Jill Writes

Rooftop West 13th Street

2010-02-02T20:05:00.001-05:00

Rooftop West 13th Street
Originally uploaded by JillWrites.com

Shot from a few weeks ago. Hi, everybody!

Working on a new background for my Twitter. Had some inspiration on reformatting the blog today. Things are looking up.

This photo is shot from 8 floors up.

;)

Underexposure

2010-01-31T21:38:00.000-05:00

Underexposure
Originally uploaded by JillWrites.com

Alternative shot for 365 Days: Saturday, January 23, 2010.

If you're still reading here, I'll be relaunching the blog later this year. I've returned to doing 365 Days on Flickr, so you can find me there until I'm blogging more often. You can also find me on Twitter (JillWrites).

Looking forward to hearing from you all again!

A photo from my "out the bus window" collection

2010-01-25T00:05:00.001-05:00

Originally uploaded by JillWrites.com

On Bay Street after the Staten Island Creative Hub

2010-01-19T16:02:00.002-05:00

On Bay Street after the Staten Island Creative Hub
Originally uploaded by JillWrites.com

I'm in the midst of putting together something else under a tight deadline, but I'd just like to share my experience of the Staten Island Creative Hub last night.

Once upon a time last year, I attended a reading at The Cup (formerly The Muddy Cup) where I met the writers who had been papering various venues with flyers about The Staten Island Writers' Collective. After hearing them read, I joined them at the SIWC. In 2010, they've morphed the SIWC into The Staten Island Creative Hub. I joined them in the back room of Cargo Cafe last night where I had a great time working in the easy improvisational atmosphere they've set up. I had such a great time working on the exercises at hand during the evening that I unfortunately didn't take any photos while it was happening. Exercises included:

~ A writing exercise on "your deepest desire" during the Outer Body Poetry segment.
~ The Recursive Blindfolded Musicians Experiment, in which all the participants (you guessed it) wear blindfolds and jam together. I was feeling especially into percussion yesterday. The second time around, I actually fell into a near-zen trance.
~ The Sound & Video segment. First we chose instruments and provided a score to a digital animation. They we took turns improvising music, dialogue and sound effects to soundless video clips. Clips included:

*The Three Stooges open a chest of drawers. I improvised a score on the keyboard while some of the other participants improvised dialogue. At some point, I started turning out the final scene from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". No, I didn't order any mashed potatoes to build Devil's Tower.
*Then I participated in a 3-man scene from the film "Forbidden Planet". Somehow, I got named "3". This will now precipitate all of you having to address me as "3" from now on. My scene-mates and I were given the task of playing to the situation of receiving radio waves from the 1980's. This gave me great opportunity to sing "Gloria" and "Material Girl" while improvising sound effects aboard a spaceship, among other absolutely ludicrous things that popped out of me.
*And finally, I played one of the Stooges in a haunted mansion--only our task was "to find a television so that we could watch the movie 'Speed'". Additionally, I was knocked about by a knight in shining armor while searching for Dennis Hopper.

Thanks to Eric, Paul & Steve who led the experiments and to all the other participants. I'll be back!

Jill's appreciated abbreviated attempt at a fairy tale

2010-01-19T14:54:00.001-05:00

Grey Goose & Pineapple Served by a Bartender Named Prince
Originally uploaded by JillWrites.com

"Grey Goose & Pineapple Served by a Bartender Named Prince"

Usually upon a time, I had only one drink Saturday night. It was a Grey Goose & Pineapple served by a bartender named Prince.

My cousin asked: Is that really your name?
He answered: Yes. Unfortunately.

And that's pretty much what the conversation between all princesses and princes sound like. Unfortunate for both men and women.

And they lived to see another day.

The end of this post.

Hello, blogosphere! How goes it?

Maybe I'll blog a little before my blog gets redesigned. Since that seems to be on the B-list for some reason.

12 Seconding, with Stills

2009-04-21T17:43:00.001-04:00

[iPhone] 12 Seconding, with stills on 12seconds.tv

Some actor I just happen to be friends with for the past 16 years or so...

2009-04-15T10:05:00.010-04:00

For your previewing pleasure... the trailer to Purgatory Comics.

Featuring Tim Kelly:
actor
co-founder of our theater company, Lifeblood Theater Company
originator of one of the lead roles in my first full-length play, Reference Material [3am Pie]
fierce competitor at Tetris on various consoles
sharer of much pie
all-around interesting dude who, at this point, I know just about half my life.

Here's the homepage of Purgatory Comics, the winner of two Accolade Film Festival Awards for Feature Film and for Casting. And they're also going to be headlining the Lancaster, PA Film Festival on May 2nd. You can also find them on Facebook.

Rabid Canadiens Fan That I Beat At Darts Seven Years Ago

2009-03-18T16:31:00.002-04:00

For some reason, I feel compelled to post the French version; song's also available in English on his YouTube.

Quick story: 2002, and my friend Tim and I come across a postcard for a play called Killing Jar-Jar: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Just Wait In Line For Star Wars in Midtown Comics. We go see it and introduce ourselves to the co-writers / actors. Both of whom are seen in here. And now JillWrites posts French hip-hop hockey anthem.

Breakfast, anyone?

2009-03-10T10:24:00.003-04:00

Take a look at "Porncakes" on the Atom Films Showdown. Vote!

Hey, I'm curating this three part project...

2009-02-28T10:42:00.006-05:00

The theme is:

"They'll figure it out. Eventually. They must," writes OpenBookJen on Twitter.

The idea of the show is that it will bring together an array of different artwork all inspired by or related to this quote: "They'll figure it out. Eventually. They must." Inspiration can also come from the rest of the sentence, bringing in the context of where the quote was found. (Twitter.) Or the idea of a screen names, etc. Some people might be more interested in the quote; some people might be more interested in making some kind of statement about cyberspace; some people might see the two ideas as connected. The art can be serious, humorous, sinister, sweet, ambiguous, or combinations thereof. I'm eager to juxtapose all the varied interpretations.

The concept for the overall project is this: each piece of work is valid and artistic on its own. But furthermore, once hung/published/performed as a collection, the art can together elicit the same sensation as the experiences that are familiar to all of us in the digital age. (Like your iPod on shuffle, or the series of text messages you might receive on any given night. Or reading all your friends' status messages in succession on IM or Facebook. Or, as in the quote I used, Twitter.)

