
"Oh, baby," she whispered, "me too."
"He's in Heaven, right?"
"Honey, anywhere other than here has got to be pretty damn close to heaven."
She smoothed his hair and pulled him closer.
"Now go change your pants and let's get going. Your brother hated black anyway."

A Thing of Fragile Toughness

The beach in summer.
That’s how I knew I missed my Lucie.
Her skin looked browner than the sand itself.
Her smile always at the ready.
Sometimes I fashioned myself an inward image of her whole being made up of glittering pearls and oiled leather, a conglomerate beauty, a thing of fragile toughness.

Ugly Like an Eel

Locker rooms have always made me feel skinny. Too skinny. As if the whole point of being naked is to be bigger than somebody else. Particularly someone of the same sex. Every time I find myself visiting one it’s exactly the same as all of the others I’ve entered, like viewing a drab scene in a excruciatingly uninspiring submarine film over and over.
Walking in, my street shoes echo off of the tiles checkering the floor, the walls, even the ceiling, announcing the arrival of the runt with an ominously resonant sonar. I breathe in deeply, filling my lungs, attempting to make myself as large as possible, like a blowfish hoping to convince the whales that he’s part of the pod. I find an empty locker while trying not to catch anyone’s eye. It’s bad enough that they can see my bony knees, my lanky arms, my tiny waist, my chest full of air making my ribs press out like a pathetic seahorse.
As I remove my clothing I squeeze my eyes shut (as if this makes me invisible). My lashes matte together in the compressed heat and moisture of my shame and I beg them to stay that way as I remove my shirt, my pants, my briefs. I feel cold and meagre. I’d give anything to be wearing a full-body wetsuit.
I’d keep my blindness if I didn’t need to don my gym clothing. Unclenching my visual vice-grip the world is blurry, like seeing underwater. Murky, unintelligible life is happening all around me and all I can do is feel around the inside of my bag for my shorts, like a starfish probing the inside of its prey. As I redress I steal glances around the fluorescent tank of the sterile space observing the smattering of fellow “sealife”. There’s the lithe shark of a man in the shower: powerfully toned form covered in smooth skin which glistens in the cascading moisture. The svelte seal with his deep dark eyes and proud chest. Even the squat figure with the hulking triangular back reminds of a majestic manta-ray taking up space with shape and quiet authority.
I see myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. I am ugly like an eel. Smooth, slender, and awkward. No points of interest, no remarkable curvature or contrast of light and shadow. So elongated as to appear unsettling, I feel I make others uncomfortable at the mere sight of me. And I am powerless to change this. I’ve never been able to gain weight. Not from eating, not from exercise, not from biding my time. Thus I am cursed to remain agile, serpentine, an ultimately hideous creature. My own contempt prohibits self-pity. I feel a thousand eyes fixed on my suspicious movements, attributing them some sort of mischief.
As I finally leave the locker room, exiting the aquarium with its variety of beautiful beasts, it’s as if I’m breaching the waves for the first time and seeing the sun.

When we all realized it wasn't lined paper

While the moon spent time hiding from the stars (even though she be seen from the other side of the clouds) we spent time hiding from ourselves. But not from each other. We were too aware of the truth about one another. We loved in a way that permitted nothing short of naked, bloody honesty. Sometimes this felt dangerous, angry even. And yet somehow still delicate, gentle. Perhaps morose. But never torpid.

We would rather be drunk than dead. For that was the nature of us: seemingly stunted while secretly growing, secretly changing, secretly full of whatever we decided to call living, what we called life. It was a grand puzzle to anyone without love and imagination; without a hope in the world for a publishable signature (who has a signature really and truly worth publishing these days?).

Too many little birds are pushed from the nest without proper preparation.

She Didn't Bleed

Pip hated the sheets where her lover had left her.
They smelled like Joanna, they lay just like her on top of Pip's petite form: light and incidental, like a garment one only felt when they moved.
And they were beautiful to look at with their light blue gauziness and tiny embroidered white pansies all around the edges. Just like the pansies Joanna wore in her hair every single day, despite Portland's seemingly constant rain.

