Food stamp cuts and other things we don't like about poor people

            I’m not a big fan of voices in the wilderness, crying out for Lord only knows what. I understand that no manna from heaven will be falling any time soon. And yet, even though a scant few people read this blog, why the fu-k are we cutting food stamps? Why is it a viable or tenable opinion to have that we should further be disenfranchising poor people? Why do people have this opinion? I know that the Atlantic and any number of other outlets are probably writing up short stories that confirm why people develop the biases that they have, education, social class, birth order, whatever, but seriously, why is being an as-hole to poor people a tenable position for a party to take? Why is it plausible for the other party of “liberals” to accept any cuts?

            I’m the type of person who doesn’t want to get into the nitty gritty of monetary policy, which is a weakness, yes. However, I’m interested in the latent thoughts that are expressed when people do things like advocate for cutting funding to the less fortunate. Is it because they believe that everyone in the world is created equal, given the same chance, endowed by the creator or the natural order of things with the same brain and four limbs with which to hew their way through the jungle of the world. That has, for the majority of human history, been pretty much a bullshi- argument that blatantly ignores the long scope of history, which points to things like your parent’s social class, the availability of a good education, a social safety net, encouragement to pursue goals etc. To make the argument that we’re all born into the exact same situation, in less you’re making it from religious perspective and relying on C.S. Lewis to get you through some of the wonkier parts, is to be putting for an argument rooted in ignoring human history. We are not, economically, health wise, opportunity wise, created equal.

            Strangely, that idea seems to have taken root in small portions of Christianity where you’d think the proliferation of Biblical and Christ given commands to aid the poor and sick would have made it impossible to bear.  And yet, bringing up an idea of universal health care, or suggesting that poor people don’t only remain poor because they lack get up and go can get you in arguments with people. It turns out that your health and well-being are only partially in your control. Catastrophic accidents, or routine blood work that turns out to be cancer can actually turn your life upside down, and I think we owe it to other people to help bear that cost. We are 32^nd in quality of care and 1^st in expense. Why is that the case? Oh, because we’re all happy with our current health plans? Too damn bad. I’m sure the feudal lords were happy pouring pitch down on the poor that doesn’t make their position morally defensible. It just makes them selfish.

            And I suppose that’s where my real root irritation with cutting aid to very poor people lies: it’s selfish. We, and I say we, because I am absolutely including myself in the imperfect here, find it more convenient to worry about our own health and well-being and our close family members, (yay biologically adaptive) than those of other people in the world, who are, you know, other. My irritation is first, self-directed, but I suppose I’m irritated writ large as well. If you’re a secular humanist then you should care about everyone getting good access to services. If you’re a good Christian who honestly believes that people can be redeemed you should desire their health and nutritional needs are being met.

We are not good Christians, nor good secular humanists though. We are tribal sob’s who can’t see past the ends of our noses. I have a gd degree in creative writing for shi- sake. I’m guilty. But I think I just need to write down for once that it irritates me. It irritates the hell out of me. We, and I’m talking the United States here, still spends 10x more than the next nation in defense spending, and yet we’re unable to continue to offer aid to people who need it. Why? Well, capitalism. Because we somehow believe that if we all just work hard enough, have enough ideas and connections that everything will work out, or could work out, and so we’re willing to continue living in an increasingly stratified system in which, for the first time in our history, more than half the members of Congress are millionaires.

The point is, stop cutting food stamps or trying to pretend like universal health care is some communist system of government. Stop pretending like higher tax rates that start to even out some of the discrepancies in wages are geared towards ruining the world and hurting job creators. Stop pretending like having a functional minimum wage is a bad idea. Start trying to think of ways to enfranchise people, to fight back against systems like globalization that just keep shipping jobs to countries for lower prices won’t create a long term solution for our economy or be good for the world in general, maybe all content shouldn’t be free (Jared Lainer). Let’s be creative and transformative rather than reactionary. Rant ended. Conscience discharged. I’m going to write a poem about a snowflake now. 

