she was sitting under the pergola, knees pulled up and under a long spring bud dress. unadorned, hair falling in long straight sheets of brown. her arms- thin- wrapped around her legs, bared toes poked out from underneath.
he knew he would find her here, adrift the potted plants and the aching afternoon flowers. the grey drone of clouds, and the wind that dashed off the shore now slowed to a comfortable amble by the time it reached his yard- made being outside possible, even pleasant.
he called out her name as he approached, but she didn't turn to see him till he had come closer. her brown eyes were unhemmed and her lips tinged with red, her sleepy slow smile confirmed the bottle that companioned her on the bench, mostly defeated.
he pulled off his silk tie, tossed it casually on the glass end table- christened with yellow pollen- and undid a few of the buttons of his shirt. he then unplugged the glass decanter and poured warm, strong smelling bourbon into a previously abandoned glass. sat down, pulled off his shoes and socks, flexed his toes.
when he inquired how she was, she replied with a shrug of her slight shoulders and so they sat there for some time, saying nothing at all. after awhile though, she stood and walked out into the grass, dragging the wine bottle behind her.
'what did you do today?' he asked.
she was staring into, or through, the blooming hibiscus- their shivering red petals.
'people drive too fast in this neighborhood.' she answered, he threw an arm over the back of the bench and didn't respond. she turned to him, caught him looking at her and carried on, 'did you know sandhill cranes mate for life?'
'no, i didn't know that.'
'i went for a walk this morning...' she trailed off.
'did you take the wine with you?' he knew she had, but the smile she gave him surprised him- implish and young, it belonged to a girl who had not been spending her days in his yard.
he watched it evaporated before his eyes as she continued, ' somebody hit a sandhill crane. i saw it.'
'did they stop?'
'no, i saw it afterwards laying on the asphalt.'
'oh' he winced.
'but that wasn't the worst part.' she paused, and a pop of wind sent all the leaves into a brief crescendo. he didn't ask, just waited for the wind, or whatever had given her pause to subside. 'what was worse was that i saw its mate standing there beside it. it was just looking down at it. it was just so awful.'
'are you okay?'
she walked around in a small circle, the green blades of the saint augustine grass shooting up through her toes. the wind pulled at her dress, her lithe form revealed- and he remembered all at once how young she was.
'i just sorta stood there and wondered...' trailing off again.
'wondering what?' she turned and faced away from him.
'what it was feeling.'
he drank from his glass and then offered up 'despair i would imagine.'
'no i don't think so.' he only half heard her-he was looking at how the whole yard was in movement- even if only recognizable in the smallest of ways, everything seemed to sway to the beat of some invisible force except for her- amidst it all she seemed so becalmed. 'no i think it was feeling something worse than despair.'
'worse than despair?' he then asked, 'what could be worse than despair?'
she turned back to him and with wine stained lips she answered.
'confusion.'
Friday, May 15, 2015
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
the cerulean dress
they were at, and of, the beach. she with her tanned skin in shades of wet sand, and he with his heavy lidded sleepy blue eyes of seaside rainstorm skies. they had been hiding together, away, and apart for a tumbling collection of days. everything in this temporary place felt like the linen curtains that were pulled out of the window by forces that seemed more pressing than wind, they flailed there white and sweet.
she hadn't know that she had been saving the cerulean dress until she realized he was leaving - it then occurred to her, laying out on the bed that she had. she pulled it on, in a movement without thought - that she would have believed bereft of grace- except without her expecting it he had informed her of quite the opposite a day or two before- and suddenly felt like a silent spectacle of femininity.
'everything you do,' he had said, 'motion and movement, is beautiful...'
she had not blushed, they had been too exposed these last few days for that. but she felt some part of her, inanimate recoil from his words. hours later she finally recognized it, it had been disbelief. no words could shake her conscious critique that her arms, reaching back and behind to work the three buttons, could be anything other than awkward and clumsy, but the look she received to the shake of her head, the messy toss of her long hair - several shades darker than sepia - left her startled, it was confident and unargumentative, and suddenly she was sure no matter how much she felt the opposite, that she was wrong.
the last button done. out through the door, left ever open, a few steps to the sand, then to the berm where everyday but one she had waited for him. she knew he would be in the water, to the waist of his green shorts, or drifting off between the sand bars nearly swallowed by the waters. it was not because she could not swim, or had no love for the sea- for she had, that she waited. and she had been part of the sea long before the morning after the third night when she had awoken and found that she was now part of him.
but because he had only asked her to come once.
