8 • Don’t move my constant. 

The solstice Maine heavens were held completely crisp + still, untroubled by electromagnetic waves. In the dead of night, a startling subatomic rumble echos through the dark, ending w/ a clutching the inside your throat. In forest blackness there lurks a claustrophobic dread. A rabbit cries for its life + looses. When all is quiet again the silence is ten times as deep + opaque. 

Field stones that were sled over decades ago became the low walls that are boundaries, trails + points. i believed through some keen higher power a mystery could be solved by backing up, up + away one could behold an epiphany in the stone lines created by the walls. With just the right aerial view some gigantic cryptic message would make known the secrets we have been asking for millennium.

     

Stalwart midnight treks revealed the snow turning silver under the spherical spotlight. The luster ricocheted through the bare trees, making birch shine. Surroundings became silhouettes plunged into the inky blackness. i imagined each soul down to the tiniest critter opening one eye as my shoe popped + crunched passed. Then closing slowly, feeling no threat.

     

i became mindful of the night sky while living in Damariscotta. Northern lights are big theater. The heavens shifted into their familiar winter pattern, sitting still long enough you'd be rewarded w/ a shooting star. i had won the a prize at the end of the day when i felt complete by looking up, + getting lost in the vertigo. 

     

When your choices are limited completeness is simple.

jahh / Script for a practicing artist + an unfinished life.

Dream; i am riding on a train that is in a perpetual right turn. i realize it’s on a wheel, of sorts, caught in going circles. i end up on my doorstep at a suburban sprawl house. Reaching for the door handle my male springs out of the door, pacing, totting in place + impatiently questioning.

“Do you want to go running?”

“No, I want to go eat.”

i worked in overtime + overdrive during my out times. i have had white-outs, but i never lost a decade. These white-outs have afforded me the knowing that if i have worked through layers + layers of emotional mud, i didn’t know about it. Sometimes + thankfully, the upheavals expected lay dormant through denial + have gone undetected.

It’s curious how things were, how they are, how they could be. People in our lives that aren’t there anymore. The way time travels. Simple twists of fate. Some times they happen in an afternoon, 
YOU CAN SEE THEM HAPPENING. 

Another time it takes years to pull your attention full circle.

At some point you’ve lived long enough to recognize the cycles in life. What folds back upon itself. What wheels around again, + again. It’s interesting to see the circles we chose to close, which are left open, what ones filled up + frozen solid w/ memories.

  Yet, we really never know what the next day will drop in front of us.

   i see a full circle, your circle.

  There is  a dismal attempt to put pieces back together again. i know that it is impossible.

   One of those wicked deja vu days.

One of those, you think you know how the day will go days —  then as simply as can be — someone phones up + rings into a time that you thought was past years ago. + thinking that it would never be, cant be, + will never be - could be here now. If you were only brave enough.

i wrote a lot more than i got down on paper. 

You know how things take flight + circle, spiral up  again + again so high up there that they become unimportant or evaporate until the next time around.

Three made the mod squad.

When i’m on deadline, different thoughts surface, some adjusting into clear memories, others sift away + only an anxious feeling remains. Just shots of memories. Standing at a stoplight on a certain corner as a car speeds by + a passenger yells wtf out the window to you. i’m thinking everyone has this experience of ‘hits’ when the mind is occupied in one area or another. Isn't it Joan Baez that sings about memories tumbling like sweets from a jar?

i had thought to put in different names, but this was so very long ago, kind of. + although this may not make since to you, it’s just how the mind works, yes?

When looking  back on being w/ Kyle the vague feeling of eminent trouble surfaces. Our compatriot Dana joined in our artistic carousing. He wanted to be a writer so i reckon he felt no competition from us. We loved him because he was quirky (who were we to say), he wore gardening gloves in the winter, brought strange + stranger women home to stay over night + lived to be a character from the film Chariots of Fire.