Artists of any discipline inspired by this theme (all of it, or part of it, takeoffs, tangents, etc.) are welcome to email me at jill@jilljichetti.com or leave a comment. I'm looking for visual art, writing, music, dance, theater, performance art, puppetry, video...

The project has three elements: an exhibition, an assembling magazine, and an evening of multi-disciplinary collaborative performances on May 2nd. It's at the Everything Goes Book Cafe and Neighborhood Stage.

If you don't currently have any work that pertains to this theme but you'll be creating some soon, let me know. Feel free to contact me with any ideas or musings that arise. Dialogue with all of you will inform my contribution to the zine, my conceptualization of the visual display, and the format of the evening. The cross-fertilization that occurs in cyberspace is part of the process as well as (potentially) the content of each element of the project.

I'm interested in collaborators here in Staten Island, from all over New York and the surrounding areas, and from all over cyberspace if work can be transmitted or transported here.

Many thanks to OpenBookJen for giving me permission to quote her.

Reflections of High Rock Photography Exhibition and Talk

2009-02-28T09:57:00.008-05:00

While I'm in the middle of conceptualizing the new site, I should probably tell you about some upcoming projects.

March 21-29, 2009, there will be an exhibit of some of my nature photography at the Greenbelt Nature Center. The exhibition features shots of High Rock Park that I took in 2008, including the one above.

In addition to the exhibition, on March 29th at 3pm, I'll be giving a talk called "The Nature of Photography". (It's something of an aesthetics lecture plus photography adventure anecdotes.)

****

More to come. Have a great weekend.

Hello friends!

2009-02-18T17:52:00.003-05:00

Jill's webspaces under construction!

raven.

2007-09-11T22:29:00.000-04:00

I picked up a half gallon of butter pecan ice cream at the supermarket this weekend. Didn't think much of it. Just a flavor I hadn't tried in a while, taken home. Taken home to wait. I didn't even know if I'd even get a spoonful--I've been eating a reasonably clean diet in recent weeks: whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, seafood. Limited dairy. No red meat or even poultry.

Suddenly I am ravenous.

*****

Standard ingredients in butter pecan ice cream:
cream
butter
brown sugar
pecans
vanilla

Those who make it as a custard will use eggs as well.

*****

I didn't sleep well last night, the culprit being a snuck-in coffee. Even when I'm not eating a clean diet, caffeine destroys my sleep. After weeks devoid, an iced Starbucks transforms the dark hours into delirium--me, mostly conscious yet only vaguely aware; sleep and awake: vicious, violent intertwining, coupling, tossing, wrestling, no one on top of the other for any notable duration.

Lavender seeps through the shades, slight, a drip, a light, slowly, slowly, herald of the hour so familiar this past year: four o'clock to five. When the drip is a pour and the awake finds a hand at its throat, sleep slides in.

*****

A thicker ice cream, a hard and custard-based, nearly begs less a lick and more a firm, persistent sucking. One might think it decidedly masculine, in that preference, were it not sometimes so rich as to engage the teeth.

The beauty of butter pecan, however and of course, is the concurrence of the savory and the sweet.

dispatch to a distant muse from my freakish subconscious

2007-07-05T21:55:00.001-04:00

I dream that my teeth are falling out, this terror the sole remaining stress of a traumatic spring. I awake, check my mouth (nothing missing), stare at the ceiling fan. Two dentists and a full set of X-rays name the nightmares for trauma and nothing more--yet when they come, they are real. Realer than many things I've felt in my waking life.

I go to the internet where I always have company, announce my sleeplessness to the gmail-o-sphere, check my mail, click here and there, and calm my breathing. I am reminded of you, of nightmare-speak, of facing the terror of a lucid dream. Soon I am ready to brave the bed. By now you are certainly awake.

Sometime between awake and asleep, you tell me I shouldn't be afraid. This works, I think, because I sleep. And perhaps it is closer to the borderline of dream, because in the dreamscape you send me a package--a message, a missive, a video. When I realize it is from you, I think maybe it will be you, but it is not--it is footage of other things. I wonder its relevance, this footage of things that are not you and that have no discernible connection to me, and then I realize: it's a project of yours. You are sending me something... from something you are working on... the details, the whats and wheres irrelevant, even the fact that it manifests as video in the dream... just the idea that it's something... something you are proud of.

"I did this thing and I am proud of it," the excerpts seem to say. "And I need someone to be proud of it with me."

And I just want to say that I am. Whatever it is, I'm proud of you.

And thanks for helping me sleep again.

the quality of light

2007-04-29T22:56:00.001-04:00

I love writing in a way I love few beings and entities of this world, with my eyes half-closed and the scent of dream still on my skin. But sometimes with work half-done and a soft embracing image in my mind, sleep creeps in.

Tonight I cannot finish what I am writing. I can't show you the snowy world glistening inside of me, but I can tell you that it is there. And in it, the light through the window shines so pure, heaven is illuminated under the skin of a perfectly imperfect mortal.

I should say, though, that this is the world I see every day. I just lose patience counting the minutes until I can share it.

Angels' Dares: Interlude

2007-04-25T08:51:00.001-04:00

This is a slight alteration of my original structural plan for this series, but the narrative opportunity was too tempting to ignore. I got the idea for this post while walking on the beach on Saturday and wrote most of it on the bus Monday afternoon. I had intended to finish and post it yesterday. Alas.

Gray upon gray, textures and layers of clouds render this colorless world majestic. I seek upon the concrete below; the sensation of weightlessness lets me believe I fly among them. A glance here--charcoal through a fence; a look down--stone, cement and grime. Up I search again--a shift of nimbus; retreat but not surrender. The sky is a swirling cauldron of the formidable.

And then the boy. Hugging his knees, huddled on the floor, nestled by the fence. Scraped knees, scratched elbows, blood. He wipes a wet cheek with his forearm, dirt-smear on his angel skin. Perhaps he is ten years old. A steady voice and a traitorous tear--absorbed into the cotton of his t-shirt with a quickly raised shoulder. His watery water-eyes never stray from mine.

"What took you so long?"

