My friend Dusk

If Dusk and I were friends, we would hold hands through the fields of ambiguity, in between the stalks of certainty and apathy. We would never be one thing. We'd be both, all, and nothing. We would brag about our freedom and it would torture us. Dusk would talk to me about how he conducted the pink shaded clouds to viciously invade the gray, like he had created a melody not made for ears. Like he'd licked a lion's backbone and found it was a sweet and luscious delicacy. Like he had felt a shift, a seminal shift in utter stillness. He would talk about the orchestrated chaos like a pyromaniac watching his own creation of euphoric destruction, licking his lips in delight. And when my eyelids would droop even the littlest bit, he would whisper, so I had to listen more keenly. His almost silent words would talk about the rush he got in the splitting second the streetlights woke up-so fast you could barely catch it, like they had been holding their breath. He would whisper about the neon's premature burst into dusk and he would wink at me, tickled at its impatience to spend a few moments with him. Dusk would laugh at his lackluster name-never in envy of the night's sharp T or the sun's bold three letters. No, dusk does not own that finesse, he is slippery but not sheik. He is elusive and proud to be in-between. Dusk shows up casually to the black tie event. He wears a dark gray hoodie and jeans. No one knows when Dusk comes or when he leaves. He eats all the appetizers he can stomach and slips out the back. Dusk calls out the trick or treaters and the smell of jasmine in November. Dusk demands you show up in your softest sweater...the one that you have had since you were awkward and you simply can't part with. Dusk encourages the silence of the city and the uproar of the night. He is secret in his own right and he demands nothing. He provides nothing for the thirsty vampire or the muted rooster.

Dusk would always talk my ear off, until my fighting eyes grew so tired my lids were sinking anchors. I would wake and Dusk would have left. And the neon would stand watch...bored. The rooster impatient for the routine to start and anxious for it to be over, and me in the certainty of Night...dull and questionless.

The Silverware Soap Opera

The fork was jealous when the dish ran away with the spoon. It felt less whole. It whispered thoughts of incompleteness to itself, looking down shamefully at its transparency. Wishing it was smooth and curvey. It looked longingly at them working in tandem...filling themselves with scalding hot tomato basil and butternut squash soups...exchanging fluids. It walked the streets in desperation. Desperate to alleviate its feeling of jealousy-hating itself for what it couldn't be.

At the fork's pathetic peak, pasta came in full recruit of the fork. The fork was reborn, spinning and twirling itself into manic frenzy. Twirling until it was dizzy in its own delight, drunk with its own reinvention of itself. Never realizing it could do anything more than stab and serve the knife.

(The sordid past of the knife and fork was whispered about in grocery store lines and dark corners of cocktail parties. Overheard conversations on the counter were steeped in debate "The major problem was the knife never let the fork run free!" the whisk demanded. "The fork should just count its blessings to be matched with the devilishly lethal piece of silverware." claimed the ice cream scoop. Back and forth they all went discussing their own stance on the tortured souls, eyes wide and thoughts unedited. In their therapy sessions, the fork pleaded with the knife to seek out its own passion..."My god, just get yourself into some steak!" "Plug yourself in, and take down a Thanksgiving turkey!" But the knife just sat flat, hurt, and annoyed at the pleas of the fork to be something it wasn't. The therapist diagnosed the knife with co-dependancy traits, and in that instant the fork had a waking moment.)

Now...at last...liberation. "Pasta? Where were you all my life?" the fork murmured in its glee. In mid-pirouette, the fork glanced over to see the spoon slumped over at the street lamp, fedora pulled over its tear-streaked silver, smoking a cigarette with the moon. In the distance, the fork watched as the dish sat...satisfied in its isolation and glowing in its self-righteousness, as large plump fingers plucked the baby quiches and deviled eggs off the plate.

Drawn to its passionately sensitive defeat, the fork wrapped its prongs around the spoon as it sank and collapsed into the fork's embrace. That night,they wept together until their tears created new tides and floods that disapated into wandering creeks. In the morning the spork was born.

Now the days of the working fork and spoon had come to a sudden halt, they were busy feeding the spork and teaching it to live with pride in its mixed race. They filled their days trying to get the spork out of the cafeteria and onto some white linen, but it had been cast aside early on. Judged as being overzealous, scoffed at for its multi-talents, it was plagued in its overly utilitarian-ness. Jealousy ran its course undeservedly on the spork, and the spoon and fork had to sit and watch as their diamond in the rough was fated to canned carrots and applesauce on the food separating plastic trays.

