Elusive, she moves along the edge of shadow’s wings when the moon has peeked under a shower of stars chasing a beast running the night’s silent song.  An oboe’s string sliding along the sliver of obsolete sound produced when a splinter of glass has raised the ante to produce a sound of everlasting peace from a piece broken by you. We mimicked black tape footsteps trying to master elegant dance steps before the final dance of our romance — our wedding day promenade.  The band shall beam our stars for a night, a night that we will eventually regret. Far away from here, but nearer than our next daydream while sleeping on Mars. 

Yes, what was that…what happens when we let our mind wander and shift between the line of conscious and the key of music that plays, opening up our music in the form of words. The above was floating along the melody of Nick Drake while he sang lowly and strings laced his lonely lyrics. A bed of flowers laid upon a land that could only be experienced under his pink moonrise, which turns golden beneath a touch of his tongue. If only we were as blessed by the beast of magical thinking, making guitar strings sing.

Every string seems to have a snapped inside this house, perhaps the stars have shot the muse dead; perhaps the sun has burnt the brains out of her head…

…perhaps, I should take the time to actually stop and write down all the words that come into my head through out the day.  Sometimes it is impossible (on the bike, at the circ desk, walking the pup) but sometimes is it pure laziness and the stories fade away before midnight. Tonight, I thought of another story, or perhaps it was a non-story, while sipping wine and reading the New Yorker waiting on dinner. The pen was right there… foolishly, I thought I’d remember.

This one, though, is a memory of a tale to tell from last nights final go while reading Dave Eggers latest, A Hologram For The King. The main character is having a rather hard time of it, his life is in the crapper and he has one last chance… as many stories go. He is readying to go, dressing for his last-ditch effort to save his company, and he feels the lump that he ignores. The lump upon his spine that has become a reminder of what may destroy him even if he succeeds. A lump of panic rose within me.

We ignore what we wish to not to face. C_ too ignored the lump that had imbedded itself within his body. He felt it daily until it became so large that it was easy to see. He told no one until he found himself on the floor. By that time, the cancer had declared war and took every prisoner it encountered until he was 50 percent occupied with enemy envaders. Nine months later, he would be dead.

This recant is clinical. It is the cold, hard facts of the black and white nature of what happens when cancer captures our castle. This isn’t a flip observation, but one I consider since I’ve been told that my risks for my body turning on me are at risk since I refuse certain western medicines. Many of us are told these things, many of us will choose to roll the dice.

What if… he questioned while dressing, I get cancer, won’t that being the final, the finale that will save this misery of failure. 

There is no failure, not really, for there has been no striving toward anything. The only thing that took my breath away for an instant last night, when I considered this glimpse of mortality… death is a long dark road of forever. What if this lack of faith that has come to embrace me lately seals this drift into a state of hate cast upon those of us who refuse to genuflect? The breath stopped until I thought – C_, E_, J_ all floated away from this world on a paper crane until the sun burned them gone. Not one of them would be allowed to ‘ever-after of holy, holy’ if the holy word is true. Surly, they’d be waiting for me.

Is it possible that the dead can shine upon the living? I swear today, his smile landed upon my lips as I turned my face to the sky while scripting a triangle in the middle of the Y. A smile brighter than any that has touched these lost eyes, stretching me toward the ceiling. There was no doubt, he’d be there to greet me.

Despite what was said in lecture tonight. Burn me, if that is my penance, but certainly these charred ashes of spent bone that God bothered to create will blow into another cloud of those that couldn’t find their way. May that wake of sand be where the lonely land and converge. May that be where the words and music can break open lonely, dark nights allowing us to finally

daydream on Mars. ~