the cats will knock it over

Daydreaming in the evening, weary from work and with cold toes, I sat on the couch under a string of colored lights. The cats lounged, stretched, yawned, returned to their day-long series of naps, and I eyed the tree through half-closed lids. A Christmas tree. For the first time since I'd struck out from my parents' house, there were significant seasonal decorations in my home. I didn't realize that I'd missed them. Since the divorce I'd not wanted to be reminded of holidays past, the reorganization of my family that made those memories bittersweet. But now here, in the living room of my new home, stood a tree, plastic and cheerful, wrapped round with colored lights, top leaning slightly one way - and soon to have presents underneath. A season's ritual I never thought I'd want.

Somehow, now, the season feels different. Less a feeling of loss and nostalgia, more a pleasant anticipation of the future. When we took the tree out of the box, we had friends over. We put streamed a laughably bad Christmas station through the Wii, ate pumpkin pie. These are the things I want the holidays to remind me of.

chicken nugget picnic

You pulled a blanket out of the trunk of your car and spread it out on the curb in the parking lot of a suburban bar. That you even had it must have meant something. The warm air carried our laughter and the enticing scent of Wendy's chicken nuggets past people filing out of the bar as it closed down. You told me that smoking would damage my skin, that it was beautiful and didn't deserve to be ruined. I'd usually be annoyed just like any other smoker when someone tells them it's a bad habit, but your delivery was charming.

The evening started as a disaster, friend fired from work and bad news all around. I hardly even knew you when you asked if anyone wanted to play pool. Truth be told I'm not very good at pool and would have said no if it had been any other night. It's fallen out of my memory who won. Those kind of things don't typically stick with me.

People were leaving, but you, like me, had the feel about you that the night wasn't over, so I invited you to tag along with me. We took your car because it's impossible to refuse a sober ride when you plan on moving on to the next bar; things were already coming together so well. Being close to someone hardly known was exciting, I guided you through a foreign city to a bar made out of a double wide trailer. When we left, I took music from a friend that would end up spelling one of the most wonderful disasters, a simple song we played loud that still rings in my ears.

a beginning

Nestled in a fort of pillows I'd constructed over the course of the evening, it was time to go home. Two in the morning and a long drive back to Dallas, where the couch I'd claimed as a bed waited for me. I didn't want to leave, to be alone and driving late at night. You'd turned out the light while I stalled and talked, my mouth pouring out words like it does when I'm nervous. I was nervous.

Darkness makes it easier to talk. In a room with no windows late at night, it is the easiest thing to talk. I hardly remember what I said to you. The words were just an excuse to stay. Swapping stories, the night passed so quickly, so much spoken but with so much left to say. You touched my arm and it was electric; such a small gesture and my inhibitions and worry gave way to comfort... and longing.

All the words had run dry while the sun rose and a sliver of light began making its way to our unadjusted eyes, and I found myself lost in your arms.

forgetting my sweater

The sun is still bright but the air is chilled. The days are shrinking into early dusk while I think of clove cigarettes and cross-country drives, horns sounding so clear and strong while miles disappear beneath the tires.

It was cold inside the office. They'd kept the air conditioning on, because in Texas you can't be sure if it's really going to cool off or if the weather is just playing games. It was cold enough inside that a jacket or sweater would have been more than appropriate, but I kept leaving it in the house in my groggy morning ritual of stumbling out to the car hardly functioning as human.

Thursday was no different. Stumble out from bed, do what is required to be at least marginally presentable, grope around for keys. Keys that are heavier than usual - they must be caught on something, struggle to free them from... my sweater. Tied to the keyring by the hood drawstring. What more could I want in life?

learn well the hunter's remorse

One of my cats was a dark blur, leaping to the back of the daybed-turned-couch and startling me away from a pretend world in the television. There was a moth in the house, flying erratically from light to blinds through the chilly room. Her eyes wide and wanting, the cat chirped and scrambled for purchase on the hardwood floor, desperate to make contact with the small, soft-winged mystery. Sharp teeth closed on the grey body; it fluttered briefly before coming to a final rest.

Puzzled, she gently batted it with a clawed forepaw. Nothing. Chirping, not with the chirp of the hunt but with confusion, she nudged it with her nose. No response. By now, the other cat was aware of the situation and came to investigate. Still nothing. A few chirps later, a few more fruitless battings, and the dead creature was devoured.

smoke and colored glass

Sunday is as good a night as any to be at the bar, to be at any bar. This Sunday I was at the Amsterdam, five Crown and Cokes and three hours in conversation with my best friend. I have one of those; I count myself among the lucky. Dim light leaks through colored glass lamps haphazardly hung throughout the bar, made tangibly warm by drifting smoke, and we pass the time talking about how nothing ever ends up how we thought it might. I worry about this frequently. Even when you can feel change coming before the first inklings of movement are made, it's hard to be prepared.