And then I'm on the ground beside him--but the ground's not the ground, it's sand, packed and damp--my hands to his face, thumbs to his cheekbones, sloshing the tears--and I worry maybe they're cold, but no, he is warm, the tears are warm, it is the rain that is cold, the rain that has come, the rain that falls from the textures of clouds--now lavender, now amethyst, now aubergine.

And behind us, not a fence, but a field of open, a far horizon--dotted with towers, strung with wires, defiant in the coming storm. At our face, no longer urban bleak, but ocean, foam, tide. Beating, battering salt. Far thunder when his eyes glisten, lightning when the sobs begin.

I pull him close and twine my arms around him; lay his head upon my lap and let him heave. Lightning stripes the sky around us. I shield him from the slaps of rain.

Ocean, electricity, ocean, electricity. Ever closer both. Soaking, I hold him closer. Determined, I stroke his hair and imagine blue. Blue blue blue blue blue.

Cobalt, cerulean, aquamarine, azure. Indigo, beryl, sapphire, blue.
Blue blue blue blue blue.

Quiet. Quiet. A lullaby of low tide. He breathes. We breathe.

He stirs, he shifts, he turns his face toward mine. He opens his eyes, and I see it: the vast, the blue, the open. All around is blue. Horizon, sea, industrial landscape--nothing disturbs the sky.

"You made the lightning," I whisper.
Quiet assurance, this boy has. He smiles and breathes "I know."

"You make lightning," I say.
"That's okay," he tells me. "You color the sky."

Angels' Dares: Volume 1 (reposted with the four sections consolidated)

2007-04-13T22:42:00.001-04:00

“Take me where you’re going,” he commands. “I want to go there, too.” I’m not really headed anywhere, but I’ll make something up for him. He’s the kind of guy for whom I don’t mind fictionalizing.

I’d been hiking through the rain, and I’m dripping on the floor now. Just inside the door and I need to lose a layer. He nods at me discreetly as the party blurs around him. I had told him not to cut his hair.

Halo snipped, he’s incandescent. And the fluttering in the mirror isn’t wings at all, nor robes of whisper-woven cloud. It’s the undulation of man-made fabric, women surrounding him, spinning their skirts ever so slightly to draw his attention, caressing their own necks in absentminded longing for his gaze, pretty pouty lips praying for the benediction of his eyes upon them. Listen closely; that’s the sound of panties falling.

Men like him are always surrounded by women. Like him? As in, men drawn to me and I to them. We fly to each other when flying means falling, and falling to flesh means approaching eden. And I’m not sure exactly what I meant by that except that taking him anywhere would result in lost clothes.

Always, they excuse themselves from their congregations to address me. They prefer not to be overheard when they breathe challenges into my ear, life-sparks into clay. A sculpture this one could mold with sure fingers should he synch their strokes devilishly with the flick of his tongue.

"To a museum. I am going to a museum."

"Are you coming?"

*****

Autumn night, and the colors of this world are deeper. And our world, if you recall, was already more saturated, dripping cobalt and crimson and chocolate like the rain off my body when I slipped into that party. I found you, as expected: a wicked half-smile, bottle of beer, as many women as your free hand allowed you to count. One finger for each of them. How is it that you manage to do that?

No matter. That door's closed behind us, the party's noise receding. I am hiking through the rain again, but this time it's with you. I speed up. I shall not fall into your orbit.

I'm in the middle of the street and by the driver's door before you've time to reach out a hand, as if standing out of arm's reach means staying out of harm's way. We're a car's distance apart and still I see the horizon of your lips.

*****

Each door slams. Sheltered, I experience the rain as rhythm, and I know he does, too. Sound, for each of us, is sex, and that would make this situation very bad. Or good. You know, depending. I stare at the windshield as if seeking divinity in the ever-shifting patterns of the raindrops.

"Which museum are we going to, exactly?"

He is as in love with subtext as I am, and this I love about him. He lives beneath the blatant, where no one expects to find him, where I must seek him out. That pretty people never live where they can't be seen is a lie. I smile, liking that he faces down fabrication with faux belief, leaving me two choices: lie more, or lie down. I submit to the obvious.

And then skip right over it.

"You didn't care where. You were coming anyway."

Now I will look at him because now it is he who must choose, and there is nothing more alluring than a man caught mid-thought. I watch as the challenge courses through him: brow-raise, blink, half-smile, lip-nibble, the glimmer of teeth, the tip of his tongue as he wets his lips as if about to speak. I say "as if" because he wants me to think he's about to speak. Mostly, he wants me to wait longer. I speak instead.

"You don't have to answer. I like making it easy for you."

A full smile now, as men are wont to show when they get what they want without having to work for it, and the hint of a laugh as he tosses out the question idly, "And why would you want to do that?"

The answer has hovered about our every interaction to this moment, and stretches forward into every second we will ever share: he desires most what other men cannot have. This is know, and this I give him.

"Because you know I make it difficult for everybody else."

*****

Overexposure--bright, blinding. He smiles with lightning; his hand flies just as fast.

Reflex—my eyes snap shut. In the instant of my darkness, four fingers inside my right thigh, a thumb above my knee, warmth--shooting warmth--and the first breath of a question. One sound and I know I will not admit light until he is done.

“What…” It is a whisper.
“…Else…” A low rumble.
“…Do I know?” Distant thunder.

I shouldn’t have told him what words breathed in blackness could do to me. And his voice… mingling with the rain… Some people, you tell things, not caring that you’re surrendering keys and incantations, ammunition and amulets. The bright wisely, carefully, shrewdly store each, until they know it’s time; the blinding possess timing so precise, doors acquiesce open the moment those talismans slip into their hands.

I graze my teeth over my lips—bottom over top, top over bottom—slowly, so slowly. A sensation of my own to focus on. Regulate my breathing before I open my eyes. But he knows. His thumb presses into my leg, subtly more than before.

I open my eyes anyway, turn my head. His gaze is steady, relaxed. Practiced. I am not fooled.

“Always more than you let on.”

I possess as many amulets as he; I conjure just as timely. I can know simultaneously the depth of his irises and the location of my own thighs. I draw my legs together, savor the heat of four fingers between them. Relish the barely perceptible raise of his brows, the dilation of pupils lit only by the street lamp stretching heavenward despite the downfall of the rain.

