face pressed up against the glass : detailed files

notebook

The three most recent notebook entries:

pinstripe fedora

I went to an ice cream parlor; homemade ice cream for 50 years or something like that. Closed for a few years, it just reopened with a line all the way down the block. As I walked out a kid of about ten walked in, wearing a pinstripe fedora and carrying an Etch-a-Sketch. I think a hole ripped in the fabric of time and space and slipped this place through to our side, and I’m completely okay with that.

20 Jun 2009 · link

sprung

I blinked, and eight months flowed by.

I blinked, and eleven years flowed by. It took eleven years for the dates to match up, for the day my father died to be that day again. Some years I am distracted by the whirlwind that passes for April, but this year, I lived the week again. I would close my eyes, and I was there. I would open my eyes, and be both here and there. I would open my eyes, and be both then and now. I’m sure there is an equation to explain that, but I don’t know it.

I blinked, and next week my daughter will be six. This week, my son will be three.

I recently reconnected with an old friend. We were twelve when we knew each other; it has been twenty-four years since then. How can this be? When we were children, our parents seemed old. Or at least grown up. But we are not old. I will not speak for my friend, but I do not feel grown up. But now I am the parent. Perhaps I am old. Perhaps old is not what I thought it was. Perhaps these seemingly mathematical impossibilites are just more equations I don’t know.

While my eyes were closed winter flowed by. There are tiny leaves on my apple trees, and the beginnings of life on my maples. But nothing yet on my ash tree, from which I take my cues. It is in no hurry.

22 Apr 2009 · link

yup, that’s my cat

The cat was thrilled. I’d found a can of slightly dusty albacore in the back of the cupboard behind the new-fangled tuna pouches and from the other end of the house the orange boy somehow heard the tiny sound of a hand can opener. A fraction of a second later he had teleported the length of the house and was rubbing against my leg, shaking in anticipation. Tuna! There is tuna! In a can! It’s been months! Damn you, pouches!

letters

A selection of letters and essays:

writing by firelight
Lightning did not start the fire that killed my aunt; the storm had no lightning. There was no rain to put out the fire that killed my aunt; the storm had no rain. The storm was all wind.
two deaths, more to come
As we entered the ICU we could see the light was off in the far corner room. Even as the doctor was walking towards me I remember thinking: where did they move him?
a thank you for everything
Warm breezes said it’s not December; winter is not coming. Pure bright moonlight whispered, you are not on earth; this is the light of another sun. Warmth in the sand spoke through my skin: this is what should always be but never is. The rock show became a ritual; the ritual became a church; the church became a shared dream.
thousand mile home
Near 3:30 in the morning I wandered the aisles of a truck stop in Provo, asking the girl behind the counter which price hot dogs were on the little spinning heater, as I had only two relative sizes to match up to three items on the price schedule.
student special
I went back to an apartment I’d looked at four hours earlier, and a long haired bearded shirtless guy was still sitting in front of the next unit playing the bongos. I reached for the unlocked door of the place I wanted to see and he called out to me. “There’s a naked Indian in there; you might want to hang a minute.”

A full list of letters is in the archives either by category or date.