Some things you already know about me

I keep telling you that I’m lonely; and you keep believing it, as if anything I’ve ever  said is true. In a month or so I plan on moving to Florence. I’ll live up in the hills near where Henry James did when he was doing his writing. I’m going to live alone, or maybe I’ll keep a cat, and I’ll learn to draw, and record his movements with a sketch pad, batting at a piece of light, or curling up in the base of a misshapen window. 

I intend to be alone, far, far away from everyone I’ve ever known. I’m going to read everything. I’m going to develop an encyclopedic knowledge of flaura and fauna of the late Jurassic period and then write a play about dinosaurs. I’m going to take up sailing, and turn my small house into a boat, and paddle through the clouds.

You can see that I’m not doing any of these things from your seat across the table, eyebrows raised just so What I’m really best at is lying to myself—stretching the truth until one day dissolves into another—capsules in water. I believe the essential difference between us is that you see life as a construction project, and I see it as a piece of art. In the mornings, I often feel that I am wrong about everything, and I slide across the bed and touch your cold feet. In the evenings, if I pay close enough attention, I can feel how fast the world is spinning and how still I am in comparison. I want to hurtle through space. I want to buy a cat and live in Florence, but you already knew that about me. Everyone knows that about me. 

If I had made the skies

If I had made the stars, laid out the moons, the planets, the suns, the galaxies, carved a niche from nothingness, I would have done it differently. If the firmaments were in my care, in the beginning, they would be brighter. How senseless it is, to have such glories obscured by the lights of a city. Certainly, were I given such a prestigious position, I’d have seen them coming. Although, to speak about time to IT that exists outside of time is to necessarily create confusion. How would time unfold to such a being?

For some reason, I keep conceiving of history from that distance as appearing on a kaleidoscope. A magical tube where the Creator can rest his, debatably, benevolent gaze and watch Brontosaurus lopping off whole tops of trees while above, spins  a Neanderthal, carving a picture of a man with a bison’s head into stone, and underneath that, spinning brightly, is our future whatever that might entail.

And when the Supreme Being sits back from the kaleidoscope, takes stock of the gin, and ponders what it means to live outside of time, if indeed, one who exists outside of time can be said to exist at all, I’d take a paint brush from It’s right pocket and make the red stars brighter, I’d change the orbits of planets and brighten stars that have been around for thousands of years. I’d change the orbits of things, send them smashing into one another, then collecting their bits and pieces and constructing a mosaic to hang on the dark side of the moon.

If I had been given license to lay out the stars, you would have known that I was here. You would not ever have had to walk out on a winter night, trees sheathed in ice, to ask the heavens why and wherefore, and if I existed. You’d know by how bright I mad the stars, how low I hung the moon.

                                                Such, Such will be the days

                Thinking ahead on being fifty-five, it’s strange to muse on the sorts of things that I’m doing. In the early evenings, I’ve noticed that I spend a lot of time in the garden. I kneel frequently, and prune half-heartedly at the branches of a blueberry bush and the knobby limbs of an orange tree, dusted by cobwebs. What I do, now that I’m fifty-five, is sit outside in the early evening gathering in the warmth and the light as if I’m photosynthesizing.

                It’s hard to remember sometimes, what I will be like when I’m fifty five. The memories are hazy, indistinct. It’s hard to recall the future, since it hasn’t happened yet. I appear to have moved somewhere warmer if the citrus is any sort of sign. A number of people that I know now have passed from this life into the next, or into the dirt, if you’re so inclined.

                That summer, I will turn fifty-five, there will be a party thrown in my honor. Many of the people will drink beer, and I’ll grill, though it looks like I still don’t like beer when I’m fifty-five and am drinking wine from a small plastic cup. It seems cavalier, or so I’ve been told, to write a memoir at such a young age, but what if I did this instead? What if I wrote a memoir of a fifty-five year old who didn’t yet exist, but had existed, following the garden of forking paths in a way that I could comprehend. Would that qualify as less hubristic?

