Wild is the Wind

Wind. What do we know about it? Where is it from? Where is it going? Some love it, it's gentle with them- carries coolnes on hot days, fuels the cold night's fire. Others hate it, it ruins their hair, its howl causes terror. It's everywhere and in everything, with everyone and with no one... I want to be everywhere and with everyone, but at the same time love solitude. I don't understand myself, let alone anyone else; it's difficult to think of yourself as wind, it's a struggle with the irreparable and reveling in carelessness. It's a thousand "why's?" It's a million wishes and aspirations. A lover called me "Wind." From that moment I knew my name. When you understand your true name, it gets easier-

-Sasha Belyaeva
(excerpt from Brenda Hillman's "Piece's of Air in the Epic")

Five and Seven, Three and Thirty-One, and a Red Calculator in My Brain

In seven minutes, I am away
from the only thing that could
make me smile at the moment.
I decided to come and it was
poor. I decided to invite and
it was poor also. I'll have you
know that I'm going to burn
everything because it's a
lot better than staring at
false hope, hearing a joking
voice, playful and hollow,
talking from a mouth
I've never known. Grow
grow and grow a garden
plant tomatoes and secret
pollen. Bury your nose.
Bury your nose and I'll
cover my eyes and ears
and pretend that you're
not here.

We Fight to Stay Alive

...just say you'll entertain the possibility.

Hearst Mining

I've tried to place you aside, yet when I adventure onto something undiscovered, I want to show you. The walls rose with inlaid brown bricks and the arches in subtle gray-green hue. There were lanterns dangling from the retrofitted all- dove-white stain-glassed ceiling. And, as you know, I climbed the stairs to the second and third floor until I couldn't climb any higher. I walked to the wooden window frames, their latches tightened, and I lifted my body to the inner ledge to look around at the world of students walking to their classes. There was the pond, the clock tower, Evans, and bike-riders. I then sat down below the sill, pulled out "Say Uncle," and read to myself.

I could have fallen asleep their on that chilly hard floor.

Patience

"Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable--
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness."

-K. Ryan

Dubliners

As he sat there, living over his life and evoking alternately the two images in which he now conceived her, he realized that she was dead, that she had ceased to exist, that she had become a memory. He began to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else could he have done. He could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how lonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that room. his life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to exist, became a memory -if anyone remembered him.

-Joyce, "A Painful Case"

I Shouldn't Write at Night

Reminder:
Firstly. Sleep more and don't dream about the woman you wish you could have.
Secondly. Warm the blankets before slipping underneath them. I don't know, find a way.
Thirdly. Don't stare at a bright screen prior to falling asleep. Nightmares ensue.
Fourthly. Make sure to use the restroom before shutting your eyes.
Fifthly. Don't write because it won't make any damn bit of sense.
Sixthly. Don't watch anything scary right before you go to bed.
Seventh. No over-drinking. Of any fluid the more I think about it.
Eighth. Close closet door. Double check.
Ninth. Brush teeth. This should be higher on the list.