I remember, it was before Christmas and I was out buying gifts for my friends. Henry owned a small antique shop that was smashed in between several other small shops, all lost behind tan walls so that you couldn't see them from the road. Once you got inside of the labyrinth, though, you could tell which shop Henry owned: every day, as long as the shop was open, he would have an old phonograph playing old jazz, or opera, or big band music. I had visited the shop for two or three years without buying anything.
The day wasn't special, but it was the first day that I ever bought anything from my favorite shop. Henry knew it, and commented on it when I came up to his desk with several items in my hand. They were all small trinkets, the only thing that I could afford, and even then just barely, but he smiled at me. "Are we buying for people we choose to love, or people we're obligated to love?" He asked me. I told him they were for people I choose to love. He nodded back with an air of old-time wisdom.
"Those are always the ones that matter." He told me.
I had bought a deck of playing cards, a fountain pen, and an old hand-mirror from 1925. It was for a girl that I liked who liked me. It was secret. This was about a year after I promised myself that I wouldn't hold anymore of my own secrets.
Like all of my promises and vows, it quickly fell through.
The main point is this: while I was buying my gifts, Henry was on the phone with his "dearly beloved," as he put it. (He joked about the one time I decide to buy something, I force him to ignore his dearly beloved.) But while he was on the phone with her, I took down every detail of his words, his syntax, the tone of voice. Not that he was anything special, I almost always took down details, but there's always been a certain interest in me when it comes to how people talk with their dearly beloved's.
The way Henry talked to his that day was jokingly harsh. There was some problem of some sort, nothing important, but one of those small little things that bother people everyday, and are usually complicated in the process of fixing them. I presumed that the same tone, syntax, and word choice had been used before numerous times, and after I left the shop I thought about how his dearly beloved put up with it.
It took me about three weeks to start thinking that being in love is made up of about one-half of putting up with whomever your in love with. Who knows.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Hope and Hope
Hope and hope and hope and hope and hope.
My friends are here, I'll survive and live and love and dream, dream, dream. No longer away from starburst suns in the ocean staring back up at me, or the air alight with such color and beauty that it sends me reeling back into them, arms everywhere; I see you and you see me and with our smiles we join together. Brother, brother, you whom I've known for so long and for so little. Are we so together that I can sink my teeth so softly into your heart, or your mind. Rejoice with me and rolling waves as the moon comes and the sun comes.
Hope and hope and hope and hope and celestial beings; you're beautiful, we're all beautiful; mud and grease and gears and roots and oil, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty!
Do we die tomorrow, dream again, act in such a way to drive others mad and revel in our own fortitude, our own conviction? Or do we dabble in our own fears tonight, release ourselves and forget, forget completely that we're anything but the appendages and the ideas that float seamlessly around our minds?
Live by the bait offered to us and escape before they even catch a glimpse!
Hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and long.
My friends are here, I'll survive and live and love and dream, dream, dream. No longer away from starburst suns in the ocean staring back up at me, or the air alight with such color and beauty that it sends me reeling back into them, arms everywhere; I see you and you see me and with our smiles we join together. Brother, brother, you whom I've known for so long and for so little. Are we so together that I can sink my teeth so softly into your heart, or your mind. Rejoice with me and rolling waves as the moon comes and the sun comes.
Hope and hope and hope and hope and celestial beings; you're beautiful, we're all beautiful; mud and grease and gears and roots and oil, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty!
Do we die tomorrow, dream again, act in such a way to drive others mad and revel in our own fortitude, our own conviction? Or do we dabble in our own fears tonight, release ourselves and forget, forget completely that we're anything but the appendages and the ideas that float seamlessly around our minds?
Live by the bait offered to us and escape before they even catch a glimpse!
Hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and hope and long.
Thoughts on a Saturday Morning
Yes, I exist as the wind. Maybe that's a bad thing, but for the most part, comforting, and where I find home. We all seek something.
Nothing's there, am I correct? Are any of us correct at assuming our surroundings? Do you love me?
Am I mad?