When I am fifty-five I see that the dirt beneath my fingernails does not bother me as much. It appears that I am still shedding the cold that I’ve been wearing out here for years. In the dimming of the light, a nut hatch sings and a woodpecker hammers away in the distance. What a strange memory, this picture of the future makes. 

Before the world ends

The evening was structured like this after you left: picked up a bottle of wine and uncorked.
Drank.
Made up a story about the mice that are scratching along the floorboards.
Talked for a while with someone I used to know about the weather in Portland.
Drank.
Wrote a brief poem about a raven that I'd seen standing on a thin strip of telephone wire
Drank.
Contemplated the chances that an asteroid would one day strike the earth, ending it all.
Drank.
If it was my last night, and I had to go. I think I'd have supper early, and open all the blinds to gather in the last of the light.
Drank.
I'd want to catch the sunset--purple behind the dark shapes of trees.
Drank
In the evening, we'd play cards, and I'd cheat savagely because I love to win. I love to win at things like cards more than other people love their dogs. I get flushed in the cheeks, and I hide cards up my sleeve.
Drank.
Drank
After cards, I'd proffer sex, which is a way to pass time.
Drink.
In the darkness, I'd start to wish for light, and we'd see a small white blur, slipping across the horizon, eliding our dreams.
Drink.
Would we, who have spent our lives curled in front of screens step outside for these final moments? Or would we secretly wish that we could sit inside, watching it all unfold from a distance.
Drink.
This is the kind of time when you'll think about all of the people you loved, the cities you've visited, and you'll start to wonder why you spent so much of your life worrying about anything else.
Drink.
For a flicker, as it grows, monolithic and silver on the horizon, we'll wonder if this too shall pass.
Drink.
If we had to do it all over again, I'd spend the evening reading Ecclesiastes with you. Later, we'd stand out on the patches of snow, loving the people we've suddenly become. 

When I was a child I raced cars

                One of the most irritable things about being me, whatever me entails, is how easily distracted I can be. I am often doing something, or nothing depending on your perspective, some online quiz to see which character I am from the Little Mermaid, (the old witch), which irritates me as I’m doing it. How can this be? I wonder if someone has posted an interesting picture of their cat on Instagram? Scanning…nothing. I’ll check again in thirty seconds. I’ll check again in thirty seconds could be a mantra for my spare time.

                I read somewhere that mindfulness breathing is an excellent way of increasing your ability to pay attention. Just focus on the breath. Breathe in, breathe out. Nothing but the breath. (I wonder who Michigan is going to start at the four spot next year if Robinson goes pro? I wonder what she meant by that? Maybe something, maybe nothing? I really need to cut my fingernails, but I can never remember to do it after I get out of the shower, which is really when it’s optimal. Woops. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. (I wonder if its been two minutes yet? Man, two minutes is an eternity, or sometimes it can fly right by. I’m so tired right now….sleep). The problem with mindfulness breathing is that I either a) do it incorrectly, or b) fall asleep. Mind you, pun intended, I sleep like a babe.

                The problem, if problem indeed it is, is that I don’t know what I’m supposed to be focusing on? Art, religion, people, the Olympics, NBA basketball, the stock prices of Royal Dutch Shell, Syria, nation building in Iraq, China, climate change? I suppose the answer is everything, which is both a dilettante’s delight and an honest person’s frustration. I walk down streets, cobwebbed in light. I rap on doors with golden knockers, made in the shape of lions. Most people aren’t home. And when I am invited in to the warmth and the light, admiring the cedar beams that line the roof their small abode, the people have nothing to tell me. We sit in our chairs and trade stories about the weather. After coffee and cookies, the grandmother takes out a shawl and begins knitting. I take my cue, thank them for the meal and wander back into the night, looking for other doors, other rooms.

