Role Call

Happy Father's Day Steve Bryant. Happy Father's Day Jim Swanson. 

I got the shakes real bad.

I won't lie, since deactivating my Facebook account Friday I've been experiencing a surprising degree of separation anxiety. I had not considered just how much I connected with others through the service. I suspect my experience is compounded by my break from grad school and the PTO season at work. Nonetheless, the identity and affirmation I've drawn from social media is revealing. Going cold turkey has been unexpectedly challenging. 

To ease the transition, I've chosen to read more. Oh, and blog more... 

Tell Me of Your Dawn (Advanced Writing Workshop Timed Freewrite)

Tell me of your dawn.

Mine is the most spectacular of processions. From the cold, hard horizon rises an endless array of dazzling songs of light. Whites and blues join the melody of yellows, oranges, and reds. The grandest lights bellow deep alternating hues. Others harmonize so brightly they become one glorious chorus. All while, ribbons of celestial clouds dance across the rich black stage—their soft gracious limbs extend out amongst the procession. It is a magnificent thing to behold.

Inevitably the parade becomes an escape. The oppressive lid ushers them below. Dark and featureless, it devours their notes and leaves only silent indifference. An icy, graveyard of stillness. The barren landscape lost. The very space between dies.

Share the parts of your night.

I can not recall it, but I sense these things were once different. Could warmth once have existed? Could this tomb of immovable landscape have flowed? Could it have thrived? Could something have eclipsed the glory of the dawn? I can not recall it.

I know I am losing myself with each heartless night—my song falls softer with each heartbreak. I wait. I long for your response. Once I knew you. I sense I love you. But now, I only know of you. And that is becoming not enough.

My body is unmoving. A lifetime has passed since it danced. Inside my limbs, the weakening call to move is met by comatose rebuttal. Muscle, tendon, and bone languish. Flesh plays the corpse. Only my eyes betray the life that beats still. At dawn, my eyes open wide. Often, tears choke but never rise to the surface. And at night, in that graveyard my eyes press closed.

That is when it searches me out. It haunts me.

How splendid are your halls? Describe the wonders that fill your palace.

The smallest spark persists within me. In my depths, it is cradled. I sense it was a gift from you. Such precious colors flicker from this faint star. Its warmth draws me closer. I follow deeper and deeper hearing its hushed song. Could it be like abundant waters that have receded into the depths? Not gone, but absent.

Tell me of your dawn.

That Guitar (Advanced Writing Workshop Timed Freewrite)

I won’t lie. I tell as I see them. But I don’t see nothing.

That isn't entirely true. I see ghosts. They drift and jump and float about my face the way mud and clay and peat feels under my feet. There are greens and blues and something red.

I see more than most. I see because I hear. Oh, and I feel. How I do feel! I feel their heat. I feel their whispers. I feel their waves and crashes. I feel their tears fall and hide in the rough floor. Tears that squeeze under splinters and along long, narrow cracks. I sometimes find them. I touch them on my lips. They taste warm and salty.

I like most when I feel that guitar. Except, that’s mostly at night. I don’t favor night. That’s when the big ghosts come. They fill my face. They perch in the corners and grow as the fire cools. They dance perverted around the lantern. I close my eyes, but I feel them. They keep trying to pry my eyes open. They run their fingers across my eyes. Poking. I don’t favor them. I just scrunch my face tight and listen. I listen for that guitar till I can feel it. Then I follow it. Sometimes it takes me too far, and I’m in the cold and damp out past our steps. Happens more than I care to say. But his words bubble up to save me. I feel him pulling me back to where I can lean down again. It always ends too soon. And worst, I can feel it coming. A step is missed, and soon his tapping gets soft. Then I’m carried away to bed.

That’s when I scrunch not just my face but my body too. The ghosts cover the door, and I can’t see nothing. Sometimes I forget fast. Other times I feel that guitar. Sometimes it whispers to me, and I try to whisper back, but I’m afraid of them big ghosts. But I always end up forgetting. Sooner or later. And then I remember. The big ghosts are gone. I’m thinking they forget too.