On their nightly autumn walks, the spoon and fork would stop at the window of the corner Chinese take out, prongs and concave oval pressed against the window...silent...hypnotized by complexity in the simplicity of the chopsticks. "Man, they are good." the fork would admit with great respect. Inevitably, their conversation after passing the Chinese restaurant would somehow make its way around to rants about the magic they could have created together, had they the chance in there. Soups, sauce, noodles, vegetables and meats. "We could have teamed up with the bowl and left the dish and knife to their own lazy and self-serving antics." the fork would exclaim. "You would have tackled that Mu Shu, while I worked the steaming wontons." the spoon imagined.

And then the night would fall short as they approached the house, the light of the tv illuminating the window and the profile of Spork sitting slightly slumped and two small tears would drip down their silver handles, in that autumn night, and the tides had changed once more.

And the moment in between...

Awake, waiting alone with the promise of the late night meteor shower. My eyes betrayingly set on this blank paper, as the echo of the Oakland train perpetrates the night. I have decided to rebel against the sky's possession of my searching eyes and excuse myself from the anxious await.

Still the moments in between...waiting...waiting....waiting...

Now, the memory of the last stab of light grows dim and dusty with cobwebs. It rocks in the chair at an agonizingly monotonous speed. It plays Bingo and eats applesauce, tapioca, and rests its removable teeth on the nightstand.

I am irritated.

It has been at least four minutes since the last meteor.

My impatience is taking a slow and painful wreckoning on the meteor shower. In the time in between, I cynically compare the meteor to a sparkler with a shorter lifespan. I question my cold wait on the balcony...ridiculing the meteor in its assumption that its as magnificent as the space shuttle or electric can opener. Quickly, I come to the conclusion that the meteor shower is something humans do to feel closer to purity, like a hip detox. A cleanse-in trade for your deprivation, instead merely stripping you of all your nutrients. I blame the meteor for making me wait for a drip after being promised a shower...feeling lied to and humiliated. My hurt feelings turn to anger, like an alcoholic.

And then I wonder in my impatience and feverish Sharpie moving its way across the paper, How many have I missed sitting here staring at this piece of paper? Were there eight at once, or one after the other? Were they blue and green, yellow and purple? Did they circle inside themselves like the star at the end of the Saturday morning cartoons, leaving me stuffed from my huge episodic meal.

And again, I am irritated...

Was this what the meteor shower wanted? Maybe its tired of living up to the expectations. Maybe it merely wanted to be met with a glance up and chance meeting. A ren dez vous. A greeting with a subtle smirk and slowly shaking finger, "You got me again, you bastard". To fill the time in-between with inexplicable joy and contagious laughter. To trade the guest star spot for the featured extra. To simply make an appearance and Houdini out.

Most likely, it intended me to wait. Stupid universe. Clearly, I have a smaller attention span than you. I have now left messages for friends in L.A., Chicago, and New York to check you out...I have contacted three major U.S. cities, How about a little kickback for the press, huh?

And so, I wait...

It has now been at least 6 minutes.

I am aware of how solitary I am here, waiting, alone, growing doubtf......

And then a glittering white scar stabs the black sky to death, and a not so silent gasp

escapes from my mouth. I am struck deaf and blind to the world beyond the meteor, resting peacefully in the beauty of its grip.

And there I sat, like a child who doesn't want to get out of the pool.

Me and the empty sky.

The empty sky and me.

Momentarily, not in confrontation.

Rapunzel

"OOzing puddles of purple passion, just for you."

Love always, Carmela

... have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

The moon is a toenail clipping tonight....whose is it?

The Breakables

My grandfather was a pharmacist. He owned his own pharmacy next to Hinshaws, a slightly upscale department store. This explains why while some use a bathroom cabinet, my mom owns a bucket of medicine that cannot not be held down by the confines of a couple shelves in a mirrored door. Everyday he sat behind the window separating pills of assorted colors, filling wide mouthed orange bottles, and running labels. He was a good man who loved his customers. My grandmother was in charge of the toys and extraneous items to fill the store, to make the prescription pickup a more joyful experience.

The back of the pharmacy was our playground. Among the plastic bottles and stacks of label stickers, my cousin and I would run wild, sticking the defunct labels from the trash onto our own fake perscriptions...filling them with Russel Stover jellybeans. Russell Stover candy was everywhere in the back of the pharmacy. There was something vintage about that candy that I liked, but resented at the same time. It lacked gimmick...a child's nightmare. It was candy for the elegant elderly. It foreshadowed a long party involving many older people telling you how old you are.

The best thing about the back of the dimly lit pharmacy was the shelf of broken items...titled, I believe by us, "The Breakables". It was the shelf of temporarily lonely items that took one for the team...became destroyed either by customers or in their travels from the delivery to the glass case. It was on this shelf that my grandmother lay the items with battlescars and wounds for us to play with. I suppose the title "The Breakables" lends itself to the possibility of the items being put back together, for it was clear that they were already broken. A title filled with hope.