                When I was four, I used to sit at the top of my driveway and roll hot wheels down towards the gutter. Mind you, I did not push the Hot Wheels. Rather, I carefully placed them at the top of the driveway, holding them perfectly still and perfectly straight with my skilled fingers. When I removed my fingers from the two sides the cars rolled down the driveway entirely under their own power. Many of the cars were imperfect, never coming close to reaching the finish line, the gutter. In general, it didn’t matter what the car looked like, though vans were a bit top heavy and often toppled over. Race cars were often as useless as station wagons when it came to navigating the uneven terrain of our driveway, thin cracks, larger cracks designed to aid the flow of water from our drainpipe. I remember one car in particular: a sheriff’s car, janitorial blue, though faded on the hood and passenger sides from overuse. One of the wheels was slightly dented and had the habit of locking up when the car was released, causing it to travel a few feet before abruptly turning to the right, making a U-turn of destruction into the other cars, who I generally tried to avoid when I released a new one.  

                The difficulty with attaining the gutter was not only a matter of obstacles, but the design of the driveway, which sloped sharply at the top but who’s incline flattened out rather quickly after the cars crossed the halfway point, which involved hopping over one of the large concrete expansion joints without losing momentum or getting off track or heading west as opposed to south.  And, in order to reach the gutter, they’d have to have sufficient speed in order to coast across the hot, flat sidewalk stone that stood between them and glory. I had forty cars or so, and I’d spend hours sitting in the front yard, legs stretched in front of me, in the dappled light cast by a crab apple tree, putting the cars through the paces. The thing about the sheriff’s car is that sometimes it would get hung up as it was making its abrupt turn, and would wind up careening down the driveway in reverse, which it was much more effective at,  before its misaligned wheels would catch, sending it spinning in the opposite direction, sideswiping and rear ending the cars that had stalled out along the way.

                The summers in the valley were white hot. It was the sort of place where you could reasonably fry an egg. I don’t remember being lonely as a child. Do you? Does anyone? I don’t remember being bored or distracted. I suppose the key word in all of this is “remember.” I remember very little. But I do remember this: one day I brought home a small black car with orange flames streaking its driver and passenger doors. And every time, or damn near every time I lined that car up it shot, like a guided missile, like a precision piece of German manufacturing, down the driveway, making a beeline for the gutter. And, in so doing, making the other cars, many of which I’d had for years, loved and treasured for their inadequacies because it was shared by all my cars, now obsolete.

                I’m sure that my memory is wrong here, but I think I gave up sending cars down the driveway a month or two after I purchased the little black car with orange flames. Perhaps it was because the long, hot days of summer were over, and I went off to kindergarten. Or perhaps it’s that the small black car took the fun out of the game. The strange thing is, and maybe this is all I’ve been trying to say, that I don’t remember the black car that raced down the driveway as my favorite. No. I remember that blue sheriff’s car, trying gamely, forward, backward, sideways, smashing into other cars, trying like some wounded bird in a dream of flight, to make its way down the driveway, to its own version of heaven. That particular car never made it down to the gutter, but what fond memories, what warm, sweet afternoons I spent watching it try. 

I made you this mix tape for Valentine's Day

If all I had to tell you about who I am was a few songs from the 90s, these are the things I would share with you. Afterwards, we could be Valentine’s.

To Be With You by Mr. Big

I structured this like every mix tape in the history of the world, making my intentions clear right from the start. I want to be with you. In part because it’s Valentine’s Day, and in part because this song by Mr. Big makes anyone who hears it want to take up dating, even if they’ve sworn it off for the year or the decade, or the lifetime or whatever. Because, “Why be alone, when we can be together baby?” We’ll take a cruise to Alaska to see the northern lights and get drunk midday on fruity drinks and dance poorly to poorly played music.

