A Winter House

Gathering
light on the wide wooden floorboards...
it's the slow sun filtered through bare limbs and gray branches
muted, tempered, diffused.
within the farmhouse hours and walls comprise the days
no idea but the thing?
The thing

The List of Lost Things

• my three wedding dresses


• my mother's green ring and blue stone bracelet


• the camera that captured the only picture of our Clinton marriage ceremony


• my engagement ring


• report cards, Christmas ornaments, dance recitals, diaries, awards, and all my childhood memorabilia


• a sleeveless black muscle shirt with a cat face made in rhinestones

I would give everything I have left for one of these precious objects. Where have they gone? How have I lost so much?

The Spectrum of Truth

You can tell the future from beads or cards amd leaves. You can tell your history with words or yarn. The pieces of furniture arranged methodically, with care. The truth of our life will be told by her, who will both be and reflect the light. Weaving narratives as we go. Our journey unfolds unsteadily and is left behind as reds, yellows, greens, blues and violets.

Videos of The Dead

In a tower of tapes, only one contains his moving image. All the rest are hours of HBO and some light porn. But in this brief, one-way encounter, so much is captured. Mannerisms, gestures, familiar, idiosyncratic habits of a life. How he wears sunglasses and chews gum, in a flannel shirt, below deck, taking measurments and plotting the tugboat course. It was a sunny winter's day. 1988. He was so alive, the way we are alive, with nothing but time ahead and ocean all around. Seeing it this way, is the memory of him diminished? Should we not indulge our necrovoyerism? To love looking upon a face and laugh again with his antics. Should we all be taped all the time, for future generations to cherish and be reminded? How can such vital animation end and what are we supposed to do with what remains? I miss all of them. Loss, loss, a slow expected stream of grief and suffering over a lifetime; they will never know how much they visit us. Why?

If a Novel

If a novel begins with a dream, is the narrator necessarily unreliable?
Just started Helen of Troy by MargaretGeorge.

I shouldn't be surprised, but I am disappointed. Back to the drawing board.

All Souls