only a few days old, the memory of their brief tryst in the sea was already bleeding. she didn't know if it had been the sensory confusion of the rain and the water, or the bizarre sensation of being in the water in her ankle length skirt that had rendered the memory so difficult. she hadn't really swum though, or even clung to him really, rather she had let him just hold her- a rarity- his hands holding her steady at the waist as around her the waves had pushed past to collapse, while the sky surrendered, like an eclipse, its liturgy of air. she couldn't say now how long they had been there in the seastorm, or why then he had pulled her out with him on that day. but without being able to understand or explain it she knew that it would not happen again.
he was out there alone now as he seemed to prefer it. the wind moved as if to say something through the rattling of the surrounding sea oats. she thought then that the sea was his, and would now always be. she did not know what was hers, she would find it some day- though not with him. the only thing she would ever share with him was that day, and all these other days, and that room, and the cerulean dress she had saved to wear as she said goodbye.
she hadn't know that she had been saving the cerulean dress until she realized he was leaving - it then occurred to her, laying out on the bed that she had. she pulled it on, in a movement without thought - that she would have believed bereft of grace- except without her expecting it he had informed her of quite the opposite a day or two before- and suddenly felt like a silent spectacle of femininity.
'everything you do,' he had said, 'motion and movement, is beautiful...'
she had not blushed, they had been too exposed these last few days for that. but she felt some part of her, inanimate recoil from his words. hours later she finally recognized it, it had been disbelief. no words could shake her conscious critique that her arms, reaching back and behind to work the three buttons, could be anything other than awkward and clumsy, but the look she received to the shake of her head, the messy toss of her long hair - several shades darker than sepia - left her startled, it was confident and unargumentative, and suddenly she was sure no matter how much she felt the opposite, that she was wrong.
the last button done. out through the door, left ever open, a few steps to the sand, then to the berm where everyday but one she had waited for him. she knew he would be in the water, to the waist of his green shorts, or drifting off between the sand bars nearly swallowed by the waters. it was not because she could not swim, or had no love for the sea- for she had, that she waited. and she had been part of the sea long before the morning after the third night when she had awoken and found that she was now part of him.
but because he had only asked her to come once.
only a few days old, the memory of their brief tryst in the sea was already bleeding. she didn't know if it had been the sensory confusion of the rain and the water, or the bizarre sensation of being in the water in her ankle length skirt that had rendered the memory so difficult. she hadn't really swum though, or even clung to him really, rather she had let him just hold her- a rarity- his hands holding her steady at the waist as around her the waves had pushed past to collapse, while the sky surrendered, like an eclipse, its liturgy of air. she couldn't say now how long they had been there in the seastorm, or why then he had pulled her out with him on that day. but without being able to understand or explain it she knew that it would not happen again.
he was out there alone now as he seemed to prefer it. the wind moved as if to say something through the rattling of the surrounding sea oats. she thought then that the sea was his, and would now always be. she did not know what was hers, she would find it some day- though not with him. the only thing she would ever share with him was that day, and all these other days, and that room, and the cerulean dress she had saved to wear as she said goodbye.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
mark kozelek
there is a space in my heart for mark kozelek from which he will never be dethroned. he does not deserve it, but that is because no one ever really deserves our love. there can be too many reasons one does not deserve our love though. the counter intuitive mathematics of deserving and love should not perplex anyone, there's no sense to love at all.
to see someone perform who has always been a spectre, the present unpresent to use a theological turn of phrase, is difficult. people can not live up to our ideas about them- because ideas are bound to nothing, where as people are bound completely to their limitations, person and/or circumstantial.
no concert by mark kozelek could eve be good enough, for he can only be himself, and he can only be himself for the time allotted. he could never be the mark kozelek that I loved, for that mark kozelek is not real- and he could never be himself, or as I wanted him to be, long enough, for he is a part of the life I have lived and will live- I want him to play forever.
this is not even to speak of the issue of song choices. some of my favourite songs of his are more than 20 years old- he could not play his catalogue, time would never permit. and to demand that he play older stuff as opposed to his newer work is to reject him as a person all together, it makes me no different than the drunken heckler who screams at the besieged rundown bar piano man "play it again!" which would be a disservice to him as the adored and me as the adorer. how many hundred times has he played 'katy song' or 'japanese to english'? it seems only reasonable that he is sick of playing those songs - I can only listen to them still because my affection for them is entirely unreasonable.