Every time we visited, we raced immediately to the shelf. My cousin hand her hands in something...dissecting the broken typewriter or wrist watch with a cracked face, examining the pieces under her telescope. Struck by the porcelain deer missing an ear, the glass skunk without a tail, or white bear with Slurpee spilled on his face, we bartered and debated over who got which item, trading the paraplegic toucan for the deafened rabbit. Their handicaps were all equal in our eyes; it wasn't a matter of which was less broken, but which animal was in question.

I wonder what impact "The Breakables" shelf had on us. Is it possible we became lovers of character over quality? That we learned early to accept faulty items? Or do we ache for new things more now, after we playing with handicap toys for years? "The Breakables" shelf was relished and in it we replaced their broken appendages in our minds and mended their wounds in our imagination.

I love rainbow sprinkles

The Pearl

Flashback tonight...Hawaii trip...198something. My memories of that trip are limited and I believe most of them I have invented from the pictures. Vividly, amongst the fog, I remember visiting an oyster farm-or mock oyster farm, as it were. If it were real, there would be tourists diving in, right and left, trying their luck at nature's lottery ticket.

Though the setup shrieked of tourist trap, a child's mind could overlook the not so convincing underwater environment. The megaphoned guide wrapped his plastic jokes in the shiny ribbon that vacationing families could not resist.

I was fascinated. I couldn't keep my eyes away. I couldn't help but ache of jealousy as the hired diver, headed to the bottom, in search of the shiny opacity, gleaming on the tonguelike mollusk. I was not alone. The envy in the crowd was palpable.

People connect with the pearl. The pearl shares the fate of the princess and the pea. Covered in a shell cloaked to look like everyother oyster. The pearl lives incognito until it is long sought after. It is aching to be discovered, but made mute by it's creator.

It is the beauty of the corprolite.

It is wisdom's unit of measurement.

It requires work like the artichoke and the pomegranate-the first check point for the easily deterred.

I imagine the discovery of a pearl must equal that of an archaeologist sweeping the dust away in the last hour of desert sun, only to find the missing ankle bone of the T-Rex.

Or the tired sculptor's opening of the heavy kiln door, only to find the glazes made sweet love in the heated stone overnight and mixed beyond his wildest dreams.

Like the rainbow and the eclipse, the pearl is a happy accident.....a truly perfect collision of nature.

Man on the Moon

"Lunar dust smelled just like gunpowder."

-Edwin E. Aldrin, astronaut

Bees Making Waves

A couple of bees invaded the pool today, diving in for a taste of the blue liquid sweetness, a haven of blue pollen from the gods. But instead the expected euphoria was, in fact, deadly chlorinated water lacking the tiniest of flavor, crippling these curious bees. A bee's tar pit. A bee's quicksand. Stuck in the faux pollen-stuck to contemplate their last hour, with the cement poolside a century of swimming away.

Were these bees, in fact, curious? Were they the gutsy bees that were dared by the other drones, who sat watching with complacency from their petunia? Were they filled with fear and terror as they dove into the luscious and mysterious unknown blue? Were they pioneers? Were they the non-conformists?

Or, were they overcome with greediness, after emptying all the pollen from the largest of flowers-were they falsely boasting to the other bees of their frequent visits to the dangerous liquid? Caught in their own arrogance-did nature once again take redemption for their overconsuption and lies?

Maybe they were claustrophobic and tired of the confines of the Communist hive. Maybe they wanted more for themselves. Maybe they thought they would be a better queen, but lacked the propriety. Maybe they identified with the Amish girl who sat on her well groomed hill, and dreamed of being an obstetrician.

Whatever their character, they were somehow done in. Done in with their own fated duty...to serve and protect. The Queen-the Messiah-who they are forever indebted to, for giving them life. Generation after generation...maintaining order. Keeping them happily enslaved. She gives them life and keeps them from tasting it. She cannot afford unstructured chaos-and so she keeps a secret weapon. The weapon is the secret. The secret: the sting is self destruction. This is the method the elusive queen uses to keep her drones in order, for the bees with lust, aggression, sadness, and joy will inevitably commit an impassioned suicide.

It is the bee that gave lessons to the suicide bomber, the burning monk, the kamikaze pilot.

It must be that Karl Marx was a beekeeper, in constant interview with the queen, invading her privacy as she lay generation after generation.

But it is the bee in the pool who wanted to chat with mystery.

The Suffocating Cubicle

Nothing is so still as the cubicle. Nothing is so loud as the constant hum of the terminal...the continuous exhale of the monitor. Nothing is so suffocating as the office talk....cliche after cliche after cliche after cliche after cliche, until cliche is cliche.

Where I live

My dead lover

I have left my dead lover to rot...so that he would not kill me. I miss us...at times...I miss his presence in my solitude, but he was a costume that later became a habit. My new costume is wind and wings...