Boo Years

Hate it..

hello neighbor

at once in a juvenile fit....I waved the welcome mat of Robert Pollard....too scared to knock, but youthfully afraid enough to scatter the woven relic to the gravel yard underneath....ready for seclusion.

Mrs. Smith....the other one.

I was lucky enough to be given Patti Smith's novel "Just Kids" by a fellow traveler while in Paris...at first I was hesitant to dive into the pages of the 70's rock and roll icon, I am not an avid follower of Patti's music, or her artwork, or any other artistic venture she absorbed...I love Morrissey's cover of "Redondo Beach" and to me, anyone that brings inspiration to Stephen Morrissey must be worth their weight in silken button ups.  Aboard a long train to Zurich from Paris, I finished the book I had been reading.  Emma Donahuges biopic of a young girl in 17th century London's dark decent into prostitution and madness. "Slammerkin" was a marvelously written book and drove me straight into the old world, being in London myself, I took pride in walking through the same areas mentioned in the book, still existing a few hundred years later....anyway, I generally frown on beginning a new book less that a couple days after finishing another.  Giving my brain the necessary time to finish analyzing the last project.  But, looking around my train cabin at my near associates....a very self absorbed Parisian teenager next to me, who seemed to almost die with frustration when she learned I'd be sharing her personal space.  Across from me, two women from Salsburg on holiday, returning from Paris.  Falling asleep and awaking suddenly, they snickered at the somber American, I shot them a glance of malcontent.  Next to me, four Parisian businessmen sharing a bottle of Chablet and playing a card game I could not understand.  Removing a bottle of wine stashed in my bag, I decided it was okay to start a new reading project.  As the last book I read, the forward offered an understanding of the ending.  A preview at who or why the subject had gotten there.  The offer was somber, bleak yet strict with the idea of loss.  Opening, "Just Kids" offered a picture of Patti Smith's childhood years.  Where she came from, who she was, and why she was.  I felt a similar connection, but grew distant when she described the siblings of her youth.  Similar in age, they marched along side by side, providing a strength against imaginary woes and the speed bumps of growing up.  It wasn't until Patti moved to New York that I began to immerse myself in her story.  At the age of 19, packed with nothing more than a plaid suitcase and thirty-two dollars found in a forgotten purse inside a phone booth.  A "package from god" she made her brief commute from New Jersey to NYC.  A familiar and understood venture, to blast off at a young age and seek the unknown.  As she battled hardships, new friends, and hunger, Patti began to find herself, even if that meant that she was "Lost".  Lost until Robert Maplethorpe came into her life like a star destined to burn out, fast and hard, full of life and love.  The love that spawned from a chance encounter between Patti and Robert is like something I cannot explain.  They fueled each other, in art and life, never leaving the other a pact was made between the two souls...a beautiful understanding of why the human needs another.......Smith's novel is a tribute, and it is as beautiful as the life it seems they led.  Sitting by a stream in a small town outside Zurich, I finished the last chapter, "Holding hands with God".  A collective image of how much a life can touch another and the importance of love and understanding between humans.......Its been years since I read a book that moved me as much as the words of Mrs. Smith's, Thank you.

Dear Patti

Wild leaves are falling
Falling to the ground
Every leaf a moment
A light upon the crown
That we'll all be wearing
In a time unbound
And wild leaves are falling
Falling to the ground

Every word that's spoken
Every word decreed
Every spell that's broken
Every golden deed
All the parts we're playing
Binding as the reed
And wild leaves are falling
Wild wild leaves

As the campfire's burning
As the fire ignites
All the moments turning
In the stormy bright
Well enough the churning
When enough believe
The coming and the going
Wild wild leaves
Wild wild leaves
Wild wild leaves

