Squeezing out some words

Thick, warm shirt, fall day; the south wind is a steady breath on the leaves, yellowing and dry. Under the sun and the clouds and under the planets and the universe, under the trees where the leaves fall and under the sky where the wind blows. Under eternity and under infinity, here it all is. All there will ever be.

September kneels. Its leaves, cool air, and diffused light paint the harvest fruit. Fields are mottled brown, a certain, muted umber. Endings. He feels this, what’s more he feels that all humans can feel this, and he says aloud to the trees, “We all share a melancholy walk through this thick air, separate in our perception and joined at our hearts. There is gallantry in this great divesting of skin. Last years’ burned detritus kicked aside, naked we walk toward the grey autumn air.”

He breaths, turns around completely – arms outstretched. Then lets his mind flow on, “Gather wood, gather fuel, gather thoughts and courage. Put up supplies for the heart and mind. A thousand books, a million friends on pages and in words to help when you become lost, the real world too distant to mark upon. Curl in your blankets. Safe and warm in those hands, the familiar, the welcome, the home. Breathe in, and wait.”

I read a website today that contained peoples’ opinions of the best words of wisdom ever imparted to them. These tidbits of advice are all very well and good to look at. I see them and think, “I would do well to pay attention to that’. However, the commitment to practice this kind of thing is likely beyond my conviction. There are too many of them and each one requires that a person monitor their behaviour. I am not consistent.

I would rather let myself be, without thought, to do as my heart wishes. Good, evil, (mediocre likely, as that’s all I have time for). Except at this keyboard. Every piece of my life is a compromise except the time spent with my fingers exactly here. At that point the flow can be regulated precisely by my whim. I can be utterly truthful, I can lie like a goddamned snake or I can laugh, weep, sing, celebrate or spew invective at various blame-horses contrived by my imagination until I have nothing left but to explain why these fingers are my only solace.

Things seem less constricted today. My level of satisfaction seems moderate to ok. I miss many things. Many freedoms, and that’s a sad fact. This wandering heart/brain/mind of mine seems to be waking up for some reason.

Yellow and black roadside hieroglyphics on dirty highways.

When I sit in a café alone – I can spin the world into something wonderful. It starts lonely, works through a kind of proud individuality and somehow lights up with humor, depending on the music and the sights out the window. Last week – Cranston. A goddamned pile of shit at the southeast end of Calgary with huge investment homes, green plastered lawns, a thousand spindly, thin, deciduous spires and a smattering of evergreens, conical and precisely placed. Fresh concrete and fresh paint, peeling already from the sun on the south side. Hot summer; bastard, cheap contractor. The flaws are only a year out from the possession date.

Editor, helper, some validation. I want to euthanize this character and resurrect him young. I want to push the smell of grass into his nostrils. Cut his flesh and watch it bleed. I want him suffering, in life and love. Accept your fate you bastard and spill from my fingertips. Die you fucker so that I can pull flesh from your bones and drink your fluid. I will piss you on to paper if I can. Cut and paste. Smear the guts. Watch the pieces writhe into a single word.

I will grab that word and it will be the first thing I type. I will type it with a hammer and chisel it into a granite slab and paint its fetid mark with gold. I will smash the slab to pieces. Liquefy it and swallow it. Each word will burn going down and burn coming out.

In the end this flow will find its place. The steps will founder, the keys of this machine jump under my fingers and refuse to connect with whatever twisted synaptic signal beckons, yet somehow there are words on paper, and somehow if I can just squeeze hard enough the juice will leave a mark that can be understood by my soul as it struggles to puke the remaining leakage from its maw.

I will type a single word today. I swear to God.

Send out random words? Hammer together a sentence? The question is bigger than the world. How deep do you want to go this time? Down to the very bottom again? Let flow the blood and tears, wait for some kind of reflection. How much do you want? There isn’t enough here to hold you, but in the wild on the highway in October a heart is an orange target. Or invisible; even worse.

There they are in the roundabout, moving constantly and never taking an exit. The people all round driving and driving and happy, windows closed against the wind and the day. Signaling left.