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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
 Posted - 02/12/2018 : 18:31:03
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| They'd fold their pliant knees and sit cross-legged on the floor with their stories. Plural candles. Circles of light. Smokey air. "Furious angels," she laughs. "Mother... Father gone too soon. No one to say what the photographs mean. No pictures from the green isle. Many scenes of New York City. Impersonal memories. The first night I didn't sleep. I sat on the floor with my back to the door hugging my knees. Strangers footsteps down the long hall. My ankle bones turning to stone. There were little angel pins I coveted. Presented at the end of each month to girls who broke no rules. It's true I wore my nightgown under my raincoat to Mass every morning. And after night prayers I lit every votive in the trays. I ran away to the trains and often came late to Confession. (Bless me, Father, I have no sins. For your Penance then, three Hail Mary's.) But my study hall monitor complained I was stubborn and made me pray the rosary kneeling on rice. It's okay, she says when he winces. It was Lent and I felt saved. Your turn now, she says, and he looks at his fists. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 02/12/2018 : 18:54:56
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| "We're here now..." he says early in some late twentieth century decade. He's washing his face over the sink with his eyes closed. Talking through the water about twenty-five cent matinee movies with popcorn, "...hahaha..." he laughs, "...what was that one...? Tied to the tracks every Saturday? Even as a kid...didn't think my eyes could...ever take it all in..." Now the sun is setting and the Knight is waiting in the gloaming. |
Edited by - Ailinn on 02/13/2018 07:13:08 |
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San Diego
Swinger
508 Posts |
Posted - 02/15/2018 : 17:44:12
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| We went to watch the gray whales migration. Open water about an hour out. First, the acrobatic dolphins. "Oh, my God!" someone shouts, and a fifteen foot high spout shoots into the air. One appears. Then two and three. Huge. Forty feet long. They seem to take up the whole ocean. "Are they always in there?" Daniel asks wide-eyed. "Not near your house," Jon says. "They're on a long trip. They're too big to fly or take the train so they have to swim to San Ignacio." Daniel looks at his whale fluke tee shirt, raises his arms and flexes his muscles, "Okay," he says. Later we go to Cabrillo lighthouse and Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. One hundred thousand white gravestones on the hill overlooking the Bay. Too much to take in without tears. San Diego is becoming glitzified but there's still a lot of real things to see. |
Edited by - San Diego on 11/20/2019 14:18:50 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2018 : 19:20:43
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| I lived on an island. I played on the docks. I pestered the fishermen. Every edge was water. Or water's reflection. The first thing my father taught me to paint. Bright light lapping round-bottom boats. Atlantic light he said was holy. An easel arrived by ferry when I was five. "Did you like it there...? Did you want to stay...?" he asks. There was snow in the winter, she says. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 02/20/2018 : 19:26:08
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| "Write it all down," he said, "make sense of it later." Loose pages in the desk drawer. "Like a journey, honey. The days flow of color." A puzzle she saw in pieces. "You're standing with your nose up against one pixel," he said, "step back and see the big picture." He was the gleaner of truths. The ramshackle edge. The ravel between the mortal and the divine. |
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Joe Z
Windchimer
USA
1819 Posts |
Posted - 02/21/2018 : 16:01:43
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"You're standing with your nose up against one pixel," he said, "step back and see the big picture."
Mick: "I actually wanted to be an artist / painter. Had an art scholarship."
Joe: "Do you paint now?"
Mick: "No I will stare at a blank canvas for 6 hours!"
Joe: "On a trip to Paris I saw the amazing Mona Lisa in the Louvre."
Mick: "Let me tell you a story about Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. (Mick got excited talking about da Vinci.) Leonardo had painted the tablecloth with immaculate picture-in-picture detail. When da Vinci asked his students what they noticed about the painting, they replied, 'the beautiful tablecloth!' That same day da Vinci painted over the tablecloth with a brilliant white, as he wanted Jesus to be the focal point of the painting."
"That story," Mick explained, "teaches us a great deal about… not just painting… but life."
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Edited by - Joe Z on 02/26/2018 07:05:58 |
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San Diego
Swinger
508 Posts |
Posted - 02/23/2018 : 17:55:37
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In the San Diego Union-Trib this morning: Neanderthal art found in caves in Spain. Images and ornaments before Homo sapiens. Amazing. The lean toward expression and beauty.
Mick was writing with a gold pen that leaked. I had a box of museum note cards on the desk and he picked up one he liked. The Lady of Shalott...embossed with gold fingerprints.