Sometimes I look into the landscape and just feel as though it's not there, has never been there, that my eyes are actually looking at a wall and my mind painting my life onto the wall. I change. The me last night
nothing more
but a vague memory
inside of me today.
(This is my story:)
I woke up; my ceiling, white crystal dots, an ocean of them, the light from my closet refracting off of them and shining down on me. If I looked long enough, they moved and breathed with me. This was my room, my morning. It would fade from me in minutes along with the memories of my dreams. I will forget, and time shall be taken from me, leaving me ignorant of my life, and every life I simultaneously exist through.
The only reasons I get out of bed this morning is to check my phone and my IM to see if you've tried to contact me, and to get dressed for my brother and his new wife-to-be. You haven't, and they aren't here, but I'm still out of bed.
I remember pieces of it: There was the Sun Shoppe and there was House of Joe, but there was also another place. I went there and met up with four people from my past that I did not expect to see. They used to be Christian and would only listen to rap, but in my dreams, they were atheists and they listened to trip-hop. They were glad to see me, and I didn't know their names, despite knowing who they were. They didn't mind and never told me their names.
I remember climbing on stacks of goods, and I told Trevor that the only good thing about us evolving from primates is that we could climb. That's the only complement that they'll ever get.
When I was a kid, I could climb better than any other kid. Higher, faster. I dreamt of space, as every kid should. Of the void and the everything inside of it's emptiness.
Will today be any different? People and face smiling, beaming, relaxed, content. Content.
Do you ever make yourself sick? Or wonder where you stand? If everyone is walking forwards and backwards
I'm walking perpendicular, along a line. Changing without progressing or declining. It's not that I'm done living or content, but that I need to explore every spot of where I stand in the now.
I don't know why since I always end up forgetting, but I have a thirst for knowledge and the unknown.
We don't grow up, we only pretend. Maturity is just about as easily forged as lust, or honor.
I've nothing to worry about, it's life and life only.
(But I don't learn from my own teaching, and it's killing me.)
Nothing's there, am I correct? Are any of us correct at assuming our surroundings? Do you love me?
Am I mad?
Sometimes I look into the landscape and just feel as though it's not there, has never been there, that my eyes are actually looking at a wall and my mind painting my life onto the wall. I change. The me last night
nothing more
but a vague memory
inside of me today.
(This is my story:)
I woke up; my ceiling, white crystal dots, an ocean of them, the light from my closet refracting off of them and shining down on me. If I looked long enough, they moved and breathed with me. This was my room, my morning. It would fade from me in minutes along with the memories of my dreams. I will forget, and time shall be taken from me, leaving me ignorant of my life, and every life I simultaneously exist through.
The only reasons I get out of bed this morning is to check my phone and my IM to see if you've tried to contact me, and to get dressed for my brother and his new wife-to-be. You haven't, and they aren't here, but I'm still out of bed.
I remember pieces of it: There was the Sun Shoppe and there was House of Joe, but there was also another place. I went there and met up with four people from my past that I did not expect to see. They used to be Christian and would only listen to rap, but in my dreams, they were atheists and they listened to trip-hop. They were glad to see me, and I didn't know their names, despite knowing who they were. They didn't mind and never told me their names.
I remember climbing on stacks of goods, and I told Trevor that the only good thing about us evolving from primates is that we could climb. That's the only complement that they'll ever get.
When I was a kid, I could climb better than any other kid. Higher, faster. I dreamt of space, as every kid should. Of the void and the everything inside of it's emptiness.
Will today be any different? People and face smiling, beaming, relaxed, content. Content.
Do you ever make yourself sick? Or wonder where you stand? If everyone is walking forwards and backwards
I'm walking perpendicular, along a line. Changing without progressing or declining. It's not that I'm done living or content, but that I need to explore every spot of where I stand in the now.
I don't know why since I always end up forgetting, but I have a thirst for knowledge and the unknown.
We don't grow up, we only pretend. Maturity is just about as easily forged as lust, or honor.
I've nothing to worry about, it's life and life only.
(But I don't learn from my own teaching, and it's killing me.)
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