Pip stared spitefully at the baking orange bricks of the outer window sill. Of course it would be sunny the morning she lost three years, two family Christmases, and one more attempt at happiness.

For any who may care to know...

...I have begun a blog specifically designed to pertain to my up-and-coming move to New York.

Please to follow if you so desire.

http://thegiftofbeingalone.blogspot.com

Spite

Vengeance
Why so typical?
Humanity, so hubristic
And yet so pathetic.

God's wrath,
Not our own,
Solely justifiable,
Painted covetous red.

Shame
Bane of lost control,
Poison in the Community
Well.

Death
For plants,
Animals,
People.

Commencement

While I'm not sure just yet what I'm going to title this new endeavor, I'm intending on starting a new blog.
Beginning today, January 1st, its purpose is to document my journeying and rabble-rousing during this auspicious and pivotal year: my twenty-fifth.
I'll be turning twenty-four in less than a month and then I'll be rocketing into my quarter of a century.

I simply can't wait.

Soundly, Calmly, Resolutely

I believe I have accomplished an unofficial sensory overload.
Having no desire to do anything self-destructive is very disorienting.

Cigarettes taste bad.
Alcohol hurts.
Sex is an aching void.
And sweets feel abrasive.

The surprising result of this collection of shifted sentiments is not the woebegone angst of a purposeless twenty-something boy. Actually it's quite the opposite: unbridled possibility.

It's not necessarily so easily defined as to merely be called optimism but there is hope in it somewhere.
And with the search for this rogue hope I shall revitalize my will to be everything I possibly can in the coming season of my life.

And while I may one day need to smoke, drink, fuck, or binge, I'll still hold to the center I'm wandering toward at this time in order not to fly like a spastic pendulum from one manic extreme to the other.

I soundly, calmly, resolutely refuse.

Here goes the plunge

While I stare somewhat contentedly out the kitchen window of my small studio I realize that I'm happiest when I'm not trying to be happy.

This notion is nothing terribly novel and yet it comforts me.
Perhaps my well being is only as strong as my ability not to consider it too fiercely.

The days all begin to roll into one another the more I release my iron grip on holding each one to some sort of productive standard.
What I will do shall be done.
What I won't shan't.

And what I will become is only the next thing and the next moment.
There are so many, many moments.

Don't tell me not to go

Whenever I hear someone telling me square in the face not to do something
I immediately resent them.

Sometimes I will listen and ponder
And then agree.

Mostly I just turn on the blind ear
And find the tiniest sound in the room other than that voice.

Lucky for me
Your sound was too loud to hear anyway.

And all of the tiny sounds
Were telling me to fly.

The night my house was blessed by a witch

Tonight my house was blessed by a witch.

She was not a bad witch.

But she was not a usual witch.

You see she was a he!

And we will keep calling her she.

It flows.

She was a joyful soul.

She filled up her laughs all of the way to the top.

She held talents in her hands like the sky holds stars.

She was a muse.

And she sat with me.

Just with me!

To inspire me, to permit me insouciance, to uplift.

She showed me many things she had created, had drawn for years.

Her pictures were lavish arrangements of precise details.

The length of her investment in their constitution showed in perfect crosshatching.

And once she left I felt her absence.

Only then did I see the drawing on my refrigerator white board:

She had left a little part of herself with me, in my home!

The length of her investment showing in her showing me.

Carrie

I wouldn't have said anything accept that you saw everything I had, I think.
You looked so much farther into me than I thought a person could.
You reached behind my eyes and sorted through my thoughts.
You seemed to sink into my blood and travel toward my feelings.
How I ever let you in like that is still and most likely always will remain a mystery.
A pleasant curiosity and an overwhelming relief: that is what you are to me.
The way I am permitted to be when we are together is something I cannot fathom or put into proper words other than to say that I'm finally allowed to take flight.
Considering the fact that rising into the air of my own accord is something after which I long on a daily basis, every moment spent begging the release of gravity, and you give me permission, this is what makes you the most special.
I love you in immeasurable, ineffable ways.
If only we had had more time to stare, more words to speak without tongues, I feel you would have known this tonight.
I know you're capable of so much more than simply listening.
You have the incredible ability to hear me in my most silent screaming.
What will my heart do when it is once again solely responsible to bear the weight of my innermost downs?
Surely you will never part from me completely.
Yet I feel the surety of our soon to occur separation and it is one of the few things allowing me these moments of grief at the thought of my departure.
Oh that your essence would alight on the metal wings of that vehicle which will ferry me from here to yonder.
Only soon to be followed by your being.