Round Here by Counting Crows

Okay, now that we’ve to the preliminaries of the two of us being together, let’s “step out the front door like a ghost into a fog where no one notices a contrast to white on white.” Look, if all I have to express myself is the vehicle of music recorded in the 1990’s I’m using Round Here every time. I love jumping up and down and singing along to Mr. Jones in bars to this day, but this is the song that best captured things for me. Maybe it’s because teens often commit suicide, maybe it’s because Adam Duritz makes legitimate attempts at constructing artistically rendered lines, but this song has always made a part of my soul weep, or at least prod at the question of life.

What a Good Boy by Barenaked Ladies

I briefly got off the topic of the two of us being together. The beauty of this song is that it’s going to remind us of our birth. And, as any lover knows, the great strangeness is how long you usually go without ever knowing that you were meant for each other. How is it possible that two souls that were meant to be as intertwined as ivy upon a wall were ever unknown to one another? Anyway, “Be with me tonight.” I love the part of the song where he talks about chickening out and sitting down to write about it instead. It’s part of the impulse to write—a desire to withdraw from the world of experiences into the life of the mind.

How Do you Talk to an Angel by The Heights

Okay, nearly every other song on this list I would still turn up and “sing” along with and feel no shame. However, this may be the one exception. That said, all it takes is the first chords to be played, and I’m immediately remembering the girl I had an insane crush on when this song came out. Mind you, I never talked to her, but that’s what makes a crush so great. Imagine how great this person could be? No really, imagine, because that’s all you can do. Make sure the details you fill in make them worthy of it. This is pre-Facebook, back when crushes were innocent things that you spent hours in your room listening to “How Do you Talk to an Angel” and staring at the ceiling. They were purer days.

Glycerine

Oh, man. As soon as this song starts I’m immediately transported back to having long hair. But also, I’m transported back to watching him sing intently into the microphone during the video. And yeah, this song is awesome.

Lightning Crashes by Live

In case the world has forgotten, we all loved this song. And, if you’re listening to the first little bit of this song, you’ve probably already remembered why. Because it is fantastic! You can’t tell me you’re not going to sing along, “I can feel it coming back again!” Me too. Passion. Romance. Life. Death. This song. This song right here! Shi- yeah.  You can just skip straight to the 4:05 mark if you want to get after it!

Crash Into Me by Dave Mathews Band

You can’t have a playlist from the 90’s and not have a DMB song on it. I remember recording this video off television and watching it in the living room, on the pillow, as was normal I’m sure for most boys of that age, and my older brother came out and said that though he questioned the majority of my musical tastes he thought this song would still be getting played years from that date. He was right, but really, I was right for recording it off television It’s weird, yes, the things we remember? Also, enough of being loving this Valentine’s Day, DMB is going to get back to the basics: voyeurism. “I stare at you wear nothing, but you wear it so well.”

Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind

I just blogged about this song two days ago, so I’ll take the liberty of quoting one of the most intelligent people I know, me: file not found. Okay, most of the way through school I was this very quiet and shy person, and eventually everyone got used to me being this quiet and shy person and occasionally ignored the fact that I was talking to reassure themselves that I was quiet and shy. I am not, as it turns out, always quiet and shy. I just think too much sometimes. The fact that I loved this song and danced around to it was a pretty good indication of that other aspect of my personality, which loves late nights, travel, laughter and games… and you, Valentine.

Time Ago

I don’t remember this song being hugely popular, but I do remember it being about as good as a song could get that was written about Heathcliff and the English Moors. Is that what this song was about? Oh, I’m being told it’s not a song written about one of the Bronte sisters. Apparently it’s a really emotive song about losing your virginity and reflecting back on it years later. This changes everything…except its essential and undeniable greatness, and I love the turn to the singer being all by himself at the end. From dust we came and to dust we will return, my friend, all we’ve got are these little illuminations in between, flecks of light on water.

One Headlight by The Wallflowers

I remember really liking the Wallflowers before it became really cool to not like The Wallflowers. I also remember this girl I had a crazy crush on telling me that her class was studying this song as poetry and thinking that college was this really amazing place where you could sit outside and talk to girls that you had a crush on without feeling like everyone was judging you, and, oh yeah, the poetry thing too.