Constant Repeat

Beards-alike

An Excerpt

I awoke to my alarm winking at me, loudly, telling me not to fuck about. Usually, I would turn it off and subconsciously roll over, back to slumber.  But today was different.  I pushed the snooze, and before I opened my eyes, grabbed ahold of the dream that had just been interrupted, diving back into the void...I was running alongside of a rushing river, the weather was a mix of darkness and daylight, a purgatory of restless seasons.  Snow was falling in heavy flake amidst a light mist of tropical rain, the sun shining loudly through tightly packed storm clouds, somehow finding breaks in the hovering collections of dark and angry precipitation....Booming claps of thunder erupted every few seconds, causing a quake of shivers that ran like an electric pulse through my body...as I ran next to the river,  the rapids beat loudly against the rocks and the water raised and lowered in a rhythmic heartbeat.  The water rushed at a speed I could not understand, as if in escape of a predator ready to drink up the life of the ferocious tide.  On the opposite bank a clouded figure ran alongside me.  Squinting my eyes I could not make out the figure.  I shouted but my voice was lost and taken downstream with the merciless water between us.  The image of the runner would change as I ran exasperated after, shifting from a near familiar into the next, still intangible to my straining eyes...Begging with the unknown, I pleaded, I need you, please stop.  Legs pumping as hard I could, muscles aching, yet falling behind, further and further behind.  Suddenly the sun drew away and the winter took over the sky.  The air turned frigid, as the wind blew harsh gusts into my soul.  The heavy flakes fell harder and faster, and snow began to pile at my feet.  I trudged on, insistent that I find the shrouded dark figure ahead of me.  The water raging next to me began to grow thick and started to slow and crack, forming from a wild stream into a vast frozen lake before me.  Losing my step and slipping, I fell onto the frosted icy surface.  Staring deep into the ice beneath me, I could see a world frozen in time.  An entire society of lost dreams and lives locked in a solid tomb of ice forever.  Scrambling, I peeled my warm face from the bitter surface like tape to skin.  Around me was only black, a vague reference of where the light left and the ice continued.  I was lost in darkness and suddenly I noticed that everything was silent, only the sound of my chest moving up and down as thick breath hung onto the frigid air.  Trying to call out, again I could make no sound.  My voice stolen frozen like the world I'd seen below the ice.  Far away across the abyss of darkness and cold, a thin line of light began to glow.  As if two doors were opening the light grew and spilled out upon the glittering surface, shining with intensity and warmth.  Inside the light my runner stood, the familiar dark shape outlined against the vibrant light.  I still could not place this figure, but it seemed womanly, my savior, my mother maybe, or a lost love.  She beckoned to me, hands outreaching, welcoming me from the forgotten frozen world.  I tried to glide along the ice....first awkwardly and slow, then faster and faster, sprinting like an Olympic athlete from foot to foot.  So eager to reach my goal, to escape this purgatory of cruel cold, of forgotteness, into the arms waiting for me.  Feeling the cold air against my cheeks, waiting, watching the light in front of me to grow larger, closer.....but it did not, reaching as I tried to move forward towards the light, it only grew farther and fainter away...eventually turning to only a pinpoint resting on the horizon of my cold prison.  I could barely make out the figure, still ushering me in, offering solace, offering love.  Tears began to gather in my eyes and fall, as they hit they hit the ice freezing my feet to the surface.  I tried to break my feet away, but could not, growing weak as my body turned colder and colder.  I begged and pleaded with my surroundings, Let me go, Let me live,  Don't forget about me...But she would not listen.  The cold overtook me as I collapsed onto the frigid floor.  My body hit the ice and streams of cold air erupted like Gulliver's captures and adhered me to the surface.  I began to sink beneath the ice, fighting, screaming, in a silent voice unheard to the world.  As I was overtaken by darkness, frozen in time, I saw the light of my future dissipating.  The tears in my eyes froze as they rolled down my cheeks, tears of loss and pain.  I closed my eyes as the darkness swallowed the light, the figure of the women was lost forever.....Forgotten.  I woke up with a gasp, unfamiliar surroundings.  A strange bed, bad artwork on the walls, and a musty smell I couldn't recognize.  Fear gripped me.  Where was I, who was I.  I was sweating, the bed was soaked with my nightmare and my fear.  Breathe, in and out, focus....I rolled over and opened a drawer of the nightstand next to the bed.  A phonebook.  I was in London, suddenly everything began to come back.