This Is What Happened...

I once heard someone say “Art wins in the end.”…that after rings, and veils, and birth… after maelstrom, and shrouds, and death …. that the words that remain most true are those we remember in our skin, the stories that give us the sights and sounds of a younger us, that stir the cavernous quiet of our souls below the surface. There is a part of me that thinks this is the stuff of bad marketing, poetic fluff of the kind of romantic who never lived up to his predecessors,   Keats and Shelly…but I can never quit escape that I might be wrong; that the way a thing appears may only be the smallest corner of a much larger picture.… When this happens it is like being stirred by a touch of something while in deep sleep. These are the times when the winds of remembrance blow so deeply, past the hustle and bustle of the day, past the many distractions of the hour that they rustle the surface of the deep places in our hearts, where we know there is meaning, and not just for us, but o

Fall is not an ideal time. It is gray and with more rain comes the morose veil of clouds that usher in the impending quiet of winter. Down cast days to down cast eyes. The colors on the trees visibly play herald to the time of year, the bright reds and gold of the newly lain carpet which wraps the earth in its yearly brilliant burial shroud reminds us, the sharp hint of ripeness on the air, the cold and silence of the nights. They all obstinately lay claim to the undeniable truth, the summer is over, death is come. Alber Camus one said that: In a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or hope of a promised land. The divorce between man and life, the actor and his setting is properly a feeling of absurdity. Camus’ here speaks of the painful knowledge that comes upon a person when hope is gone, when a world, once explained seems explained away, th

It was quiet, a gray scale painted the walls with the shadows of a dusky evening spent behind closed shades. Her hair sprawled out under her head. "What?" she asked. Her eyes smiled. She has freckles in this light...how come I've never realized that before?  I thought when I told a woman I loved her for the first time there would be fireworks and music and kisses in an amusement park. I'd pick her up as the orchestra swelled and I'd spin her around as the camera panned back.  Maybe, I'd yell it just before that door slammed or the top window shut. Maybe there'd be a thunderstorm. Maybe she'd say it back, maybe she wouldn't...but it would happen and we would all know....we would know the way middle schoolers know everything....that life was happening exactly how it was supposed to. We would be living this consummate moment where both the beginnings and endings of stories were simultaneously taking place. …We would be happy.