I've never been very good at keeping a diary, at least not since I was sixteen.
We made breakfast this morning, cinnamon apple crepes with bacon on the side, and as we sipped coffee and sat smoking by the window I tried to reason with myself. I made lists of things that need to be done: my tire needs to be patched, have to go to the bank, the library, pay a parking ticket. He started loading things into the car, little by little so that I wouldn't take a strong notice. The bags began filling the car. I paced. Every time we talked about the logistics of rent, vacations, family engagements and work schedules I started crying. I don't know whether I've run out of tears or I've accepted his departure. 3 months of working on the docks, valeting cars, and writing on the beach while I work and play in the mountains a hundred miles away. We always see each other more than we think we will, and last summer it was nearly every week. This time it might be two weeks. We haven't been apart for more than three days since August, and that was only when I went to Seattle.

The fall is a warm fellow,
He gathers up all the colors and kisses them dry
Wraps the morning in bundles of notebook paper,
Blue, ink lined skies scratched with white print

The summer betrays with warmth
Drips down the backs,
Sun worn leather shoe tops and
Carpets are lighter where the furnishings

Never stood, soaked in safe shadows.
Let the fall breeze in and cool hopes
That linger on, unquenched by dry beach sand
Blinking in the gloss of waves

Encounter

It's only two hours into my overnight shift. I spent the first surfing the internet and checking on the kids. I knock on their doors gently to accounce my presence and slowly open the creaking old doors with my key that's tethered to my belt loop and peer in to see if they're sleeping. It's aboslutely silent here, except for the clock which ticks loudly. The ouside world is frozen with cold and sleep, an icy sheet on every surface. I went to the fire escape for a cigarette, standing on the 2nd floor platform with a keen ear for moving children. The house is in the woods across from a river, nestled in a mountain valley. This is the area that Washington Irving wrote about, with Rip Van Winkle's sleepy town. On the fire escape, I heard a rustling in the woods, the soft, slow crunching of snow. The full moon aided in my sight, making everything a silvery blue color like looking at a monochramatic painting. I follwed the shadow making the noise and quietly dragged from my cigarette without moving more than my hand to and from my lips. It hadn't seen me yet, and carefully walked closer to the house. Its hunched shadow looked like a wolf from the distance, creeping like a hunter through the dark. There are no wolves this far south, I thought maybe a coyote hunting deer. It stood further upright, arching its neck and the moonlight made it out to be a deer. Slowly, the doe crept closer and closer until I could make out all its parts. It stood on the dead, frosted grass of the backyard twitching its ears in an oscilating motion. I made a gentle exhaling sound that caused it to look up at me. It made no alteration in its movement, and only came closer, writing me off as harmless as a sparrow. I stood watching it, long afer my cigarette was finished. Two others came out, one behind the first, and another from the other side of the wood. They ran when I opened the door to go back outside. In this beautiful moment, where deer were only fifteen feet from me I could only imagine hungry coyotes finding their next meal before me. The deer are alive in reality, but my imagination has made them a midnight snack. If the human imagination controlled reality, the world would be sinking ships and car wrecks.

Baby it's Cold Outside

Loneliness, sadness, alienation, and liquor seem to be the accoutrements for the beauty of the written word. I had an American literature professor who once thumbed through the thick pages of an anthology, held it over his head, and dropped it onto a desk. He chewed on his unlit pipe as he said, "This whole damn book is soaked with alcohol. Pft, true prohibition and this thing would be a pamphlet." I find it easier to write, that the words come more fluidly and exact when I have a sense of loneliness. Liquor doesn't do the trick for me, hangovers leave only grocery lists to be written. A cloud like feeling, wet, sopping, like looking into a warm room through a window with a cold nose and fingers. It's not self-pity, but a sensation of alienation. A writer isn't living while they write, but sacrificing socialization to be an outsider, to be one who watches and does not participate. Not that writers are not within society, because you can only write what you know, but there's a separation that allows for examination.
There's a disconnect, a stripped copper wire in my brain, and I feel like a ghost. Some might call this depression, but I refuse and instead feel that it is a self-reflective state of mind. A murky puddle instead of one reflecting blue skies and clouds.

I've been reading Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and I find it strange that I had never heard of it before. I study literature, and although I find it embarassing to be ignorant to a well known novel, finding a classic gem is rejuvenating. I just finished it this afternoon and I'm not quite sure what captured me so wonderfully. I have the deep heart tug that comes along with each book that secretly digs deep down to the bone and strikes the marrow like a pebble in a puddle. I read it slow and steady, savoring it like a last meal. Singer's part was confusing because he was just a mirror to the others, not a single person understood him. Is he neutrality? Is his muteness an examination of character, that with a voice there is no ear? Is he a literary tool?
Reading about the south made me want to reread Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. Penn Warren's work, his every word nearly drew a tear in my eye- it was so exact. When this book was published it must have been like the first time sound was added to film, or color t.v. Something is illuminated in the soul and the door to a new corridor of the mind is opened by a soft, warm breeze.


Time to go to work.

Listening to: Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Ray Charles, Alicia Keys, & Radiohead.

Pirates, Werewolves, and Drunk Raccoons

I find myself alone in my house again, pacing and checking the locks. I live in a small town that is not known for crime, and nestled in the mountains hushed and chilled with snow it leaves an impression that is completely separate from the one my over active imagination has conjured up. I imagine madmen clawing at my windows, drunk and angry passersby begging for a chance to tackled and maim a young girl, pirates and bloodthirsty werewolves even. I make up excuses to myself, because I am alone, to avoid going to sleep as I listen to loud french hip-hop in an effort to make anyone passing think I was holding an exciting party. When I go outside for a cigarette I open my eyes wider, thinking it lets in more light, and attempt to develop cat-like night vision. I keep my hand on the door handle. These paranoid habits are not learned through experience, but vicariously from far too many movies and novels where things go bump in the night. Rather, it is not so much creatures, for I feel that I might have the power to gain their favor through some previously unseen charm, but the human beings that I live among in the daylight. Their dark hearts are concealed by their tooth baring grins as they hold doors open and offer up the last seat to an elderly woman. You, honor student, under the cover of dark may be more deviant than America's Most Wanted. Aren't the stories always, "Johnny was such a good boy, sang in the church choir. I just can't believe he chopped up his girlfriend and pureed her to feed to his dog" or "Susie and her family seemed so happy, bludgeoning the mail man with a baseball bat was uncharacteristic, such a nice lady" The uncharacteristic, the unexpected, these things come out at night. It's irritating when the old "things are the same as day time, just less light" argument comes out. I say nay nay, and bullshit my friend. The cover of dark brings out another side of people, like a mask on Halloween lets us pretend we are another character, develop another persona. Put on a uniform and you can be another person. The night is nature's costume, and as it is unnatural for us to be awake at night (our terrible night vision explains this) humans are like raccoons with rabies at night, drugged with the delirium of darkness. So yeah, I'm afraid to be alone at night and it's not irrational; I have my reasons.