“But...” I continue.
“…You…” I float my hand above his forearm.
“…Always…” Smooth it over the soft cotton of his jacket.
“… Need…” Soaking warmth into my fingers, sliding down.
“…To...” Heated fingertips meet his skin and skid.
“…Hear…” I graze my nails instead.
“…It...” Over the back of his hand. I drag them, dig them.
“…Spoken...” Deeper.

A slow, tight, full squeeze of my thigh.

Again, lightning.
Reflex.
Eyes snap shut.
Darkness.

But no thunder.
No rain.
Silence.

Warmth.
Sunlight on my eyelids.
Open them.

No car.
No street lamp.
No New York City.

Day.

Day illuminating his eyes.

And a swath of summer sky I've seen before.

Angels' Dares: Volume 2 (reposted with the four sections consolidated)

2007-04-13T22:31:00.001-04:00

The days of our years are three score years and ten.
-Psalm 90:10

Midway life’s journey I was made aware
That I had strayed into a dark forest,
And the right path appeared not anywhere.
Ah, tongue cannot describe how it oppressed,
This wood, so harsh, dismal and wild, that fear
At thought of it strikes now in my breast.
-Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Canto I: 1-6

*****

I knew they would match. Not just sweeping firmament, but dabs of ochre like Tuscan morning as it glints off the marble of the bell tower. His eyes, like my words, born here, just outside the shadow of il campanile, a beckoning to the four quarters of Florence.

In Via di Campanile, I am grounded. In this light, no one can tell me I’m not where I think I am. No one can tell me the bell tower isn’t me.

Sono il campanile.

I rise, I summon, I point to the stars.

As does he.

But this he does not remember; this just now he cannot see. That which illuminates him in my sight blinds the very eyes that beckon me. They call me forward. I raise one silver-ringed forefinger.

I point to him.

“Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in exile,” I begin, words for him alone.

“When he left Florence, work on this cathedral was barely underway.”

Finally, he will look up.

“I studied here for weeks. Do you know what first I remember?”

He will not speak. He need not speak.

“Each book of the Commedia ends with 'stars'.”

He need not speak when I am here. Sono il campanile.

Inwards, I call him closer; upwards, I point the way.

"Stelle."

My hand to his face, four fingertips, a constellation: sweet skin in front of the ear, vulnerability where jaw tethers to skull, fleshy cavern beneath bone; pulse-point. Paths of my palm a cradle, I tilt his eyes to face the blue. As my lips approach his open ear, he becomes my in-between.

“There, always,” I remind him. “Le stelle.”

Against soft flesh and solid bone, I hold my hand assured.

“Sempre le stelle. Even when you cannot see them.”

I need not grasp tighter to tell him he shall not look down. Instead I focus on the sensation of my forefinger against his cheek, two millimeters of silver the only barrier from full contact. My skin needs no such completion to know his waits on the other side. My hand, I think, would slide down further… and further still… if my inverse gravity were not so formidable.

Do I want it to...?

When it is time.

Not in this instant.

Not more than I want to hold him steady as he imagines the stars.

*****

My hand to his cheek, our eyes to the sky, we remain silent in the Tuscan sun. Silent, but not quiet. Never are we quiet, most especially when we lack words.

He is weary of mortality. I feel it in the never-ceasing rhythm of his thoughts. He grows tired of the idea of it--the toll of so much psychic energy spent, for what? Youth thrashes upon unconquerable battlefields; age recognizes wisdom in roots. He sees this now. Desiring roots, still he struggles silently--something astray, some part of him sensing disjunction, sounding panic in violent choppy waves that rush and batter my shore. On the outside, we are placid.

In this place, I do not wonder why he will not speak. I only know that he needs a guide. Here in her city, I can be Beatrice. Yet also am I Virgil. Exhausted with the weight of his own survival, solely responsible far too long, he wishes his plight recognized with indicators implicit, even silent. First blinded in the sun, now muted in the shadow, he hopes but dares not believe. I merely continue receiving the semaphores. Someday he will see how he sent them. Or acknowledge, for already I believe he sees.

Once, I feared him--not his strengths, but the hollow of his searching, his potential for resignation, his aptitude for despair. Is climbing worth effort when irony promises further to fall? Yet where others see mere meltable snow atop summits, I see an infinitude of sparkling joy--resplendent even in scattered impurity. And him... he sees the light dance, too. Siblings in pain, lovers in optimism: I feared him only as I feared myself.

And so...

Speaking—or not speaking—of the pinpricks of mundanity: what is that, compared to company in the vast home of spirit, next to omnipresence in the heart? Words become superfluous. Pressured, disappointed, insecure, we squabble, constrained as mortals are. But here we are ourselves. Here we are angels.

Subtle pressure from my fingers nudges his face down, brings his gaze to mine. With my open hand, I reach for his, slide my fingers down his waiting palm. Skin on skin, ever more contact, only now will I flutter the fingers off his face. Our hands entwined, I let a fingertip find the flesh that separates his thumb from four fingers, and rub and knead and soothe. I am here.

First I saw for him and now I speak. Now is the time of his rebirth. Though I'll not say it aloud. Angels speak epics in the imperceptible pulsations of distant stars.

*****

This moment is only just being written, as the letters fill the screen. I know where the story goes; I know the ending--it is beautiful. I want to take you there. But I don't know what happens now.

I haven't known the now for so long, I can hardly remember a time when I did. Or thought I did. There's a difference sometimes, but you don't see it until you accept that other characters turn pages, too. You think you are narrating your own life, but that is only a partial truth. Your life is being re-written all the time. I typed rewritten; I wanted co-written; I mean both. Lives are being co-written all the time.

You give someone love--you are bestowing editorial power. You receive love--it is the authority to revise. The cruelest revisions happen before you even know what page you're on. The crackle of paper, a breeze, you open your eyes to the brilliant naked.

Down you look; you are unwrapped. What will become of your stripped and weaponless heart?

*****

Outside, I was secure in the silence. Inside, I am afeared of the emptiness. How in the stillness it may engulf him, and I--pews ahead--may be pages behind. I have been before. Would he not even cry out if the slippery marble betrayed his footsteps? Would I recognize his voice in danger? Would I hear wrong?

This cathedral, mine; this city, my home. Here I was to guide. And I do, I am. I stride the aisle toward the dome, peer through dimness toward sunrays dripping from a heaven my earthbound perspective does not permit me to see. I can make it; I can navigate. I want to navigate. But I weaken.