Her mom has just had a surgery and she's here on family duty. Before too long she's leaving for Seattle and I'm afraid. Growing up seems to be a matter of holding on to things that are worthwhile even as they fade out between your fingers and scatter across the country. I'm thinking of the future and forgetting about the present, and she reminds me that this is rarely fun. I let go.

We run out of cigarettes and I pay the tab. She sidles up to some other patrons and asks for a cigarette for the two of us - it's a good thing she's so charming. Someone's dog is barking as we cross the street to the car, but it's not time to go just yet. We smoke and sit on the curb, cars drive by on their way home from whatever revelry or disappointment or habit that brought them here.

Before we leave she plays me music. She's got impeccable taste and whatever she chooses is always perfect for the occasion. It's a real talent, finding and loving music this much. There's a harp and an imperfect voice that soars in chorus, choosing impossible words that make me smile. I'm looking out the windshield and I can see the highway as the sound washes over me and rolls over the concerns in my head. Lights reflect and distort through the glass, lengthening when I blink. These are the things I love most in life, this is a moment that makes it worth it. If people sing despite vocal limitations like this, with no concern but to sing, then my problems are nothing.

disappearing

I want to be so well-liked or unnoticeable that I could travel the country by couches. If I could cook like a five star chef I don't think anyone would mind me for a few days, if I sang heartfelt lyrics and played harmonica and left quietly in the night leaving nothing behind.

photograph in a history book

When the seasons start to change is when I feel the most nostalgic. The first day the air is crisp and cold and I notice the changing leaves beckoning on autumn, the call of summer-green leaves filtering the cloudy sky and the sound of cicadas. Those days where the the slow turning of seasons becomes as apparent as the passing of a minute are the ones that dig up thoughts and feelings that slept far under the surface of consciousness.

I play old songs through my headphones and drift out the window of the 13th story. The louder the music, the more real it is. The horns soar in my ears, a chorus of voices and times long past, a familiar and comfortable feeling tinged with longing rings through me. I'm never more aware of time nor more unphased by its passing. The lyrics are a eulogy, I'm dreaming wide awake in color of late night joy rides and hours passed sitting outside a coffee shop talking and whiling away the time, counting in the minutes in cigarettes and waiting for something to happen.

The day is nearly over, the sun sinking away. When I drive home I'll sing in the car.

making peace

He didn't have it in him to make it through another Texas summer. Fifteen years outside, weathering the seasons, running and sleeping, finding ways to escape the confines of the wrought iron fence, had finally taken their toll. Sounds had faded away from him in those last months, becoming distant in his ears and soon diminishing to nothing. For a dog, it seems so crippling - I wonder how he felt with the color drained out of his world, if he could even know or understand or remember hearing at all.

We bought him at the Forney chili cookoff when I was in third grade. My memories of walking around there with my friend Beverly, who had a long blond braid, and my family are indistinct at best. Clearly, though, I remember picking out a puppy at the local SPCA's table, a fiesty little brown mutt with liquid eyes. He and I grew up together. When I was young, I spent days outside playing with him, adventuring around the block, exploring the creek nearby. As I got older, I'd let him inside after the rest of the family was asleep and give him table scraps and let him curl up at my feet while I lost myself in games or the internet or acid. I wonder what he thought when I went away to college. I think he missed me.

Last week, he curled up in the most remote part of the yard he could. He must have been tired that day. Like most animals, he seemed to know it was coming - I wonder if he thought about his life and what he would remember if he could. He closed his eyes, breathed in one last breath and let it out in a long sigh.

My dad found him still and peaceful the next day. He drove what remained out to the farm and buried him under a tall pecan tree on a hill.

death of a home

My father still lives in the house I grew up in. It's in Forney, a small town that seems to have expanded exponentially every time I go back, rural fields and pastures growing up into miles of faceless suburbs. There was a new traffic light on the farm road that leads home, there's a Wal-Mart where there were acres of grass and tilled earth.

He had redecorated the living room, clearing out the furniture that sat there fifteen years and replacing it with new leather sofas and a flatscreen television. I talked about work and my words seemed hollow in my ears, echoing in the space where my mom's furniture had been. Maybe he really does miss her now that she's across town in her own place - I'll probably never really know.

We split a pizza while my brother watches television, a dim reflection of the ghosts from ten years ago. Our dog is deaf now, sweet old creature sniffs around the table for scraps and my dad gives him a crust. Around his paws and muzzle he's got white hair now, his liquid eyes seem to reflect his age. My dad tells me he hopes he won't have to put him down, and I struggle with unexpected tears pondering the poor beast's mortality. Fifteen years is a long time to be outside.

Before I go I always visit my old room. The smell of the closet dredges up old memories. A feeling of sadness seems to cover the rooms, muting the colors of carpets and painted walls, haunting me with the weight of growing up and knowing there is no going back. Today I return home with a stack of old paperbacks and a feeling of loss.

city skeleton

Every night, I drive by tall cranes hovering over the skeletons of a new shopping center. Red lights blink from the motionless beams, the cables hang slack, waiting for the return of their operators the next morning. Beneath these sleeping builders I see concrete and steel forming repeating geometry, the structure that will support the finished tower unseen - holding up the hallways created by cubicles, behind the walls with bland art, forming the basement delivery bay. It almost seems embarrassed with its innards laid bare, eager for the workers to return and continue stacking and forming the massive concrete frame and ready to house people in their desk jobs and busy shoppers underneath.

