they are not pools of deep thought, but moments of pleasant lightness
instead. they are quiet hopes strengthening themselves among the
bustle and hustle of daily busies. they are your heart taking over
from your head, if only for a moment, telling you to relax for a
second, that things tend to work themselves out, sometimes better than
you can imagine.

i get stuck sometimes, in the crunch of everything needs to be done
yesterday. these times unstick me, when somehow, i don't need to make
sense of things, and to just be is enough.

ghost

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i woke and went outside to make sure the world hadnt ended.

ghost

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of course, i've also wanted to fly. there has been that dichotomy in
me, the desire to sink down and rise up at the same time. i remember
thinking i could do anything and yet, accomplishing nothing. it is an
almost overwhelming frustration. all that seems to be gone for the
time being, though. i want to be here, where i am, doing what i do.

the three laws of dynamics are, you can't win, you can't break even,
and you can't get out of the game. sounds like those would apply to
life as well. whatever happens, entropy and chaos will increase. but
then there's this little miracle we call life, and at least there, on
a local level, is a decrease in entropy, and and an increase of order.
in the big picture, i don't think i can break even. chaos increases in
the world at large, but in pockets, like my life, i think i can do
better than break even. i win, i think, just in being, just in sitting
here breathing. and maybe that's a glimpse of the bigger picture.

that's how i feel today. i win. despite "their" best efforts. one day
i will die, but not today, i think. today, i win. and being a thorn in
someone's side is really all the motivation i need.

ghost

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i don't know what your friday holds for you. i hope its full of magic.
i'll be the person ten feet away having a paradigm shifting aesthetic
experience just losing myself in the color of the sun through the
clouds.

i believe quality of life depends a lot on depth of focus.

ghost

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i am a poem writing itself.
unfinished, some days i go hanging
upon a half phrase, sometimes
without meaning for an hour.
i dream to be of epic things, teeming
with angels and devils and heroes,
but i do not know more than the
words written here.
i think it must be nice in the stories
outside my little window, but
i am satisfied merely to have begun,
and to know i have an ending
that gives me a reason to be.

ghost

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that was trust. the bird had trusted the branch would hold, but it did
not. as a result, the bird used what he had learned, his skill of
flight to avoid hitting the ground. new trust was born in that moment,
trust that he would not fall. and he didn't. that is the greater
trust.

such is faith, i think. when the branch breaks under you, look to your
wings, the wings all of us have.

today i'm doing something that feels a little like spreading mine
again. it's been so long.

ghost

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every life, i imagine, would span several genres. contemporary pop on
a first date. classical epics when solving some difficult situation.
heavy metal when we're revelling in some excess or another. perhaps a
jethro tull flute solo when we're laying in the bed in the wee hours
just thinking. i wonder when our favorite song would play, if ever.
what songs truly define who we are?

our songs are not alone either. they join in the tunes of others.
there's harmony when we're in agreement. it's a cacophony when we're
at odds. and sometimes we can hear some of our own tunes listening to
the music of others, in the way they laugh, the way they cry, the look
in their eyes when they wonder. it's been beneficial, at least for me,
to listen for the turns in melody in others that i've heard in myself,
and i hope that i've been able on occasion to kindle in others the
uplifting songs i've heard in my own soul sound.

in the end, i think a lot of us are singing the same song, just maybe
in a different key.

ghost

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it's better to find a purpose for what has happened, i think. this is
also fraught with the dangers of myopia, though. we snap up any
reasons which fit our wants and viewpoints. it's also little comfort
when your heart has been torn out and stomped if someone tells you it
is meant to be. because f*ck that. you know? perhaps the healthiest
(and hardest) thing to do is move on, and not dwell. if there is a
purpose, it has the habit of revealing itself at the oddest times, and
we are forced to see how small our picture plays in the grand
choreography of this life. forcing the picture never quite works out.