Is he there? Is he behind me? He can survive the stillness, as I am in his sight. He proves I exist each time he lifts his lids from a blink. Me, I have to close my eyes and raise my heart to the sky just to see him before me.

Those visions he knows I have, I protect, I believe. But with the luxury of sight--sight I led him to, his hand within mine, smaller, when sight the sun had taken from him--can he imagine the ache of what I cannot see? ...And have no hand to lead me to? With what he keeps of me, can he know the haunting lack of the him he has taken from me?

Hurt bleeds indignation. My silhouette comforts him; I am rewarded with nothing. I yearn to fly ahead before indignation breeds outrage. I command my feet faster but existence slows down. Dust floats, its dance slowed to the point of the imperceptible. The stillness begins to hum, its pitch ever-heightening--filling my ears, echoing in my stomach. Is there air? Is there breath? Could he know if I were suffocating?

My eyes still on the light. Path, direction, vision--I have. I have a memory of his hand, open to mine; I recall warmth. I recollect safety. I hear light and see the sound of the tower's bell.

Would he catch me if I fell?

*****

My heart is as it was when I was born. Crises, I have--they retain power only as they remain hidden. On the page, on the screen, in words--a tangible existence strips their authority to revise my heart.

Weaponless, I am strongest. It is the fierceness of my heart that can always afford you shelter, even when you thrash disbelievingly within the fullness of its warmth.

We were born to slay beasts.

Weaponless, belief becomes the sharpest sword. I know it--but to see its echo in your eyes is to sense the continuation of time, to be caught mid-air, to hear the bell and not the aching hum of silence.

I know faith. I know the brilliant naked. But sometimes I need. I need, too. The pen to my pages bears no obligation--but tell me. When you blink, can you see my heart in the stars?

*****

I know not the result of the circumstances of this world. What I speak of here, in this realm, is of having found my brother. And when later in this tale I speak of your body, know first that I love you as this—the one who knows; who has questioned and wandered; been lost, naked, and drowning.

For the one who looked to me and saw his familiar, who recognized in me something small and shiny in a place far deeper than anyone has ever thought to look—my first concern is to protect and nurture your bruised and beaten heart. Never do I desire lead you to a place where you’d love yourself the less.

*****

Racing ahead, I am racing ahead; down the aisle of the cathedral, along the smooth marble floor, toward the pool of light under the dome of history, frescoed bright with bodies in Judgment. My cohort, my lover, my brother, he follows me on faith. Faith I know for him is limited—not faith in me, but faith in general. To show faith in anything is a leap for him indeed.

There are things he wishes to believe. He hopes: if he acts as if he does believe, then sometime inside he will.

He doesn’t know where I am going, only that he asked me guide; he wonders why here—for reasons others than the blatant, the transparent, the Catholic ritual of childhood remembered and faith once possessed—but he follows nonetheless. Silent. Attentive. That he would trust me lead him anywhere is a gift to me; that he would trust me questionless and rapt is nearly full a miracle.

It seems forever ago, he recognized at once my sharpest spear and thorn: thought. Never-ceasing thought. Processes I can never halt, a mind I can never quiet. He knows well when and how to coax it to be still. He cannot believe, in what he knows of my mind, that in this place I’d still believe—yet still he follows. In the heightening pitch of silence, in the dimness, airless empty and the chilling stillness of time, I detect unmistakably his sure footsteps behind me.

*****

A stipulation of the Commune of Florence for the erection of Santa Maria del Fiore was for it to be “a more beautiful and honorable temple than any” in Tuscany. Yet this cathedral, from its very conception, required a dome no one for certain could construct. Audacious, the Fiorentini: the promise of glory for a work of architecture none could prove feasible. Brunelleschi found a way.

Cathedrals, my love, are metaphors—as are houses of the flesh. And not just in literature, but in their very being. Cathedrals are brazen, lifting human toward divine. Bodies are brazen, uniting spirit through flesh. You and I, we know these divisions for what they are: man-made. Culturally constructed. Deceptive. Limiters of the brazen, inducers of despair. They know not all cathedrals reach so high. We know not all bodies touch the sky.

But do I believe in this God they portray? In this construct, in this dogma? Examine your own heart and know mine. The god I believe in is the hope that I may live reveling in the quotidian—that the mundanities in my life might inspire lightness rather than the thrashing of my spirit. This occurs only for those who believe they are where they belong. Once this was a possibility unimaginable. And then: my visitation.

Angels bear messages from the divine.

*****

Closer, ever closer—I can’t breathe but I can see—the silence so shrill it slices my insides; the empty, so hot-heavy, I’m melting at my knees. It’s there, though, as I knew it would be—the sun through the skylight, the dome overhead—the dust, again, dancing, now faster, now mesmerizing, now hypnotizing, now time.

Time.

It comes back. Back in a rush, like the speeding, the pounding of footsteps behind me, like the break in the rhythm of the shoes on my feet, like the momentum of my body lurching forward into light—like the pop of the silence and the rushing of air, the spinning of the dome and the pivot my body and the blues and the greens in the frescoes like the ardent rushing of a swirling sea. And my drowning body falling from it, sure of nothing—nothing, nothing but the sharpness and the saturation and the certainty of the very last thing I see: that the fierceness of his being jumps space and I know—know—had he but the power, he’d choose unflinchingly to take this fall for me.

I’m in a spin, one foot in the air, when the other slips out from under me. My insides course cold as I take to the air. It is blackness now, and space—and the whole of me, tense, in anticipation of the parallel. Air whooshes, and in the instant I imagine the cruel slap of marble, there is a tightness in my stomach.

No--not in my stomach, but around it, one arm and then another across my chest as my leading, traitorous, balanceless shoulder thuds his breastbone. I am not falling, I think, as my feet hit the floor, I am not falling--but my knees are as treacherous as my failed equilibrium and I am falling, they are buckling, my weight collapsing, his arms tightening, and when I collapse his body’s behind me, his body’s against me, his body is my bumper and my pillow and my shield, and I am not. Falling. I am not falling.

My head falls back to his shoulder, his breath warm on my cheek. There is only blackness--and his heartbeat at my back, pulsing hotly, surprisingly, redressingly into me when experience had anticipated the icy rocky wallop. Darkness takes my consciousness. Yet I know, tonight, it is he that will be seeing stars.

