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Joe Z
Windchimer
USA
1819 Posts |
 Posted - 03/07/2015 : 11:52:31
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"What a glorious gift of God music is... It drives away the devil and makes people happy."
Martin Luther |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 03/13/2015 : 18:37:41
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| Scissors, slices, shadows. The tree-propped sky appearing over the haunted San Jacinto's. You turn onto the blue gravel road. Pine blur of trees where the sun never falls all the way to the needled ground. How quiet our footsteps. How safe we are there. "...between two worlds..." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 03/13/2015 : 18:45:15
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| It was your idea. Pretend we're invited guests, you said. Charming the grave grandmother in the corner. The overseer. The one with the authentic evil eye. What did you say/tell her that she gave you a fine linen napkin filled with tiny wedding cookies? |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 03/15/2015 : 17:40:09
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Late Surfliner. Union Station. "...her face and hands were porcelain bisque. The rest of her body was...something not around anymore. She had long dark hair and lashes. Brown glass eyes that closed. She wore high-button shoes and a blue-ticking sailor dress. She slept between the Harlequin Jester and the Gypsy doll with exaggerated long legs. When I was five I jumped on my high iron bed trying to touch the ceiling. She hit the floor and fractured her peaches and cream face. At the doll hospital many dolls were recovering in cradles and cribs. Doll nurses in uniform aprons. Big red crosses on their chests. I sat on the floor beside her bed until Mr. Rosenthal turned out the lights..."
The hypnotic rocking of the train. The picture of him, weary. A wince in his heart. His reflection in the midnight window pinching the bridge of his nose. An Edward Hopper melancholia.
After all that dark... "Tell me all of it!" he said. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 03/16/2015 : 18:53:31
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| A woman tells stories to a man. His expression never changes. Nor do his profiles. Small moles on either side of his face in different places. And his eyes. Grey clouds coming in. Clear blue skies. There again, stormy weather. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2015 : 16:56:08
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| Late days. Ensenada. Benito Juarez stalking the honey market. Crepe paper streamers and ten dollar painted guitars. Every cruise ship tourist tethered to a papier-mâché piñata. The harbor with its wavery reflections. Aqua marine. Bands of blue. "Wet pictures," you said, brushing shortbread sugar from the front of your shining white shirt. |
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Joe Z
Windchimer
USA
1819 Posts |
Posted - 03/26/2015 : 11:21:39
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| The magic works like this: You feel bad. You listen to Newbury. You feel better. |
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Joey L.
Swinger
USA
1383 Posts |
Posted - 03/27/2015 : 09:06:16
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And if you feel good ... you go play golf. Is that how it works?
Inquiring minds knead da dough, y'know! cuz ... 'the Future's Not' ... |
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Joe Z
Windchimer
USA
1819 Posts |
Posted - 03/27/2015 : 11:39:27
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Whatever rings the bell.
Kayaking is my second choice... |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 03/28/2015 : 18:10:26
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| Life in the filtered light of days gone by. "I like to be surprised," he says, his elbow out the window freckling up. His reflection in the rearview mirror. The Badlands casting their mutinous shadows across the desert floor. The sky, star-flecked and quiet. Furious Summer's bramble miles. Heat lightning. Razor-sharp at the edge. Waiting for a break in the weather. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 03/28/2015 : 18:25:38
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| He's sleeping. A brief time. A few moments at the most. A series of revolving doors when he wakes with a start, "...still out there..." he says, and she knows where he is. Out on the vast Mojave where they discovered the slabs that night. Asymmetrical. City blocks wide. A high thin vibrating sound. A whine almost a color. "Like landing strips for space ships," she'd said, and he'd said, "Ours...?" They couldn't find the road the next morning. Too much mirage on the windshield. Everything tilted and slipping away. All needles and thorns. Brittle branches. No sweet stems to wrap in a wet paper towel and set in a safe kitchen window. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 03/28/2015 : 18:31:26
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| After supper they blew out a thousand candles and walked under jacaranda. Lavender confetti sticking to the soles of their shoes. This world's petals in their hair. "Jus' tell the story," he said, "don't explain it." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 03/29/2015 : 18:48:44
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I used a compass. Ten miles was my outside travel number from where I'd be working in LA. (Here's where the natives laugh.) I rented a ladder cottage on Westwanda in the hills above Sunset. A steep road of S curves with no room for two cars to pass. A half apron driveway where I had to open the garage door to pull in. The kitchen was a blindingly bright balcony. The rest of the house midnight dark. Like living inside a tree. A long narrow basement with wooden floor and a barre that ran the length of a mirrored wall. A man came in and sat down at the piano on Thursdays.