Near you Always by Jewel

My unabashed love of Jewel is most prevalent in this song. She melts my heart, which wasn’t even iced over. That’s how hot this song is. And yes, I did actually put it on multiple mix tapes for girls back then, but I’m sure everyone did that with their go to songs. “Your hands are in my hair, but my heart is in your teeth, baby. It makes me, want to make you near me, always.” The real point is that this mix tape was being derailed by rock songs, and we needed something to remind us that it is a Valentine’s Day playlist. If this song didn’t do that go back to complaining about how this is a Hallmark holiday designed to make us feel bad about ourselves instead of a celebration of Jewel’s music and the human capacity for idiocy and love that it really is.

Raining in Baltimore

This is the part of the mix tape, CD, playlist, where we break up. Maybe we’re from different socioeconomic ranges, or of different races, or our parents really don’t like each other. Every great love story needs some people who are actively trying to stop the great love story from happening, so that we can later kiss in the rain or run after each other at airports. Also, this song is f-ing spot on, and I now live almost exactly where it takes place and am from California. This song is aesthetically just a gorgeous piece of music and songwriting.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Deep Blue Something

As I noted a few days ago, the main thing I remember about this song is my sister driving us to school while playing it nearly every morning, and I remember that the car had a slight leak and smelled of mildew. I like that the memory of this song is in this really enclosed space that I don’t associate with anything else, just this hermetically sealed environment. We can handle this break up mix tape. We’ll work it out.

Stay by Lisa Loeb

This time I will just quote myself on why this song definitely belongs here:

The internet cat meme was nowhere near being birthed and what does this amazing video start with, a cat? Why? Because cats are an endless source of entertainment and curiosity and were worshiped, rightfully so, as gods in Egypt. Who knew that in 1994 more than anyone? Lisa Loeb. And before there was Sarah Pailin, and Tina Fey mocking Sarah Pailin, and Zooey Deschanel being quirky there was Lisa Loeb, wearing glasses and hip little dress, making them look sexy or intellectual or just downright cool in 1994.

And, oh yeah, besides that. In 1994 I was years and years still away from dating someone, and yet, somehow, some way, I understood that Lisa Loeb had already captured the complexities of what it meant to want someone and not really have them, or to not realize how it really takes letting something go to really understand what it meant to you. All she needed to do was get to that lengthy bridge to rip the heart from my chest. And by that, as usual, obviously I mean cry. Come back, Lisa Loeb! Okay, good, you're just hanging in the doorway for a minute. I was worried for a second there.

A Long December by Counting Crows

An alternative to this whole enterprise could have easily just been me posting the album, “August and Everything After,” which was unquestionably the best album released in the 90’s. And yes, I’m aware that A Long December appears on Recovering the Satellites. “And all at once you look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl.” Yeah, I’ve been there, Adam Duritz. Whenever I’m listening to the Counting Crows I’m reminded of the essential loneliness of life, the mooring in our heads: the inescapability of being us, which is occasionally exhausting in its unrelentingness. Just once wouldn’t it be nice to see something from someone else’s mind, a sunset, a piazza, the ocean. Let’s all just go out to CA and make this work in a commune of some sort.

The Old Apartment by The Barenaked Ladies

Okay, now that we’re totally broken up mix tape, I’m going to do the honorable thing and break into your house and try and discover how you could have possibly moved on without me. Relatedly, I remember being at a concert a few weeks after I’d broken up with my girlfriend and hearing this song, and thinking how great of a concept the whole song is, and sneaking off with this girl I’d met with friends and enjoying the concert from closer and nothing but some polite flirting, I think she had a boyfriend, but realizing in that moment, “Oh, this is a thing you can do multiple times. I might actually be capable of dating someone again, but in fooling multiple people into thinking I am charming and laughing and having fun evenings with people who were stranger’s minutes before.”