Driving by at night, I wish construction would stop. Frozen like this, I want to explore the construction that looks suspiciously like a ruin. I want to play hide-and-seek between the pillars and climb up the steel lattices all bathed in the eerie fluorescent lights that stay on through the night.

From the road, the shadows are compelling, telling me a story of the city growing and changing. Old edifices were cleared to make room for this new complex, and someday it, too, will be cleared away. The city is always growing and dying and changing itself, always expanding. Building replicate like cells out beyond the borders, pushing and growing further as the interior constantly renews. I wonder whether these cells are normal.

a fever

I was getting chills even though the heater was on, struggling to maintain warmth in the apartment against the cold outside trying to work its way in at the seams. My stomach was swimming. There was a dull ache in my head that hurt at the corners of my eyes when I tried to look around. I stayed on the couch for about three days.

Fevers always make me consider my body too much. Laid up and trying to increase your fluid intake while getting some rest, there's not much to do but watch television shows you've seen a hundred times and become uncomfortably aware of yourself. Just the difference of a few internal degrees changes the entire world, calls to mind the real fragility with which we're all hanging on to existence. It's something marvelous and terrifying to remember how perfect the conditions have to be to support the weight of just this one consciousness. I slipped in and out of sleep those three days, fevered dreams bleeding into reality when I woke up coughing and needing more water.

I don't like the doctor. Sometimes you end up having to go whether you like it or not. He looked me over quickly, asked what was wrong, prescribed antibiotics, and then a nurse gave me a shot that almost made me faint.

blacker than black

Winter's short days always catch me off guard. It was only 5:30 and the last rays of the sun streamed through the blinds behind me, highlighting thin strips of my monitor in a kingly golden orange. Was the day over already? I stretched and rubbed my eyes, my body seeming to suddenly catch up with my mind's realization. A whole day spent here, singing in my head and passing the time, working and waiting. I spend a lot of time doing those things these days.

Pressing my hands against the almost icy glass, I leaned toward the outside, the 13-story plummet to the ground looming up behind the barrier of the window. One of the things I love about Texas is the spectacular sunsets. The north of the state is flat and flat and flat as far as you'd like, and 13 stories up you never miss the sun setting. Today a line of clouds caught and manipulated the dying light, rich orange rippling over the upside-down ocean of its underside, playing deep blue shadows and bright shocks of pink through the waves. I imagined I could see tiny ships sailing through, their sun fading steadily upward into the horizon to reveal the starry sky of Dallas city lights above. I thought of them steering by those stars, navigating to some unknown continent in the sky by the positions of the Reunion Tower and the clusters of outlying suburbs.

Before I knew it the sun was gone. I could hardly see the clouds at all, but by the absence of stars could tell the were still there. I wished the little upside-down ships and their crews safe passage through those dark waves and shut the office door behind me.

ones and zeros

Comforting someone who has suffered a loss is the hardest thing to do. They've come to you seeking some sense of understanding, but all you can give is a sympathetic nod while you search around inside trying to remember the last loss you suffered and if anything could have helped you then. When it comes down to it, the closest you can come to helping is just listening, since what words of encouragement you may speak ring hollow even to yourself.

It's even harder over the wire. A message popped up on my screen two nights ago that put me into that kind of situation. Just a frowning emoticon sat there, prompting my inquiry, probing to discover if anyone was actually there on my side to listen. Snagged by the hook and somewhat bored, I responded with the awaited inquiry. His friend of 18 years had passed on the night before, bowing out quietly and without complaint .

The internet widens the gulf that is already so daunting between human beings. For all the connections available, sometimes it only barely suffices the minimum conditions of interaction. The range of options is just a false front.

I read his messages, which came broken with large silences in-between. The chat window prompted responses, some way to know that his words didn't just pass through unseen, so I did what I could to be there.

a cartoon character's fiery demise

A new year snuck in this week.

Without cable or any sort of reception for local channels, we just waited until the neighbors cheered to ring in another 365 day trip around the sun. There was champagne (or just sparkling wine because it was not manufactured in Champagne) and we stood on the porch while I smoked three cigarettes first thing on New Year's. I don't make those quitting kinds of resolutions.

Inside we reflected on the past several years, eating the kind of potato chips that have a rippled surface with French onion dip - exceptional when your tastebuds are being affected by just enough sparkling wine and beers. What a fantastic thing for us to be able to sit there at the table, drinking and talking and eating. What a marvel in the first place that we ever all met and still know each other. Out of all the billions of people in the world, there we all were, people all over the city and state and timezone celebrating with their own groups.

When we were done and everyone had left, I went to bed to stare at the ceiling and allowed my mind to wander.