so, join me in my attempt to take my own advice. let go of the past.
it won't go anywhere. what good is it to count your bruises? it is in
us to persevere, and sometimes we don't know why. all we can do is
keep one eye out for the future that's always rushing toward us, and
the other to the sky should a sign ignite.

ghost

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it has caught up with me, and now it is all too much to handle with so
few resources. i hate to, but it's time to pull the trigger.

f*ck everything.

ghost

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ghost

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i am painting today. i have been for several weeks now. i will take
pics and post them at some point. for now, though, the process is a
personal one, and too mundane to speak of.

i feel calm today. the furious voices that drive me are resting.

what's that Duran Duran song? i don't cry for yesterday/ there's an
ordinary world/ somehow i have to find.

indeed.

i think that's all i've got today. no distress to propel the words.
just a slight current of ordinary air through the doorway of my mind.

ghost

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day by day. step by step. note by note. i do believe, one day, i'll
catch on to the tune.

ghost

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"it's because you're asian."-huggy bear
"i get that a lot."-the asian

"there will be no dream house for you."-boren
"sounds like both my marriages."-ghost
"jeez, tip."-t.r.
"i'm just saying, i've heard this story before."-ghost
"way to destroy the mood, dude."-t.f.

"tiny fridge isn't getting built if you're sitting there with your
head down, begging me to drop red paint in your ear."-ghost
"my arms and legs feel like they're filled with pudding."-boren

"i marked you absent. where have you been?"-ghost
"i had to pay the water bill."-a.g.
"d*mn good excuse. i'll let it slide"-ghost

"i'm carrying colby's baby for like two years now. i'm not getting any
bigger, but i feel a kick every now and then."-jeran
"that's kinda like when i eat mexican food."-ghost
"my butt burns when i eat mexican food."-jeran

"peppermints are the reason God created taste buds."-d.d.

"are you really making that big crappy piece of cheese?"-j.h.
"yes i am. are you really making that crappy wright brothers airplane?
what about that big moose head you started and abandoned sitting over
there taking up space? do we need to talk about that?-n.w.
"what about your donkey you had me rip the legs off of so tip wouldn't
make you finish it?"-j.h.
::pause::
"something you wanna confess, noah?"-ghost
"i really hate you, jacob."-n.w.

in perfectly quiet room: "a dude's balls are weird."-dani

"what is that?"-n.w.
"dr. pepper 10."-ghost
"those are gross."-g.t.
"they grow on you after a while. like a fungus."-ghost
"no, they taste like hooker spit."g.t.

ghost

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ghost

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and i want to beat my chest and declare with all my might. i want to
be unpoetic and graceless and impossible, rawboned and alive with the
thrum of stubborn, stupid strength, arrogant and cocksure and good,
despite a roughscuffed heart of gold that yearns for home. i want to
love whole and pure and hopeless. i want words that might catch in my
throat to flow warm and willing from knowing fingertips. i want to
face each day with a rogue's twistlipped lightning smile and a child's
wholehearted sunlit laugh. and i want you to look at me, and see me,
to really see me, to see eyes always, always burning fire under glass,
brighter by the weight of worlds on my shoulders. i want you to see my
dreams between my lashes, iridescent and blinking slow by dawn's first
light.

that's what i want. but...

"i don't know," i answer, looking away.

because i don't know how to put that into words.

ghost

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i am still fighting, still holding the line, but it feels, especially
lately, that i am slowly being pushed back. i don't give anything, but
an inch is taken here, a couple more there. the latest battle is being
waged on the financial front, and i am losing inch by inch, day by
day. my spartan existence is forced to even further barrenness, to the
point my life now reflects the vast emptiness of the west texas spaces
i grew up in.

