notice

Got a call the other day from my folks, they're great, but I guess one of the older guys from church is mostly bedridden these days. Grady liked to look out for us young dudes. Once, at Easter, he asked us to not stand around the front door as people were coming in since it “didn't look good”. I never really understood what that meant since we were all wearing suits, like he was. And then there were the days, or weeks at least, as some of us were shooting hoops in the gym before the evening service he would time quarters with that old conductor's watch he carried, the same one used to determine when it was time for us to settle down in the sanctuary. Once I was sitting near the back pew and came out to get a drink, and sure enough, as I wet my whistle there was Grady standing there with a grave look asking whether this was necessary so early in the service. I suppose I had no business disrupting the order of things with my frivolous biological impulses.

At any rate I hear his wife Freda is holding up well. She's the one who taught children for 150 years and used to look around as we prayed to make sure we were being revern't. You've got to be revern't. she'd grunt, shaking that seemingly ten-jointed finger as she justifies all she'd been taught and reared, all with the ardor of a seventh-grade cheerleader. After all, if it was good enough for the Apostle Paul then it's good enough for Freda and more than enough for these supple-souled young'uns. Other teachers didn't share Freda's attention to detail and she often challenged them, which is probably why she was often chosen for leadership. Who knows, maybe some people express their love in the form of tireless devotion to duty.

Lately, seeing them withered, becoming less and less relevant to the thrust of life in that little church, I can't help but yearn for perspective. I mean, who's gonna show us the righteous path once the faithfuls are gone?

control

what if I don't have enough in common with you to really hit it off?
what if a tree falls on the car of a coworker's aunt as she drives through a storm?
what if it were a bird that nabbed that huge spider from its web beneath the gutter out back?

why are legal pads so expensive?

what if I take a girl to a movie and she slurps the last bit of my pop just as I reach for a drink?
what if I see something horrible happen to someone right outside my window?
what if I don't make it to the bathroom some day?

why get so worked up about stuff?

what if I am asked to do something differently than how I'd planned right in the middle of an awful mood?

why is it we always seem to have mixed motives?

birthday blues, good words and bad words

Often I wonder if a bloke like me could do a creature like her any good...then I have to stop and think, shoot, if I knew the answer to that ?? then I'd definitely stop doing her any good in the first place.

*shrug*

So there's your answer, fishbulb.

Desire, she said

For as long as I could remember the house was shrouded, at least from my backyard, by tall pines and generous weeping willows. Even the front facing has its share of shrubbery. I never saw the inside until we were in high school, complete with rustic hand-carved shelves coated with nick knacks and paneling of maybe walnut.

They had moved in sometime during our elementary years. The girl behind me used to hang out with their daughter who went to a private school at first. I heard people say things about her from time to time. Some of it was just talking, some of it kept me wondering at night. Somehow it seemed that people thought things they never said out loud.

She has eyes that stop time and a mouth that never stops.

Her mother had remarried and cussed at me for crossing their yard on my bike.

Lunch my sophomore year was in the middle of Spanish class. She was that special ingredient in the buffet of misfits at our table, from devil to angel almost overnight.

One chance exchange of lingering glances was all it ever took.

Her song is her stories. Times and events fall into a rhyme and meter to which only she can dance.

Calcetínes are socks. ¿Puedo ir al baño, por favor?

I offered consistent presence and she met me half way. Never a couple yet always a pair.

Too blue to stand it but too yellow to make a move.

Rarely did she talk about practical everyday things. Part of her died too young I glean. Her brother perhaps, or her innocence. Or both.

I always liked how she was herself in jeans and a sweater most days.

For such a popular person it was as though none of us really knew her.

Once a week we take turns putting mustard or ketchup or pickles or onions on our breaded pork sandwiches. Years later she tells me she never really cared for breaded pork.

Silly fool deny the undeniable. Go make your bed somewhere else.

It's not easy being green.

Certain males in her life she describes as you would an intestinal disease or heinous crime.

Maybe deeper understanding is not always worth the risk of loving.

What's the new U2 song called?

Desire, she said in a flat voice, staring out somewhere beyond the pines and willows.