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.