Dana fired off odd one liners, “Jayne, of all your faults, malicey is not one of them.”

We'd rehearsed non-existing screen plays in the subway at rush hour.

Once, we scaled a fifteen foot cyclone fence at dusk to walk across a barricaded rickety scaffold high above careening traffic. Actually, once was enough.

We had spontaneous photo shoots on the roof top. On one occasion Kyle + i dressed Dana as a messiah in a lamé diaper. It was cold. Dana was really cold. i wanted  him to wear double stick tape on his tattered sandals so that he’d pick up and drag leaves, dirt + small sticks. i thought for some reason it would make the image authentic, as though that was important.

jahh / Script for a practicing artist + an unfinished life. Posted just because.

  

A semiretired backdrop tool, that has been to the paintbrush hospital way too many times.


76 

In Hong Kong workers mopped up behind us w/ the reek of benzene as though we were stinky americans. There was an amazing lack of unemployed citizens + dirty smells. Early morning in front of the five star hotel we were forced to stay in, we could wouldn't help notice men on their knees scrubbing the white lines on the street using acetone + a toothbrush.

Describing the aroma inside the elevator left us competing for superlatives. This bouquet of sweaty chrome landed somewhere between spicy incense + unpopular feral swine. 

jahh / Script for a practicing artist + an unfinished life.

conNOTEative.

This rusted giant crushed can thingie will not be coming home w/ me.
Here is an example of something i can not make.
i collect things i can not make.
They lie mean-looking, stacked in a wood crate, sometimes disturbed, but mostly waiting to be upcycled.

define work load / budget
define budget / workload
sizes
things you can steal
things you can hand over to someone else
things too large to move

i keep thinking about what am i going to be, what am i gonna do? That is the condition of an artist. i am once again gaining mental ground by stepping away from it all + saying, okay this is it, i am what i am being. Socks up, continue on. Older ideas drop off, some decision are made for you ... others take time.
Instead of having the mind of this is my lot (a lot)... i’m asking, are we all in this too deep to think it was the wrong path? (Perhaps there is a sand bar up ahead.) i am forever trying to redefine my path + concentrate.

When trying narrowing + deepening of a vision i end up w/ a wider swath, bumping into the side walls for lack of focus.

Rest on that.

We were fixing an installation at Forte de Basso when he sent me off via taxi. He armed me w/ a to-get list on a slip of paper, instructions on to-and-from, + i was off on an obscure errand to find hardware in a foreign city where i did not understand the roads, language or currency. The taxi driver rolled away into the pouring rain + darkening sky. Cold dread was written on Kyle's face as though he had just made the worst mistake + mega-regret of an entire lifetime ... reading as, What have I done? I’m never going see her again.

"Okay," he said brightly, "We can each have 3 and a half headaches.”
-kb, after counting the aspirin for the unth time.

jahh / Script for a practicing artist + an unfinished life.

auspicious / suspicious

i have been accused of not liking blue.
Totally untrue.

i am the first to say we must be friends with all colors.
Though, now that i think of it there is a certain hue of blue that rakes on me like nails on a blackboard. It is that awning, or soda-can blue. Really, not to be confused w/ the potent cobalt that comes out of a tube, there is something different about that...

But, in design work i created a beautifully complete color story for an underwater installation w/out touching blue.

i just thought this was interesting.

98
I sat on the subway heading to who knows. To my right sat a young business associate in a stiff navy-blue pant suit. She looked practically normal. That is, until she pulled a legal sized zip-lock bag out of her brief case. It was stuffed w/ half used lip sticks. i’m not good at the guess-how-many game, but i’m saying it was far too many for a lifetime use of one person.  Rhythmically + staccato-like, she grabbed out a tube, pulled off the cover, screws it up to see the color, ‘tsks’ disgustedly, recaped it + clutches for the next stick. She does this over + over + over + over again, till she has seen + disregarded each color. She’s having an audible imaginary talking-to w/ a peer.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The passengers were soaked by the time we had all queued up the stairs into the cabin. Plane guy hollered, “Everyone throw your luggage in a front seat, then move to the back of the plane + take a seat."

