Petit addendum to an excavation...

COLLECTING

I am collecting bits and pieces of myself.

And each part is wanting another.

And each part is calling out, and they are all in three’s and two’s and

I am collecting bits and pieces of myself, lined up on the table in blues and slight broken yellows.

And they are ample lies, and unexpressed moments.

And they are like the potsherds of my youth, or yesterday's paper as it flies, wet across the lawn.

And I am collecting bits and pieces of myself, and gluing them with your smile.

And stitching them with your hair.

And I am collecting bits and pieces of myself and they are floating freely, and they are losing their common ground, and they are sinking in the slow pliant earth that I have chosen.

And I am collecting bits and pieces of myself, and the more there are, the more I shatter and the more I collect and the more the colors astonish me, and I am collecting bits and pieces of myself in grays and blacks and declines and grades and level spaces and feelings and I am collecting bits and pieces of myself.

Bits and pieces.

Shady Grove - traditional ballad. Mandolin and vocals SH

“That’s where I used to live..."

I pointed to the photograph, which was partially obscured by the slanting rays of the setting sun. I was in an old beach town and feeling, as usual, alone, or almost, and discovered that I had been traveling with more than memories...I had found an old photo of a road at sunset taken 20 or 30 years before.

“You really lived there?”

I wondered how to respond, because I wasn’t sure anymore. Wasn’t sure if it was my stories that had made my life there real, or whether I had really been the person behind the camera that evening, capturing that sunset. Meanwhile, the sky was turning red with the sun in front of me, and I looked again at the person holding the image and wondered what she really saw.

Was she also blinded by the setting sun, imagining the same on that road long ago? Was she thinking of something I told her earlier in the day? Thinking of me as I am now (because that's all she knows, this me that didn’t exist then, but which she now sees in her mind walking down the road I’ve now forgotten). Can she see who was standing next to me? Or who I was dreaming of? Or who had a coffee with me minutes after I had taken the picture and the sun set? Or was she just thinking about her own life, and roads like this, and better photographs than these, because now that I looked at it again I wasn’t even sure it was good, but that it was only the burden of my memories that made it so.

And what was all this but the passing of years and the realization that long after I passed away (when I would have added other memories and pictures of this sunset and this beach town to my collections) that these photos would be found by someone else, who might string together a bright series of lies about where they were taken and by whom, and what they could mean. But here I was in the present, with the sun setting slowly. The sound of the sea and the beach. A couple of kids throwing a ball and yelling in a language I didn’t understand. A car. People screaming hello to each other, and me shaking my head as if I knew what it was all about and wondering how I could be so old when I wasn’t, but then, that I always was.

“Funny, I think I’ve been there, but it can’t be, I must have dreamt it...”

I looked up and saw her squinting into the sun. I didn’t answer. It wasn’t necessary. I could see that the response had been made, not for me, but for herself, and this image of mine had already become secondary to what it would be in her mind, and her memory.

I liked this. I liked not being there but being there nonetheless and having this person I didn’t know build memories upon the memories that I had left over.

That was it. I leaned back and took another sip of my coffee, and found it too cold, and wondered why I hadn’t ordered a beer, but then beer was something I never ordered, and I felt that I didn’t have the right to order it, but of course I did, and why deny it - except, thinking as I do, that I am not old enough, but when will I ever be, and stop being embarrassed to realize that I was now grown-up - a man - but then by the time I got around to accepting the fact I was out of the mood anyway.

“Really...”

I finally answered her, but it was too late, and she had placed the photo on the table and was staring out towards the beach, and the sea beyond it. The air hung in horizontal ribbons close to the shore. A boat passed going back to port. A fishing boat. In season this beach would probably be filled with people, with pleasure boats...with noise. But now we were tourists in an off time when the real people came out of the cracks and emerged to enjoy their beachfront. When the children were the children who would one day grow up to serve in this tired beach café, rather than returning like us to some land too cold to think of, and too filled with thoughts to relax in.

We were proud of ourselves for being here just now, and that was why we met.

I picked my picture up off the table and placed it back in my bag.

So long ago...

A NEW YEAR

What do I want?

What can I?

Time moves slowly, but it hasn’t stopped.

There are multiples of everything and I’m losing track.

There are lists where once there was life, and I fail to be moved.

When was the last time I saw you?

Walking down that road at sunset, when we thought it would be the end, but was it?

You carried a green pepper that you’d grown yourself and I was intoxicated with my ignorance (I remember, I pinched my hand each time I thought of it).

But now decades have past, and we are forever caught on that sun filled road, just there below the reservoir in late summer.

I think I have a picture somewhere, but I'm not sure.

We all dressed the same then, but this time the difference was not your clothes, but the car you leaned on.

There was dust everywhere, the sure markings of a bitter cold to come, and then a blue sky, but all this is just a memory of that sunset, and the road, and a parting that was never meant to be because we should never have met.

(And all the warnings I received, were they correct?

…and did they know when they cried out against me, like so many harpies, that I was perilously near the shore and would dive in and be captured?

…and did they know that they themselves, though warning me, were also part of the danger?

…and in steering clear of them I fell into another trap no less mortal, no less perverse?

Did you know this as well?)

Did I really see the future?

But what then is blocking my eyes now?

I remember seeing a sharp turn in an old road.

I remember seeing a mask like death and the faint odor of death.

I remember looking over your shoulder and seeing endless acres of graves.

I remember thinking that this could not be true, and hushed aside any mention on yours (or anyone's part) of suicide, and yet now I know now the death was my own...

(Yet hadn’t this death been my friend?

…and hadn’t it sat with me for so many years, just on the edge of my bed, before I went to sleep?)

But this is no way to celebrate the end of the year.

And this is no way to accept one’s proper mourning.

And if there was a way of changing time, would we really?

And who are we to try?

I search for a conclusion, but there are none in sight.

I search for some happy ending to stick at the end of my words, but find none.

I count up all who are not here, and their numbers are starting to be mountains, and yet I remain too small to see them.

The year is ending, so let it be.

Those days that ended so long ago, still sit in my memory, streaked with long shadows and scattered suns.

The sunset that said goodbye to you will never be done, and I will remain there always, on that poor asphalt road, clutching some simple vegetable in my hand, almost tasting it before I began to eat, staring into the sun and watching blinded, photographing as you walked away,

As you walked away forever.

Erie Canal - traditional ballad. Mandolin and vocals SH