No Need to Argue by The Cranberries

I loved this CD in the early 90s, and I loved this song the most. You love it too. This sad part of our relationship is lasting a long time mix tape. Apparently I’ve always been a bit morose, and it wasn’t an affectation I developed later in life to seem more intellectually competent.

The Freshmen by The Verve Pipe

 Sadly, I wasn’t in college yet when this epically sad song came out. However, I could imagine what it would be like. It would pretty much be just like this song--lots of sorrow and angst and slowly played guitars and emotions. Sad, sad emotions running amok. Why did we think we were so smart 1997? We were so young and fragile, like baby birds trying to fly that first time out of the nest. Wait, did the song just speed up? Did it just speed up? Are people taking drugs in college? Are we sad about it? Oh man, I can’t wait for all this angst to begin 1997. Man, I’ve never had a relationship, but I bet they are just like that, slipping through ice and then having to sing about it with gravel in our voice to get rid of the rage that we feel at ourselves for taking something so fragile and beautiful and turning it all into shi- like we always knew we would.

Nobody Knows by The Tony Rich Project

The album cover is light years ahead of its time in just being the quintessence of cool, which is a good start. And then the song starts and you can feel 1996’s heart breaking. In the early portions of the song it’s easy to think on all those foolish people who didn’t know how much you ached for them in your soul of souls. However, by the end of the song when he’s hitting a dusty road in search of love, you begin to realize that he’s not really looking for a real love but regretting all the things he didn’t say, the person that he couldn’t be. That dusty road isn’t leading to a person. It’s leading to a journey of self-discovery, which is hopefully filled with some beautiful people, some laughs, some late nights, and eventually, you know, death. 

I Believe by Blessed Union of Souls

Let’s remember, mix tape Valentine that there are things bigger than you and I. We’re about to head into the new Millenium where football players will be gay and people will still be nominally racist but will feel bad about it, and try to raise their kids to be different, so let’s have this song lead the way. Or, you know, we could listen to most major religions, Jesus and stuff, and go around  loving people who are poor and less fortunate and in need because it winds up being both a good thing to do, but a deep and powerful experience that is transformative internally and gives a rudderless life some purpose. Valentine’s Day is bigger than our love.

All I Want is You by U2

But honestly, we’re so brief, Valentine. We are but flecks of ash tapped from a cigarette sailing briefly against the vast outline of the night skies. And, of all the languages we could have spoken, and individuals we could have been if our parents had formed us but a moment sooner, we are here, right now, you and I, staring into one another’s eyes, and even if the best of things fade, my God, to have had such moments will keep me light for eternities to come.

Motorcyle Drive By by Third Eye Blind

My favorite song of the decade:

If ever a long period of time in your life passes and you start wondering about things like meaning, God, whether love can ever be truly selfless, if the oven is still on, whether the plants have been watered, if the Egyptians really built those pyramids or whether it was a crew of industrious aliens, if animals have souls and will be a part of any sort of afterlife, if the afterlife is anything that a human could conceive of, if you find yourself worrying about dark matter and a big hole being torn in the universe like a cheap sheet from Target, whether the people you love/like will live as long as you'd like, if it's been too long since you've stared into water or at an undiluted sky, if you look as good or as bad as you suspect you might in those jeans, if anyone notices or cares that you always iron your shirts, if you are in fact in sound mental health, if this is the year that winter never arrives, if you find yourself worrying about lead, leaks, monthly budgets, the future of humanity writ large in light of things like nuclear weapons and man's inherent evil, if humankind, because you're gender inclusive like that, will turn a corner and become something else, the Yellowstone volcano, asteroids, missing a movie just because Rotten Tomatoes gave it a low score, whether people of the opposite sex still notice you, the shape of your dog's kidneys after some strange stool samples, water quality, flight patterns of birds affected by the construction of cell phone towers, strip mining, stripping as it pertains to getting appointed in Poland, nearly extinct beetles, new varieties of beetles, overly long or slightly misshaped fingernails, explaining death to a child, whether you can continue to work at your job, at your relationships, if you worry about plaster and e-waste and parking attendants, it's probably time to sit down, shut up, and listen to some Motorcycle Drive By, and think, I think it might turn out all right, maybe not forever, but probably at least for the night. Happy Valentine's Day! 