the out come of a concert like the on I saw on Saturday seems to be predestined to be disappointment. frustrating since it never could have been avoided, not even by that figure around which the experience of the concert fixates. (I will admit that I am left in a complete state of doubt as to who that figure is: mark kozelek or myself)
mark kozelek has received some praise, and a great deal more criticism in these last days. his style has long since drifted away from the crushing, over-dramatic, yet inexplicably lovely, 'slowcore' style that brought him his early, relative, success. his lyrics no longer seem like pages of some manic journal shared with the listener because mark kozelek is compelled through/by guilt or love or madness to disclose. no his lyrics now read more like clippings from newspapers or writings from napkins composed on a porch. the guitar work is more artistic in his new work, and the lyrics are more mundane.
in one of his many rambling, entertaining talks between songs he explains to the crowd that the reason he does not have a fancy new smart phone is because he wanted to 'be able to do this'. it is his segue in his song 'alesund'- which is beautiful and haunting and so difficult to perform that one can see him have to focus the whole of his will and ability to perform it. it is more than enjoyable, and would leave me stunned except every song is performed in the space that the song he did not perform could have occupied. if I am not shaken and fulfilled, it is not fault of his. and while my inclinations are to self incriminate - I can not quite say that it is mine either.
going to see a concert is a strange thing in conception, especially if the musician or band one goes to see is not the type to put on a spectacle/ why go? the best the musician can hope to accomplish is to sound like they did on their album, perfect, and I am not trying to belittle the ability to replicate one's album caliber music - anyone who fancies concerts will confirm it is no small or common feat.
so why did I go? knowing I would be disappointed, knowing he would play few if any of my favourite songs, knowing I would not get a spectacle. was it enough to have some fragile temporary experience with mark kozelek for myself? is the concert experience so selfish in its roots as that?
though his music has changed over the years, mark kozelek music has always spoken to me. he words seemed, insanely or childishly, to be expression of things I felt. (I will admit there is a confusing element to that idea, seeing that I almost always discover mark kozeleks music after its heyday, and due to the fact that he is 14 years my senior) he seemed always to be saying what I could not, or perhaps closer to the truth dared not.
maybe in that is a little truth, that I went to see mark kozelek so that I could hear him sing about the things I did not know I already knew.
he was halfway into a strikingly different version of 'richard ramirez', carrying the emotion of the song entirely with his voice; which I sometimes wonder if he has forgotten has always been his best instrument- when I found myself crying. not loudly, or in the guiltless way I often cry at the end of good movies- but in the revelationary way. for reasons I can not finger I realized something in the midst of that song.
mark kozelek has no idea what it is all about.
his lyrics and music have change not as some artistic response to changing cultural stimuli but because that part of him that used to write lines like 'we walked down the hill/I feel the coming on/ of fading sun/ and I know for sure/ that you'll never be the one/ its the forbidden moment that we live/ that fires our sad escape/ and holds passion more than words can say'. he doesn't see the world that way anymore - pushed by mystic and unimaginable forces. now he writes lines such as 'We didn't have very much to say/ she said that she'd come from some other place/ a town called Troyskirt, maybe Troysworth/ i was pretty distracted packing my stuff/ but I did make a point to ask her to stay/ but she said she had friends that she had to go see'. he is not struggling to make sense of the failed relationships and the fading loves, the seemingly unavoidable movement from love to pain, and back again. now he sees relationships as failed because that's the way the world is- there is no mystery to the 'why'- there only is. love fades because everything fades. and the lines or transitions between love and pain are so temporary on the larger scale and so subjective that differentiating between them at all is not some great human endeavor but a silly statement on one's current location.
mark kozelek has let it go. he's living and writing about the mundanity of experience - and if it sounds magical as it does at the end of 'I know its pathetic by that was the greatest night of my life' - its just coincidental.
I cried, because I missed my mark kozelek, and because I missed myself that could sing in off key affirmation of shared emotion and desperation about such things. I cant want him to be who he was anymore than I can hope to retain those things no one seems to retain. and while I cant be indignant about it, I suppose I don't either have to be happy about it either.
So I cried because mark kozelek has no idea what life is about.
and neither do it.
to see someone perform who has always been a spectre, the present unpresent to use a theological turn of phrase, is difficult. people can not live up to our ideas about them- because ideas are bound to nothing, where as people are bound completely to their limitations, person and/or circumstantial.
no concert by mark kozelek could eve be good enough, for he can only be himself, and he can only be himself for the time allotted. he could never be the mark kozelek that I loved, for that mark kozelek is not real- and he could never be himself, or as I wanted him to be, long enough, for he is a part of the life I have lived and will live- I want him to play forever.
