moths

When you’re thinking you’re not having a thought unless you can write it down. If you have a thought but then you cannot write it down you are not having a thought. The thing that seems to be happening in your brain is like what happens when you check a potato for electricity – the potato will have electricity but the potato is not thinking, nor is it thinking about whether or not it is thinking. This line of reasoning will get us nowhere. Check your head for electricity and there will be electricity. Will there be enough electricity to kill a man? No, but perhaps enough to kill a moth that decides to alight within. The head can have moths. Maybe what you feel when you wonder if you’re thinking but you’re not thinking because you can’t write it down, is moths. The powder falling off with the flap of their wings. Their eyes on those flimsy stalks flickering left and flickering right. Write it down, and then you will be thinking, you will have a thought. The shape that remains when you lift their bodies from the dust is the character of the first letter.

the D-minor mood

"Impetuous as if conquering territory ...gravitas with moments of reverie..."

There are a few lies every singer tells at an audition. Most common is the imagined illness: a throat over-lined with phlegm, a nasal passage conquered by the prickles of oncoming sinusitis, an accidentally ingested grape leaf stuck in the esophagus (not an illness, but still, an unfortunate sort of vocal ailment). They get onto the stage and put their hand to their chest and cough, expelling dry air into the space, looking at the accompanist (tempo? key?) shuffle their feet to the left, to the right, put their hands into the folds of their long skirts, their trouser pants, their mossy sweaters, and breathe. They are not like dancers, who pull their legs up and their arms out, rippling the muscles they plan to show. Their talent does not sit as a golden mantle on their bodies. Some beautiful, some with faces like depressed Chihuahuas, some slouching, some twitching their noses as if they can smell the comments you will think before you make them. Whatever lives in their throat is invisible, even if it speaks to them. The high F is there today, sitting on its shelf, simply reach up and throw it over.

Do they dream of this? If they do, there’s no romance there. No maestro in violet cloaks rushing to his feet to wave a wand and command the performance. No chirping birdsound to score the moment. 

the sky fell

And there were two inches of mussed gray ice on the ground as you heard the sound of rocks thrown down the gutter. The roof of the house across the street flew into the air and seemed to hover before it drifted down and you realized it was actually falling when it came to rest on your own front stoop. Crash, bang.

It's not that anything ever changed around you. The same paper bag that came across your face whose crinkled brown surface you condemned for the flecks of dirt you thought you tasted as it passed and seemed only to indicate disintegration went softly to the floor and the next day you walked by it and thought of the family of ants that must be living in its corners. You slipped in the ice and when the salt pressed into your cheek you wondered if you'd seasoned the soup. The leaves finally dipped red.