words

~
Claire Brewster taught me how to describe a ship crossing the horizon and a sandy hand tossing a flame upwards then coming down like a black dog digging for nothing but the bones of people and parties gone past. She taught me that the stars are the gentle bass line to a musical played by all of us and that an alleyway is the best runway and a plastic glass of tossed ice cubes can stop the most fundamental movement. Claire Brewster taught me that a ship crossing the horizon is better than a distant night light dimming past the point of curiosity, maybe swallowed whole by oncoming storms of an undecided and tempestuous scene. Claire Brewster taught me something like that. She signed a magical sign across the sky like a visual broadband twisting its hair into a knot that knows nothing of times before, with their milky nights and ways. She taught me that a white space ahead of you is a something to crack a smile at and the center of the room is the only place to stand; that a story is a story and unsavory or not, it is a poem to be swallowed. She taught me not to fear my shadow or the beat inside that told me the time. Claire Brewster cradled flame when I still had no inclination or taste to attempt calculating the equation. She taught me that a story goes round and round and round until the sky swirls into a magnificent and feathered pen flowing gently southward to a star that never fades, never loses focus and knows that everything else is just child's play, trembling without the calibration of a rhythm that may or may not be achieved or conquered. But that will be years away and Claire Brewster is still teaching me how to describe a ship crossing the horizon.

S*
2004.01.30 03:02

~
There was a moment some time ago, when the populace sighed a collective sigh, and the globe knew that the time had come. Nine-eleven had just happened, courtesy of the crony regime, and we all knew that the world would now be a different place; teachers told us, sentiment warned us. In the end, it was a time to liberate the soul and set free the demons trapped by the wretched liberalism of the 70's and the conservative monopoly of the 80's. Not to mention the stifling anti-progression that marked the mid-to-late nineties. What an hour! It was a time to let go of the feelings the world didn't need of. We were prime to contribute to a constant universe that needed self-gratification and self-acknowledgement to render itself important. And I urge you to find a working system contrary to the one I've described; it's a diverse world and I refuse to bring down the level of dissemination. It may be that the masses will only comprehend when accompanied by the sound of everyone screaming or whispering for a better life.

S*
2004.10.18 06:00

~

"What about the edge of the universe?" he asked, I didn't know the answer but it was still a good one to tinker with, over tea. I'd been in a drought of mental sorts, literarily too I suppose, but watching the machines act and react, I had no choice but to follow the flow of the rivers I once knew. Sure there were sandier and dusty times behind -- and surely more ahead -- but I'd come to figure that it was all part of the grand creator's design, loaded into the master hardware and set to stir, ages once before.

And in the perpetual meantime, I liked spending my minutes and hours with the cat -- purring, rolling, giving him fresh water. It was humane and warming and bore the hallmarks of nurturing both senses of sincerity and calm. It was the warm afternoons that I never ventured out: spoiled by the whipping tentacles of a nearby fan, I'd drop some pressed plastic and fill the airwaves with the sounds and sultry syllables sung softly swinging from mangrove to mangrove. Mangroves are beautiful, by the way, twisting in their randomness -- their path set ablaze, ages ago, in the grand template -- similar in chaos to a perfectly-knotted necktie, steadfast and uncompromosing in commitment to its particular master's early morning whim.

So we got to thinking about this universe's edge thing and while the thought stretched our imaginations, the cat purred sweetly against my calf. The moment held and for that suspended, serendipitous juncture, I thought, then knew, then finally came to understand that it had always been alright to stare at the sun. The understanding materialized in the same vein as do dreams hussling their stories across the back of our eyes, unable to be ignored (in the same way that streetfights or the smell of picnics never, truly, exit our concious and revert to pure invisibility).

It was just the right kind of afternoon and so I peeked upward, gave a wink, a nudge, a fleeting, flirting glance and, for the first time, held nothing back. In return, it unflichingly stared back with a fiery and holy sainthood. It was warm and felt good. Yes, and it was then that it dawned on me that this primordial oracle had been here since the beginning: before oxygen and carbon, before Tut or Alexander or Hammurabi or Christ -- a full-circle affair and it stood, looming, in our sights, the whole while. Gazing, peering, staring, waiting for us to return the favour.

There it was: the edge of the universe: the smiling of every child and the naming of every species and unknown. The universe was itself the very instantaneous collective of knowledge that we would all automatically and painlessly absorb after every blade of grass was mowed and each sidewalk bombed clean of its playtime chalk. It would be then -- and only then -- that the human contradiction would crystallize. Until that hour, we seemed condemned to sit in our own murky waters, staring at our toes, agitated, waiting to push up daisies.

S*
2004.10.15-16