The Park Bench

*Inspired by some Anglo-Saxon readings explored a few weeks ago.

The sky was unusually blue for December, the only vibrant pigment dyed into Minnesota's largely grey winter stitchwork. The lake's dull frozen top made for a mild, unpolished pewter sheen. This smooth, grey stuff spread between stalks stiff with frost and black trees that dotted Northfield's small park. The snow that covered the town's flat sanctuary had lost its fresh white sheen and had thawed and re-frozen into another dull grey.

The old man stuffed Prince Albert into his dark pipe. His fingers pinched the old tobacco that had begun to dry out. His one-two-three shake above the pouch to free loose weed back into the bag was burdened, as if the light, sweet leaves were shredded strips of lead.

The smoke was mild, fairly unscented with a weak taste. Its white spectre body would float but a few yards from the bench, then soon soaked into the greater winds of the place. The old man watched the few people who'd decided to brave the nipping temperatures. Two teens were bundled up in red, grey and plaid--ice fishing. Both would be Adam's age, the man thought, one of his twelve grandkids. There'd be no snow where Adam was. "Get's into the 60's on cool days," Adam's father would tell the man on the phone. The old man couldn't comprehend a place without winter. The ice-fishers soon left.

He thought of Janine and Ezra out east, and Eric far south in Mississippi. Just JoAnne and him now left in the Midwest, her in the frozen dirt, him in the frozen air. But the pipe's old bowl, worn with smoke around the top ridge, warmed his hand.

A young couple passed by. College students, he thought, from the way they dressed. Thick scarf wrapped around the wide necks of grey pea coats. The local kids who stuck around after high school wore hunting jackets, more likely. The young man looked towards the old man, smiled, and waved. Just cuz I'm an old local with a pipe, he thought, cuz no one smokes these things anymore--he thinks its quaint. He nodded his head to the boy. The old man watched the brightly colored scarves shrink and disappear over the hill. And he nodded off to sleep.

When he came to, the pipe sat cold in his hand, only half of the tobacco burnt up. He thought of relighting, but noticed the setting sun. The right side of the pipe had terrible bubbling under the lacquer--a hole was forming in the bowl's wall. Ash fell between his legs, and then stale, unburnt tobacco, both resting lightly on the snow. On the walk home, the man saw a brightly colored bird. It flitted from one tree to another on the opposite side of the path and quickly disappeared inside of the black trunk--but a brief second's arc through the sky.

Lovemaking

You are my greatest friend on nights like these. Call me racist, but I prefer you white. Just seems much more clean that way, as opposed to the reds always found in the little joints spread all over Manhattan --carnelian, rufous, or the fire brick shade--always with a semi-gloss finish. Green, too, you see often. Not quite hunter or forest green, but more of a fern, I think. To each his own--I like you white.

White is clean, like the canvas in front of me. But white is the enemy on nights like these, the daunting stare of infinite possibility. The terror of Eden, it is. With one stroke you're thrown from the purity of the blank slate and barred by the angel with the flaming sword who, flapping his wings like a downtown pigeon, crows "you've pick your stroke and, for better or worse, must now proceed." I dab my brush into sunglow and, mixing, lighten it up into schoolbus. The brush is brought to the white, and I pause. The tyrant white.

On nights like these, I love you so--not for the white alone, but for the black as well. And how the two oppose! The glazed ivory is stalwart, cool and strong. Inside, though, rushes a maelstrom of black, liquidy chaos, steaming hot with the caffeine muse. And I cherish simple you for the absolute binaries you manage to be. The hot stuff would burn and spill terribly but for you, cool white.

Thus, the tyrant white's blank gaze making me want to cry, I bring you in for a dear kiss. A strange sort of lovemaking ensues, and I imbibe the liquidy passion that makes up your steaming soul.

And, in post-coital ease, I inhale your sweet, bitter breath. With a final kiss, I thank you and God for you, and I dab my schoolbus yellow onto the hospitable white.

High Priest

She lies there, Miss Samsung Intensity, with deceitful marginality. Teeny, black piece of plastic with but a dozen little buttons. Drop her from even the lowest of tabletops, she never fails to spill out her own battery and power down. Useless, suicidal thing. Little, electronic lemming.

But in a flash, like the batmobile, a full QWERTY keyboard pops from her sleek, black side, ready for finger-firing action. In three seconds, she is the artist-capturer of candid memories, the painter of spontaneous adventure with friends. Click, snap, and save a small slice of your life in this little altar-y thing. At the push of a button, the screen instantly fills with dozens of contacts. She knows your friends and family, and she is your mediator, your go-between. Matchmaker, matchmaker. And high priest. Quick! She vibrates a message to your eyes from your girlfriend. Avast! She stands ready to send out a ten-person"Wat u up 2 2nite?" telegram for the weekend rendezevous. Mom here, dad there. Brothers. Sisters. All in a second, she stands ready. For you, just for you. Your little maid.

And soon, fingers shaking, you fumble in pockets and realize you left her at home. Immediately, the panicky, nicotine fit hits. Your valiant drive into a prairie sunset is instantly transformed into a cold night on the lone range. You are without your high priest. And without a mediator, you--like young Pippin of the Pequod--bob up and down in a dark, vast ocean, completely alone in the night. And Pippin went insane.

The little piece of plastic, piece of crap, marginal Samsung--she has become your great giant high priest.

Week 1: Inanimate Objects

Assignment: Pick a common, inanimate object. Stare at it a good while. See what happens.

In Just Looking, Updike wrote a whole book of art criticsm doing this with single pieces of art, I'm told. Just sat down, stared and stared some more, and wrote. Melville spent an excruciating amount of pages examining whaling objects in Moby Dick--forges, try-works, the dart, the crotch, and the Heidelburgh Tun. Philosophers have found a renewed interest in Melville because of this attention to inanimate objects, I'm told. Russell Hoban wrote a crazy little metaphysical novel called Kleinzeit in which he transformed inanimate objects--The Hospital, The Underground, and Glockenspeil--into actual, major characters. And of course, there's Cogsworth and Lumiere from Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

Disney excluded, these artists try and examine the profound effects that seemingly dead objects can have on our lives. A friend of mine thought Hoban's Kleinzeit was, in part, an examination of those type of events in which one stubs one's toe on a piece of furniture and proceeds to cuss out the thing as if it were a living enemy. What can a single, "dead" object hold?

The Aim

It would be more fruitful for creativity, I think, if I attempted to loosely organize this blog around a common aim. Of course, the first aim is to get me writing. But, I don't want the thing to turn into incessant ramblings about my own day-to-day going-ons.

No, I've found that I've yet been able to synthesize my own life experience into good writing. I need to learn the basics as seperated from myself before I can inject myself into the writing. I need distance. That is, I need to write about things I'm not biased about, don't have a personal, vested interest in. For the time being, that is.

So, how does a guy refrain from constantly writing about himself? Give him an assignment.

An assignment for the entirity of a blog--which may run for half of a month or for a of couple years--is difficult to do, I think. So, I've decided I'll do weekly(ish) assignments. One week will have a common theme on which I write, simply to try and distance myself from the creative subject matter. Force myself to not talk about me so fricken much. Slaying of the self, George MacDonald called it.

We'll see if this works. Or lasts.

I'll Try

I'd like to be a decent writer. This is my attempt at practice. It's public as I hope it'll give me motivation to keep posting.