When I remember at first, I don’t see nothing. I can’t feel past my urge, and I fight it. But she helps me. She listens for me. I wish she’d stay close as she can be. I sometimes cry when I feel her warm go. Makes my inside heavy and stuck. But she talks to me. Oh her words. I wish I could find them on the rough floor and touch them on my lips. Sometimes she hums a song. But she never sings. It’s okay with me. I let her tune carry me out past our steps. Out there are white and yellow ghosts. They sway and flutter. Sometimes I creep to our steps. I let my feet down. Oh, I don’t get too far. I just want to feel that tune out in the open. That ends too. And I feel it coming. First, it’s the ghosts. They lose their warm. And then they go altogether.

That’s when I start to feel them most. Their heat. Their whispers. Waves and crashes. Blues and greens and something red. I wonder why they come and go. Why they don’t stay. But then I start feeling that guitar.

The Middle — How I found myself there and struggled in form to it. (Advanced Writing Workshop Timed Freewrite)

From where do I come? I have no answer. I go everywhere. I am a sojourner.

I have felt the heat from the desert boil me. I have felt the bite of the tundra freeze me. I have lost my way deep in the jungle. And I have howled across open plains.

I fall and crash. I rumble.

I meander.

And there are times when I collect myself. My dark belly moors these still moments and spans. It is there, at my very bottom, I am cold and motionless. My innards hang featureless and comatose.

Layer on layer covers my slumber.

Parts of me drift and drive, yet I return. I compress into myself and slumber.

Though, rarely can I be still. It is inevitable that I move. I do not resist the pull from beneath me and the flow from within me. I am alive when I dance! Swirling, tumbling, rolling, moving along.

Under the brilliant eye’s gaze, I dance. I arch my spine. My limbs weave. Joyful tears swell and fall through the air. Under his gaze all of my movements shimmer.

From mountain peaks I plunge. Steep gorges are my tracks, and widening valleys are my ways. The arching horizon will always be my destination. I lay out my palms upon the earth and stretch out my fingers. I press into the warm ground. I push against it. I feel it give and move along with my body.

In his absence, I dance. I bath in the cool blue cast and wander the blanketed night. My heart is quieter though my pace remains.

I am a sojourner.

My dancing releases me. I come to myself, and here I swell. I leap. My eyes open wide and I see more of myself than I ever have before. My mouth gapes. I am overwhelmed by something new and deep. Something powerful. Violent.

I explode. I throw my hands up, arms jutting into the air. My locks are a mist in motion. Again. Again. And again. I slide away and then surge forward. I explode! My dance is vitality. It is energy. Violence.

Lap after lap. I collect myself. Drunk.

What is this? Parts of me taken. What is this? I feel parts of me fouled.

My dance is interrupted.

I see them gathering to my side. One extends a touch, and I slide along her rough, dry hand. There is something to it … So I smile and continue my dance. I am drawn out. Again and again. Relentless, they cause me to stumble. But I continue to dance.

As I dance, their presence grows. They have now crowded my way. They have intersected the horizon. More touches. More and more touches. They go everywhere.

I am their captive. They continue to draw more of me away.

Now, I linger in their shadows and stumble along hard edges of their steel and concrete. They corral me amidst their trophies of grass and trees and sculptures. They force me to dance in cages beautiful, dreadful.

Here the brilliant eye’s gaze is stern and unwavering. I lie still under his gaze. I recoil amidst his fumes. And they draw more away.

Here in his absence, I wallow. My exhale is foul. And In the icy blue cast, my complexion is an oil slick.

They pour into me their bitterness and their mistakes. They demand me to carry it away. But the weight of it all, how can I dance?

Exhausted. I am languid.

Once more they gather to my side. Afraid to touch, they begin to cry. I see their tears, big drops of me. Now I know.

They are a part of me.

But my cooling kiss can no longer sustain. It has evaporated. In its place expands a greater thirst.