Friday, February 16, 2007

i know i'm not alone*

the camera pointed out the car window somewhere in gaza and captured the young girl's smile and reticent look her hand on the glass of the window rolled down just enough how deeply her eyes saw into my heart even though she was not looking at me nothing more than bits of electrons in the stream yet a vastness expanded between us and what filled the void was the simple question "is she still alive?"







*Michael Franti film "i know i'm not alone"

Thursday, February 15, 2007

A letter to my son

I walked my dogs every night of virtually every day that I lived in my parent's house. My father moved out and I still walked the dogs. I would come home late, having spent my evening drinking too much with friends or doing something inconsequential and inane, and I would walk my dogs. It was the world to them. I was their savior. I grew older, one of my dogs died, I eventually married and moved out. I received a call one day from my mother, saying that I needed to take our other dog to the vet and have him put down because he was too old and in pain from cancer. I remember how his body grew limp as I held him on the vet's exam table. I remember wondering if that really was the right thing to do. I remember feeling like I had deserted him. If you have dogs to walk, they need to be walked, even when it's not convenient.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Interview with an Alien Observer

You don’t look alien.
I know. That’s the beauty. I appear to fit in.

Why are you here?
Initially, it was kind of a vacation, but then my spacecraft was discovered by the Pakistanis and then one thing led to another and...

What did they do with your ship?
I think they sold it to North Korea.

What are you going to do?
Well, I’m certainly not going to try negotiating with the North Koreans…

What have you learned about humans?
Oh. That’s a tough one. Do you want me to be honest?

Yes.
First, you’re really good cooks. But you seem so willing to kill each other, it spoils the appetite. Second, when you dance to music you look really silly. At least the men do.

That’s it?
Of course not. I could go on about how you spend billions of dollars on armaments and those cute little space shuttles and sports teams and yet you let children die by the millions because they drink dirty water or starve to death. I could ask why supposedly intelligent beings use advertising as the primary means of deciding who will lead your countries, why you seem to prefer lies over truth as long as it keeps everyone happy, or how come children carry guns to school and murder one another. Get my drift?

Completely. But we have to break for commercial.

Invisible Man

He hated how her beauty was wasted on a cell phone. It couldn’t return her kiss or brush the hair from her forehead. Yet she cradled it in her hands with far more care than he would ever receive, and her lips were closer to it than they would ever be to his. But he could dream.

She sat outside on a folding chair, a flurry of activity moving about her as the crew prepared for another shot. Closing his eyes, he could follow the graceful line of her forehead down to her nose and onto her mouth. It was a pleasant image.

“Dan,” a voice shattered his daydream. The director was standing beside him. Dan replied like all invisible men reply.

“Hey.”

“I was thinking that it would be better to start with an extreme close up of the blinking light on the face panel rather than …”

Dan stopped listening, because he would agree with the director regardless of what he had to say, because it was an inconsequential matter in the grand scheme of things, and mostly because the woman on the cell phone was walking toward them. She was the set stylist, and Dan knew nothing about her except that she was beautiful and could care less if he existed. This was confirmed by the fact that as she approached, her eyes flashed in recognition at the director, ignoring Dan’s presence entirely.

Like all good directors, Jack immediately turned his attention to the beautiful woman, and she smiled. “Hi Gretchen,” he said as she passed. Dan watched the swish of her hips, and experienced a sense of emptiness. It was the feeling of being invisible.

Dan couldn’t pinpoint the precise moment that he became invisible, but it seemed to coincide with his second marriage, which coincided with his getting older, which coincided with his flesh tiring and another 20 pounds finding its way onto his frame. “Bubba” was his new nickname and he hated it. Not that he was fat, Dan would contend. Fat was big, walrus-y flesh that required buying XXX-large. That wasn’t Dan. He was still X-large.

Contrary to popular opinion, invisibility sucked. It didn’t let you slip quietly out of a boring meeting or eavesdrop on conversations. When entering a bar, you still paid a cover charge. And most disturbing, when Dan looked into the mirror, he saw the invisible man’s reflection. It was Bubba.

“…and move onto the hallway shot.”

Dan nodded in agreement. “Nice” he replied, and under his breath added “like her ass.”

“What?” Jack asked.

Being invisible didn’t mean being inaudible.

“Class. It’ll add class.”

Later that evening, after the martini shot had been applauded and a production assistant had dropped him off at his hotel, Dan stopped at the lobby bar for his own martini. Dinner was out of the question, not because he wasn’t hungry, but because he was invisible. Bubba would just have to go hungry.

Dan had never imagined that one day he would be sitting by himself in an elegant bar surrounded by beautiful women and feel so depressed. It was as if a cone of isolation had been lowered around him and everyone was dutifully avoiding contact. A generously endowed blonde looked his way, and for a moment Dan thought she might actually be looking at him, until a young stud slid past his shoulder and onto the seat next to her.

The ride up the elevator was uneventful, his key card worked after the second try, and the bed was turned down and ready. A nice little mint awaited him, which Bubba promptly devoured. He and Dan wrestled over the remote control, until Dan finally won and turned on the late show instead of the in-room movie Bubba wanted to watch, the title of which wouldn’t have appeared on the bill. After the news was over and he had taken a few manic laps through the channels, Dan ordered his wake-up call and fell asleep.

In his dreams, Dan was visible. He looked like he did when girls not only noticed him, but flirted with him and tried to pick him up. Of course, at the time he resisted their advances because he was in his first marriage and didn’t want to have sex with anyone but his wife, who didn’t want to have sex with anyone, especially the asshole who made her life so miserable. Of course, to keep up appearances for the kids, they slept in the same bed, along with her 20 or so post traumatic childhood ghosts. One of them would kick Dan whenever he got too close.

Even in his weirdest dreams, except the one where they were taking his children away from him, Dan was happier asleep than when he was awake. That night he was happy, because he was sitting in the makeup chair on set while the stylist was kissing his neck and stroking the back of his hand. He might have been the client, or an actor or maybe even the director. Of course, he woke up just as the stylist was unbuttoning her blouse in the motorhome.

On the ride to location early that morning, Dan re-read the letter he had recently received from his ex-wife. She would be moving with the kids to Michigan and there was nothing he could do about it, a fact his lawyer had confirmed. That didn’t make him happy. Looking out the window of the van at the city sliding by didn’t make him happy either, because once he arrived on set he would have to ignore the stylist in an attempt to appear happily married.

Then, once on set, the most unexpected thing happened. As he settled into the black folding chair near the video tap monitor, a cute production assistant actually noticed he was alive and struck up a conversation. Of course, his sudden visibility was quickly reversed when she mentioned her boyfriend’s interest in writing and wondered if Dan wouldn’t mind reading his script.

Dan replied like all invisible men reply.

“Sure.”

Thursday, February 01, 2007

We Sleep, and then, Tomorrow

The moon has moved above the slats in the blinds and all I see is darkness yet above this frame of window there we find the man of tides, the woman of allure, all I see is darkness and yet I believe there is more I put my head to pillow and without fail there is more

eAT URE peEEz AND Kuwez

i dotted my eyes today
and it did no good
eyes were still upon me
examining my every move
i crossed my Tees
and got dirty looks from the caddy
that's all the day could bring
no carrots
at the end of a stick
no sticks
to strike me with
just a slow meltdown of existence
just a feeling of
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