Amidst the beauty

When I look around at all of this, this silliness, I can't help but feel a bit detached.
It's not because I don't care. By no means. Quite the opposite.
It's because everything is so beautiful.
I don't want to be caught up in enjoying one beautiful thing while missing out on another.
I don't want to get dizzied and overwhelmed whilst standing in midst of organic chaos.
Rather I remove myself. Somewhat. Though not all of the way. I must still feel active, alive.
And in taking myself just far enough away from everything to see it all, as if seeing one's whole house and yard from an airplane, I am permitted to revel in the simultaneous beauty with near absolute surrender.

I take it all in; the warmth of the people and situations and places softening the hair on my arms; the bursting palette of shades and textures making my pupils shrink; the smell of crisp, open freshness rejuvenating me like waking up with the sun in the middle of the woods; the clamorous cacophony of every word, wind, and drip blending into the faux ocean waves of tv snow.

Where might I find myself if suddenly reinserted into some part of the whole picture?
In an ethereal version of Where's Waldo I would look for my hair above the jostling throng.
And I wouldn't find myself. At least not my body. But somehow, amidst all of the untamed intricacy of the masterpiece, I know without doubt it is where I belong.

Pay attention to the small things

Do you want to know what makes me supremely upset?

Even if your answer was no I'll proceed to detail anyway:

People who are full of themselves.

You may think of this profession as one that ought not be written considering how painfully obvious and assumedly universal it should be. But the fact of the matter is that the keenest of its offense is found in those who are completely unaware of their own ailment.

That is to say, the ones who don't realize that they are full of themselves are the most annoying.

Again, I realize that many of you may or may not already feel this way.
Even so pay attention to the small things, won't you?

Sunday as it should be

Having spent the early hours catching up on the sleep I missed the night before while serving the Houston Rockets round after round of Sambuca, I awoke just before 11:00 to the sound of my phone ringing and the crisp sunshine of yet another sharply cold Portland morning pressing through my window. Wayne was calling to see whether or not I would like to accompany him on his Sunday morning rite of a visit to the local Finnish steambath and sauna. Realizing that I was completely without hangover (the result of working too late to procure any Sambuca of my own) I felt that a healthy dose of humidity might be just the ticket to guaranteeing a good day.
We agreed that Wayne would come around for me within a half hour. I boiled the water and ground the beans for my morning french press while simultaneously throwing on some semblance of a warm, half presentable outfit. I had just slipped my arm into the first sleeve of a plushly insulated hoodie when my phone began to ring again announcing Wayne's arrival. Coffee in hand, keys jangling obstreperously, I rushed out the door and down to street-level where Wayne waited patiently in his SUV. Making our way to the spa we chatted lightly although both of us were still somewhat foggy with morning sluggishness.
Located in one of my old neighborhoods, I marveled at having never before visited Löyly. The interior was sparing yet quite stylish. The reductionist aesthetic was complimenting to the simplicity of the notion of simply sitting in a hot space and allowing all of life's myriad toxins to melt off. There was a steam room, a cold shower, and a sauna. Outside of the three was a spacious and naturally lit seating area complete with very, very quiet serene music and a selection of reading materials. And water. For drinking. There was tea available for purchase along with various skin care products meant to augment the healthfulness of the visit.
Wayne and I began by sitting in the steam room where we continued our conversations begun earlier on the ride over. We were a bit more cognizant at that point and could stand to converse with a bit more complexity. Following a brief reprieve in the lounge area we then visited the sauna where we both chose to be rather quiet. I began meditating and found it much easier to clear my mind with the pungency of the heated cedar and sizzling of the hot stones to sooth my sensory perceptions.
Once finished, we showered, dressed and headed to brunch where we were met by Lucie and her roommate Margaret. The four of us enjoyed a lovely meal at the Jade Lounge where our friend Brett had just begun serving the morning before. After coffee, bread pudding french toast, and huevos rancheros, the four of us parted ways and set out to continue our restful and enjoyable days.
Wayne dropped me off at home where I decided to read and relax so as not to upset the placidity of the primary part of my day. Through the hazy stream of cigarette smoke, I stared at my computer screen and decided the whole ordeal deserved to be recorded. How often is it that a chance morning turns out so picture perfect? With the ambiguity of the answer floating lazily with the blue gray smoke I set to work.