Angels' Dares (Volume 2, Part 4)

2007-04-09T20:45:00.001-04:00

I know not the result of the circumstances of this world. What I speak of here, in this realm, is of having found my brother. And when later in this tale I speak of your body, know first that I love you as this—the one who knows; who has questioned and wandered; been lost, naked, and drowning.

For the one who looked to me and saw his familiar, who recognized in me something small and shiny in a place far deeper than anyone has ever thought to look—my first concern is to protect and nurture your bruised and beaten heart. Never do I desire lead you to a place where you’d love yourself the less.

*****

Racing ahead, I am racing ahead; down the aisle of the cathedral, along the smooth marble floor, toward the pool of light under the dome of history, frescoed bright with bodies in Judgment. My cohort, my lover, my brother, he follows me on faith. Faith I know for him is limited—not faith in me, but faith in general. To show faith in anything is a leap for him indeed.

There are things he wishes to believe. He hopes: if he acts as if he does believe, then sometime inside he will.

He doesn’t know where I am going, only that he asked me guide; he wonders why here—for reasons others than the blatant, the transparent, the Catholic ritual of childhood remembered and faith once possessed—but he follows nonetheless. Silent. Attentive. That he would trust me lead him anywhere is a gift to me; that he would trust me questionless and rapt is nearly full a miracle.

It seems forever ago, he recognized at once my sharpest spear and thorn: thought. Never-ceasing thought. Processes I can never halt, a mind I can never quiet. He knows well when and how to coax it to be still. He cannot believe, in what he knows of my mind, that in this place I’d still believe—yet still he follows. In the heightening pitch of silence, in the dimness, airless empty and the chilling stillness of time, I detect unmistakably his sure footsteps behind me.

*****

A stipulation of the Commune of Florence for the erection of Santa Maria del Fiore was for it to be “a more beautiful and honorable temple than any” in Tuscany. Yet this cathedral, from its very conception, required a dome no one for certain could construct. Audacious, the Fiorentini: the promise of glory for a work of architecture none could prove feasible. Brunelleschi found a way.

Cathedrals, my love, are metaphors—as are houses of the flesh. And not just in literature, but in their very being. Cathedrals are brazen, lifting human toward divine. Bodies are brazen, uniting spirit through flesh. You and I, we know these divisions for what they are: man-made. Culturally constructed. Deceptive. Limiters of the brazen, inducers of despair. They know not all cathedrals reach so high. We know not all bodies touch the sky.

But do I believe in this God they portray? In this construct, in this dogma? Examine your own heart and know mine. The god I believe in is the hope that I may live reveling in the quotidian—that the mundanities in my life might inspire lightness rather than the thrashing of my spirit. This occurs only for those who believe they are where they belong. Once this was a possibility unimaginable. And then: my visitation.

Angels bear messages from the divine.

*****

Closer, ever closer—I can’t breathe but I can see—the silence so shrill it slices my insides; the empty, so hot-heavy, I’m melting at my knees. It’s there, though, as I knew it would be—the sun through the skylight, the dome overhead—the dust, again, dancing, now faster, now mesmerizing, now hypnotizing, now time.

Time.

It comes back. Back in a rush, like the speeding, the pounding of footsteps behind me, like the break in the rhythm of the shoes on my feet, like the momentum of my body lurching forward into light—like the pop of the silence and the rushing of air, the spinning of the dome and the pivot my body and the blues and the greens in the frescoes like the ardent rushing of a swirling sea. And my drowning body falling from it, sure of nothing—nothing, nothing but the sharpness and the saturation and the certainty of the very last thing I see: that the fierceness of his being jumps space and I know—know—had he but the power, he’d choose unflinchingly to take this fall for me.

I’m in a spin, one foot in the air, when the other slips out from under me. My insides course cold as I take to the air. It is blackness now, and space—and the whole of me, tense, in anticipation of the parallel. Air whooshes, and in the instant I imagine the cruel slap of marble, there is a tightness in my stomach.

No--not in my stomach, but around it, one arm and then another across my chest as my leading, traitorous, balanceless shoulder thuds his breastbone. I am not falling, I think, as my feet hit the floor, I am not falling--but my knees are as treacherous as my failed equilibrium and I am falling, they are buckling, my weight collapsing, his arms tightening, and when I collapse his body’s behind me, his body’s against me, his body is my bumper and my pillow and my shield, and I am not. Falling. I am not falling.

My head falls back to his shoulder, his breath warm on my cheek. There is only blackness--and his heartbeat at my back, pulsing hotly, surprisingly, redressingly into me when experience had anticipated the icy rocky wallop. Darkness takes my consciousness. Yet I know, tonight, it is he that will be seeing stars.

Angels' Dares (Volume 2, Part 3)

2007-03-23T00:00:00.001-04:00

You can read the previous posts in the series by clicking on the links in the sidebar, or on the Angels' Dares label at the end of this post. (Those come up in reverse order, so be sure to read from the bottom up.) You could also just start reading right here, with the characters inside the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.

*****

This moment is only just being written, as the letters fill the screen. I know where the story goes; I know the ending--it is beautiful. I want to take you there. But I don't know what happens now.

I haven't known the now for so long, I can hardly remember a time when I did. Or thought I did. There's a difference sometimes, but you don't see it until you accept that other characters turn pages, too. You think you are narrating your own life, but that is only a partial truth. Your life is being re-written all the time. I typed rewritten; I wanted co-written; I mean both. Lives are being co-written all the time.

You give someone love--you are bestowing editorial power. You receive love--it is the authority to revise. The cruelest revisions happen before you even know what page you're on. The crackle of paper, a breeze, you open your eyes to the brilliant naked.

Down you look; you are unwrapped. What will become of your stripped and weaponless heart?

*****

Outside, I was secure in the silence. Inside, I am afeared of the emptiness. How in the stillness it may engulf him, and I--pews ahead--may be pages behind. I have been before. Would he not even cry out if the slippery marble betrayed his footsteps? Would I recognize his voice in danger? Would I hear wrong?

This cathedral, mine; this city, my home. Here I was to guide. And I do, I am. I stride the aisle toward the dome, peer through dimness toward sunrays dripping from a heaven my earthbound perspective does not permit me to see. I can make it; I can navigate. I want to navigate. But I weaken.

