Monday, February 15, 2010

architecture of people.

i made the most exquisite looking latte today. soy milk is good milk, but most especially for decorating purposes.

P tells me that she's taking a class about the history of the middle east. i know her so well, & yet sometimes, when i ask her how she's been, she's so taken aback, & then so pleased, that i even bothered to ask her such a question. i think she's one of my favorite regulars. the wise world traveler. a lonely woman who seems so okay with being lonely. if i do end up alone in this lifetime, i hope i can be as accepting and independent as she seems to be.

i want to write about the woodshop men. next door is a wood shop, a part of the architecture firm. it's the rough & tough, hands-on part, where the workers wear flannel shirts and paint stained blue jeans, work boots and hats in this cold. they are the ones with the occasional earring, the tattoos peeking out beneath their rolled up sleeves, the wiry beards, the leathery, sunned skin. these are the ones that use their hands and make things happen - they turn the things on paper into three-dimensional reality.
i don't know them by name. there is the one with the white beard, who left a $20 bill in the tip jar around Christmas. There is the one who orders a muffin with his coffee. there is the one with the earring and the soft eyes, the one who is jolly and calls me a 'cutie' in a fatherly sort of way, and then there is my favorite one: the one who shaves his head bald until it shines, who tells me about his three daughters, & i tell him i have two sisters, & i can tell he cares for them so much because i pour black dark roast into a makeshift clay creation mug, clearly created by a young girl. he has an earring as well, wears moccasins on occasion, & i can tell he's the type that puts his feet up on the table and doesn't take things too seriously. he's handsome, & i can get away with calling him 'dude.'

they seem so enduring. so simple. scratched up, yet unscathed.

***

"The knowledge of impermanence that haunts our days is their very fragrance."

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Saturday night & Chicago dreams.

i keep on telling myself that someday, everything will make sense. but i've finally realized that no, it won't,
& all we'll have are memories of standing in puddles,
my hair strung along my forehead that you almost
touched. fog, clinging to my coffee breath,
violin strings in the backs of our minds,
you sipping your peppermint tea in the rain.

one year later, i'll scrub counter tops & feel
my way through icy basements
& dream about chicago in all its glory,
pouring coffee & sweeping dust
into a bank account

& at home on saturday night,
i'll find two dead flies lying beneath a lamp
their small bodies fragile & overturned,

dead to the world, i'll stare
at them for hours on a saturday night.
this is reality.

i'll leave the light on
dream of chicago & violin strings & the places we
could have gone.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3azDdaFlu0



[Can I call you mine.]

this song got stuck on repeat while i was driving. i love when that happens. and when i can see the entire night sky from certain parts of the highway, and just driving and driving and driving, and thinking but not thinking. meditating.

The Things We Leave Behind

today at work, in the office of white paper stacks to the ceiling
i didn't even notice how the amaryllis flower in the window
right in front,
right there in front of my face had
fully blossomed and when i did noticed
it made my heart leap, as if startled by someone
who'd crept up on me cruelly.

and yet right away i had noticed
at the bottom of the nearby trash can the
sticky note stuck there, neatly
in green pen, a name, "allison"
a group of flowering ink surrounding her
at the bottom of a trash can
a piece of her once life tucked away, discarded

and we walk into each day, opening our eyes
to remember in the dark morning
that it was not a nightmare and
proceed forward, step by mechanical step
to bury ourselves among the
piles of white paper, ignoring
the amaryllis and how she used to stand on this
orange carpeting, and pretending
that we won't Go too, and that
they didn't have to tape that sign over their doorway
to keep the reporters out.

sticking, on the bottoms of trash cans,
the things that actually happened.

***

she is scattered all over that office. on the sticky notes, on pieces of old yellow paper - notes to her mother. her picture on her mother's desk. on the covers of those books she'd designed that summer.

when we sat there side by side that summer, chatting and working, writing and doodling, we didn't know that half a year later, i'd be reading her obituary in that same seat, surrounded by her old and beautiful doodles still clinging neatly to the walls.

i still get chills to the bone. i am so sad for them.