Leaving the Internet behind

Well, we're off the grid for a couple of days, which leaves me with only a short period of time to post something epically intelligent.....


This video, courtesy of a Ms. Nesmith status update is an attempt to redeem last night's blog. I now love this song.



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Obligatory DFW quote:
The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do?

Now obligatory G.K. Chesteron quote:

"I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

I occasionally write literary fiction as well.

ONE PERSON AWAY FROM YOU

Last night, I decided to become proactive. The cable had gone out and I was staring at the reflection of the lamp on the screen. I turned off the stereo, which had been playing Joan Baez for weeks, and put three handfuls of food in Oscar’s tank. I decided it was time I visited you in New York. Even from a hundred miles away, I could tell you were excited. Your new girlfriend was not going to like it. But she could become a story we’d tell our children on a camping trip— ribbons of fire that lick the dark, burnt s’mores, sticky fingers—about how we’d almost lost each other.
I watched Oscar swimming through the food above blue pebbles. It seems as though he will swim forever—small gills, fanning out to catch water—in his lonely universe of glass. I lay in bed touching myself absently, and someone started coming up the fire escape towards our apartment. I imagined that it was you, that I could hear your dress shoes, heavy against the grates. When you arrived, we’d have wild sex with the lights on; after, we’d lie awake and reflect on the aesthetics of a backlit clavicle and the island of shadow in the crease where hip meets waist.

You’d outline my body with your fingertips, gently sliding your calloused hands across my back, goose bumps rising to meet you. You’d nibble at my ear and whisper, “I’d forgotten how beautiful you are.”

You wouldn’t roll away from me and say, “No, like this. Like this,” holding yourself between your hands.

At the end, your near perfect body would be spread across the smooth sheets, the firm line of your calves lit by a small bedside lamp. I’d wait until your chest was rising and falling, and we’d forgotten the miles of cement you put between us. I’d whisper, “I forgive you.”

And even though it turned out to be no one on the stairs, it was only one person away from being you.