That was the same flight that after finding a spot near a window i looked out over the wing + noticed a pink sticky note flapping on the top do not walk area. i didn’t want to know why. The weather was in turmoil. i kept trying to forget that Noah's rainbow only promised no flood, not no destruction. It’s strange how the many-thoughts-at-once thingy becomes noticeable when we are in emanate worry. i was concerned as to why there were two seats on the left row + only single seats on the right, that the pilot looked under age, why was it that it could be so drafty in such a small airplane, + what about that swarm of something in front of the propellers? 

A white sheet lit w/ a flashlight will render a rush of motley stupefied bugs as they fly onto the fabric. Bugs in headlights. Kind of like hunters paralyzing deer w/ the spot light from their truck. What does this have to do with philosophy? I don’t know. One of those days where every word sounds like a quote if it were just written down. What does this have to do with who's talking? i don’t know that either. i once had a teacher, whose standard annoying quip had been, “I don’t know, find out + tell me.”

-Script for a practicing artist + an unfinished life.

Quan Yin told me in a dream, and not very patiently, 

 

Time has past, you should know these things.

Make room for more WHITE paper + sharp pencils.

78
One of these December nights, I was awakened by the jazz station I listened to for white noise. The man behind the microphone was crying and stuttering. I couldn't understand what was happening. Was it a sleepy fog of twisted sound or a disaster at the radio station? I peered below, over the edge of my loft bed just as Guffrie jumped up from his cot to his 6’6” height.
“Oh, my god...” He reeled with his hands to his head as the TV crawler announced the assassination of John Lennon.

Walking up to Central Park the following Saturday you would have merged with other overwhelmed city dwellers.Talk became hushed tones. A bitter cold was blowing in. At the band shell Imagine played and a memorial silence was obeyed. Afterward, the paper had Yoko saying she had seen John’s face smiling down from the sky. She can see things like that. On the walk home it began to snow and a lightness filled the air.

jahh / Script for a practicing artist + an unfinished life.

53/54
...and as a custom he always took an uncharted street home.
He was entranced with radio games and truck gimmicks. Colored glasses that turned the landscape into a novelty scene. What is most vague? What is most uninteresting? One late afternoon he rode half way across Kansas with a set and clear conscious. He passed that peculiar water tower with obscure graffiti. As it shrank from life size to a spec in his rear view mirror he felt himself mentally backing up.

Plan ‘C’ found him being assistant to an artist. Tedious. He was entrusted to stretch and make ready canvas. This yoga-monkey-man task left him mental time with cunning thoughts. While sizing fabric he would under paint geometric shapes with gesso. Perhaps a large X, stripes, or a single block letter. After the applied final coat of white paint was dry and ready for the artist’s paint, a hint of his mark remained. This was subtle graffiti at its most tasteful.

jahh /  Parallel Chances Tend to Neglect

i saw Ginny's car today. She almost hit me. i’m left trying to figure out what the heads up was about. Do you believe in that strange displaced channeling, when someone passing by says something off hand to you + it goes in deep? Or, vice versa, you just have to say something to a stranger as if someone else inside your head is forcing you? Bypass brave or cordial, you message what this person needs to know, needs to hear.
Well, i do.

“What type of animal is that?”
Ginny was a triple scorpio. The only one i’ve met so far. Known her + knew it, anyway. A breed that would be hard to miss. As it happened our determination took us to see prints from the John Lennon archive that were being sold at a posh gallery downtown. We headed out to take a long lunch break in the name of art. Simply beautiful drawings + lithos had been collected. Eventually, we came to a closed portfolio on a wood rack w/ a sign warning of the erotic material w/in. Always interested in the hidden, Ginny raised an eyebrow cocked her head, looked around + said, “This, we have to see.”

