Day One: It’s snowing! It’s snowing, snowing, snowing. I hope it sticks. Maybe it’ll stick. Do I have a sled?
Day Two: Everything is white. This is beautiful. No problem. Let’s go pick up a friend at the airport. Four and a half hours of waiting because the Max line froze up. Kill me now.
Day Three: Sledding almost works. There’s a little bit of snow on the ground.
Day Four: It takes 10 minutes to leave the house. Long-johns under jeans, jeans under snow pants, snow pants into snow boots, two sweatshirts and a down vest, coat over the top of it all.
Day Five: Feels like an End of Days Movie. Snow ball fights abound.
Day Six: Movie indoors, under thirty pounds of blankets. Hot tea. Heaven.
Day Seven: Sledding with a boogie board. Reaching face-flapping speeds. Broke up a fight between teenagers at top of sledding hill. Was I ever that big of a dumbass?
Day Eight: Sledding again. Snow down front of coat.
Day Nine: Sledding again. New distance and speed records set.
Day Ten: One movie and a Blazer game watched. Barely left shelter. Worked six hours at the store. Sold out of ice-scrapers.
Day Eleven: Didn’t leave house until 2:30pm. Getting cabin fever. Long for cross-country skis. Marshall Islands. A sunburn. Went to Starbucks inside Safeway just to get out. Everywhere else is closed. Deli is packed.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Published Poems
OK, so two poems, "Montana Trailor Life," and "Morning After Lightning on Kearny" of mine are in the newest edition of Four and Twenty Poetry.
Go and check it out. There is some other really good stuff there besides mine too!
Go and check it out. There is some other really good stuff there besides mine too!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Stuck on the Max
Thursday, December 11, 2008
On Success
This is what my father tells me when he speaks of success:
“My boy,” he says, “do everything just a little better. Put a little more into everything and you’ll be great. Where is the difference between Dostoyevsky and the author of a gossip article? Is it in the single word? The single sentence? The single paragraph? Maybe old Dostoyevsky chooses a word that’s just a little, tiny, small and insignificant amount better than that hack writing for People. You look at the single word and you say, ‘well, damn, Dostoyevsky don’t have too much on this other guy.’ But that adds up, my boy, it all adds up.”
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Lost California
Outside, P took photos of Alex leaning against a wild-west mural and taking desperate drags on the dog-end of a last chance cigarette.
He looked like a desperado.
Like a movie poster.
Like a new suit in a shop window the day of the dance.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
The Smallest Hours
In the smallest hours, when all else is asleep, things seem the biggest. Like a balloon wrestled from a hand by the wind, suddenly things of great height and consequence are possible. Extraordinary ideas and fantasies march through the brain and the body responds with clenching and scheming.
Action! Action! Action!
Sometimes the things that come in the smallest hours are phantoms pumped up and away from reality and spread over the peace of the night with claws and teeth bared. There is nothing you can do that is worth anything, they hiss into ears and dreams, everyone else is better, more accomplished, and you have failed again. The body begins to sweat. Your paper for tomorrow is crap. You will not pass the class. Hands grab hold of sheet’s edge as if waiting in a boat for the storm to break. Your interview will be a disaster. You will be jobless, friendless and wifeless. Eyelids flutter in the wasteland between asleep and awake and the shapes of towels hung to dry look like villains holding knives. You will eat too much and then you will not look fabulous and you will not surprise anyone at the high school reunion.
Awake finally, with brain washed clean by morning, the struggles and doubts from the night before color the day in washed out grey’s.
Sometimes it is different though. Sometimes something purer in nature takes hold of these smallest hours and alights them to fly unabated through sweet skies of possibility, creativity and productivity. Minds snap to thought smartly and in line. You are on your way now, this is what you’ve been trying to get at this whole time. Bodies cease to grow weary and eyelids remain light. You’ve worked for hours now, can you believe it? For hours and no rest. Toes tap happily on the floor beneath. I’ll be the walking dead tomorrow and I don’t care. I don’t care at all.
It is after that the mornings seem the best. The smallest hours gave license to the deepest and best fantasies, and even if in the daytime the scheming seems silly and impossible, distance was covered and progress was made. Extraordinary ideas and fantasies had marched through the brain and the had body responded with clenching and scheming.
Action! Action! Action!
Action! Action! Action!
Sometimes the things that come in the smallest hours are phantoms pumped up and away from reality and spread over the peace of the night with claws and teeth bared. There is nothing you can do that is worth anything, they hiss into ears and dreams, everyone else is better, more accomplished, and you have failed again. The body begins to sweat. Your paper for tomorrow is crap. You will not pass the class. Hands grab hold of sheet’s edge as if waiting in a boat for the storm to break. Your interview will be a disaster. You will be jobless, friendless and wifeless. Eyelids flutter in the wasteland between asleep and awake and the shapes of towels hung to dry look like villains holding knives. You will eat too much and then you will not look fabulous and you will not surprise anyone at the high school reunion.
Awake finally, with brain washed clean by morning, the struggles and doubts from the night before color the day in washed out grey’s.
Sometimes it is different though. Sometimes something purer in nature takes hold of these smallest hours and alights them to fly unabated through sweet skies of possibility, creativity and productivity. Minds snap to thought smartly and in line. You are on your way now, this is what you’ve been trying to get at this whole time. Bodies cease to grow weary and eyelids remain light. You’ve worked for hours now, can you believe it? For hours and no rest. Toes tap happily on the floor beneath. I’ll be the walking dead tomorrow and I don’t care. I don’t care at all.
It is after that the mornings seem the best. The smallest hours gave license to the deepest and best fantasies, and even if in the daytime the scheming seems silly and impossible, distance was covered and progress was made. Extraordinary ideas and fantasies had marched through the brain and the had body responded with clenching and scheming.
Action! Action! Action!
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