at the tip of fingers

who to call on among the smoke and the chatter. unless you pray a mouth of sulphur, tongue the particle in laced lung and kiss the corners around you. at every turn, you call it down with your lips. at every bead of smog, touch a piece of your body to the edge of corners and breathe in. breathe in and give it with both hands. give it until you can't chant any louder. give it until the standard oil lifts, melts and you strain your chin to the blackened sky. you forgive the streams of steam in the air. steam, you say out loud. that's what you tell yourself it is. you say it's just cold.

stuck

if you stand in the middle of anything for too long, it becomes a vortex.

the middle of a crowd, or a lake. or the middle of your own room. the middle of a friend's face, or a fire escape. the middle of the street, the cars pick up circular speed. the middle of the space between you and the distant watchtower.

or yourself. i keep trying to shift away from the center of my own private boxes. i am trying to step outside myself and i keep winding up back in the same position. try to leave the area, and the air rides with me in the backseat. try to throw salt in the water, and it keeps sliding off into freshwater. it's never enough. never further enough outside my self to matter for anything. like in those movies you think, if you could just get out of the town, you'd be safe. the people you love would be safe.

but there's a blob of the monster on your tires. or the stalker is in your trunk. and the stalker is you. you take with you when you go.

i am standing still in one place where i've always been standing and i am wondering if everyone else is this dizzy.

snow again.

i really get defensive about the snow. i don't like people talking bad about it. we live in the midwest, between oceans. i believe some of us have forgotten what that means about our seasons - and our planet.

remember the great lakes?

we are supposed to be the great basin where water swirls and culls and gathers. we are supposed to sit and funnel so the melt can go bleed out into the mass of water. this is where we amass. we are faceless flutter and we are supposed to sit here under little snowy hourglasses: and tick ticking. and the snow piling, like the rain slushing down, and this is how it should be. it's where we live.

the rain, the snow, the sleet, the hail. it's like the post office. delivers water, no matter the weather.

eventually, we leak out into the soil, into the seas. but for now, we just gather. and slush. and fill crevices, and gather. we are, if you like, a congregation of water.

amen.

and yes, i know it's hard to drive around through a funnel. all pushed up in the middle of the road, and bad gutters, and no salt. i know. and yes, i know it's too quiet in the middle of a gathering of mush, all cold, can't hang out at campus martius.

i know. i know.

but i believe there is something to what people verbalize in those castoff wishes. i think there is something to the things we speak out loud. "i wish it would stop snowing." "i wish it would go away". well....

it is going away. more and more every year. and that's not a good thing. we are supposed to have more snow than this. it's supposed to much worse. our lakes are supposed to be fuller. our soil is supposed to be wetter.

it's winter. so let's get zin about this shit.

it is time, my friends. to close your eyes and hold your breath. it's time to spend the morning drawing. make cocoa. and when you have to go out, support your lakes. pull on your boots and pull on a smile.

Take a wrong turn ...

Getting lost in Detroit is never a bad idea. The wrong turn will lead you down a street that feels like an alley and an alley that feels like someone's back yard.

There is always someone alone walking. You wonder where they're walking off to. Sometimes you want to stop and ask them. Alot of times they don't have anything with them. They are not in a rush.

I wonder about people's stories. I tend to think I might be disappointed if I asked. That it they tell me they are headed off to their girl's house after I've concocted a sweet little tale about them getting off the Greyhound in the wrong city cause they overslept through Cleveland and figured since they were here they'd go to the Casino, that somehow that speaks poorly of their character. I know that's fucked up.

... and for the record: yes, in case you're wondering, if I imagined he was headed off to his girlfriend's house after a long day at work, and didn't have a car, so walked all the way from downtown, I'd be intensely disappointed if he told me he just off a Greyhound in the wrong town.
I took the wrong train to Bloomington a few months ago. I thought I could visit Indiana University in Bloomington, IL apparently. Fortunately, the cute redhead sitting next to me let me know I on the wrong train before it took off. Unfortunately, he did not invite me to stay on the train and keep going wherever he was going, since I suppose he thought that would have been in bad form, even though we were having great chemistry.

I have wound up staying in the wrong train stop, or the last bus stop, or the only stop at that time of night outta' somewhere else. That's how I moved to Chicago. It was a bad layover that lasted. and lasted.

Anyway, got lost in Detroit tonight, looking for my boss' house. Turned around in bank parking lots, and empty storefront byways. Watched the snow swirl and pile up like little white blowflies. Made it home just in time to catch the rain on my tongue.

Here's a mildly, remotely related interview my friend did. Notice the awe over the patch of black in the middle of the street, like it really looks like anything:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzUEim3nwnk

New Year's ... Resolve...n such

first, the ephemeral:

may this year give me courage. again. it seems i have to start some things all over. sometimes you forget what you have taught yourself. you forget the simple. you forget that desire is nothing more than passing water like rain and that it always falls. and you forget what it means to be brave. that bravery carries with it all the weight of a body clad in armor.

and it is lonely. most often. there is no one else to sit with you for very long, there inside your head. mostly bravey is about battling the edges of your own sharp convictions. all the things you tell yourself you're up against. so may this year come with some new found tools. some resoureces you didn't know you were working with, or have simply forgotten were in your shed.

and now. the specific.

1. i have been watching the door for a knocker. not a person, but a ghost. i have been listening to the air to see if someone was gonna' come fix my spine, but that hasn't happened. and it may not. i need to stretch more.

2. sometimes i want to pick up the phone and call my mother. usually, when i think of something like how she used to like plain potato chips. now i crave chips with no frills. the thing about chips is they're supposed to be comfort food. they're not supposed to turn your mouth into a pillar of salt or set it on fire or remind you of pizza or the great blue sea.

they're just supposed to crunch. that's their only job. to crunch.

3. my number one resolution this year is to get my book published. that's really it. everything else is negotiable. i think i did a pretty good job with my 13 number long list last year, even though i don't remember what was on the list for the most part. i think controlling my anger was one of them, practice some ol' zen type shit. pretty sure. i think i did alright. everyone is still standing.

4. alright i just thought of some more. i need to read more history. particularly, local history.

5. i resolve to look at the Polish language. i need to see what the hell i'm getting myself into here.

6. my father was a good man. a good father. and i love him. and i miss him.

Happy New Year.