And now, for today, I am through.

Time unwasted

I slept most of the day today.
I missed things I would have rather been able to do.
But I knew I needed it and thusly decided not to feel remorse.
It was this long, deepish sleep that yielded some strange yet crisp dreams.
It has become more and more obvious to me that dreaming is increasing.
I've had friends tell me that they're been dreaming much more than usual.
This is a gift I think.
Perhaps we're all growing to be less and less asleep.
And perhaps that is what's causing the waking to bleed into dormancy.
Whatever the case I try to hold onto the images and possibilities of fantasy behind my eyes.
I can fly, I can see, I can invent.
There is so much possibility.
What if I were to die before the end of this year?
A question worth asking I believe.
We all must question the longevity of our being from time to time.
It undoes the hubris.

Teaching One to Love Reading

I've always felt more strongly connected to the reading I do where a reference is made to something else I've read.

When an author alludes to the epic battle of Troy, Odysseus's tormented venture homeward, the seven rings of the Inferno, the Glass family, or Nancy Drew I can't help but fall just a little bit in love. I feel special, intimate, in the know. As if the author and I have now officially become brethren.

There's more and more love to be found in reading when one realizes how incorporated literature happens to be. It's what makes us up-and-coming authors feel some sort of right to the field: we are officially in the know.

And we want so badly for others to be as well. So much so that we write and write and write and write. We hope to come up with a way of gaining a new member of this not-so-secret society. And we want our writing to be the door through which they choose to enter into the sanctum of scholarship.

So in essence, teaching one to love reading is tantamount to teaching one to meditate. The student must possess the inner-desire, it's the talent of a teacher to unearth and foster that preexisting passion.

Though Joy Departs

I can still hear the sound of her voice.
A distinct memory
of the way her words ended
in a soft croak,
like leather
being tightened against leather.

It was calming, textured.

I can still see the wrinkles
around her eyes. Wild
details, punctuating every curiosity.
Like spiderwebs
once taught to snare,
now wilted and pleasant.

They were calming, textured.

I can still feel the giving
of her smallish body in my arms.
Full, fallow breasts in which to harbor
a slowing, peaceful heart.
Like couch cushions out of place,
now needing to be laid down
to provide comfort for others.

They were calming, textured.

And

while you this world is now without,
I break all oaths to fearful doubt,
though joy departs in present bout,
some semblance of sunshine singes a sad eye,
for you have known me all throughout.





I love you Megan.
And dammit I miss you.

Benedictus

There comes a time in everyone's lives when the mere glimpse of sunlit bare branches through a skylight or windshield provides the simplest, most complete solace. As if everything is actually going to be alright. Everyone is going to make it. All is not for naught.

That is the place I find myself today. As the bright afternoon stretches on, crystal sky outlining the horizon with sharp, beautiful definition, there is so much possibility, so much potential. I'm happy. Just happy to be. My thoughts drift here and there, high and low, to and fro. And in my mind I'm at sea on the waves of an imagination unhindered by the worries of tomorrow, by the responsibilities of today, by the hurts of yesterday. I'm simply letting the sails lurch and tremble, popping haphazardly against the loose rigging.
And even with the buck and churn of daily disappointments there is an adventurousness to the trials where their foreboding and woe previously stood.

So here sit the tired bones of one with too many thoughts to count and too few misfortunes to bemoan. May this peace and calm be a theme of mine in the coming months and years.