Is he there? Is he behind me? He can survive the stillness, as I am in his sight. He proves I exist each time he lifts his lids from a blink. Me, I have to close my eyes and raise my heart to the sky just to see him before me.

Those visions he knows I have, I protect, I believe. But with the luxury of sight--sight I led him to, his hand within mine, smaller, when sight the sun had taken from him--can he imagine the ache of what I cannot see? ...And have no hand to lead me to? With what he keeps of me, can he know the haunting lack of the him he has taken from me?

Hurt bleeds indignation. My silhouette comforts him; I am rewarded with nothing. I yearn to fly ahead before indignation breeds outrage. I command my feet faster but existence slows down. Dust floats, its dance slowed to the point of the imperceptible. The stillness begins to hum, its pitch ever-heightening--filling my ears, echoing in my stomach. Is there air? Is there breath? Could he know if I were suffocating?

My eyes still on the light. Path, direction, vision--I have. I have a memory of his hand, open to mine; I recall warmth. I recollect safety. I hear light and see the sound of the tower's bell.

Would he catch me if I fell?

*****

My heart is as it was when I was born. Crises, I have--they retain power only as they remain hidden. On the page, on the screen, in words--a tangible existence strips their authority to revise my heart.

Weaponless, I am strongest. It is the fierceness of my heart that can always afford you shelter, even when you thrash disbelievingly within the fullness of its warmth.

We were born to slay beasts.

Weaponless, belief becomes the sharpest sword. I know it--but to see its echo in your eyes is to sense the continuation of time, to be caught mid-air, to hear the bell and not the aching hum of silence.

I know faith. I know the brilliant naked. But sometimes I need. I need, too. The pen to my pages bears no obligation--but tell me. When you blink, can you see my heart in the stars?

I think we've passed the statute of limitations on this one.

2007-03-12T01:40:00.001-04:00

TequilaCon was this weekend. And also, Grad School Reject had asked for tequila stories. Although there is no actual tequila in this story, the characters herein are tequila-related in my mind. Eventually, I will write tequila stories as well.

1997. My last semester of college. This class is held in one of the university's theaters. I'm sprawled in the third row, legs up on the seat in front of me, listening to the instructor differentiate among power tools and address their various theatrical uses. I take out the plastic container of leftovers I've brought for lunch, mostly consisting of slices of candied yams. He watches me, quizzically.

Fuck. I forgot a fork.

I eat with my fingers.

He watches me some more. Not so quizzically. He tosses in some mention of how this will be tested. I keep eating. And listening. And nodding. Eventually, he stops speaking.

Staredown.

He's not pissed off; he's trying not to laugh.

"You don't seriously think I need to take notes on this? I think I'll recognize the power drill on the midterm."

*****

Late some Saturday night a few weeks later. I'm flopped on a cushy thing near the bar inside of some Pan-Asian restaurant. This piece of furniture could seat three, but right now it's just me and the guy beside me. With some space between us. The place is dark, vaguely shadowy, and I'd probably be able to give more details if I hadn't drunk quite so much vodka. But that's okay, because I'm not the only one in such sorry condition--he's not much better, and neither are the people we arrived with. This is when the sober people show up.

And by "sober people", I mean "high-strung and anal retentive". There are two of them--one man, one woman--and both of them have some strange fixation on my sofa companion. I tell him he ought to start his own cult. He says that it's just a hobby. He'd rather be a designer. At the moment, he's also stuck being an adjunct instructor. Of course, when he says that it's just a hobby, what he really means is that he's done with her, and can't I please stop her from sitting down so he doesn't have to be the bad guy.

I can, and I do. Actually, we do it together. She approaches; he spreads his knees; I grab the inside of his thigh. Then we both look up and smile. Neither she (a grad student) nor the man in denial of being fixated on the man beside me (another adjunct) smile back. How rude.

They pull up two chairs, chat with the drunken posse, and order vegetable sushi. More conversation ensues, people come and go, we drink more.

Here's the next thing I remember:

Drunken sushi-eating female grad student filled with rage approaches the sofa, but remains on the other side of the small coffee table. She carries an immense martini glass.

The martini glass contains the partially-digested remains of her vegetable sushi.

Ceremoniously, she places the vomit martini on the table in front of us--an offering to we gods of we don't give a fuck.

Yay! A present!

She says something. What she says I have no clue, because my male cohort is shifting his body from serving as my pillow, and is searching for something. Feverishly. Checking every pocket. Shifting stuff around in the bags at our feet. He finds it.

A pen.

He pulls off the cap, grabs a napkin, and begins sketching.

The vomit martini.

Sketching. The vomit martini.

"Look at that." He is deadpan, sincerely excited. "That spittle on the side of the glass, hanging down..."

(Indeed, there is a long path of drool dripping to the table.)

"The perfect detail. It fucking makes the shot."

We look on as he finishes. He is practiced--the sketch is quick and accurate. Someone puts her in a cab, our group disperses, one of our friends goes home with the inked napkin. Actually, one of our friends takes another one of our friends to her home, and with them goes the sketch.

Or maybe she takes possession of it later.

Not sure.

Mostly, what I'm sure of is that they all left us alone.

And a glass of vomit isn't as big a distraction as a sober person might think it would be. If you've consumed enough vodka and are too busy making out on the sofa.

And I honestly can't remember at which point the bar staff cleared the glass from the table.

The end.

...but not really, because I haven't even gotten to the tequila yet.

like wine upon your heart

2007-03-09T20:19:00.001-05:00

I've been struggling with words, this week--wanting to write, not knowing what. Sensing a gift in the birthing... But even so--images and sentences and actions and metaphors at war in my mind, throwing each other against walls, beating each other bloody, grappling without victory.

Then today, I spoke religion and science and flesh and spirit--ideas and connections, concepts. It calms my battling mind. It does, and it did. I found myself, close-eyed, centered. And I saw him.

The one I thought I'd never write to--the one with the smile and the grace, the magnet with the skill to attract and repel. The one gifted with self-preservation. I told you, time and again, how my instincts would insist I keep that one at my opposite pole, in any given room, as far from survivalist me as possible. Alas, the room we met in didn't admit that me at all. A cruel trick upon her, but best for the rest of us. He wouldn't have trusted her, either.