As soon as she cracked open the large folio six people zapped over like magnets to peer over our shoulders. i guess they were waiting for a Ginny to oblige their fear + interest. She flipped through w/ a running commentary.
“Okay ... not offended ... yet ... got it ... i could have done better ... what type of animal is that?”

Who would the Minotaur Apologize to? 

This is a memory circa '90 put down in ... Script for a Practicing Artist and an Unfinished Life. i read this thinking how judgmental it is, which isn't really me. Add too, i'm fairly skittish, + scare easily. But wondering, now, what was really going on then. 

You could live at the Vulcan for a long while, then all of a sudden someone you’d never seen nor ever want to meet would surface. A friend of a friend wanted to introduce us to someone's painting. i believe a false word had got around that we had lots of work for all that asked. Little did they know. + little did they know how picky we were about who we worked w/. Though always eager to cheer someone on, i walked by Lonnie’s side to the other end of the complex w/ an open heart + beginners mind. We entered through the creaking garage door, jumping (with fight or flight) as it slammed closing us in. My thoughts were as murky as the cavernous space. Eyes adjusted, i looked into the rambling studio set up like an art show. We walked past the art w/ wide eyed poker faces. The work was colorless, abstract, sans expressionism + expression. When the dreaded artist pointed saying, “The good stuff is in here.” i mouthed words to Lonnie, ‘I’m not going in there!’ He rolled his eyes to let me know this too will pass so lets get it over w/ sooner than later. We walked into the artist’s private chamber like we were doomed. +, as it turned out, we had good reason. 

Sometimes i suspect we were all left here to unravel each other. Art is subjective, + this fellow is probably a celeb now. It has become a standard joke between us that when you start talking about the size of a piece of artwork, you don’t think highly of it. If the best compliment you can come up w/ is ‘that's a great size for a poster’ then you must think the work isn’t worth looking at any closer. Just too scary. 

When the scene is a Victorian mansion, you should know it’s going to be a horror movie. i tend to carry that backdrop around in my head so it’s accessible at appropriate moments.

133
We were somewhere between San Francisco and our Santa Barbara destination. Your hands full of hose. Looking up in mischievous impatience, you catch my eyes and raise an eyebrow sensing a question.
“...I just never thought I’d see you siphoning gas from a strange car outside a biker bar in the middle of the night...”
“You think I was never a teenager?”

89
It was short walk from the apartment on Union Square to the village sandal shop that was run by Hells Angels. There is nothing more noble than a kneeling Angel as he traces your foot and asks,
“How long do you want the straps?”
I had an idea I wanted them very long, but didn’t know how to say without seeming like it was a lot of trouble. I imagine it was Kyle that broke my indecision by interrupting,
“She wants them to wrap up her legs and around her waist twice.”
The angel tilted his head up with a confused complexion,
“How would that look...”
Kyle pursed his lips, raised an eye brow, turned on one heel and began searching the notice board. The biker lumbered to his feet and embarrassingly asked if they could have the twenty-five bucks in advance.
I still have those simple leather Grecian sandals. In some places they are brittle from sea water and there’s a bit gnawed from Maine rodents that aches my heel when I wear them. But then, every pair of shoes has a story.

All of those Z Z looking guys have the choice of impersonating Santa or Bikers.
And ... I am wondering if, as children, future bikers used the card & clothespin trick on the spokes of their Stingray (with banana seats!) to get the Hog sound they would future fall in love w/ ...

-Being Red Skelton. 

Three memories with Hats:

1. There was usually a group of musicians over for the day or the fortnight blasting looped tapes out the second story window to see the street walkers reactions. These guys, judging by the sounds they crafted, majored in the most compelling + wonderful feedback imaginable. One handsome devil was obsessed w/ Einstein on the Beach at the time. We’d have parties depending on what we wanted to score. For instance; The Hat Party. People invited would know hats were mandatory. Eventually everyone would get drunk + a sea chapeaus would be left behind. Voila. +, if it ever got too weird, i could always crawl into my loft + pretend i didn’t know what was happening. 

