"Irena not only opens the door, but falls through, and the door only leads to one place, home; and home isn't safe."

Declan Donnellan, The Actor and the Target

Visa

This is how the hand off went. My fingers faintly so faintly held the plastic square, and then the Starbucks cashier applied her fingers faintly so faintly to the other side, and we each for a split second held the card like daisy chain or a banner or bridge between us that would be incorrect to break. Like both of us believed the other had cooties that we didn't want to contract. Like touching the plastic was somehow more embarrassing than touching the other's body. This is the pattern of these transactions. And sometimes in these transactions myself, the purchaser, and the cashier of whatever business will both grip the card so faintly that it will flip between our fingers like a fish, like we had slapped it, beat it around, and then it will clatter on the counter. But when it clatters, it is such a soft sound of the plastic, weighing some micro metered amount. There is no damage done. I imagine that others' transactions can be different. Yet mine are all like the card: commerce and purchases, faintly so faintly mediated by light plastic, and if the eagle in the corner catches it, oddly pretty in the light.

beach black nights-- Hamptons, L.I.

Change

my favorite word used to be cathedral; my new favorite word is crypt.

Tonight I saw the moon

And I could not number the weeks it’d been since that last time I saw it. Is the world indifferent to the moon? As long as it’s there, does it matter if we see it or not?

I suspect all the things inside of me are dead and that’s why I can talk about them. Brave is only a way of saying callous. I think all that’s left of me is a museum, resurrected over the village of all the things that mattered once but are gone. And the museum is getting dusty and worn down with too many tourist visits, not enough upkeep and exhibition swap-outs. That is the pattern of things that grow. They must, by law, grow, diminish, then be faux-revered.

Jack 'n Jill

It's true we all know Jack 'n Jill to have both worn leiderhoesan. There may be small discrepancies over each's hair color-- both blonde? Or did Jill have damp brown locks curled clockwise from her face like, well, the supple clock towers of her tiny Austrian home town, and did Jack's green cap have a feather stuck in it posing as a charming afterthought? And did his chubby hands grab Jill's or did they instead hoist sail on his own leather suspenders as he said goddammit Jill I ain't going for no more fricking water? Was their hike up the hill a metaphor for a life journey or a quick run and endless plummet where crown doesn't mean a metal monarchy but actually a bloody coxcomb? If the hill is a metaphor for life, I hope Jack and Jill were sweet and gray when they got up there to the stone well sheltered by that little rooftop, pointy, with a wooden bucket underneath. Maybe they started the walk as baby betrotheds but by the top they were brother and sister, arms lattice-linked.

And I hope they admired the setting sunset there at the summit-- the sky embroidered the color of an old children's book page, and I hope they finally got a drink of water before setting back down the hill again. And I hope when they did fall, Jack's mouth softly O-ing and Jill's toe finding the same tough patch or banana peel or slick spot from the slashing water, that they had the gentlest of tumbles like lazy roses somersaulting, barely loafing the grass-- pulling down from the clouds.

tonight

The moon is half full...  thank you everyone one for getting  me to this point. chaucer once said (i believe) that man is aways keeping appointments that he never makes. For example, I am going to the  beach tomorrow. It's like I'm on that moving sidewalk at the airport and I just get off whenever it lets me off like it's saying "here is your activity go enjoy" and I say, "yes thanks."