Early Valentine's Day Writing

A Horse and Her Boy

                We were formed from the earth by the hands of some God, form made flesh, for the sole purpose of inhabiting one another. This, despite the fact that we are distinct, separate, she was born in the hills—lark songs, aspen and evergreens shedding needles like soft bits of rain, hillsides clothed in bluebells—splashes of color above the heather and the electric green. I grew up in the valley, in a small house made of thatch and mud. In the evenings we clapped the metatarsals of sheep together to pass the time beneath the stars.

My parents are against the match, as all parents throughout history have been against matches that are neither profitable nor useful for attaining land or nobility. In the evening, I sit before the fire and confess my love of her. My mother stares through a hole in the thatch to a sliver of sky, gilded by stars and sighs, “It would be fine,” she says, knitting her fingers together and looking skyward again, “If you were not a boy, and she was not a horse,” as if such things mattered between those who love.

Yesterday, the hills were veiled in fog, and I wandered up the muddy path to meet her. We wandered together, she nickering, and I listening intently, into a field littered with every color imaginable—avenas, cloudberry, campions, and gorse. To live in a world comprised of such beauty is a gift that we cannot repay.

My father was silent for a time, and then he spoke, gravely, “You know that she’ll die well before you,” he said, his eyes now wandering into the fire to make out shapes or nothing. I tell him that I know that it’s true, but that I’m ready for it, for to have lived, even a short time, with just such a love, is enough to keep me filled for a lifetime.

We are Composed of Water

Olive light

Sea grass floating

On the dunes

Laughter, as if from far away

A crossing of elbows,

navel, kissed intently

Sand, cold and wet

A division of clothes

Spoils of many a war

Waves keeping time

As they did in Troy and will do eternally

Sand, purpled in light

Sea gulls low on low horizons

An attempt at a joining,

 a gasp and a cry

all to understand the movement

Between bodies of water

A Love Affair

The young girl, being young, having once bestowed her love, attributed to the man on which she’d given her love, all the perfections, that she, without consciously knowing why, ascribed to love. She did not know yet, as many older people do, that love itself is flawed—a diamond cut through with imperfections.

Her lover was imperfect, though she suspected that this feeling of love that she carried within her, monstrous and all-consuming was incapable of faults. For his part, the beloved was a drunkard, who on certain nights preferred her to other women. Most nights, in fact I’m speaking of those nights when he drank deeply and intensely, which was quite often, he preferred other women, who laughed more frequently, or spoke more eloquently, or invited him to their bed more readily. Though really, to be quite honest, what he preferred to all of this was the idea of himself as an individual, a lost seafarer on the swift seas of life. This mystery figure was only really present when he was deep in drink and isolation.

One evening, made pleasant by a warm breeze brought inland that had a faint scent of jasmine, so rare in this city by the seas, he made an offhand remark about preferring the hair of a woman they’d had dinner with the night before, an opera singer, black haired and pale skinned. This remark, though fairly innocuous, for some unknown and unknowable reason, as I’m sure you’re familiar with as a living and breathing entity upon this strange earth, shattered the crystalline dream of love that she’d been carrying around—a fragile globe in her mind. And up in its place something new grew, stiffer and stronger, like the bark of an aged tree.

In two months he’d be in the hospital for his liver and she’d have sailed on to Ireland, where she’d become a nanny, a school teacher, a poet, and a politician before she settled back down for her declining years in that city by the sea. All the while recalling in memory when he said he’d preferred the hair of another lady, and everything changed.