 2. i went down to see the opera production director w/ a hat in question pinned together, mocked up to the nth detail. Upon seeing it, he ripped it apart verbally + shredded it literally. Humiliated, i came back up stairs to the craft room where Charles was huddled over a balsa block pining a turban. He glanced at me sideways for a moment + caught the mortified shock on my face w/ the hat draped over my arms in pieces. He offered, Oh, I forgot to tell you he’s in a snit today.  From Charles i learned of the blind nuns at dawn stitch.

 3. Manhattan winters are slap-in-the-face cold. Turning up toward the sun to warm our faces, we walked along planning a trip to the flower mart. We carried three regular coffees from Chock Full of Nuts steaming into the chilly early morning air. Heading down to the Bowery we traversed Union Square where we recognized the huge pile of fabric as Evelyn. She embodied a fashion statement by building a hat ornament day to day. If you had the time, you would notice that she added a bit of this or that to her chapeau everyday until her headpiece became too heavy. She’d have a two day break + then begin the building ritual again. She inhabited a homeless dingy heap moving from this place to Washington Park on quieter days. Kyle + i had been paid in cash for a restaurant installation the day before, so life was good. i casually handed Evelyn a twenty dollar bill + coffee as we passed her in the park. Her frosty breath rose from the lifeless pyre into the crisp air. When she bolted + came chasing after us, we didn’t know if she was in trouble or if we were. 

Movement.

i sit by the fireplace as it flickers highlight + shadow w/ inspirational scenes.

Dana + i had walked to the tip of south Manhattan. Our heads hanging over the cement pier so all we could see is the choppy water as it sparkles as fallen stars. Then, shifts into an animation birds flying upward. This transforms into feathers sifting downward, fitting together in that complicated Escher-like geometric way. i get dizzy + look up to the horizon in time to se the Circle Line Ferry way off turning into the sunlight. The glittering sun hits each flat square pane of glass, sparking a flash, one after another in a kick line routine. As though each passenger were twinkling a bright idea.

Drivers travel on the expressway in the northeast, hi-way in the south, freeway on the west coast.
Riding in a car as a chain of thought.

The crew sat in the back of a Hong Kong taxi. This was 1996. One of us asked, What do you think about the hand-over?

It got real quiet + the cabbie looked around for a hidden mic. i leaned over the front seat and kidded, Hand over, what hand over? Later i realized w/ limited english, he may have thought we were attempting to rob him.

One late afternoon as i dropped letters into a mail box, three nuns in a Rambler stopped by to ask if i was a post man.

Burl Ives drove by in a green VW today. He didn’t look very happy stuffed in there like he was, so i didn’t try to brighten his day by waving hello. It’s great when i see folks that aren’t around any more.

Car memory of college student genré. I'd see them, eight or ten stuffed into a rusty Duster barreling south bound on thirty-eight toward Daytona Beach on spring break. I reckon I was waiting for the day I’d be one of them. By the time I hit graduation age I couldn’t have been farther from their reality.

Inside a repro of Lenny's hall of mirrors.

He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.  -Rainer Maria Rilke

I look in the mirror and say to myself, Can it be you once played Romeo? -Bela Lugosi

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only. -Samuel Butler

Sister + i would sit in the attic w/ the dull winter light glancing in through the mutton barred glass. Staring at each other until we took on another form. So deeply frightening neither could move for fear it may be real. Years later i came across a passage of Dylan Thomas describing the same thing. Mr. Thomas called it Invoking The Devil. i knew immediately what he meant.  

-Script for a Practicing Artist and an Unfinished Life.

