Internal Winds

February 9, 2018February 10, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

masters of the trap

Alli walked down the street at night. Long shadows. Post no bills. The wind lifted old pieces of newspaper up and held them in the air like ghosts, before dropping them flat on the ground, as if the moment of flight had never happened.

But Alli wasn’t paying attention to that. In a leather jacket, Alli walked past chain-link fences, along the overpass, and over a tumulus of fallen leaves. She was on her way The Gem.

It was easy to miss. The building was slung low, hunched, almost sinking into the ground. A single, white neon sign depicting a diamond was the only symbol that indicated where she was. Alli opened the wooden door, with a square of stained glass at eye-height.

The juke box was going at a muted volume. The creaking fan spun at a lazy speed. Heads hung low, discussions hushed. The aging barkeep slowly wiped the counter down with a soft cloth.

Alli ordered a martini, with a lemon peel. Marta, sat on her usual stool, wearing her flowered hat, stirring her mint julep. She came to the bar to read.

Kaan appeared on the stool next to her, also in a leather biker jacket, and a wife beater. Alli sipped the martini, “Do you have your gear?”

“Sure do,” Kaan said pulling a cloth-wrapped bundle from her leather jacket.

“Let’s go over there,” Alli gestured. They slid into a booth, ducking beneath the low-hanging ceiling beams.

Kaan unwrapped the item in the red cloth. It was a deck of cards, the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. She shuffled the deck and dealt seven cards, face down. From those seven, she pushed the last three forward, “Past. Present. Future.”

Alli eyed the cards and then looked up at Kaan, “Go on.”

Kaan flipped the first card: “Knight of Swords. Dashing off toward adventure. Careening toward danger. Loyal, but contending with many forces, buffeting winds. True?”

Alli nodded and took another sip of her drink.

“Second card, the Star. Liminal card. One foot on dry land, the other on water. A card of selflessness. Also, a card of internal re-awakening. True?”

Alli nodded for Kaan to continue.

“Final card. King of Cups. A sensitive person. An adviser in high places. Contemplative. Pensive.”

Alli, again accepted the card, folding her hands.

“The transition is from land to water, from the frenetically bellicose to tranquility and self-awareness.”

“It’s a good narrative,” Alli said.

“But you’re not at peace,” Kaan replied.

Alli looked down, studying the whorls in the table.

Kaan leaned back, into the black upholstery, “It takes two to break up. You will wonder what you could have done better for a long time. But the truth is you couldn’t have done anything better. You haven’t lost anything, because you never gained anything in the first place.”

Alli looked up at Kaan, with more hostility than she meant to.

“It’s going to take a long time to understand that it wasn’t your fault, that you need to stop blaming yourself. Ultimately, you must forgive yourself.”

Alli also sat back, exhausted – even though it was only the beginning of the night.

Kaan looked around, and caught sight of Marta, in her yellow hat, “Is she always here?”

Alli looked past Kaan, following Kaan’s line of sight, “She’s been coming here for twenty years. Every night, same seat.”

Kaan looked back at Alli, “Must be a good spot.”

the matrix, still the best

Songs:

1) コンシャスTHOUGHTS:

ＮＥＥＤＵ

あなた

2) Michael McDonald – “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)”

Vanilla: Forgettin’ (based on “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)” by Michael McDonald, of the Doobie Brothers)

3) Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins – “What a Fool Believes” (Live)

Bonus:

slosylove: Da Hauntings

Duett: Running Scared

Gravitational Sounds

February 8, 2018April 6, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

Gym Leader Agatha

Alli walked barefoot by the sea. The sand was cold in the morning air. The waves were rolling back and forth, crossing oceans to get here. Alli turned and faced the east; the sun looked like it was rising out of the water. The golden rays hit the rocks, the forgotten shrubbery, shrewn around, and the window panes of the beach house behind her.

Constant undulations. Water that came halfway across the world, to this shore, hidden in some corner of the Keys, a silent island chain. Alli watched a wave bring in some limp plants.

Sitting down on the beach, Alli picked up handfuls of sand and let them run through her fingers.

“What would you have me do?!” Alli had yelled, months ago.

“Offer me a future!” Jan had yelled back, the night they had broken up.

And Alli had moved up north with Dallas, the debonair esper of Pennsylvania, self-assured, confident, and devastatingly beautiful.

“I would have given the world for you,” Alli had said.

“But you didn’t,” Jan had replied.

“You didn’t, and you won’t,” the words resonated from that time, ping ponging off old memories. The perennial swirl of New York and Florida.

“You don’t have to give up on me,” Alli had said, lying on the couch. Dallas held a rag full of ice up to her forehead.

“That’s the fever talking,” Dallas had responded. Alli had been working through some bug she had caught in Melbourne. “It must have been the crayfish in your bibimbap,” Dallas said.

They had both gone to several restaurants, including the offending Asian fusion joint. Dallas had said she was going to look at various Okinawan karate dojos, to see if she could buy one. But the premise had been running a little thin, even then. As Alli would soon see, Melbourne was only a foreshadowing.

“I want to be there for you,” Alli had mumbled from the couch. Dallas had dabbed away some sweat with a handkerchief, “You’re here for me, right now.”

The New York loft was receding from view. “Tell me I am right for you,” Alli had said, hovering in the darkness.

The spring buds were falling to the earth and the trees were unfurling their newborn leaves. “You’re not giving yourself any room to maneuver,” Nealy had said.

They were sitting in the park during the afternoon; the sun was gaining strength and beating down on them and the other chess players.

“I had a bad start,” Alli laughed.

“Yes, that was a horrible opening,” Nealy had said, “What were you thinking moving your knight way over there?”

“I was going to bring it in and position it in between your queen and your bishop. A knight fork.”

“An ambitious plan, in the best of times,” Nealy sighed, taking another one of Ally’s pawns, “Checkmate.”

“Tell me I am the one for you,” Alli had said, standing in between worlds.

“If I write you out of the will, what will you feel about that?” Jan had asked, turning around in her chair.

“Nothing,” Alli had sneered. When she left, she left for good, closing the screen door, walking out into the night, the endless crashing of waves and the peerless moon.

On the beach, in the increasingly hot morning, Alli let another handful of sand run through her fingers. “Are you going to do that all day?” a voice behind her said.

Alli spun around, still sitting on the surf; Nealy stood behind her, surrounded by the tall beach grass, “Are you going to come in for some crêpes, or what?”

Somewhere in the bottomless pit of space, echoed a thought, reaching back across time, splitting into pieces, stretching the distance traveled, in a second, by a photon careening at the speed of light: “Tell me I’m your one and only.”

not afraid of the darkness