caveat emptor

Boy

A sufficiently old boy who is still sufficiently young, maybe nine or eleven, and has woken up just after sunup when the light is still coming in sideways so all the shadows are different and everything is a little golden, has no objection to yesterday's underwear or to the jeans and T-shirt rumpled on the floor at the foot of the bed. If you throw the pajamas on the bed it’s going to work out perfectly tonight when you need them again. Socks already properly utilized, however, are stiff and feel wrong. Even a boy will don clean socks if there are any, new, clean socks under old, dirty sneakers and then off to the day. There are seasons of gaming days, sitting for hours in front of the television honing reflexes and problem solving skills with deft fingers and thumbs that wield pretend massacre in passionless pursuit of some invented objective. Then there are seasons, like now, of outside play, late summer and spring with no jacket, otherwise with this year’s jacket, or maybe last year’s if it still fits. There are toys in the dirt, balls in the fields, thickets, ponds and creeks to explore, or, with good fortune, real woods, rivers and lakes. There are seasons with friends, maybe even a gang, other boys or, if a boy’s lucky, some girls. Then there are solitary seasons, just one other person or not even, just a boy and his survival gear alone in the fauna and flora. These are years for honing mechanical aptitudes, learning to control the large muscles and the fine, learning how humans interact in conflict and cooperation. Subtleties might still befuddle a boy of ten, flushing in anger or embarrassment, confused at the brush of another’s hand that tingles like most things haven’t before, the seeds of things that will grow to awful, wonderful fruition in more complicated times to come. Sometimes that howling longing, that disconnected wind of restless despair or desire might stir briefly in the heart of a boy this young, and he’ll feel the echo of it in the vast cavern inside his chest even though he won’t understand it. He’ll stop digging and look over the tops of the trees and wonder how far a person can go from home, what they’ll find if they do, whether they’ll ever come back. It’s fleeting, though, shaken off and washed away in the torrent of young questions and ideas, the maelstrom of learning and growing. Youth burns away fast, but not when you’re in it and every hour feels like a day, every day like a week. How can we wait until tomorrow? It’s so far away. Let’s do it now. Everything. Let’s do it before we have to shed these stiffening socks in the sleepy, darkling decline of today strewn across the carpet and up into the warm, soft, unmade bed.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.

Another Day is Done

Day is drawing to a sleepy close here at the coffee shop where I sit at this computer and work for hours every day, morning till night. My top and bottom eyelids are trying to snuggle and spoon, but I’m resisting them because they block my looky holes when they do that, and my other senses aren’t sharp enough to see the screen. I’m punctuating sentences and making a few last minute edits on a software specification document, the same one I’ve been working on for weeks. It’s a beast. I’m saving files and shutting windows. I’m packing up this morning’s goals carefully because, as it turns out, they’re still going to be tomorrow’s goals, so I cannot be too rough with them. I still need them. I’ve been using them for many days and they’re getting a little ragged around the edges, a little torn at the creases, a little soiled with coffee stains, grease and barbecue sauce. In a minute I’ll start disconnecting cords, shutting down peripherals and packing everything into the sixty pound bag of junk I carry around on my sore shoulder. One shoulder, my fingers, my eyes, my ears and my ass, these are the parts I use every day. Sometimes I use my talk hole, but I’ve been doing a lot of remote solitary work lately. When I go back to the office it’s going to take me a few days to remember how to look at people and listen to the word sounds they make. This is what I do lately. It’s work, you know. It pays the bills. (Actually, Susan pays the bills, but the job is where we get the money.) One day I’m going to change into a butterfly. People will come to my office and they’ll see a giant, empty cocoon and they’ll ask, “Where is Scott? I need him to sign this expense report,” but I’ll be gone. Not sure how I’ll get out of the building, though. I’ll have to wait for someone else to call the elevator and open the front door, I guess. Will anyone do it? I mean, a giant butterfly with a sixty pound laptop bag will probably scare them, right? I’ll just have to try and be cool and nonchalant. Most of them never look up from their smart phones anyway. That reminds me of how annoyed I was that SNL stole my idea about a car that sends you a text message when you’re about to crash into something. I wish those guys would leave me alone and quit stealing all my ideas. Have you noticed that they do that to me? I have. Aaaaaanypoop, I guess I’m going to pack up and go home. My iPod Shuffle, Señor Tinybop, is fully charged. I always charge him when I think about going back to the gym to get in shape. Who’s ever heard of a fat butterfly, after all?

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well.

Later. Love.

When Inspiration Comes

I am waiting, ostensibly, for the paint on the canvas to dry. Never mind that it dried long ago. In the meantime I am sitting, inviting inspiration to move me. The paint on the palette is not usable now that it has hardened like rubber and cracked, caked with a mat of dust that makes the colors indistinguishable, falling to the floor in little broken crumbles. The brush gripped between my weary fingers is stiff with desiccated cerulean blue, cobwebs hanging from it to the jar of mineral spirits skimmed over with dust and a single dead fly. I am staring at a place on the wall where I am certain something will happen soon despite all evidence to the contrary. I dare not move lest I discover that I have died, succumbed to years with no water, no food, a lack of basic human care. I might crumble with soft noise in a billow of dust at the feet of this filthy, neglected easel, toppling the canvas with its single, faded blue stroke - the beginnings of the sky, perhaps, or maybe the sea. Sometimes you have to wait for art to come to you and exhale life warmly into your moldering remains. You have to have faith that the universe has not forgotten you forever. After a long, dry season inspiration will return, falling like rain on yellowed fields, tracing through your matted hair over your forehead and into your eyes, then running down your cheeks like tears, whispering to you the ancient secrets of life: Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat for as long as you can.

Hello, friends. I hope you're well.

Later. Love.