3 

The tide had just gone out. Walking down to the shore i noticed a gorgeous, colossal sand castle someone was obviously living in. Taking a self guided tour i found it had been designed + outfitted by sculpting sand complete w/ overhead lights down to the tile + fixtures in the bathroom. The designer was dashing about rearranging sand that had drooped + shifted from the ocean seeping in. i asked her why the place was so heavily decorated, when the tide moves + removes things daily. She explained that the owners wanted to learn the art of letting go, only slowly.

i hiked under a full moon along the beach, + lay down for a nap near the sandy villa at dawn. The sun was awhile above the horizon when the tide awoke me by sloshing my toes. i looked over in time to see the great mound of sand crumble nobly into the sea. A moment later the face of the woman appeared behind the huge pile, as she raised a shovel + prepared to rebuild.

You’d have to know me better, but this dream seems appropriate just now.

-Retreating Angel

Traffic conditions.
Conditions for traffic.
You need a lot of cars.
You need too little road.
You need loss of time.
You need a driver fishing for a cd on the floor of the truck, someone opening a pack of Fig Nutons, someone who can‘t put down a book, or a cell phone, etc...
You need at least three thoughts, not on driving, for each behind the wheeler.

21
Driving to me is about watching things go by, not necessarily about watching where I’m going.
Chloe notices that, The blue mountains are closest to the sky. As we do because we can, on another level i was thinking of how painterly the clouds seem. But if painted this haphazard on canvas it would look contrived.

...And thinking about when to paint the return. What if the return is already painted another color + thus the returns begin to argue over which is the real return? Return to forever? Return from where? This implies that we got there safely. After tagging the wall do we turn + head back?

...And, also regretting not being able to write something down, since I was already reading while I was driving.

‘Drew’s voice wafts into the front seat. He heralds seriously to Chloe how it is going to be.
Well, I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that the Earth is going to blow up. The good news is that we’re all going to be gone.
Always eager to up the wager, Chloe responds, Yea, well, I learned how to speak Spanish today. I can say corn! Cornalito!
I am so over you, Chloe! ‘Drew blasted, frustrated at her lack of obeisance.

She hailed a cab by using obscure hand gestures.

She sits in the back as the cabbie zooms by a costume shop named Just Decide. A restaurant called Food. A leather place run by Hell’s Angels that touted a teetering lineup of hogs on the front sidewalk. Tiny, the tallest Angel, wore boots covered w/ retablos, buckles + buttons. Scraps scavenged from the shoes he repaired. This layer, in turn, was covered w/ the dust of his exploits. She saw memories in every shop, on every corner, every greasy spoon offered a fleeting tease of an image, color, or conversation, until the collective experiences blurred + flew by as a giddy roller coaster in suspended animation.

A painted tin votive rested on her kitchen altar. It was her attempt at visual gratitude to those who have interceded on her behalf. When she half prayed, she also half wondered if this ex-votos stuff was effective.

This was indeed a traffic meander, but it’s what I do.

-from a WIP book image, above: Chance Neglected

174
Glancing back to photos from this time i looked poetic.

It certain chapters of my life it has helped me to turn the page by exiting the country. i do love packing up + leaving. There isn’t a better remedy than seeing my puny life on the other side of the world to put things into perspective. Long distance vision will anchor on what is amuck.

i broke the bit this time by going to Central America. First leg of the trip included a white knuckle flight from San Francisco to New Orleans. The pilot announced that we were in the eye of the storm + would he turn the plane around + have another try at heading it off. The pilgrims were getting drunk in their seats w/ the complimented hospitality that says give ’em free booze + they won’t realize what's happening. Every time the plane pitched + hawed the clients whooped yah-hoo as though they were riding the most exciting roller coaster EVER. In sober distraught my silent mantra went on uninterrupted. We are all going to die.

For me, air travel is too close to astral flight. i spin out easily, so i ground myself at the first feeling of deliverance. When sentenced to a mandatory air transit i  usually end up thinking, The pilot is going extremely too fast!