this is not even to speak of the issue of song choices. some of my favourite songs of his are more than 20 years old- he could not play his catalogue, time would never permit. and to demand that he play older stuff as opposed to his newer work is to reject him as a person all together, it makes me no different than the drunken heckler who screams at the besieged rundown bar piano man "play it again!" which would be a disservice to him as the adored and me as the adorer. how many hundred times has he played 'katy song' or 'japanese to english'? it seems only reasonable that he is sick of playing those songs - I can only listen to them still because my affection for them is entirely unreasonable.
the out come of a concert like the on I saw on Saturday seems to be predestined to be disappointment. frustrating since it never could have been avoided, not even by that figure around which the experience of the concert fixates. (I will admit that I am left in a complete state of doubt as to who that figure is: mark kozelek or myself)
mark kozelek has received some praise, and a great deal more criticism in these last days. his style has long since drifted away from the crushing, over-dramatic, yet inexplicably lovely, 'slowcore' style that brought him his early, relative, success. his lyrics no longer seem like pages of some manic journal shared with the listener because mark kozelek is compelled through/by guilt or love or madness to disclose. no his lyrics now read more like clippings from newspapers or writings from napkins composed on a porch. the guitar work is more artistic in his new work, and the lyrics are more mundane.
in one of his many rambling, entertaining talks between songs he explains to the crowd that the reason he does not have a fancy new smart phone is because he wanted to 'be able to do this'. it is his segue in his song 'alesund'- which is beautiful and haunting and so difficult to perform that one can see him have to focus the whole of his will and ability to perform it. it is more than enjoyable, and would leave me stunned except every song is performed in the space that the song he did not perform could have occupied. if I am not shaken and fulfilled, it is not fault of his. and while my inclinations are to self incriminate - I can not quite say that it is mine either.
going to see a concert is a strange thing in conception, especially if the musician or band one goes to see is not the type to put on a spectacle/ why go? the best the musician can hope to accomplish is to sound like they did on their album, perfect, and I am not trying to belittle the ability to replicate one's album caliber music - anyone who fancies concerts will confirm it is no small or common feat.
so why did I go? knowing I would be disappointed, knowing he would play few if any of my favourite songs, knowing I would not get a spectacle. was it enough to have some fragile temporary experience with mark kozelek for myself? is the concert experience so selfish in its roots as that?
though his music has changed over the years, mark kozelek music has always spoken to me. he words seemed, insanely or childishly, to be expression of things I felt. (I will admit there is a confusing element to that idea, seeing that I almost always discover mark kozeleks music after its heyday, and due to the fact that he is 14 years my senior) he seemed always to be saying what I could not, or perhaps closer to the truth dared not.
maybe in that is a little truth, that I went to see mark kozelek so that I could hear him sing about the things I did not know I already knew.
he was halfway into a strikingly different version of 'richard ramirez', carrying the emotion of the song entirely with his voice; which I sometimes wonder if he has forgotten has always been his best instrument- when I found myself crying. not loudly, or in the guiltless way I often cry at the end of good movies- but in the revelationary way. for reasons I can not finger I realized something in the midst of that song.
mark kozelek has no idea what it is all about.
his lyrics and music have change not as some artistic response to changing cultural stimuli but because that part of him that used to write lines like 'we walked down the hill/I feel the coming on/ of fading sun/ and I know for sure/ that you'll never be the one/ its the forbidden moment that we live/ that fires our sad escape/ and holds passion more than words can say'. he doesn't see the world that way anymore - pushed by mystic and unimaginable forces. now he writes lines such as 'We didn't have very much to say/ she said that she'd come from some other place/ a town called Troyskirt, maybe Troysworth/ i was pretty distracted packing my stuff/ but I did make a point to ask her to stay/ but she said she had friends that she had to go see'. he is not struggling to make sense of the failed relationships and the fading loves, the seemingly unavoidable movement from love to pain, and back again. now he sees relationships as failed because that's the way the world is- there is no mystery to the 'why'- there only is. love fades because everything fades. and the lines or transitions between love and pain are so temporary on the larger scale and so subjective that differentiating between them at all is not some great human endeavor but a silly statement on one's current location.
mark kozelek has let it go. he's living and writing about the mundanity of experience - and if it sounds magical as it does at the end of 'I know its pathetic by that was the greatest night of my life' - its just coincidental.
I cried, because I missed my mark kozelek, and because I missed myself that could sing in off key affirmation of shared emotion and desperation about such things. I cant want him to be who he was anymore than I can hope to retain those things no one seems to retain. and while I cant be indignant about it, I suppose I don't either have to be happy about it either.
So I cried because mark kozelek has no idea what life is about.
and neither do it.
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