I went back several years ago. A sentimental journey. Every house had been remodeled. The road even narrower now. |
Edited by - Ailinn on 08/19/2017 18:33:16 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 04/01/2015 : 07:58:57
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Promissory Notes. The lifeguards children are raking the beach or walking on water. They want ice cream from the jingle truck. The lifeguards want a cold beer. Zinc oxide smear on their heroic noses watching the Spring break convoy heading south on the PCH. Smoke rising from miles of bluff campgrounds. Pavilions of tail-gaters barbecuing beside their RVs.
At the top of a cliff there's a stilted house strung around with wind chimes and tiny bells. Glass beads in the window. A shivering carnival presence on the walls. Outside, a welcome mat. A picnic table. A deck of Bicycle cards. |
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Craig
Firefly
Kyrgyzstan
3793 Posts |
Posted - 04/02/2015 : 03:07:53
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quote:
Originally posted by Ailinn
A deck of Bicycle cards.
Blue or red?
Craig |
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San Diego
Swinger
509 Posts |
Posted - 04/03/2015 : 08:36:54
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Morning, Craig. I have a houseful here with more arriving this afternoon. Marathon cooking. I considered making your cherry pie... but I don't have an extra week to do that.  Easter blessings to you, Janet and family. Love, Ro. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 04/11/2015 : 17:08:52
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| I meet her at the Daily Grill in Palm Desert, "...where they still know how to make a whisky sour." Marcella Delight. Appropriate name. Remarkably beautiful. (Those high cheekbones her famous photographer mined so originally in black and white.) "Some men break your heart making history," she said after I knew her a while. A world traveler who fled NYC after a 40-hour blizzard in 2008. Now she lives in Rancho Mirage and occasionally dines with the displaced Ventura ophthalmologist who, "...insists you have 'surreal vision'," she's laughing. He's also joined her in a poetry workshop, "Quite humorous," she's serious now. "The rest... Ah, well...I get on with it. You know how that is..." After lunch we wander through Clementine Market where I find treats for my children who live in another world. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 04/11/2015 : 17:18:49
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It's a long drive up and over the menacing Santa Rosas. A dangerous vertigo climb past the big horn sheep lookout. Wooden crosses and plastic lilies at Carrizo Road. I pull over for a few moments. Turn off the AC and roll the windows down.
Surreal vision. His lightning-sliced palms interrupted lifelines. Water skiing off Route 66 in the middle of the Mojave. Any close encounter at the Bagdad Café. "...stopping everyone without chains on the mountain," he said. 109 degrees on the desert floor. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 04/22/2015 : 18:39:07
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| She bakes loaves in the yard oven beyond a blur of smoke trees. He made the oven from bricks and broken stone. He showed her how to arrange the stones to adjust the temperature. He's uncannily mechanically inclined. And industrious. He places the easel in the center of the overgrown courtyard where mornings spread open and the prolific vineyards unfold. Steep steps on a sloping hillside. His voice rising and falling. His animated sermon of light. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2196 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2015 : 18:36:28
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| Down the sand blown road the coast curves to commerce. Hand-made chess sets. Cuban cigars. Corn in cones on every corner. Mariachis and oyster bars. |
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The Nightly Vigil