Yes, close-eyed and centered, I saw the truth and the irony. Proclaiming distance, I've been writing to him all this time. Not realizing it? Or not admitting it? Either or both, it matters not: I know now to whom I speak.

The one I assumed would never listen was the one that heard when I called. The one I'd never have gifted--with the sweetness of a kid on Christmas. He who needed to be trusted; he who lacked the mirror to see the apple orchard in your heart. More fruit than he ever knew how to harvest--falling from branches, seeding the ground.

Sweet to make your acquaintance, graceful boy. Sorry to have not greeted you before.

toward action

2007-02-25T14:49:00.001-05:00

I do not write about you, for if I did, I may know truth.

Even those of us most obsessed with it--elusive truth--may sometimes not want it for a housemate. If you live with something long enough, it demands action.

I occasionally regard truth as a glowing elixir, locked in an aged amulet, and hanging on a chain about my neck. It is a long chain, and a small amulet, and the world you cannot see it when I'm out.

In fact, it's light, and breathable, like fabrics of a certain purpose, and barely do I remember it lies against my skin.

A few words written here and there, perhaps a turning of the screw, a sliding of a key. Someday it shall set truth free.

Angels' Dares (Volume 2, Part 2)

2007-02-22T02:16:00.001-05:00

You can read the earlier installments series...

Volume 1, in New York City, USA
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Volume 2, in Florence, Italy
Part 1

Or pick up here, with the characters outside the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.
*****

My hand to his cheek, our eyes to the sky, we remain silent in the Tuscan sun. Silent, but not quiet. Never are we quiet, most especially when we lack words.

He is weary of mortality. I feel it in the never-ceasing rhythm of his thoughts. He grows tired of the idea of it--the toll of so much psychic energy spent, for what? Youth thrashes upon unconquerable battlefields; age recognizes wisdom in roots. He sees this now. Desiring roots, still he struggles silently--something astray, some part of him sensing disjunction, sounding panic in violent choppy waves that rush and batter my shore. On the outside, we are placid.

In this place, I do not wonder why he will not speak. I only know that he needs a guide. Here in her city, I can be Beatrice. Yet also am I Virgil. Exhausted with the weight of his own survival, solely responsible far too long, he wishes his plight recognized with indicators implicit, even silent. First blinded in the sun, now muted in the shadow, he hopes but dares not believe. I merely continue receiving the semaphores. Someday he will see how he sent them. Or acknowledge, for already I believe he sees.

Once, I feared him--not his strengths, but the hollow of his searching, his potential for resignation, his aptitude for despair. Is climbing worth effort when irony promises further to fall? Yet where others see mere meltable snow atop summits, I see an infinitude of sparkling joy--resplendent even in scattered impurity. And him... he sees the light dance, too. Siblings in pain, lovers in optimism: I feared him only as I feared myself.

And so...

Speaking—or not speaking—of the pinpricks of mundanity: what is that, compared to company in the vast home of spirit, next to omnipresence in the heart? Words become superfluous. Pressured, disappointed, insecure, we squabble, constrained as mortals are. But here we are ourselves. Here we are angels.

Subtle pressure from my fingers nudges his face down, brings his gaze to mine. With my open hand, I reach for his, slide my fingers down his waiting palm. Skin on skin, ever more contact, only now will I flutter the fingers off his face. Our hands entwined, I let a fingertip find the flesh that separates his thumb from four fingers, and rub and knead and soothe. I am here.

First I saw for him and now I speak. Now is the time of his rebirth. Though I'll not say it aloud. Angels speak epics in the imperceptible pulsations of distant stars.

"if I ever cease to love"

2007-02-20T00:00:00.001-05:00

"Can
you
give
me
sanc...
tu...
ar...
y..."

New Orleans--never been there. But I'll tell you where I have been--at the center of myth, in the veins of ritual, in a swirl of Catholic mysticism and grasping, gripping, faithless faith-wanting semi-despair--yet catechized into never relinquishing the last of belief; on darkest days, the tiniest of seeds fallen out of place onto cold marble, nowhere to root in the vastest expanse of empty echoless cathedral. The undertow of emptiness is lonely lonely until you recognize other drowners in your deep--and then it is heady, foaming with recognition.

*****

Green, gold, purple;
Mardi Gras in three colors.
Faith, power, justice;
nothing more compelling than a trinity.

Carnival season, farewell to flesh, from Twelfth Night to Mardi Gras: bidding adieu with a long, hot, salty embrace; anticipating forty days and nights of penitence and denial, to become worthy.

And what of those who never felt unworthy?

*****

"I must find
a place to hide..."

I never liked costumes, wouldn't wear masks. Never cared for losing myself, even for a day. Won't wear things that don't feel like mine; can't look in the mirror at a stranger primped for a ritual I did not originate.

"...a place for
me to
hide..."

Masques, parades, beads, and baubles; masks and costumes; torch-lit processions and liquor-lit revelers: the ritualized, orgiastic losing of self. Then here are we, too vain, too proud, to ever lose our selves in the masses--charter members of a secret society not unlike the Carnival krewes who cloak the season in mystique. And yet, a paradox: never being lost makes it that much more difficult to find the self when necessary. This we know too well.

Know we also: there are better ways to dissolve the self, if only holding out for a moment of personal choosing, so as not to be a one among the all. One among one, one among two, one among few well-chosen--these we can abide.

Remember always, the re-emergence of the self-lit blinds--blinds others, as the sun-staring had first blinded the audacious into dissolution.

Audacity is not a sin.

*****

"Can
you
find
me
soft
a..
sy...
lum..."

As I sit writing, in a comfy chair, in a homey chain-cafe, the time approaching closing, the employees that I'd befriended earlier cross their tolerance threshold for cafe music and find solace in The Doors. They start with "People Are Strange", though they may as well have hit "The Soft Parade", so engrossed in the mythic and mystic is my mind.

"I can't make
it anymore..."

Say what they may of James Douglas Morrison, entering this world on the Immaculate Conception, exiting via Paris on the third of July... but he knew.

He knew.

*****

We need not end life as he did, grabbing wildly at nothings, wishing density upon vapors and hallucinations, thrashing to fill the void, succeeding only in expelling the very air that shapes the vessel. What seems a vacuum is in actuality vast potential. 'Tis the void that's an illusion.

...And I would give you directions to the location of my soul, if I thought you needed them.