sometimes i have good days. others, the weight is almost too much. i
imagine that no matter how well i do with my life, i am being built up
only to be torn down again. i recently told a beautiful young woman
that i could not be the "he" she is looking for. time, money, and
geography played the part of spoilers here, though in their defense,
they never lie. the entire episode made me consider the state of
things, the state of me. and it occurred to me that i really don't
have anything to offer a woman. sure, i am a true friend, a stalwart
protector, a loyal man full of love and desire, but i seem to belong
to the minority of those who work in fields they love despite the pay.
oh, i know there are those "out there" who live like i do, working
jobs, not because of money, but because of a deeper spiritual reward.
i know there are those who care as little for the ideas of 401ks and
403bs and retirement plans as i do, who believe that love and laughter
is all you really need. i hold nothing against those who believe
otherwise, who work strictly for the money. in fact, i admire them.
it would be so much easier to consider leaving this place, this job i
love so much if i thought that way.

sometimes i feel as if i am wasting my life when it comes right down
to the nails of it. but what else is there but to keep on? everyday i
try to start fresh and do my best to do what i am able, and to do what
is right. i will not let my enemy win. i will survive the
circumstances i have been given. i do not imagine others have an
easier time than i do. that is a fallacy of only being able to see
things through my own eyes. i keep on because i can do nothing else.
nothing else but see each day through.

i do not know what the future holds, but i can hope. that will hold me
for today, and that is all i need of it. tomorrow i will think of
tomorrow. and if it shall be that i am alone on tomorrow's road too,
so be it.

ghost

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"i'm beyond needing a hair stylist. i've ascended. or receded if i'm
being honest," i said.

"ascended works. it sounds like a superpower," kris replied.

which reminded me, one of my students has a recurring theme in his
drawings. he has made me a super villain in his pictorial narrative
known through out the land as The Bald. i'm a villain so evil that in
his last drawing depicting the ultimate showdown of good versus evil,
i am fighting the combined might of the good army led by satan, darth
vader, and hitler riding a pegasus. my super power? the sun glinting
off my shiny dome forms a death ray that destroys the army of good,
incinerates vader and the devil, and unhorses hitler.

these students do keep me laughing.

ghost

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i suppose "not thinking about anything other than the work" is a bit
of a lie. i'm sure i was thinking. the mind never truly shuts down,
you are never truly just reacting by instinct except when you're
fighting for your life. but, i couldn't tell you what i was thinking
of or just where my mind was wandering. i do remember vaguely
considering the words, "let go." at least that's what i was
considering when i stopped working.

let go, and what's left?

if everything is left, that's heaven.
if something is left, that's purgatory.
if nothing is left, that is hell.

sometimes i dream of these places. sometimes they are technicolor
cartoon dreams. "let go," makes me think of meister eckart from the
movie, jacob's ladder. interesting movie, in that he was in purgatory
the whole time. i've felt like that this world is actually my
purgatory from time to time. i cannot remember when i might have died
though. i mean, sure, there have been plenty of close calls, but,
"they've come to snuff the rooster, but he ain't gonna die."

grin.

ghost

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one of my friend's top pick for the category of tv shows was the
simpsons. forest gump and when harry met sally for movies. for music,
she chose john lennon's imagine and beethoven's ninth symphony. books
was an easier question for me as i am interested in story. she chose
kurt vonnegut's stuff. i chose glen cook. for food i'd have to say KFC
is in my top five. i do love those 11 secret herbs and spices.

i could not narrow most categories down. i figure if the situation
ever arises, i'd grab whatever was closest. i'd grab them and make the
best of those split second decisions. and the things left behind, i
suppose i'd try not to think of them.

and it hit me why she had such an easy time choosing. she has no
memory. she forgets things almost as soon as they happen. she will
remember with some reminding things we did as kids, but she just never
thinks of it otherwise. she reminds me a lot of my ex wife in that
regard, which is maybe why amy was able to just walk away. perhaps
that is why she believes, as she told me recently, that i was no help
to her with the kids or the upkeep of the house when we were married.

i remember everything. i remember small facial expressions and the
exact sound of laughter. that's probably why i could not choose a top
five in most categories. i carry memories around with me like they are
people i love. i mourn them when the dream that created them dies.

ghost

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