Love you, Joe |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 02/24/2018 : 18:03:43
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| Biscayne Boulevard before Nantucket. My parents eating shrimp cocktails in sweet orange air. Greyhound could get me there. Leave the lilacs behind. Find the billboard highway. Pecan pie. Pecan candy. Pecan everything. Three...two...one miles... You're here! Sea oats and sand dollars with doves inside. A cottage. My own walls. Small trouble. Blue enamel coffee pot on the stove. Tropical haze out the window. He can look at you a long time without blinking. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2018 : 17:00:16
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| "...Gothic churches. Tall saints by the river. Cracked marble floors and wine-stained sofas beyond the ornate vestibule. Adhesive tape names on the boxes. Back-to-back grand pianos. Everyone smoking. Not a clean glass in sight. Tunnel nights slipping through turnstiles in the west heart of the city. Up on the avenue you had to move fast. Blossoming paranoia. I went to school now and then. I went to Technicolor movies. Overtures. Big music." "...but what did you dream about back then...?" he asks. They're sitting so close their knees are touching. "A road I'd never been on before..." she says, "...can your dark machine take us there?" |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2018 : 17:05:18
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| In the middle of the year he said, "Don't hang up on me..." and he laughed his cracked-in-half laugh. The days flamed into summer. Turned hot and sleepy. His shirt on the chair back. Empty boots by the door. Shimmering halo of heat overhead burning color onto their skin. At the south end jetty the Fire Department practiced swift water rescues. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 03/18/2018 : 17:40:58
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| Rock-strewn beach after the storm. Sea star-strafed and rolling. Moon a bright V of light on the water beyond the NO TRESPASSING signs. Cops and Coast Guard mustering in the parking lot. Locals offering donuts and coffee. Deep down in the ocean the magnetic fields drift. Up on the PCH traffic lights swing in the wind. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 03/18/2018 : 17:50:45
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| His canvases leaning against the walls. Cartons of paraphernalia. The particulars and inventions of their lives. "...market to mine," he laughs, smearing paint with his finger, not the brush. It was the year of El Nino. The Jet Stream shift. Big rain many days. Pistol-dark skies. Black tarps anchoring the cliff side. Sand bags supporting the porch. "The first thing we're gonna do..." he says. She's kneeling by the trunk. Paper towels and a hair dryer. He appears in the doorway with two cups in hand. He spreads the pages in a circle around her. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2018 : 18:01:43
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| The house with blue shutters and lintel over the door. The curtain of jingle shells on the patio. The jar of keys on the counter. The clock that lies. She's tying hibiscus stems to the trellis. Triple knots. "Too obsessive...?" she asks. "Dedicated," he grins. Here come the hummingbirds wooed by red. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2018 : 18:07:09
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| An acre of sprawl off Coast 101. WEEKENDS 7AM TO SUNSET. Antiques-On-Consignment. Time-contained stalls. The mystery of emptied attics. Each decade in its frame. Hint of scent in a stoppered perfume bottle. A patron spirit for the crowd. "...catching up to the past..." he laughs, but he means it. There's also local honey and strawberries. Meat grilling on sticks. Street tacos. Chili in Dixie cups on the corner. "Order it up," he says. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2018 : 18:11:38
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| Dark cyan sky in the Valle de Guadalupe. Late afternoon vineyards bordered with mustard bloom. All that buttery light in the hollows. Alebrijie totems on the window sill. Sheets waiting to set sail on the line. Star wine in the viney green. Early moon balloon-high above them burning the house down in Mexico. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 04/08/2018 : 19:01:22
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Traffic magic. Seagulls sailboat footprints in the sand. Sandpipers feather and foam at the ruffled edge. Water flooded with sunlight. Out on the ocean the pleasure boats travel to Catalina. A new branch of green leaves aboard one. Bon Voyage banner and remnants of a christening left behind on the dock. Above the Pacific the Flower Fields glow on in April. Fifty acres of tissue-thin blooms. Translucent. Like paint on glass. Step lightly here. Close and careful. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 04/08/2018 : 19:08:42
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"Let's go where we're gonna go seein' so much..."
"...if one is good...two is better...hahaha." Market in O'side Harbor. Honey roasted peanuts out of the barrel. Fill a little brown bag for a dollar. Embarcadero's afternoon sunlight so bright with its kettle corn smell. "Day of the flowers..." she said, "...how they always come back..." Walk around Liberty Station. Arches and alcoves. Warped air in the jet blast over NTC Park. Grand balcony overlooking The Gaslamp's striped awnings. Music spilling into the street. "Listen..." he said. Something leaking before the flood.
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Ginny G.
Windchimer
USA
1810 Posts |
Posted - 04/12/2018 : 03:52:04
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Your writing so beautifully poetic, Ailinn.  Thank you for sharing it. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 04/12/2018 : 19:45:37
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| Thank you, Ginny. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2155 Posts |
Posted - 04/16/2018 : 17:02:39
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| "Cards is jus' payin' attention," he says, tipped back in his gravity-defying chair. His easygoing manner and instant grasp of information. His proficient shuffle and ace-flipping thumb. "No bluffin' in this game," he says. But she reads the signs. How he taps his middle finger. How he glances up without raising his head. Slight lift of his left eyebrow when he sets his glass down in the same circle. "What else do you think you know?" he grins. Silver clasp holding the sea and the sky together. The night just beginning. Lightning spiking the clouds. Ocean full of rain outside the window where men in yellow slickers are wrestling barricades. If he picks the blue deck she wins. |
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The Nightly Vigil