No dare devil me in the sky at this time or ever.

i have thought, though, being a trapeze artist would be a real kick. It would be fun to wake up one morning + be on a flying team. But i’m certainly not willing to train for years + years to be able to do it.

175
Layover in the Nicaraguan wilderness.

We were waiting for the six seater to drift over the hills + collect the next group to be flown into Costa Rica. Fuselage lined both sides of the rough short rural landing strip. i remember looking hard + imagining that THAT piece of metal was still smoking! We were several people w/ diverse accents. Someone casually mentioned the most beautiful beach in the world. Then each in turn told of their sanctuary. Very specific places, on the other side of the world, on the fifty-five degree parallel, south of Bombay, second sand arch on the left. People pulled out paper pads + took down obscure directions to hideaways as though they were going to travel there next week. The scene had all the flavor of a group of Dead Heads scribbling down concert notes.

Travel is a bug that, once bitten, becomes an addiction.

from -Metta / Loving-Kindness illuminated

First names i'm fairly good at knowing. Last names need to be indisputably visual. i have made it my business, throughout life, not to know anyone. i'm not attesting to anti-socialism, but to my non-socialization. i don’t consider myself naive, as i am probably in the second half of my life. But it has only been recently realized one could talk to strangers + they would decently talk back. i had seen this done, my mother being a champ. She would get off the phone after 20 minutes of conversation just to say it was the wrong number. But i had always imagined if i talked to an unknown someone they'd get a far off look in their eyes as though they were in State Fair,  start singing, turn + walk away. The rules change the reaches, as Le Guin says.

It is good to remember ... all is fleeting.

87 

The apartment's kitchen was situated inside what used to be a walk-in closet. The Fridge door opened only half way, as it was wedged in + the stove edged out of the door frame. If there had not been a barred window, making it seem expansive as you looked out over the gray rooftops, it would have seemed you were cooking in a closet. We worked okay, side by side Kyle + i. Since he was so much taller than me we used different elbow space.

He had to have that credenza. That damn piece of furniture. We hauled it 16 blocks uptown from the salvation army. This huge buffet counter thingy, resembling a moose — as long as a coffin, heavy + on high spindly legs. you know, that thing from th e'50s that store china + linen for fine dining. We trudged it, stumbling, having to stop every 20 feet or so. i remember someone passing with the quip, Why don’t you put a handle on the top to carry it? To the cop we pretend it wasn't ours. (What credenza?) When it got so late we discussed using it for an overnight bunk bed on the street. We fibbed to the door-man by saying a friend had won it. Up the freight elevator ... i'm reckoning it’s in that apartment on 208 W 23rd street today still. It would be fun to know. i carved a note on the outside back of the drawer for posterity.

165 It was requisite to see Niagara falls on our road trip. We ended up hitting the state line in the middle of the night + all the fancy lights had been shut down. We smuggled W.S.Trax into Canada. By that time she was very use to ‘lie still’ on the floor in the laundry bag. After seeing the big deal we walked up to the part where the water was calmer + belied no threat. It seemed like an nice swim around. i thought how easy it would be if you had a death wish to ease yourself into that lovely water. Fifty feet along the drift you’d get caught up in the here after. It’s not something you’d be able to change your mind about. You’d need to have set your resolve. 

Last night, lying in bed, i began thinking how real that danger would be if one of the children slipped through the space between the grass + cement into that water for a little swim. The kind of realization that makes your heart race even though the danger is ten thousand miles away + ten years past. i had to mentally reduce Niagara to a harmless puddle to get back to sleep.

i often wake up + not know where i am. i don’t recognize the orientation of the room. The window being THERE, the door THERE.  But some inner prompting lets me to know. It doesn't make it sunny to know this is simply the human condition + limitation working.

from -Script For a Practicing Artist + an Unfinished Life.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.  -Mark Twain